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I think it is certainly not as easy to generate sales through an online store as it is usually implied.
The problem is, roughly, that when journalists write an article about the online world of commerce they pick up the interesting cases: a site that has rapidly grown to turnover millions. This can create the impression that this is the norm not the exception.
In addition, the standard list of suggestions-to-any-business-owner these days includes the line about "you must have a web presence" and usually a corollary "and have you thought about boosting your sales by making your merchandise available online".
There is nothing wrong with either of these suggestions except that, again, you might think that by doing those two things it will actually help. But infact they are necessary starting points to achieve the goal but aren't the achievement of the goal itself. When you get yourself to the exam hall in time for the test and turn over the paper you still then have to take the actual exam.
Similarly once you've got the site you then have to do the actual work of building the traffic. It's a fairly simple metric: the more visits to your site, the more potential opportunities for conversion, and the more sales. Tweaking various aspects can increase the ratio that purchase, but first you need worthwhile levels of traffic.
There are a huge number of online consumers in the UK, and the market is there. The problem as alluded to above is that a very small percentage of sites share virtually all the traffic, which leaves crumbs on the table. If someone comes online and thinks "I will look on Amazon for x,y,z" then nothing you can do will get them to your site.
BUT if they think - as many do - "I want x, I'll go to google and search for x" then you have a chance. There are quite a lot of sites that do exactly that and come high up in google search results and make a lot of money, or at least an adequate amount, as a result. That number of sites is still a small percentage of the total number of sites out there, and necessarily so, but it does exist. I know several people that operate such sites.
How do they do it? By working very hard over a series of years to build their sites presence in search engines, by writing and adding articles to their site to boost page views then using that content to cross-sell their products; by writing extensive and specific product descriptions for each and every product, using basic search engine optimisation techniques, and by never giving up.
It's not glamorous and it's probably just as hard in many ways as running a bricks and mortar shop, but it can work in the end. But since simply setting up an online presence and waiting for sales never works, nor does making a token effort to drum up interest and traffic, it is the only viable option.
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Web Design |
