The Right Questions to Ask When Launching an Ecommerce Website

In website development, people often ask themselves the wrong questions when launching an ecommerce Website. This is a statement I make regularly, people do not ask the right questions to launch an e-commerce website, we reason almost always in the wrong way.

I get plenty of opportunities to regularly talk to merchants who are embarking on e-commerce and their attention is almost always never in the right place. What comes first in the merchants’ mind is the graphic appearance — the visual aspect.

Perhaps it is how we, humans are really wired up! We always fell for the appearance first and virtue/value second.

What is the important thing to put emphasis on when launching an ecommerce website?

Is it the visual aspect? Does it help?

Of course it helps! But the problem is that your buyers will not come to your shop because it is neat aesthetically. Customers are not there to be entertained. I am not saying it is not important, because it is. But they are at your website because they are looking to buy something from you, isn’t it?

And yet, I see merchants spending a lot of time on the graphic and hours to scrutinize the graphics and the choice of colors. But what is the end interest of launching an ecommerce Website?

Let’s make a comparison with cars. This makes me think when I see people wondering hard about that cute and expensive car. Never really putting much thought into what happened at the end of the month when everything is grilling at his savings account. Yes it’s pretty! Yes, it gets a lot of likes and comments from your social media friends. But it will quickly become a liability to you rather than an asset.

What about Choosing a template?

Premium themes are really elegant and beautiful. But is it really going to help you sell more? Will the site always be so simple and manageable? Do you really need to invest in an elaborate visual to launch an ecommerce Website?

What is the right question to ask when launching an ecommerce Website?

The question to ask is where will you get the customers? This is the core of the problem. An e-commerce website without traffic is surely going to die quickly. I can promise you there are a lot of websites out there that have no traffic. Where the owners are worrying as the days turns into months, and it starts to weight on the wallet. And pretty soon, those websites are going to close.

You absolutely must put weight on how you are going to bring your potential buyers and where possible, consider the cost of acquiring a customer will have to be calculated soon enough.

Yes! You read it right. There is a cost of bringing in customers! And that is going to be calculated accordingly into your expenses when launching an ecommerce Website.

I may have to emphasize it even more, I know for a fact that a good number of customers will never do SEO properly, they do not have the time nor the desire to learn and do it. So they risk limiting themselves to run after “paid” SEO.

Is Google Ads a good option for traffic?

The advantage of a business model like Google Adwords or Google Shopping, is that you will have visitors quickly. But the cost of doing it deserve a second look. Let’s take a figure for example $1500 monthly budget at 1 dollar per click AdWords or 50 visits of qualified traffic per day. We must spend 50 USD of profit per day just to pay Google Adwords. It is a hard proposition when you are on a tight leash to budget 50 bucks a day.

Let’s take for example if you search for the keywords “gold ring for men”. This is what Google search result will give you.

pcjeweller and bluestone are top 1 and 2 in ranking. It probably cost them a lot more than $1.00 to get that ad posted in that first page like that for the competitive keyword. Probably about $5.

Why google adwords isn’t as great as some think?

Yes, Google Adwords and google shopping is a great and quick way to get traffic to your ecommerce website, but they are too expensive. If we factor in the standard conversion rate of less than 2%. So, to be able to have a sale, you have to bring 50 traffic to get a sale. Multiply that by $5(cost of “gold ring for me” keyword) – you will have to spend $250 to make a sale. This is without taking into consideration you skill and experience in Adwords.

I have seen a lot of people who have gone the Adwords way spend thousands of $$$$ and ended up worst. You don’t have to take my word for it. You just have to go into marketing forums to see for your self.

Paid advertising has its place

Sincerely, however – although I’m not a big fan of paid advertising, – I think it’s still essential to the success of an e-commerce website. I am  not oppose in paying a professional agency in Adwords for a good optimized campaign, otherwise you will not have qualified traffic quickly and you will not sell anything. But I am not recommending it, unless you are really really good at it and have considerable experience to offset the cost.

What if it is already too late and you have already burned all your money in the realization of your e-commerce site and you realize that you made a mistake? Nobody knows you, you are invisible to Google and you are starting to get really desperate.

If you made this mistake, there are 2 things you can do to turn it all around:

• Make sure you have handwritten text in all your product listings, have at least 250 words on each product description the more the better.
• Open a free WordPress blog and post new content every day, never give up and keep posting. Don’t worry if your grammar is not good, learn as you write.

Do not think  for a moment that it’s easier if you had money, I have to disagree with that, and its totally wrong. I see companies with money struggling to cope with sales, because their approach strategy is bad. Without money you will have to spend time creating content, it will be difficult, but you can do it. This is what you call organic growth for your ecommerce website.

Get Traffic to Your Ecommerce Website for Free with Organic SEO

Commit to blog posting regularly, once a day, for at least 6 months to grow your organic traffic.

You challenge here is more about motivation / discipline than knowing how to do it. If every day someone is next to you with a whip for 8 hours, I’m sure you would be more inclined to produce content. It may sound funny, or perhaps brutal, but it is what it is. The image below says it all:

Blogging gives you a voice in the web to drive traffic to your ecommerce website!

It allows you to share information about your business and its services but it also allows you to share opinions and thoughts on certain topics.  Having a blog is a great way to create a personality for your company and makes your business more credible approachable. So, don’t be afraid to share your interests on your blogs, comment on timely news topics or market trends or educate your readers on a particular topic. Always be sure you write blogs with your audience in mind.

For me, to know how to bring people to a website, is even more important than knowing what to sell or launching an ecommerce Website. We can have the most beautiful site in the world and the best product anyone can come up with, all of that means nothing, without visitors!

Resources on content is king!

In conclusion

As a business owner, your goal is converting people into customers

This is the right statement to declare when launching an ecommerce website! Website traffic is important: it’s been called the “lifeblood of small businesses”. As a business owner, your goal is converting people into customers. But if you don’t have any traffic on your website, you don’t have anybody to convert. You CANNOT survive without website traffic.

In my almost 20 years of internet experience both in web development and internet marketing, as well as content writing – I have seen business people and online merchants with ridiculously good product – but never knowing how to proceed to get a sale in the web.

Focus on driving traffic to your website not on cosmetics. Write good contents regularly and think of your customers as you write your them.

So, let me know in the comment section what you think is the most important question to ask when launching an ecommerce website. Do you agree or disagree with our take?

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