Planning is key to marketing an online store

Getting found among the millions of Web sites on the World Wide Web seems insurmountable and is critical to survival as an online store. Marketing a web site on your own takes time, lots of learning, and many steps.

Sometimes I feel like a fish out of water when it comes to marketing my web site. But then I pull out the written plan and see what has been accomplished and where I am headed. The marketing plan is now longer than ever and continually grows.

Planning is key. The plans can and do change over the years as the Internet changes, the search engines change, business models change, and people change their online shopping habits. If you don't like change running an online store is probably not the job for you.

Read books, do Internet research, and attend workshops to learn the latest about Internet marketing.

The first part of most plans would be to register a site on search engines. Ten years ago there were 15 or 20, now it is just a few big ones like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It could take a few months before your listing shows up -- unless you pay cash for an immediate listing.

Important key words in the text of the site and meta-tags are critical and should be repeated through any online advertising, articles, or press releases.

Links back to your site are important but if they aren't relative to your site they won't help much. Key words within the site linking to yours are factored into the algorithm Google uses to bring up sites in organic searches.

Paid advertising -- Pay Per Click -- is an option to help a site get found right away. A PPC campaign boosted online sales immediately for my site. I worry though about fraud even though Google says they keep a close eye on fraudulent clicking.

EBay was another form of marketing and advertising. Now I use Online Auction to create traffic and links back to my site for a flat monthly fee of $8.

An e-Newsletter has had good results. It's a great way to build a following, show new products, and sell.

Blogs are another way to drive people to your Web site if you have something to teach or if your blog has entertainment value.

Social networking is a relatively new phenomenon but has grown in leaps and bounds in recent years. Word of mouth is what it seems to be about. I need to read and know more about it. A lot of people are extolling social media -- Twitter & Facebook -- as great marketing tools, but I have yet to see any definite results from our efforts other than creating a list of fans.

Make a list -- a plan -- ways to drive people to your web site. Many times there are offline things that can be done to drive people to a site. You'll never be able to do all the things on your list at once unless, of course, you have a large staff. Over time, you can implement a variety of marketing activities that should show results.

I will share more on Internet marketing plans in future posts. If you get a stiff neck sitting at the computer -- reading too many blogs -- you can go to Maine Warmers and find a microwave Neck Warmer to relax the stiff muscles.

My Biggest Fear Came True

My biggest fear has come true. I worried that if I re-designed my web site I would stop getting orders. I went ahead and redesigned it – trying to keep as much of the header information the same so people could still find Maine Warmers in Google searches.

I muddled through hours of classes for 6 weeks learning Dreamweaver CS4, thinking it would be intuitive (like the old Macromedia Dreamweaver). It wasn’t. I think the people who wrote the code for this program must have taken lessons from those who wrote the Federal tax code.

I studied the 800 page DREAMWEAVER CS4 The Missing Manual for 3 months beyond that. I talked with a variety of people about what was important to them when they looked for products and purchased online, and I looked at a variety of e-commerce web sites. I experimented with different designs, keeping in mind usability and accessibility. I drew out a plan, arranged it in MS Publisher, and created a re-designed site in the new $400 Dreamweaver CS4 program. Then I created another site and another, finally ending up with one that met my goals of organizing and compacting information into a smaller area, looking decent and consistant.

I have had a number of people review the site to make sure it is working well and to help me work out a few bugs. But it has been four days without an Internet order and that is a mystery and a worry. Determination and resourcefulness will help me root out the causes and fix them, but it will mean more 3 AM problems solving sessions until the orders begin to come in again.
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Maine Warmers is an e-commerce store selling microwave heating pads and iced packs. People find the site by searching for Neck Warmers and Back Warmers to help relieve sore muscles.