Once you get your online store up and running, how do you get the word out and keep those folks coming back? While there’s no magic solution, here are our tips on promoting your eCommerce site and maintaining a customer base.
Make Friends with Social Networking
These days, everyone and their goldfish have a Facebook page, so why shouldn’t you? Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are great way to gain fans and customers – but remember to only get started if you plan to keep your accounts active. It won’t be too hard to think of ways to maintain your social networking page: you can encourage your fans to advertise for you by offering freebies, discount codes, or contests to those who share your products or page. A social networking page could also be great platform for your customers to share their pictures or reviews of your products. And of course, don’t forget the power of a good old-fashioned post where you can share updates, news, or anything you like!
Check out our 3 blog posts on enhancing Facebook business page engagement.
Online Advertising
If you have money within your budget, online advertising can significantly boost your eCommerce site traffic and establish your image. Some popular advertising programs include Google Adwords, Amazon Product Ad, or Facebook Ads. Think of your target demographic when you decide where to advertise – placing ads for your luxury auto parts business on a coupon-hunting site might not be the best move. After you’ve planted a few ads, continue to analyze your site statistics to identify the most effective placements by making use of Google Analytics.
Don’t Be Wary of Large Marketplaces
You don’t need to compete with the big guys. Well, in a sense you do, but use them to help you out as well! Online Marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon and eBay have a lot to offer. You can get your name out there by hitching on: they are known, trusted, and most importantly, they have a large built-in customer base. Try adding links to redirect visitors to your site whenever possible, and make sure that your product catalog is easily found.
Pay Attention to SEO
Don’t underestimate the importance of SEO in the eCommerce game! Consider starting a blog where you can create relevant and compelling content. This can drive traffic to your site and encourage others to link and share your information. Also, stay active in relevant forums, but DON’T cross the line into Suzie Spammer territory. You don’t want to brashly post links to your site anywhere and everywhere: the goal is to establish yourself in the forum community, gain contacts, and keep up to date with industry news.
Site Performance and Speed
Your website speed and performance directly impact your bounce rate, visitor satisfaction and store reputation. With eCommerce and other image-heavy websites, initial page loading times can be especially slooow, and potential customers might not stick around for the wait. Here at Doteasy, we’ve been pondering the best way to offer exceptionally fast hosting to our clients, and we’ve come out with a SSD hosting plan. Not just any SSD hosting: we have a 100 GB plan that entirely uses a Solid State Drive for storage… at the lowest price in the world. That means load times for SSD sites can be up to 30X faster than traditional HDD counterparts. We believe in SSD hosting so strongly that we’re offering our plan for only US$4.95/ month for the first year: it should be accessible to everyone.
So get out there and start raking in the dough with your online store! Yes, there will be work involved and the beginning might be slow-going, but with patience and diligence, the pay-off can be huge.
Bonus tip: Don’t want to deal with setting up an online store? We can do it for you with our Doteasy eCommerce Solution.