Your online store needs to reflect your passion and interest, visitors to the store would form an opinion of the products and you, through the store. From day one, push for building a brand of your own, don’t worry about budgets and challenges for the time being. Here are some awesome ideas to help you develop and expand your online store.
Choosing A Name: Choose a store name that is easy to remember and pronounce, keeping it short is always a good idea. Don’t confuse the store name with the store title or description. For example, if you plan to sell shoes in your outline store a name like ‘Classy Feet’ is better than something like, ‘Shoe Shop In Michigan’. Once you have thought of a name and decided to use it, believe in it, be proud of it and promote it everywhere. Print on the envelopes that you use to ship merchandise, print it on images that you post and make sure that it is used in any kind of written content that you create. If the size of business does not warrant volume printing of envelopes or packets, here is a great idea. Prepare a sticker of the appropriate size, place the store name on the sticker and look for a decent printing shop. Take some time to finalize the size and shape of the sticker, you also want to ensure that the sticker has essential information without appearing cluttered and congested.
Know Your Products: You could order merchandise and resell it, make your own merchandise or simply work as an affiliate. No matter which option you choose, knowledge about what you sell is absolutely important. Visitors and prospective buyers from your online store, will feel more confident if you can answer all queries related to the product. The products that you stock in your store should pair well with your target audience. If you are a beginner focus on a few products, you could also include some related products. Taking the shoe shop as an example, you could stock socks and even shoe brushes along with the shoes.
Images Are Important: A picture speaks a thousand words and it continues to do so until this day. Camera equipped smartphones have unleashed the photographer in everyone but, your images might need an additional dose of effort. The images published in your online store should appear professional and streamlined. Work on a size, try to follow that size for all images published in the store. It is always a good idea to mount your camera / smartphone on a tripod when taking product images. This should ensure that the images are sharp and clear. If your images appear without uniform lighting, you might have to spend some time working on the setup of the camera, lights and products. If the products that you are imaging are not very large, here is an idea. Pick a large cardboard box with a depth of around 12 to 18 inches. Line the box on all sides with sheets of white paper. Place the products inside the box, set the lights and camera outside the box.
Image Edits: The images in your online store need to look good, they should also carry your brand statement. Work on a standard template, you want to display your store name (brand), the title of the product and a unique product code on each image. The search engines that visit your online store will index the textual content and the images. Branding the image will ensure that, your products are linked to your brand name. It is not uncommon for online visitors to share images and links, you want all the brand exposure that you can get.
Content Focus: Visitors to your online store will appreciate product details, make sure that you clearly explain features and functions. Do not hesitate to write detailed information related to products, here are some guidelines. You will need to prepare a title for each product, keep this short and stay within 10 to 15 words. Use these limited words wisely, more lengthy content can be added into the product description. For example ‘Hand Crafted Leather Shoes For Men And Women’ is an effective title. When writing the product descriptions for your online store, make sure that you have a short but descriptive paragraph (short description) and longer paragraph to get into the details. If you plan to sell the shoes internationally, customize technical details to target various markets. The shoes size numbers differ across countries, a size 8.5 in the U.S might be referred to as a size 43 in Europe. While it is true that a visitor to your online store, could Google search shoe size conversions – do you really want your visitor to get distracted by other websites and online stores.
Meta Tags: Most online stores allow you to add meta tags to each product page, make sure that you make the best use of these tags. These are bits of product information that are scanned by search engines, internal search functions implemented within an online store could also use the tags. Take some time to prepare and put in the content relevant to these tags, ideally each product page should have different tag information. Do not hesitate to thrown in your shop name or brand name into some of those tags.
Infographics: Simply put, an infographic is an image that shows useful textual content. Let us presume that you are writing a description for a garlic based herbal supplement. The product description might contain some information explaining the health benefits of garlic. Along with this textual content, you could prepare an infographic image that briefly explains the benefits of eating garlic. You don’t want to write lengthy stories on the image, using bullet points is effective. Don’t forget to mention your brand name on every infographic image. Search engines will consider the image and the textual content, as two separate entities and this works to your advantage. Infographic images are also great for posting on social media websites. Just upload the image with a short note and then link to the page on your online store. Most online stores allow you to upload multiple images for a product, upload the infographic as one of the product images.
QR Code: This is similar to a barcode and has a square shape, you can generate a QR code for any page on your online store or website. Smartphones and tablets have ready applications that can read a QR code, interpret the URL and open a browser to display the content of the URL page. You could include a QR code on every product image, scanning the code would take a visitor to the specific product page in your online store. You could also print stickers that contain the QR code for the main (first) page in your online store. You can do a Google search and look for free websites that allow you to generate a QR code from a URL that you feed in. The code is then saved as an image, edit it into any web page or image that you wish to.
Social Media: This is the latest mantra to online selling, done in the right way, social media can help your online sales in many ways. You could pair your personal facebook account with your online store but, give it a thought before you do that. You really don’t want posts for your online shoe store, buried inside dozens of personal posts related to house repair, party celebrations at home and some other personal notes. While a business facebook account need not be just selling and marketing, it should your business in focus.
Video: You might want to do simple videos, don’t complicate them or make them too lengthy unless, you have the technical skills to edit them. Also remember that the audio (voice) around the place generally gets recorded along with the video. You could open a Youtube account, choose a channel name that matches your online store name or brand and upload your videos there. Remember to make a good title (text) and write a paragraph in the description field. It might be a good idea to mention your store name once in the title and just once in the description. You can also place a link to your online store or a specific product page appended to the description. Be creative when working on videos, no slang and no hyped up sales talk.
This report will not make your online store an instant success but, it will surely put you on the right track. Make a checklist of the points mentioned in this report, add some goodies of your own, work on the checklist as you move ahead in your online venture. You need not implement all your ideas at once, pace yourself and add things as you are ready. Have confidence in what you are doing and take it step by step.