How to promote online ecommerce store

First, on page seo has to be spot on. I would also suggest not using wordpress and maybe using another platform as it will be easier to rank. Next, PPC is very difficult if you don't have the experience and can be costly depending on the niche. I think your best bet is to set up some bloggers or google site and put up a 600 word article LSI and make sure you get traffic to it. Right now the direction of IM is leaning more towards brick and mortar products due to FTC stuff so your headed in the right direction. I think using an email list is crucial. You need to place in in the upper right hand corner but don't have it pop out as that will turn people away from your site. Get on facebook, twitter and put up offers such as 10% off a product if you sign up this will build you a list once you have established traffic. If you need someone to do SEO for you site I knew a few people but make sure again you have checked your meta tags, H1 and are willing to make your site secure for eCommerce. I am all over the place but hope this helps at a bit.

At first you have to select in which platform you like to work. Is it joomla or wordpress.
I think wordpress is the best platform. But you need a premium theme.
At last you should know html.

Use PPC as much as possible. It will save you a lot of time.
SEO takes a long time and a lot of work. Results are not even guaranteed.

PPC: Spend $1,000 and get traffic to your website today.
SEO: Spend less than $100 and get traffic to your website in 3-5 months.

Money can always be earned but time... you can't get it back.

I think you should use PPC and SEO. PPC is instant traffic, SEO takes time. Start both at the same time, unless you're doing it all alone and don't have time to spare, then just do PPC.

Do some on-page optimization anyway. If you can create a few posts, that would be great.

As for email opt-in stuff, try a "2012 Buyer's Guide for Widgets" and a "How Widgets Help You" report.

if you have enough budget and fund then you can start with PPC, but prepare a perfect plan according to your profit. You can get maximum traffic and lead from PPC

hi,
PPC and SEO are both useful to promote the business, to start with both the process need to be done simultaneously in order to get more traffic.

Wanted to put in my two cents. PPC and SEO are both important as most have said. I'm getting ready to launch my first ecommerce biz and having built many a site for other people, this is what I've seen work.

Pre Launch - SEO SEO & more SEO. This is key words on every page relevant to your product. You want to make sure you specific page titles and H1s for each product. Don't use a generic for every product. This will be a never ending chore.

Initial launch - PPC and lots of it. This will help drive traffic and build a customer base. Until the SEO kicks in. Make sure you can track your PPC with Google Analytics if you use Adwords. This will help get a cost analysis if the money you're dumping into PPC is worth it.

After launch - Once you have a small user base built up from PPC take care of them. Treat them well and make them feel special. Interact with them on social media. Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are big ones. Again this is never ending. It just becomes part of your business.

EDIT: Also wanted to say like some other people have that email lists are invaluable. Give them a reason to subscribe. 10% off, free ebook/guide, etc. Once you have that don't over do it. Once a month...twice a month is plenty. Use this to let them know of any new products or perhaps a holiday or seasonal sale.

Wow, everything here is PPC and SEO... Let's try thinking a little outside the box here guys.

First off, do you have a USP? What makes your product or store different/better than your competition? If the answer is nothing - you're screwed.

If you do have a USP, you should start looking into guest posting on blogs in a related niche. Get people talking about you. Come up with some controversial hook and use it to get attention.

People will come to that blog you guest posted on to read the controversial news, and if you did your job of writing well, a good percent will click through to your site.

If You have alot of money then you can using Paid Advertising, but else if you have less of money then you can using SEO.

great discussion!

You can try with Paid Advertising or Classifieds ads promotion to get instant results.
Basically, everything except SEO will work for you, but you need to invest a buck

If your niche has a forum following hit those hard. The more people that know about you the better. Then, when people visit your site they are more likely to purchase than when they just stumble across it via ppc or seo, which are both important as well.

hmmm.. Some interesting suggestions..

Sky, I can say first hand that starting an online business, especially an ecommerce store, without some research and a marketing plan, is going to create some very hard lessons.

