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30 Ways to Increase Sales on Your Business Website

saletimparkinsonAs we discussed in our previous post on traffic, there are three ways to increase sales on a website: 1) increase qualified traffic (number of potential customers), 2) increase the number of conversions (sales) or 3) both 1 and 2. This list focuses on ways you can increase traffic or conversions.  A good strategy would be to pick a mixture you’re comfortable with and continue to add to it as you see success.

  1. Increase your advertising budget
  2. Expand the keywords you target with Search Marketing
  3. Use/Expand Affiliate Marketing
  4. Purchase ads on niche websites
  5. Write articles with valuable information for your potential customers
  6. Start a blog
  7. Join social networks and start conversations in your areas of expertise
  8. Advertise on social networks
  9. Allow customers to rate and comment on your products & services
  10. Create a FAQ section on your website
  11. Add a discussion board to your website
  12. Start a podcast
  13. Target your marketing message to your audience
  14. Change to a customer-centric design
  15. Add support information about all your products and services
  16. Make it easy for customers to contact you with questions or concerns
  17. Create an ongoing newsletter
  18. Offer a free product or service in exchange for contact information
  19. Update your website design to a professional, modern look
  20. Add a sitemap to make it easy for customers to find information
  21. Include a search function
  22. Use structured menus instead of drop-downs
  23. Organize your website information intuitively
  24. Add contact information throughout the site
  25. Use a creative, but professional color scheme
  26. Incorporate all the information needed to make a purchase decision on product and service pages
  27. Solicit customer purchases from every product and service page
  28. Tout company accomplishments on homepage
  29. Announce company news through press releases
  30. Optimize your website copy for search engines

Do you have more ways to increase sales on your business website?  We’d love to hear them in the comments below.

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(photo by timparkinson @ Flickr CC)

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Reach for Your Business Goals, Not for Numbers

soccerrandysonofrobertOne of the top requests we get from clients is to help increase traffic to their business website.  Our first response is to ask what business goal they are trying to attain.  While increasing traffic may be one of many possible solutions, it may not be the right one.  Working on increasing traffic on your website without understanding how it will help you reach your goals is like getting triple-bypass heart surgery before you’ve had a doctor’s diagnosis.

Let’s take a look at an example:

An e-commerce site is spending a great deal of money on Internet advertising and SEO, but is sales have fallen.  Their first reaction is to increase traffic to their website.  What should they do?

Understand your business goals

Is the business goal to increase traffic?  Hardly.  Their business goal is to increase sales.  Increasing traffic may help, but there may also be other issues.  By understanding their business goals, they’ll be able to come up with solutions and ways to measure whether they’ve attained their goals.

Understand the problem

Understanding the problem helps you brainstorm all the possible solutions.  The highest return on investment may come from a mixture of solutions or one solution may not be complete without taking a look at other aspects of the website and business.  After taking a look at their website, their advertising and marketing efforts, this client had a number of different issues to address, including conversion rates, usability, marketing message, and ROI of advertising, which were all affecting their sales and bottom line.

Look for solutions

Now that you have recognized your business goals and understand the full set of issues, you can come up with the right solutions.  In our example, there are a wide range of solutions, of which, increasing traffic was only a very small part.  By creating an Internet business strategy from the set of solutions, the client was able to more efficiently attack the problem.

Measure your progress

This is where the numbers do actually help.  Of course you need to understand exactly what numbers you are looking for.  Just increasing the number of visitors or page views won’t help attain your business goals.  For our example, we had to measure conversion rates, ROI of advertising, time on site, exit pages, etc. to see how we were progressing.  It may seem like a confusing bunch of numbers, but once you’ve gone through this thought process, the numbers you need are much more clear.

Summary

Before you spend big bucks on SEO or Internet advertising, take a few minutes to consider what business goals you are trying to achieve and all the possible issues that you may need to consider to reach those goals.  Just a few minutes of thought can help direct your efforts into the biggest bang for your buck.

(photo by randy son of robert @ Flickr CC)

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Creating an Internet Business Strategy – Implementation

gnrimplementationWe’re in the home stretch of our Internet Business Strategy planning, but let’s quickly review the parts of the plan:

  • Executive Summary
  • Methodologies
  • Current Situation
  • Vision & Goals
  • Requirements
  • Implementation

The implementation portion of the Internet Business Strategy planning is not intended to be a full implementation plan.  Once you have your strategy, you’ll need to create detailed implementation plans.  For your Internet business strategy, consider the following for implementation :

  • Lessons Learned – Are there any previous projects we can learn from?  Are there external sources that have implemented similar strategies?
  • Implementation of Sub-Projects – Does it make sense to divide the project into smaller, easier-to-manage proejcts?  How will you divide up the implementation into sub-projects? Who is responsible for each sub-project?  How will the sub-projects be managed in order to move towards a common goal?
  • Phasing and Milestones – What is a realistic timeline for implementation?  Should we divide up implementation into phases? What are the various phases of implementation?  What are target dates for each phase?
  • Budget Plan – What are the budgetary requirements for any phasing and sub-projects?  Are there any opportunities for cost-sharing with other organizations? What are the specifics of our financial processes?  Who is the financial authority for administration the budget? How does the available budget affect the time periods for phases and milestones?
  • Marketing – How will we get the word out about our strategy?  Who is the target audience?  Are there any events we should attend?  What is our marketing budget?
  • Measuring Success and Making Adjustments – What are the critical success factors that should be communicated to our stakeholders?  What performance metrics should we use? What cost avoidance can be expected and how can it be measured?  How often do we assess our progress to determine if adjustments need to be made?

Once you have created your Internet business strategy, you will need to work to implement and communicate your vision throughout your organization.  We’ll cover these topics in future posts.

(photo by qnr @ Flickr CC)

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