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osCommerce

The e-commerce.

Advertising other than online


mpiscopo

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Hello all! osCommerce has been a great solution for our website, I'm pretty much done with all the mods and have been focused on developing inventory and traffic lately. We've had a lot of success in the past few months with sales generated through Google Adwords, Overture, and other online means of generating traffic.

 

I figure that most business generate only a small percentage of their sales through online advertising and that they are using more traditional advertising methods for the bulk of their sales (magazine ads, newspaper, direct mailings, trade shows, etc.). I'd like to know what methods people in this forum are using for advertising other than online methods. I don't have the budget to run a full page magazine ad; however, spending around $300 to $400 is acceptable.

 

How are some of you advertising and generating leads and sales? What have you found to be most effective for companys with small advertising budgets?

 

Thanks in advance,

Mark

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My company has experemented with all sorts of ads, and to be honest we have found print media ads to be poor performers. The fact of the matter is not many people are going to get up from their couch, walk to the computer, and type your URL in that they saw in a magazine ad.

 

However, you have a targeted quasi-professional market you are aiming for (store owners) and you may have some luck in trade publicatons, professional periodicals, etc.

 

I would have to say though, the most effective form of advertising for you is going to be search engine positioning, backlinks, and adwords like you are doing now.

My advice comes in two flavors- Pick the one that won't offend you.

 

Hard and Cynical: How to Make a Horrible osCommerce Site

 

Warm and Fuzzy: How to Make an Awesome osCommerce Site

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Hire yourself a sales team! Online presence is important but just as important is offline. When we redesigned our structure and operations we included a plan to involve offline sales. Now we are positioning ourselves away from the retail market and into the b2b. Our case in point was that we sold electronics that we have distributing rights for in Canada, we had soem great ideas to tap into local interests, but not enough sales experience or time to handle it. The simple idea was to hire salepeople on a base + commission basis, have them do the sales but we did the marketing and lead generation in house. So far it has been a worthwhile investment of time and very little money. Just be kind to your sales team and remember that there job is to sell... not write ad copy, sales copy or do their own marketing. You are the sales person assistant not the other way around.

 

I see a bad trend in online marketing where everyone submits to Google sits back and waits for the orders to roll in. Thats the kind of strategies that keep companies at the base level. Some people look at staples.com or futureshop.ca as examples of what they wouldl ike there etailer sites to become. What they forget is the engine behind the site. The countless experience, building of that brand, marketing and name tossing done outside of the online presence. If you can't afford an offline solution then do a few small things to help online:

 

1. A 1-800 number is indespensible... period. Having that golden number in a high profile place on your site boosts your credability by leaps and bounds. Small investment for a huge gain.

 

2. Look at your conversion rates. hits don't mean a damn thing if you are not converting those hits into sales. Do some research on the average conversion rates for your area of industry. Heres an example: You get an average of 1400 hits a day. Average of 10 sales a day. Your conversion rate is about .7 % . This is extremely low if you find that others in your field are hitting near the 2-3 percent mark. Start looking at your site. hows your customer service? do you have the mentioned 1-800 number? do you ask for feedback in a prominent place on your site? hows your reputation on etailer review sites? Your focus at this point id you suffer from low conversion rates is to fix that problem instead of wasting time on getting more links in.

 

3. What do offer thats different then your competitors? I look at the site feedback forums here and I have to say that what I see is countless sites selling the same thing with the same layout. What do you have thats different? value? price matching? what is your niche? In my case it has always been customer service, I spent every last ounce of energy focusing and gearing my sites towards this. Live help (useless if offline 99% of the time). 1-800 numbers, emails given support tickets. Prominent privacy policies, should'nt have taken the new California laws to make people put this in better spot then the bottom of the barrel. Generally just show people that are willnig to put as much effort into maintaining there order as you are in obtaining it.

 

4. Reviews are golden. Have real world cases where you can prove people use your product and it works. I'm not talking about buyer reviews, those are almost pointless (most people only review if its bad, they keep quiet if its good, proven fact). Heres an example. You sell jewelry supplies (seems very popular in this community), find forums, special interest sites anyone you can that actually uses your type of product. Give em a sample, don't charge em for it. In return ask that they write a review on that sample. If you are satisfied that the review reflects a positive response, add a link to it from your product page. also a good opportunity to gain another affiliate on the review by asking them to link back to you as a source for that product.

