As anyone with a little online sales experience will tell you, there's a lot more to the success formula than having a great storefront. In fact, with all the options available for setting up an online store these days, it's just about the easiest part of the process. Launching and maintaining a site to sell any product or service is almost an automated process.
The other side of the coin is that, of the thousands of sales sites launched annually, only a small percentage manage to turn a substantial profit. In this article, we'll explore a few of the possible reasons for lagging website sales and some resources that can help overcome them.
1. Analyze your Customer Base
Many online entrepreneurs have never even considered creating a business plan. This isn't to say that you can't succeed without it; it's just that preparing one forces you to ask yourself questions about important aspects of your business. The answers to those questions can help focus your efforts. One of those questions is “Who am I trying to reach?”
Finding and targeting your audience saves a tremendous amount of wasted time and effort. You may be able to “sell ice to an Inuit” as the saying goes, but you're more likely to sell it to a bartender. Whether you're just starting out or need to boost sales for your existing site, a Customer Analysis will help you focus your marketing at any stage.
Fortunately, there's a great guide available that will help you understand and implement your own analyses, in the form of a “For Dummies” guide. Check it out here.
2. Leverage Social Media
I know. You've heard this before. There's a very good reason for that: it works. Social media platforms are the new “word of mouth”, but much more powerful and if you're not utilizing them, you're losing business.
With the number of platforms out there today, this can be a full-time job and, in fact, many larger businesses hire managers just for this purpose. That's not affordable – or necessary – for us “little guys”. There's an add-on, extension or plugin that will help you utilize social media, no matter what your site platform.
One of our favorites is AddThis. It's available as an extension for Magento, a plugin for WordPress, and you can even add it to a standalone website!
3. Start an Opt-In Email Newsletter
You may have heard some negative things about this particular form of advertising. That's because it's often abused, sometimes unintentionally. The key to sending out a newsletter is getting it to people who want to read it. You'll find plenty of online companies ready to sell you lists of targeted email addresses, but be cautious. Not all these lists are kept up to date and sending unsolicited email is a good way to get your email server blocked.
A more reliable method is to create an opt-in form on your site, inviting people to subscribe. Be sure that there's an easy way for them to “unsubscribe”, too. This method tends to build better customer relations, and you can encourage your subscribers to invite their friends with promotional contests or giveaways now and then.
You an sign up for services like Constant Contact or MailChimp for standalone newsletter solutions. There are also extensions and plugins available for most platforms:
Newsletter for WordPress is a free, complete solution that even times your sends to avoid flooding your email server. It can be extended with other plugins for WooCommerce, statistics and more.
Magento users will like the Advanced Newsletter extension, but be warned, pricing starts at $139.00.
4. Make Sure Visitors Find What They're Looking For
So far, we've talked about getting traffic to your site. Once they've arrived, it's imperative to get them to the right place as quickly as possible. That means always knowing which products are hot and getting those in front of your buyers quickly. It's important to monitor your sales and your inventory to make sure you don't run out of the hot items and to promote those items on your site and in your newsletters.
Another great tool is an intuitive search interface so customers can find anything else they're looking for quickly. Remember, you have a limited amount of time before a potential buyer gives up and looks somewhere else. The best site search programs remember the popular searches and suggest them according to user input.
The good news is that there's one company that provides a great package of solutions for searching and reporting for popular platforms and they'll even design a custom package for you. You can give your visitors an incredible search experience, while having the search results tracked and automatically analyzed to recommend products, promotions and more for you.
No matter what platform you're using, take a look at what instantsearch+ by FastSimon can do for your site.
5. Lose the Distractions
In retrospect, maybe this should have been number one on the list. clutter is not your friend.
There's a reason that advertisers create minimalistic designs: the singular purpose is to sell a product. By the same token, your web store is there to get people to spend their money on what you're offering. Ornate graphics and unnecessary “bells and whistles” detract from your product images and increase load time. Take a look at the top selling sites on the Web. You'll find they're clean, focused and easy to navigate.
If you're not a designer, don't try to be one. With all the free, extendable platforms you have at your fingertips, choose one, find a simple, clean e-commerce theme and put it to work for you. We've done some of the legwork for you:
WordPress | Themes
Obviously, this isn't a complete list of ways to increase your sales. Taking these 5 simple steps, however, will make a difference in a short time. Try these steps and share with us your results in the comments!