If you've already set up your own online store, congratulations! You've accomplished a huge task that undoubtedly required a substantial amount of time and energy to complete. Now that you're all set up, we want to help you answer a pretty important question: how can potential customers find your website? Whether you just started selling products through your site or have been doing so for quite some time, this article will give you some basic ideas for increasing traffic and helping you turn potential buyers into loyal customers.
The discussion around what can be done to market an online store can sometimes be overwhelming. In this article, we want to give you a quick list of easy-to-do things that can help you drive more traffic to your site in the short term. Check them off as you do them, and make sure to keep exploring new ideas as you grow!
Submit your website to some of today's leading search engines: Google, MSN, and dmoz for example.- If you're willing to spend money to have your website prominently featured on search engines, use a service like AdWords or Microsoft AdCenter to increase traffic to your store.
- Put a link to your website in your e-mail signature so that anyone who receives an e-mail from you can check it out (and easily pass it along to friends).
- Build a fan page on Facebook and set up a Twitter account. Social media is a great way to develop a relationship with your customers, occasionally promote some of your products, and answer any questions your customers have.
- Create videos about your business and/or products and upload them to your site and to YouTube. Videos are sticky, engaging, and sharable and can also start to show up in search results on Google and other big search engines.
- Create a newsletter to keep your customers informed of your products and business updates. Encourage buyers to share this e-mail with their friends, thereby spreading the word about your site. You can use an e-mail service such as MailChimp or Constant Contact to do this and also find a wide variety of free e-mail templates to use.
- Pay other people to sell your products for you with affiliate marketing programs like Commission Junction.
- Upload your products to Google Base so that they can be featured in Google's product search.
- Create online classified ads for your store and products. To see a list of free and paid listing services, click here.
- Ask your friends, family and customers to spread the word about your business! The best (and cheapest) kind of marketing is word-of-mouth marketing, after all.
- Offer coupons to your buyers to encourage them to keep coming back. If you do offer an e-mail newsletter, you may want to offer a coupon to anyone who signs up for it. You can even offer coupons to customers that like your page on Facebook.
- Interact with potential customers in online forums related to your products or customers' lifestyles and ask loyal customers to post about your site in their blogs and on Facebook/Twitter.
Of course, there are many more ways to promote your online store to the millions of potential buyers out there. We hope this checklist gave you a few ideas that you can implement quickly to generate more visits to your site and simultaneously build customer loyalty.
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