Hi Shopkeepers,

Here are a few tips to help optimize your shop for success. I would like to hear from shopkeepers who had success with some of the points here.

Make the Most of Your Designs and Shop Layout
- Market Your Products Using Descriptions. Name your products and include interesting and accurate descriptions for each item. Not only will it tell a story about your products, but will help optimize your products for search engines.
- Be Selective on Your Product Choices. Don't feel compelled to offer every product for every design. Choose the products that are best-suited to showcase your designs.
- Upgrade to a Premium Shop. The features of the Premium Shop will enable you to create a better customer experience. Such as: The ability to add multiples of each item, categorize products, and set up a more customized shop appearance.
- Organize Shop Layout. With the Premium Shop, you be able to help your customers easily find items by categories, optimizing their experience. Categorize by designs, merchandise, theme, or whatever makes sense for your customers.

Update Your Shop Often
- Offer New Designs Regularly. Create new designs and retire designs that do not sell as well. Drive last minute orders for your retired designs with a message that conveys a sense of urgency (Ex: Last Chance to Get this Design) via your shop, Web site, and/or newsletters.
- Create Newsworthy and Timely Trend Designs. Follow a holiday or current events calendar. Keep up on what's hot in the media. Make your shop the place to go for timely trends and gear related to current newsmakers.
- Offer Limited Edition/Time Designs. Let your customers know your Limited Edition designs are available for a limited time. It creates urgency, encouraging customers to buy now, rather than later.
- Consider New Products. CafePress.com is always adding new items to our Product Center so watch for additions. See if new items work with your images. Take advantage of new offerings including seasonal gear, and spotlight them on your shop.

Help Your Shop Show Up on Search Engines
- Describe Your Products. Be sure to fill out all product names, descriptions and keywords so major search engines categorize your shop. Be patient, it can take a couple of months for search engines to pick up on your keywords.
- Categorize for Search Engines. Creating categories will increase the likelihood that your shop shows up through the CafePress.com search engine, Marketplace, and external search engines.
- Add Meta-Tags and Keywords. Make sure the proper meta-tags/keywords/phrases are added to your shop. Find this on the "Shop Info" link for your shop.
- Make Your Links Descriptive. Be descriptive when naming links; they're more likely show up on search engines. For example, instead of naming a link "Design 1" on the left sidebar of your shop, name it "Westie in the Park".
- Optimize the "Section" and "Teaser" Titles. If you have a Premium Shop, be sure you fill out the "Section" and "Teaser" title with relevant keywords. In the world of search, all text can be optimized for search.

Promote Your Shop on Your Web Site
- Add a Shop Link. On your Web site, add a Shop link to your top or left sidebar. As your visitors navigate throughout your Web site, the link will be accessible.
- Place a Banner. Have banner ads on your Web site? Add a banner promoting your shop. Create a short, strong action phrase to motivate visitors to click through! Don't forget to take advantage of the CafePress.com sponsored sales.
- Create Designs for Relevant Topics. Promote designs relevant to the topics found on your Web site. For example, your latest entry on your Web site blog is regarding Pug puppies – link and/or show your visitors to your Pug designs.

Send Regular Newsletters
- Communicate With Your Visitors. Get your Web site visitors to subscribe to your newsletter and get a relationship going. Your visitors will become customers within time when you communicate through a great newsletter plan. If you don't have your own newsletter, use our Newsletter System.

Promote Your Shop Offline
- Wear Your Designs. If your designs are cool and interesting, chances are people will ask where you got your shirt. Perfect for an event – keep those business cards handy so potential site visitors can link to your shop when they get home.
- Build Your Buzz. Tell the story behind your shop or designs. We have shopkeepers who have generated their own publicity. Once their story hit the media, they saw a big increase in sales.
- Create a Catalog or Flyer. Showcase your products in a catalog or flyer and distribute it. Pass it out at events, send out a direct mail, leave a stack at a public place, etc. Get your products seen outside of the Web.

Happy Selling!

This is all very useful, thanks Angela!!!

Great tips. I was considering direct mail as well but wanted to target college campuses and figured an ad in a campus publication might be more cost-effective.

Thoughts?

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This message has been edited. Last edited by: Daverj,

Hi Dwacon,

You may benefit from the following post which refers to the same offline marketing you are looking to do. I am sure that you can get additional feedback from others that are looking to try this or have already.

Post - Offline marketing in college publications and on campus

At Graphictruth, I often write a story using the latest product I've created as an illustration. It gets the design exposed - and I get my website illustrated.

I'm planning on offering my stories (with the same illustrations) up to the newsletter archive sites you can find on the web - more on this later.

Consider integrating your products right into your site design too.

And finally, if your shop is about something you believe in, write about it and submit your writings to sites such as mine. Portal and news blogs are ALWAYS looking for good content submissions; I regularly publish one raving leftie because she regularly gives me many, many column inches I don't have to write.

The same is true for newsletter publishers. Your payoff is the link at the bottom of the article. If your products illustrate the story, the links may well be included.

