Website to advertise physical shop?

[movietub]

We have a good physical shop and also an eccomerce website of the same name, both perform well.

I have recently considered building a micro-site for the physical shop only (although with a link to the ecommerce site) in order to attract local folk to the shop.

My lgic is that people looking for shops in their local area will more often than not these days run a google search. We sell aquatic supplies in Peterborough, there must be people searching for 'aquarium shop in peterborough' etc.

Does anyone else do this? Do you get feedback from new customers that they found the shops website and decided to visit?

[movietub]

NB - we do come up anyway if people search for our type of shop in out time, all the yell and other local directories have us listed. But by developing a good micro-site I could showcase the shop a little better. I'm also confident of page one results for the type of search terms used by local people. Peterborough ain't a massive place!

[NextPoint]

Most shops generate their business from passing traffic. Some people may use the web to compare prices before going to the specific shop, but I assume that the e-commerce shop would cover this.

[GreatSEO]

Sounds like a good idea to me and another asset for the shop too.

Maybe a good way of gaining data for a newsletter with special offers etc as well.

This could work quite nicely if done correctly

Dave

[movietub]

Sounds like a good idea to me and another asset for the shop too.

Maybe a good way of gaining data for a newsletter with special offers etc as well.

This could work quite nicely if done correctly

Dave

Thats the idea, we are in a just out of town location, and although there is a lot of passing traffic there are a lot more people who probably don't come over this way!

I also want to get over to more local people what we are about. Due to our main ecommerce operation our shop prices are without doubt the cheapest for 50 miles. And we have the biggest stocks too! So the website would showcase that, along with a load of useful content for the general hobbyist.

[GreatSEO]

I would go for it but make sure it is well thought out first :')

Dave

[movietub]

Most shops generate their business from passing traffic. Some people may use the web to compare prices before going to the specific shop, but I assume that the e-commerce shop would cover this.

The logic is that people used to find local shops (not on the high street) by flicking through the yellow pages. More and more people bin the yellow pages these days and swap to googling what they need. Local people won't find the ecommerce shop easily as it is targetted on more general keywords/brands etc. We could never target the site to just our local town.

Horses for courses!

[NextPoint]

Micro sites are good to target specific segments of your market, but if you only have one shop, I get the feeling that you would be better optimising your main website to invite people to pop in as well as providing the option to order online. The advantages you have from this are:

* You benefit from the current SEO rankings of the main website straight away.
* You reduce the amount of work and cost involved.
* You increase the amount of visitors who will see this from day one.
* This would also be relevant to people who are could be thinking of visiting the area and not just who live there.


Using the micro site method would be better suited if you had more than one shop, allowing you to have a micro site for each shop. You could develop micro sites targetted towards specific segments of your market - what that is depends on what you sell.

[movietub]

I would go for it but make sure it is well thought out first :')

Dave

It will be a nice change to design a static site that doesn't have to anything complicated or dynamic!!!

I could probably get something neat up and running in 48 hrs / two bottles of wine :D

Although having said that I could llink to the webshops DB and generate live catalogue too... I'll order more wine ;)

[movietub]

Micro sites are good to target specific segments of your market, but if you only have one shop, I get the feeling that you would be better optimising your main website to invite people to pop in as well as providing the option to order online. The advantages you have from this are:

* You benefit from the current SEO rankings of the main website straight away.
* You reduce the amount of work and cost involved.
* You increase the amount of visitors who will see this from day one.
* This would also be relevant to people who are could be thinking of visiting the area and not just who live there.


Using the micro site method would be better suited if you had more than one shop, allowing you to have a micro site for each shop. You could develop micro sites targetted towards specific segments of your market - what that is depends on what you sell.

I'm lost by your logic I'm afraid. Surely a microosite per shop based on several shops makes no more or less sense than a single site focussed on the single shop we have?

There is no way I would consider optimising our main ecommerce site to bring visitors to the physical shop. There are only so many strong keywords I can optimise a single site for. 'Peterborough' would not be a valuable one, even if it did bring an extra 20 customers a day. Not compared to the value of keeping the site 100% focussed on distance selling. I would simply be eroding the SEO rankings of the current site by trying to make it appeal to two entirely different types of shopper/search strings.

