Boosting the number of sales your business makes online is a great way to generate revenue and ensure the success of your company. Here are six proven methods of boosting sales, which don’t require you to blow your entire budget on advertising.
Use SEO to Bring in More Relevant Traffic
Is your website optimized to attract people searching online for the products and services you offer? Search engine optimization can make your website show up close to the top of the search engine results pages for certain search terms. The most important part of any SEO marketing strategy is to regularly publish content that is relevant to those search terms, which are also known as keywords or keyword phrases. Fresh content that contains the keywords people are searching for is likely to boost your position in the search rankings, bringing more traffic to your site that you can then convert into customers.
Make Your Sales Copy Credible With Customer Testimonials
Customers are more likely to buy a product if they can see proof that other people enjoy using it or find it helpful. Include customer testimonials on your website to show that you have many satisfied clients. Ideally, these testimonials should explain exactly how the features of the product bring benefits to the consumer, rather than simply saying the product is fantastic. You can generate these testimonials by contacting your existing customers and asking them to review the products they have previously bought. Generate goodwill and increase the number of testimonials you get by offering money off the next purchase for customers who leave a detailed review.
Promote a Single Product on Your Home Page
Is your home page a confused collection of different products, services and special offers? Simplify your site by stripping away all this noise and using your home page to promote a single product or service. This gives you enough space to write copy that convinces customers of the benefits of your core product, which could encourage them to buy. Other web pages can continue selling your other products, but don’t try to cram too many offers into a single page. Simple designs are less confusing to customers and can often be more effective at generating sales.
Make Your Site Easy to Scan
Avoid having big blocks of text on your site that visitors have to read through word by word. Many online shoppers want to make their purchase as quickly as possible and don’t want to have to wade through lengthy paragraphs to decide if a product is right for them. Use bullet points, subheadings and plenty of white space to break up the text and make it easy to scan. You should find that making your site easier to scan reduces your bounce rate (the number of people that open pages on your site and then immediately leave) as it presents the information to visitors in a more accessible way.
Follow Up With Your Site Visitors
When someone creates an account on your website but leaves without buying a product, it’s important not to let that potential customer slip away. Send an automated email to every person who abandons their shopping cart to remind them to return to the site and complete their purchase. Consider including a special discount code in this email as an extra incentive to persuade the customer to buy. Also follow up with customers who have already made a purchase, encouraging them to check out other related products and offering them discounts as a reward for their loyalty.
Use Split Testing to Tweak Your Site
Split testing allows you to split your audience into two groups, one of which sees the original version of your e-commerce site, while the other group sees the new and improved model that you are testing out. By tracking the clicks, purchases and other activities of each group, you can determine whether the new design offers a significant advantage over the design you were previously using. When using split testing, it’s often a good idea to change one element of your site at a time, so you can clearly see how replacing your sales copy or tweaking your headline impacts on your conversion rate.
The tips given here can help you attract more people to your site, keep them engaged and informed while they browse and then convert them into paying customers. Why not try implementing all these methods on your e-commerce site to see whether you can become more successful at selling your services and products online?
Author
Don Roberts is nationally recognized as being one of the most sought after search engine optimization experts in the business community. He is well known for creating profitable Internet marketing promotions that significantly increase brand awareness and sales by making businesses more findable online.