how to increase traffic for E- Commerce website

[Adam_Watson]

Hello friends,

I have a E-Commerce website which offers office supplies, office furniture and office stationery in the UK. I want to increase traffice for this website. Can anybody help me how to increase traffic.

 

[fisicx]

Pay for some advertising.

It's a myth that still persists that setting up a website and doing a bit of netwrking will bring in the punters. You are competing with some big and well established brands who are spending thousands of pounds on marketing. Unless you have a decent marketing budget then your chances of making any money are slim.

In any case, it's not visitors you want it's customers.

 

[CraigieDD]

Hi Adam,

There's a number of ways to do this.

Maybe someone should write a "sticky" post as this subject seems to come up so often.

Here's my starter for ten.

1. Get a list of potential purchasers, send them an unbelievably good opening gambit, then cross-sell and up-sell once they visit and for the rest of the customer lifespan.
2. Get up the search engine results pages by putting in place a solid SEO strategy.
3. Affiliate and Joint Venture with other high traffic sites giving them a percentage return.
4. Implement a highly targeted, carefully measured PPC Campaign.
5. Get out into the social media space and take part in conversations around your products on forums, blogs, groups, etc.
6. Set up an RSS feed or e-mail alert list of public contracts that are out to tender by registering at one of the many public tender aggregators.
7. Go to procurement shows.
8. Set up a data feed to get your products on to other marketplaces that have higher traffic.
9. Do something highly PR-able and chase publications in your sector to run the story.
10. Give purchasers an incentive to refer you to others.

Best of luck.

 

[CraigieDD]

Pay for some advertising.

.

I was going to disagree with this until you qualified it.. ;-) Advertising, unless it's highly targeted to a relevant audience, with a strong time-barred call to action - it simply doesn't work. Unless you've got a lot of money to spend.

That's why most media sellers have teams of sales people.

 

[fisicx]

Marketing a busienss takes time and effort. You can't just build a website and hope, you have to put in hours and hours of work of graft. In fact you probably have to do more than a B&M store who will at least get passing trade.

It can take a year or more of plugging away before you see some result of your marketing efforts. Until your name is known you are just one of a thousand others all selling office supplies online.

 

[ooh]

Make the website do something good for the type of people who would buy what you're selling. You've made a vending machine. Now (instead of spending money and time trying to work out good ways of shouting 'hey look at my office furniture, stationary etc. vending machine' which is basically what this question is about as is) add on genuinely useful features to your site which benefit people before they buy. Make it more attractive itself. Improve it. Preferably remarkably. In order to do that you need two things:
- knowledge of customers, then
- imagination applied to inventing on their behalf (come up with great answers to "what'd be great for them?")

 

[Giggleberries]

Pay for some advertising.

It's a myth that still persists that setting up a website and doing a bit of netwrking will bring in the punters. You are competing with some big and well established brands who are spending thousands of pounds on marketing. Unless you have a decent marketing budget then your chances of making any money are slim.

In any case, it's not visitors you want it's customers.

I agree with Fisicx about it being a myth that you can set up a website and expect the punters to start rolling in because you can't. It takes years of hard work to start making money.

However, I have to disagree on the need for a decent marketing budget because we have established our business on a shoe string simply by doing all the seo and internet marketing ourself. We get loads of organic traffic and this accounts for much of our business.

Consequently, we have been able to build a business with very little investment, we are now making a good enough profit that I have been able to give up a well paid career and live off my ecommerce business alone.

We are now in a position where we can allocate a marketing budget.

My tips would be; keep over heads low, know your customer, understand your cash flows and margins, be prepared to do a lot of work yourself for the first 2 to 3 years and build slowly.

Good luck

 

[faabseo]

There are many things to be done to increase not only mass traffic, but potential traffic. For this you first need to let us know the url of the site so that we can first analyze and then provide you valuable suggestions.

 

[faabseo]

There can be no one rule to increase potential traffic. I can type hundreds of suggestion but it is of no use. Each such site should be deal with unique strategies. I had done so and got brilliant result.

