Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Opening An E-store

Posted by Anonymous on 3/17/2007 at 5:28 PM ET 155 Points
I came here to get a name for my EBAY store (thanks to Phoenix One), it is doing very well thank you! One of the perks of having an EBAY store is marketing tools one of which is Trafficking Reports powered by OMNITURE SiteCatalyst. On their tool bar is Finding Methods > Referring Domains. 68.5% of my traffic comes from other websites, mainly Yahoo & Google, I don’t know exactly how (magic maybe?). My ultimate goal is to lose EBAY and just have my own E-Store… so if most of my traffic is coming from search engines and not EBAY, how do I go about opening an E-Store? I assume I need to purchase a domain, they are cheep on nameboy.com, but does that just give me a .com behind my name? Will I have to have more than that, plus a web designer to do the lay out and have someone update my inventory daily etc., or is it as simple as opening an EBAY store? Perhaps I am biting off more than I chew, but it just seems to me, that if most of my traffic is coming elsewhere, why bother with EBAY?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 3/17/2007 at 7:27 PM Member
    Have you tried https://checkout.google.com/ or https://store.yahoo.com ?

  • Posted by MajorHal on 3/17/2007 at 8:10 PM Accepted
    Hi Isfarr,
    I don't know how familar you are with SEO/SEM, but just in case your not too familar here goes nothing.

    The reason you are probably getting most of your traffic from Google and Yahoo to your eBay store is because of the humungous links to eBay from other websites. Search engines use many different criteria when ranking a site during a search. But all of them rely heavily on the number of times a site is linked to from other sites.
    Google and Yahoo also rely on ADWORDS. You bid for ADWORDS. The more popular a word the more it costs. Sites like eBay can and do pay top dollar for the most popular words.

    If you start your own store chances are your site won't come up as high in the search engines and people rarily check sites that are listed past the 2nd page on searches.

    To answer some of your other questions.
    Yes you will need to have a site designed. You will need to register your sites' name & URL. You will need to find a web site hosting company that can handle online purchases (a lot do). Yes will need to keep your inventory up-to-date. This can be done by linking your web to a database. You will need to establish a merchant account with a bank to process your payments. Some web hosts can help you here, as well. Some can set you up with PayPal.

    There is a lot of work in getting your own eCommerce site up and running. Some maintenance as well. I don't want to discourage you with all of this. They are some of things you need to consider.

    You might also want to check out the SEO/SEM forum here at MarketingProfs. There is a link at the top of this page. Read some of the posts to get an idea about rankings in search engines.
    Best of luck,
    MajorHal
  • Posted by Carl Crawford on 3/19/2007 at 2:44 AM Member
    I suggest you look into OScommerce, it is an opensource application that lets you set up a online store will a little bit of effort. It costs nothing for the basic app, but if you want a custom template you might have to hire someone that knows there way around OScommerece.

    You should give it a try, you never know when you might have a hit on your hands. There is no gain with out risk.
  • Posted by steven.alker on 3/20/2007 at 12:44 PM Member
    Dear Isfarr

    Sorry not to be in time to contribute, but for what it’s worth I totally agree with your conclusions and the advice you’ve accepted.

    I would be fascinated to know what the name or the URL is of your EBay store. I think that it is always instructive for us to be able to see the results of a successful endeavour which has gone through these pages!

    If you feel that it’s too sensitive and that you don’t want to give away the secrets of your success to 600,000 readers of this site, I’ll fully understand! There’s always my private email address in my bio which you can access by clicking my community name.

    Good luck


    Steve Alker
    Unimax Solutions

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