For instance, an overview of using Print-On-Demand in the heat of an activist campaign to take advantage of a last-minute opportunity, or an article of what you need to successfully publish and market a book.

Obviously, an example is needed. And there you are...

Right now, I'm busy writing my own newsletter. It's populated with a number of articles - free for the taking for other newsletters.

It will also contain links to free graphics that can be modified to make individual Cafepress products.

Here's the way I see it; if I come up with a design that's simply languishing on my site because it doesn't quite fit, why NOT pass it on to someone who can make a buck on it, in return for that referral? More to the point, I get their email address, and my site name will be embedded in the design.

Sign up here if you'd like to see what I'm up to.

Thank you Bob! Definitely share your tips on the Newsletter forum.

thank you very much, your comments really help a lot!

My first product in was a book of historical photos taken by my grandfather in 1906-1910 Seattle.

My marketing included letters to all people related to him, and contacting historical societies and historical museums in the areas where he lived. Since these areas are where I live now, they also have a "local person" flavor when I contact people because they know me.

As a result, I had an article on the book in a local newsletter and some photos printed there, too, as a way to generate sales.

I didn't sell very many copies, yet, but I have people begging for more books in the series!

This type of PR was something I learned about back when I was doing volunteer work for our local library--do something newsworthy and then make sure the local newspapers know about it. "Local boy/girl/institution does good" is always a popular topic.

(For those curious: my store is at www.cafepress.com/rowanchisholm
For more informaiton:
my email is rainslie@access4less.net)

quote:

Originally posted by Dwacon:
I was considering direct mail as well but wanted to target college campuses and figured an ad in a campus publication might be more cost-effective. Thoughts?

Visit http://www.dailyjolt.com . It's an inter-campus forum. Pick a college you went to or heard of. (You're still going there, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.) Register an identity. Then you can use the inter-campus forum or click the forums of individual campuses. Your identity works on all.

You can read student comments about the campus publications.

Also go to http://www.NewsDirectory.com .
Click any state. Then you can pick local newspapers or college papers within that state.
You can see if you'd want to advertise in any of them.

Also you can post at campus paper forums or on DailyJolt forums. Don't overtly spam your site. Just read a forum, post an answer, and list your signature below, like I'm about to.

Linkin Mall
http://www.cafepress.com/mccain_in_2008

I just opened up my first shop yesterday and I filled in all the categories and did a shop description and my product STILL isn't showing up in the cafepress search engine. I searched under media, i searched the product name, some of the key words from the description...is there something i forgot to fill out? It's not even showing up under "newest shops"

It takes a few days to show in the search.

Hi Everyone,

I just opened my first shop. I am a Nursery school Teacher who loves politics, so I felt the time was right (I hope) to open this shop.
If anyone is interested in using my shop as a link, I will do the same for you. Serious about liberal, progressive politics? Vote blue?
Then my shop ID is http://www.cafepress.com/BlueSkiesAhead
THANK YOU!!

quote:

Originally posted by Linkin Mall:
Visit http://www.dailyjolt.com

That's good info. A thousand thanks, friend!

Another good suggestion for getting traffic to your site from search engines is to submit your site to the open directory project, it only requires you to pick an appropriate category, fill in the form and wait for 2 weeks to 2 months for your site to be listed on all major search engines.

This is something I did for my web-site a while ago, now if you search for "Renamon desktop" in Google why not take a note of who's domain name comes up top

Hello Angela, I'll try to get us back on topic...

Adding search terms has been huge for me. I sell my stick figure designs and have had a shop with CP for over a year now and since being contacted by you guys to work on my key words, my visitor numbers have increased, as well as sales.

The key for me? I didn't even have the words "stick figure" in my shop before! When people see my design on a shirt and want one, they're more likely to go to Google and search for "stick figure" than "BusyBodies" since my brand name isn't that well known yet. So be sure to accurately describe your products in any way possible that might set them apart from other shops.

Before adding those search terms my shop didn't show up on any searches for stick figures. Now it's number one on Google if you type in "stick figure T-shirts." Now that's results!

Where to put key words?
-In the product description
-In the section teaser
-In the section description

Also, I say my BusyBodies name in every description to reinforce my brand and to make it more prominent in search engines...and it works! Better yet, it's free!

It helps, too, to just have a big variety of designs on lots of products. I have a ton of topics for people to choose from and it keeps customers in my store longer, looking at stuff. The more, the better, as long as it's organized!

My other general advice for success is to not expect a lot if you don't put a lot of effort into it. Don't be surprised if nothing sells and you aren't spending any money on advertising, not taking time to get links to your store on other people's web sites, and not providing original content that people actually want to buy. It's hard work and it does pay off. Just be willing to work at it.

As far as advertising, I've found Google AdWords to be pretty effective and a great way for beginners with a small budget to have paid ads that work. That, too, takes practice, but the results do pay off...I know because I track my incoming clicks with a stat counter and it tells me where my customers are coming from.

Good luck to the new shopkeepers...listen to Cafepress...they have good advice on helping you become successful!