Tags: Ecommerce | seo | Social Networking

You have a product, now you want to sell it.  The first question you should ask yourself is 'Do I really need an ecommerce website design?'.  Many businesses want them, bu they do not really need them.  Any website design company will tell you that an ecommerce site is significantly more expensive to build, oftentimes twice the price of a normal website.  The reason is complexity.  Ecommerce websites are much more complex because of all the products that need to be inventoried, not too mention the coding for the site.  If you do not absolutely need an ecommerce website, save money and don't do it. 

Another mistake is thinking that sales are simply going to come to you.  The average time it takes for an ecommerce website to begin making a profit is five years.  You may have a great product and website, but if no one knows about it how can you make sales:

1.  You need to hit the bricks.  Let everyone in your community know about your product.  Pass out brochures, business cards, fliers, etc.  
2.  Register on social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace; this will help your website and your product gain more visibility and help with SEO
3.  Experiment with website design; little design changes to your site can make all the difference in converting visitors into sales.
4. Search engine optimize your site.  A number of my St. Louis and Springfield customers wanted a site, but not SEO.  Their websites look great, but they were getting no visitors because they wrote their own content without knowing the rules of SEO.  Now they have hired me to optimize their site, but it is more difficult to perform SEO after the website has been completed rather during the website design process.