Why do some online businesses perform better than others? Why is it that two stores in the same niche which get the same amount of traffic can make drastically different numbers of sales?
There are a few essentials you need to think about in reference to optimizing your online store that can help you boost your sales and increase your income. Traffic is great to have, but it is only one part of the picture. Commonly referred to as ‘eyeballs’, traffic is useful to have if you are generating your revenue from an online advertising model that will pay you regardless of whether or not they take action at your site (commonly referred to as Pay Per View or PPV).
But for those of us who plan to earn revenue on the basis of selling goods and services, the most important number you need to think about will be conversions. And you won’t want to think of your traffic simply as eyeballs, but people with wallets and fingers who can click to take action and buy something from your site, or click out if your site and/or your products do not meet their expectations fully.
Everything on your website should be geared towards conversions, from your email sign up for your free newsletter, to your sales letter pages encouraging them to buy your products. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to do business with you, and encourage them to do so with clear calls to action and attractive offers.
If your site is struggling for sales, it is time to start using some tried-and-tested strategies to boost them.
Test Different Layouts
What products should you put on your front page? What theme should you use? Where should you put your navigation bars? Where should you put product recommendations? These are all things you can test by observing what actions your users take on your site.
Cross Sales and Upsells
A very high percentage of your profits will come from upsells and cross sells. These are the repeat buyers who are so enthusiastic, they want more of your products and services. You can recommend more items to them in follow up emails or through a second sales letter with a great one-time offer or big discount that they will not want to miss.
Drive Sales with Promotions
You should be doing special promotions on a regular basis, especially if you have a slow month. At certain times of year, they will almost be expected. For example, hold a President’s Day Sale, Mother’s Day sale, Black Fridays and Cyber Monday sales, and so on. If you run out of reasons to have a sale, just have a “January Sale.”
Increase Your Payment Options
Are you accepting PayPal? Are you accepting American Express and Discovery? If you’re not, you’re probably losing sales. Are you accepting orders by phone? There’s a certain segment of the population that just won’t order anything online. Even in the high-tech age, there’s a very affluent low-tech crowd that buys online who need they assurance of buying from a person.
You may even find that placing a phone number increases sales just because it builds trust; often without anyone actually calling to order. You can get a digital 1-800 number with an answering service that can handle these calls if you think you might have people who want to talk to a real person. Finally, consider giving payment plans for high end items. You can do this easily though PayDotCom, which uses PayPal as its clearing gateway.
Get affiliates to sell for you for a commission
With the free set up through the online service PayDotCom, you can process payments through PayPal and also recruit affiliates through their marketplace. Affiliates sell your products for a commission through specially coded links created by the system. Any time a sale is processed, they get credited with the sale and the system allows you to pay them once a month through the handy interface.
This is convenient for two reasons. First, you can create an excellent affiliate area for each of your products to support their sales efforts without having to administer to every affiliate you have individually. Second, you don’t have to pay the $50 per product set up fee required by ClickBank.
These are a few things you can do right now to boost your online sales. If you are already getting traffic, then pay attention to your conversions. If you need more traffic and sales, motivated affiliates can also help drive traffic and give you a good boost in sales.
Further Reading
