The Two M’s of Making Money with a Furniture Website

Part 2

The two things that matter most if you want to make money with your website are Merchandising and Marketing.  Since we’ve already discussed the importance of filling your online showroom with a great selection of products (Merchandising–see earlier blog post), we’re half way there. 

Now we need traffic (Marketing).  If the only people visiting your website are your existing customers or those who arrive via your traditional advertising, then you are missing the big opportunity.  Your next priority is to optimize your site for the search engines - to make it search engine friendly.   

SEARCH ENGINES ARE THE BEST WAY TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS ONLINE
Online search is the single most important way to attract qualified visitors and furniture shoppers to your website.  An estimated 82% of online shoppers know exactly what they want when they log on, and almost half of them use search engines to find solutions and suppliers.  Attracting customers requires getting your site to appear near the top because the vast majority of searches end within the first two pages of results. 

MOST WEBSITES ARE NOT SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY
Why do so few retail furniture store websites perform well on Google, Yahoo or the other major search engines?  It is because search engine optimization requires a lot of planning, hard work, persistence and luck.  You’re not alone if your website does not get found by people searching for your products and services. 

WHICH IS BETTER:  AN ATTRACTIVE WEBSITE OR AN ATTRACTIVE WEBSITE?
Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to maximize your website to be both attractive (pleasing to the eye) and attractive (having the power to attract customers like a magnet).  Choosing to focus your website so it will achieve search engine success will limit your creative freedom.  In their extreme forms, the most eye pleasing websites are made out of graphics and Flash and contain minimal page text, while the most search engine friendly websites are made out of HTML, organized with text hyperlinks and filled with pages of lengthy keyword rich text.  Search engines can not read graphics.  They can only read text.  Unless you design keyword rich text onto your web pages, you are unlikely to generate significant search engine traffic. 

Am I suggesting that only ugly websites make money?  No, quite to the contrary, you can and should use graphics and animation, but you need to also have text on your site if you want people to find it.  It can be very challenging to achieve that “cutting edge,” “high fashion,” “minimalist” look and still perform well with the search engines.  You can have the best of both worlds, however, as long as you implement alternate navigations through your site to make sure your content gets found.  If you must have a certain visual “look” that can only be achieved without any text and at the expense of your search engine effectiveness, then you should consider implementing two websites.  Consider obtaining a second URL.  Create one that is really attractive to the eye and the other that is really attractive with the search engines. 

CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT
The exact algorithms that the search engines use to rank search results are closely guarded trade secrets.  One thing that is clear, however, is that top ranked pages have highly relevant content for their search phrases.  Google’s stated mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  To accomplish this, they “return relevant results in a fraction of a second.” 

The first and most important step to earning top search engine rankings is to develop rich and highly focused page content.  If your website has the same type of information found on a print catalog (a short description and a price), then don’t expect much traffic unless you are the only company in the world who sells those products.  Success requires focusing each page of your site on a single subject that can be described with a keyword phrase.  Since your pages do not have a word or space limit, you should do your best to create and provide the most relevant information on the internet about this item.  Go deep.  Use words.  Provide a lot of descriptive information.  Work hard to write keyword rich copy that is easy to read. 

One word of warning:  It is hard to trick the search engines in ways that will result in high rankings over time, but it is easy to use tricks (such as repeating keywords on pages too often) that will get your site black listed and will result in poor listings or de-listings. 

*This is the first part of my blog.  Let me know what you think.  Stay tuned for the next part.