Marketing Your E-Commerce Business

Here is this week's third and final article on e-commerce: Starting an e-commerce business is easier than ever. Once you've found a good idea for your business, you can get up and running over the course of a weekend. Many popular web hosts now offer one-click installers for popular online store applications, so all you need is the hosting, a domain, and a payment processor. The tricky bit is attracting customers.

Now that it's so easy to start a store, you have to work a lot harder to stand out from the competition. You can't count on the idea of "If you build it, they will come." A solid marketing strategy is essential.


Online Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

When you start a bricks and mortar store, marketing is still important, but you can start small and still have a chance at surviving. If you're lucky enough to have a store on a busy high street, you can expect to get some passing trade. If your store is a little more out of the way, you can print up some leaflets and deliver them yourself to keep costs down.

Marketing an online store is different. There are a huge number of marketing options, and you'll need to think carefully to decide which ones are best for your business.

If you're selling a virtual product, then you don't need to worry about where your consumer is based. All you need to do is find ways to reach people that are interested in your niche. Adwords, banner advertisements on niche websites, and affiliate programs are a good way to do this.

If you're selling a physical product, then you have shipping costs to worry about. You may want to limit the places that orders can come from so that you can keep shipping costs down. One good way to do this is by running geographically targeted marketing campaigns. For example, you might decide to run a competition aimed only at people from your country. You can gather their email address and phone number, and ask them to opt-in for future marketing. This gives you the freedom to use a business SMS service or some mailing list software to send marketing messages to entrants at a later date.

Bulk SMS marketing and email marketing don't cost a lot of money, and they can convert pretty well. The trick to getting those methods to convert is to make each message valuable. Don't just send "check out our store!" messages. Instead, use your email list to send tutorials and topical news coverage and mention your products in passing. When you send business SMS messages, make sure they're interesting and enticing - for example, send a message to tell people about a big sale, or say "Thanks for being a member of this list for three months, here's a 25% off coupon code".

It can take a few messages for people to respond. Send messages with a steady tempo (once every couple of weeks, for example), and don't spam. Build up a relationship with the members of your list, and eventually they will become regular customers.


About The Author: Wayne Barker writes for Collstream who are experts in bulk SMS marketing and voice broadcasting.

Did you find this article helpful? Please let Wayne and myself know by leaving us your valued comments below.

Related articles:
A Guide To Setting Up Your Own E-Commerce Business
Incorporating SEO Within The Design Of An E-Commerce Website


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Incorporating SEO Within The Design Of An E-Commerce Website

As promised, here is the second of the three articles on e-commerce: Having a good ecommerce web design is very important in the current world. For any company to make its online presence felt by potential customers, clients and competitors, it must have a good web design. Nevertheless, having a good web design alone is not enough. Your website needs visitors to help your company achieve its goals. Success of an ecommerce website depends on its ability to increase your online visibility. It should also have features that will make visitors want to spend more time as they get information about your company and its services or products.

SEO ensure that your website has increased visibility by making it friendly to the search engines. Basically, SEO ensures high rankings for your web pages. High ranked pages on the search engines get more customers. This translates into more sales for your company. In addition, ecommerce websites differ depending on the kind of services and products your company is offering. SEO ensure that you get an ecommerce web design that is specifically designed to suit your company. Although some people think SEO is a simple task, this is not usually the case. It requires time and professional skills to come up with a good quality and effective ecommerce website.


Benefits of SEO in developing an ecommerce web design

Hiring professional SEO services guarantee your company a number of benefits. They include the following;

• You get an ecommerce website designed strategically to increase your business visibility to the target audience.
  
  
• Your website use keywords and phrases chosen after research to ensure its effectiveness in reaching your target audience.
  
  
• SEO services ensure that your company gets returns from its investment within a very short time due to the increased visibility.
  
  
• SEO experts know how to use different techniques in developing a website and also ways of avoiding penalties of the search engines such as being banned from search results.

Generally, success of a website in achieving its goal lies on the strategies employed in its development. Good SEO practices in developing an ecommerce website should ensure that strategies of promoting your service or product are always included in the design. The major reason for having a website is to offer information to internet users about your products and services and eventually drive them into purchasing them. Nevertheless, you could be selling a good product through an ecommerce website but if this website is not promoted properly, many online shoppers may never know about it. Promoting an ecommerce website is one of the major roles of SEO experts.

However, although there are many providers of SEO services today, not all of them have what it takes to deliver quality services that many clients are looking for. Therefore, carry out your research before hiring a professional for your ecommerce website development project. You may consider projects they have handled in the past that is similar to yours. Find out if what they delivered for such clients is what you are looking for. This way, you will get an ecommerce web design that will enable your company achieve its online goals with ease.


Did you find this article helpful? Please let me know by leaving your valued comments below.

Related articles:
A Guide To Setting Up Your Own E-Commerce Business


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Until the third and final article on e-commerce on Friday, enjoy the rest of the week!

