One of the most common problems we see with sites selling products to consumer is that there is not clear purchase path in the site. Sometimes the problems are simple, we fixed a site where the problem was that once the customer added a product to the cart and decided to continue shopping there was no way back to the cart except to add another product to the cart. Its rarely this simple to fix.

In another case, we had a client who built a site to show off how cool their products were and had pages and pages of features, instead of explaining the benefits of their products. In this case, we restructured the site to highlight the benefits. We kept the product features information, but recast those pages as additional information pages. Once the site was restructured, the conversion rate (number of visitors who end up of buying) increased. We then evaluated the market and determined the appropriate combination of PPC, SEO and SMM. Since this was a product that is tied to a common social interest, social media marketing worked well.

Social media marketing is effective when the product appeals to people engaged in a similar activity. An example of this would be a product that appeals to gardeners, or gunners or some other self-identifying group of people.