Posted on October 30, 2011
The secret to making any e-commerce site profitable is to have a sound strategy for promoting it. While the overall goal is to earn a healthy return, it is important to recognize that it needs to be consumer targeted. These five essential marketing strategies can help elevate an e-commerce site from ho-hum to something extraordinary.
Have a Marketing Plan
Without a detailed plan that outlines specific marketing activities, promotional campaigns are doomed to fail. The plan should not only address activities that will boost current sales, but allow room for future growth. Stay current on e-commerce trends, and use research tools to know where the potential audience is and how to reach them.
Web Site Design
When an e-commerce web site is built, it can be tempting to make it fancy and fun. However, statistics show that the best performing sites are simple and easy to navigate. Ditch the flash animation or anything that may distract the consumer. The overall goal here is to attract the consumer and close the sale. The best method is by simple pictures, clear pricing, a strong marketing message, and easy to find buttons. Read More...
Posted on August 26, 2011
To the non-technical local shopkeeper, getting onto the internet with a small business web design in the first place can seem incredibly difficult but getting found online is even harder.
Because it's not just about having a website, it's making sure that your pages show up on Google and the other search engines for the search terms that best reflect your product or service.
So, you need to find out what your potential customers are typing into the Google search bar and then you need to make sure that there are pages on your site which position those words in the places that the search engine spiders can see them.
Header tags, metadata, alt tags are the main places that the bots sent out by Google and the other search engines will be looking for the clues that tell them what your website is all about so these must be completed with care as it is very tempting to keyword stuff.
But that's just making the page search engine friendly. It's not much good having a page full of words that only the spiders like, you have to think about the visual experience of your reader too. Because they're not just a reader, they're a potential client.
Use the right words in the correct order and they will be picking up the phone to find out more or even buy straightaway. Read More...
Posted on February 23, 2011
Many virtual professionals I know have gone through that phase where they just put one foot in front of the other and hope that things go well.
The problem with that is that if you don't have a plan in place, you can experience a lot of issues:
- you can go off track
- worse, you can go nowhere
- you can't measure your successes
In order to know whether things are going the best way possible in your business it's important to determine where you want to go, how you want to get there, how you are GOING to get there, and how things look when you arrive. That's called strategic planning, and every business owner should practice it.
It's not as difficult as you might think. Whether you are tackling your client intake process, your marketing calendar, your revenue planning, or your newsletter, you need to go through these four steps to make sure that your process makes sense and that it will work for you.
Determine where you want to go
Sit back regularly and look at your business. Break things into chunks if it's easier for you, for instance - if you decide that you want to communicate more regularly with your audience, think about increasing the frequency of your newsletter. If you do it quarterly, plan for monthly. If you do it monthly, plan for twice a month. If you can, try to figure out if you can produce it weekly. Don't just make a decision, really look at your calendar to be sure that what you are deciding to do fits with your schedule (because once you commit to it you will want to be sure to be able to produce it easily). Read More...