Increase website sales – Tips & Advice

Are you disgusted with your website sales while watching other web business owners soar past you in the search engines?  

You're not alone, if this is you, it's almost a sure bet that at least one of the following is holding you back:

• You're not getting enough traffic
• You're not getting targeted traffic
• You're not converting your visitors to sales

For many internet business owners, increasing your website sales may simply be a matter of tweaking a few things here or there, for others it might require more extensive website redesign, but in the short term it's worth it to you to take a look at how these things might relate to your decreased sales and what you can do about it.

Not Getting Enough Traffic

This is a big one that plagues most internet marketers.  Getting traffic today isn't what it use to be. 

Ten years ago, because of fewer competing websites and internet marketers, it was much easier to get top search engine ranking without doing a thing. Today you have a lot more sites to compete with, and depending on your niche the competition can be fierce.  

Today's solution is to look at your competitors as a marketing advantage.  With the advent of Web 2.0, social marketing has made it much easier to connect and link with other prominent sites. Today you might not be able to simply build a site, put it out there and expect tons of traffic but with a little social marketing savvy you can rise leaps and bounds in the SERPS. 

Your best strategy is to extend your reach as far as you possibly can. Strategies such as article marketing, pay per click adverting and one-way linking methods can help generate traffic but today's marketing environment calls for more social interaction which builds trust and projects authority.   

Start networking and socializing in your niche by using tools like Twitter, Facebook and Squidoo. In fact Tiffany Dow's Social Marketing on Squidoo guide and bonuses is an impressive Squidoo resource and a must read for anyone who needs a fast way to to increase their traffic. 

These social marketing tools are excellent ways to utilize socialization strategies, build trust and familiarity. Resist the temptation to use them to directly promote your products and services, instead use them to promote yourself as someone with knowledge, expertise and a supportive friend.  

Not Getting Targeted Traffic

You need to get your message in front of the people that are most interested in what you have to offer.

If you have an e-book about how to get pregnant for example, you don't want to attract visitors that already have kids, instead you want to reach women looking specifically for how to get pregnant.

This will require you take some time and look at who your target market is.  Think in terms of gender, age and income.  Quantcast is an excellent free tool for grabbing stats from you website on those very things. Once you know exactly who these people you can scope out where they hang out. 

Don't do business in a vacuum. Branch out and connect on related forums and blogs.  Find out what specific things your target market wants to know and make helpful comments. The internet is bursting with related sites, blogs, forums and social marketing venues. Devoting an hour, even thirty minutes a day to connecting with people who can benefit from your expertise goes a long way in bringing targeted traffic back to your site.  

Not Converting visitors to sales

We all want the most visitors possible, but getting tons of visitors doesn't mean a thing if they're all clicking off within the first few seconds.  If a visitor can find they need or want on your site you're wasting your time and theirs. As a matter of fact, a well converting website can afford to get less traffic.

A general, really general, rule of thumb for most website owners is one sale per about 100 visitors.  If you are not making at least that then you might want to experiment with your site design or your salescopy. 

If you're not doing this already, consider capturing your visitor information and providing consistent communications is still one of the best marketing strategies both off and online.  Setting up an account with an autoresponder such as Aweber for example, and putting out useful tips and information each week works wonders for building buyer confidence and trust in you.

Keep in mind that very few visitors buy the first time around, people on the net have a 'show me' attitude, they might not be keen on buying from you today but if you can prove yourself down the line, they'll come around.

Nope, not done yet …almost

-  Check your site's loading time, a slow loading website gets a click off every time. Here's a pretty good straight forward website performance tool you can check your website against.

-  Check your order/delivery process if you have one and make sure it's easy to follow and doesn't leave your customer confused.  

-  Check for spelling and grammar errors, this can be a big turn off. 

-  Use lots of white space, a busy page leaves a visitor confused. 

-  Be sure to post your contact information as well as customer testimonials and feedback. 

Of course it won't help you to promote a site that can't make a sale so be sure you are using good website design best practices. Putting time and money trying to get visitors to a poorly designed site won't do much for increasing your website sales.

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