How to create an online store that sells effectively?
Wix is undoubtedly the best platform for creating an efficient online store! In fact, I invite you to try it out for yourself; a free trial is possible!
14 days free trial
Building a website by drag and drop
Integrated Payment Processing
More than 500 online store models
The creation of an online store is not limited to its creation itself. You must consider aVery important choiceWhich one?
Marketing...
In other words, it is about how you will market your products. It also determines your revenue. Also, if you adopt the right method, everything else follows. If you make a mistake or neglect this part, you will not succeed in selling a single item.
How to market a Wix website?
The creation, marketing, and optimization of your online store are done in six steps:
Choose your strategy marketing to create an effective online store
Find the right product niche
Choose a name for your brand
Create your online store
Run a 60-day marketing campaign
Build your marketing strategy
Step 1: Choose your marketing strategy
Before opening your online store, you must choose your marketing strategy. Don't even think about the products to highlight, color palettes, logos... (We'll come back to that later, we promise)...
If there is one step that will make or break the success of your online store, it is definitely the choice of your marketing strategy. This choice is not difficult at all, you simply have to do it at the beginning, thoughtfully.
Now, the three most commonly used strategies by online stores are:
Search Engine Optimization
Paid advertising
Platform marketing
Let's review each of them.
1. Natural referencing (SEO) to create an effective online store
This marketing strategy involves finding keywords for the products you want to offer. Once these keywords are chosen, all you have to do is make sure that your website ranks for them. They need to appear in Google search results thanks to these keywords.
Sometoolswere designed to help you with the referencing of your site. I talk about it in one of my articles.
I took an example from the photo above.
We can see that IKEA, Wayfair, and Walmart.com are winning the organic spots (those found under the carousel and ads) for the search term "bookcase". If you manage to appear there, it would mean that your online store creation has been a success!
Here are 3 reasons why a business uses natural referencing to create an effective online store:
Traffic flows are very reliable, which means safe revenue for your business.
Search traffic is usually the most important of all other sources of traffic.
Even on a large scale, search traffic can be extremely profitable.
In short, SEO is a reliable, high-volume, and cost-effective strategy. What more could you ask for?
However, there is a major drawback: search engine optimization requires a lot of efforttimeSorry, the provided text "et" does not have a clear meaning in English to translate. Can you please provide more context or additional text to be translated?of efforts. En général, vous devez attendre entre 3 Sorry, the provided text "et" does not have a clear meaning in English to translate. Can you please provide more context or additional text to be translated?6 mois avant que votre site n’apparaisse dans les résultats de moteurs de recherche (même si la catégorie sur laquelle vous travaillez n’a pas beaucoup de concurrents). Ensuite, le The volume of traffic will be quite lowUntil your page appears in the top 1 to 3 positions of search engine results for a keyword. If your category is even moderately competitive, you may need to waityearsto get there..
To help you speed up (a little), I will reveal three points that you really need to focus on:
Optimizeeach of your pagesof products on keywords adapted to the products.
Create a useful and engaging contentfor other keywords (other than product keywords) that are also related to your industry.
Make sure that your content should be of qualityso that people can refer to it.
In the game of SEO, only two things matter: content and links. So that's where you should focus and spend the majority of your time.
2. Paid marketing for online stores
By paid marketing, I mean sponsored posts on Instagram, Facebook, and paid results on Google. So you need to spend money.
Only, how to know if paid marketing is suitable or not for your business? If your product is likely to be of interest in a shopping center, the answer is yes, this type of marketing is suitable for your business.
"Moreover, the main paid marketing channels used by online stores are currently Facebook and Instagram."Instagram, in particular, has become very popular for online stores in recent years.
You must also consider the behaviors of internet users on social networks. In most cases, they browse social networks during their leisure time (a few minutes) to look at photos, videos, exchange messages with their friends... In short, they have fun. I wanted to point out that their behaviors are the same as when they are at the mall.
Certainly, there are those who go to shopping malls in order to look for a specific item. Others, however, go there to have fun. Shopping malls know this, which is why they have optimized their marketing accordingly.
Take inspiration from these shopping centers, and sell products tailored to your target audience on Facebook and Instagram. These products are:
Highly visual and catchy
Easy to understandIn just 3 seconds, customers should understand what it is. If you have a more complicated sales process that requires more explanations, people prefer to skip your ad.
An affordable price. If the price is too high, your targets won't even take the time to think about it. Once again, they will scroll past your ad and quickly forget about it.
So? Do the products you offer meet these 3 criteria? If yes, you really need to consider paid marketing.
