Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Would anyone have any ideas on how to promote my site  basically for free until I start generating some income off it.
I have had almost 10,000 views and no sales.......

Your site looks fine. Checked out your source code and one thing that I noticed is that your metatags are only in your home page; you might try placing specific metatags on each page. Some of the web designers in here may tell you different (if they do, go with them because my web training is basic), but that would get more search engine coverage.

Now, with 10,000 views, I don`t realy think that there is a real problem with getting people to the site, so promoting the site isn`t the issue. One thing that you might do is put a discount on the site that can be used with any purchase. Make it like a special limited time offer.

I will keep thinking on it and drop any new ideas that I may come up with.

Making the sale is always harder than getting attention. It’s easy to shout the qualities and benefits to your product or service. The next step would be the sale. Without much study, I would say Price (your product retail price), Trust (potential customer trusting your biz), and Ease Of Ordering (from your biz) are major obstacles to overcome with an online store. Sometimes there is little we (online retailers) can do about price. After all, we have expenses too, and our job is to find the best price available at wholesale in order to provide a good price at retail. Trust and Ease Of Ordering are often overcome by special offers (suggested by engraver). I originally sold products at $1-2 profit in the beginning. This provided the opportunity for customers to buy (at a great price) and “feel out” my service and online ordering process. I am not suggesting you take a hit as I did, but you will need to be creative in order to build trust and inspire customers to walk the path to the check out counter. I don’t really have a good idea as to solving the problem yet. But I recognize the hurtle you need to overcome. I hope this post helps the thought processes.

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Vincent Wilcox (a.k.a. KRAKR)
Drummer
My band: Letters Make Words

Man Vincenet, thank  you so  much. I am so happy to be a member of this great online community.

C.


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XMG Internet Marketing Group
Making the Web Work
www.xmgonline.com
inbox@xmgonline.com
336.510.9642

Paul, how long has it been since your new revised site has been active?

Does your stats package tell you how many visitors have been past the front page?

Avg length of visit?

Total page views? Avg page views per visitor?

Prior to developing any "marketing program" you need to know where you are falling down. Having 10,000 visits (or was that "hits", or page views?) is great ... but if they aren`t getting past your front page and going into the store ... then you need to see why they are simply "drive-by" visitors.

If you are able to share that info with us ... then it might be easier to see why no one has purchased anything yet.

If you are getting visitors into the store ... then we can start to address that ... but the first objective is getting them past your front page.

 

One of the things I thought of when I started digging around your
site was... "why would I buy from this guy when I can go to
newegg.com or any other big competitor?"

I think that`s the fundamental question you need to ask yourself. You
mentioned trying to compete on price, but I think you might look at
a differnet approach that could serve you much better.

Become an expert. There are SO MANY places I can go to buy
electronic equipment. The thing that seems missing are "experts". If
I go to Best Buy for example, those folks can tell me all of the
specific detalis about a product, what other things I will need, how
it`s going to work with what I already have... AND they can steer me
in a direction if I am undecided on which product might serve me
best. Maybe you can try to be that "helpful guy with the polo shirt"
but available on the internet.

(reminds me, I just recently spent a chunk of change for a higher-
end inkjet printer. I can`t tell you how many hours I spend trying to
find information about different printers to help me decide which
one to purchase. I was quite a few. And it really took some faith that
I chose the right one. What I needed was an expert to help me.)

How? (I am sure you`re asking)... Okay, here are a couple of ideas.

You could have a blog that discusses particular products in great
detail. This makes you a subject matter expert to people who are
interested in a particular product. When they`re searching the net for
those details... there YOU are providing them. I would definitely let
people know in your blog that you sell this stuff, and if the
information they have read has been helpful, please consider
purchasing from you, and remind them that your expertise is an
email away. I think trying to compete on price with the big guys is
going to be way too difficult.

Or (actually and/or), you could try setting up a chat area. There are
many chat applications you can set up on your server that would
allow your potential customers to quickly connect and talk to you to
get advice and help.

Another idea popped in my head. Online video. Video blogging.
Whatever you want to call it. Similar to my blog idea above, you
could try putting together video of yourself discussing and
demonstrating the features of certain products. This helps people
understand what they`re buying AND it helps them understand from
whome they are buying.

Whew! That was a lot of typing. Hope this stirs up some ideas for
you. Good luck!

-Zepp

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-Zepp

Creative solutions for digital communication; providing web site design and marketing for small businesses.

The images on the website are Not fast loading images.  Unfortunally only people with a mac can tell. They can clip on the image and drag it and see how big it is. They are huge. If you are getting that kind of traffic people are getting ticked it takes so long to load. Check to see how much the images weigh
make sure you do that when you do a fake order.

something i noticed was that you have ALOT of catagories, but NOTHING IN THEM... it makes your site look incomplete. To me, it`d be like going to radioshack and only everyother shelf had products on it... and i KNOW that if i went to bestbuy they`d have more selection and TONS of options to choose from... my .02

also, OS Commerce is a good cart... but you need to spend some money and get rid of the basic template... i`m finishing up one right now for a client and will post the finished product later...

There is one key thing you need to do. Market reasearch! The second thing you need to do after you finished market research is speak to your potential customers. Find out why they are leaving your site..for example you can create an exit pop up survey and offer customer a discount off next order for completing a simple survey.

Another way to speak to your customers is to Set up a live chat solution and proactively ask to chat with people as you see them on your website.

Talk to friends and family and have them critique your site and tell you what products they like and would buy.

Listen to your customers - they are always right. Read the Book "Raving Fans" by Ken blanchard

Create a Myspace profile and add friends. Ask people to visit your site and leave you comments about your product.

It all boils down to knowing your customer and making sure the products on your site are what people want to buy at the right price point.

 

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Laurie Champagne
CMO
Groove Rock Gear, Inc.
grooverockgear.com
grooverockmusic.com
grooverockradio.com



email: laurie[at]grooverockgear.com