A Guide To Setting Up Your Own E-Commerce Business

I hope you all had a fabulous weekend. This week and because I haven't covered this topic before on the blog, I will be publishing three articles on e-commerce.

Today's article by our guest author, Wayne Barker will provide vital information on setting up your very own e-commerce business. On Wednesday, there will be an article explaining the benefits of incorporating SEO within the design of an e-commerce website and finally on Friday, there will be a second article by our guest author, Wayne Barker which will provide information on marketing your e-commerce business.

I hope you enjoy reading these three articles and as with all my blog posts, don't forget to share and leave me and our guest authors your valued comments within the comments section. Remember, your feedback is very important which not only shows that you found these posts helpful, but also helps to determine future blog posts on Derek's Home and Business Blog.

Thank you and without further ado, here's the first of the three articles on e-commerce...


A Guide To Setting Up Your Own Ecommerce Business

Setting up an e-commerce business is easier than it's ever been, well, at least on the surface. These days, you don't need to be a tech expert to get an online store front working. However, attracting people to that store, getting them to hand over some money, and then having internet fulfilment services in place to make sure they get their product is a little more complicated. If you want to make sure that your store is a success, then make sure you know the answer to these questions:


1. Is Your Idea Actually Good?

If you're setting up a store, it's because you want to sell something. Before you go through the process of building a site, accepting payments, and sorting out efulfilment, do some market research. Are you sure your product is good? Would people want to buy it? If you're planning on dropshipping, selling handmade goods, or selling ebooks, you might want to use an existing store (eBay, Etsy, or Amazon respectively), instead of investing in tech yourself. Yes, existing store fronts charge fees, but in return for those fees your product will be put in front of far more people than you could ever hope to attract to your own website.


2. Who Are You Selling To?

If you're sure you want your own store, the next thing to figure out is who you want to sell to. This will affect the domain name you buy, and the payment options you take. If you're aiming at a specific country, then a local top level domain (such as .co.uk for the UK, or .de for Germany) is a good idea. If you're aiming internationally, you'll want a .com.

For payment options, most people would instantly think of Paypal and Google Checkout, but that doesn't mean they're the only options out there. If you're aiming your product at young people, you might want to accept UKash or other currencies that are designed for people who are too young to have a credit card.


3. How Will You Ship Your Product?

The issue of internet fulfilment services can make or break a company. If your website takes off and you get a lot of orders, will you be able to fill them in a timely fashion? Storing your product in your spare room and boxing up orders every evening before bed will work while your company is young, but it's not something that you can sustain in the long term.

Outsourcing your internet fulfilment is a good way to protect your business from the teething troubles that are all too common as a company starts to attract more attention. Outsourcing can be a scary proposition at first - especially if your business is a labour of love, but it is a good thing for your business. Specialist packing, shipping, and even customer service companies can usually provide better service than you can in house, and for less money too. This means that you, and your customers, gain from it.


About The Author: Wayne Barker writes for Hallmark who are internet fulfilment services experts.

Did you find this article helpful? Please let Wayne and myself know by leaving us your valued comments below.


If you found this or any of my other posts helpful, don't forget to +1 or share the posts to your favourite networks using the toolbar below or by using the "+1" and "Share" buttons located at the bottom of each post.

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Until the next article on Wednesday, have a fabulous week!

Why A Bad Business Reputation Is Harder To Ditch Than Ever Before

There are few things more important to a business than its reputation. A good reputation can bring in new customers and help to keep old ones satisfied. A good reputation can also help a business change and grow, possibly merging into a bigger and better version of itself. A bad reputation, however, can do just the opposite. And, more than ever before, a negative reputation can stay with a business and affect its growth for years to come.

With the advent of online operations and communication, the times for businesses are changing. It is no longer possible to survive with a bad reputation, and it is harder and harder to make things right once you're given a bad rap. Here's why:


1. More people have access to private information than ever before.

Today is the age of complete and utter access to information. While there are many things that are still kept private, there has never been a time in history when more strangers have had higher access to private information about other people. As a business owner, this means that potential customers can look into almost everything about your business. They can see when it was founded, how your prices compare to other retailers, and whether or not your business has a strong online reputation. On top of this, they can find out as much information as they like about you and your personal life. By searching for your name, customers can find information on the trajectory of your career, where you live, even you home phone number.

While this may lead to Big Brother type fears, the real issue here for business owners is the fact that there is almost nowhere to hide your dirty laundry, unless you are already making the bug bucks and can afford a costly PR rep. You have no control over who has access to your online history. So, it's best to figure out exactly how your private information could detract from your business goals and do your best to work around it.


2. Nothing is reversible online.

Most people think they have control over the information they share online. They assume that, when they post a photo or change their status, it will be available to others so long as it remains online. Then, once it's taken down, people will no longer have access to the content. This, however, could not be further from the truth. In fact, there is absolutely no reversing something you did online. Not only are online interactions and posted content often recorded (for example, the Library of Congress has recorded every tweet out there from the beginning of Twitter), once you post something, you are basically giving it up for free use to the general public.

