main Site vs Store

mobiiart · #1 (**permalink**) 03-04-2008, 05:28 PM

On Lisa's site, she made reference to the fact that my main site should drive buyers to my store. I am a bit confused by this. Isn't my my main poage my store? I thought the general idea was to build a main site that offered all the products involved in with the niche I had chosen, and then build lots of blogs and such, that each focus on one or a group of products from that niche...all driving traffic back to my main page/store.

Can someone please clarify this? Lisa said it was something that many people never get, so I want to be sure I am not skipping an important piece of the puzzle.

lisa · #2 (**permalink**) 03-04-2008, 05:36 PM

Your main page could be your store but the reason I suggest creating more content to support your store is that it's difficult to get a store ranked well in the search engines if you are a new kid on the block.

So rather than just throwing up your store as your entire site, supplement that with related content.

The site jugglenow.com is a great example of what I mean. Yes, the main point of that site is to sell juggling balls but Jim draws in tons of targeted traffic through his useful content on juggling.

That's one way to draw traffic to your store if you're starting from the ground up and have no brand awareness and traffic.

mobiiart · #3 (**permalink**) 03-04-2008, 05:43 PM

Lisa, are you saying that my main page should be used as more of an introduction page? Not hit them with everything all at once. More of a "hello, and this is why I'm here" attitude? Then have all the other product related pages do the actual serious info and selling?

lisa · #4 (**permalink**) 03-04-2008, 07:33 PM

I guess that would work. I don't want to make it seem like it's absolutely wrong just to try to promote a store by itself. But for the average person, unless you have a ton of money to spend on direct marketing, PPC, etc. it's going to be hard to get into the search engines when you just have a store.

You need credibility to make people want to link to you and the best way to do that is to build useful content around your store. An introduction is fine but you still want to offer quality content that people would want to bookmark. An intro is a start but still be thinking of ways to also add useful information that would direct people to their store.

Say you were selling skin care products. Instead of just launching skin-care-store-2008.com for example, I would create sections on my site that discussed how to care for the skin. Tips on cleansing, facial masks, etc. That way those pages have a chance of drawing in searches related to those topics.

Now that you've got some targeted traffic people may click over to see what your store has to offer.

So don't just throw up any old content, look at it from someone who doesn't know you and just stumbles upon your store. How are you going to make your site appeal to them? Why would they trust buying your products when they can go to name brand retail stores to buy it? You have to give them a reason to stay, bookmark and trust you.

Make sense?

mobiiart · #5 (**permalink**) 03-05-2008, 05:51 AM

Lisa, I understand what you are saying. I have just noticed that because I do affiliate business. I tend to shy away from a main page idea. I am used to just ushering the customers through to something else. I understand, as you said, this won't work. I wouldn't be comfortable with it, so why would my viewers? Thanks for the info.

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