So far very view hits and no sales. If anyone has time I need all the help I can get. Margaret

Maragret,

What is your website? Post your URL on here and I will take a look.

What is yoru target market and what are you trying to sell? Do you do any kind of marketing? (online or offline)

Thanks,

Julia

You should consider online marketing if you want to increase traffic to your site. Online market strategies like pay-per-click and SEO make your site more visible and draw more relevant traffic to your site. In other words, they bring consumers who are searching for the products you sell to your website. If your store is new, you should also look into distributing an optimized press release, which basically announces the launch of your store.

Also, since your store uses the Network Solutions shopping cart, you are qualified for MonsterMarketplace.com. MonsterMarketplace is a shopping portal that showcases products sold by Network Solutions shopping cart users. It is a free service provided to all qualifying Network Solutions e-commerce customers.

Margaret,

After looking at your site, I have a few suggestions that may help you. First, you have to start working on an online marketing strategy.

Build Links - I was looking at some people who could be your competitors (did a search for customized pet clothing in Google) and looked at the backlinks of some of your competitors. FuFu Fashions for example, has a lot of links from pet related websites, interest sites, and breeders. Here is just an example of the quick baclkink search I did for FuFu Fashions. Approach some of those sites and ask them if they will put a link back to your site with a short description. As an additional bonus, you may want to add a keyword phrase into the text of the link itself i.e. Sassy-Paws.com - Pet Clothing or something like that.

Do you have a budget to do PPC advertising? - If so, I would start doing some keyword research and find good niche keywords to bid on and try to get some paid traffic.

Consider writing an article or two about pet clothing and the fun things people do with it. Or better yet, consider creating a blog where you feature new designs or share stories about how your customers enjoy your products. Use this blog as a way to drive traffic back to your ecommerce store to drive sales.

Those are a few starting suggestions just from looking at your site for a few minutes. I hope that helps.

Also - I did a quick search of this site and I found a few articles that might be worth a read. They have some pretty good info.

SEO 101 for Ecommerce

SEO in 5 Easy Steps

What are Keywords?

Hi Margaret, engaging in an online marketing campaign is going to be necessary to build traffic to your site.  You should also consider a new design.  When a new visitor sees your site, the design is one of the biggest things that tells them that you are credible.  Frequently when I'm shopping online, I immediately leave stores that have poor designs - even if they have a slightly lower price. 

I would suggest that you start using Google to search for phrases you think describe the products that you sell.  Look at the top five (or ten) sites for each of those search queries and I would make notes on their design and layout.  While price is a big factor in online sales, your credibility is also very important. 

I took a quick glance at your product categories and there are only three.  Is there any way to add a few categories?  It just looks a bit barren.  Some people might come to the site looking for a large amount of selection and that could prevent or deter them from shopping.

I also added an item to the cart and went to the checkout page.  At the top, the following code was displayed:

<% Cart.Total %> <% Cart.Count %> <% User.FirstName %> <% User.LastName %> <%Cart.Total%><ns:QuickOrder showimages="true" showdescriptions="true" showstockmessage="true" /><ns:Form id="1" />

This tells me that there is probably some invalid markup in the source for that page.  You will want to track that down and address it too.  This again goes back to credibility. 

I hope this helps a bit...