What's in it for me?

I sell more in a day on my websites than many of my customers do in a month. After being in the ecommerce business for over a decade, I have figured out how the game works. Sadly though, most online store owners still don’t get it. It continues to amaze me that business owners think that just because they have a website, that they should be selling something. The same problems exist in the virtual world as in the physical world. The store owner must do something to bring people into their shop. And once they get them into their shop, they must get them to buy something, and then to come back for more.

Just because I set up a physical store on some side street downtown, doesn’t mean that people are going to walk into my shop and buy something. And even if they do, will they come back? Will they tell all of their friends? No matter what “search engine optimization experts” may tell you, a new website will not appear on page one of Google. You get listed on page one because you’re the most popular website for a specific search term. You have to become popular first! You have to get people linking to your site, then get people to click on those links. There has to be something on your site that is going to get them excited enough that they will tell all their friends about you. Then, maybe, you will finally appear on page one of Google.

So what about paid links like Google Adwords? How about free shipping? Free content like a whitepaper? Security seals? Do these things work to bring in and create more customers? Sure they do! That’s why everyone does them. But your competition is doing all these things too – you have to do something that no-one else is doing. That way people will start promoting your site for you.

Here are two simple examples that I’ve implemented:

1.    CyberbaseTradingPost.com. This site sells campfire and ceremony supplies to scout units. I created a little program that dynamically generates printable certificates for any award you want to give. You can create as many as you want – free. The only thing I ask for is your email address prior to being able to print the certificate. You better believe this generates a lot of word of mouth! And yes, I do suggest they buy something to go with the certificate – many don’t, but some do. An almost everyone recommends my site to many other people who do end up buying.


2.    MasterNursery.com. this is a site I developed for a garden center coop, primarily for their own use. But it has one great feature called “Green Buyer”, where a member garden center can search for plant stock from national and regional growers, and compare availability and costs in real time. Then, they can place orders from multiple growers simultaneously – no more looking through availability/price sheets and placing numerous phone calls. If a grower isn’t in the system, the garden center is the one pressuring them to upload their data. And each of the 800 members tell each other how they are using the system, creating buzz about the site.

Now it’s your turn! What can you do on your site to generate word of mouth?

Inbound Marketing

The world of marketing has changed. Today, most of us have TV’s connected to a DVR so we can easily skip the commercials. When we are in the car listening to the radio, we change channels when an ad comes on. We no longer read newspapers and we throw away junk mail without opening it. We even delete messages that come to our email inbox. All of this marketing has one thing in common – it is what I call outbound marketing, and we pay little to no attention to it.


Rather than using outgoing messages, today’s successful marketing has an array of techniques for inbound marketing – where customers actually seek you out. Inbound marketing refers to those marketing methods that help consumers find your company based on their interest. Unfortunately, most people think the way to accomplish this is through search engines. But as I’ve discussed in the past, search engine rankings are the result of doing other marketing methods well, which then results in higher search engine placement. You don’t get higher search results first and therefore become popular – you must first become popular in order to get higher search placement.


Inbound marketing consists of methods such as blogs, podcasts, videos, photos, presentations, articles, ebooks, social media presence, and news releases. Basically, the more content there is about you, the great the chance of getting found. Companies need to have an ongoing content development strategy. Each of the methods mentions gives you an opportunity to create content that your customers may find important. In turn, they may “tweet you”, “digg you”, or otherwise create a link to your content, which in turn provides links to your website. Companies who blog or otherwise create ongoing content tend to get more visitors. This creates a snowballing effect – more content and more links makes you more popular. The more popular you become, the more sales you make, and the higher your page appears in the search results.


This is the reason why web professionals will tell you that content is more important than design. Graphically pleasing websites are nice, but they don’t bring more visitors. Only content and others linking to that content will do that for you. Customers today have a choice and most will not listen to your message. You must get them to come to you by using inbound marketing.

Eating your own cooking

This past year was tough on businesses. Many of our customers, both large and small, closed their doors. The internet was supposed to shield them from a down economy, and perhaps it did, but ultimately it wasn’t enough and some, even after decades of serving their customers, were forced to close. What happened? And is the economy really going to rebound in 2010 so this doesn’t happen again?

The reason for so many businesses failing is not a matter of the economy or of the business itself being viable. It’s not even a matter of the business not serving the customer, which has historically been a reason for businesses not being able to make it. The reason lies with a changed world. Customers no longer have the same needs as they did even a few years ago. A continuing array of more and more gadgets to complicate and fill our lives simply doesn’t seem necessary when you are in survival mode. Additional software features and buying software upgrades are certainly not on most people’s minds (Which is one of the reasons why updates are included automatically for our WebStores customers). Getting the most out of your current customers is key to growing your business. As an ecommerce consultant, am I willing to take my own advice?

In addition to developing shopping cart software and creating online stores for others, I run a number of ecommerce websites myself. The advice I offer each week relating to search engine optimization, niche marketing, email lists, blogs, and other internet marketing techniques are all things that I try myself on my own websites. But turning each of these sites into a sustainable business requires a lot of work, not casual tinkering.

One such website is NaturesPillbox.com. Nature’s Pillbox is a website based on a very narrow target market – Baby Boomers and Seniors looking for all natural health supplements to enhance their active lifestyles. The ingredients in our exclusive product line of “Colorado Natural Supplements” are based upon two decades of research focusing on beneficial plant properties rather than synthesized chemicals found in many supplements.

Regular readers of this column will know that businesses cannot rely on search engines to drive business to their websites, but that you must provide other means for customers to find you. Offering significant content about your products and services is an important way to get people to visit your site, and NaturesPillbox.com does just that. There a numerous pages describing the benefits of each plant ingredient used in the supplements. Driving people to your site through traditional marketing is important, and NaturesPillbox.com is doing this through a team of medical advisors, many of whom are offering Colorado Natural Supplements as part of their practice. Email newsletters, testimonials and word of mouth are all important components of creating a successful website. While the products themselves are proven, this new website is a testing ground to insure that the marketing techniques described in this column work. I encourage you to take a look at this site to see how these methods can benefit your business.