 

[That Guy]

Add your Site/Products to:

- Google Adwords
- Google Maps
- Google Base (Shopping)
- FreeIndex.co.uk
- hotfrog.co.uk

This may help a little

 

[anditucker]

Hi Adam,

There's a number of ways to do this.

Maybe someone should write a "sticky" post as this subject seems to come up so often.

Here's my starter for ten.

1. Get a list of potential purchasers, send them an unbelievably good opening gambit, then cross-sell and up-sell once they visit and for the rest of the customer lifespan.
2. Get up the search engine results pages by putting in place a solid SEO strategy.
3. Affiliate and Joint Venture with other high traffic sites giving them a percentage return.
4. Implement a highly targeted, carefully measured PPC Campaign.
5. Get out into the social media space and take part in conversations around your products on forums, blogs, groups, etc.
6. Set up an RSS feed or e-mail alert list of public contracts that are out to tender by registering at one of the many public tender aggregators.
7. Go to procurement shows.
8. Set up a data feed to get your products on to other marketplaces that have higher traffic.
9. Do something highly PR-able and chase publications in your sector to run the story.
10. Give purchasers an incentive to refer you to others.

Best of luck.

I think this is one of the best answer among the all the post Thanks for such a wonderful post.

 

[Adam_Watson]

Hi Craigie
But Where I can Get a list of potential purchasers Please tell me if you have any idea about that..

 

[CraigieDD]

Hi Craigie
But Where I can Get a list of potential purchasers Please tell me if you have any idea about that..

You simply buy the data. Ask one of the big data suppliers to get you a list of contact names and addresses for people who procure office supplies. One of the big data suppliers will be able to help. Try putting in "procurement data" into google.

Buy a test amount first. Test an offer via telephone, e-mail or direct mail. Test doing all three.

Work out how much it costs to buy a customer. So if you contact 1,000 people and you get 20 sales and it costs you £1,000 then it costs you £50 to "Buy" a customer. Effectively, once you know this figure you can just go out and "Buy" more customers.

Remember it's the lifetime value of the customer that you're looking at, not the first sale. So using the above example, if the first sale gives you a £20 profit. But the person purchases five times a year from you then you make £50 gross for the year from that customer.

Brad Sugars explains it like this...

Leads
x
Conversion Rate
=
Customers
x
Transactions
x
Average Sale
=
Revenues
x
Margins
=
Profits

So 1,000 leads x 2% conversion rate = 20 customers x 5 transactions x £20 Average Sale = £2,000 Revenue x 40% margin = £800 profit

All figures substituted for simplicity

I'd imagine that your average sale would be a lot bigger and the number of transactions higher. ;-)

Good luck, and let us know how you get on.

 

[akhtarkasia]

I am in Office Supply business. Its a very competitive market. Are yo uusing your own bespoke website or are you using one of the wholesalers off the shelf ssystem? Are you part of any buying group? What discount terms are you on? Based on above, your selling strategy should be created. It is a very competitive market. If you are based in say Yorkshire and you are trying to sell all over UK, than STOP. Try selling your website through local contacts, business etc..... That way you will gain better results.

But as I say, its a very very very competitive market. GOOD LUCK!!!!!

 

[Archil]

Hello friends,

I have a E-Commerce website which offers office supplies, office furniture and office stationery in the UK. I want to increase traffice for this website. Can anybody help me how to increase traffic.

Adam, what's your aim? To increase traffice for this website or to increase sales amount?

I think it's the second one, u wish.

In this case post your products also on eBay, Amazon, Gumtree, Kijiji, etc.

 

[stephanielarry]

You are competing with large and well established brands that spend thousands of pounds on marketing. Unless you have a decent marketing budget, so your chances of making money are slim.

 

I am in Office Supply business. Its a very competitive market. Are yo uusing your own bespoke website or are you using one of the wholesalers off the shelf ssystem? Are you part of any buying group? What discount terms are you on? Based on above, your selling strategy should be created. It is a very competitive market. If you are based in say Yorkshire and you are trying to sell all over UK, than STOP. Try selling your website through local contacts, business etc..... That way you will gain better results.

