MAIN Business Small Business Marketing

Turning Your Site Traffic Into Sales

Here are some strategies to help you convert your clicks into customers:

Build a site that is appealing and easy to use.

• Do you present your product or service clearly?
• Do you offer articles with the information a good sales person would present if your site was a "real" store or office?
• It's your site - you can't be unbiased. Get honest feedback from others not involved with your site.
• If you have pictures on your Web site, make sure the images load FAST and are high quality. Business sites don't need a lot of graphics. If you use pictures - make sure to use the "ALT" tag to explain in a few words what the picture describes.

Is it easy to place an order?

• Make sure that your ordering section — your shopping cart — is easy to use and works. The statistics on sales getting lost in abandoned shopping carts are very high. Don't let all of your hard work go to waste because your customer can't find a cashier!
• Make sure that you can deliver the goods when a visitor gets directed to your site.
• Remember - put yourself in your customer's position.

Advertise to Attract Customers

• Create a blog that potential and existing customers can read. Do an update at least once a week. Use it to provide information and keep them updated on new products, sales and seasonal offers. Make sure your information is accurate and useful. If it isn't, you'll lose your "expert" status and your customers as well. An updated and useful blog is another plus when it comes to search engine result page rankings for your site.
• Target your audience, but remember to always step back and look at your ad from the customer's point of view. Ask yourself how you would feel about the ad. Shopping for goods and services is a very emotionally driven experience. Don't turn off your visitors with your marketing or you will lose future customers.
• Choose cost effective keywords for pay per click search engine advertising. This can get expensive — focus your ads on special items and seasonal needs. Bulbs, grass seed, weed wackers all cost less to target than a more inclusive ad. Remember, a satisfied customer who found your grass seed when they want to buy grass seed will be back when they need other supplies.
• Buy relevant advertising from related Internet sites.
• If you sell toys, try advertising on sites that sell other related types of children's items. Many of the top activity sites for kids accept ads. You may also think about placing ads on sites that provide parenting tips.
• Advertising on a children's clothing site would be less effective...when parents are shopping for school clothes, they seldom are interested in spending money on anything else for the kids.
• Ask people you know to get unclouded opinions. You may not be the best judge of where to spend your ad budget!
• Contact web masters of sites that have related products or services to sell. Don't use a preformatted letter. They just get deleted. Introduce yourself and your service and explain why visitors to your site would be interested in the other site's product.
• A bonus from this is links from good, relevant sites help improve your ranking in search engine results, but the real focus here is on quality links for your customers...not getting over on the search engines. A few well placed links on busy sites related to your products can be your best source of customers.

Bring people to your site who are shopping for what you sell and make it easy for them to buy what they want. You will be rewarded with an increase in sales and in loyal return customers. Intelligent ad targeting, good site design, plenty of information and an easy to use shopping cart... That's what conversion is all about.