I've never made a sale

Hi there,



I just wanted to share my feelings on Online Business.



I've never made an online sale. I've never had someone come across my site and part with money. I want to know what it takes and what it feels like for the first time.





I've used wix and moonfruit until January, building overpriced hosted sites that to be honest never had enough text or SEO content - I now understand that I never gave us a chance with all products and images and no text.





I have now started to learn about web design & coding, using Wordpress and Yoast SEO and have just set 3 lightweight but reasonably attractive wordpress sites live with Paypal integration.



In the last 6 months, I've managed to learn how to build a site from scratch and get one of my sites to appear when searching 'Unique Handbag' without even typing one of our brand names.



I am also comfortable with adding sites to Google Webmaster.





I'm an aspiring Jedi here.







I am now working on my CS Cart Project and facing the overwhelming beast with a positive determined attitude.









Can I please ask, those on here who have made a successful business from Online possibility.





Can I do it?





If I am ensuring I am using pretty permalinks everywhere, making sure I have 300 words on each page and taking the time to fill in the meta data for search engines, and I am generally always on the look out to improve my sites Search Engine Optimization….Do I have a chance?







Sometimes I stop and think…there is 72,000,000 people in my country.







Let it be known, I have only just submitted my wordpress sites to google and 2/3 don't have a history with webmaster and so will take a bit of time to jump into the proverbial matrix.





My CS Cart is still in production…but I want to know do I have a chance with a shoe string budget and a determined head?

Strangely enough I have just done what you are about to do. Although I was moving a site and am well used to the market. Perhaps I can pass on some experiance.



I'm also using wordpress - I use this as my site entry point and cscart is in a directory.



Indexing and ranking is still building but well happy as now my natural traffic to the new site is higher then the old one. SEO seems to be going very well too.



I'm suplimenting the launch of the site with Adwords, but it's very importent that you understand both Adwords and your market before you spend money on that.

You need a simple methodology.


  1. Don’t target everyone - Everyone doesn’t give a shit about you, your store or your livelyhood.


  2. Moving along with #1 - Target the people that YOU would like to talk to in a room. Technically we call these demographics which will provide a sizeable portion of your income.


  3. Do not write boring, monotone emails, descriptions, and sales information. Every tinge of the product has to have some character, people don’t buy on price alone, and those who do will whore out their wallet to the guy across the street to save a dime.


  4. Moving along with #3 - Target a style, my own in humour “I’m a funny bastard, even without the crown” - The reason that most people are still reading this, is because they know there is something at the end of this sentence (see?)


  5. Give customers options - This is my PAIN. Every customer is different, they have different tastes, styles and budgets. They also have different ways they would go about business so it becomes a balancing act upon providing good, well meaning customer service while simultaneously providing the goods quickly.


  6. Do not, under any circumstances ride on the bandwagon. CS-Cart has released 4.0? fuck yeah?! - Fuck no.

    Remember all those clowns who went out and purchase HD-DVD players, Betamax Cassettes and Bitcoins - Early adopters get screwed for the convenience. Keep the store, focus on the customer, the product and the technology when you can.


  7. Speak to people. Opinions count more when they have purchased from you, so find a way to get your first sale, make a loss if you must. The fact that you’ve made a sale will break down more mental barriers than you’d expect. Being a business owner isn’t all fun and games, but it makes you start visually identifying yourself to a certain crowd. I speak to associates via Skype when I have an opportunity, discussing business, CS-Cart, international orders, customer reviews etc. It helps to know that someone else is in the same boat when you need them, as they’ll need you.



    8) “SEO” is dead - Google shows people how to win “Content is king” - Just write some and everything else will meld quite well - then you optimise.


  8. See #10


  9. End.

Thank you very much for your responses.





What is your verdict on when you have a product that only really changes in colour. Like a collection of Tshirt designs.





Per product like a Tshirt regards SEO:



Would different titles, different unique interesting short description, the same fabric, sizing detaisl and an interesting yet uniform general brand description under neath all that in the long description do the job?



