Your online store is all set up, you have your products at the ready and are sitting tight for those orders to come flooding in. But they don’t. What’s the problem? You have excellent products that you know people want, so where are those all-important customers? It’s because you need promotion, you need to get your business out there! This is absolutely crucial when it comes to making sales, and making a success of your store. Here are some of the ways you can help promote your online store.
Set Up a Website
Having a website gives your buyers a central point of contact. You can provide information about you and your shop, your story so far and all kinds of things that people might want to know. From your website you can have links to your ecommerce store, your social media, blog and everything else that you need to promote your business.
Image from hereSet Up a Blog
Once you have a website set up, blogging will drive traffic to it. Every time you publish a blog post, it’s another chance for your site to come up in a search result and for someone to click on it. It also helps you to build up a network of readers and followers, all who may be interested in what you’re selling. It’s a much cheaper way to get your name out there than placing ads. This is useful when you’re just starting out in your business! Write an engaging blog, get people clicking onto your website and then through to your shop. Plus a blog makes your company look professional and legitimate, which is crucial when it comes to securing sales.
Utilize Social Media
Blogging and social media go hand in hand, as people will often share blog posts to their friends and followers. This is useful for you, as it means more people clicking through to your website and then to your shop. This is a much better way to get people engaged rather than just tweeting out or posting the link to your site. This can look spammy and is likely just to put people off. Having a well run social media account is essential. Again it shows customers that you’re a legitimate company, and gives them another point of contact for questions and queries.
Hire a Professional
It can be worth hiring a company who specializes in search engine optimization for ecommerce. While there are some things you can do yourself, unless you’re extremely knowledgeable about SEO and advertising techniques then getting the help of a professional is advisable. They will make sure your store is ranking highly within Google search. They will also be able to advise you on the best techniques for turning website views into sales.
There’s a lot to think about when it comes to setting up your store. If you’re going in with an ‘if you build it, they will come’ mentality then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. As a small fish in an extraordinarily large pond, getting your information out there to be discovered by customers is of the utmost importance if you want to succeed.