[GreatSEO]

Try some of these ones they are so worth the cost

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domaine_de_la_Roman%C3%A9e-Conti

Dave

[NextPoint]

It wouldn't be any major effort to optimise your shop to appear in local searches. All of the following will help:

* Mention the area in relevant text
* Mention local places
* Register on Google Maps
* Get incoming links from press and business websites located in the local area

By offering offering the option to buy online or reserve a product to collect, you get the best of both worlds.

[movietub]

It wouldn't be any major effort to optimise your shop to appear in local searches. All of the following will help:

* Mention the area in relevant text
* Mention local places
* Register on Google Maps
* Get incoming links from press and business websites located in the local area

By offering offering the option to buy online or reserve a product to collect, you get the best of both worlds.

Sure we already have a the option to buy and collect instore on the main ecommerce site. My point is that the main site is focussed and optimised to sell to the masses, If I optimised it to appear on page one for 'aquatic shops peterborough' then it would lose out in other more valuble searches.

But with regards to the micro-site, I'm confident of page one in the serps within a month. It wouldn't take much to make at all.

As always, lots of advice but no one comes forwards who has actually tried it and is able to report the results!

[movietub]

Try some of these ones they are so worth the cost

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domaine_de_la_Roman%C3%A9e-Conti

Dave

Perfect!

I'm certain a worrying % of SME owners get through a bottle a night whilst working at home in the evenings ;)

[NextPoint]

Sure we already have a the option to buy and collect instore on the main ecommerce site. My point is that the main site is focussed and optimised to sell to the masses, If I optimised it to appear on page one for 'aquatic shops peterborough' then it would lose out in other more valuble searches.

But with regards to the micro-site, I'm confident of page one in the serps within a month. It wouldn't take much to make at all.

As always, lots of advice but no one comes forwards who has actually tried it and is able to report the results!

If you are concerned about how changes will affect your page rankings, you could create a landing page geared towards local trade. Although mentioning local places elsewhere in the website is not likely to affect how your website is viewed for existing terms - they will just add your local phrases to the relevance that you have with existing search terms - e.g. you show up for 'toy cars' and 'toy cars in Peterborough'.

[movietub]

If you are concerned about how changes will affect your page rankings, you could create a landing page geared towards local trade. Although mentioning local places elsewhere in the website is not likely to affect how your website is viewed for existing terms - they will just add your local phrases to the relevance that you have with existing search terms - e.g. you show up for 'toy cars' and 'toy cars in Peterborough'.

Single page SEO'd for 'aquatic shop peterborough' would be the best way to do it through the current site yes.

But there is simply no benefit in using the current site. Building a new site geared entirely towards the most likely search phrases local people would use will always rank more highly, more often.

There is also the issue of how the business is presented. I want the locals to see a welcoming local shop to visit, and I want the general online shopper to see a thriving warehouse based business dealing in volume, efficienecy and low prices.

[cmcp]

I'd go for it, but be careful not to confuse the user with different branding. A consumer might be confused which way to direct his business with multiple sites.

If I were you I'd be aiming to have slots 1, 2, 3 and 4 with niche sites.

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

There is also the issue of how the business is presented. I want the locals to see a welcoming local shop to visit, and I want the general online shopper to see a thriving warehouse based business dealing in volume, efficienecy and low prices.

I think that is important, it's also the benefit of being online, you can present yourself in different ways to target different audiences.

It sounds like you would create the site yourself so it's not really costing much more than a domain name so it's worth a try.

There seems to be 300-400 searches for pet shops peterborough each month
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

[movietub]

I think that is important, it's also the benefit of being online, you can present yourself in different ways to target different audiences.

It sounds like you would create the site yourself so it's not really costing much more than a domain name so it's worth a try.

There seems to be 300-400 searches for pet shops peterborough each month
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

More than I thought to be honest! I'll take those odds, like you say - it costs nothing to try!