 

I could go on and on which I already have done. The bottom line is talking to people is the best way to generate sales. wether its reviews, gaining feedback, which ever the case may be.

 

I am not responding to anyone in particular so please dont be offended when I use the term "you". :rolleyes:

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Thanks Jason and Binare, you both have offered good insight. I have contracted a professional copywriter to write for one on my category pages. I decided the best bang for the buck is to look at increasing my conversions rather than generating more traffic. The intent of her copywrite is to generate an emotional response from prospective customers, to get them excited about the product and the project they will be using it in. I will try it for the one category and see what the response is, if it works I will have her write the copy for my other categories over time.

 

I agree with the 1-800 number, in fact so much that I had put it up top next to our logo many months ago. It definately helps with sales by making it easier for prospective customers to get their questions answered. We also get a significiant number of people who feel more comfortable calling the order in rather than placing it online.

 

Magazines and such are expensive, I will focus on the website and expanding our product lines for a while longer. Then revisit the advertising options.

 

Salespeople is a good idea, I'll look further into that. Have to figure how to work compensation and such.

 

Thanks again for the good responses!

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I thought about adding an 800 number but can't figure out how to take orders online. I'm using 2Checkout and PayPal for payment. Is there a way to safely take cc orders over the phone. It seems like it is asking for trouble with charge backs. If anyone is doing this I would appreciate your views on how it is working for you.

 

Jack

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Taking orders over the phone is safer no matter what way you look at it compared to online. You have several options if you take orders over the phone:

 

1. ask your vendor if they offer pos software so you can enter the authorization directly on there site.

 

2. You can always make the authorization over the phone, time consuming if it happens alot.

 

3. You could make the purchase yourself via the cart.

 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking orders over hte phone, I'm not sure why you wouldnt see it as safe compared to online. You are asking for the same information your site does. Another benefit is by taking them over the phone you dont necessarily have to use your payment vendor, can go directly through your merchant account, saves a little on transaction fees.

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By safe, I was referring to charge backs. When you use 2CO, you don't take the cc information on your site. In fact, it is against their TOS for me to have that information. The buyer is transferred to their site and they enter the information there. They do all of the checks to try to ensure it is a valid order. I'll ask 2CO if I can place an order manually although I doubt they will allow it. This probably applies to PayPal also. Once my orders get high enough I plan on switching to a different payment processor but for now I am stuck with these.

 

Making the purchase myself via the cart might be an option. Altough I'm not sure how that would work as far as the customers account is concerned. Maybe I am misunderstanding how to do it but all I can think of is the following: Customer calls and places and order giving me his cc details. He would then have to give me his password to his account or I would have to use my own. If the former, that seems a little lame to me. If the latter, he has no way of checking his order history since it would not be in his account. Is there some other way of doing this?

 

What's the difference between a payment vendor and a merchant account? It was my understanding that you signed up for a merchant account (@CO, PayPal, Authorize.net, etc.) and they processed the orders for you. How do you bypass them?

 

Jack

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the merchant account and payment gateway are two seperate things entirely. For example I use verisign for my gateway, TD Canada Trust as my merchant account and Royal Bank of Canada holds my business account. I've never dealt with 2CO.

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....with sales generated through Google Adwords, Overture, and other online means of generating traffic.

Might be off topic in this thread, but does GoogleAds really work for you? And how can you see that? Can you track the visitors coming from the GoogleAds?

Im just curious. :)

 

As for our marketing we are lycky to get high places on googles regular search wich generates good traffic.

Other than that we have tested a few magazines and one of them turnes out to be a great profit for us.

We only do offline advertising there for now.

It seems as if our customers do stand fron the couch and walk up to the computer after all. :)

(We deal with gear for rock climbing, so our customers are pretty athletic.) ;)

 

/ Zipper

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the merchant account and payment gateway are two seperate things entirely. For example I use verisign for my gateway, TD Canada Trust as my merchant account and Royal Bank of Canada holds my business account. I've never dealt with 2CO.

Ahh, I see. Then 2CO rolls the first two into one. Until I am able to get such a setup, the 800 number won't work for me, except for answering questions. Thanks for the clarification.

 

Jack

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Jack, you might want to use Propay. It's mainly an offline cc processor for Discover, Visa, and MC. I've used them for about a year now and no problems so far. Very conveniant. It does take about 2 weeks to finalize everything, but after that it's nice using them. Also they include address, and CVV protection as well.

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