Web Marketing Strategy Update

It’s little touches that can make all the difference for an online merchant’s bottom line. For example, consider an online retailer who gets 20,000 hits per month, and has an average order value of $75 – that is to say, customers are spending $75 on average per order.

If that store’s conversion rate – the percentage of customers who become buyers – is one-percent, then that store can expect to make about $15,000 that month from about 200 orders. With a two-percent conversion rate, profits double as well to $30,000. Likewise, profits plunge when the conversion rate does.

Increasing conversion rates should be a primary goal of any online retailer. Unfortunately, there’s no magic formula; no easy, guaranteed way to do it. Some marketers with a narrow focus on a particular niche market might enjoy conversion rates as high as ten percent, while others, who employ identical marketing strategies, might struggle to see even a tenth of a percent. Thus, boosting conversion rates is a bit more like an art than a fine-tuned science or mathematical discipline.
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There’s a serious flaw in many people’s approach to SEM (Search Engine Marketing). It’s simply that they tend to change their tactics too often – sometimes even replacing tactics that work with ones that don’t.

Search engine marketing focuses on the monetization of an online business or website. As long as making money is the goal, the business should survive. However, if the goal becomes getting or having the newest and latest gadgets on your website or blog, the likelihood of success diminishes…significantly.

Let’s take a look at what you should be doing…

Refine, don’t Replace

This is why it is imperative for you to find tactics that work and then refine them to perform even better. By using metrics on your traffic and sales, you can tweak your tactics until you see more and more of both.
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Times have changed. Closed markets with restricted access and limited choices are a thing of the past. These days customers can, and often do, vote with their feet.

Given the dynamics of an economy that expands each day with the introduction of new businesses online, it is critical that you implement effective customer retention strategies to keep the customers you have as you look to expand your customer base.

Today I’m going to share with you some extremely cost-effective ideas to help you keep your business moving forward while retaining the business you have. Implementing some or all of these strategies has a compounding effect over time, leading to incredible increases in growth.
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Building your online presence can pay dividends for your business in terms of market reach, brand exposure, perception of your company and ultimately increased sales. There are numerous tools and strategies you can use that help you to build online presence, from SEO services and blogging to social media. Exactly which tools to use depends on your market, your business, your skills and your resources.

But whatever means you use to build your online presence, here are a few tips that will help ensure your success.

Do Your Research

It can be easy to get caught up in buzzwords and hype over the ‘next big thing’. Make sure you don’t run headlong into something that you don’t understand. Before you set up a Facebook page or Twitter account, look for advice on how to use these tools and others in the most effective way. It’s more difficult to pull back from screw-up or publicity disaster than it is to avoid falling into it in the first place.
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