Ecommerce Success - The Revolution

A revolution is taking place on the internet and will change the internet we know today, into a system that puts quality first and leaves the trash for last. The reason behind this is that the internet is not new to most people anymore and majority of the time when someone is searching for something they end up seeing a ton of ads, tricky banners, sign up forms which result in advertising junk mail, and many of the other gimmicks marketers use to try to turn a dollar. Click through rates are decreasing more and more for a lot of these widely used marketing methods as time passes. I am not saying that these advertising methods do not work and will die out, but what I am saying is that people are demanding the information they want without all the hassle and games.

The Problem

Search engines are the gateway to the beginning of a huge majority of all web traffic. They have updated their search algorithms to produce quality results for their visitors making it harder to generate traffic and gain popularity for your website. They are trying to remove product sales pages and advertisements to help monetize their traffic and produce results of quality content.

The reason they are doing this is because it is what their customers and visitors want which is what is best for their business. People are in search of information and knowledge. The internet was founded on being the world’s largest information database. When people are browsing online they get hit with so many advertisements and product sales pages that any type of direct marketing is becoming less and less effective. Real targeted traffic is moved through the content that the visitors read.

The internet will evolve again and a lot of this garbage is going to be more controlled and if you are not ready for the future you are sure to lose more and more sales everyday.

The Solution

Your main objective most likely is to provide a living for yourself by generating an income stream. The sole concept of your business, or for any business of that matter, is to make money.

Quality is playing a huge role online as search engines are weeding out the junk to produce search results of quality content and quality products. eBay has done the same, tweaking its index to display more of the quality products people want provided by the biggest sellers that receive the most traffic.

If you want to be successful, you are going to have to be generating the most amount of targeted traffic to your site or auction listing while maintaining repeat traffic consecutively.

Are you really giving your customer’s value?

Your business system must be designed and built to make your customers life better by serving them what they want or else you will be another one of the millions of online entrepreneur failures or your success will only be for the short term.

Those who are willing to actually do the work and focus on serving their customers exactly what they want and not try to make a dollar off of everything are the ones who will survive the revolution and become successful.

Servicing Your Customers

There is a big difference between selling to your customers and serving them what they want.

Someone selling a product will find a product that sells well and begin focusing on selling that product and ways to squeeze more money out of their buyers and how they can generate more money from them.

Someone serving their customers what they want is constantly thinking about ways to improve on meeting their customer’s needs.

Take your mind off making money and stop thinking about ways to sell more of your products. If you want to boost your sales you need to be thinking about ways to enhance the customer experience by giving them what they want and need.

Your main objective can no longer set on selling. To generate more new traffic, reoccurring traffic, and more buyers you are going to need to be making the user experience the best you can make it. You need to start focusing on what additional value you can give your customers.

If you can add value to your market and serve your customers what they seek they will be happily waiting when it is time to sell them something.

Quality Creates Quantity

Think about the products you are selling or are planning on selling and think about some of the problems your customers may be having when they need your products. You must educate your visitors about their problems and provide them with simple solutions that will draw them into buying your products.

For example:

If you are selling digital cameras, your visitors could benefit from learning about one of the following scenarios.

1. They want to store pictures on their computer.
2. They want to edit pictures, make slide shows, and print pictures from home.
3. They want to email and fax pictures to friends and family.
4. They want to keep a better organization of their photos.
5. They need high quality resolution.

These are only a few of the selling points that someone could come up with for selling digital cameras. You would want to take these selling points and educate your customers on these topics to help brand yourself as authority on digital photography.

• For storing and organizing pictures on your computer you could write an article about the history of paper photos and how they become damaged and lost. Explain new technologies and the benefits of keeping photos stored on your computer.

• For editing pictures and making slide shows you could write about or give tutorials about using a popular computer program to repair old pictures, to edit and add backgrounds to pre-existing photos, and how you can incorporate them to easily create slide shows. You could also give some software away free from your website that enables someone the ability to fix and enhance photos.

• For printing, faxing, and emailing pictures to friends and family you could write about different type of picture formats, how it works, and printing solutions like paper density and photo copying.

All of these solutions can be provided to the visitor who will find value from the information at your site and you will become a trusted authority in digital photography increasing the chances of the customer buying from you. In some of these articles you would want to use a link to one of your products as a resource or solution to the problem.

These methods are already being used by a lot of companies on the internet to help generate new sales and bring back repeat visits from recent customers who will be able to see your newest promotions. Having this sort of information can also be picked up by other web authors and journalists who may add a link to your site from theirs delivering you more traffic. Your business model must have the ability to get someone buy one of your products without them intentionally looking for that particular product to purchase.

Traffic To Your eBay Store

One problem I get in my inbox occasionally is how to gain popularity and beat the competition on eBay. It is a place over saturated with competition and it only seems like a miracle to gain power seller status. Providing your customer with quality content from your expert blog is a good way to build long term sales and success through eBay.

The solution for any eBay entrepreneur wanting to build credibility and popularity while drawing in visitors to your auction listings and store can be done by simply creating a blog with your business brand name and posting your articles, resources, and links to your store and your listings. Then you can submit and build links to your blog site to gain new targeted traffic from other places on the internet. There are a lot of blog directories and blog feeds all over the internet that could be putting your content in the eyes of thousands of targeted visitor’s everyday.

Publishing a blog on the web is a great way to get your own content, resources, and links published on the internet for millions to view. Word Press is the most popular and best search engine friendly blog hosting site on the web, which is 100% free and quick to set up.

The Atomic Blogging System has the best training video’s I have seen about making blogs for eBay Stores and listings.

Business Branding

Having educating content is important but giving your customers a perception of your goals is also very important. To help establish yourself as the authority you need to make an image and slogan for it. A good company name that shows the customer your goals with a slogan that lets them know that you are the expert and you are working to meet their needs.

For Example:

If you are selling digital cameras, you need to think of a way to give your company or yourself presence and authority surrounding your target markets needs.

Company Name: Photosphere Solutions    
Slogan: Your Digital Arts Educator

Company Name: Your Name   
Slogan: Your Digital Photography Mentor

You will notice that the company name and slogan does not directly point to selling digital cameras. The name and slogan completely focus on giving the visitor the perception that you are an expert source for information about digital photography.

Branding is a way to give the public an appearance or personality of a company by showing customers the goals and promises of the company. These goals and promises are used to build relationships with customers on an emotional level. This creates customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Business Marketing

The American Marketing Association defines marketing as an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders. Marketing is simply a process for communicating to customers and potential customers about company goals in ways that help manage relationships with those customers.

Your company must make a commitment to its customers and remain loyal to those roots. Your advertising needs to make your customers aware of your company brand and goals while at the same time defining a differentiation between the company brand and other competing brands.

When advertising your company you need to consider where your ad is going to be placed and who will be seeing it. Publicity and endorsement advertising is typically a lot more effective than paid advertising. When you are being endorsed by a third party, your advertising is a lot more effective in increasing loyalty and awareness of your company, not to mention being more cost effective.

Marketing your products is only a short term project while marketing your company brand is more of a long term project.

To gain popularity for your website, auction listing, forum, or any sales median you must be building for long term success. Providing your customers and visitors with educating information that surround your products will prepare your business for long term success and the future of the internet.