Banners and pop-ups can be used to promote an e-commerce system. Banners are advertisements placed on websites linked to the advertiser's site, while pop-ups are windows that appear on top of the browser but can be irritating to users. Spam refers to junk email that businesses can use to send advertisements to their registered customer lists, but spam is considered unwanted and may be deleted without being seen. Newsgroups and forums are online discussion groups where e-commerce systems can be promoted to attract large numbers of customers. Effective use of search engines also allows e-commerce businesses to be found through relevant keyword searches.

2. Banners and pop-ups
Banners and pop-ups could also
be used to promote an ecommerce system. A banner is
an advertisement placed on a
website either above, below or
on the sides of the website’s
main content and is linked to
the advertiser’s own website
and Pop-ups are windows that
appear on top of the browser
window of a website that a user
has visited. Pop-ups can be
irritating for the user and they
will just close the window
without even looking at it.
Here is a banner which is
on YouTube.

3. Spam
It refers to electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings.
Spams can be used to promote an e-commerce system as
businesses can use its own registered customer list to send an
advert out in email to all the people on the list. Using spam
means businesses can target their messages straight to the
customer however, spam is considered to be an unwanted email and customers might delete it without even looking at the
content.

4. Newsgroups and forums
Another way of promoting an e-commerce business is through
newsgroups and forums. It can be a powerful tool in promoting
an e-commerce system if it is used actively. They are an online
discussion group and users come to discuss topics of mutual
interest. Promoting an e-commerce system in relevant groups
can attract large number of customers.

5. Effective use of search engines
One way of promoting an e-commerce business is to effectively
use search engines. Search engines are program that searches
documents for specified keywords on the World Wide Web and
returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found.
Data collected from each web page are then added to the
search engine index. When you enter a query at a search engine
site, your input is checked against the search engine's index of
all the web pages it has analysed.

6. Site name
The site name is important in an e-commerce website. For the
potential customers to remember your website name, it is
essential for the website name to be easy to remember.

7. Direct Marketing
Direct Marketing is a sales technique in which advertisers
approach potential customers directly with products or services.
The most common forms of direct marketing are telephone
sales, catalogues, leaflets, brochures and coupons. Advantages
of using direct marketing to promote an e-commerce system is
that companies can target its audience, thus saving cash and
time on advertising by focusing on its target audience. Direct
Marketing also allows the company to build and maintain a
great business relationship with its customers. There are also
disadvantages in using direct marketing as lots of people do not
like the idea of receiving ‘junk mail’ from marketing companies
and rather than winning clients over companies risk alienating
these similar clients.

8. Effective user interfaces
It is the most important part of an e-commerce site. A simple,
easy user interface means people won’t have much trouble
using the website and might keep coming back to the site but if
it is not easy to use and difficult to navigate around then people
might not be interested in the website and might never use the
website again.

9. Establishing customer loyalty in a
virtual environment
Lots of customers still have difficulty to trust an e-commerce
website due to lack of human contact and also potential risks
such as hacking and identity theft. It is important to establish
loyalty and it can be encouraged by personalising web pages and
ensuring customer confidence.