Congratulations on your brand new e-commerce website! Now what? Let’s discuss some techniques to ensure you maximise your new website and make a profit.
SEO Optimisation
You are going to want to ensure content is SEO optimised. Woocommerce allows you to add a short description, a long description, product categories and product tags. You should be using all of them to ensure that the search engines like Google, Bing etc can find your content. SEO aka Search Engine Optimisation is the process of setting up the content of your website so it can easily be found by the search engines.
The best and easiest way to do SEO is to be natural. Don’t force anything. Ensure the content is suitable to the human being who will eventually click and reach on your website looking for that content you posted. Let me give an example, your customer might be looking for a white v-neck t-shirt. In this example, let’s think about what the customer will search for, they will search for “white v-neck t-shirt” right? Therefore your product title should also be “white v-neck t-shirt”. Your product description may go on to describe the material the t-shirt is made out of. Maybe your customer is going to search for “white cotton v-neck t-shirt”. Putting the material in the description helps the search engines to know more about your product. Product tags take it a step further but allowing you to add more words relating to your product that a customer may be searching for. You can read this article by woocommerce to learn more: An Advanced Guide to Product Based SEO for eCommerce (woocommerce.com)
Claim your “Google my business” page
Google allows you to add your business and website to its Google my business platform. To sign up visit Google My Business – Drive Customer Engagement on Google.
Set up your Webmaster tools
Google and Bing both have their versions of Webmaster tools or Search Console. They allow you to add your website to their search engines and get better control over what they find on your website. I’ve found that this step is not really needed since they are pretty good at finding your content without your input.
I mentioned this topic for one reason! Google has something called “International Targeting”. This is where you can set the specific location your customers tend to come from. Mine was actually set to the United States of America without me knowing. I changed it to Trinidad and Tobago and finally, more local traffic began coming my way. Who knows, maybe you are reading this because I changed that setting.
Set this up by visiting the following: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Social Media
I’ve said it in the past and I’ll repeat it now Social Media is like the shop display for your online store.
Your social media isn’t the place to sell just the same way your mannequins don’t actually do any selling in your storefront. Your social media is where you post content to engage the potential customers to get them to enter the store. Use the images/videos to showcase the product and the captions to tell your customer how they can buy it.
Once they enter your store, can they easily find what they are looking for? Do you have items sorted into categories? Are the categories easy to find? Do the categories make sense? eg. are socks classified as bottoms or footwear? Are they sports socks or work socks? Remember your website can act as a 24/7 store and be its own sales clerk if you design it that way.
Let’s break this down in another way. SEO/search is where your customers go to when they are ready to buy. Let’s think of that as a mall. Customers go there to buy. On the other hand customers seldom go to social media looking for something to buy. They then to go to social media to find enjoyable content. Social media is like going to the park, or to the club. You go to socialise. Therefore, you need to use social media to socialise and engage your customers.
Advertising
The easiest and fastest way to ensure sales is to pay for advertising. This can be paying for ads on Google or Facebook or Instagram. Of course, this depends on your budget! My advice to clients is to set a budget that you can sustain for at least 3 months before you start seeing any returns on that investment.
Advertising is a good way to boost your brand presence and let’s your customer/potential customer get to know and trust you. I’ve found that ads typically take up to 6 weeks to really start to see results! Why so long? Keep in mind the end user, the customer. Some maybe looking to buy now but most either aren’t ready as yet or don’t know they need your product as yet. You must give this step enough time and budget.
Set up systems
What are you going to do when the orders start coming in? You will need scalable systems in place. Use this downtime to begin putting thought into these systems. Let’s say 100 orders come in tomorrow morning, then what? Who will handle production? What about customer service or even delivery?
I may have left systems for last but systems can make or break your online business. This is by far the most important part. Once this is down then the entire business can be scaled from 1 order to thousands of orders daily.