Good advice office suppliers is tough one for organics so use PPC or go geo as suggested.

As time goes on and you have a bit of cash to spare you can go for SEO to hit the big money provided you have the right products at the righr price.

Earl

 

[goweoie]

For the foreign?

 

[Adam_Watson]

Hi Craigie,

ok sound is great tell me next step supposed I put on google procurement data after that what should I do.

 

[CraigieDD]

Hi Craigie,

ok sound is great tell me next step supposed I put on google procurement data after that what should I do.

Give them a contact and ask them how much data they have. Get a test amount of around 1,000 names and contact details and put a great offer together, that's timeous and relevant to your audience. Personalise it to.

It's up to you how you make contact.

In my experience, a mailed item with a follow up call works best. Postcards are cost effective too. E-mails, more so.

Practice your opening line, make sure you've got the benefits of working with you straight. Take notes so you can see what works and what doesn't. To be fair, there's people on here with more Telesales experience than me who'll be able to go into great depth. There's also printers on here that'll do your print work.

 

[adamsmith]

Great post bro. I will be using it for my website.Thanks again.

 

[stephanielarry]

Marketing a business requires time and effort. You can not build a website and hope, lasting hours and hours of graft. In fact, it is likely that more than one store B&H, that at least pass the trade.

 

[amyd]

I would definitely check out selling on ebay - this is probably one of the only advertising platforms that actually works for us.

Do some searches on ebay for some of your products to see if people are selling them already - if so, how much are they selling for? Look on the completed listings to see how many sold and at what price. Even if people are already selling them - you can do it better (offer better delivery options, service, more professional listing etc).

Obviously if there 100 identical items on there at the price that you would need to sell them for that haven't sold, and theres nothing wrong with the seller that would have put people off (bad feedback, bad shipping options etc) - then dont list that product. Research the next one.

If you then decide to list on ebay - the idea is to promote your ecommerce site to them by sending them newsletters, include a leaflet about your store with their order.

Everyone slags ebay off but we have done well from it. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you're to good for ebay and that it would somehow downgrade your products/reputation. All the big player are using it as a sales platform now.

Good luck!

 

[Juliee]

Hi,

There are many things by doing them you can see the traffic on your site, but the mots important thing is customization. Yes a custom template designing not only attracts the visitors but also convert them into buyers. You have freedom to edit the existing and add the new designing of your Volusion site.

You can notice the considerable conversion percentage by trying the custom designed template. Good luck

 

[Adam_Watson]

Hi Craigie,

Thanks for the reply I will defiantly try it. once I done I will let you know If I get any difficulties.

 

[stephanielarry]

Marketing of a business takes time and effort. You can not build a website and hope, lasting hours and hours of graft. In fact, it is likely that more than one store B&M, that at least pass the trade.

 

[InspiredJohn]

my company has literally started trading today and 50% of the business is e commerce. We are a comprehensive IT firm and we also offer business services too. Before i go into a pitch and probably get banned i have found some of what you guys are saying very helpfull..
i am going to be using search engine optimisation and ad words, google analytics forums etc and also good old fashioned tele marketing too...
ive found that its worth covering as many bases as possible.. if one seed does'nt come to fruitition then you can guarantee that some will.
And you don't need thousands of pounds on marketing campaigns just a well made site, determination the strength to never give up, and of course some money for marketing! lol!
we've got a good forecasted turn over for the 1st 18 months but i totally appreciate how much of my time life and sanity this venture is going to take if i want it to work!
And i also feel that you really can't beat networking. I do my best to give most people i know who run a business a card when i can, and im always talking about what im doing at every opportunity.
Being an ex event promoter helps!
Anyway.. thats what i think. Some very valid points raised so far.

 

[velvet monkey]

I
However, I have to disagree on the need for a decent marketing budget because we have established our business on a shoe string simply by doing all the seo and internet marketing ourself. We get loads of organic traffic and this accounts for much of our business.

hi
a complete novice here who wants to set up her own web based business, giving information and facilitating groups. I'm interested in how one goes about doing ones own SEO and internet marketing. is there anything i should read.

many thanks
VM