Hi there everyone. I opened an online store for business about 10 days ago and I have not generated one sale at all. Several months prior to opening the site I performed SEO in the form of: article submission, directory submission (not paid), keyword research (did this 1st of course), and I very recently listed in google shopping, bing shopping, and thefind shopping. I also submitted a press release last weekend, but I still feel as though I opened the store in woods somewhere-away from all civilization. Any thoughts on what I can do to convert sales? The website is <snip> if you are curious. Any input is appreciated.
A few questions that will be useful to anyone who wants to help you:
- Have you ranked for any keywords?
- Are those keywords informational(eg. Canon X camera), or you also have ranked for keywords that have buyer’s intention(cheap Canon X camera)?
- Do you have traffic?
- Are there any reviews available online for your eshop?
- Do you run analytics in the site? What is the traffic right now?
[FONT=verdana]Maybe you’re focusing too much on SEO, and not enough on your proposition. Put another way: Are you sure you are selling a product that people are willing to buy at a price they are willing to pay?
Mike[/FONT]
Have you tried to run a Google Adwords or Bing / Yahoo Ad campaign? What are you doing in way of advertising? Is your product even popular? Have you test sold it on Amazon or Ebay? How easy is your checkout / shoppin cart system? With a little more background I am sure we can start to point you in the right direction.
The amount of time it will take to generate sales can vary a lot. For example the following will all impact:
How competitive the niche is
How competitive your prices are
Your website design-needs to be designed with the customer in mind, not necessarily what you or a website designer like the look of
Where you rank for the keywords & phrases
Where your traffic is coming from
How well your products are illustrated and described
How quickly your sites pages load
and much, much more. When you do start making sales your competitors may notice you and react accordingly, so you need to be constantly improving
If you’re getting qualified traffic and not generating any sales, you likely have one of three problems:
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You site doesn’t appear trustworthy. Is the design up-to-date? Does it look professional? Do you have trust seals and a prominent phone number?
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You have a poor value proposition. You always need to ask “Why would someone buy from me?” You need to be solving a problem for your customer, and with eCommerce the easiest way to do that is by providing great information about the product you sell so your customer can make informed, confident buying decisions.
Are you using stock photos and manufacturer descriptions? If so, then you’ll should definitely re-write them.
- Your prices are significantly too high. Check the competition. If the prices are significantly higher, you likely will lose the sale. Make sure to include shipping fees in your calculations.
The new site this situation is normal, after all, start no credit, and have much to do promotion
I would like to make a point to you. Even if you perform SEO to a site, how would people know about your site? How do you build a brand to your site? SEO is merely to increase the customers. Prior to that you need to work on brand awareness. Use social media to promote your eCommerce website. Use PPC for a period of time, else i don’t think you could ever succeed. And then work on SEO. Later comes the rest part, which is competitive pricing of products, design of the website, etc.
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I agree with all that - except the order of doing it. I would say that the product must come first. You’ve got to make sure your product is something people will want, and are willing to pay for. If you don’t do that, all the SEO and social media in the world will be of no use whatever.
Mike
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Yes mike! Unless the product is of any use, there is no point in starting a eCommerce portal. There are many factors from product’s perspective as well. The site owner must carry out a demand-supply analysis as to which products are being catered by the local brick and mortar models and which aren’t. For instance, people would find it better to visit a nearby clothing store to buy their apparels. An eCommerce portal could do great in this case, but then if you don’t have enough stock to lure the customers, it would be a mere waste. Choosing the product niche is one important thing as mike stated.
funny, 10 days and you are screaming.
when you have a new site its gonna be real hard to make sales from it. its gonna take
in the mean time try to utilize ebay, amazon etc. this will get you some sales hopefully, at least chances are better.
10 days!? If you’re getting impatient after 10 days, you are not going to like business. It takes more than throwing up a random site and doing $10 worth of SEO to start making money in business.
This is the same as saying, “I spent 10 minutes in the gym, how come I’m not getting muscles yet?”
If you’re relying mainly on SEO, it might take a few months of dedicated effort before you start seeing some results.(maybe shorter or longer depending on how good your SEO efforts are and how tough of a niche it is)
Sounds like you’re focused on YOU benefiting, instead of the customer, which makes it even harder for YOU to benefit, since you’re not concerned with creating an amazing site/product/service for the person buying, you’re concerned with selling something ASAP so you can make money
Hi,
Add a link to your store in your signature so we can give you some feedback. There could be many reasons why your store isn’t working. One reason good be that your store doesn’t look legitimate. You can add a toll-free number to make it look a little more legitimate. A better design could also help. Add logos on the bottom of your store where your store was mentioned. Your prices could also be an issue. In many cases, however, it could just be that the people who want what you’re offering simply aren’t finding your store. More targeted marketing and better SEO could help.
[FONT=Verdana]The OP has not been a member for the required 90 days, and therefore cannot have a signature. A request for a review of the actual site needs to be submitted to the Reviews and Critiques forum, in accordance with its [URL=“http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?744418-Read-before-requesting-a-review”]rules. The OP was advised of this, but has not chosen to use that option. They have also not returned to this thread, so presumably no longer require assistance.
Thanks to those who contributed. Thread closed.
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