How To Increase Your Online Sales
an Opinion
By Jennifer Johnson
[January 30th, 2002]
Disappointed with your online sales?
What would you say if I told you, chances are, your
less-than-stellar sales can be attributed to one of three problems?
If you aren't making the sales you envisioned, it's probably due
to one of these three things:
- You aren't getting enough traffic
- You aren't getting the right kind of traffic
- Your site isn't converting your visitors to customers
I'll discuss the first two problems in Part I of this article and
Part II will address some ways to increase your conversion ratio.
PROBLEM ONE: Not Enough Traffic
Simply put, no visitors = no sales.
You can have the best product in the world, but if no one can
find you online, what good does it do you?
You must devote a significant amount of time daily to attracting
visitors to your site. There are lots of ways to do just that.
Here are a few means to attract visitors:
- Submit to the major search engines and directories.
- Launch one or more pay-per-click campaigns. Overture and Findwhat.com are two PPC engines I like.
- Start your own email newsletter in order to maintain contact with visitors and
(hopefully) convert them to customers at some point in the future.
- Utilize banner ads. Many publishers now offer pay-per-click banner advertising
in addition to the traditional CPM (pay-per-impression) model, so you can get
more bang for your advertising buck.
- Locate email newsletter advertising opportunities. Try Ezine Ad Auction or
simply look for rate cards/advertising info on the sites and in the newsletters
where you want to advertise.
- Become a "regular" on high-traffic message boards whose subject
matter relates to your product/service. Many boards allow you to use your SIG
file to discreetly promote your site. NEVER blatantly advertise your
product or service! Most boards don't allow it and an obvious ad probably won't
get any attention anyway - at least not the good kind of attention.
- Subscribe to several quality Internet marketing newsletters. Trafficology's newsletter
is my new favorite. You'll be amazed at the unique traffic-generating ideas
people submit each month. Some are super, some are off-the-wall, some are
downright sneaky, but they're always unique.
PROBLEM TWO: Untargeted Traffic
We've established that visitors are necessary in order for an
online business to survive. Traffic, in and of itself, however, is worthless when it
comes to selling your products or services.
Yes, I know I just said "no visitors = no sales"; and
it's true. BUT, there's a corollary to that rule: the "wrong" visitors -
even lots of them = few/no sales, too.
We're all taught from the time we're baby webmasters that traffic
is the ultimate goal, but the reality is, it's not.
The ultimate goal is to sell your product or service - and unless
your product or service is advertising, traffic alone is useless.
You need targeted traffic.
Here's the bottom line: you want people to visit your site that
are actually interested in what you have to sell.
If you own a site that sells DVDs, visits from a million die-hard
VCR users who don't even own a DVD player might give you an ego rivaling Texas in
size when you view your stats, but it ain't gonna put any money in your pocket.
It's better to have fewer visitors and make lots of sales than to
have lots of visitors and make few sales, right?
Granted, if you have 100,000 visitors and your conversion ratio
is 0.1%, that equals 100 buyers. The same amount of buyers you'd have if you
converted 2% of 5,000 visitors...I don't know about you, but I'd rather have the
task of herding 5,000 people to my site than trying to attract 100,000.
Spend your hard-earned cash on getting your ads in front of your
target market's eyes. Do a little research; find out where they hang out online and
pursue advertising opportunities there.
You don't have to have huge numbers of visitors to make lots of
sales...IF you have the right kind of visitors.
Now, one exception to this rule is that cheap - or better yet,
FREE untargeted traffic doesn't hurt. In fact, you may actually pick up a few sales
from people who aren't your typical customer. They might have a friend that is
interested in your product or service and pass your link along to them, or something
along those lines.
If it doesn't cost you much, go for it. Save the big bucks for
advertising to your target market, though.
That wraps up Part I. Be sure and read Part II to learn how to
more effectively turn visitors into customers.
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