Online Shop Owners! How Do You Do It?

What is an online shop but a web site?

Market both the same way but if your web sites are single product, you could always market individual products from your online shop the same way as you market single product web sites.

I can't see any difference.

Yes, that is what I have been doing! : ) Just wondering if anyone else has any other marketing strategies that work or should I say, work more powerfully for online shops!

GoGetta

Online Shops are a little different, not so much in the marketing but more to do with th tricks and layouts for conversion rates,

There are so many to list but some key ones:

Keep the checkout process as short and simple as having to load 8 pages to buy something is annoying.

If it is physical products then they will not purchase before knowing Price of the product including sales tax in the us or vat included uk, How much shipping costs and your returns and warrenty policy, shipping/delivery times.

The best way to handle these is to make sure on your product listing page have links that pop up the info in a new mini window, If you have a look at some higher end e-commerce business and click on a product then you will get a feel on how to include these.

Obviously security is the major issue so any where asking for customer details make sure it is ssl protected, thats even if you using something like paypal to start with because customers will still be registering with you before payment.

Then there are the other tips that also need to be split tested and depend on your store like whether you will have horizontal navigation or vertical or both.

Make sure your images of the products are decent in size and quantity as this is all the customer has to view the product things like zooming tools etc also make sure that the add to cart button that is on the product page is visible on page load without scrolling and is clear and bold to see same again on the view cart page make sure the the checkout button is screaming in there face.

also you will want to look into cross selling and upselling so when a person views a product along the side or underneath the product details have 3-4 simular but higher priced products because they might decide they prefer the more expensive item and when they add an item to the cart you want to display accessories or things that ad to the product.

this is just the very short list of the top of my head you can really get into the nitty gritty like whne the user starts the checout phase then getting rid of the catagory navigation so they proceed through the checkout rather then get distracted away from the purchase part etc.

Awesome MoneyMan, Great tips, especially the cross selling! I want to do this but need a bigger product line which I am hoping I can increase this weekend when I can hopefully meet my distributor.

Thanks,

Its funny, I posted this yesterday and made my first sale on this particular project yesterday with only around 20 hits. Great conversion, maybe a little luck. But I got a great product and a stupid percentage of profit each sale. This was made through Twitter marketing I think!

Now I intend to ramp this up massively to see if I can keep the conversion at around 4-5%. That would be awesome. I haven't really done anything yet either. Its a test to see if what I am selling, actually sells!

Simple, usual internet marketing techniques I use for other projects seem to be doing the trick here as well. Keep plugging away and we will see what happens!

GoGetta

We have an online shop and a physical product. The best advice I can give is truly make sure you have extensive information about your product. The more info you have, the better your site. We're consistently ranked first for our top key words and I'm sure it's because our content is good. Reviews, testimonials, alternate uses, ideas for using your products, and articles on topics of interest. We've held giveaway contests for blog comments and have had huge success with that as well - and the product doesn't have to be an expensive one.

Thanks Treece,

Great advice, I will work it into my site. This was a test project for me as the products I am selling I get for a stupidly low price meaning my mark up is about 500%+. Even though it is a lower priced product I will make good money if I can make 3-5 sales a day. So I thought I would target SEO first which I have experience with and already I am seeing results and I haven't even started! : )

Now I will see how easy it can be to make money through an online shop with the right product!

Matt - How many sales do you generally make per week?

GoGetta

Iv only made one sale on the site so far... The sites been up 3 months. Iv only had about 1000 unique visitors in these 3 months though, and around 200 click threw to amazon.

As with the type of marketing we normally discuss here, the money is still in the list. If you can find the private label rights on an ebook that is applicable to your market, buy it and re-brand it. Give it away free on you site in exchange for the customer details and let them know you'll send them product and service updates too.

You can build a list this way of people who are going to expect further correspondence in the future and won't complain to Aweber(or whoever you use)about your mails. If you have a discount voucher system on your site you could also offer a % discount to all readers of your free ebook. People love free stuff, you have a list that you can keep sending good useful information to and slip in the odd sales message too.

Get their name - Think like Tesco and their loyalty card. They only offer all the discounts etc so they can have our details and build a profile on us, then sell us the stuff we want.

Good Luck

Hi GoGetta
I'm new to IM, but have had an online shop for 10 years selling physical products. Is this a product that you are physically shipping?

twinmom,

Yes it is!

GoGetta

I agree with the others that say the marketing strategies shouldn't be much different just because it's physical product. I've been fortunate (lucky?) in the marketing area - I've never really done intentional SEO, PPC, etc and I'm on page 1 of Google for most of my keywords naturally for quite some times. My site has over 6000 links to it - again naturally - mainly from satisfied customers. When I think back to when I started, the main "marketing" for me was "word of mouth" from customers.

I have started a second site with downloadable products (somewhat related to my main site) and it has been tough to get it going, even with links from my main site.

I guess my main comment would be the old saying "be careful what you wish for, just just might get it". The reason I am exploring IM is because having the physical product site is very demanding (or at least the way I push myself, it seems to be!) LOL

Thanks twinmom,

Well I sell digital products with success, I always wanted to start a physical ecommerce shop and got the opportunity to do it with a great distributor and product, its an experiment I fully estimate will work well! I was looking within this thread really for input from other warriors pushing physical products in an ecommerce type of shopping experience and thanks so far to everyone in here!

We will see how it goes, anymore promotional tips from you guys, SHOUT EM OUT!

Good Luck with the DL products! ; )

GoGetta

I agree with twinmom - packing and shipping, keeping inventory, meeting rush orders, and keeping up with the competition (both on and offline) is different than selling information or a downloadable product. The good news is, it isn't hard to outsource some of the grunt work.

Treece,

Exactly what I was thinking. If your selling enough you can quite easily pay someone else to pack and send the stuff as well as someone to maintain promotional avenues. It can be pretty much hands off, if it was pulling the sales in that is!! ; )

GoGetta

Dr. Mercola from mercola.com is following the traditional e-commerce + long sales copy model very well. Newsletter + articles/blog + long sales letter + video, It's very well done. Take a look:

Natural Health Information Articles and Health Newsletter by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Tyrus

Tyrus - Yes that is nice how he has done that, I like it! I wonder how well it converts and the difference in that way and the conventional ecommerce way!

GoGetta

Hello GoGetta,

Funny thing is that for all the IM that i learn and purchased ebooks and tools, everything are able to use in online store format. I am not sure why i am going this way..Perhaps i always feel that selling information products is something that i can't do...trying to promote or writing a sales letter...Nah..i can't do that for now..

But what's make retail store different from other or to me is, it's a 'real' stuff out there and they can look into the item without any description to write at it. [Pictures always speak thousand words instead of text] Of cause by marketing, it's different game. since it's more toward link building instead of keywords search. I don't intend to write articles in a retail store...its look awful..so link building is the only way to go.

Of cos you need to handle those 'hand-on' situation like wrapping the items, buying goods, Shipping fees, [unless you go for dropshipping] but as some mention, once you have too much orders to handle - outsource them.

Hope this help, but i truly believe that if you success in downloadable sales, retail sales should be easy for you as well.

oh one more thing, my feeling toward online retail store is that these will be the next big thing to go as the offline business is coming now. Trust me, most of them who open both offline & online stores have the same mindset from offline business - they don't really know how to market themselves through internet.

The feeling is great when your site are able to rank higher then some of the reputation store out there! imagine having these customers in your lists..already purchase items from you..if there's new products coming in or pre-orders..you can imagine that..

It's never the ecommerce thing that gets people, it's the fulfillment & logistics. That's why Amazon hired a bunch of the top dawgs away from Wal-Mart several years ago.