Online Sales
Selling online is big business. If you are selling vinyl or CDs you can send these types of media through the post. You may want to stick to shop sales only but unfortunately record stores are dying out and those that will stay afloat need to think of different ways to generate income. Selling records through your business website will increase your sales and give your customers a level of ease that they have come to expect.
Online Community
A record store is often a place that has a community that grows up around it. You can use your website to develop this. The internet makes it so easy to build communities and keep in touch. You could create a blog or create a forum. A blog is a great way to generate both web traffic and business. You can keep people up to date with all of the latest music news and gossip. If your record store is geared towards a specific music genre you could develop your blog to become the go-to place for information about your genre. The great thing about this is that you can reach an audience globally. Combine this with online sales and you could easily extend the reach of your customer base.
You could also use tools such as Twitter and Facebook to build up your online community. This way of communicating is a great way to keep in touch with all of your customers. It lets them get to know you and you know them.
Online Advertising
Advertising can be expensive but with a free website you can really keep your costs down. There are plenty of free business website templates that you could use. You could use a Flash website creator to build a website that is both stylish and useful. There are so many tools out there that you can combine with things like free hosting and free domain names to build a site.
And a website does not have to lose out on style. You can use your website to develop your online brand, augmenting the advertising of your physical store. Print advertising can be expensive and restrictive. You will be restricted by the number of words that you can use, and perhaps also by the colors that you can have. On your website you can do anything that you want. Here are a few suggesting for using your website for successful online advertising:
- Include an “About” page with detailed information about your history and your ethos. This helps your visitors to get to know you.
- Include testimonials from happy customers. This is a great way to tell people how great you are without having to say it yourself.
- Use photographs. Has anyone famous ever passed through the doors of your records store? Got a photograph of it? Your website is just the place for something like that. It gives you kudos and credibility. People love to shop at places that their heroes have been!
- Develop a strong brand identity. Use colors, fonts and images that are appropriate to your store. Go for black for death metal and goth, funky colors for pop music, browns for country music.
Convinced yet? The next step is to get out there on the internet and start looking for websites that inspire you. Don’t copy them but look for elements that you like and borrow those. Combine all of your favorite style elements together and you’ll have the perfect free website for your record store.