I've come across many sites across the first pages on google that have a reasonable amount of duplicate content in appropriate places.



Is this punishable or normal?

Merging Wordpress and CS Cart sounds exciting.



I'm tempted to look into this, however I have already installed my site on the server and have started work.



Also wordpress' hack-ability is concerning.

You don't need to merge Wordpress if your customers are never going to use it.



I just use it as a blog, except it's in the root and so the front landing page is wordpress.



In my experiance 70% of my customers won't land on the home page anyway so using it to bump up ranking and deliver content to social media is a far better use for it. In the past I've also sold advertising on it which suppliments the cost of hosting by about £1000 a year.

[quote name='kickoff3pm' timestamp='1371499712' post='163820'] In my experiance 70% of my customers won't land on the home page anyway so using it to bump up ranking and deliver content to social media is a far better use for it. In the past I've also sold advertising on it which suppliments the cost of hosting by about £1000 a year. [/quote] And about £1000 in lost customers…this should never be advised for a start-up ecommerce business. Congratulations if you required £1000+ of hosting for an ecommerce start-up. Unless of course you used server resource intensive cart functionality such as product features, filters, etc heavily, then you've paid way over the odds for your actual requirements.



In regards to the OP…do you shop online often? At all? Have an indepth look at the stores you personally shop at, look at competitors stores of those products, why did you choose the store you bought from and not their competitor? Thinking outside of the box is the biggest uphill task in the beginning.

[quote name='StellarBytes' timestamp='1371501465' post='163825']

And about £1000 in lost customers…this should never be advised for a start-up ecommerce business. Congratulations if you required £1000+ of hosting for an ecommerce start-up. Unless of course you used server resource intensive cart functionality such as product features, filters, etc heavily, then you've paid way over the odds for your actual requirements.



In regards to the OP…do you shop online often? At all? Have an indepth look at the stores you personally shop at, look at competitors stores of those products, why did you choose the store you bought from and not their competitor? Thinking outside of the box is the biggest uphill task in the beginning.

[/quote]



Interesting counter argument.



Would you suggest keeping my .co.uk (CS Cart domain) for CS CART and possibly use .COM as a wordpress site completely seperated but dedicated to driving traffic at my site?



Or should I drop the idea all together.



I can't see a blog style function working directly in the CS Cart.

[quote name='marcemaker' timestamp='1371503045' post='163827']

Interesting counter argument.



Would you suggest keeping my .co.uk (CS Cart domain) for CS CART and possibly use .COM as a wordpress site completely seperated but dedicated to driving traffic at my site?



Or should I drop the idea all together.



I can't see a blog style function working directly in the CS Cart.

[/quote]

It would be awesome if CS-Cart could cater properly for WordPress integration. The additional plugins for WordPress, combined with the SEO-friendliness of WP, almost make it a no brainer. Instead, CS-Cart tried (and imho failed) to create a similar functionality albeit under the name 'News'.



I believe if your sole intent of having an online presence is to sell online, then your store (CS-Cart) should be the homepage and the front of your business. The News functionality is limited as default - and despite there being an addon to develop it into a blog - so I would opt for WordPress, or another CMS platform - Joomla is equally as good - as a subdomain or subfolder (blog.store.com or store.com/blog/ - neither have an advantage over the other these days) with the intent of capturing an audience, while driving targeted traffic to your product pages. Remember, to sell online, you must allow your customers to find the products to buy in the first place - for each click they have to make, your conversion (% buyers against number of visitors) rates will drop. Hiding your store behind a blog will not help you convert your blog traffic. The blog will - or should be - content rich, so will get you decent traffic, but as I said, hiding the store behind the blog will not help convert this traffic into buyers.



Don't be fooled - your conversion rates for traffic coming to your blog will likely be very low in comparison to traffic landing directly on your shop pages (category and product pages mainly). Once you have your online shop set up and have optimised your homepage, pages, categories, subcategories and product pages for SEO purposes - including content rich pages (content is king and always will be, fact) - if you still find you have plenty time on your hands, then, and only then, should you consider expanding out into running and updating a blog on a frequent basis to gain more traffic.

