A good blog using a blogging platform with optimization built in will help your sales, blogging is a big part of online information, anyone can do it.
I personally use a blogging platform that has optimization built into it, it's really simple and it helps.
If there is no physical store location and you are strictly selling online, handing out flyers is probably small thinking.
Ideally the site would be profitable enough to use paid advertising, though it could become your single biggest expense. I suspect some sales page optimization would be in order to make the most of visitors that are each costing you money. All the major retailers do regular split-testing of design variations to find what sells best (of course having hundreds of customers a day speeds that process) You should probably have graphics on the home page representing the product categories in the little navigation buttons in place of the featured products you have there now, make shopping a bot easier.
Give the shipping limitations before they check out, your shipping fee would not cover some international shipping.
Often the self serve ads available at Google Adwords and Facebook are recommended for new advertisers, they are quite different systems. Adwords can deliver highly qualified prospects when you pick the right keywords but is expensive, prices are effected by an advert and landing page quality score. Facebook ads are interrupting people's social meanderings, like a newspaper ad., instead of active search keywords, you can employ member demographic information to only advertise to women of the right age who express interest in parenthood, in the UK or other English speaking countries.
Consider having multi currency version of your site, users could just click a flag to identify their country, or an automatic script might determine their location based in P address, that might help with shipping cost issues as well.
You could feature your store in free social sites like on a Facebook business page (you have that covered) or a pinterest page, some limit the sales pitch you can present, you might just have to show a fun product gallery, you might even show other kid products to attract more viewers., facebook paid ads are cheaper when sent to a business Facebook page.
Sometimes having a presense on marketplaces like Ebay an Amazon allows you to capture repeat customers, bypassing the middleman on later services.
Finally you could risk direct buying ad space on a web site with appropriate demographics, these ads can get better response than banner ad networks in some cases, Buyads.com, buysellads.com and blogads.com are brokers making it a bit easier, you can buy smaller chunks of space for as llittle as $10 - $20 some of the reasonable looking per thousands CPM prices have a huge min but, you may have to test add one to your cart to see you options. Some blog sites offer paid reviews.
You need a marketing plan. Doing this will help you to figure out the best way to target your customers and split marketing activities and promotions into target audience's.
By having a marketing plan you can also regulate marketing activities and keep and eye on costs and return on investment.
Templates can be found on Google. Make sure you research, research, research.
with adwords
I run www.lilstitches.co.uk selling children's clothes and I am trying to figure out the best way to generate more sales. I currently advertise with business cards, flyers, ebay sales, selling at local playgroups, using twitter and facebook.
What advice do people have for further advertising?
