Everyone with any kind of intelligence knows that online sales continue to skyrocket every year. This is because the Internet continues to grow rapidly. In fact, the number of people online is expected to double in 10 years from 1 billion to 2 billion. To make things even better, people are loosening up and trusting online merchants to make purchases online more than ever.
The question for entrepreneurs, local store front owners and e-commerce veterans alike is:
"WHAT CAN I DO TO MAXIMIZE SALES ONLINE SO I CAN CLAIM A BIGGER SLICE OF THE GROWING E-COMMERCE FINANCIAL PIE?"
Below are some tips that have been collected by internet marketing and ecommerce consulting experts and are proven to drastically increase sales for any online store. The tips in this article will yield great results for both "one person" small online store owners, all the way up to online companies that have hundreds of employees and do millions of dollars in revenue each year.
1. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize - Revise, Revise, Revise
You can not have success online without continually changing your website to adapt to the needs and expectations of your customers. The companies online that continue to drastically increase sales are continually making changes to their online store so they very are confident that their customers are getting exactly the e-shopping experience that they demand. It is amazing to see how if just one element is missing from your customers expectations and needs, then your sales will drop astronomically.
The next points in this article will help teach you to find and remove these "road blocks".
2. Professional and Fresh Graphics & Photography
Remember, online sales is a whole different game than store front sales. At the store front people are able to use their senses to make a decision on which products to buy. When buying online they are limited to sound and sight. Therefore it is very important to display the highest quality graphics and photography to showcase the superior quality of your product (or service).
This is also important for the graphic template or layout of your web site. If you do not interest your viewers within 5 seconds they will leave your store. it doesn't matter if you have the best product for the best price. If your site looks cheap, most people will leave immediately. Also remember that it is important to appeal to your target market. For an example, if your store sells snowboard gear then it would be very important for the graphics on your site to have some kind of crazy youthful style and appeal and capture the younger audience.
3. SSL and Other Certificates
Everyone who has been in the e-commerce business game for any amount of time knows that customers expect a SSL Secure Socket Layer certificate to feel secure when sharing financial information.
What most online e-commerce entrepreneurs do not know is that the brand of SSL certificate that you display on your store can greatly influence your store's sales. It is important to get a SSL certificate that is well known by people who buy online such as Verisign. Another helpful SSL tip is to position your SSL graphic on your check out page and also on the bottom of every page of your website so customers see it and know that your site is secure.
On another note, the more name brand certificates you have such as BBB, Hacker Safe etc.., the more your customers will trust that your e-store is secure.
It is simple math: More trust from your customers = More Sales!
4. Analytics Software
Analytics Software is a must! Analytics software allows you to track: what search engine, web page, banner ad, email campaign, direct mail campaign or even keywords did your site visitors use to find your website. How long did visitors stay, what did they click on when they were on your site? What are the most common pages that visitors viewed, entered or exited on your website. What city, state, or country are your visitors from etc.....
This is important in learning what marketing campaigns that you have launched are leading to the most sales. Analytics software will help discover what marketing approaches to cut off and which ones you should pour more money into because they are yielding the greatest return.
Also analytics software can help find where customers are being disturbed and leaving your online-store. This is simple to find out, all you do is track the sequence of pages in your check out process and take note of where visitors are exiting your site in the process. If there are trends that 40 % visitors are leaving, lets say "step 2" in the checkout process, chances are that there is something lacking that the customer is expecting in that step or something offended your customer at "step 2". From here, it is important to figure out what is disturbing your customers at "step 2" and then fix it asap.
There are numerous stories of businesses that have changed just the simple text of a button and have increase sales 20% or more. Needless to say, some times it is the little changes that produce enormous results.
5. SEO for Keywords and Phrases Related to Your Industry......
This is huge! What is the point of even having a perfectly designed and developed ecommerce store if you do not have a plan to get a flow traffic to your site. Overall, there are 300-500,000 searches done on the Internet each day. By far, the best way to get traffic to your site is to have keywords and phrases that are related to your business to be optimized in the layout and coding of your site so that your website shows up on the top of the Google, Yahoo, and MSN search engine's results. (Note: These three companies hold 95% of the market and with Google holding more than Yahoo and Msn combined.)
