7 Ways to get more from your eCommmerce strategy

'Build it and they will come', was once the mantra of eCommerce site owners and at the turn of the last decade this was largely true, with any half decent site able to attract a little PR, rankings in Google and a good stream of visitors.

Back then the biggest challenge was managing to get a working eCommerce site built in the first place, but today it is possible to have a basic site up and running in just a few days - and at little cost. The resulting millions of new eCommerce sites launched each year mean that your biggest challenge is getting anyone to visit your website in the first place.

This means that marketing your site needs to be considered as an essential part of the planning process. Different marketing tactics will have an impact on your website so it's worth considering these well before you launch, to avoid missing opportunities in the early days of your online trading. Here, I work through some of the most common online marketing tactics and the impact they can have on your website. I also suggest a plan of action that will allow work done for one set of marketing tactics to be used across several areas.

1. Do you have a clear proposition for your online business?

Taglines, elevator pitches, call it what you like, a succinct description of what your site has to offer and who it is likely to appeal to, is an essential first step before you even start trying to drive visitors to your website. Only Amazon and eBay can say with real confidence that they have 'something for everyone' so focus on the area where you can really excel. Here are a few good examples:

• Coast-Stores.com: 'Women's Evening Wear'
• BritishHampers.com 'Gifts of Food To Lift The Mood'
• MyLivingSpace.co.uk 'Designer home-wares and design led accessories'
• These are very much 'does what it says on the tin' statements about what you'll find on each site. Whatever you decide on, make sure it is written down somewhere you can refer back to it, often.

2. Are people looking for what you are offering?

Online, there are essentially two ways to encourage people to visit your site and see your products. Either tell people about them, or find people who are already looking. Unless you have a large marketing budget, let's assume that the latter is a more reliable recipe for success. This leads us to the best place to find people who are already looking for your products; the search engines. Google provides a handy keyword tool to show you the demand for various phrases. 

Try plugging in various combinations of words from your proposition to see how well it matches whether anyone is already looking for your products: for example, the tool show that there are around 7,000 people looking for 'food hampers' in the UK alone even in the height of summer so British Hampers looks like it's on to a reasonable business model.

The tool also gives other similar phrases which might help you refine the wording of your proposition to something with more demand. My best example of this to date was convincing Blockbuster that they should be focussing on 'DVD rental', not 'Movie rental', exposing them to 500 per cent more customers for a campaign they were running.

3. Have you set your search engine objectives?

The phrases you have identified above are your target phrases for search engine optimisation. This article is too short to explain all the nuances of SEO but for a phrase you want to rank number one for your business you should start to include it in your website pages and every possible mention of your business online. One caveat though; if you type your phrase into Google and find the first page full of global brands, you might want to pick an easier fight. 'Evening wear' will be far less competitive than 'Women’s Fashion', and people looking for more specific phrases are also more likely to turn into a customer.

This is the first instance of marketing impacting on your website plan. To rank number one for 'Food Hampers' you need to have at least one page, if not many, talking about food hampers. Food hamper products, food hamper buyers guides, ideas for what to include in your food hampers. The list goes on and on. To achieve this, your site will probably need more than just a product catalogue so think about what content management system you might need to include to add this information for the search engines to read.

4) Do your landing pages match what people are looking for?

You've set your big SEO target, but what about the more specific pages in your site? Christmas food hampers, Mother's day hampers, corporate gift hampers and so on. Do your shop category pages match what people are looking for? If you are paying for clicks to these pages using Google's Adwords, until your SEO kicks in you want to drive visitors to the most specific pages possible.

5) Are you gathering email addresses yet?

Email is likely to be the most effective way to gain repeat business, or turn prospects into buyers so have you started gathering email addresses yet? Even before your site launches you should have a page up to gather emails ready for your launch. For example, Give.co.uk, George Davies' new brand had a holding page up to collect emails ahead of its first mention in the press and had already buildt a sizeable list before its launch day in October 2009.

6) Are you working closely enough with your offline media campaigns?

Imagine two scenarios, you run a reader offer in a magazine and the link you give to find the offer in question is
'Yourwebsite.com/index.php?cat-12345&prodid=54321&src=rdr0709vge'

This links to a page on your website. Alternatively you give a link to 'Yourwebsite.com/voguejuly' which links to the same selection of products on a page with a Vogue reader offer banner. Which one is most likely to create the best shift of print readers to online, the most trust in the relationship and the most sales?

7. Is social media even considered?

Blogs and Twitter accounts where you can show just how expert your business is in its field aren't just a gimmick -- they are now a serious part of marketing your business and getting feedback from your customers. Your site should have some sort of blog, news or other area where you can keep customers up–to-date with new products and offers, and ideally it should feed into a Twitter account which you can also add other information to. Dell outlet's Twitter feed has added 3 million dollars to their bottom line this year, it's serious business.

The above are a handful of issues which many eCommerce businesses dont realise they need to address until it is too late and opportunities are lost. Hopefully they come together to say one thing: launching an eCommerce website isn't the end goal of your business, it’s just the beginning. For a successful online business you need to think about where your customers will be coming from and give them the best reception possible.