Web Marketing Strategy Update

If you’re running an ecommerce website, it’s the site’s conversion rate, not traffic that should be your main focus. You could have all of the visitors in the world, but that traffic is useless unless it converts into sales.

If your site receives a good deal of traffic but is not generating the number of sales you expect, consider the following to help increase your conversion rate.

Establish Trust to Gain More Sales

Trust is a big factor in whether or not your website generates conversions. If shoppers do not feel as if they can trust your site, they will not want to get out their credit card and make a purchase. There are a few basic steps you can take to help improve the trust factor associated with your website:

Use SSL Certificates – Having a secure server is essential on an ecommerce website and a requirement for credit card processing on the site. Consumers want to know their information is safe when they make a purchase online and will not make a purchase unless they see your using SSL certificates to keep your site secure.

Be Accredited – Placing badges that signal your site’s credibility with the Better Business Bureau or various industry watchdogs will help gain the trust of your visitors. Also, placing icons that show your website is hacker safe and protected will help people feel safe about making a purchase through your online store.

Professional Design – The design of your ecommerce website can say a lot about your business. In order to increase your conversion rate, use a professional design. The better the quality of your website the easier it will be to convince your visitors that you are reputable and they can trust your business.

Clear Shipping Costs – Clearly stating your shipping costs before someone makes a purchase makes you to appear straightforward and trustworthy in the eyes of your customers. People do not like to be surprised with the total amount of their bill, and tend to feel like they have been tricked or deceived. Clearly stating your shipping costs up front will help you eliminate the chance of this happening with your customers while further gaining their trust as a respectable online business.

Utilize Email Marketing

Many ecommerce websites do not fully utilize email marketing. With the ability to reach your customers at the click of a button, email marketing offers online businesses an excellent way to increase sales. By keeping your customers in the loop about your newest products and any specials or sales, you can help ensure those who have made a purchase from you in the past will visit your site again with credit card in hand.

Email marketing remains one of the most cost effective marketing tools any business can use. By creating targeted email lists, you can reach your current customers and potential customers separately and provide each one with a targeted marketing message. Targeted messages like these increase the success of your marketing campaign and provide you with an excellent ROI.

Web Design Matters

The design of your website has a large impact on how your visitors perceive your business, and therefore also has a dramatic affect on your site’s conversion rate. Split test different designs and layouts so you can see what does and does not work in terms of increasing your conversion rate.

The colors you use throughout your site along with the position of the product image and depth of the product details can all have an affect on your conversion rate. Split testing these and other aspects of your website’s design will enable you to make subtle changes to your site and gradually increase your conversion rate further.

In the end, the success of an ecommerce website is judged by the number sales and amount of revenue it generates. If you only focus on increasing traffic to your site, you are doing your business a disservice. Working to establish trust with your visitors, utilizing email marketing techniques and improving the design of your website will help you increase your conversion rate and make more money with your ecommerce website.

Ben Sawyer has worked for the Ny Candles ecommerce website as an online marketing specialist for more than 4 years.

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Handmade goods are rapidly gaining popularity, and it’s no wonder when you consider that they often slot in perfectly with the modern trend for ‘green’ products. Handmade products, whether clothing, cupcakes or carved ornaments, are often an eco-friendly alternative to mass produced items from the high-street, and they’re more unique too.

After all, it’s very unlikely you’ll catch someone else wearing the same hand-knitted scarf as you when it’s been shipped all the way from Texas and the seller only makes five of each design!

So if you’ve got some crafty talent, why not make a business of it? At the very least, you’ll pocket a little extra cash on the side as well as getting to spend your weekends indulging in your hobbies, and at best you could start up a thriving, full-time business doing what you love the most!

If you’re considering selling your handmade goods, once you’ve got the product nailed you need to find an audience who’s willing to pay for them. You have all sorts of options such as local craft fairs or starting your own website, but which is best for you? Below I’ve listed some of the best places to sell your handmade wares, and the types of businesses they work best for…

eBay / Amazon

Becoming a seller on eBay or Amazon is easy and until you actually sell anything, the fees are nominal which makes them a brilliant place to start out. Simply create an account, list your products and away you go.

