How to increase online store traffic please ?

[Kiwi]

Hi ! I' m a kiwi who lives in Australia. I started an online store 4 months ago, hardly have any sales or online visitor/ prospect buyer.
This is my first venture into business and I am not sure how to solve this challenge, it would be great if anyone of you willing to share your thought & infinite wisdom with me, thanks!
Some of the things I have done after the store went live 4 months are:
1) register with local free business directories
2) listed some of the products for sale on eBay & GumTree besides selling it at our online store.
3) setup social media networks,i.e. Facebook, Pinterest, Google+
4) no paid advertisement yet.

As a brand new store, a big chunk of our products are operate on dropship basis as we have limited capital. Our plan is eventually to have own brand products after we have identified market demand by selling other brands' products. The profit margin is relatively low on dropship business model...we wonder
1) how we can improve the online traffic & sales.
2) should we focus on selling one category of product only(e.g. Sports,rehab braces & supports) instead of a bit of everything.
3) how we can differentiate our online store from our competitors who have been in the market for >5 years.
4) should we undercut our competitors in term of pricing on every item?.
5) how to gain more local online traffic/ visitors, currently we ship our products within Australia only.
6) any other ways to generate cashflow to balance the book, eg selling affiliate program @ the store

Cheers.

 

[dyanmarie25]

Hello there! Since you haven't tried using paid ads yet, why don't you try Facebook Ads then? That might help increase your online store's media popularity and sales. And I have noticed you still haven't utilized Instagram. It is also another good social media option. I know a lot of online business owners who make use of Instagram for advertising and selling purposes. Wish you all the best!

 

[William Clements]

I would recommend doing a Google search to find competitors websites that are established and doing well. Then see what they are selling, pricing, & do a search to see if you can find out how they are advertising online so you can get an idea of what media they are doing as that is probably what has been most effective for them.

 

[Kiwi]

Hi Dyanmarie25, thanks for your suggestion, I will give it a go.
Cheers.

Hello there! Since you haven't tried using paid ads yet, why don't you try Facebook Ads then? That might help increase your online store's media popularity and sales. And I have noticed you still haven't utilized Instagram. It is also another good social media option. I know a lot of online business owners who make use of Instagram for advertising and selling purposes. Wish you all the best!

 

[Kiwi]

Hi William Clements, thanks for your suggestions. Based on our research, our product range is quite similar to our competitors, some of the differences are they have plenty of back links point to their websites and a lot of paid adverts/ Google Adverts. We have to reallocate our resources and gear up on these two aspects.

I would recommend doing a Google search to find competitors websites that are established and doing well. Then see what they are selling, pricing, & do a search to see if you can find out how they are advertising online so you can get an idea of what media they are doing as that is probably what has been most effective for them.

 

[Kiwi]

Dewlance, thanks for your suggestions. We do sell on eBay at a discounted price & offer free postage in order to compete with other sellers. eBay is the platform where sellers rush their prices to the bottom...

For online store, usually which of the following options work better, i.e.
1) includes shipping fee into the selling price ( higher selling price) and offer free shipping; or
2) have fixed shipping fee & lower selling price; or
3) lower selling price & charge shipping fees according to the weight & destination.

Are you suggesting instead of promoting / advertise the entire online store, it will be better to focus advertment on one of the product categories, then move on to promote another category few weeks later ?

Cheers.

I hope you will get success in your business. You can increase online sale by advertising in forums, be active in forums which is related to your niche and as you said you did not spend any money on advertisement so I want to suggest you to advertise via google adword in selected city where you deliver product.

Create a ad for each products and also try to sell it on ebay which is a good platform for sellers. You can find many similar site like ebay who help sellers to join and sell their product. You can add shipping cost,etc.

If you get easily success in focusing on one category then focus on only one category but only for few week then also focus on other category.

Answer to your 4th question:
You can't beat big players but you can get some portion of selling share from big players, If you are expert in beating them in pricing then beat them in pricing but do not sell at loss.


Give freebies to attract some customers, You can give them a gift card, random gift,etc.



You can make a affiliate program and even sub-resellers.

 

[terryse]

Why not try search-engine marketing, either pay-per-click or search engine optimization. I assumed every product in your online store has a separate page on your website and is included in your sitemap page. Submitting a sitemap to Google helps make sure that Google knows all the pages of your website.

 

[pwarbi]

Social media marketing is also one of the best ways to get your business seen bunnies people. Pages on sites such as Facebook, pinterest and Google+ can help as well as Twitter of course.

While it might not guarantee more sales, what it will do is expand your business so it's seen by more people, and the wider you cast your net, the more fish your likely to catch, as the saying goes.

 

[Kiwi]

Pwarbi, thanks for your suggestion, I have started social media marketing 3 months ago and still working on it... Guess it takes time for a 'new' website to grow, I have to be a bit patience...

Social media marketing is also one of the best ways to get your business seen bunnies people. Pages on sites such as Facebook, pinterest and Google+ can help as well as Twitter of course.

While it might not guarantee more sales, what it will do is expand your business so it's seen by more people, and the wider you cast your net, the more fish your likely to catch, as the saying goes.

 

[Kiwi]

Hi Terryse, thanks for your suggestion. Yes, I have submitted the sitemap to search engines from day one when it was listed..as for paid advertisement, we will consider it..

Why not try search-engine marketing, either pay-per-click or search engine optimization. I assumed every product in your online store has a separate page on your website and is included in your sitemap page. Submitting a sitemap to Google helps make sure that Google knows all the pages of your website.

 

[pwarbi]

Pwarbi, thanks for your suggestion, I have started social media marketing 3 months ago and still working on it... Guess it takes time for a 'new' website to grow, I have to be a bit patience...

I think your right and sites will take a bit of time to get established unfortunately. In a way that's a good thing though and a site that's been going for some time, as long as it starts to get a good reputation, will often start to expand pretty quickly as more and more people start to trust it.

It's just the initial start up that takes time but I've found it's definitely worth persevering with.