A few months ago, I lost a small eCommerce client who shut down her young business. She had a carefully crafted line of products that appeared to be reasonably priced. We had a well-designed and functional website (of course). After a few months and too few sales, she gave up the endeavor.
What happened?
We often tell our Web clients that a successful website is a three-step process.
Step 1 - Create a compelling and useful site that is well designed to meet the needs of your primary audience.
Step 2 - Get people to your compelling and useful site. Step two has two strategies, advertising (web and other), and search engine placement.
Step 3 - Build a network of interested parties who frequent your site and share your story. This is where social and personal networking come in.
All three steps are important, but I regularly encounter people who hope that their better website will be enough to assure success. More successful eCommerce clients follow this three step process, and the failures that I have seen avoid Steps 2 and 3, believing that their better mousetrap will create its own market.
The Web is a crowded marketplace, and while that is an opportunity, it is also your biggest threat. You need to get your organization visibility Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can get you toward the top of Google search results, but this usually takes months and effort. On-line advertising such as AdWords can drive traffic to your site within hours but costs money and takes a bit of time.
Even though her sole retail channel was her website, the client described above was not able/willing to invest the time/money to spread the word. As a result, her potential customers never found her, and her small business
The purpose of this ongoing blog is to share what I learn with my clients and friends. Each entry will be short, and of relevance to
