How to market your eCommerce store successful by putting in the least amount of effort.

So, you are ready to start getting sales on your eCommerce story.  You want to know how to make your conversion rate go through the roof and how to get hundreds or thousands of shoppers to your website each and every day.  Our DSL coaching program will show you exactly how to set up marketing for each of your websites to start bringing in sales on day one. If you're not ready for that, this article is a great place to start.

This strategy will give you the best chance of succeeding in converting your traffic into buyers.  It will be easy to optimize your site to increase conversions and to generate the traffic but you need to have already chosen a niche that converts well online to make getting traffic pay off.

The Calm Before The Storm

Prior to sending all of this traffic to your eCommerce store you are going to want to make sure that you have the highest of chances of converting each visitor into a buyer.  There are going to always be many other retailers selling the same exact products as you, and most internet shoppers will visit at least three of their websites before making a decisions on where to purchase from. So how do you get them to choose your website and give you their business?

We're not going to over-complicate things here.  We have tried many different techniques in the past but when it comes down to it there are two things we do that make all the difference.

Two simple techniques that we use that make all of my websites convert traffic into buyers at a higher rate than my competition. Are you ready?!

1. Content:

Price Guarantee:  You will need to add a price guarantee page that is visible to every customer who visits your website.  This will make the potential customers feel safe buying from you right now, not after they research all of the competition.

Shipping & Returns:  You will need to create a simple, but clear, Shipping & Returns Page.  The less the customer has to assume, the better.  Let them know when they will be charged, how soon their item(s) will ship, if they will receive a tracking number, what to do if they want updates, what happens if the item arrives damaged and what happens if they do not like it. There are the main questions that customers want answers to prior to placing an order.  If the answers are clearly laid out in front of them chances are they will just place an order without ever contacting you, and before moving on to one of your competitors.

About Us:  Customers want to know who they are buying from. You need to have a clear and professional About Us page.

Note: If you join our Drop Ship Lifestyle coaching program, you can follow our About Us eCommerce page template to help you create your own by simply copying and pasting.

Stress Urgency:

I cannot say this enough, you need to create urgency.  Once you have a visitor on your website, it is your job to stop them from leaving prior to placing an order.  It is your job to convert that visitor into a buyer.  One of the best ways to do this is by offering them a discount.  The best way to offer a discount is to make it for a limited time only, by stressing urgency.

One of the best ways to do this is by offering them a discount.  The best way to offer a discount is to make it for a limited time only, by stressing urgency. How we do it:

Expiring Coupon Codes:

As soon as I started experimenting with coupon codes my sales increased by 30%.  As soon as I started using expiring coupon codes my sales doubled.

2. Bring On The Buyers!

Once you've got your content in place, you need traffic. While content marketing is a nice strategy for long term traffic, if you want traffic ASAP (which I assume you do), then you'll have to pay for it.

Now, there are many different options when it comes to driving traffic to your eCommerce store and we have probably tried every technique out there (okay, not EVERY one, but most!).  We have spent tens of thousands of dollars EACH MONTH on SEO (there was a year I spent over $50k on Adwords). We had an Amazon Product Ads account that I was spending hundreds of dollars daily on.

I have had all of my products submitted to shopping comparison engines (both free and paid). I was buying ad spots on related Blogs and spending a few thousand per month. I have even had thousands of Craigslist ads posted in all major US cities promoting my websites. Want to know the scary thing? I was spending all of this money BEFORE I even knew had to track my results. My websites were making a lot of money, so I was spending a lot on advertising but I had NO IDEA where my sales were coming from.

One day, I was talking with a friend who also makes a lot of money online via eCommerce and he was telling that Google Analytics for eCommerce will literally track where EVERY DOLLAR OF REVENUE comes from. You install the script on your website and every time someone “checks out” it will be added to your Google Analytics account. Google Analytics will show the revenue amount and the referral source for this sale (where the buyer came from).

