Ok, I have a client that operates a store front selling guns (assualt rifles, shotguns, swat gear, etc etc). They hired me to build them a site with full e commerce capabilities basically allowing them in the future to close down their store front and function solely by their website.

I have never done an ecommerce site so I don't know a ton about really driving targeted traffic to a site, especially when their business will 100% rely on getting sales online to survive. They do not have a ton of money to invest in this, but are willing to put what they do have into making their business online.

Can you guys give me some examples of ways to.....

...safely do this for them being conservative
...take a risk and use a high expense approach but really drive traffic to their site
...use a budget approach where they can't really break the bank unless they see results coming in

Thanks for any help

[3cellhosting]

Hi Rowtek

A lot will depend on how much work they want to do themselves in order to keep cost down. I use an ecommerce package called EROL and it isn't cheap!

The good thing is that once the template/layout is sorted the client can add their own products and marketing descriptions etc. EROL will take the description and include it in the TOC. To enhance the chances of better rankings I always recommend clients to use 1 page per product rather than filling the page with many products. This means extra work with the menu navigation but it is doable for most small businesses where products are diverse.

The effect this has is that the search engines will index every page and this allows each page to be more precise with keywords. The keywords section should also include common mis-spellings in order to catch those of us who are dodgy typists or just can't spell ;)

Get the client to invest time in joining as many gun related forums as possible and include their url in their signature. These will all count as links to the site which will help increase ranking.

Hope this helps

David

Thank you very much :)