There are some things to perhaps consider before deciding what your advertisement avenues might be:
First that comes to mind is: Who is your target market? The entire world? Or perhaps just U.S teens?

If you really, really want to open an online store, you best know who your customers are before writing a single advertisement check or your overhead can become your downfall in a short time.

I hear a lot of advice being given to beginners to just jump right in and go for it. But I say there is a LOT of disinformation in this world and one must use their own mind to decide what is right and what is wrong. When you know exactly where you are going and how you are going to get there, well, it just makes life a hell of a lot easier.

Just one example where your plan comes in is considering the importance of having a well SEO'ed page for not just the fact of the searches, but a well optimized page will often bring a much better rating from Adwords giving you better rates thus decreasing your Adwords expenses.... per product

Marketing is not just one avenue, but rather it is many streams that trickle together to make a river. You have to decide how large you want that river. Once decided... then you go for it!

The best of luck to you,

JL

Wordpress and OsCommerce are best plat form to develop a professional ecommerce store

PPC are not as permanent as SEO, so my advice is to promoting your websites more using SEO techniques to have long term earnings

Post ads on classifieds and paid for marketing as PPC or CPC.
CPS or CPA is also great for EC sites.

I agree with Blase.

I would first start a PPC campaign and do some testing before getting into SEO just to find out some statistics such as Average duration on page or bounce rate and if you start seeing good results than you should do SEO. A lot of people are missing this big piece of the puzzle in the SEO world.

How about shopping comparassion sites for starters?

You need to go for SEO (may be 500+ w articles) and blogs at a regular manner. As users more tend to be inclined to updated info, you need to update those regularly. You can contact with any freelancer or writer to do your job daily and it won't cost you much as these will bring for you great earning source later on.

I'd use ppc and, SEO. And put your link in your signature on forums related to your products.

Chad

Hi Skylang1,

This is what we do for our ecommerce stores with great success.

PPC (Adwords)
Use an individual adgroup to target each individual product.
Write 2 ad versions for each adgroup.
Monitor and split test. Re-write different versions of the most successful ad copy. Rinse and repeat.

Our ROI using this method is off the charts, its really worth the time.

Shopping/Comparison Sites
These sites deliver very targeted and high converting traffic, well worth the spend. Once set up it's very easy to manage because you just submit your ecommerce sites RSS feed and it auto updates.

SEO
If you're bootstrapping do it from the profits made using the above 2 methods. I've done this with several stores when starting out.

This is a big and ongoing task so I'll briefly outline the onsite stuff specific to ecommerce.

Use Google keyword tool and start with the most searched/decent profit product you offer. Decide on a landing page. It's normally an individual product, the brand page or a category page. Use what is most relevant. Deep linking to eCommerce sites is important. When people reach your website you want them to land on the product page they want to buy, don't make them look for it.

Writing unique content for each product is a massive task with a store with 100's or 1000's of products. Just write really awesome content on the pages you are targeting. If you can do more it's a bonus.

Do all the normal stuff like have the keyword in the url, page title, h1 etc.

Email List
Whenever someone buys from us they get added to our list. Acquiring new customers is hard and expensive, send out a super duper special every now and then. Ask your supplier for specials to maintain profit margins, they might be clearing stock or something.

For people who don't buy, offer them a discount to join the mailing list, and offer deals in the mailing list.

This way you are building your list from non buyers and buyers. In a lot of cases the non buyers who sign up to the list will turn into buyers.

Hope that helps a bit

It help remind you to promote you new items on your social media channels if it sees you haven't done so already.

I used to run a construction business selling chicken coops, dog houses, and more. The greatest fast free traffic I got was forums. I went to sites like backyardchickens.com and other social network sites relating to these small structure and got about 100-150 visitors daily. If you want paid advertising I would also go for google ppc. Facebook was to broad for me but google was more targeted.