Running an ecommerce business is not a simple task, but there are a few tips and a few tricks that you can use in order to ease your job. For example, you should know that your potential customers are somewhere on the internet, extremely active on social networks and they don’t take into account their age, their gender or their economic status. Recent studies showed that a social networking average age is 37. At the age of 37, internet users do have a job and they can afford to purchase the items or the services you sell. This is absolutely great and you can use this in your favour.

In order to make sure that your business has more and more customers, you should know that you can use the social networks in order to attract them. You simply have to go where they are and you have to attract their attention. This is not going to be too difficult because the social media marketing offers you numerous options that can bring you a lot of advantages.

Use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even LinkedIn and make sure that people find more about you. If you don’t have internet users to visit your web site, you don’t exist and your ecommerce business doesn’t exist either. This is the reason why you have to approach these internet users. You can ask them simple questions, you can add them as your friends on Facebook and Twitter and use your walls in order to make them aware of your existence, you can make polls on your web site that have gifts for the first of them who choose to participate in your forms, you can do basically anything that you want.

The main idea is that you attract the attention to your web site, so that it is visited by as many internet users as possible. Use blogs, use the article submission techniques, use the numerous forums that are so visited by so many people. You have hundreds of tools at your disposal, you just have to learn how to use them. This is the huge advantage of an ecommerce business: the internet offers you the chance to grow your business into an international one without financial effort from your part. The only effort is represented by what you do in order to be present on the different web sites, so it is going to be a time consuming activity.

If you feel like you don’t have the skills needed for such an advertising type, then hire a specialist because there are numerous of them ready to give you a helping hand. Of course, their services have to be paid, but I assure you that the investment is worth the financial effort.

Nowadays, many business owners are turning their hands to the online environment, whether they see this as an add-on to their offline store or as a whole movement to selling online. There are a lot of motives for doing this, from lower maintenance costs to higher numbers of people searching to buy products online.

Once an ecommerce website is created, the major barrier encountered is promoting and getting traffic to that website. By getting traffic we, of course, think about targeted traffic, prospects that are willing to spend money on the products/services one promotes. Here are some great methods any ecommerce business owner should use for promoting his products online.

1.      PPC Advertising

Probably the best way for getting highly-targeted traffic to a website. If done correctly, it can become a very profitable tool every business should use. On the other hand, it can be one of the fastest ways of loosing big money in short time so  have a chat with some SEO professionals in order to getting things right.

2.      Email Promotion

This method best works along with another trick, getting people to sign up to your newsletter. Make them an offer: whoever registers to your newsletters until the end of the current month has the chance of winning a gift (it’s best to be a gift related to what you promote). The newsletter should contain tips and tricks related to your niche or industry news, you decide, but make it a weekly one. Once you have setup a big subscribers database plan and an email promotion. It can be a discount or anything that offers more value for the money.

3.      Social Media, forums and blogs

Yet another inexpensive way to promote your online store. Twitter and Facebook should not be left out from your promotion campaign. Search for related forums and blogs, become an authority in your niche and most important, do not spam while this will get you only negative image instead of a positive one. Make connections, answer questions, show your expertise in this field. If done well, this will send you an impressive amount of traffic towards your business.

4.      Affiliate program

Set up an affiliate program. This is a great way to get more customers for your products. Basically, you reward with incentives, the affiliates promoting your products will get your people buying stuff. Very powerful!

These four steps are definitely the best ways for promoting an online store and for getting highly targeted traffic to your business. Keep an eye on our website design blog for more tips and tricks.

Have you thought about your FAQ page lately? Or if you’re starting a new on-line business have you considered the importance of a FAQ page? Many businesses overlook the importance of this page, but it does offer a vital on-line service for customers.

A FAQ page answers a host of questions that many customers might be asking – and it means that they are less likely to need to be in touch with you by telephone or email (thus cutting down on your customer admin).

When creating this page, think about what it means: Frequently Asked Questions. Ensure that this page really does include FAQs! The page needs to offer customer support – and not a host of sales pitches and promotions.

