Thread: How should I Market my business

Hey guys maybe you can give me afew tips on how to start marketing my business. What are some free and cheap solutions.

Maybe you know of some good directories to submit to or maybe a good cheap SEO company or something.

I sell sunglasses. Nifty Shades Sunglasses - The Sunglass Store - Best Sunglasses and Cheapest Prices Around (Powered by CubeCart)

My experience is that most e-commerce stores rely on SEO and PPC. Smaller shops tend to rely on SEO whereas the larger ones on PPC. Affiliate and e-mail marketing plays a much lesser role. As this stage, I would say paid directories are probably useless and you should not employ an SEO firm yet.

I can see that you have made a nice effort but there is really quite a lot more you can do. I hope you don't mind me saying this but as it stands, your store does not inspire much confidence. I would suggest that you look at the following first.

1. As it stands, your cart is definitely not SEO friendly. You need to check whether cubecart provides an SEO module which generates an HTML catalog. You will also need to have your product keywords in the title tags of your pages. If you do not get this right now, you will pay dearly later on.

2. You need to do much more to inspire confience.

a. Consider providing a physical address for returns and if possible a tel no.
b. Provide an about us, FAQ, privacy policy, and return products policy pages.
c. There should be more information about your products

3. Look at how your site compare with the larger competitors such as unitedshades.com and eyeglasses.com. Can you do anything to make your site more unique so that it stands out against your competition?

Good luck

Derek

Originally Posted by zxpro168

2. You need to do much more to inspire confidence.
a. Consider providing a physical address for returns and if possible a tel no.

I don't know where you are located or what your thoughts on Google is but this is an interesting find.

If you would like to give a phone number on your site but don't want to give out your real number consider something like GrandCentral: The New Way to Use Your Phones

Oh i definately know I need to make it more SEO friendly. I found a Cubecart addon but either I installed it wrong or it just sucks... I had to reinstall everything after I got done.

As for other pages I am still working on developing the site. Adding a return policy page and contact info and all that. I work a fulltime job so in reality I'd be happy making 5 sales a day... Which I am sure will take some work.


But thanks for the input.

I used is800.com to set up a toll-free no. so that callers in N. America can reach us in Hong Kong. It had been set that a toll-free no. on every page of an e-commerce site would do wonders for conversions. Although we did not see any evidence of that.

Anyway, best of luck. I would recommend that you get your SEO sorted out before trying any paid advertising.

Anyone recommend a shopping cart that is either cheap or free?

xsnoboard added 5 Minutes and 42 Seconds later...

Would you guys recommend that I setup my own website and just use paypal shopping cart...

xsnoboard added 6 Minutes and 18 Seconds later...

Does anyone know if OScommerce is more SEO friendly than CubeCart?

Your index doesn't grab me, it looks more like an internal page. Make this larger

Welcome to Nifty Shades - The Sunglass Store - Where you can find High Quality Sunglasses for Low Prices

Maybe make the Category list a different color to catch attention.
Good luck.

Originally Posted by xsnoboard

Anyone recommend a shopping cart that is either cheap or free?
Would you guys recommend that I setup my own website and just use paypal shopping cart...
Does anyone know if OScommerce is more SEO friendly than CubeCart?

I've set up and used a number of different ecommerce programs and I would recommend Zen Cart. It is similar to osCommerce but at this point has more built-in features and is CSS based too. Both Zen Cart and osCommerce are open source program and are FREE.

If you have fantastico with your hosting, it is usually a simple installation.

Zen Cart and osCommerce are both SEO friendly and the page title changes with the category or product viewed.

The default design of Zen Cart or oscommerece is similar to cubecart - boxy looking (highly technical term) :2068: But there are many templates available that can provide more "wow" factor. You can start with a template layout you like and change the graphics to fit your logo and make the site unique.

~Roland

I am going to looking into Zen Cart more. I checked it out quickly last night. From a pretty cool addon for OScommerce called STS (Simple Template System) i think... You create your own template and then where ever you want things you just type $title... $category....$cart

I would suggest the OP to diversify his marketing campaign for more reach - SEO (SERP), ppc, offline, sitewide ads, etc. Putting your site on your siggy would also help

Ok well I decided to test out OScommerce. So far I like it. There are alot of addons and good community support. Still working on the site design but I think its much better looking that before. Also, the site is more SEO friendly than before.

Check it out let me know what you think

Nifty Shades - Affordable Sunglasses for Cheap

Looks much better. Now it looks like a main page.

I normally recommend x-cart or litecommerce. X-cart is now the industry standard for low cost carts. I never got the hang of OS Commerce but it is used by some large companies. It does have an SEO addon, you can see it in action at Mittoni - Thermaltake Performance IT Distributor for Australia
You should be able to see product pages in both php and html.

Another good avenue of promotion is through Google Shopping aka Froggle. You will need to provide a datafeed to Google through Google Base. If your cart can create a feed for you, it would save you a lot of time.

Your site does look much better now, continue with the good work!

as for the marketing, I've found you can't go wrong with scantily clad women.

1. Put some babes in bikinis
2. put the glasses on them.
3. share
4. profit

I have that SEO mod installed and Yes i am looking into the froogle feed, yahoo, and bizrate.

I've done it just word of mouth and already got LOADS interested enough to make me a potential $1,000. Yay for message boards!

Submit to directories and classifieds ads, and you can do some off-line promotion to.

put your site link at the end of emails is a good way to help

I would appreciate any help or advice on promoting or improving my website I am very new to this marbellalink I am British but living in Marbella Spain

Originally Posted by paulkevan

I would appreciate any help or advice on promoting or improving my website I am very new to this marbellalink I am British but living in Marbella Spain

I suggest you post this on a separate thread where it would get more attention...

Originally Posted by xsnoboard

Ok well I decided to test out OScommerce. So far I like it. There are alot of addons and good community support. Still working on the site design but I think its much better looking that before. Also, the site is more SEO friendly than before.

Check it out let me know what you think

Nifty Shades - Affordable Sunglasses for Cheap

site is looking good...the STS add on makes it pretty easy to incorporate a nice layout

what i like about oscommerce is that there are so many addons that you can install to get the job done. i have been using oscommerce on one site for almost 5 years. ranks at the top of google for its major keywords (as well as product specific ones)

good luck with your site!