You can't just develop an ecommerce website and assume that customers will show up. You need to promote your ecommerce site and the products you sell. That's where online marketing comes in.
Online promotion can have many aspects; almost any component of your web marketing mix can be used to drum up sales. You may elect to purchase payper- click (PPC) advertising, a la Google AdWords. You might opt to purchase larger, more expensive display ads on select sites. Or else you may choose to promote your site via friendly bloggers or on social networks like Facebook.
You most definitely want to optimize your site so that it will rank very well on Google along with other search sites and in all likelihood want to submit your site listings to Shopping.com and other comparison shopping sites. And once you get a few customers, you'll wish to coax additional sales from them using a targeted email subscriber list.
What's key is that you do some form of promotion for your online store. You can't assume customers will stumble over your site while they're surfing; the web just doesn't work that way anymore. You need to advertise your online store with the same aggressiveness as you'd promote a bricks and mortar store; you have to drive customers to your site and push these phones buy what you're selling.
Just as advertising in print and broadcast media is really a key part of the traditional retail marketing mix, online advertising should be a major component of your ecommerce marketing. One of the most effective kind of online advertising for retailers is PPC advertising; you can drive customers directly from your ad to some specific product page in support of pay when your ad is clicked. It's targeted advertising, as PPC ads only appear on search pages and thirdparty sites related to the keywords you buy. This type of advertising isn't about creating a brand image; it's about moving units which PPC advertising does quite well.
Nevertheless, you decide to promote your store, you need to possess a plan in place before you open your virtual doors. Knowing how you'll be promoting your site is every bit as essential as deciding what products to sell, how your site will appear and feel, and what checkout and online payment services you'll use. An un- or under-promoted site is a site with few if any customers. And that's a sure ticket to business failure.
Hand-in-hand with PPC advertising is search engine marketing. A lot of potential clients use Google, Yahoo!, and Bing to search permanently deals on which they're looking to buy, therefore if your site appears high in these customers' search results, they'll click to and perhaps purchase from you rather than a competitor. So search engine optimization and identifying the best keywords are also key.
You should also submit your site and your site's inventory towards the major shopping directories. They are sites, sometimes called price comparison sites, that compare products for sale from multiple online retailers. Consumers begin using these sites to obtain the lowest prices on the products they're searching for; obviously, they are able to drive a lot of qualified customers directly to your site's product pages. Most individuals are under the impression that these sites scour the Web for prices from the wide variety of online retailers.
That's an incorrect impression; instead, these sites build their price/product databases from product links they have submitted and paid for by participating retailers. And not only are these product listings submitted by retailers, they're also paid for by retailers. Fortunately for retailers with large inventories, payment isn't on the per-listing basis; instead, you pay when customers click your product listings. This is the old pay-per-click model, and also the individual fee is, of course, a cost per click. CPC charges run between a nickel to more than a buck, depending on the site and the product category.
So if you run a website that offers products available, you can often get more visibility by listing using the major online shopping directories than you'd relying on organic search results from Google, Bing, and Yahoo! While you pay for the click-throughs, those clicks will likely result in sales.
Building an ecommerce website is more challenging than building a more brand-oriented site. You don't only have to establish your brand image, you also have to offer your products for sale which means designing product pages, shopping cart and checkout systems, and a customer support mechanism. You can incorporate all of these elements into an existing website design, either by building from scratch or using third-party ecommerce services, or you can go the prepackaged storefront route which can be a good idea for smaller retailers.
Once your site is launched, you need to advertise the site and also the products you sell. For most online retailers, that means some mixture of PPC advertising and search engine marketing with other web marketing activities thrown in as necessary. You need to drive customers to your site and close the sale once they're there.
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Note: This article was sent to us by: Peter D. Hughues at 03142011
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