I'll take your advice and put that on the back burner for now.



I would much prefer your idea of ensuring the Cart is the cart and only introducing the wordpress if I have any realistic time and if it's nothing more than a loud mouthed content rich subdomain or subfolder.

I second everything StellarBytes has said, for what it's worth.

[quote name='kingsleypress' timestamp='1371514071' post='163834']

I second everything StellarBytes has said, for what it's worth.

[/quote]



You're doubly ensuring me that is the right thing to do if your ever going to do that.



Can I ask how you would shove a wordpress into a CS Cart or is that a difficult question?

[quote name='marcemaker' timestamp='1371515931' post='163837']

You're doubly ensuring me that is the right thing to do if your ever going to do that.



Can I ask how you would shove a wordpress into a CS Cart or is that a difficult question?

[/quote]



You don't. Just put WP in a subdomain, blog.domain.com

[quote name='StellarBytes' timestamp='1371501465' post='163825']

And about £1000 in lost customers…this should never be advised for a start-up ecommerce business. Congratulations if you required £1000+ of hosting for an ecommerce start-up. Unless of course you used server resource intensive cart functionality such as product features, filters, etc heavily, then you've paid way over the odds for your actual requirements.



In regards to the OP…do you shop online often? At all? Have an indepth look at the stores you personally shop at, look at competitors stores of those products, why did you choose the store you bought from and not their competitor? Thinking outside of the box is the biggest uphill task in the beginning.

[/quote]



What are you on about ?



I got income for placing relivent text links on the bottom of a webpage. A page that was functioned by Wordpress not cs-cart. You seem to think I said I plastered banners all over my shopping cart.



As for start-ups money is a key eliment and people should leverage anything they have to attract income. I happened to have an high aurthorty high ranking domain that people kept asking to advertise on.



As for the OP I was saying Wordpress doesn't need to be merged with cscart and mentioned a few reason why they would use it as a landing page.

[quote name='JesseLeeStringer' timestamp='1371541417' post='163866']

You don't. Just put WP in a subdomain, blog.domain.com

[/quote]



You don't need subdomains.



http://matchdaymemories.com - wordpress



http://matchdaymemories.com/shop/ - cs-cart



Unless you going to allow customer to post articles you don't need any merging.

I prefer the idea of making it blog.mysite.com or www.mysite.com/blog



Than



www.mywordpressite.com/mycscart





But despite how people are doing it, it's a good idea.

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[quote name='afreshup' timestamp='1373320159' post='165036']

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The above sums up my thoughts very well - Jesse also said the same but added a few extra words.



But before that you need a good product or service that is different in some way hopefully…

[quote name='afreshup' timestamp='1373320159' post='165036']

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Thats one side effect of having a wordpress frontend. I keep adding short articles which are auto sent to Facebook, Twitter and Linked in and get indexed with hours. This is a key weapon for ranking in Google.

[quote name='kickoff3pm' timestamp='1373407661' post='165087']

Thats one side effect of having a wordpress frontend. I keep adding short articles which are auto sent to Facebook, Twitter and Linked in and get indexed with hours. This is a key weapon for ranking in Google.

[/quote]



What we do is this: We design our content for the products i.e. blue widgets, we tell the customer about the widgets in the (cs-cart) store, then we spin off articles about the widgets for the blog, i.e. how to build a widget, blue widget reviews, blue widgets vs orange widgets. We then send our content needy visitors to the blog for more info, and back to the store from the blog with coupon codes banners and specials within the content.



This does two things … It builds inbound links to our blog (our store is on a sub-domain for that reason, i.e. store.website.com) and allows us to give customers a “better deal” than the price they just saw on the product. We have a 38% conversion rate from store to blog and blog to store …



BTW … For our content ideas we use adwords to find the best converting KW's … it's a bit expensive, but it's a lot better than spending a week on a content section only to find out the content is useless for sales …



Hope this helps …