Monday, May 4th, 2009

How to Increase Sales on Your Site

When you decided to start marketing online you decided to play by certain rules that will keep you in the business. If you are more than serious and dedicated to your online business, as you should be, your route to success rallies on one single factor: how you satisfy the needs of your customers, new and old. In this business, when you ask “How to Increase Sales” your customer should be above all other considerations.

Nowadays, when the competition in enterprise climate become tougher the buying experience of your customer, can make all the difference between a failed or celebrated business.

So, you have to make sure your customer has a pleasant experience for a paramount to long term viability. Your customers just like us are human beings who want to feel that you care about them (not just chase after their money) and with you they want to feel how special, cared for and entrust they are.

Clicke here to Learn how to Satisfy Your Customers Needs » 

They need to know that you are here to solve their problems and deliver products and services to satisfy their needs.

Tell me, do you really think that any of them truly care if your business grows or fails? But at the same time, they can gladly and willingly help you on your path to success, if you fulfill their needs first in an efficient manner.

So, first — let your customers know how you value the fact that they are your customers, and then show them they are your priority; not just a mere meal ticket.

Well, when you do this well, it will have a considerable impact on your business and relationship with customers thereby boosting your mind, market, and wallet share… As a result it’ll increase  sales on your site.

Said that, to satisfy your customers needs it’s not enough to show them how you appreciate them – at first, as a good host, you have bring them to well designed web site…. Please pay attention here… I don’t mean to use smashing graphic design incorporating flash and java scripts but web site that serves your customers simply and affectively.

So, just like a brick-and-mortar business, your website has to be carefully designed to ensure commercial success. You have to eliminate guesswork and base your content management decisions on carefully taken web metrics. When you set measurable business goals and monitor your progress you will be able to build a website that generates revenue to years to come.

The number of the visitors that buy from you can tell you how good your site performs and how many of your visitors are being ‘converted’ from visitors into clients, customers, leads, or subscribers.

You drive traffic to your web site, paid or free, invest your money in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising campaign, or in website management, so the visitor who bought from you and has been converted into a client, (an action known as a ‘desired outcome’) is a return on your investment.

So, since even a well built PPC advertising campaign with highly optimized search terms that bring you laser targeted visitors at an acquisition cost of pennies-per-click, still cost you money, isn’t it reasonable to bring them to web site that maximizes the conversion process and ensures you have the highest rates?

Once visitors come to your web site, they have to find there a most efficient navigability to ensure that the traffic you worked so hard to drive to your website also finds what they were looking for from the beginning.

The fewer clicks your visitor has to do to the goal, the more efficient your navigation is. So, when you plan your website navigation check how many clicks stand between your visitors and the outcome that you desire! … and if there are an obvious drop-off points (a leak or place where visitors leave your site, but are not intended to do so) between “add-to-cart” events and checkout, simply remove them as it will lead to a substantial increase in number of sales and visitors buying from you!

The main idea in planning effective navigation is to identify bottlenecks and shorten the path to desired actions.

Here are steps that help improve conversion rate:

  1. Reduce the number of clicks to your desired action
  2. Identify drop-off points and eliminate them
  3. Identify bottlenecks and improve traffic flow

What should you learn about your visitors:

  • The percentage of your visitors that are converted
  • Your best source of converted visitors

What to learn about visitors, who converted, means who complete specified actions and become clients:

  1. Where they come from: a specific advertisement or search engine
  2. Are they returning visitors (loyalty) or it’s the first time on your site
  3. Learn demographic profile of your visitors
  4. Learn which pages are popular on your site
  5. How long the visitors stay on your web site pages
  6. How many pages are they reading?
  7. Can you identify specific interest in the pages they have read?
  8. Do you see any trends or specific paths they follow?
  9. Analyze what your “model visitor” looks like

When you make informed business and take right content management decisions, it can turn your web site into profitable enterprise.

In essence, conversion metrics are here to help you find out what works best for you and put your advertising dollars there to increase sales on your site.  Tracking and use of website statistics can indicate your progress over time.

So, to summarize all said above, when you decided to join IM game you decided to do all it takes to succeed in this game, didn’t you?

If so, you must systematically track your progress and improve your business to get the most profits of it. In order to do so you have to use all available tools to measure your campaign from start to finish, you have to evaluate and update your site, and then measure it again.

Click here to Learn How to Increase Sales on Your Site »