Marketing an online business

Hi,
I recently set up an online coffee business and I'm wondering how to get people to the website without paying € of euro. I've tried google adwords, but find that is very limited in generating traffic.
I'm about to go with a banner ad on eircom.net, but this is pricey and obviously no guarantee that it'll hit my demographic.

Any ideas how to generate more traffic? Where to advertise cheaply?

thanks!
Tony.

I would have thought that distributors would be the best play and not the man on the street. Tighter margins, higher volumes.

create demand in the shops and you might stimulate a walk out trade.

Have you had any success in selling to coffee shops.

Try blind taste tests and find out how the punters taste buds react to your product. If positive get try and get a few pr releases out. I think i saw your product the other week in one of the broadsheets or bus mags.

You could improve the indexing on your site so it appears higher on rankings for search engines. Here's a Meta Tag analysis of your index page:

Meta tags analysis.Title:Title meta tag contains no errors.
This tag contains 21 characters.
Title relevancy to page content is good.
The Title relevancy to page content is 67%.
Description:Description meta tag contains no errors.
This tag contains 68 characters.
Description relevancy to page content is good.
The Description relevancy to page content is 75%.
Keywords:Keyword relevancy to page content is poor.
The keywords relevancy to page content is 45%.
Robots:The Robots meta tag contains no errors.
This tag contains 12 characters.
Author:The Author meta tag contains no errors.
This tag contains 13 characters.

TonyC said:

Hi,
I recently set up an online coffee business and I'm wondering how to get people to the website without paying € of euro. I've tried google adwords, but find that is very limited in generating traffic.

Click to expand...

Do you know that your site does not display correctly in Firefox (on the home page the card payment logos are occluded by the footer for example). I'd be very interested in your service but would not be willing to purchase 500g bags of coffee for up to €58 a go without being able to get a sample first.

Why eircom.net? - are you only trying to get people from Ireland to your website?

Maybe people just don't look to the internet to buy coffee and chocolates. (post crossed with above - Apart form ClubMan )

Thanks for all that. I'll have a look at the tags and the firefox browser.
I was only targetting Ireland. There's plenty of similar services in markets like the UK and Europe, but they're even more expensive. Good idea on the samples too. All your replys are greatly appreciated!

And I'm sure I should know this but where would I find a distributor for this kind of thing?

what about pigsback, they would have a huge number on the mailing lists for promotions etc, you could give 10 piggy points or something if they visit not sure of the costs of this.

There are some good practical hints for attracting more visitors to your website on the www.betterbusinessresults.com website and should be a few other threads on AAM as well.

why not head over to www.irishwebmasterforum.com they have some really good advice in terms of Search Engine Optimisation

You should also consider a webshop on ebay.ie and automated ads on buyandsell.ie, adverts.ie etc (Sorry if I'm stating the obvious!)

Also, some comments about your website:

1) Looks a bit weird in firefox. Make sure you tell your web designers that it must work in other browsers besides IE!

2) Using IE7 (very popular browser), I cant add products to my shopping basket!! - Keep getting java script errors. This is a serious problem, it means a good proportion of your potential clients can't buy from your store even if they want to! This could be a reason why your getting a low amount of sales.

3) Always a good idea to have 1 or 2 products on your front page with a '1 click buy' feature. This means the user just clicks on them, fills in credit card details and shipping and the product is ordered. Once they have a good experiance, next time they will most likely buy more. Look at http://www.flowers123.ie for an example.


Anyway - this is just from a shoppers perspective....

Mike

Hi,
That's great. Thanks especially Mike. I'll get straight onto a few of these and come back in a couple of weeks with something positive I hope. All that help and advice is greatly appreciated!!