So you had your great idea, got your products together, built a website, now all you have to do is put your feet up and let the money roll in, right?
Get social networking
Getting sales to a new store isn’t easy. Ideally you need to have laid some groundwork prior to launching the website by building up an audience using social media channels and database list building. Grow a network of contacts who can recommend you to a friend or who can cross-promote because they sell a similar product or sell to a similar market.
Great SEO stands to reason
Get the new site indexed as quickly as you can, ensure that you submit a sitemap to Google and other major search engines for your location and checking for any crawl errors that’ll prevent Google from indexing fully. Pan for the gold dust of organic results with long tail or niche terms where you might be able to compete as these will bring traffic at lower cost.
It pays to advertise
Accept that a certain level of spend is going to be inevitable in the early days, whether on PPC or Shopping feeds, advertising on social media and other sales channels or good old fashioned discounts, promos and competitions to encourage your followers or mailing list to give your website a try, then do everything you can to keep them on board and repeat orders or refer your site on.
Whatever means you choose you can bet your bottom dollar (and maybe you will!) you’ll need to put a large amount of work in to get the site successfully making money.