Research Archives - GUJRAT INDIA

How to Research an Ecommerce Business Idea

Ecommerce is well known as being a low overhead route to market but that doesn’t mean that you can be complacent about your business model.

I’m going to give you some ways in which you can test out your ecommerce business idea before you get in too deep.

A common way to set up an ecommerce site is to start with your business idea, talk to a design or web agency who will provide you with a project proposal to design and build your website. Once built and paid for you then begin to wrestle with ways to generate traffic to your new website, given that the site is new and has few (if any) inbound links you’ll soon be setting up your Google AdWords account and paying for visitors on a Pay Per Click (PPC) basis.

Given that you’ve just paid to design and build the site and are now paying for your traffic, this isn’t a good time to find out that there simply isn’t the demand you thought there would be for your products, or that given the cost of traffic and overheads you can’t make a profit on what you sell.

Let’s look at some ways of avoiding a situation like this. By taking a range of steps using existing online tools and services you can get some real world research to find out a bit more about your potential market, and then with a minimal investment test how receptive that market is to your proposed products and price point.

Step 1. Where is the search?

Your first step should be to write down a list of the phrases you believe potential customers would use to find your products, once you have these phrases use some online keyword research tools to find out how much traffic there is for each term, as well as the level of competition each phrase has.

You need to bear in mind that the figures for search volume will vary dependent upon where you go for the figures and the marketplace you are looking at. Google’s keyword research tool is geared towards AdWords and by default will give you figures based upon their ‘Broadmatch’ setting which includes similar searches, and as such by default gives unusually high traffic figures.

I prefer to use Yahoo! or Wordtracker for this kind of information as the figures are more realistic, if you do use Google’s keyword tool then make sure you enclose the search term in speech marks as this will match the phrase directly.

Step 2. How many competitors are there?

You might find that you have a healthy search volume, but then if this is an already well mined niche with many existing competitors you will be at an immediate disadvantage as your competitors will be trading with an established website and you will be starting from scratch.

There are 2 pieces of information we will need for each phrase to give us a complete picture of the situation. One is the number of direct competitors who are already in Google’s index for the phrases we are interested in and the next is a keywords effectiveness index (KEI) which combines search volume with competitors volume to derive an index figure which highlights the potential of each phrase in our list.

Step 3. Get to grips with the competition

Not all search phrases are created equal as some will have more sites competing for them than others.

Imagine you have a search phrase in your list with 100 searches per month, are you competing with 10 other sites for that traffic or 10,000,000 other sites? By using an effectiveness index you will see at a glance where there are gaps in the competition and if you decide to go ahead with your new ecommerce site you can use this information to help optimise your website for these phrases.

In order to find the number of competing sites for a search phrase, do a search in Google with the search phrase in speech marks and take a look at the “Results 1 to 10 of about xxx” the xxx figure is the amount of websites that are in Google’s index for that exact phrase.

The KEI equation is searches x searches / competition = effectiveness for example 100 x 100 / 10 = 1000 KEI which is a great opportunity as ultimately you have 100 searches with only 10 direct competitors for that phrase. Whereas 100 x 100 / 10,000,000 = 0.001 KEI which is dreadful!

If you know a bit about search engine optimisation you will recognise these techniques as they are often used in the keyphrase selection process when optimising an existing site, but given that this research can easily be completed before any website has been built it makes sense to employ these techniques to get a feel for the nature of the opportunity presented online for your particular business idea at the outset.

Step 4. Test your business idea with PPC

This technique requires more of an investment but rewards you with some more tangible results.

You will need to set up a few web pages for your key products with a click to purchase button that sends you an email. Tell your prospective customers that you are out of stock and ask if they would like to be informed when the product is back in.

Now set up a PPC account with Google and spend a couple of hundred pounds/dollars on getting traffic to the page, you’ll soon get a feel for the cost of traffic and the kind of conversion rate you’d be starting with.

