Wednesday, 2 May 2012

How To Boost Your Online Sales

An online business, like any other business, is always going to experience sales peaks and troughs. Sometimes the down periods will be owing to market fluctuations beyond your control, but more often there are some simple areas you are neglecting or overlooking which, if rectified, could help to boost your sales immeasurably. Whether you choose to hire an SEO marketing consultant to develop your marketing strategy, take steps yourself to improve your website functionality or hold special promotions, there are plenty of things you can try:


Website Design: To convert visitors to your website into paying customers you need to give them a positive user experience. This means it needs to be designed in such a way that it is easy to navigate, isn’t too cluttered with unnecessary and confusing imagery, and has a quick and simple payment process. If you don’t have any of the above, you are unlikely to get repeat business and this is where most companies get the majority of their sales from.



Product Range: The list of products on your website should come with clear and simple information on aspects such as their specific features, whether they come in different variations and how much they cost. Also, it helps if your product range is focused on one specific area. If you try to offer too many different kinds of products it can be confusing for customers and may also cause problems when it comes to SEO.

SEO Content: There aren’t many online companies these days that won’t be using SEO in one way or another – and there is a good reason for this. Identifying the right keywords and using these to boost your search engine rankings is a proven way to increase traffic to your website and win new customers. If you are unsure how to implement an SEO strategy, hire an experienced SEO consultant who will be able to get you up to speed with the latest trends in SEO, research the market for you and generally get you on the right track.

Targeted Email Marketing: In addition to the above, you should never overlook the effectiveness of a well-planned email marketing campaign. You should always organise your mailing list into categories of clients so you can target emails with certain product promotions to those who are most likely to be interested. A good product promotion or online sale is useful for providing a quick sales spurt if you are going through a particularly slow time.

Pay-Per-Click: If handled correctly, pay-per-click advertising services, such as Google AdWords, are a great way of getting new customers to your site in a relatively short space of time. You have to be prepared to put a certain amount of your marketing budget into this (so work out how much you can afford to pay per click) but the results will often speak for themselves so it’s worth looking into if your sales team are having trouble generating new leads.

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