Within one month of installing Analytics, I cut off 50% of my traffic. Why? It did not bring in ANY SALES. I was literally blowing through thousands of dollars each and every month for almost a year and not getting ANY sales off it. I was burning through money that should have been in my pocket.

For the purpose of this section, I am only going to focus on the traffic sources that converted for us in the past. If you do not see a traffic source listed here it’s either because we have not tried it or because we’ve wasted money on it and not seen ROI and therefore. I do not feel it is worthy of discussing.

EDIT: Since writing this post, we've actually found a few new ways to drive traffic successful that are not mentioned in this post. We talk about it immensely inside our private community, along with all of our members who share their experiences as well.

SEO:

Yes, ranking high in organic search results will bring you hoards of customers. No, you should not invest heavily (or at all) and hire an SEO company. This is just based on my personal experience and I’ll explain exactly why.

Warning: RANT AHEAD.

When I first started in 2006, I had no idea how to rank my website. I had no idea how to anything really. Once my website was live, I was contacted by dozens of SEO companies (I must have gotten myself on a list somehow) and they all promised page one rankings and their rates varied from $100/month to $25k/month.

It was a waste of money and based on proposals I have seen 99% of SEO companies out there are just looking to make a quick buck off uneducated beginners.  DO NOT spend money with an SEO company UNLESS you research the industry yourself and have a moderate level of understanding of what the services you are buying entail and how they will benefit your rankings.

DO NOT spend money with an SEO company UNLESS you research the industry yourself and have a moderate level of understanding of what the services you are buying entail and how they will benefit your rankings. Or if it's someone your trust dearly.

This was the start of my disgust with the eCommerce industry.  They all sent sample reports and listed what they do to increase your page rankings but it meant nothing to me.  I did not understand the industry and I did not want to invest a lot of money at that time.  We eventually ended up hiring our web design company (who also offered SEO services and came highly recommend) for $1,500/month only to realize six months later that we could have completed everything  they had done for us in about 20 hours TOTAL time.

It was a waste of money and based on proposals I have seen 99% of SEO companies out there are just looking to make a quick buck off uneducated beginners.  DO NOT spend money with an SEO company UNLESS you research the industry yourself and have a moderate level of understanding of what the services you are buying entail and how they will benefit your rankings.

Whew, okay. Rant over.

Google Shopping:

• Out of all of the traffic sources I have tested, Google Shopping converts the highest, by FAR.  It is important to note that up until 2012, Google Shopping was FREE for merchants.  Now they have a pay pay click (PPC) model which is good in some ways and bad in others.  The good news in you can set your bids as low as .01 cents per click and still receive A LOT of traffic with a small budget. Bad news, it ain't free!  What’s even better is that Google Shopping results now appear AT THE TOP OF PAGE ONE.

But, what’s even better is that Google Shopping results now appear AT THE TOP OF PAGE ONE.

With this new feature you can literally be on the TOP OF PAGE ONE of Google your first day in business, with a very small advertising budget.

PRO TIP: Use the RetailTower App in Shopify's App Store to get your products automatically submitted daily to Google Shopping.

TheFind.com:

This is a shopping comparison engine similar to Google Shopping BUT it’s FREE to list your products there. You can use the Retail Tower app to submit your product feed daily and you will receive a steady flow of traffic.  The search volume is obviously much lower then the traffic you will receive from Google Shopping BUT it’s free and the traffic does convert into sales.

Amazon Product Ads:

Amazon product ads have always converted extremely well for me.  Reason being is that people on Amazon are SHOPPERS, not browsers.  If they click your ad then like what your website has to offer there is a very good chance that you will capture the sale.  Amazon Product Ads are shown on related Amazon product pages.  For example, if you are selling an Entryway Chandelier, an advertisement for you product will be shown as a related product a Chandelier that is already being sold on Amazon. Once again, you can use the RetailerTower app to control your product data feed.

And that is all folks, these are ALL of the traffic generation methods that I use. Two of them are absolutely free and the other two are extremely cost effective.  Most importantly, THEY ALL CONVERT.  As with every topic on this website, please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments or concerns.