Week 11

This week we learned about linking your website and others to make your site easier to find and how to use Google Analytics to see where you get your cliks from. We also learned about using Social media to promote the website.

My website is new it’s an online store that sells jewelry accessories for women, and of course my goal is to get more sales on my products. To reach that goal I have to generate more traffic on my website first. This is not an easy task and could take some time to starts see the result, but patience and consistency would be my two favorite words for this project.

So how do I start to achieve that goal? On the TopRank website an online marketing blog it says that: “it’s no longer enough to simply publish features and benefits information on products and services. Customers want more.” Looks like I need to make big changes on my website, because it’s too static, it’s only display featured product and the products itself and that’s all. My long term strategy to optimize my website is to get more social by opening a blog page on my website and blog about it and also things that people are interested, so my website would not just be a place to sell but also a place to talk, and people would be able to write some reviews and make comments about the products.

Before all of that could be done people has to find my website. Even I wrote many interesting topics it would be hard to get people to read them without sharing it and that’s where social media takes place.  In the beginning my website’s social media page would only have two likes which are me and my husband, and the challenge here is how to get more likes for people to view, share and like my website’s content? I need to choose a SMO tactics wisely.  First I need to “starts with creating & promoting optimized content & assets”( www.toprankblog.com). I have several pretty and affordable products on my website and what makes my website unique is it’s all free shipping. My strategy is first literally taking advantage of those 200 friends that I have on Facebook to get the words out, and I will give a free product for the lucky winner who like and share my page. That is only one of the SMO tactics that I was going to use, and I think it’s good to use more than one tactics and switch around so people won’t be bored with the same posts because they see the same promotion other and over. I will be using Google Analytics to measure my social media traffics and see which strategy is working.

Week 10

Traffic! traffic and more traffic!

The main object of this week is to learn how to set your website on the first page  of Google and how to choose Word title and content for your add. I also learned that what you wrote on your add if you use Google campaign should be easily found in your website. For example if you wrote “free shipping all accessories today!” then that promotion should be easily found in your website when people clicked on your links.

 

Week 8

Which Keywords works the best? 

So far I have been using Google for my campaign. Looking for the best keyword is crucial, it’s like trying to read   people’s mind and came up with “a keyword that is relevant “. Thankfully Google have this tools called ” AdWords Quality Score”  that you can check and see which keyword most people are using when using search engine. “Quality Score is an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. Having a high Quality Score means that our systems think your ad, keyword, and landing page are all relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad. You can find out your Quality Score for any of your keywords.”(support.google.com)

Google Analytics

Google Analytics I think is great for my business; it has tools that could help me evaluate traffics that go to my site when trying   different keywords and ads. It has lots of features and traffic resource reports I think is the most important part. Google Analytics would help me to see if people are visiting my site and look deeper or come land live. If most people are just come and leave, then I know that it needs some aesthetic modification. It also help me to see which devices most people are using when visiting my site in order for me to make more modification.

Week 7

Creating effective advertisements for your website.

This was quite a challenge, I had lots to say to bring people to my site but, I didn’t have enough of room.

I used these tips from Google support to create my ads.

Tips for creating successful ads:

Highlight what makes your business, product, or offer unique: Do you offer special menu items? A large selection of products? Tell people! Highlight features that make your business stand out from the competition.

Include prices, deals, and exclusives: If you have something special to offer, make sure your customers see it. People are usually searching to make a decision about something. Give them what they need to help make their decision

Tell your customers what they can do:Are you selling? Tell them they can buy. Are you offering? They want to receive. Strong verbs like Call today, Purchase, or Make an appointment tell your customers what they can expect to do when they see your ad.

Include relevant search phrases in your ad text: This can catch the attention of the people who searched for words related to your business, and it shows that your ad is related to what they want.

This can catch the attention of the people who searched for words related to your business, and it shows that your ad is related to what they want

Match your ad to your website: Make sure the promotions or products in your ad are also mentioned on your website. If visitors don’t find what they expect to see when they reach your site, they may leave.

Keep it professional: Polish up your ads by double-checking your spelling and grammar. Fill in both description lines, and try capitalizing the first letter of each word in your headline to draw attention to your ad.

For my ads I include deals, and highlighted what makes my business unique. I made sure that people that who clicks on the ads have real intent to visit my site, but not by accident.

week 6

This week we prepared to start our Adwords Campaign. While making the decisions for the campaign these questions should be asked:

• What geographic locations do you want your ad to show in? Why?
• What devices do you want your ad to show on? Why?
• Did you choose automatic or manual bidding options? Why?
• What is your daily budget? Why?

I personally choose manual bidding options for my ads because I want to have control of the max CPC. For now I am focusing on using Google Adwords, and later using Bing. Yahoo is not on my thought yet, but I would consider using it if I get free credit for trials. My main tools for my campaign is social media like Facebook, twitter, and Instagram.

Week 5

Time to select the right business entity for the business. 

Choosing the right business structure is crucial for the success of your business, you choice could affect your business’s image, reputation, and the ability to expand the company.

I have to say just thinking about all of the paperwork that needs to be done to make my business legal makes me want to though up! This is the first big reason why I always delay on pursuing my ambition.

