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e-Commerce
What are the strategies that Optima uses to ensure the Ecommerce results are reached?
1. Keyword Research
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| Good Keyword research tools : The main idea on keyword research is to identify keywords that are ACTIVELY searched on the search engines. Your task is to ensure you target keywords related to your website, and hopefully with the least competition. |
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The one most important exercise which most web developers always fail to take into account is the keyword research. Why spend time and do keyword research, most will say. You've probably created a brand new website. A couple of weeks go by and only a few stray people show up at your website. Another couple of weeks go by and still no luck. No visitors... and no money. What a complete waste of your time!
Reason is that, UNLESS you do not need to rely on Search Engine to bring traffic to your web site? Your web site will have to be carefully researched for keywords, so that you build web sites that Search Engines understand how to index you. Without proper keywords, you are blindly building your web site, not knowing how the search engines will index you.
Some will ask, why bother doing keyword research when it is impossible to be indexed high on search engines. The answer to that will be complex BUT perhaps a simple truth is that, if you have developed your web site carefully based on your carefully chosen keywords, you will be indexed by Search engines based on those keywords. You may not be ranked high (yet) but at least you are correctly indexed. Without proper keyword research, you will not be indexed correctly, and worse you will never have the day being highly ranked on those keywords.
Now the exciting part, with careful strategy and with time, you CAN and WILL get indexed high on search engines. We have done it hundreds of time as testimony to it.
How to do Keyword Research?
Good Keyword research tools : The main idea on keyword research is to identify keywords that are ACTIVELY searched on the search engines. Your task is to ensure you target keywords related to your website, and hopefully with the least competition.
- www.inventory.overture.com used to be the main keyword research, however of lately, the servers seem to be down a lot. Give it a try and see if you are lucky on this.
- www.keywordenchanter.com - good basic keyword research tool. How they provide it free? I haven't any idea but that is the beauty of Internet.
- www.wordtracker.com - a great service! But unfortunately paid service. If you are serious about generating thousands of keywords related to you, this is a MUST. You can use the Free Trial first before deciding.
2. Web Site Design
Next comes the very important element ie. the web page. These are the pages your customers will look through to study and decide whether or not to buy your products or services.
Does the web design have to include sophisticated and mind boggling animations? Whilst view can vary on this BUT Optima's view is that is should not. Reason is that these animations normally consists of larger files and thus slows down the download. Statistics shows web users normally do not spend more than 30 seconds on average on most pages for the first time. They are just scanning around for the correct info. Slow downloads will not benefit you in any way.
A good combination of graphics and compelling copy write will be the secret in achieving the goals. Importantly also, each and every page within your web site must have an effective call to action. This is something I see lacking in a lot of web sites. Call to actions could be anything from "Email us your ideas", "Buy Now", "Limited time offer", to "click here". You need them because you need your customers to actively and effectively do something. Fail to do that, and they will close your site and surf other web sites with noble intention of coming back later, BUT if the, other web sites have a compelling call to Action, that may have converted your customers which prematurely changed their original intention of coming back. I cannot overemphasise that web sites need to capitalize on the "Impulse" element. Think about it, what other media can you have viewers committing on the spot? TVs, Newspaper, Leaflets? No way!!!
3. Shopping Cart
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| Most importantly, the cost of the shopping cart should always and must always return a very small proportion of the cost of your online business. |
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Optima uses combinations of shopping carts from third party. Shopping cart can come in the form of a basic free shopping cart provided by PayPal or it could be some sophisticated "Amazon" type shopping carts with full and advanced feature.
Which shopping cart should you invest in? It isn't about how cool your cart it, it is about how well you can sell your product or services. If you are just starting out, Optima recommends the use of some basic shopping cart. The reason being that the learning curve of Online Marketing for your products / services can be very steep, so you will be experiencing and learning new things as you go along. The web site's evolving process can be very drastic, moving from one strategy to another very quickly. Your needs will change and your requirements will too.
Therefore upgrade and enhance your shopping cart as you move along. Customize where necessary to achieve the highest goals. In a nut shell, no one shopping cart will be able to equip you fully in this exciting and fast paced internet scene. Amazon and even popular shopping sites like Dell.com have evolved continuously to keep up with new environment.
4. Online Payment
To be able to sell anything online, you will have to be able to accept payments online. With the immense progress of online payment services, there is just no reason why you should not be able to accept payments online. You can now accept payment via Credit Cards (Visa, Mastercard), Debit Cards, Bank Cards (eg. Maybank2U), Direct Transfers (TT), Mobile Payments, etc. These online payment facilities costs you minimal administrative fees.
Online payment providers includes PayPal, 2CheckOut, WorldPay, ClickBank, Maybank2u to name a few. Depending on your needs, Optima will carefully advice on the most suitable solution.
Online Payment Processing - Standard Routine
5. Tracking
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| Where the site visitors came from? |
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Web marketing is trully the most cost effective way of marketing your products or services. Why? Because there is no other media in the world that can allow you to so effectively track every single step of the way.
Amongst some of the data you can track are :
- You can track how many people comes to your web site.
- You can track how are these people coming to your web site.
- You can track whether these people coming to your web site converts as a customer.
- You can track whether these people like the design of your web site.
- You can track whether your marketing advertisements are working or not.
- ... and the lists goes on and one!
Rule of thumb, when developing your web site, put in place from the start all these tracking abilities. Do not spend a single cent until you know every single thing can be tracked.
End result, you will know exactly whether what you are doing is correct. There is absolutely no risk in spending another extra dollar on your web site, because you will know whether that works or not !! It will be mind boggling when we show you exactly how well everything can be tracked.
6. Traffic Generation
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| Traffic Generation : You can never sell anything on your web site unless you have visitors coming to your web site. |
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The most beautiful and creative web site will be nothing more than just a beautiful and creative website IF IT DOESN'T achieve its goal. Very often the goal in an Ecommerce site is to SELL!!!
You can never sell anything on your web site unless you have traffic (visitors) coming to your web site. That is the most important strategy in any internet marketing - getting traffic to your web site.
How then can we get traffic to the web site. There are many ways in which it can be done. Some methods will require more manual tasking while others could come in the way of paid services. Some examples of Traffic Generation technique includes Search Engines, Articles Submission, Squidoo, Myspace, Friendster, Graiglist, Blogging, Video & Audio marketing, Google Page Creator and Web Advertising like Sponsored LInks, Banner Advertisement.
Which of these are the most effective?It will very much depends on the industry and the nature of the product and services you offer. Each of these methods have been proven to bring in huge amount of traffic in their own way. We recommend trying out each of these methods and then carefully monitoring to see which we should be spending more resources (time & money) to get the best conversion.
7. Search Engine Optimizaton (SEO)
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| Good SEO results will help your business. |
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SEO services simply means optimizing your web page according to your targetted keywords. These search engines will then index you according to those keywords on the organic search results and over time, you will move up the page results.
Many agencies will charge you thousands of dollars for this service. Remember, at the start of this article, most people think its not possible to be ranked high on search engine? Well that is a fallacy and Optima will guide you through it. If you are interested, you can download this powerful Ebook by Brad Callen teaching you how it can be achieved. You could do it the manual way or you could use softwares to assist you.When you go through his powerful article, it will still confirm my mention that if you have correctly created your web site at the early stage with properly targetted keyword, you can be on your way to good Search Engine Optimization results.
Optima will be thrilled to be able to assist you in your Online Sales / Ecommerce experience. We look forward to a rewarding and mutually beneficial relationship with you. Email  to arrange for an absolutely "No obligation" presentation.
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