Add Value To Your Customers’ Online Shopping Experience

Selling at times is quite an art. You need a combination of getting the ‘desire effect’ right. Look at how Apple did it. Their products are more expensive but whenever there’s any product launch (or even a hint of it), everyone goes a bit nuts. Then comes the sales.

But let’s get down to reality here. Not all businesses are like Apple. Normal folks who are just setting up a small online store to sell products need to offer something more to their customers.

Other than the usual buy 2 and get 1 free or free shipping thrown in, one of the best ways would be to add some value to your customers. Depending on what type of product that you are selling, your online store should not only be about your products. It should have a mixture of tips, advice and relevant information to help your customers. Or it could even be a good place for people to visit to get relevant, useful and informative tips and advice. This will help your store’s SEO if you get a lot of natural traffic coming in.

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Is Your Business Targeting Emerging Markets Or Over-Saturated Ones?

Spotted Eagle Ray formation, Keauhou Bay, Big Island, Hawaii.Happy New Year everyone! Hope you’re all doing great. We’re still hearing constant news of economic slowdown and the never-ending budget woes coupled with stock markets bouncing around. But one thing has certainly remained constant. Consumers are spending more and more on online shopping year on year. Last year had some pretty impressive figures to show when it came to all the Black Friday, Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday and holiday shopping season.

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Build Your Own Online Store With Proper Planning

Too Beautiful to Eat?Building your own online store may be easy for some people but for the majority who are not so techno-savy, they will need all the help they can get. Before you jump on the bandwagon to start your own online business, here are a few things that you will need to consider.

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Online Store Tips For The Holiday Shopping Season

sausage platterSaw the news that Target has already started advertising their Christmas shopping. Most people may think that was way too early (we’re not even done with Halloween or Octoberfest yet!).

However, this should be a clear sign for online business owners to get their store ready for the holiday shopping season and not wait till the last minute.

Please make sure that your store’ s SEO has been tweaked properly. If you’re unsure on how to get that done, click HERE for a reference to our SEO Wizard Green Thumbs Up article.

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SEO Won’t Work For An Unheard-of Product. What Then?

When the traffic lights are green

SEO works only if there is search trafficfor terms related to a product. For example, if you use a keyword tool to analyze traffic for the term ‘Nike Free 3.0’, you’d might discover that that term gets a few thousand searches a month.

Now turn back the clock 6 years, before the iPhone came along. If you had done a keyword analysis for the iPhone back then, it would have returned zero results. No one would be searching for it because no one would have ever heard of it. So, in such a case, there is no point using SEO and PPC.

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Pictures And Images Make a BIG Difference For Your Online Store

Pumpkin carvingOctober is here! Halloween is just round the corner and so is Black Friday, Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Yes, time to gear up your online store for the upcoming holiday season. Past month has been exciting with Apple launching their iPhone 5 which got everyone excited. Then there’s the never-ending saga on who’s suing who for patent infringements! Anyway, back to the main thing – Your STORE.

Other than getting your social sites all set up (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Google+, Pinterest, etc) along with your SEO, have you ensured that your product images are of the best quality? Because you could have a terrific site with tonnes of traffic coming but if the fish ain’t biting, maybe it’s time to consider the look of your online store and product images.

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Access Your Google Analytics While On The Go

Last week I mentioned about making full use of Google for your business. While it’s easy to access your Google Analytics account from our InstanteStore’s Admin panel (just link your account by clicking on the Website Statistics button), it would also require you to use either your tablet, laptop or desktop computer to do so. The Google Analytics page has not been optimized for mobile so viewing the live site format on a 4 inch screen can be a bit taxing.

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Are Customers Bouncing Off Your Site?

Phew! 2011 sure whizzed by fast! 2012 is a brand new year with new resolutions (and maybe some old spill overs!) and more exciting things to look forward to for this year. It’s going to be GREAT! I hope many of you had a great time celebrating Christmas and New Year with family and friends along with all the wonderful food that we just can’t get enough of.

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