Forum Moderators: buckworks
So far this month I have had just over 500 unique visitors to my site, and out of those customers, 22 have placed orders. My products are from a local company but there is only a very small range that I can possibly put online, they only manufacture a small, high quality range. In all there are around 10 unique products listed on the site, although I have provided a flexible pricing structure: buy 1 at full price, 3 at a small discount, 6 at a larger discount.
The site has keywords in the URL, title, description and keywords tags. Every link on the site has a title tag, every image has an alt tag, each page is around 10k and there are as few images as possible. It loads quick and displays well across a variety of platforms.
On the search engine side of things ... I am nuber 1 with an indented number 2 on google for the most popular phrase. For a host of other targetted phrases I am number 1, or in the top 10. I am using Google AdWords, will be starting Overture this week, have an ad running in a relevant online magazine and provide good customer care.
How can I get more customers? What do you guys do if you are stuck in a similar position? Email marketing has been poor for me in the past and print ads don't seem to be all that advantageous unless you want to spend thousands. My customers are in the USA, I am in the UK. How can I reach out and contact more customers?
Check out your log files. See what people are using to find your site. If you see new phrases or ones that can be split into more granular phrases create new pages targeted for those works. You aim should be to own a load of targeted phrases and not just the top level words. People looking for “widgets” wont be as qualified as people looking for “widgets birmingham”. If you can have 50 pages each bringing in a 50 people that is better than having 2-3 pages bringing in 100 people.
Create more related content.
I forgot to mention, I have a whole section of relative articles. These contain information about the history of the products, what they taste like, recipes to use etc.
I am thinking that I can tie in more articles to the products, and hope to do so as soon as possible. Most people are coming looking for "brand-name widget" or "brand-name". Some, but very few, come in looking for "widget blend", of which I have a few.
On the up-side of things, I have already established a solid base of customers. After they receive their order I send a little email making sure everything went well, and to see if I could help them more. Most customers seem very pleased to get a personal touch and come back again. I sell consumables that people drink, a particular blend of tea.
How have other people got around the problems associated with niche markets? (If you have ever come across any!)
It looks like you need some keyword research to grab a wider segment of your potential customers. In my experience, more content pages=more keywords=more visitors=more sales. (well a different income source for me as I evidently can'T sell!).
Try to think out of the box a little. Another thing I found usefull, put up a site search and study what your visitors search for. If it's not on your site, add an article for it. I've added a lot of content that way and know for sure that it's wanted because somebody already looked for it!
SN
1000 uniques per day, thats quite a lot. On one of my other sites selling giftware I am getting about 800 uniques per day, and am making roughly 1 sale per day. But that site has sooooo much competition it's unreal. Every other site selling something similar is selling it for less, and then less the next quarter, with a pre-Christmas sale followed by a January sale. They just go for the price point, time and time again.
Back to the subject at hand though ... I already have a site search built in. People tend to enter the site after searching for "brand-name widget", then when they get in it is easy to get round and see what they look for. If they can't they search for "widget blend" and find what they want. I have cPanel which has multiple ways of presenting wet-stats already built in, including Entropy Search, which I use. It is interesting to see what people search for indeed.
I am getting a new custom built shopping cart installed soon. With it I hope to add multiple payment processors, just to offer a choice. I'll also be adding a piece of script to the shopping cart page which rotates and randomly displays related products people might be interested in, just to help increase the average order.
Maybe we could start to make a list of things which are imperative for the niche market site? Has that been done before on WW?
