Published on February 07, 2012 Shopping Cart Tips: Launching your website
Starting an online store is more than just choosing the right shopping cart and loading your products in to it. Your store needs to be properly launched or else you run the risk of not generating enough buzz about your site to get initial sales, which means a lot more hard work down the track.
Some marketers talk of “soft launches” where a site is made live, and then slowly built up over time, but once your site gets to the point where you want to generate a serious revenue stream from it, then serious promotion is required. How can you get your site off with a bang? There is no blueprint, as every industry is different and it depends on your industry and your competitors. But here’s a quick checklist of ideas for you to consider.
Press Release
You might not get picked up and reported by the media unless you have real news but why not try? A press release should be written with the most important information at the top going to the least important information at the bottom, on the assumption that an editor (if your story was published or used) could cut off the article at any point. The most important thing to think about when writing a press release is to ask what your story angle is. What is the real news? You launching a site might be exciting to you, but what is so different about it that makes it news? Would you expect to see it in your local newspaper? Get the right angle and sell it in your release well and you have an opportunity to get published.
If not, your release will be archived on news release sites and it helps get the message out there – some search engines may even index articles from releases depending on its content.
Social Media
A Forrester analyst has recently warned people not to go overboard with social media as there’s not a huge stream of evidence to support it can totally transform your sales. But it’s a good way to get an initial buzz, and the same analyst concedes that it is an important sales channel. Word of mouth has always been a powerful referrer and social media are yet another way to get your “message” out there. Sign up for Google+1, Twitter and Facebook accounts and encourage your customers to post reviews of your products on there. Make it easy for them to do this with follow up email marketing after sales. Tools like Ozcart’s after sales email system can help you do this.
Shopping Comparison Sites
These can be expensive if you don’t have products that are comparable to other businesses or if you already get sufficient traffic. But to get your website known, and for the sales to start ticking over, these are a good place to list your website. Sites include Getprice, Shopping.com, MyShopping.com.au and Shopbot to name a few. Advanced Data feeds in Ozcart’s Diamond Package can help you configure your feed to suit your needs.
Link Building
You need to think in the long run as well as the short. Search Engine Optimisation has two main parts – building links (votes to your site) and optimising the content of your site to be relevant to the things that your potential customers will search for.
You need to think about the links back to your site and the quality of those links if you want to build long term traffic to your site; as short term “link bait” techniques will only have a short term life.
Consider links from:
- Australian directories (business directories, industry directories, shopping directories)
- Quality blogs
- Industry Suppliers
- Partner businesses in related (not competitive industries) – cross linking
Is there value in reciprocal linking? Yes, there still is but only if it is relevant to your industry and not purely for the purpose of improving your search engine rankings. A link from a medical supplies technology site to a florist for example may be less relevant in the eyes of search engines from a link between a medical centre and a medical supplies company.
Paid advertising
Pay per click advertising such as Google Advertising or Facebook Advertising is quick way to get “fast traffic” to your site but the extent to which it forms part of your longer post-launch marketing strategy depends on your business and your overall marketing strategy.
These are just some of the ways you can generate initial launch traffic, but don’t forget other tried-and-true marketing approaches like offline advertising (radio, flyers, brochure), advertorials, news based interviews with offline reporters, email marketing, and viral marketing campaigns
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