Step 5. Prototype your ecommerce website with SaaS

These days there are many low overhead software as a service (SaaS) web applications for ecommerce that are ready to use with nothing more than an online sign-up.

This kind of service utilises existing functionality that runs on a webserver and has no design/build overhead so you can simply start trading and pay as you go for the service.

Pick an ecommerce service provider that you like the look of, upload your products and set it up with a low cost payment system such as PayPal and off you go.

If you did the phrase research you’ll also have a good starting point to set up an AdWords account and a strong lead on the phrases you should include in you site content to attract search traffic.

Essentially in this last step we are setting up a fully functioning ecommerce website, however as we are only paying for the service monthly and there is no design/build overhead we can quickly get to grips with the nature of the business and see if it has legs or not without sacrificing all of our capital, which if things go well we are then in a position to spend on improving an ecommerce site we know works rather than simply gambling on a hunch.

Autoresponders – Automatic Email Services Compared – Research Before You Buy

If you’re planning to purchase an automatic email responder service or software program – that’s good news! That means you have customers or plan to have customers and you want to organize your client base and provide an easy means to answering emails. It’s a good thing you are reading this article – because you can save yourself time and money. Don’t make the same mistakes I made – and the same mistakes a lot of others have made in purchasing the wrong autoresponder service. Fortunately you can learn from my experiences and choose the correct email autoresponder for your business. With so many choices, it can be overwhelming – so I will break it down by individual autoresponder programs. The ones I will expand on are several of the most popular autoresponder programs, services and software out today.

Before I delve into the topic further – I need to offer one important piece of advice. Don’t use a free autoresponder service. Yes it is a direct statement and you may want to go against my advice and try one for yourself. You can – go ahead. If it works out for you then that is good. But, through my personal trials, in using so many of the “best” free autoresponder programs, my sincere and serious advice is to avoid doing them at all costs. First, the features offered are very limited. And, what happened to me every single time I signed up with a free autoresponder service is that I ended up with a lot of junk mail. I kept receiving more spam from the autoresponder company and I found it very difficult to “unsubscribe” and cancel my free accounts. The other downfall, if that one isn’t bad enough – is that the autoresponder company usually places their own ads and promos in your emails. So instead of being able to promote yourself, your business and products to the utmost extent- you are promoting theirs.

Let’s say you are an eBay seller – and would like to completely automate the process of selling. If you are sick and tired of typing in “Thank You” notes and sending links to download products, then look no further. My Digital Dispatch is the way to go. It works specifically with PayPal payments. So, whether you are selling items on eBay or on a website and use PayPal as your main payment processor – you could save yourself time and money by using this software program. It’s easy to use, setup and maintain. It stores all of your client’s contact information, as well as the date of the sale and all of the details. To purchase it, there is only a one-time fee of $67.00. The price is unbeatable, considering most of the automatic email responder services out there today charge monthly fees and only allow limited number of messages. With this software you can create an Unlimited number of messages to send out. It also has a wonderful affiliate program which has a 50% payout. The affiliate link appears at the bottom of every automatic email that is sent out. If you don’t know what an affiliate program is, basically – it is when a company offers to pay you for any traffic that you deliver to their website which results in a purchase. So if someone clicks on the link in the automatic email you sent them, and they decide to sign up with My Digital Dispatch, you will receive about $33.00. This software is perfect for eBay sellers and PayPal merchants – but if you are more interested in creating subscriptions, newsletters, ezines, etc. then you will need a more advanced program.

