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Maintaining Your Online Store
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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. |
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 dropship 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.
If new products are on the way, then you can check with dropship 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.
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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.
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
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.
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.