10 Ways To Increase Online Sales

Successful companies never take anything for granted. Whenever implement new ways to increase online sales, they will implement, test, and then evaluate, to determine how sales were affected. By tweaking, you too can optimize your sales.

Let’s look at 10 ways to increase online sales.

1.    SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

You should think of search engine optimization as a powerful, long-term strategy to increase your sales and improve your revenue. SEO takes a real commitment on your part if you want it to work. Google loves to make changes on how it ranks sites quite regularly so you’ll need to stay on top of fit.

If you work hard, and get your e-store to page one of the search engine results for your keywords that represent the products you are selling, then you’ll enjoy the free targeted traffic that comes with that placement. This traffic is easy to convert to sales.

If you figure out the SEO game and your product is a niche market that’s smaller if you make it to the top, many times you can enjoy that ranking for years without much additional effort on your part. It’s a great way to increase online sales.

2.    PPC (Pay Per Click)

Most of us have seen those small Google ads that appear at the side of Google search results. These are the ad links that make Google rich and increase online sales for companies. PPC is a type of online advertising that many websites rely on where you as the advertiser pay if someone clicks on your ad, which is why they are call pay per click.

PPC is like a silent auction where the advertiser bids on specific keywords or phrases that they believe their target market would search for. It’s important that you trace how effective your PPC campaign works to increase online sales.

3.    Classified Ads

Kijiji and Craigslist are two of the most popular online classified ad forms, but there are many others. What’s nice about classified ads is that it’s free or a very cheap form of advertising that can increase online sales by directing targeted traffic to your site. It’s also underutilized.

4.    Blog

Blogs are a very powerful tool to increase online sales. The search engines frequently update blogs making them a very viable tool. In fact, companies that blog have 55% more visitors to their website, and they generate 67% more leads per month. That should be enough to convince you just how valuable this can be, and best of all blogs are free.

5.    Real Testimonials

If you are going to use real testimonials make sure you are using the right kind. For example, “Love your product! Sally T,” is not the kind of testimonial you want. No one believes that kind of testimonial. What works better is using tools like a Facebook fan page where testimonials are posted live and you can see they are legitimate. They build trust. LinkedIn and Twitter also work well.

6.    Online Video

YouTube is the online video platform of choice. Reading is becoming a dying art, while people turn to YouTube or other online video sources to learn about products. With video, there is a stickiness factor created, that is difficult to get with almost any other web marketing tool and there is proof that to increase online sales, online videos can be very helpful.

People like to learn by watching videos. If you want to increase views of your videos, include the length of the video and whether it is safe or not safe to watch at work. You can create simple product and/or service demos that are way ahead of the competition who is still struggling to build websites that are text based.

7.    Clear Powerful Call to Action

At the end of the day, this is what it all comes down to. You want to turn your visitors into paying customers. You need to create a strong, clear, and powerful call to action. A “click to buy” button is easy to create. But getting to that button is where the work lies. You need to tell the visitor clearly and concisely why they should click that buy button. It needs to be compelling and the visitor should want to click that button. Increase online sales with a strong call to action.

8.    Support and Encourage Impulsive Buys

Fast food restaurants have mastered this technique. “Do you want fries with that…?” You can use this same technique online by suggesting products that are related, and by sharing associated linked products. Limited time offers, or two days left sales.

9.    Provide Total Product Information

Make sure your website is very informational providing visitors informational pages and full details on your website. Pages that are packed with useful information are viewed by humans and the search engine bots. Good information also makes your site appear authoritative.

Don’t forget to add thumbnail images that when clicked open into full size photos. The thumbnails allow the pages to load faster, but for those visitors that are looking for a larger image, just a quick click and it’s there for them.

10.    Affiliate Sales

If you want to increase online sales, look to affiliate marketers to promote your product. In fact, it’s a great way to quickly increase your sales. Offer the affiliate marketers a percentage of the sale. You make a little less profit, but that extra exposure can increase your overall revenue, so it is definitely a win-win. There are many different sites where you can set up your affiliate such as Clickbank, then others will come along and choose who they would like to be affiliated with, and the rest is generally fairly automated.

These 10 ways to increase online sales are proven to work, but as we mentioned earlier you should always track results to determine what is working best for you and also to know if something is not working. Far too many companies just amble along assuming everything is working well. Don’t let that be you.