This week I learned a lot about all kinds of business structure and what works best for me. I also learned how the structure of my business could have different affects when filing my taxes. I also learned that it’s always better to be safe and do the legal stuff even if it cost more in your investments. It’s always better to be safe and prepared

Week 4

It’s all about design! 

What is the odd that people will leave your website because of bad design? People are buying product online because of its facilities, but what if they couldn’t find what they are looking for? Or it takes more than 3 clicks to get where they wanted to. There are many factors that we should keep in mind when designing a website which are color, type, and layout. It’s always good to find two great website that does the same business as you do and find their similarities then ask why they have those similarities? I found really helpful to have them open in the same screen and write down what they have in common, and why I prefer the one instead of the other?

Credit Card Payment.

 Have you ever have those days when after choosing what you are going to buy turns out that it won’t accept credit card? I am not talking about online store here. What I am trying to tell here is that, that food mobile across the street could have put more money in his pocket if he had credit card option available for his costumer. Same with virtual store, people might walk away if you don’t have their payment option available. Some of them might sign up for an account PayPal/Google/or Amazon, but some might just skip it and go somewhere else to buy the product that they already selected in your website? It’s hard to know what kind of payment option will satisfy your costumer. Plus you have to pay .30cents +2.9 % for any transaction. This could make a difference to you product price. It looks not a lot, but it is. For now I will choose PayPal because of its popularity, but who knows Google wallet could be the next big thing!

 

Week 3

When I shop around for website builder I made some specific criteria that work with me.

1- Flexibility: Could I easily change it the way I want it to look?

2- What’s on the package?

3- Shopping cart and accept a variety of payment

4- Data size (how much file I can upload to my website)

5- Google SEO

6- Mailing update

7- Coupon, discount, free shipping option

8- Reviews

9- Costumer email feed (RSS)

10- Network sharing

So I went through most of the Website builder, the thing is  I cannot judge until I am really start working on them.  I am still learning using HTML/CSS , JavaScript, PHP, etc. so the option of drag and drop would be easy for me. I looked around many different sites and I came up with those 3 sites that I think will meet my demand so far.

Word press: recently word press have a plugin called:” woocommerce a free e- commerce tool built purposely for selling product online. This word press plugin have lot of capability like: Inventory, shipping, tax, shipping method, payment, but they are all extensions which mean that you have to buy them to upgrade. The free version looks good, but I don’t know if all of the extension that I need are included otherwise I have to buy them which are around $70 each. Not so much tutorial.

Weebly : is a really drag and drop site builder, it flexible you can change the theme anytime you want without distorting the data. The website is free, but it doesn’t reveal too much about pricing. It’s starts with $4 a month to remove the weebly advertising and get the premium support. The free package have the shopping cart functionality, can be share on the network, Google SEO, lot of tutorial and blog.

Wix : The templates are already structured and you just edited the content with yours. The templates are beautiful. The negative side about WIX is that it  doesn’t give you the option on changing the design, you have to build the website all over again if want to change the theme. It is also limited they don’t have any HTML/CSS access. They have a library tutorial that are really relevant.

For now I decided to go with Word press. Another thing that I learned this week also is about hosting. Your website builder could also affect your choice on which host you choose to host your website. I learned that it’s hard to move your website around with some websites.

Colette’s Baby :)

Link

This Week’s Objectives was:

• Learn how to find a supplier
• Learn about suppliers for business models other than merchants of products.

This week I learned how to Quantify and compare suppliers and choose a business model that works for certain criteria depending on what they have at hand Time/money/ talents. For me Personally,  I am not good at writing on blogs or news so doing the affiliate is not my thing. If I have to choose between having an affiliate marketing or drop shipping, then I will go with the second one, but that might change along the way.

Affiliate marketing or drop shipping?

Everyone is different, some have success with affiliate and some with drop shipping. I read that affiliate marketing tends to be a long-term solution that takes longer to generate initial revenues, unless you are really good at it. It also depends on the success of the company you advertise for. The way I see it is that I  have to come up with something exciting most (all) of the time to drag people to see my website then click on the referred  link to buy the product. Once the purchase is done the costumer will not come back to the site again to look for product to buy they will go right away to the store website you refers to.  The only way a costumer will come back to visit my site is because they subscribe for newsletter, deals, etc.  and my catch word better be a good one! otherwise they will skip my email or unsubscribe. The fun part is I have to consistently write in my site or blog, interact with the consumer to be successful which demand lots of writings which I am not good at, like I said before.

With drop shipping, it will also cost me lot of effort to initiate revenue. It requires research into every supplier to ensure reliability and quality. Also I have to build and maintain my website all of the time. Drop shipping could generate revenue faster than the affiliate, but there are risks. All of the convenience of not having to do any of the fulfillment work like keeping a warehouse, inventory, shipping, packing, comes at a cost. I might lose money or their business reputation if they are not careful.

They both takes time and effort, but building an online business takes more effort and risks, but the business is real it’s there. The great thing about it is I would have chance to build a long term commitment with the customer, and also could increase, grow, improve, change, ect. my business anyway I want it.

Which suppliers?

When it comes to choose which suppliers  to go with, here are some important criteria that I would suggest:

• Supplier on support for returns,
• Length of time that they have had a drop shipping program,
• Percent of charge backs.
• Stock availability because you don’t want to sell and item that turns out to be out of stock.
• Anonymity: because you want to advertise for your business not the drop shipper.
• Customer service.
• and facilities.