Ecommerce | Ecommerce News

Get Your E-commerce Website Noticed In 2008

In this article we will reveal the best places to get your products noticed online in 2008.

eBay - 15 million eBay members are actively buying and selling in the UK and over 68,000 businesses are trading there. Over $52 billion was traded on eBay globally in 2006. eBay is one of the first places that consumers looks when trying to source a product to purchase. Consider opening an eBay shop. If set-up correctly and managed, an eBay shop can result in your listings being organically visible on the top search engine organic listings. You can even give your eBay shop the same look and feel as your website.

Amazon - Together with eBay, Amazon is one of the first places that consumers visit in their efforts to source products. Online merchants can be invited by Amazon to open Pro-merchant Accounts to list their products. More than 900,000 third-party sellers now promote and sell their products on Amazon which has 45 million customers. Like eBay, if set-up correctly and managed, an Amazon listings can result in organic visibility on the top search engines.

Amazon offers volume listing tools, subscription selling rates, downloadable inventory information and more. All you need to gain access to these tools is a Pro-merchant subscription which involves contacting Amazon directly.

Google Shopping - Many people do not realise that Google has its very own shopping portal, and the best part is it is free! Google Shopping is also known as Froogle, Google Product Search or Google Base and is a place where you can easily submit products to be indexed by Google. Google Shopping is an extension of Google dedicated to helping shoppers find products quickly and easily on the web. The advantages of listing products include (taken from Google)

* Millions of people come to Google each day, and many are actively looking for the consumer or business products you are selling.
* No cost. Unlike other online shopping sites, listing your products on Product Search costs nothing.
* There is no spending account to set up and maintain, and no cost-per-click.
* Control of your product information. Google Base lets you maintain the accuracy and freshness of your product information, so your customers find the relevant, current items they are looking for.

Google shopping provides all the necessary information to get your products listed for free. This is an opportunity not to be missed for ecommerce retailers. Google shopping product listings also appear in Google's organic search listings.

Other Comparison Shopping Portals - Shopping Portals allow potential customers to browse and compare products online in terms of cost, quality and delivery from anywhere in the world. Additionally, a picture of the product is displayed along with the name and brand of the company who is selling the goods. In most cases, the selling company's brand image is displayed alongside their brand name.

Paid shopping portals operate a strategy by charging companies to be listed on their portal websites. The portals introduce a very similar system to pay per click advertising in that they charge on a cost per click basis i.e. a user clicks on a product within your listing and you are charged for that click through to your website.

Accounts and budgets for shopping portals vary in that some portals will charge you more to set up an account as opposed to others that will charge a minimum spend. Shopping portals to consider would be some of the following.

* Shopzilla
* Bizrate
* Shopping.com
* Ciao
* Price Savvy
* Next Tag
* Kelkoo
* Price Grabber
* Price Runner

Again, shopping portal listings can and do appear in the major search engines for product related searches.

Pay Per Click - Pay per click advertising is a powerful online marketing tool, as it immediately assists in the promotion of the business brand and products by placing adverts at or near the top of search engines such as Google.

On most occasions, pay per click advertising allows businesses to get adverts on page 1 on Google generally within one day of the advert being set-up. Additionally, pay per click advertising should attract the correct type of visitor to your site - one that has an interest in the products and services on offer.

Pay Per Click Advertising can take on a diverse range of formats and these can include:

* Text ad
* Image ad
* Local business ad
* Mobile text ad
* Click-to-play video ad

The top Pay Per click Companies include:

* Google AdWords
* Yahoo
* Microsoft Ad Center
* Miva

To check if you are doing all you can to promote your business online, have a look at our Internet Marketing Checklist for more ideas.