Online shopping cart software and ecommerce shops

Online entrepreneurs and marketers are continuously looking for ways to promote their products and services effectively.

One of the best ways of marketing your site or products online is by joining a community forum that focuses on your particular niche. While most forums do not allow explicit marketing of products or sites, they generally do allow you to add a link in your signature.

The best way to go about this is to start making some friends in the forum. Answer a couple of questions and try to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Do not be too impatient – it can take some time to gain a little authority and to push up your post count.

Once you have built up your reputation, people will tend to look for the link in your signature and visit your site. The might also contact you directly for assistance, or ask you to recommend a product or service. This is where this strategy really starts to pay off.

Unfortunately there aren’t that many active South African forums around. One of the biggest and most active SA forums is mybroadband.co.za , which has numerous active threads on a wide variety of subjects (the main focus is technology).

So have a look if you can find a community forum on your particular subject field, join up and start interacting with the members. This might take up some of your time, but it will pay off in the long run. If you can’t find a forum related to your field – consider starting one!

If you have an online shop that you would like to promote, consider listing it in our Shop Showcase section in our forum. We'll give you feedback on your site, and some of our forum members might also comment on your site. You can also join the discussion on ecommerce in general in our forum. 

One of the major advantages of ecommerce is the ability to compete with well known, big brand companies. The reality is that for people shopping online, finding the exact product they are looking for is much more important than who they are buying it from.

In the physical world, only a few big players will be able to afford the rental cost and overheads of having a store in a big mall. This means that when shoppers are looking for a specific product, they most probably will visit a mall and look for stores that they know might stock their product. In this case a well known brand is very valuable.

Contrast this to the online shopping scenario. Here the shopper will search the internet for the product they are looking for. They will probably visit the top couple of search results, and if those shops have their product at a good price, they will make the purchase. In this scenario any small company that can achieve good search engine results can compete with big retailers (who at this stage have not yet realised the importance of search engine marketing in South Africa). This means it is very important for small ecommerce companies to have their sites optimised for search engines, and to invest much of their marketing budget in online marketing.

More information on this topic is given on Justin Harisson’s Internet Marketing blog here .

One of the main differences between shopping online and normal (offline) shopping is the fact that the shopper cannot physically see, touch or feel the product he/she is buying. This is a major drawback for online shopping, as most people base a large part of the buying decision on their sensory experience of a product.

One tool that the online shop owner has to try and address this drawback is to provide a number of high quality photos of his products. The more photos the shopper can see, the better idea he/she can form of the product. This doesn’t make up for not being able to physically hold the product, but it will give a much better idea of the product.

It might be worth while to invest in some high quality photographs of your products. A good idea is to commission a professional (or semi-professional) photographer to come and take pictures of your products. You can hire him for a couple of hours, and have him take photos of all your products in one session. You can even make a deal with him to credit him on the photos, or negotiate a long term agreement (at a reduced rate) with him to take photos of all your new products.

Below are a couple of examples of online shops offering multiple product images:

Note: The effectiveness of making use of multiple product images will vary with different product types. For example, if you sell books online, there is no real need for multiple product images, while products like shoes will definitely benefit.

If you follow the online community and the ecommerce community in particular, you will have hear much talk about The Long Tail. This is the concept of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities. This portion of sales can combine to outweigh the high volume sales of popular products.

This is a must read for anybody who would like to get a better understanding of ecommerce and make a success of their online shop.

You can check out the website: The Long Tail 

Image courtesy of Bookston Beer Bulletin