Here we bring you some great tips for creating a great FAQs page:

Quick access: Offer a table of contents at the top of the page with a hyperlink to the relevant subject. This means that people do not need to do too much scrolling.

Heads up: Group subjects together in logical categories and head these up with a straightforward label. This helps people to access info quickly.

Keep it brief: Questions and answers should be short and to the point. For example: How do I use the checkout? This is a very general question, which would require a long answer. Instead break the questions down: For example, * Is the purchase system secure?

* How do I shop for more items at checkout?
* What are the delivery costs?

Answer the question: This might seem obvious but customers are looking for direct answers. A simple “yes” or “no” might actually suffice sometimes.

Links: Offer lots of links from the FAQs to the website that customers can help themselves, rather than having to call you to find out more. So links should take customers directly to the relevant part of the website, according to their questions.

Keep updating: When customers ask questions that you have not included in your FAQs then simply update the FAQs page.

Talk to leading web designers WebCreationUK about their great deals on ecommerce sites.

If you’re an on-line business and you want to improve your reach, marketing efforts and traffic then a few new updates to Facebook could be just the ticket.

The “Like” button social plugin on Facebook now has three updates:

1)    The ability to Like canvas URLs for Facebook apps that represent things such as causes, movies, or other real world objects.
This means: App users can like pages from within an app. This will then place a like in the user’s newsfeed, linking to the app. The chances are this will increase app growth.

2)    The ability to link a Like button to a Facebook Page.
This means: Page owners can use the Like button or the Like box to increase user engagement.

3)    The “box count” layout that displays the total number of likes above the button.
This means: The new layout offers another option to suit different website designs. To decide which Like button is most effective at driving traffic for your website, you can check out the ref attribute for tracking.

Jerry Cain, from Facebook, is reported as saying: “Since we launched social plugins in April, we’ve been listening to user feedback and working with developers to optimise the Like button to make it as seamless as possible for people to ‘like’ content around the web and share it with their friends.”

WebCreationUK can assist you in not only website design but social media, come speak to us for more information, you can also find us on Twitter and Facebook!

Pizza firm Domino’s has reported that fast growing e-commerce sales have helped to boost their sales and profits. Earlier this year, the take-away food giant passed their sales target of $1 billion. And recently Domino’s stated that their first half-year profits of 2010 is up 23% on the same time last year, to  $47.1 million.

Apparently some quarter of all sales now come from the ecommerce arm of their business.

Dominos was one of the first takeaway companies to embrace mobile and on-line takeaway food ordering. Since 2007, customers have been able to choose and order their pizza either on their computer or their mobile phone.

Last year, Domino’s introduced a Pizza Tracker application, which means that customers  can view constant updates about the status of their pizza order.

It’s clear Domino’s must be doing a lot right given that their on-line sales have continued to grow despite the general economic decline.

WebCreationUK can offer web design for mobile phone devices, come speak to us for more information!

A new report reveals the stores that have gathered the biggest customer base and loyalty. The survey from STORES Media, conducted by BIGresearch, found that the top five on-line retail hubs in the US are Amazon.com, Walmart.com, eBay.com, BestBuy.com and JCPenney.com.

Now on-line retail experts are suggesting that it is the overall service offered to customers that has pushed these stores to the top places. One analyst said: “Online retailers have proven they are up to the challenge of building a loyal customer base, and will continue to be preferred destinations for many as the Internet continues to mature.

“Multichannel retailers have done a commendable job understanding what their customers are looking for and providing a favorable, seamless shopping experience to millions of people every day – no matter how they choose to shop.”

This shows that the key for all on-line retailers is to offer a great service across the board. This includes price, delivery, returns policies and also the quality of the product received.

The spokesperson added: “Consumers who were solely focused on price a year ago are still looking for good deals but are also evaluating return policies, merchandise quality and free shipping as part of the buying equation.”

If you are interested in having an online shop, stop by WebCreationUK for more information on website design including our fantastic ecommerce packages.