Advice for Online Retailers in the US
Being an online retailer is not always easy, but it can be a lucrative way to make a living if you follow the right advice. With an online retail store, you literally have the entire world as your prospective customer base. The steps you take to create the ideal store and cultivate that customer base will determine what level of success you will enjoy.
Product tags are keywords that can be associated with a product when it is added to your online store. Most ecommerce software has a field you fill in for tags and it is something an online retail store owner should use.
Tags are not going to help your store or your products show up in the results of major Internet search engines. But they will make it easier for your customers to do a search of a store and find the products they want. Your product tags should be descriptive and help your store’s search function to find products for your customers.
Include Descriptive Titles
If product tags do not help your retail store to show up in search engine results, then what does? The titles you use for each page in your store and the titles of each product are what helps establish your search engine status in each of the big online search engines.
You need to use the proper keyword and keyword phrases to create your product titles and descriptions if you want those products to show up in Google search results. The page titles of each section of your store are also important in helping to drive more traffic to your online retail business.
Use Multimedia Elements
Be sure to use clear pictures for each of your products and remember to tag those pictures to make it easier for your customers to search your store. If your ecommerce store allows you to utilize videos, then use videos of your products in action to enhance sales. You can create a channel on a video hosting website and use that channel to drive more traffic to your site as well.
Make It Easy To Navigate
All of the important elements of your store should be no more than two clicks away from your front page. While it is commonplace to make product pages accessible, other pages such as returns policies and shipping options should also be easy to get to as well. Everything your customers need should be within easy reach at all times if you want to increase business.
Make Sure Your Main Page Loads Fast
Videos and graphics on product pages will slow those product pages down slightly, but they are necessary elements in presenting a product. Most of your customers will wait the extra second or two for those elements to load. But your customers will not wait the extra second or two for your main page to load, which is why you need to keep your main page as streamlined as possible.
The online retail experts at KISSMetrics did a study and found that an online retail business that generates $100,000 per day in sales loses almost $2.5 million per year for every one second that customers have to wait for pages to load. You can modify that math to fit your online retail business and see that a fast-loading page is in your best financial interests.
Have A Store Blog
Along with adding products on a regular basis, your online retail store should also be adding advice in the form of blog posts as well. If your ecommerce software does not have a blog option, then start a blog with one of the many free blog service providers online. If your ecommerce software does have a blog option, then use it to inform your clients and increase web traffic.
Owning and running an online retail store is just as much work as running a brick and mortar business. If you want your business to succeed, then you have to understand your client base and you have to understand your industry as well. With some hard work and smart tactics, you can turn your online retail store into the business of your dreams.
Bizwiki provides a list of Web Designers and Graphic Designers across the US which may be of help when setting up your online retail business.
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