UK Online Sweet Shop

Without knowing the competitor site, or the brand of sweets etc I can't give any proper advice other than what I think the sweet niche would be like.

Either way you should start with targeting some main keywords for your front page, and then specific sweets on product pages. I don't know what crowd you'd target because when you think of sweets you think, kids. But there are a lot of sweets that actually appeal to older crowds, depending on what they are. Like liquorice sweets for example. Either way party related marketing would probably be your best bet.

If you actually think about why someone would order sweets online, these come up in my mind:

- Bulk buying for a party
- Themed party that needs specific sweets
- People who want sweets that can't be found in their area/country
- Corner Shops or Sweet shop owners who want to add variety to their sweet collection

Those, in my opinion would be the sort of people looking to buy sweets. Going by that, I would perhaps want to advertise in magazines related to parties. Newspapers in the appropriate section. Submitting your site to a local/national news paper may prove to be a great story, and if they want to run the story it could give you some potential customers. Also contacting corner shops, sweet shops around your area/country may give you a constant flow of buyers who need to buy your stock in often.

Tons more but you get the point now

Ah ok was just wondering because you didn't mention it. So are you working at a loss currently or at a profit? Ignoring any design and coding costs. Simply marketing costs, small profit, small loss or breaking even?

Have you been trying to run ads on specific sweets, since you have 400 of them. They'll be considerably cheaper to bid on and you'll get better conversions as people already know what they're looking for.

Have you done any press releases for your site? They usually help to give you a boost.
Also, consider contacting your local press (newspaper, radio, even tv) and see if they are interested in featuring your story.

Hi Bushell,
All of the suggestins based around more general marketing are great and you should look into them.
However, a large portion of your time should still be cracking the google code of PPC and SEO for e commerce.
So go back to your PPC campaign and now instead of looking for turnover look for profit. So you should target your adverts in a much narrower way i.e. by brand or type. and concentrate on making sure that after you have paid for the sweets and the PPC you are making profit even if it means less sales.
Now take the profit and invest in SEO. SEO is medium difficulty for sweets in the UK and the reason for this is people like aquarterof have been around since almost the start I remember them launching at the begining of 2000 or so not long after firebox. Having said that I had a quick peek at their site today and it looks like they have not updated it since 2000! So thats handy for you.
If you scared about doing the SEO yourself, look for a reputable company that will get you results.
Good luck
David

First get analytics installed so you know where your sales and traffic is coming from, then you can tell what is and isn't working.
Then get your PPC sorted.
Then get your on page sorted. (do 10 pages first and concentrate on them).
Then absolutely get some backlinks. I'm a tad reluctant to tell you where to get your links from there is no one size fits all and we haven't seen your site yet.
Another thing is everyone on here has a different idea and frankly probably they got it from a WSO rather than first hand and most WSOs do not tell you how to rank an ecommerce site in the UK.
However, to answer the question you asked yes directories will work as google would expect some directory submissions for a UK e commerce site (not everyone on the warrior forum would agree). Will they have the best possible "link juice"? NO but they will not get you penalised and will be a good base as link diversity is a major factor in not getting penalised.
DON'T buy a 1000 links from anyone that can get you penalised.
PRWEB will benefit you and is also something I would do at the start of an SEO campaign (again after the on page is correct). As a cheaper option get someone to write the Press release on fiverr for $5 then get someone on fiverr to look over the Press realease to make it better another $5. Then get someone to syndicate it on fiverr which includes google news and someone else who perhaps gives you a few more sites but without google news and for $20 you have the slightly more complicated but cheaper "poor mans" press release option. Again don't buy from the person who is going to syndicate it to 1000 sites thats never good in google's eyes.
Hope that helps.
David

Bushell, my mentor asked me "John, are you building a real business or just f*cking around...?"

I want to ask you the same thing.

If you're building a REAL business, there should be no room for anything but HIGH QUALITY.

Getting a press release from Fiverr is like selling half sucked lollies.

Not sure you can ship food into NZ or Aus just like that. And not sure about shipping a couple of chocolate bars into anywhere else.

You would have to look into 'sweet hampers'

Which leads me to....

I bet you can ship nice British sweets to our deployed forces though.

At XMAS time people pay to ship hampers to the troops. Sometimes troops are 'adopted' if you like as they may have no family and it is soul destroying to see comrades receive hampers from friends which is where the adoption comes from.

I think you should get yourself onto a military forum to throw the idea out and set up a local campaign where you live too where people can buy a small hamper of sweets that will be flown out to a random soldier or platoon or Regiment depending upon the size.

This will generate PR for you in your local press and may get picked up nationally.

Hope you see something in what I have written.

It is nothing to do with IM which is what you were asking but I know nothing about that, I can just see a great idea here.

Dan

I'd really like to see your website...!

It's okay to post it.

Anyway here it is for those who don't want the hassle of going through profile.

Snack City - Buy Pick n Mix Sweets & American Candy

I love your little blogs. You have a real interest in sweets!!

Good luck with this venture.

Dan

PS: You can write a line or 2 and put the link as your signature too. I think that would maybe get you high traffic as it would be different from the usual boring signatures about IM. Also you may get some sales from Brits out of it eg me!!

Nice site. A press release would be ideal to give your site exposure and backlinks.

If you thinking it will go long way and got some money or Programming knowledge go for Magento ,im in love with it

Skimming this thread, I notice no one mention paid advertising on Bing and Yahoo. Have you looked into other paid advertising options ?