Best Ways to Drive Traffic to a Store besides Search

[chadlerh]

I was wondering what everyone's thoughts are about driving traffic to an ecommerce site besides search and PPC Search.
I'm looking into starting an affiliate program. Any other ideas?

[Morgenhund]

Links exchange? Takes a hell of time, but then gives you a stable and consistent traffic source.

[etechsupport]

It should be easily shopable store with competitive prices, you can create a "community" for your loyal customers. You should research the shopping experience of your prospective buyers and adopt change if required.

[chadlerh]

Is anyone using adbrite or any banner network that has a good cpc?

[Morgenhund]

I do not use banner networks -- mostly because of in this case I cannot control what banners will be shown on my site.

Particularly, I do not want a sudden adult banner seen in one of my children's products category.

Besides, if you keep an e-shop, 3rd party banners look a little amateurish -- as if you are too greedy or just cannot earn enough with your e-shop.

I started affiliate program about a year ago. Shortly put, the effort was not worth it since then. Those who register for this program are mostly little free-hosted amateur home pages. Perhaps, the situation will change in the future, but since then links exchange performs far better.

P.S. SEO performs far better than links exchange.

[martyt]

We rely heavily on word-of-mouth -- we enclose 2 business cards with every order and do our best to impress customers with prompt and curteous service. And they tend to tell their friends -- I frequently see clusters of orders coming from the same small geographic region. We haven't offered "refer a friend" discounts yet but are considering it.

Link exchange also works well. Taking the time to actually research potential link partners and draft a *personal* e-mail requesting a link exchange is well worth the effort. I also use my web statistics provider (Hitslink) to track referrals from those sites I link to and can tell who's sending the traffic and who isn't.

[Morgenhund]

Well, I allow myself to prepare a little list of promotion methods (ordered by relative effectivness in descending order). I do not have strong statistics here, just perception:

1. SEO
2. Word-of-mouth
3. Links exchange
4. Affiliate program
...?

[Eltiti]

Mailing list/newsletter?! People sign up for you "Widget World" for free, and you provide them with widget news, the best ways to use widgets, and unbeatable widget deals... Advantage: you become *much* less dependent on SE traffic!