So, now you’ve finally set up your ecommerce store, what is the next step?  Stay and wait for the customers to come flooding in?  That will not happen.  The days when all you had to do was build it, and they would come, are long gone.

This is why many new ecommerce store owners often have problems with getting their newly built ecommerce store off the ground.  We know how this feels and want to make sure that you never have to stare at your site with uncertainty or refresh your account over and again only to see no new purchases.

Traffic and Marketing

The first step to take immediately after setting up your ecommerce store and making sure that everything works okay is getting people to come visit.  Marketing and generating website traffic should be your priority here.  So, start getting the word out.

If you have a marketing budget, the most effective places to spread the word fast is via radio ads.  Radio ads are still powerful and convert reasonably well.  In just 1-2 months of consistent radio advertising, you could have significant traffic to your store.

However, you cannot stop there.  Find ways to keep them engaged and interested.  This is where social media marketing comes in.  Create a few social media accounts, particularly on image-based social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, and ask them to like, pin, and share your images.

Now on these platforms you can always run contests, offer special offers and bonuses.  This is where you go to notify your audience as soon as you have new inventory.  If you can master social media marketing, you’ll find that you can drastically reduce your marketing and advertising spend.

ecommerce by Maria Elena, on Flickr.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

Conversion Optimization

Once you can get a significant number of both new and repeat website visitors, it is time to start tweaking and testing your various ecommerce store pages.  To do this, you would need to do some split testing.  You’ll also need to test and tweak other important ecommerce store elements like cart color, the buy now button, the categories, images and other crucial elements that will boost your conversion rate.

Track Everything

To quantify and measure your results, you will need to track the various landing pages, images, links and so on.  To do this, you can use the Google Analytics tool by yourself or get expert help such as that offered by Fastspring’s ecommerce platform.

This includes your sales, leads, prospects, clients, and buyers.  The tracking and measuring your results is crucial to your success as an ecommerce store owner.  Know this one thing: all successful ecommerce store owners test different site elements and track them to get the best possible returns on investment.

Build a List

We cannot reiterate this enough.  Studies and research have shown that it takes way more effort to get new customers to buy than it does to get old or repeat customers to buy again and again.

So, get as many visitors on your list as possible.  Email, text or push your offers to their phones via your store’s app if you have any.  This is how to generate repeat business, drum up more traffic and triple or even quadruple your revenue.

Hacker-Proof Your Website

Most ecommerce store owners never pay attention to this, but it is the most important thing you can do for yourself.  A hacked ecommerce store is dangerous to both you and your customers seeing as the hackers can steal their details and compromise your website’s security.

Moreover, if your store’s security is compromised, it can affect your credibility and trust factor online – something that will be difficult for you to recover from.

The writer of this article, Oscar King, is himself an aspiring ecommerce entrepreneur who recently lost his site and is learning from his mistakes to start over.  For now he writes to provide supplemental income and help others learn his lessons.  If you wish to learn more about Oscar you can visit his profile on Google+.