Nowadays, many business owners are turning their hands to the online environment, whether they see this as an add-on to their offline store or as a whole movement to selling online. There are a lot of motives for doing this, from lower maintenance costs to higher numbers of people searching to buy products online.

Once an ecommerce website is created, the major barrier encountered is promoting and getting traffic to that website. By getting traffic we, of course, think about targeted traffic, prospects that are willing to spend money on the products/services one promotes. Here are some great methods any ecommerce business owner should use for promoting his products online.

1.      PPC Advertising

Probably the best way for getting highly-targeted traffic to a website. If done correctly, it can become a very profitable tool every business should use. On the other hand, it can be one of the fastest ways of loosing big money in short time so  have a chat with some SEO professionals in order to getting things right.

2.      Email Promotion

This method best works along with another trick, getting people to sign up to your newsletter. Make them an offer: whoever registers to your newsletters until the end of the current month has the chance of winning a gift (it’s best to be a gift related to what you promote). The newsletter should contain tips and tricks related to your niche or industry news, you decide, but make it a weekly one. Once you have setup a big subscribers database plan and an email promotion. It can be a discount or anything that offers more value for the money.

3.      Social Media, forums and blogs

Yet another inexpensive way to promote your online store. Twitter and Facebook should not be left out from your promotion campaign. Search for related forums and blogs, become an authority in your niche and most important, do not spam while this will get you only negative image instead of a positive one. Make connections, answer questions, show your expertise in this field. If done well, this will send you an impressive amount of traffic towards your business.

4.      Affiliate program

Set up an affiliate program. This is a great way to get more customers for your products. Basically, you reward with incentives, the affiliates promoting your products will get your people buying stuff. Very powerful!

These four steps are definitely the best ways for promoting an online store and for getting highly targeted traffic to your business. Keep an eye on our website design blog for more tips and tricks.

Everyone remembers the best advertising catchphrases such as:

• Clunk, Click, Every Trip
• Let your fingers do the walking
• You can’t get quicker than a Kwitfit fitter
• Diamonds are forever.

And so many people can associate those taglines with the products. Which is why advertising can work so well in encouraging people to buy/use certain products and services.

In a nutshell, a tagline is a short, snappy slogan that is catchy and easy for people to remember and hopefully associate with your business.

So how should you go about thinking up your own catchy business tagline? Here are a few tips:

•    Product power: Choose one of your products and think up a need for it. For example, Adidas trainers: Run the fastest.
•    Make a promise: Tell people what your product will do for them. Zest washing powder: For the cleanest whites yet.
•    To the point: Keep your catchphrases short.
If people can remember your catchphrase and associate it with your business then this will work wonders for your company’s profits in the longer term.

To find out more about great website design and some of the best deals in the UK, check out leading web design company WebCreationUK.

Research has revealed that location-based advertising spend will reach $1.8 billion by 2015, and become an increasingly bigger factor of overall mobile marketing budgets for many companies.

Location-based adverts are enabled by three sets of technologies: GPS, Wi-Fi and Cell-ID. According to the research company ABI, the most successful campaigns use a mix of some or all of these, depending on the product or service, the region, the consumers and the location accuracy required.

Now new location-based services are being created, which are aimed at mobile shoppers. Some are “check-in” services, such as Foursquare, Facebook Places and Loopt. Others use an iPhone app to reward shoppers for visiting certain stores.

The benefits for shoppers include easier access to store location, in-store information and the potential for shopping discounts. Meanwhile the advantage for businesses include greater advertising reach and more effective marketing potential.

If you are looking for information on website design for mobile phone devices then speak to WebCreationUK!

Research has revealed that organic search engine results play a direct role in whether or not a paid listing is clicked. The study by an America university found that if both a paid result and an organic result appear at the same time in a search listing then there is a greater chance of your paid result being clicked on.

It’s thought that these findings have come about because of our tendency to trust organic listings more than paid ads.

The research found:

*The impact of organic listings on paid advertising is 3.5 times stronger than vice-versa
* There is a positive link between paid and organic listings, which could increase advertisers’ profits by at least 6.15%
* Click-through rates, conversion rates and total revenues are higher when both paid and organic listings are present at the same time.

The internet has changed the way that businesses advertise. Now a survey has revealed that the majority (92%) of advertisers are using Internet advertising in their media campaigns followed by print advertising at 88%.

The LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Poll survey also found that half of those questioned use radio advertising (46%), TV advertising (46%) and mobile advertising (39%).

The survey showed that there has been a rise in usage of internet advertising compared to a year ago. Three-quarters of those who use Internet advertising (74%) do so more often, while 69% of those who use mobile advertising are using it more often compared to a year ago. The largest drop is with print advertising as half (49%) of those who use it are using it less often compared to a year ago while 41% are using it the same amount.

So it’s clear where business feels it should be going with advertising but at the same time the report revealed that internet users find many aspects of online advertising “very annoying”.

The majority (80%) say they find ads that expand on the page and cover the content “ frustrating” while 79% are “very frustrated” by the adverts with a close or skip button that they can’t find.

Other annoyances include Internet ads that automatically pop up, ads that open when the cursor happens to hang over them and animated ads.

Finally there is some good news with a report that shows on-line advertising has grown Europewide. New figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers reveal that on-line advertising spend in Europe increased by 20% in 2008, reaching £11billion.
The report shows a 26% increase in on-line search spending last year compared with 2007. Meanwhile, on-line classified spend rose by 17.4%, display advertising grew by 15.1% and email increased 12.2%.
However, while 10 top countries accounted for 93% of the total European on-line advertising market, six of these nations, including the UK, experienced growth of less than 20%.
Tough times indeed – but perhaps it’s time to be a bit more positive.