I assume you put a lot of time and energy into creating your store. A million thoughts run through your head of how to make your dreams an actual working reality that will turn heads and expand your wallet. But do you put the same energy, time, and thought into your online web store?
Some fashion designers do not, which will result in a very unfortunate chain of events for any business owner. In today's market it would be close to a catastrophe to not have an online presence of some sort for your company. But just anything is not sufficient; placing a considerable amount of your budget into perfecting your online store is as important as perfecting the presence of a store that is visited by patrons in the flesh.
Imagine you open a store and all the aisles are blocked by boxes, and if you go into another room there's no way to get back into the main entrance. If you customers could manage to leave - if they even came in the first place - they would not be coming back. Unless of course they dig being frustrated and confused.
When you consider your target market and demographic, I would hazard to guess that 90% of the clients that walk into your door have already Google'd you, read reviews about your store online, or even tried to save themselves a trip by shopping online. With today's online Internet purchase rate creating large revenues for online retailers, most designers rightly put a lot of stock into their online stores. With such a high percentage of possible customers, it would be best for your company to acknowledge this growing market as fast as possible.
First, we'll need to start you off with an experienced web developer. I educate clients all over the globe about the importance of an e-commerce store should have with their business. Proficient developers will focus on the best product layout and placement, which includes visual stimuli geared towards certain key categories or images, such as sales or seasonal wear. The savvy developer is also privy to technical items that are key towards website placement in search engines, like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) coding for your entire website, and clean coding that will not break in the 6 different browsers your clients may be using to access your web store.
Once you find a developer who knows what they are talking about, you will need to talk with them about how you want your web store to be laid out and presented to your viewers. Your brick and mortar store on Whatever Street has its own personality and feel to it, and you will want to transfer that same ambiance to your web store. Your customer should feel familiar with your online store after having set foot in your store building: think of it as the same store but at a different location.
It should go without saying that setting aside a good budget for your web project is crucial, since developing such a large online venture will take many hours from your web development team. While money is always the bottom line with any transaction, don't always go for the first cheap person you find – just like you should resist the temptation of a suspiciously cheap Rolex from a street vendor. Longevity and quality do not come cheap, and you always get what you pay for.
So once the website is in the making, my clients often ask how to increase traffic to their online store. As we touched on above, it is both what you see and what you don't see of your website that will attract these results. Working with a web developer that knows how to create excellent and clean code is a must for any search engine to effectively "crawl" your website. In order to go through your website and index as much information as possible, the website must have excellent SEO on every page as well as the back end of your website.
While this helps greatly, it is also important to have your website fully viewable in all popular browsers your customer may use. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Camino, Opera - as well as Operating System based browsers like Mac and Pc - will each show your website in a different light completely. Even the different versions of each browser will display differently sometimes. So if you end up with a dazzling site in Internet Explorer 6.0, don't dismiss the idea that the text may overlap in Internet Explorer 7.0 and make your website a jumbled mess! It is a business person's worst nightmare to have a client leave over something that could have been prevented, like browser-specific coding, and we don't want that to happen to your business.
Another avenue of increasing your traffic is a blog. I know almost everyone has a blog, and you might think having one will be useless and no one will read it because there are so many. But it works. Fresh and interesting content on a constant basis is what search engines love. While your company's online store might only be updated once or twice a season, a blog can offer weekly content that will send the search engines back for more. More indexing by Google and other engines means more content is being placed into their system, which means more of your demographic will find you with their searches. When you increase exposure, you also increase the likelihood that clients will be exposed to your content: it follows simple probability. Within your blog's main page we would put a link to your online store. And that is how you get reciprocal links from a simple blog.
While online advertising may be beneficial, I would first advise my client to start with the above steps. Many times companies without proper consultation will leap into online advertising efforts, only making their budget pool weaker by the month, and offering little results. But utilizing a proper design firm that is educated about web design standards will greatly benefit your website - much more than blind advertising with a sub-par website. Of course, targeting your adverts where your demographic is known to visit will always help. To sweeten the deal, most websites offer programs where you only pay for those that click on your advert. Keeping in mind you can target your ads to specific zip codes or keywords, this method of online advertising has become the largest means for any website seeking revenue.
Getting your name outside of the Internet and into people's minds is another very useful tool in marketing your online store. I remember one website used parties and various activities in downtown LA as a way of promoting their project. Through giving away free gifts and other goodies in the hot spots where their demographic would be every weekend, they successfully increased their patrons. This website was Myspace. The same idea goes for your website. Thinking outside the box has gotten you where you are now, so use that same logic when pulling in customers.
As I've discussed, there are various ways of increasing traffic to your online store once it is developed. An educated development team will supply great results by creating an avatar for your existing business and boosting your sales by better reaching your desired clients. Various methods outside of your website's realm can also be very useful in managing traffic. The sky is the limit when you want to attract your audience to where they – and you- want them to be.
Zachary Smith is owner and operator of MIB Solutions, a Louisville, Kentucky web design and development firm.
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