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Can you avoid your site being used as a "look up site"?

         

SilverShine

11:18 am on May 30, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



We plan to be a specialist site selling merchandise that often won't be widely available but also, that people looking for these products will most likely not know model numbers or even the correct product name.

If we become known for the niche that we are aiming for (and which we feel confident that we will achieve), we are concerned that many customers will use us as the first website to look up or search for the item they are looking for, by looking at product categories.
Then with the model/product number or name, they search for the item on Google, Amazon or Ebay.

Is there any way to prevent that from happening to any extent?

I appreciate that not everyone will do this and also, that products may not always be available elsewhere.

BeeDeeDubbleU

12:01 pm on May 30, 2011 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



There is no way to prevent this. I do it myself all the time and I would bet that most of the the rest of this community do too. ;)

HRoth

3:21 pm on May 30, 2011 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



What about instead of selling stuff, you sell the info by having it be an ad site? Seems like that would work pretty good, especially if you could get ads well targeted to what they are searching your site for.

CPC_Andrew

5:49 pm on May 30, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Yeah along HRoth's line of thinking, you could create one information focused site / blog that ranks higher for SEO and research purposes then a strictly Ecommerce site that sells your products.

Hoople

8:59 pm on May 30, 2011 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Make your first (information) site an authority site in your niche and set the links on it to point to your second site doing the actual sales.

That way they if they have the 'buy' thought you are getting their eyes on your sales site not someone else's site!

incrediBILL

10:18 pm on May 30, 2011 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Use in-house item numbers instead of actual part #s, that'll slow 'em down a bit.

Only show the real part #s when they put something in the cart ;)

BeeDeeDubbleU

8:20 am on May 31, 2011 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Good suggestion Bill but it could perhaps irritate some people?

incrediBILL

8:23 am on May 31, 2011 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Good suggestion Bill but it could perhaps irritate some people?


If they weren't going to purchase anyway...

The only downside to my suggestion is it does stop people from looking up reviews which could annoy them.

SilverShine

11:33 am on May 31, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thank you to all for your posts.

The blog/info site is not one I had considered.
I am not sure about this idea as we may not be able to know enough about all the merchandise we intend to carry in order to do reviews or articles. Food for thought though.

I also doubt we will have the time to do this as a startup or before.

CPC_Andrew

3:53 pm on May 31, 2011 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I think the value of blogs is undervalued as a whole. All it takes is one article, or one review of one product to get started. If you can set a schedule to do one or two per week you will quickly build up 50+ articles each year. They only take around 30 minutes to write.

You can also hire copywriters for cheap on websites like odesk.