Building a website is easy. Building momentum to get your business off the ground can be trickier. Read on for some secrets to putting the ‘commerce’ into your e-commerce site.
You may have a beautiful e-commerce site – but if no one knows it’s there, it won’t bring you any revenue. You may even have a great marketing campaign that draws people to your beautiful e-commerce site. But unless you have a good product that’s ready to sell, you won’t convert your visitors into customers.
So let’s lay some foundations and put the right building blocks in place, in the right order.
Finessing your product
Before you even think about creating a website, a great way to test out your product on audiences is by getting an actual market stall or a physical pop-up. This is relatively inexpensive and gives you a chance to engage with potential consumers, find out what they want and establish an emotional connection between them and your brand. Listen to their feedback and be sure to take it on board.
Testing your offering
Before committing to a website of your own, why not sell your product through online marketplaces such as Etsy and Not on the High Street to build up a following? Although they will take a cut of your sales, these platforms bring you lots of benefits:
- You don’t need to think about the design or layout.
- You don’t have to worry about creating a user-friendly checkout.
- Online marketplaces have a huge audience already, so you needn’t go looking for customers (they’ll find you).
- If you want to change your product, you needn’t spend hours redesigning your landing and product pages (you simply need to change the details on your listing).
Finding your followers
Before you start building your site, identify your niche by asking yourself: who is your target audience? Who are you trying to entice to buy your product? What do you do that no one else can?
Keep in mind the e-commerce dichotomy: brands vs products. People buy a brand and stay loyal to it because it speaks to them on an emotional level – it’s more than just a product; it’s an ideal – a way of life. People buy a product because it does the job or satisfies a need.
Helping your followers find you
Once you’ve perfected your product and identified your audience, here are some tips on attracting customers to your e-commerce site:
Start with who you know. Export all your contacts from LinkedIn, add them to a mailing list, and let them know about your new brand or product. Even if it isn’t suited to them, they might share it with people who would be interested: the network effect. Try to offer more than just a product push – such as some lifestyle editorial.
PR
Find someone who can get you in the media. If you have a strong, clear, niche message, journalists will want to write about you. PR is expensive, so only invest in this once you’ve proved your business or product is viable.
If you can’t afford PR, find relevant, influential journalists and editors in magazines. Follow them on Twitter, find out what they’re interested in and what they’re looking for. Then when you reach out, you can show them that you know who they are and have taken the time to approach them with the right product.
SEO
This is easier if you have your own special niche, as there will be less competition under your specific search terms.
There are three parts to successful SEO:
1. On-site SEO – this is your content: the keywords search engines will flag.
2. On-site code – the technical usability of your site. Website builders such as Shopify and WordPress do this well.
3. Link building – webpages are ranked according to how many people are linking to them, so get people to write about you and ALWAYS link back to your site.
This How-to guide was inspired by one of our Zoom Dives with Alex O’Byrne, co-founder of We Make Websites. For more tips on building your e-commerce site, see our related guide: How to set up shop online.
Zoom Dives are deep-delving discussions between our founder, Carolyn Dailey and handpicked business experts from the creative world. You can listen to Carolyn and Alex’s full discussion here. Fancy catching our next Zoom Dive, live? See our Events calendar and sign up for free.
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