You’ve gone to the trouble of building your own ecommerce site, but if you don’t effectively promote it, you’re not going to see much business. Even if you already have an established offline presence, that is no guarantee that your online store is going to do well. Here are some tips on how you can start driving business to your ecommerce site.
First, you will need to advertise. The old adage is definitely true when it comes to online selling – the worst kind of advertising is no advertising. Start with simple pay-per-click ads with search engines. You’ll be able to effectively target potential customers through keywords and you’ll only be paying for the actual clicks that you receive. This is probably the most effective method of advertising for most businesses.
Once you utilize your PPC ads, you’ll want to create interest that will entice potential customers to come visit your site. It’s not enough to advertise a product. You need to tell them why they should be shopping with you and not your competitors. This may mean running special sales or simply using different methods to describe what you have to sell.
For example, you can use human interest to help you sell an item. Let’s say that you are selling self help books. You can just use the title of the book and hope that people recognize it, or you can promote it with a PPC ad by using calls to action. CTA’s are statements that make people want to learn more about what you are selling. You have to pique their interest. Instead of using a simple title of a book, use the phrase, “Change your life right now in one easy step.”
This is just an example, but it contains two important facets. First, the call to action: they can change something right now, and it won’t be difficult. Second, you are working the human interest angle by promoting a way to make their life better. Everyone wants to enjoy a better life. Of course, you will need to modify this to suit your own store, but these are the general concepts behind writing a compelling PPC ad that will drive customers to your store.
You can also utilize banner advertising to promote your store. This is more hit or miss, but may be effective for you. It generally costs more than PPC ads however, and you may be charged by the amount of time an ad is viewed, rather than how many times it is clicked.
Once you’ve got people interested in your store, you are going to want to give them a reason to stay and keep using you in the future. Try offering incentives to regular customers, like an extra 10% off coupon, or special customer only sales. You can also give away free gifts to further entice potential customers. These can be little add-ons, or even better, free ebooks that don’t cost you a thing to give away.
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February 4th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Very informative. I agree that you should have the little “perks” to keep your customers yours, and drive them away from competitors.
February 4th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Hi,
Nice post on driving traffic to an Online store. I agree with many of your points and would like to add a few to your list.
Once you’ve successfully completed the tasks above, you can list your site across several niche channels, two of which include comparison shopping engines and local search engines.
CSE’s are much like Google Adwords only you pay for clicks from sites where shoppers flock including Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, Shopzilla and more.
Local search engines and Internet yellow pages are very popular among Online business owners. Typically all you need is a physical mailing address (not necessarily a physical storefront) and your business can get listed, but these sites are also great for brick and mortar business owners who also sell Online.
eCopt
May 21st, 2008 at 2:35 pm
If you want to monetize a site, it is a better idea to think of how you are going to do it before you actually start the site, rather than build the site and then decide to monetize it. Of course when you are planning, you may decide to add the monetization once the site becomes popular.