People are free to copy, save and re-post anything you put up online. Just because you take something down, it doesn't mean it's gone. Because of this, people often have to pay for things that they said or did years ago, even if the information is no longer available online.


3. Consumers can communicate and easily rate services.

While the advent of sites like Yelp.com and Yahoo Business has definitely helped business in many ways, they also have the potential to greatly hurt a business, as well. The ability to place reviews and communicate about particular businesses on a wide scale is a fairly recent development. Before consumer review sites, people had to rely on word of mouth or organized reports, such as Consumer Reports, to determine where to put their business. Now, business owners have to be very careful not to get bad reviews online. Because anyone can post anything they like about your business online, and because consumers are listening more and more to the opinions of other consumers before making purchase decisions, these types of reviews can stay with a business for years to come.


About The Author: Working for one of the best background check companies, Jane Smith offers insight and advice on the subject through her blogs. She welcomes you to email her your questions, comments or concerns at janesmith161@gmail.com.

Do you like this article by Jane Smith? Has the reputation of your business been unduly effected? Please let Jane and myself know by leaving us your valued comments below.

Coming next week on Derek's Home and Business Blog: Three articles on e-commerce. On Monday, there will be an article by our guest author, Wayne Barker which will provide vital information on setting up your very own e-commerce business. On Wednesday, there will be an article explaining the benefits of incorporating SEO within the design of an e-commerce website and finally on Friday, there will be a second article by our guest author, Wayne Barker which will provide information on marketing your e-commerce business.


If you found this or any of my other posts helpful, don't forget to +1 or share the posts to your favourite networks using the toolbar below or by using the "+1" and "Share" buttons located at the bottom of each post.

As ever, if you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar), on NetworkedBlogs, via Email (maximum of one email per day), on Facebook and Google+ or by subscribing to our blog feed at:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DereksHomeAndBusinessBlog

You can also follow me on Twitter @djones1509, Google+ and on Facebook at:
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Until my next post on Monday when the first of the three articles on e-commerce is published, have a fabulous Summer Bank Holiday weekend!

How Google Plus Listing Can Affect Paid Search

Google+ is a new social network that has now opened its arms for business marketing. It has the capability of giving good competition to Facebook which is considered the best social network. Many aspects of Facebook and Google+ are very similar.

There is a +1 button for Google+ which is same as the like button on Facebook; this +1 button allows you to share different types of content and also improve the quality of your own search results. They are listed at the right side of each title; so when a user logs in, he/she will be able to click on the button and show their approval for the listing.

Apart from the organic listing, Google has also added its +1 feature for sponsored listing. This +1 feature of Google has made a great impact on the paid search in the following ways:

• All the sponsored ads that are shown on Google+ have a +1 button adjacent to the ad.
  
  
• This button is compulsory and there is no way to remove the button from the ad.
  
  
• Any click on the +1 button will not be counted for the pay to the ad sponsor.
  
  
• But the best part here is that the +1 button has no effect on the quality score of the ad.
  
  
• The viewers of your ad are able to see the +1 stats for your ad.

Apart from the above mentioned points, using the Google+ for paid search marketing is beneficial in the following ways:

• Greater targeting: Google search results are the most widely used results. Therefore, marketing your business here would ultimately help you in reaching your target audience.
  
  
• Speed: Since you use paid search for your business marketing, your ad is being displayed just within few hours on the Google's search result. Therefore, you need not wait for a longer duration for your ad to be live.
  
  
• Control: It is very easy to achieve direct visitors to the relevant page on your site and with the management of Google+ you can have proper control of your budget.
  
  
• Predictability: By using this, you can get a good traffic to your site along with predictable ranking and costs associated. Therefore, the ranking and costs would be more stable and predictable when compared to SEO.
  
  
• Minimise wastage: With right matches according to Google Adwords and by using phrase match combining with negative keywords, you can make sure that your ad will be displayed only for the relevant products only.
  
  
• Greater conversion rates: Usually the conversion rates of PPC are higher than SEO and they are even much higher for display ads.
  
  
• Effect of Branding: Tests have proven that when there is branding affect associated with PPC, it will give positive results even if users don't click on the ad. This will have an impact on the brand awareness during launch or campaigns.

Using the above resources you can easily understand how Google+ is integrated into a search, so you can start managing your online marketing strategy easily for the search plus.


Article written by Kate Ford, a Tech writer from the UK. Catch her @thetechlegend on Twitter.

Do you like this article? Please let me know by leaving your valued comments below.


If you found this or any of my other posts helpful, don't forget to +1 or share the posts to your favourite networks using the toolbar below or by using the "+1" and "Share" buttons located at the bottom of each post.

As ever, if you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar), on NetworkedBlogs, via Email (maximum of one email per day), on Facebook and Google+ or by subscribing to our blog feed at:
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Until my next post on Friday, enjoy the rest of the week!