Shop Talk: How to Get Your Website Discovered
Q: "Hi, I'm planning to launch an e-commerce site for women's apparel. The price point for the merchandise is between $150 and $500. I know the hardest part is going to be getting the website discovered. Could you give some advice on how to do that?" — Dina Agam, Entrepreneur
A: Getting traffic isn't necessarily hard if you have money to invest. I assume you don't have much as you're just starting out. Not knowing where you're at with all other aspects of your business, it's hard to answer, but below are some quick ways to drive traffic to your website:
- Build a profile of your potential customer. Since you don't have an active customer file, it would be an educated guess.
- Spend time with people who fit the profile and find out what words/terms they use to search for the items you're planning to sell. A simple survey can be done by sitting with them in a coffee shop and searching for the items. Track keywords and notice behavior when they get to a website.
- Use the keywords from your survey in a modest Google AdWords campaign.
- Spend time with your analytics program (Google Analytics is free) to track the return on investment for those keywords. Make sure you measure the performance — that's the key to spending wisely.
Two other tactics that you can try but may not be as quick to produce results include the following:
- Social media: You didn't mention target ages for your demographic, but I assume 35- to 55-year-old women are your target audience, which is a strong group on Facebook and Pinterest.
- Search engine optimization: It takes time to build and Google has been making many changes to its algorithm, but SEO can be a good source of organic traffic.
David Sasson is the president and CEO of overstockArt.com, an online retailer wall decor items. David can be reached at dsasson@overstockart.com.