However, both sites do have their downfalls too. They’re both often associated with ‘bargain hunting’ which can be a great thing if your product is low cost, but if you’re targeting the luxury market you can expect your sales to be few and far between.

These sites also allow only minimal branding – you can customise your seller page with basic information such as your logo and a short description, but that’s about it.

Etsy / Misi / Folksy

There are sites like the massively popular Etsy and the lesser-known but nonetheless brilliant Misi and Folksy that cater to lovers of handmade (and, in Etsy’s case, vintage) goods which makes these sites an excellent choice for those just starting out – their visitors are exactly your target market!

Unlike eBay or Amazon where visitors may simply be searching for a bargain, the people who visit these handmade sites are more likely to be willing to pay out for the quality they associate with handmade items.

Again, you can customise your profile with your logo and some information, and the selling fees are low, but the sites still lack the opportunity to really create your brand. There’s also the fact your products will be mixed in with thousands of others, so you may need to resort to on-site ads to be seen, which can get expensive.

Specialist Stores / Websites

Another great option is to search out stores, either online or offline, that focus on your industry. If you make wooden bookmarks, look for bookstores who may be interested in buying a batch to place at their counter. If you knit scarves, contact some local fashion shops (by which I mean small boutiques, as Topshop likely won’t be interested!) or find places that specialise in indie designer fashion online such as US Trendy.

Esty Lingerie is a brilliant e-boutique for those creating handmade lingerie since they focus solely on indie brands, with over 30 currently on the site. The benefit of a site like this above one that sells handmade products in general such as Misi is that visitors are not only looking for handmade products, they’re looking for your handmade products – in this case lingerie. Putting your product in front of your target market doesn’t get much better or easier than this!

Craft Fairs / Markets

Markets, especially craft markets where all the products are handmade, are another great way to sell your goods if you’d rather sell offline. Markets are the original sales-place, and have been tried and tested for thousands and thousands of years!

However, selling at markets almost always comes with a price. At bigger markets, you can expect to be paying over a hundred pounds for a space and even at small, local fairs you’ll usually still have to pay a small fee to the organisers. Add to that the price of an actual table or stand (often not provided) and some sort of decor such as a tablecloth, and you’ll need to sell a decent number of products just to make your money back, before you can make a profit.

However, if you’re putting desired products in front of the right audience and enough of them, you will make sales. If you’re unsure, try starting at a local Christmas craft market since lots of sales are made at these as people buy gifts – just package your products appropriately, such as selling gift-wrapped sets as well as individual items.

Your Own Website

Last but not least, starting up your own site is both good and bad for the newbie retailer. On the one hand, you can brand it exactly as you want (graphics, texts, placement of different features and so on) which, especially if you’re aiming at the luxury market, definitely comes in handy.

However, unlike big sites like eBay or Etsy, you can’t benefit from existing traffic and will have to work hard to build up traffic to your website yourself. Especially if you’re not already an SEO expert, you may make very few sales for the first months or even year!

Setting up a website can also be expensive, and difficult if you’re not using a ‘what you see is what you get’ editor and don’t have any web-coding skills. WordPress is a free website-creating software but for e-commerce, there are better (but also more costly) alternatives.

Overall though, setting up your own website is by far the best long-term strategy. At first though, you may want to also use other methods to start making sales immediately and get your product in front of people, which is the best way to get your brand ‘known’!

Do you sell your own handmade goods? Where did you have the most success selling? Leave me a comment below!

Estelle Puleston is the owner of Esty Lingerie which she has been running for over 3 years.

Related articles

• Guest Post: Shop Talk – Switching From Etsy To Storenvy With Moe
• Turning your crafting hobby into a business Part 2
• Should You Have a Unique Online Storefront or Are You Better Off on Etsy?
• Etsy’s Reign or Terror – Discrimination and Abuse
• Eco Market, The “Etsy For Eco,” Rebrands, Revamps, Raises & Prepares A U.S. Launch
• 3 Simple Ways to Transform your LOVE for DIY into Something More
• Eco Market – Store Profile
• The ‘Etsy Economy’ and Changing the Way We Shop

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Magento is an open source ecommerce application for the web which allows businesses to create their own custom online store. It’s highly customizable and offers lots of great features for designing a professional ecommerce site.

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