Most
store builder software today will help you create a blog that easily converts. That's just the start of having an effective online store. Choose a good niche to work with, find a reliable supplier, make your navigation easy to understand and voila! You've got a nice online shop going.
The good old adage of "build it and they will come" does not exactly work for online stores. You will be in competition with hundreds, if not thousands, of other web retailers. Each one has it's unique selling proposition.
Despite getting a good
store builder, you will also need to focus on attracting the right visitors to your online shop and converting them into solid sales.
Search engine optimization is one way to do this. Find the right keywords that your market is using to find the products you are selling and target these in your meta tags and in your content. You should also work on building links to your online shop.
If you're not exactly the techie store owner, but you do enjoy writing/talking, then there's one other alternative. You can do something as simple as writing a blog about the items that you are selling online. House this blog within the same domain - either as a subdomain or a subfolder. It should be related to your online store in some way. There are actually instances when blogs go viral and gain popularity online. If this happens to you, having your blog as part of your main
domain will work well for your branding efforts.
Your tone should depend on the kind of audience you are targeting for your online store. We recommend keeping it light and casual, yet sticking to the rules of grammar and good writing. This will make you seem professional but approachable.
Don't be all about business and hard selling. Informative blogs are just as effective as sales blogs. Give your readers more information about the background of your online store, highlight your favorite customer testimonials, focus on some benefits of buying a particular product. Make people want to read your blog by creating content relevant to them.
Integrate social media elements into your
online store's blog by adding plug-ins. Social plug-ins from Facebook can allow you to immediately add the "Like" button on your online shop. You can also add a way for your audience to Tweet about post or to add it to their social book marking accounts.
Last, but not the least, don't use it as a one-way marketing tool. Your blog should be both responsive and interactive. If you receive comments - whether negative ones or positive ones - you should always acknowledge and respond to it. The more it leans towards the neutral and negative comments, the better the opportunity for you to interact with your audience directly.
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