It’s nothing new, with the economy being down it is harder to make sales today than it was 12 months ago. Not only is it more difficult, but revenues are dropping. With all the companies doing everything they can to encourage sales via discounts, revenues are getting much tighter. With that being said it might be getting worse before it gets better. However, there are a few things you should do to get through this.
Your most likely not going to sale as many high profit items as you want but one way to fix that is to lower your profit and sell more of that product. Think the dollar store. Say you normally sell 100 products a day at a net profit of $20 each ($2,000 a day). You are now seeing not only the number of sales drop to 50 a day, but your net profit dropped to $15 ($750 a day). In today’s economy it is going to be very difficult to bump up your net profits, so the alternative is to increase the number of orders. So we are going to focus on increasing products sales.
STEP 1: Increase your current revenue avenues
1. Increase the number of paid search engines
Assuming you are selling your products in Adwords, Yahoo, and MSN Adcenter already, it’s time to test 2nd and 3rd tier engines. Remember, we are not looking for blow out revenue numbers. We are simply looking to increase the number of orders while maintaining a positive return on investment. Anything generating positive ROI is something to keep running. Examples of some of these engines are Ask.com, 7search, MIVA, and search123.
2. Increase the number of shopping engines
One of your first steps if you are not already doing so is to join Google Base. It is 100% free. It’s a great way to get more exposure to your products and who knows may help you sell more. If you are already using shopping engines, use the same concept as above, add more of them.
Here is a list of some of the top shopping engines:
Google Base
Yahoo shopping
Shopping.com
MSN shopping
Bizrate
Shopzilla
PriceGrabber
Nextag
Smarter
Shop.com
3. This is all about search engine optimization of best practices, here are a few must do’s:
a. Each product/service should have its own page
b. Each page of your website should have a totally unique title tag, meta tag, and content. If you sell red sticks and blue sticks, do not simply replace the words “red” and “blue” on those product pages and tags. The tags and content need to be 100% unique.
c. Go through your website as if you were going to buy something. Ask a friend to do that as well. You will be surprised by what you see. “Buy” button hard to find? Once you find the product are there clear instructions on what to do next? How long is your check out process? Is it simple, fast, and easy to buy your product or service?
d. Using your analytics program, which is an absolute must have, look at your bounce rates, and where people are leaving your site. Why are they leaving? Test different promotion modules- is “Save Up To 50%” better than “Free Shipping?”
STEP 2: Time to add new avenues of income
Step back from your business and look at your business as if you were an outside consultant. What are you missing? Do you sell shoes? Are there popular brands or models you are not selling? Get those brands and start selling them. Do you have an affiliate program? Look into starting an affiliate program and have others sell your products for you.
What payment types do you accept? Do you ship overseas? By simply adding PayPal as a payment method you may increase the number of sales not just due to the addition of a new way for your customers to pay, but our overseas sales increased as well because it is a trusted source of international payments.
This is all about just making yourself more friendly for the customers. First they need to find you and then once they do you need to make it easy for them to buy. Sounds easy but you would be surprised how many business are not taking advantage of this.
- May 18, 2009
- | Category: General, Online Marketing, Tips
- | Comments: 0
