Having a virtual store or online store gives us the ability to count millions of potential customers, but if nobody knows about our business or not there are sufficient reasons to buy our products, it is unlikely that someone will.
So to succeed with an online store, not enough to have a good design or sell good products but also to ensure good visitor traffic to our store and encourage consumers to buy our products. And how to achieve this is through promotion.
Then see what the main ways to promote an online store are:
Search Engine Positioning
In general, most of the visits to a shop, comes from search engines (especially Google), so that the main way of promoting an online store is to provide a good ranking in search results these search engines.
Having a good ranking in search results not only gives us the possibility to have more visitor traffic to our store, but that appear on the top of search engines on consumers generates a greater sense of confidence.
Search engine positioning a virtual store or any other website, you can take some time, and depends on several factors, including the main ones are external links pointing to the website, and the proper use of keywords.
The more external links are located in quality web sites, pointing to our online store, the better our position in search engines. One way to get these items is sent links to sites that post and allow us to put under each article a link to our store.
The other way to achieve a good positioning is making good use of keywords, for example, if our shop is found whenever someone type in the search engines the words “Peruvian handicrafts, we must ensure that these words are repeated during our entire site, for example, in titles in texts and, if possible, even in the domain name.
But we must always ensure they are placed in a natural way and does not appear to have been placed artificially in order to affect the search results because we could be penalized by search engines, and instead to increase our position, we could get to decide decrease.
Online Advertising
Online advertising is to make Internet advertising, which basically consists of placing graphics or text ads on other websites, for example, for a periodic payment, we can place banner ads on websites related to the theme of our business that offer such opportunity.
An effective way to advertise online is through Google Adwords program, which allows us to place our ad in different sites related to the theme of our business, paying for clicks that visitors make in our listing.
Another form of advertising is writing articles about its products (e.g., advice on proper use of them) in places that allow us to do so, and under each article, we put a little blurb proficient our online store (avoid also include a link to it).
Offline advertising
Although our online store can be based exclusively on the Internet, we should not dismiss the opportunity to make offline advertising (advertising outside network).
For example, we could advertise in traditional media such as television, radio or written prey, although there are several other lower-cost alternatives such as small posters ads or posters, distribution of flyers, creating business cards, yellow pages ad , clothing apparel advertising, etc.
Email marketing
Another way to promote our online shop is making use of email marketing, for example, by having an email newsletter or by sending emails to our major customers where they do know, for example, the launch of our new products or promotions.
Sales Promotions
Another way to promote our online shop is making use of sales promotions such as special offers, discounts, coupons, giveaways, sweepstakes, contests, etc.
For example, we give away a free product for the purchase of a different product, or send an email to our core customers by offering a discount coupon which can be redeemed when purchasing one of our products.
Good presentation of the product
A good presentation of the product means that each of our products displayed in our online store has sound image (not too small, clearly showing the product), an attractive description (which highlight the main features or benefits of the product) and have a good variety of products (have a good stock of products which, in turn, will be constantly updated.)
Promote products on other websites
Another way to promote our online shop is promoting our products on websites such as marketplaces or auction sites such as eBay, which allow us to display and sell our products as well as the opportunity to promote our online store, and that thus achieve greater visitor traffic towards it.