Many strange things really turn in to great things. Web pages all have a unique ability….. Even if its ability is nauseating the visitor. Anyone who has built a few websites knows that these little freak happenings of the Internet are happening everywhere.
A great example is a site we have which serves up free content in exchange for clicks on our Adsense Ads. This being its only source of income, you can certainly imagine a great deal of thought went into add placement and landing page optimization. After a few weeks of putting our heads together we came up with a layout for the ads on every landing page. These ads all perform well, but the most effective one is the one we stuck in to simply fill a void! This ad was bringing in an excellent amount of click, so I set out to find out why. I tracked analytics, click thrus, times of day and location only to find that indeed the ad performed well simply because it was rather close to a VERY popular link. So you never really know when the next great thing or hidden success you will find in your website.
My personal opinion is that, if you own an online store and you are not spending 20 minutes a day per site in Analytics, doing frequent usability click thrus (including checkout) have used the heat maps to optimize your site’s flow… Then you will likely suffer from failure to thrive in your web business. Fact is, it’s hard work…. Sure some have made fortunes overnight, and you might hit the lottery too! Nope, really it’s hard work and the same level or more of dedication and work ethic is needed to run an online business as a brick & mortar business.
So after you’ve started your business and your website is built…. Then what?
Then you must decide to be successful. Make a daily schedule of things to DO to build your business and succeed. Things like link building and adding fresh content are like the electricity bill for your website. Very likely starting out there will be many things you aren’t skilled enough YET to complete. Don’t let that be a crutch…. In time you can learn all of these things. So let’s make a new shop owner maintenance plan for success.
Things to do to make your web store successful
- Get in to your site’s stats and analytical information. Really study your traffic, flow conversion opportunities and keywords to start. Just a note that the really valuable keywords are at the bottom of your list… Look in to longtails.
- Study… This is your business. Learn how to promote your store, how to make small edits and how to convert visitors to start.
- Shop at your website. Seriously…. Do this alot and have your friends do it to! You will NEVER get every single bug worked out… But finding them brings you one bug, mistake or misspelling closer!
- Keep control of your own business. Make sure you have full access and control of your website, your hosting, your domain and any accounts related to your business at all times.
- Deliver customer service and build trust. Believe it or not, word of mouth on the Internet is even bigger on the web than in our daily lives. Our fingers now have hundreds of ways to share thoughts and links worldwide, don’t miss this.
- Build links every week, optimize a page every week, build a new page every week and update your products everyday.
- Look and explore marketing opportunities within your budget. Pay per Click or Pay per Lead are usually very good to get started with … I prefer the latter for shopping carts as the shopper has already seen, read about and knows the price of the product before you pay for the click.
Most importantly, plan to wok hard and build your business… No free bus rides on the net either.