I AM on a number of newsletter lists and a recent one I received asked for comments about how a online store selling dog products could improve its sales.
You can get an idea of the amount of work the shop owner has undertaken, but it is clear he is struggling to make this convert into sales.
Some simple steps I think the chap could take, and which anyone with a similar online presence could use, are:
1. First have an About page on the site so that I can see who I am buying from, especially effective in this case if there is a picture of the owner with his dog.
2. A simple blog style site with an RSS feed and the newsletter/subscription facility provided by Feedburner.
3. Using Feedburner's BuzzBoost would also allow him to run the headlines from his blog articles on his normal website.
4. Post three articles a week to the blog about testing new products, pet related news and your own experiences of being a dog owner.
Static websites will struggle to be found in search engine results as effectively as ones being often updated, so look to keep your site fresh using blog software and you will see your site regularly indexed and visited by search engine spiders.
But once people arrive at your site make sure you make it easy for them to stay up to date with your site updates via an RSS feed or newsletter style service.
Here is another interesting take on using blogging software, and other online tools, as a small business from Seth Godin.
Craig
We also find it pretty useful to have a privacy policy on the site. People are interested in what happens in their data once they submit it. Are they going to be bombarded with SPAM if they transact with you? Are you going to send them the occasional freebie? And so on.
We have a couple of legal bods as clients. Would a free generic website privacy policy be useful?
Posted by: Simon Wharton | April 16, 2007 at 09:36