For example, if you are selling snowboards and you hire a search engine optimization company that is able to make your site appear #1 in Google for the phrase "buy snowboards online" YOU CAN EXPECT BOAT LOADS OF SALES TO COME YOUR WAY! (granted you practice the other tips in this article).
6. Easy Navigation and Product Searching
If Customers can not find what they are shopping for on your site, you will loose their business! This is why it is very important to have easy navigation set up for your online store. Drop-down menus, search boxes and site maps are some web development technologies that you can add to your store to make sure your e-customers are finding what they are looking for.
The most important of all of these would be the search box option. The majority of sales made on the leading e commerce sites such as Ebay.com, Amazon.com and Bestbuy.com are made by online customers using the websites search option to find the item they are looking for. You can see why it is very important to have a search option on your online store, just make sure it gives accurate results and it easy for customers to find and use.
7. Email Marketing
This is another promising Internet marketing technique, if done right, email marketing can send your sales through the roof. The object with email marketing is to get your customers to opt in to receive information about your product offerings. The tricky thing with this form of marketing is growing a list that is completely organic, you heard right NO SPAM!. Spam lists are a pain in the butt to work with to say the least! Must people who receive spam email from companies end up hating them as opposed to doing business with them. The best way to get people on your list is to grow them organically by advertising your newsletter in a graphic on every page of your site or just adding a check box asking them to join as they are checking out of your store.
Once your list is large and healthy, now the battle is learning how often you should send out emails to those on your list and what sales content to send them. If you send out emails to often.... They will opt out of your list..... If you send the the wrong content.... They will opt out of your list. It is wise to study email marketing or to consult email marketing experts if you wish to have great success with this marketing strategy.
8. Offer more than 1 Payment Option
Think of it this way. What do you do if you are going out to shop at the local mall and a store that you are interested in only accepts cash and all you have is a credit card? You simply do not shop at their store. If all that you offer your customers is Pay Pal then you can expect to loose a lot of sales.
If you look at those websites that are dominating the marketing in e-commerce sales you will notice that they offer 5 or more kinds of payment. There are many payment methods such as: Bill me Later, Paying by check, Money Order, Pay Pal, Google checkout etc... Go ahead and try it, offer some more payment methods and we guarantee your sales will jump.
9. Do Every Thing you Can to Avoid Looking Like a Scam Site
With the local store front this issue, typically, does not exist for customers, actually it is the vendor (store owner) that has to worry if they have just been ripped off by the customer if the customer paid with a bad check or fake cash, etc.... To further this point, it is very rare that a local place where you did business will completely up-root it's location and leave no trace behind as to where it went. Sadly, this happens all the time online and every online customer fears getting ripped off or dealing with the head aches of having their card numbers stolen.
The goal for the online merchant is to make their site look as professional and secure as possible and do everything in your power to avoid doing (or not doing) anything that will make your site look like a fly-by-night scam shop. There are some practicle things you can do to avoid looking like a scam site such as: posting a real email address on the site for customer service, also a real 1-800 # and a physical address of where the operations of your company is located. Try to avoid using P.O boxes if possible. Also, including client testimonials and public press releases from your business. These tips can help you to look like the innocent sheep instead of the big bad scammer wolf.
There is nothing that will affect your sales worse than if new customers assume that your store is a scammer shop or that it is insecure - because you failed to take the extra steps to win their trust.
10. Rss Feeds for Sales Specials
Rss stand for Real Simple Syndication. The way it is used is people who visit your website see a Rss button or or link where they are able to subscribe to your Rss feed. In order to subscribe they need a Rss reader. It is not hard to find a reader as there are thousands of free Rss readers available on the web and all of the new internet browsers come equip with what is called "Live bookmarks" which is a built in Rss reader. Once a visitor is subscribed to the Rss feed, then they are able to view your Rss articles or posts.
Why is this relevant to e-commerce sales? Good Question! Just have a web developer create a "RSS SALES Feed" on your site where people can subscribe to it and see the special of the day, week, month, etc... And watch the new stream of sales come flowing in.
It is important to have a plan implemented to not only get customers to your store, but to keep them connected to what you have to offer as much as you can without annoying them.
.....
Please let us know if you had any success from the tips in this article. Also, Quist Designs has the ability to execute every tip that is listed in this article. If we can be of service to you in the area of ecommerce website development, please contact us or visit our website - www.quistdesigns.com
