Where’s the E-Commerce Traffic for Website Builders?

The idea of building an online business website is a pretty attractive one.  E-commerce, virtual business, click of a mouse, profits-galore!!

It looks easy, it sounds easy.  There are so many website builders in the markets nowadays, with the likes of Weebly, Jimdo, Wix, getting an e-commerce store up and running is just a matter of spending a day on building a website.

So why aren’t we all billionaires?

The fundamental flaw about the concept of starting a business online is not the concept itself.

It is absolutely true that there are a ton of potential customers in the online world.

It’s true that anyone with an internet connection could potentially see what you have to sell.

And it is true that no matter how unique your product is, there is a good chance that there are people out there interested in it.

The flaw, which is a very common one amongst many online entrepreneurs, is that once you have the online shop up and running, no one walks through your e-commerce doors.  Where’s the e-commerce traffic?

The Truth

Fundamentally and simplistically, to be successful in an e-commerce business is not that much different than building a physical business.

You need a product and you need customers.

A lot of times, failing to drive e-commerce traffic from your potential customers’ computer to your online shop is what leads to failed ventures. 

There is no point in having the best looking website or best product if no body even knows you exist.  Period.

What can you do?

So what can you do?  Driving online traffic to your e-business is not a simple or straight forward subject matter.  But simplistically speaking, you could either buy traffic, or you can drive traffic organically.

1) By buying traffic, you could quickly usher potentially customers into your online store.

However, if you are not careful in managing your marketing spend, you could quickly spend you way out of business if the traffic does not convert into paying customers.

The simplest and one of the most common way is to advertise your business using Google Adwords.

When your potential customers search for specific terms related to your product on Google, you can pay Google to show your ad either at the top or the right hand side of the search results page.

This is one of the easiest way of buying traffic to your online business.  However as mentioned, you better ensure that your that your website is optimized in a way that maximizes your chances of converting these traffic into paying customers.

Basically, if you are on the first page of Google search, you are significantly increasing your e-commerce’s chances of doing well.

How do you improve your search engine ranking?  The purest way to do so is to provide valuable online content or information to the online community.  The more relevant and useful your content is, the more search engines such as Google would like you.

Writing original and useful articles about your products is an excellent way to provide value to people looking for information related to your product.  Becoming an authority in the online world and hence having others recognize you as an authority by linking their website to yours is also another effective method of rising in search rankings.

The more you contribute, the more you will receive.  The price in this case is not your marketing budget, but more so, your time.

Conclusion

In summary, there are all sorts of different techniques in driving e-commerce traffic to your online business.  What I have mentioned above is just the tip of the iceberg.

The key message to remember is, traffic is equivalent to blood to a living organism.  If there is no online traffic, there is no business.