If at all possible, my recommendation is to find a program that you can purchase through a one-time flat fee. Programs with monthly subscriptions always end up being more expensive in the long-run. They may have excellent features and services that can’t be beat, but it can be very costly. Then when you find an autoresponder program that you like better, it is extremely difficult to switch everything over and move your client information to the new program. So, you may need to spend a little in the beginning, but if you are serious about your business and you want to start it out right, then it is more than worth the investment. So, if you have an online business and you need a powerful feature-rich autoresponder program that allows you to: manage clients, create subscriber lists, send text and html newsletters and more – then Send Studio is the software program to use. The cost is a one-time flat fee of $239.00 and worth every penny. The installation is FREE and Send Studio is jam-packed with features which are easy-to-use, yet more advanced than any other service that I have tried. It also offers you the ability to re-brand the software through a simple template. Then you can allow your clients to login and create their own email marketing campaigns on their own domains. Just “create a new user” so your client can run his or her marketing campaign, rather than needing to purchase the software for each person. With a single website license purchase, you are allowed 5 different users with access.

There are several other Top-of-the-Line autoresponder programs I recommend, but they charge per-month. They are also feature-rich and easy to operate. For more information about all of these autoreponder services and programs, comparisons and full resources about autoresponders, marketing, emails, enzines, newsletters, subscriptions and more, please visit: How2-WorkOnline.com. The site is an information center all about autoresponders – also providing tips, trick and techniques to increase your sales through email marketing and mailing lists.

SEO Keyword Research Tips For Yoga Studio Businesses

SEO can be broken down into 2 main categories – on-page and off-page, also called on-site and off-site SEO. This article focuses on on-page SEO for a yoga business such as a yoga studio to improve a yoga business marketing campaign.

What is on-page SEO?

It’s researching and properly placing key search terms in each page of your website. Key search terms are also called keywords.

It’s critical that your yoga studio website use the very keywords that your prospective students will use to search for the yoga services they want. If your website is found by people who aren’t interested in your site, then you don’t have the optimal search terms.

Keyword research is a refining process. It’s never perfect; it’s a constant work in progress. You measure success by results. Results are the number of visitors to your website and the percentage of visitors who contact your yoga studio.

What are good keywords for a yoga business?

A good starting point for keyword research for a yoga studio is thinking of the required keywords in 2 categories:

Your location: your town, the nearest large city, surrounding towns, your county, your state, and any other commonly referred to geographic names in your area.
The yoga styles you teach: yin yoga, hatha yoga, kundalini, Bikram, etc.
General benefits: yoga, meditation, wellness, health, fitness, yogi, yoga teacher training, etc.

Keep in mind that the term “keyword” refers to a single work and phrases.

Where to research the best keywords?

Google AdWords is a free keyword research resource. I use it all the time. It’s simple, fast, and free. Be sure under “match type” at the top of the right column (in a search results page) to select the “exact” option for more precise results. The results will show you how many searches are performed for many related keywords and keyword phrases.

You want to try a variety of searches; some with your geographic terms, and some without. Don’t be discouraged if phrases with geographic terms have very few monthly searches (i.e. 50); if it shows a number that’s great. Remember that specific geographic search phrases (i.e. “Bellingham Yin Yoga”) with your yoga style will likely rank very well. That means those 50 searches in the future will list your site.

Where to place keywords in your site?

Your keywords, including phrases, must be placed the meta titles, headings, and used in the written content of a web page. Every page in your website is an optimization opportunity. Do not solely optimize your home page. For any yoga studio, you should be able to create a list of 50 to 100 keywords / phrases.

Here’s the thing, each web page in your site should have no more than 2 to 3 keywords. 1 if your keyword phrase is 5 or more words. This means you must methodically plan out on which pages you will place which keyword phrases.

Now you can see why a blog is so valuable; you can create as many new posts as you want and each post can be optimized for a new keyword phrase. Take for example a 15 page website with a blog that has 50 posts. This site has a total of 65 web pages. If each page (a post is a page) has 2 keyword phrases, that site is optimized for 130 keyword phrases. Without the blog, the site could only be optimized for 30 keyword phrases.

That is an overview of on-page, aka on-site SEO for a yoga business. Remember, on-page SEO is only part of the SEO equation; off-page SEO is equally, if not more important than on-page SEO for building tons of quality traffic to your site and blog.