E-Commerce: Getting Found
The first step in making sales is making sure your shop gets found.
In the real world it's a straightforward case of setting up in a suitable location, putting up a big sign, filling your window with the best of what you've got to offer and listing yourself in the phone book.
On the web, things are different.
On the web there is no such as a prime location. Don't be fooled by 'Information Super highway' analogies or virtual malls. No how big your sign, or how shiny the things on your home page are, when you first set up your online store no one is going to know it is there. There will be no passing trade.
People find things on the web in a number of ways:
Web Addresses (URLs):
You need to share your web site's address with everyone. Put it on your catalogue, your van/car, your letterhead, your t-shirts, your packaging.. everywhere.
If someone comes across your business or any of your products in the real world you want to leave them in absolutely no doubt whatsoever that you do have website.
Links:
If other website owners believe that your site is a worth a visit they'll provide links to your site. A link from a reputable site is as good as a recommendation from a friend.
Links from other sites, especially well-known and respected ones, has an additional benefit of improving google's ranking of your website... as with all things google, that's a whole subject in its' own right.
Search Engines:
The majority of people find things on the web by searching. The subject of search engines, how they work (and how they can work for you) is obviously and article in it's own right, but here's the one thing that every online retailer really needs to do:
Provide Quality Content...
There are companies out there who specialise in trying to trick search engines into sending people to sites that they weren't really looking for. You don't have to think about it for very long to realise that this is an inherently weird way to spend your time.
If you sell shoes and manage to fool google into sending you people who were looking for golf balls you're probably not going to see a big jump in sales.
At the end of the day, if you fool google into giving your site a higher ranking than it deserves you're just going to annoy people.
People may come to your site, but when they fail to find what they were looking for they'll be gone. And they won't be coming back. Increasing arbitrary 'traffic' to your site is a pretty futile pastime if you are a retailer. If you're not attracting actual customers who want to buy what you're selling, you're just wasting their time and your bandwidth.
On the other hand, there are companies that dedicate a similar amount of time and energy into making their sites the kind of place that large numbers of people are looking for. Unsurprisingly, these kinds of sites tend to do well.
Search engines match people up to the information they need. It's what they're all about, it's why they exist. The more information you put on your site, the more reasons they will have to send people to your site. The more completely you describe the products you sell, the more chance people will have of finding them.