Here's the first thought - what really was your goal for this site? What sort of keyword research did you do prior to building the ecommerce site? Are you trying to build an authority site / brand? What are your main sources of traffic you are going to try and build?
These are the most common sources of traffic for an ecommerce site:
- Search Engines (SEO)
- Social Media
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing (Blog posts, guest posting, blog commenting, etc)
- Pay Per Click (PPC)
- Affiliates
- Product Listing Ads (Amazon / Google)
- Comparison Shopping Sites (Nextag, PriceGrabber, etc)
- Remarketing
Assuming you are trying to generate Search engine traffic, then the keyword research NEEDS to be done. The initial layout of the ecommerce site is directly related to the keyword research you did on the site.
Now, assuming the site didn't have any keyword research done on it prior, you can still do some keyword research on the backside. Start taking some of your product names and plop them into a keyword research tool as a seed keyword, and look for products that will have low / medium volume, with minimal competition. For ecommerce, if you don't see huge brands dominating the SERP, its usually a good one to attack. The huge brands I'm talking about on most SERPs are sites like Amazon and Walmart. Once you find those keywords, write the best description for the product you've ever seen, SEO optimize the page, and build some backlinks to the page. Watch it rise, and watch it sell.
At the same time, do keyword research for your category names. Effectively treat those categories as Mini niche sites. Build authoritative relevant content on your category pages. Build backlinks to those pages.
Your overall goal should be to build your website into an authority / brand in your niche. Building traffic to the inner pages gives your ecommerce site other things it needs to grow: reviews, social shares, and other user generated content. The reality is, the niche you are in is extremely saturated, and trying a top - down approach from the start is a recipe for failure.
Do a backlink check on all of your competitors, and replicate as many of the backlinks as you can for their sites, unless they look suspicious.
That's just a quick SEO primer...there's other strategies that can be used on all of those other methods listed above. On the "free" methods, here's some high value things you can do:
Setup google alerts for product names and other descriptive names in your niche. Any time someone posts a relevant question about a product, answer the question and give them a link to your site. Take a variation of the answer, and add it to the product detail page to give your page more relevant content. If you start seeing a lot of the same questions, build an authoritative page on your site answering those questions, and start directing everyone to that page for the content.
Build a facebook page around content related to your niche. In this example, probably some sort of computer repair tips, computer news, etc. Contact owners of other facebook pages that have similar topics, and ask to cross post to build audiences. Use the facebook page to drive traffic to your site.
Build an infographic that will be shared and talked about. Contact 200 people in your niche via twitter / email, letting them know about that awesome resource.
Those are just some ideas....There's SO much you can do, it's a matter of picking and choosing the path you want to take. Pick a path, write down the actual steps on how to achieve it. Work on a few steps a day. Eventually you'll drive traffic.
