These following
six basic tools and strategies help you bring in, qualify, inform visitors
and turn them into sources of feedback, referrals, and, ultimately, customers.
- Closing
Rate
- Server
Logs
- Sales
Funnel
- After
Sales Support
- Site
Layout
- Online
Ads
What's
your closing rate?
If your
site has 100 visitors and you make 1 sale then 1/100 which equals
1% conversion rate.
As soon
as your sales volume starts to rise you can see the benefit from increasing
your conversion rate.
If your
conversion rate is high (say 20%) then you have to look at marketing
rather than sales issues.
If your
conversion rate is low (say 1%) then you need to take a good look
at what is going wrong.
What
do your Server logs say?
- Who are
your main referrers (i.e. how people got to your site)?
- What
are the most popular entry pages (i.e. the first page in your site
a customer looked at)?
- How sales-oriented
are your exit pages (i.e. the last page a customer looked at before
leaving.
- Normally
the exit page is the page that put potentials customer off from looking
further in your site. It may be a page with an obvious error on it
or it may just be that your visitors had to jump through too many
pages in orderto get to the sales page.
Online
After Sales Support
Best chance
of making a new sale is to your returning customer.
So, treat
them well after they have made a purchase.
Deal with
their order and despatch it as quickly as you can.
Keep them
informed, or -better yet - allow them to track their order.
Turn them
into loyal advocates: deal with their complaint as quickly as possible.
Trust
them since they trusted you.
Have your
after sales email address and or phone line visible and operational.
Use autoresponders to acknowledge reception and prompt response.
Online
Ads
Adverts
are displayed on search engine results pages, so you are almost guaranteed
to get visitors coming to your site.
However:
- Adverts
cost much per visitor. This is great since the lead that has been
generated is a qualified lead. But if you are selling low value
items, then the cost of that sale might means low profits, no profits
or losses
- You
risk the relying on paid for adverts only to bring online sales
leads.
- Google
and other search engines will not count the fact that you paid for
ads towards your overall link popularity.
It is
much better to work on all aspects of your site that will increase
your link popularity before relying on ads.
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