What is the best form of marketing for an e-commerce website?

[Lou]

[Fla]

Social networking media

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_medi…

You need a deep search about the sources provided in the above article but this search will truly boom your website in the entire world.

[Pat]

If you're looking for the greatest amount of impressions/reach upon a given audience, social media is the best way to go. You'd be able to create genuine touch points with your customers and the platform basically works for itself.

If you're looking for deep and meaningful engagements with your audience, I'd say you should become an expert on the product category you are selling and start a blog or YouTube channel about it. This way, you can provide relevant information either in written or video form, and your customers can see you as the go-to source for the latest trends in this product category. With a blog, you can connect with your audience and have it be fully interactive. A sincere response from you will ensure that the customer is loyal to your brand every time he/she considers this product.

[timetesting]

There is a lot to think about here... selecting the right keywords is an essential start!

I mean it - don't throw money away trying to rank for keywords you 'think' will be good

Use googles keyword tool, and make sure you are using 'exact match' results, set to your target country - and also use the local results column (that is if you are going after country specific traffic, which is a good idea at first especially!).

Then, once you have some highly (over 1000) searched keyterms, save them in Excel (or other spreadhseet program).

Check the competition levels - go for something relevant, that is a 'buy' term - words like cheap (if your site is!), buy, etc, along with your keyterms may convert well...

Then, once you have done this research, and ensured things like your CMS (cubecart, zencart etc) puts the product and category names in the URL, Title tag (<title> </title>) and also in the h1 tag, setup relevant categories for the products, using the keyword research, ensure the category names are good keywords (or product names).

Then, start writing some articles about your products. Link to your product/category pages with anchor text that is varied between an exact match to your target keyterm, and a closely related match - DO VARY it.

Then, write press releases, about news in your industry, or about your site. Write GOOD ones - unique, and quality content is essential.

After this, join twitter, follow people in your industry, and follow their followers too! (DO NOT OVER DO IT! follow between 20 and 50 people per day MAX)...

With twitter, do tweet about interesting stories, news and facts in your industry, NOT just your won site! - although tweeting your own news items on your own site is also fine, of course!

Phew, that's enough for now maybe?

[Peter]

This depends on what you are selling - or are you 'simply' trying to sell yourself as an e-commerce designer ?. If you want to market someone else's e-commerce website then you need to know their market :-

Where do their customers (and potential customers go in order to buy the product?)
Younger people may use social media, 30 somethings may use a search engine (in which case you need to make sure your site is setup for those keyword terms)
Older people may use old fashion print media - in which an advert in a relevant trade publication that tells them about the ecommerce website would be the way to go.

Of course if the answer is that their customers are from all ages, and gender etc - then you need to do all 3. I would start with the one you think you'll get most response from.

To conclude :-
1. Social Networking sites - highly precise - but results as yet unproven in terms of actual conversions.
2. Search Engines - this requires lots of research - work and time (that means money)
3. Print Media trade shows - especially sometimes for the older generation and business to business trade.