Making your site easy to find

Launching an ecommerce website is only the start of building a successful online business. You must consider how people will find your online store and how this differs from a physical store. One important distinction is that when people shop online they tend to be searching rather than browsing. This means they often have something clearly in mind that they are looking to buy. If you want your online store to be one of their options then you need to make sure your website is easy to find. There are many ways to achieve this, but outlined below are some of the key methods you should consider.

There are two marketing techniques that will be familiar to anyone who has ever worked with a web developer; search engine optimisation, and pay-per-click advertising. They are often the mainstay of website promotion, and in many cases the only promotion that is carried out to bring customers to an online store. We will come back to these in more detail as they merit more explanation, but firstly there are many other, often overlooked but effective, techniques for promoting an ecommerce website that do not involve search engines.

Email newsletters

When someone buys from your website you know their name, email address, what they bought, when they bought it and how often they buy from you. This is much more information than you would normally gather from an in-store transaction, and can be used to promote relevant offers back to existing online customers. Email is relatively inexpensive and by sending timely and interesting offers to customers you will keep them coming back to your website to buy from you. Depending on your products and the frequency of purchase it may be appropriate to send a weekly, monthly or quarterly email. You should use software that manages subscriber lists and allows recipients to unsubscribe if they wish.

Printed catalogues

One of the weaknesses of an online store is that it is waiting to be found. Unlike a high street store with a physical presence you need to work much harder to attract attention. Printed mailers that land on the doormat and highlight product offers and remind customers of the website's presence are very effective in generating a repeat purchase.

Customer reviews

A system within your website that allows customers to review your service and products is a good way to build confidence among new shoppers. If you have a nationally known brand then maybe this is less important - but if you are less well known then the positive experiences of existing customers can be a strong influence.

Advertising banners

When someone enters your physical store you don't abandon them at the door - you use signage to direct them to departments or to products that you wish to highlight. Exactly the same should happen within your ecommerce website using clickable banners that direct visitors to relevant offers and seasonal products.

Social networking

There has been huge growth in online social networks, and just as word-of-mouth recommendation spreads offline, it spreads so much faster online. As a technique it is not an easy marketing option, and you need to be careful that promotion of this type is not seen as a cynical ploy and therefore counter-productive.

Price comparison websites

There are some well-know price comparison services that you can use such has Kelkoo and Pricerunner. By their very nature, the focus of these services is on price, and they appeal to a consumer looking for a bargain. If you are the cheapest online then these can work well for you; if you are not then the results can be less satisfying.

There are many more options for website marketing your website, but let's return to search engine promotion in more detail, and the techniques that can build visibility and bring customers into your ecommerce website.

Search engine optimisation

Search engine optimisation (SEO), describes the techniques used to encourage search engines to rank your website highly for your chosen keywords. For this example we will use Google as it accounts for around 70-80% of all search engine queries. SEO delivers what are referred to as natural or organic results within search engine listings. These are the websites that feature in the main part of the results page, sometimes below a tinted panel containing sponsored links. Google decides where web pages will be positioned within the natural results, and it aims to put the most relevant results at the top of the list. Nobody pays for their website to be featured within the natural search results, but there are techniques that you can use to influence your positions. Google looks for relevance, and therefore the more closely matched your website is to your chosen keywords, then the more likely you are to gain good positions.

There are three main elements of search engine optimisation that influence your positions; the coding of the website, website content, and external links.

The coding of the website

Search engines read billions of web pages every day, and the easier you make it for them to read information within you site, then the more of that content will be read and filtered through into the search engine database. A website that is coded to comply with modern standards and meets accessibility guidelines is one that makes it easy for the search engines to read, and is likely to perform better as a result. Information about website coding standards and simple tests to assess your own website are available at www.w3.org. A lot of the work in this area of SEO should be carried out by your ecommerce provider and it is good practice to comply with web standards both for search engine performance and for the usability of your site by customers. There is also what is called ‘meta data' that should be present within the code of your website. This includes page titles, keywords and text attached to links and images.

Website content

Whereas you may not be confident working on the code of your website, one area where you can have a significant influence on natural search engine performance is the text content of your website. Search engines read words, and so the words you use within your web pages will have a profound effect on your search engine positions. Customers use keywords typed into a search engine to find relevant websites; if the content of your website matches the words being used in the search then this increases your chance of being found. Choosing keywords is often a case of listening to customers - how do they describe your products. Use these words to describe products within your website. A good ecommerce system should also allow you to add additional keywords to a product page, so that you can include mis-spellings and slang words without having to show them on the visible page of the website. There are many theories about how keywords should be used within the pages of a website in order to optimise search engine performance but, in essence, using the most popular and accurate phrases to describe your products is likely to result in a good performance

External links

The third key element of developing strong natural search engine results is building a network of inward pointing links to your website. There are many good directory websites where links are either free or available for a modest fee. The search engines view inward-pointing links as a vote for the popularity of your website they can have a significant effect on search positions.

It is important for any ecommerce website to have a strong search engine optimisation strategy. Work should be carried out regularly on the website and results should be constantly measured to assess the effects. This process should be continuous in order to build strong natural search positions over a period of time.

Pay per click advertising

One of the weaknesses of search engine optimisation is that it cannot be guaranteed to deliver results. For this reason it cannot be relied upon as your only search engine strategy. Pay-per-click advertising helps to cover this weakness.

Pay per click advertising (PPC) is a form of advertising that delivers links to your website within the sponsored links section of the search results. These appear down the right hand side of the Google results page, and sometimes across the top of the page as well.

The main features of PPC are that you choose your keywords, and you choose the wording for the adverts that appear when your keyword is searched on. The more you are prepared to pay, then the higher your advert appears in the listing. When someone clicks on your advert then a sum of money is deducted from your account with Google. The exact amount that is deducted is dependent on the value of other bids received for that keyword, so even if you submit a very high bid, you will not pay much more than the second highest bidder at any time. PPC is effectively a constant auction between advertisers. Advertisers who are most successful are those you choose their keywords very carefully to make sure they are targeted towards buyers, and specific to the products they sell. They ensure that their advert wording is accurate and honest so as only to attract genuine buyers, and they manage their PPC accounts carefully to ensure that each advert is converting visitors into customers, and not simply wasting money with visitors coming into the site and not buying.

The internet is going to continue to be an area of significant retail sales growth over the next few years and the ecommerce businesses that will be successful are those with an effective and easy-to-use website, a clear understanding of their customers needs, excellent service combined with effective marketing to develop new business and breed customer loyalty.