Your Online Store

I’ve had this ongoing dialog with myself this morning. It’s about eCommerce of all things. So I figured I really should put this down in writing and blog about it.

I had an online store for my business which was a tack shop. I thought it was going to take off and bring in lots of sales because it’s not like there are millions of tack shops out there. Well, once again I was wrong. I don’t think it matters what business you are in; there is going to be competition online. Some of your competition may be from large, well-known companies, and then there will be individuals or small businesses too. The question becomes, “how can you stand out from the rest?”

I did some research on how to get traffic to my online store and I’m going to share some of the key points that seemed to work.

Finding a Niche

Marketing online as a tack shop, or even English tack, wasn’t going to get traffic to my website. I had to find a niche and focus on that. One thing I carried in my shop was plus size breeches. They were hard to come by, and I knew I wasn’t the only rider that needed them. I also knew from experience that they weren’t easy to find online. In fact, there was only one company that specialized in them at the time.

Bingo! I found my niche. I decided to focus my marketing on plus size breeches. This meant a bit of tweaking to my website’s search engine optimization (SEO) and the online store setup. I was still going to offer other products but wanted the plus size clothing to stand out.

Search Engine Marketing

A website that is set up with excellent SEO is going to rank on search engines. Add more hits to your pages and your site will rank even higher.

I would recommend making use of a pay per click program. Google AdWords is one you probably recognize, but do some homework because others offer good programs too.

Social Media

Make use of social media as a marketing tool for your business. It’s easy to set up a FaceBook page and Twitter account. The hard part is keeping them active. Be sure to visit your social media accounts and keep them alive. Tell people about new products and sales. Encourage questions and interactions.

As a store owner, I enjoyed being able to get to know my customers on a personal level. Social media helps keep these relationships alive. It is also a great way to gain more potential customers or clients.

These things should help you get some traffic to your website. This blog will be continued next week with a few more things I found to be helpful with my online store.