Maintaining Traction When You Are Starting an Ecommerce Business

Starting and growing any ecommerce business does not flow as most individuals conventionally think and believe.

A lot of people feel that making a website SEO complaint, having a social media presence and doing some form of advertisement could lead to an overnight success of the ecommerce business.

Sorry to burst your bubble if you are of that mindset!

Before you can maintain traction as it affects your Ecommerce Startups, you have to first sort the problem of generating early traction.

Every Ecommerce Startup is faced with getting its products and services to the attention of the potential customers.

Without getting your Ecommerce products to the real people who are interested in them, you might end up not having any real grip on your ecommerce business.

What has been normal?

Opening and maintaining a related page on your ecommerce business in any social medium may not always be an answer to generating traffic or traction to your ecommerce business or Estore.

Imagine posting articles to your facebook which might contain very few of the relevant potential customers.

Also, it is no longer news that search engines like Google do not usually trust new websites. It takes a while to rank well with them.

Instead of depending more on SEO, Social Media, Family and Friends to spread the word on your ecommerce business, you really need to roll up your sleeves and get a grip on your ecommerce startup.

How will you go about it?

To get traction on your Ecommerce Startup, you will need to:

Reach out to bloggers

Most ecommerce start-ups usually expect that building traffic is through creating an active presence in the social media and having search engine optimization of your website.

Note! Building traffic usually is through building up backlinks that will also help to optimise your search engine ranking.

Conventionally, doing business involves showing up door to door, dialling individuals, sending letters and any other forms of hustling.

Now with the advent of the internet, hustling online has gone a step further. You have got to reach out to bloggers, send out emails and carry out mobile marketing.

Individuals that responded to your articles and your customers can then be directed to your social media accounts. Usually the process is once you have sales, you can then build an advertisement budget and experiment with the budget for the best effect.

Asking for product reviews

Apart from the two methods above, you could also put out your product and ask individuals to examine and review your product(s).

The idea is to generate alot of backlinks to your set and thereby causing it to rank favourably on the search engines.

Also when people rate your product(s) very well, it tends to build potential customers’ confidence to buy such product(s).

Reaching out to potential cross-marketing partners

A great way of getting traction for an ecommerce startup is by quickly building partnerships with leaders in the niche you are operating within.

Starting Ecommerce Business is strong on this as it believes to hit the ground running you have to “Sit on the shoulders of Giants”.

In operating our Ecommerce Businesses, we make use of the services of e-commerce giants like BigCommerce for their great platform to create successful online stores, which include a securely hosted site, shopping cart, product catalog and more.

Another giant we make use of is 3dCart which is an Inc. 5000 company, a Visa PCI Certified provider, and a pioneer in mobile commerce and social media marketing.

Knowing we are directly partnering with suppliers who do small business IT management who tops the chart as service providers gives us the necessary edge.

Getting featured in videos

Having your website or Ecommerce business featured in videos and another medium especially in the news or video by any authority in your niche. This will definitely generate target traffic to your website or Estore.

Partnering with authorities in your market niche could get them to feature you in one or more videos in order to boost your business since it will be of mutual benefit.

Requesting guest posts

Apart from reaching out to bloggers, another way to get early traction is to pitch a guest post and become a guest blogger on an authoritative site.

The more you write on any subject matter, the more site visitors “sees” you as an authority on that subject. This makes it easier for them to take your advice or recommendations.

Getting on the shelves of local stores

You should still note that not every individual relies completely on the internet when it comes to product search. It pays to use the conventional retail stores to pass across information about your product(s).

Get your products onto the shelves of retail stores and where there are related services you provide, hand out bills on your services and the website to visit.

Pulling a stunt that gets press

For those that can pull it off, nothing generates quick traffic to your site as creating a sensational stunt that gets you media attention.

Creating a buzz online or offline is great for business as it generates traffic and creates more awareness about your products and services.

Mindset for all Startups

We believe you have heard of hard-nosed hustling, that is the best way to start and stay in business.

Social media, SEO and Advertisement should only be tools to enhance your business and not the main vehicle to drive your business. Their involvement could increase with time however not depending on only one form to generate backlinks.

When starting an Ecommerce Business why post to an empty or new Facebook page and “Pinning” to empty boards?

Very Ridiculous! That’is if you ask me!

On the Social platforms, partner with people who run active pages or groups and get featured on an active Pinterester’s board. Always talk to people with reach or should I say sit on Giants!

If you want early traction, you need to reach out and take it. Learn to hit the ground running by “sitting on the shoulders of Giants”.