Quote:
Originally Posted by shopalacart
how then do you create a buzz about something you created when there is a mountain of competition out there? How does one get ANY traffic to their site in a legitimate fashion?
|
Oh dear
This is the sort of knowledge an e-commerce developer should aquire
prior to releasing a product, especially if they intend to charge for it. For a start, any savvy potential customer will research the product before buying, and they'll run smack bang into a question like this from none other than the developer. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence, does it?
As you have already acknowledged, you will struggle to compete with any of the free open source carts out there, for obvious reasons. Even if you were to drop the price, you would have to have a "knock 'em dead" product which people will feel is worth the price. At the moment you do not have that. I'm not entirely convinced by the "free for 6 months" offer either, as no online seller is going to want to migrate their entire inventory to another shopping cart once the trial period has expired. Let's face it, if they do not feel it is worth almost a grand a year, then they won't feel any differently in 6 months' time.
Secondly, if you have struggled to sell something for 4 years, that should have sent a pretty clear signal to you by now that something is not working. In that case, there's no point in continuing along the same path; you need to take a long hard look at your product (and your website IMHO) to see where it can be improved and developed further (you
do need to offer much more, even at a reduced price). With regards your website, your homepage looks like it is under construction. Because of this, I never went any further on my first visit. Compare your site's homepage to that of Zen Cart:
http://www.zencart.com
Looks professional. Contains a brief software featureset as well as a little blurb about the company without looking overcrowded.
http://www.oscommerce.com
Again, a professional-looking site which tells the user something about the site they're visiting and the products they will be viewing.
http://www.shopalacart.com
Looks incomplete. No information about the company or the product whatsoever.
You need something to entice people in! Your homepage is your shop window and people are walking straight past. No amount of expensive advertising is going to change that.
Those are just a couple of things. It may be an idea to have a rethink about your target market as well and how you plan to generate your income. Most of the members on this forum trade online amidst a sea of competitors, so they will no doubt have some advice of their own. It'd be worth taking their comments on board as it will benefit you in the long term.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shopalacart
So now I ask, with all due respect, how does one REALLY, SUCCESSFULLY market an unknown shopping cart with more than 400 competitors completely ethically and, most importantly, inexpensively?
|
Do you really need to ask about ethics?
