What do you look for when shopping online?

[Jayelle]

I'm looking to increase my web sales, and am having trouble competing with the "big names" that send a paper catalog every 3 weeks....

I have a small business, specialty sport retail, with high-end, and mid-priced quality equipment and apparel. Great customer service (we've been told), 9 out of 10 employees actively compete in our sport, yet it's been tough to transfer the in-store success to our website (as far as profit).

We get the hits and page views, and items in the cart, yet people won't "pull the trigger" and actually purchase! It's driving me nuts!

Sure, we sent coupons to current clients, promo codes in advertising, do banner ads....and all that seems to "discount" us, and ends up losing $ in the long run.

Any other small businesses see growth online??

[scarmichaeloh]

If you haven't done this yet, try adding blogs, content, how-to's, buyer guides, and LOTS of free content in addition to just products do so. It will help you significantly improve your "information value" and content that helps with the search engine rankings. But more important your providing "value" for your customers. Use Facebook and Twitter and try to create a "community" or hub around your online site. Make products secondary. I know it sounds anti-intuitive, but it works. You still have your store, you just create tons of stuff that makes people want to hang out at your store or come back... Get your 9-10 employees to create content. Sounds like they are very knowledgeable as well. Give them bonuses or special perks for each blog or article they write. Try to get a few of your instore customers to contribute as part of a contest or promotion.

The days of just putting up a product website and hoping to sell just products is pretty much over. People are over marketed to, and coupons, banner ads, etc just aren;t very effective anymore. You have something the big guys do not have. employees who compete in the sport, but also a niche. Penetrate that niche in ways the big guys can't. The big guys are too busy being big. They can't move as fast as a smaller company can. They probably can't carry the depth of products that you can for your particular sport. Use that to your advantage.

BUT, when you have a specialty niche (which it sounds like you do), you can create some pretty good word of mouth marketing and your Twitter and Facebook fans will eventually start recommending you... It takes a lot of time and work, but a lot can be done by your employees if your store is slow.. The key is to eventually build a base of "community members" who become not only customers, but advocates.

Here are some free information sites/blogs around ecommerce. I get a lot of my information by following these sites. Hang in there.. It took me since 2001 to really get going and just in the last 24 months has things really taken off. Its just something that constantly has to evolve. Best of luck and I hope this was somewhat helpful...