

Ask HN: Customer acquisition for online stores - bgnm2000

What do you find are the best ways for customer acquisition - for an e-commerce store?<p>I recently started: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=619589 and even though I haven't done too much yet, I think I'll be focusing on generating buzz above anything else.<p>Anyone have any good advice or experience to share?
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mahmud
This is the site:

<http://www.excycle.com/index.html>

Front page gives me three options, all of equal "weight". A bad thing for an
online store. Front page should dump me in a product catalog, and the "labs"
and "forum" links should be in the menu-bar above, along with "About Us",
"Blog", "News" and the rest of the flat pages. IOW, I shouldn't have to click
"Enter". "Enter" landing pages should be used to serve disclaimers and get
user agreement; i.e. what lies behind it might offend one's sensibilities.
That's why flash intro applets suck.

"Register" is also figured in there prominently. Replace it with a sticky-note
on the side inviting me to use the site "Look around, you will register when
you're ready to order :-)"

Over and above that, the one thing I advice you to do is GIVE YOUR SITE TO A
COMMUNITY. Had to yell that out, sorry. You're a workout nut, so you're
probably a member of one or more forums. How about you contact the forum
owners, introduce yourself politely, offer them affiliate IDs (done
transparently as readable URLs; site.com/products/list/REFID instead of the
embarrassing site.com/referer.cgi?id=workoutnut.com; the first is more
discreet and you would cost the forum owners face, plus they get to make a
chunk of money.)

Once they have their affiliate IDs and you too are sweet, don't hesitate to
make a public announcement say "Hey guys, I launched a site" .. BUT, use the
site owner's affiliate ID.

Don't be a dick, alright? You have to break bread and you have to work with
people.

After that make the site open and update the forum members on any changes and
news. Invite them into the circle. For a site with more than 10k users you can
pretty much count on explosive growth. They're all members in multiple sites.
Throw in the occasional rare product, ebook, video, even offer prizes to
success stories.

Cheers!

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dhimes
mahmud makes some excellent points. I'm no design guru, so I won't comment too
much on it, but overall it's a nice clean site. Be careful with your font
choice as well as your word-choice ("vomitable?"). On your front page change
"Engineering Fitness" to a call to action: "Engineer Your Fitness"

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bgnm2000
Thanks for the comments guys, its definitely stuff I'm going to look into.

I agree about the enter page - the entire splash needs a make over

