Tips for Creating an Online Store

Archive for the ‘Marketing Tips’ Category

Keysa’s Boutique Los Angeles Lifestyle Image

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

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Just like a brick and mortar storefront puts up displays and signs to catch customers’ attention and make a great first impression, an online store should make a great first impression with a bold lifestyle image. What’s a lifestyle image? A lifestyle image captures the essence of a brand or company and helps customers relate to the product.

Keysa’s Boutique Los Angeles gives customers an impression of their overall vibe with a fantasic lifestyle image. From the picture we can tell that the shop carries casual summer wear. It also has a cool urban vibe that appeals to a young fashion foward crowd. What’s really great is that the dress featured in the lifestyle image can be from their online store.

So what kind of lifestyle images make sense for your business? Your best bet is to just show your target audience using your product, which will help you customers picture themselves using it too.

Flying Links! Marketing Tips From Around the Web

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

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Learn How To Build A Profitable Online Business – The Challenge – Flippa
Sign Up for The Challenge for Free!

Customer Loyalty Rewards Programs – Retail Store Blog

5 YouTube Channels for Small Biz Advice – Mashable

Tips For Opening A DIY Studio – Indie Business Blog

The Beginner’s Guide to Getting Links From Bloggers (Video) – SEOmoz

Landing Page Makeover Clinic #27: HiddenSoy.com – Copyblogger

7 Essential Social Media Instincts Everyone Should Learn – Influential Marketing Blog

What Would You Do with 60 Seconds? Shortest Marketing Conference Ever – Brains on Fire

Flying Links! Marketing Tips From Around the Web

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

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The Beginners Guide to SEO – SEO Moz <-- Don't miss this!

10 Easy Tips for Using Video To Build Your Brand Online – Indie Business Blog

The Grateful Dead 4-Step Guide to the Magical Influence of Content Marketing – Copyblogger

Build Buzz With a Business Blog – Entrepreneur

Retailers Can’t Ignore Facebook – Internet Retailer

Are You Really Saving Money Using Old Technology? – All Business

Connecting Social Networks Pays Off – Marketing Sherpa

Social Shopping Done Right: 23 Crystals

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

So if you’re still not sure how this whole social shopping thing relates to your business, check out what the ladies at 23 Crystals are up to.

The two swarovski loving sisters who run 23 Crystals not only have a knack for making pretty handmade jewelry, but know their stuff about online marketing. If you check out their About Us page not only will you find info about the sisters themselves and the story behind their store name, but you’ll find links to their blog, Facebook group and a great video. Just for being a customer and reading a little bit about them, 23 Crystals offers a really cool tutorial on how to make a swarovski crystal heart necklace like the one shown in the video as well as a 10% off coupon code just for watching.

Engaging your customers with tutorials and videos and giving them something a little extra with coupons really goes a long way in creating a loyal customer base who will continue to come back and shop with you.

The Social Shopping Cart

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Big corporations are starting to unlock the mystery that is “social shopping,” but for us, it’s not just a buzzword—it’s a what we do every day. While you may sometimes feel like you don’t stand a chance running a small business online against the big guys backed by lots of money and resources, you may not realize that you have something they don’t have: a real voice. You’re a real person with real ideas and you can connect with other real people just like you. As for us, we make it easier for you to get your message out to your customers.

Talk About What You Know
Part of what makes Flying Cart so unique is of course all of our amazing shops with creative products run by passionate sellers. You guys have real expertise in your niches, so why not put your talents and knowledge to good use and share some of your insight with your customers and really get personal with your readers.

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For example if you sell sports jerseys then share your passion about sports. Blog about your favorite teams and players, tweet about recent games and share videos of plays on YouTube. Now that you’ve got your audience hooked, let Flying Cart help you sell some stuff. If you’re blogging about a Phillies game use the embed feature to add a Phillies jersey you sell right onto your blog.

Share With Online Communities

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Of course if your customer base isn’t very large yet, social shopping can help you reach your target market. We’re not suggesting that you spam a bunch of blogs and forums or pretend to be someone else. This whole social thing is about transparency and making real connection—a point that a lot of companies miss. Instead try being open and letting people know who you are and what you do and they’ll appreciate the honesty. And if they enjoying communicating with you and find your contributions to the group helpful, they’ll check out your products. No spam necessary.

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In the sports jersey example as a sports fan you might be part of some online communities like the ESPN message boards, which is the market you want to tap into. That’s where those link sharing buttons come in handy.

Your Adoring Fans Await
Of course you don’t have to just rely on outside sources like blogs and social networking sites to connect with your fans. Flying Cart gives you your very own fan club, giving you another way to reach out to your customers. Send your fans updates or look them up on social networking sites like Twitter, Myspace or Facebook. Fans can also stop by and leave a message and show their support on your Fan Club page.

Putting It All Together

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There’s no one method of social marketing that works; you have to use all of these methods together to really get results. Use every outlet to your advantage and give back to your customers. Remind your fan club members, Facebook fans, Twitter followers and blog readers that you appreciate their time and offer exclusive coupons. For instance, if you create a coupon just for Facebook it makes your fans feel like they have a good reason to check your page often.

Stores Doing it Right

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As you know, starting a blog is a great way to connect with customers, something that Julie Ellsworth understands. She sells giclée prints and discusses her creative process in detail on her blog Consume Create, giving her customers deep insight into her work and the meaning behind each piece.

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Even easier than blogging, setting up a Facebook Fan Page is another effective way to keep in touch with your customers. Kitsch Klothing created a Facebook fan page so their customers can stay updated on events and new products and they link right to it from their Flying Cart shop rather than linking to a blog.

Tell Us What Works For You!
How do you participate in social shopping? How do you connect with your customers? How do stores you love connect with you? We want to know about your experience with social shopping and what’s worked for you.

Lessons from very tiny businesses

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

One of my favorite blogs to read is Seth Godin’s Blog and he just had a great post that I just had to share with you called “Lessons from very tiny businesses”.

Your SEO Friend: The Website Title

Monday, August 10th, 2009

One of the best ways to get natural organic search results on Google/Yahoo/Bing is to put your main keywords in your website title.

Now you can modify the title tags of your store.  Go to Marketing -> Basic Tools and enter in your website title.

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What should your website title be?  It should be your store name and what you sell.

Ask yourself: “What do I want my potential customers typing into Google to find me?” – That is what your website title should be.

Feel free to ask me for suggestions on what your website title should be in the comments.

New Feature: Embed Your Products!

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Allow bloggers/publishers/YOU to easily display your products on any website. 

Check out this video tutorial on what this feature is and how to use it:

This is what an embedded product looks like:

The embed button is right next to the share links located on all stores:

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The Importance of Making Connections

Monday, July 13th, 2009

This video demonstrates the importance of forming a connection with consumers to create brand advocates instead of simply encouraging people to buy a product.

Thanks Tim for the video!

Find out what your customers are searching for

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

We recently added the search box to all Flying Cart stores, but are you curious what your customers are searching for?  Wouldn’t it be nice to target your marketing efforts by being able to focus on products that you know they want? Now you can do that.

Our latest feature is a Search Statistics page where you can see a log of the last 200 searches done in your store.  Click on Marketing > Search Statistics in your Headquarters. For each search you will see the date and time of the search, the search term, and the user’s IP address.  This last field is the unique internet address of the user’s computer and you can use this to identify if the same user is doing a lot of different searches.

Note that the search logging begins today, July 2, 2009 so the data will be collected from this date forward.