How ‘Brick-and-Mortar’ Stores Make Money Online is determined largely by their e-commerce system. Most current shopping cart/e-commerce platforms allow your website visitor to browse your merchandise, select, and purchase items. They work well on mobile devices and they’re visually appealing, (provided the images are high resolution, load quickly, and look good). If your customers are into your brand they’ll find you and if your product is completely unique then you might choose a different approach than what I’m about to suggest. But, if you are one of several options for similar merchandise and you have one of the more popular e-commerce platforms then much of the work is done for you. Today’s leading e-commerce platforms generate a ‘product feed.’ This feed can automatically be integrated into Google Shopping. That means, once you secure a Google AdWords budget, your product feed will list every single product you have for sale each time someone searches for that type of merchandise. Each product page must be coded properly for it to show up. In other words, if you are selling yoga pants and the words on that page don’t mention ‘yoga pants’ then your page is not properly coded. But, provided you got it right, or someone like VOX does it for you, then your products will appear as images in Google Shopping for a search for ‘yoga pants.’ When a new customer purchases your yoga pants they must be prompted at checkout to submit their email address for your VIP club for discounts, special offers, and store events. You have to ask for their email address and incentivize them to sign up. Ultimately, you can use those emails through a rewards program to build your list. So here’s what you have to have to make money online:
- a mobile website that loads quickly
- high resolution images
- on-site SEO, properly coded pages etc.
- competitive price points
- product feed
- Google Ad budget
- online customer rewards and email address collection
- electronic follow up for their purchase(s)
- detailed metrics too show you best sellers
- someone to manage the program daily
The last two are critical because just like your real store you want to stock inventory based on demand. That means you need to have someone manage your online store and pay attention to most popular styles, colors, and sizes. To learn more about e-commerce, internet marketing and Google Shopping select the Live Chat tab in the website margin and thanks for subscribing. Note the attached image example of a product feeds for yoga pants in Google Shopping.