What aboutGoogle AdsFormerly known asAdWords) ? Vos produits n’ont pas besoin de répondre aux critères que j’ai énuméré tout à l’heure. Vous pouvez utiliser Google Adspour tous produits. Vous n’avez qu’à choisir des mots clés, et Google mettra en avant votre annonce sur ces mots clés. Alors, si une personne tombe sur votre annonce, c’est qu’elle est réellement à la recherche d’un produit comme celui que vous vendez. Tant que le mot-clé a un volume de recherche suffisant et que les enchères ne sont pas trop compétitives, cela fonctionnera très bien.
The main disadvantage of paid marketing is that it requiresinvest a lot of money upfrontHowever, we don't even know if we will benefit from it or not. Paid marketing professionals typically take between 3 to 6 months to see results. If you choose this path, be careful not to invest more than you can afford.
3. Marketing platform for online stores
This is a completely different direction from the two methods above.
Instead of creating your own store and choosing a marketing strategy, you will turn to e-commerce platforms such as:
Amazon
Etsy
eBay
These 3 platforms are all effective, but I particularly recommend Amazon. Its audience is indeed much larger, so you will have more advantages. Almost all categories of products already exist on this platform anyway.
If you do a lot of buying and selling, you should opt for eBay. On the other hand, if you regularly produce the same type of items, the potential on Amazon is much higher.
Once you have chosen the platform you want (Amazon, Etsy, or eBay), it will be yoursmarketing channelYou will then create your store on the platform itself, and then list all your products there. You will need to further optimize this store so that the platform showcases your products.
Only one needs to know how to optimize the store. This optimization concerns two specific areas:
Target your product pages based on Specific keywords that are most searched on the platform
Getthe most number of 5-star reviewspossible on your products
The more you improve your search terms and reviews, the more chances you have to be visible, and the more sales you generate.
How to choose the best type of online store?
Let's recap what we have covered so far. There are three types of online stores that you can open. You must base your choice on the marketing strategy that you will employ.
Here are the 3 strategies:
Search Engine Optimization – Vous vous concentrerez sur le contenu du site et les liens. Le Search Engine Optimization nécessite toutefois du temps et de la patience
Paid marketing - You will pay for placements. This marketing strategy requires between 3 to 6 months, money, and a very attractive and easy-to-understand consumer product, with a price level favorable to impulses.
The existing platforms like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay - You will focus on the most used search terms on the platform, and on accumulating 5-star reviews. To access it, you must first understand how the platform works.
Among these three strategies, you should only choose oneone only.
"Why not? Using all 3 of them does it not promise more results, more sales?"
I myself have had these thoughts. Even worse, I made the mistake of using 3 different strategies at the same time. But I swear to you that if a person is skilled in one of these methods, they are useless in the other two.
Why?
3 reasons can explain it:
Each marketing channel is unique. Although some marketing principles apply to all channels, each of them has its own specificity. And learning any type of marketing can only slow you down.
The online marketing channels are constantly changing. What works today will not work in 12 months. Even though I have spent a decade doing SEO, I always feel like I have to relearn it every year. If you focus on just one marketing channel, you will have much easier time keeping up with the latest trends.
Online marketing is the power of laws. This means that the majority of profits go to a few big players - everyone else is fighting for crumbs. If you are not one of the winners, you won't win much..
If you stick to just one marketing channel, you will pass through the learning curve much faster. The sooner you unlock your marketing channel, the sooner you will make money with your online store.
OK, the first step is complete. It was long, but it is important that you dedicate time to it - it is the very foundation of all the other choices you will make in the upcoming steps.
Step 2: Find the right category for your products
After choosing your marketing strategy, the next step is choosing the product category. It is just as important as the previous one.
Another mistake that I made in the past was to take this step lightly.
If you target a specific category, you will really be able to grow your business! You will need to choose the category strategically. What's the point of selecting one that doesn't have much demand?
1. Avoid choosing a too common category
A common best practice in marketing is toto differentiate.
That's why you must find a way to stand out from the others at all costs. What will make your customers willing to pay for the product offered? There are countless ways to make a product unique.
The top-rated toothbrush holder on Amazon for example. Does it need to be too original? Not at all. It just needs to be simple, easy to use, reliable, affordable, and have plenty of reviews! Nothing more.
2. Set an affordable price
Low prices drive customers away. Moreover, by setting such prices, you will not be able to make a profit. Suppose you only make 1 CHF per sale; you will have to sell up to 100,000 products per year if you want to meet your needs (not to mention taxes and overhead costs).
Now let's assume that you are selling an item for $80 and making a profit of $40 on each sale. To earn $100,000 a year, you just need to sell 2,500 items. It is much easier to manage.
However, avoid selling products that are too expensive. The higher the price, the higher the demand from customers. They may even demand a completely different purchasing process. How many people buy cars without trying them out at a dealership? Others want to see the car and talk to a real person before making a decision.
