How to Increase Your Online Sales
By Sam PascuaIn this sluggish economy, it’s more important than ever to optimize your website and maximize sales. Fortunately, it’s easier than you might think. First, focus on making sure your website attracts the right potential customers. Then make it as easy as possible for customers to find what they’re looking for and complete the transaction. Finally, offer incentives that make customers want to come back again and again. Let’s consider these tactics one at a time.
The first step toward increasing sales is to focus on attracting potential customers to your site. Website performance reporting tools such as Google Analytics can help you understand what people are searching for in major search engines and within your product catalogue. You can use the reports to help visitors find products more easily, editing and adding sections or pages as needed. Analyse the keywords and phrases that visitors are typing into your search engine and be sure to incorporate them throughout your site and especially in your product descriptions. If certain products are searched for more frequently than others, feature them in a prominent position on your landing page. You may want to hire an SEO consultant to guide you through the process of identifying and incorporating appropriate keywords.
Another way to attract potential customers to your site is to build in opportunities for interaction. The creative use of blogs, user-generated content, and feedback or review systems can keep your site feeling fresh and engaging. Many potential customers rely on feedback from other customers, preferring to learn about their experiences before deciding to make a purchase. Also, consider adding some inexpensive services that will make your products even more attractive. Free shipping, free gift wrap, and free greeting cards can all help to seal the deal for your customers.
Once you’ve attracted the right potential customers to your site, you need to make the shopping experience as simple and intuitive as possible. Test each and every link and button on your website. If you’re too familiar with the site, ask someone else to do this for you, so that you can benefit from their unbiased assessment of how easy or difficult it is to navigate the checkout process. Test all of your shopping cart functions and complete a sample purchase, making sure that there are no hang-ups. You can also use Google Analytics to analyse common paths through your site. If you see that customers are abandoning their shopping carts after a certain step in the checkout process, focus on improving that particular page or function. Your goal is to make the checkout process as quick and painless as possible.
You should also use the checkout process as an opportunity for up-selling and cross-selling. Ideally, your website should automatically offer a better version of the same product or a complementary product that may interest the customer. You might even consider offering a package discount for purchasing two or more products at the same time. Having these options appear automatically during the checkout process can be a great way to increase sales.
Finally, don’t assume that your work is finished once the transaction has been completed. Shipping the product to the consumer offers a valuable marketing opportunity that is too often overlooked by ecommerce businesses. Consider placing a catalogue, thank-you card, or coupon in every box that you ship out. It won’t cost much in additional shipping, but it could make a big difference in terms of repeat sales.
By following these simple steps, you can maximize your online sales – and profitability.
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