I read on another thread a comment where one Shopify user was disappointed that they had not had more traffic more quickly. This must be a common feeling so I thought I would relate it to my experience of launching other sites.

I have been working with the web since 1997 and launching a new site back then was a newsworthy event. But no more. If you launch a site today you might as well stick a Post-it note to a tree in the middle of a forest and hope that it will be noticed.

When people discover this they look around for a silver bullet to help drive traffic: PR, Adwords, SEO or other voodoo and hope that with minimum outlay and in double quick time they will transform their 10, 35 or 100 visitors per day (and no orders) into 10,000 visitors a day (with the cash-tills ringing).

In my experience this never happens. The web may provide any page within 10 seconds but getting your message out on the web is a slow process. Typically it can take 6-12 months before your traffic starts to grow.

I launched my latest site The Market Quarter (selling French Food Products in the UK) in late January and have seen only a gradual growth in daily traffic and although orders are growing sometimes they can be days apart. I am supporting the site with some low cost Google AdWords (£3 per day) and blogging and writing about it as I can.

My best lead so far is that I have been found by a UK TV Food Show (satellite and cable only) and have had some products featured on there with a link to my shop from their website. This has begun to deliver some additional visitors.

Let me reassure you that if you keep pressing away at the marketing you will eventually start to see some results. Another site I launched 3 years ago now makes £40,000 per month from a standing start BUT it took 18 months of marketing slog to get it to to that point.

I would recommend some Google Adwords Advertising and persistent commenting and blogging plus telling all your friends and enemies but without an enormous marketing budget you will need to be patient.

Jonathan