Interested in starting up your own eCommerce site, and you already have a niche targeted?
If you answered yes to both of these questions, here are the things that every successful online marketer MUST know!
Choose your shopping cart solution wisely! Whether you pay for the solution or use open source, your site's very being on the web depends on this! If you were to use osCommerce or Magento for instance, can you build other pages that aren't necessarily product promotions but articles to drive more traffic into your site? You can, but you have to add in several add-ons or custom program them yourself. If you use Volusion or other solutions like this, you aren't going to find the ability to do this with them without registering another domain and pointing links.
You DON'T have to pay for SEO classes to get your site ranked to the top of search engines. You MUST, however, follow a few steps to getting the site ranked:
Adding Podcasts will attract new traffic to your site not only through search engines but if you deliver to iTunes, you have a whole new world of exposure. Build subscribers by offering informative podcasts about the product(s) you are promoting. If you can reach your user and become the expert, you gain their trust and in turn will be 9 times out of 10 more likely to get their business.
Adding Videos will attract traffic from people who like to see proof of what is claimed about a product or looking for instructions on how to use the product. If they don't have the product, there is a very good possibility of making the sale through this channel. This is also a great way to upsale products such as accessories.
Add images. Do you know how many visits per day that I get on a few of my ecommerce sites from the images alone? I know that people aren't as likely to become customers through this route, but here is the opportunity to hook them in. See next step.
Use Hover Ads to capture email addresses for your newsletter. Offer your visitor something free in exchange for their email address. This gives you the potential to give them incredible offers that will likely result in a huge payout!
Write articles. If you can't write good articles, hire somebody to do it for you. There are multiple sources to find a freelance writer. Let them research what you are selling and write the article for you. A good article should cost no more than $5-$10.
Have RSS feeds and an XML Sitemap. There are a few RSS feeds that your site will need to provide your visitors and Google with the information it is looking for. If you podcast, you should have an iTunes RSS feed. Your shopping cart should have a product RSS feed for Google Base. Finally, your visitors need a feed to add to their reader. This gives them the opportunity to read new information as you post it. And the Sitemap should be in place so that the search engines have access to it.
Give your visitors a forum. This gives them the ability to discuss the products that you have and gives you the perfect channel for interaction. You can make this a "members only" option if you are selling information products or if you only want to give your customer's access.
Build backlinks. You can do this very easily. I also must stress that I do not advise any of my clients or you to buy links. If the search engines find this, your site WILL be penalized and possibly banned from the SERP listings. DO NOT DO THIS! The exception: Yahoo Directory is the only exception. You can pay for a listing here and Google won't penalize but will actually increase your page rank for this listing. You can build backlinks by searching Google's blogsearch tool for relative blogs and by joining forums where you can add a signature. DO NOT SPAM blogs or forums just for links however!
On your product listing pages, write a unique product description. Be informative and make sure that you stress the points that makes your customer believe that they can't live without it. Remember, you may only have one shot to sell to this customer and you don't want to blow it. Give them something that will make them want to buy from you.
Give your users a contact form. This will give them the ability to contact you with any issues/ questions that they have regarding your product(s). If you have a couple of questions that are commonly asked, create an FAQ page with the question and the answer. Put a link to it on your contact page so that they can read through this before contacting you. If they still need to contact you, they can.
Use an autoresponder. Most hosting companies that provide an email account with the hosting has an autoresponder. If your email is info@yoursite.com, set up an autoresponder for that email address. You responder can have something that says (but be creative with it): We have received your question and usually respond within 24 hours. Thank you, Support Team
Have a Privacy Policy. Be sure to let your customers know that you are not going to share their information with another site. Make sure that they also understand that "what happens on your site, stays on your site." Nobody wants their information getting into the hands of spammers.
Once you start getting traffic, you probably will want to upgrade your hosting account. Several of my clients have found that once they started getting traffic, a lot of times they would get a failure to connect to webserver. As it turns out, your hosting company usually only allows so many connections at one moment causing a failure to connect when that amount is surpassed. Nothing is more frustrating to a customer than to find a site that won't load. This could cost you a sale.
Make your site easy to navigate. In other words, make sure that somebody with little computer experience can find their way around. Also make sure that it doesn't take forever for your site's pages to load. I have had clients that spent thousands for graphic design, only to find that it was overkill. Don't let this happen to you. Remember, simple sells!
Be consistent when adding content. Try to add 4-5 new pages of content per week, especially if it is your goal to make the internet marketing a full-time job. The more traffic you can drive to your site, the better your odds of conversions.
Don't set unrealistic expectations and be sure to be consistent. A lot of the time, people have what I like to call the "Field of Dreams" syndrome when it comes to eMarketing. The facts are, there are billions of websites on the net. When you build the site, don't expect to start seeing huge amounts of traffic overnight. Do continue to optimize your content for keywords and submit your site to the search engines. Patience pays off.
Lastly, be sure to use social networking. This is the way of the future. If you don't already use Digg, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, you are losing out big time. New market research shows that up to 45% of site's are using social networking to notify followers of sales, promotions, and general information. It will give you more exposure to not only people but to the search engines as well. In fact, Google updates this information on page 1 with the new Caffeine program that they have!
If you haven't found a solution that will work for you, there are numerous programmers who can assist you in finding the right solution. Also, I am going to release software very soon that will give you the potential to utilize everyone of the features highlighted above. The only thing that this will not do is accept payments on your site yet, you will have to use a gateway such as paypal or Google Checkout.
If you are interested in beta-testing, contact me or visit http://scottpdaugherty.com/go/phpPig.org to sign up for the newsletter where I notify of new products to test out.
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