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The hardest part of starting
and opening your online store is building the
storefront and adding your entire or initial
line of products.
And in the beginning, this is
where most of your time and efforts will be
spent, (adding product images and product
information). However, once your internet storefront is up and
running and virtually stocked as well, then
maintaining your store becomes nothing more than
a matter of routine checks and adding new
products when new products come out on the
market.
One of the best ways to stay on top of
the market is to visit the
manufacturers’ website and your
competitors’ websites weekly. It’s
important to take some time each and
every week to visit your top competitors
in your niche market just to see what
products they’re selling. |
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And you’ll be on their website looking
for new products, the latest tends, and new
ideas for your business as well.
You may also want to visit the manufactures
website to see if new products are on the market
or are coming out soon. The manufacturers’
website is also the best place to get the latest
news on the market and on the products as well.
If there are new products on the market that you
were not aware of then go to your distributors’
website and check for pricing and availability
on those particular products.
And then add those products to your website to
create new product pages in order to start
getting orders for those products right away.
You can also add those new products to your main
page on your storefront where popular, top
selling and new products should be displayed.
If new products are on the way, then you can
check with distributors for pricing and ETA,
(estimated time of arrival) for those products.
Then you can start building web pages for those
new products in order to start taking pre-orders
even before they arrive. (This is especially
important with electronics and computer products
as well.)
And in order to create pre-sale orders you can
add that product image and a short description
on your main page along with the headline,
“Pre-order now”.
You’d be surprised to see how many people
pre-order products such as books, electronics
and computer products even before they hit the
market as everyone wants to make sure they have
one too.
Updating website content
When it comes to updating and adding new website
content pertaining to your niche product market,
all you have to do is re-visit your content
resources weekly just to see what’s new.
Content resources can include review websites,
article directories, industry websites,
manufacturer websites and more.
It’s important and essential to keep product
information, comparison charts and product
reviews updated on a regular bases, especially
as new products hit the market. And doing so
will help keep your website visitors coming back
to your website even after they buy the product.
Furthermore, updating your content on a regular
bases is one of the best ways to create new
targeted traffic weekly. And more traffic means
more sales.
More tips for maintaining your website
Backups: It’s important to ensure that
your website files are backed up frequently. And
many times, it’s not enough to rely on your web
host provider to do it for you as such backups
are not frequent enough. Therefore, to be safe,
it’s best to keep a copy of your website on your
own computer at all times and backed-up (saved)
on a regular bases |
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Check links: Both internal and external
links should be checked on a regular bases as
well. This is especially important when you have
outgoing links linking to other websites since
many times, the URL on the destination website
might change or may have been deleted. Internal
links must also be check to make sure that
product links are linked to your shopping cart
correctly. Link checking is just a matter of
clicking and can be done within a short period
of time.
Check images: Take the time to visit
each page to make sure that all of your images
are in their proper place. And if any of your
images are linked to other pages on your site,
then make sure all links are working correctly
by clicking on the image to make sure it takes
you to the proper page and not an error message
page.
View your store in multiple browsers: Since
browsers change and are updated all the time,
then it’s important to check and make sure that
your website works correctly in old and new
browsers such as Internet Explorer (old and
current versions) , FireFox, Safari and others
as well. Testing your website in multiple
browsers from time to time allows you to make
sure that everyone is able to view your website
correctly.
Check your content: Many times, just
running an automatic spell check is simply not
enough. And if you’re writing your own content
then it’s important to check and proofread your
material to make sure that you haven’t
misspelled any words, used the wrong words,
(i.e. your, you’re) or left out the proper
punctuation.
Building your website and adding the entirety of
your initial product offering is the hard part,
but maintaining your website is easy to do and
takes little time as well.
And for the most part, once your website is up
and running and every page has been checked for
errors, then your most important task for
maintaining your website will be adding new
products as they hit the market. |
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Your Internet Marketing Master Plan |
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All about Search Engines |
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The
Top Search Engines |
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Search Engine Optimization Guide Pt.1 |
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