Therefore, if you want to sell a product efficiently, quickly, and without any issues, I recommend selling it between 50 and 100 CHF. This price range allows you to earn more profits, and at the same time, simplify the purchasing process.
3. Make sure that your products truly interest your target audience
To do this, it is necessary to check if the demand is high enough. So, do a search on your marketing channel.
You can use itGoogle AdsIt has a keyword planner. This planner allows you to see how many times something has been searched on Google in a month. If your product keyword is searched for less than 1,000 times per month, it is probably too little to start a business.
Same thing withAmazonIf you are having trouble finding products in your category with over 100 reviews, it's probably too few.
These days, I much prefer to choose a category in which I have no experience but where there is a real demand. It is much better than investing in something that I am passionate about and yet, has no demand.
Step 3: Choose the right name for your brand
The bad news: everyone hates this step.
It is necessary to find a name that is not already taken. At this stage, we sometimes feel stuck... We spend days on it, so much so that in the end, we give up. Therefore, we tend to choose a name that is not impactful enough, just to move on to the next step.
Tell yourself that the more effort you put in, the more it will pay off!
To help you choose a catchy name, I will show you my own tips:
It must be feasy to spell. I never want any friction when people try to find my site.
Do3 words or less. I like to keep it as short as possible so it's easier to remember. 1 or 2 words is ideal, 3 is still good. Do you want to know the name of my team? Well, it's Lions Creative.
Take the bar exam test. Here is the principle: you should be able to say the name you have chosen in a noisy bar without having to repeat it. For word-of-mouth marketing, this is essential!
The name should be able to obtain the .com domain. I am youbuy a domain .com in advance (as long as it is not already taken by someone else), so for each chosen name, you must first check its availability.
The name must be relevant to your category. You need a name that is related to your category.
You must avoid brand conflicts.
Once you have chosen your name, all that's left is choosing a hosting. There are several options availableAffordable hosting plans !
Step 4: Open your online store
This step is specifically reserved for those who choose as a marketing strategy:
Natural referencing (SEO)
pay-per-click advertising
Know that the quality of your website has a significant impact on your traffic.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this guide, Wix is the best solution for an online store.
14 days free trial
Build a website by drag and drop
Integrated payment processing
More than 500 e-commerce models
Certainly, there are other tools, such asShopifyGet Bigcommerce. However, none of them compares to Wix. Wix is indeed very easy to use, has all the features you want, and its price is very reasonable.
So what do you do if you already have a blog with a large audience, and you want to add an online store to sell some products? In this case, adding WooCommerce to your WordPress site is a good option.
On one hand, if you have chosen the option: platformYou must also take care of it (the platform will actually be your site). It must be very convincing. So use all the features available to you. Also, use the best photos for each product. The goal is to stand out from the others.
Step 5: Launch a 60-day marketing campaign
Here are some examples of marketing campaigns:
I could leverage my personal network to see if anyone is willing to do an interview with me and then publish it on their own site. This will help me get some initial links to my site.
I could ask my loved ones to leave the first reviews on Amazon.
I would try to spend some of my own money on paid ads to test if the offer interests certain people.
It is necessary to achieve results as quickly as possible. You can also carry out other types of marketing campaigns; these are just examples. Therefore, make a list of 50 ideas that you could implement yourself.
Rank them in order of priority and plan a 60-day marketing campaign. If necessary, work long hours, drink too much coffee, and put in a lot of effort during this period.
At the end of the 60-day marketing campaign, some of your marketing ideas will have worked and you will have your first sales (the streams will be small, but steady). This steady stream is already enough.
Step 6: Build your marketing wheel
You are almost ready.
If you have chosen an online sales platform, you are not condemned to seek the opinion of consumers or your network for a particular product. There are other tactics that work just as well.
A popular tactic on Amazon, for example, is to ask customers to leave a review after every purchase. Some even promise a discount code for the next purchase if a review is posted.
This tactic can be automated. So ask an assistant to send the same email template to every new customer (asking for their opinion and promising a discount code on their next order). All online commerce platforms allow you to use this functionality.
However, make sure to check the policies of the chosen platform. There are always rules for this kind of things and each platform is slightly different.
Here is another method that works very well:Produce high-quality content.
Instead of creating content yourself, can you pay someone to do it? You can then focus on keyword research, creating your own editorial guidelines... while someone else writes very interesting blog posts. This way, you can create a lot of content.
Finally, forThe paid advertisementYou can also delegate it to a specialist. Think about the benefits you will get: improved conversion rate, increased revenue, etc.
So, what are you waiting for?
Start your free trial with Wix Today, launch your online store in just a few minutes! Then follow the other tips above to have an edge over the competition.
14 days free trial
Building a website by drag and drop
Integrated payment processing
Over 500 e-commerce models