Market Your Products through the Web

Building the perfect online store is only half the battle.  You can have the most attractive, efficiently laid out website on the Internet, but if nobody finds it, the time and effort you put into it will have been wasted.  So you’ll want to do everything you can to help alert potential customers that your site exists and is worth visiting.  And once they find you, make sure you have a good strategy for enticing them to return.

Marketing your site is very important; it can mean the difference between a thriving business and one that just never takes off.  Successful online marketing strategies will differ slightly from site to site, but the core components of each are pretty consistent: drive traffic to your site, turn visitors into customers once they’ve arrived, and retain those customers so you can get repeat business from them. Let’s look at each of those in a little more detail:

Drive traffic to your site

A lot of first-time visitors to your site will find it through search engine results.  Did you ever wonder why some results are listed before others?  Search engines determine the order of search results by analyzing the content of each available website and determining which of them are more likely to satisfy the needs of the searcher.  That’s why it is so important to make your site search-engine friendly.

There are other factors involved, but in general it is the content on your site and how it is organized that determines how highly your site will rate on any given search.  Increase your chances by identifying key words or phrases that a searcher might use to find your products, and then make sure they’re used prominently on your site, especially in the title and description tags of your front page.

You can also take advantage of a highly-effective marketing technique known as paid search, where you buy ads on search engines.  When visitors search using keywords you’ve specified, your ads appear among the top results.  Anyone who clicks on them is likely to be a valuable prospect, since you know they’re already interested in what you’re selling. There are two good paid search programs: Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing.

You can even draw business to your site by adding a blog to it.  A blog is basically an online journal for your site, and is an excellent tool that you can use to communicate promotions, product additions or other news that you think might be helpful to your customers.  You can also add links to other blogs or sites that you think would be useful to your customers, and in return encourage those sites to do the same.  The more links you get to your site, the more traffic you’ll attract.

Turning visitors into customers

Once people have found your site, the next step is turning them into customers.  This is where the design of your site is especially important.  Make sure your site is clear and uncluttered, that important information is concise and readily available, and that it is easy to navigate.  Your store should be carefully organized, with products clearly described and easy to find with a simple search. 

Once your site is well-organized, you can concentrate on increasing sales.  Consider using tried and true methods like offering sale incentives or promotions for popular items to increase interest in your site.  Periodically offer discounts to spur additional interest, and give special incentives to anyone who refers a friend to your site. 

Retain your customers

Once a customer made his first sale and given you contact information, you should follow-up with new products and offers for a repeat purchase. Promotions and incentives can be very effectively communicated with your customers via email.  But be careful: make sure you tell your customers what kind of email you’ll be sending them, and allow them to easily opt out.  Unwanted email is called spam, and customers may report your messages as spam, which can get your future emails banned from major email servers. 

There are just a few of the strategies you can use to help attract customers to your site and get them to return.  Properly used, these ideas can be a very effective at sparking customer interest and then keeping it as your online store evolves. 

Are you selling online? Do you have an ecommerce store? If not, learn about Homestead and Start Selling Online today.

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