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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Today I want to talk about the synergy between quality content, SEO and building brands. From what started as a fairly routine monitoring exercise, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has moved well beyond just simply tracking and reporting on your keyword selection.

Over the years new factors to look at become more important and need to be added to reports, including looking at multi-channel funnels and conversion rates, which will give you a much better sense of how your campaign has been working to boost your traffic, sign ups and sales.

As well as developing reporting styles and focus over the years, the general principles of SEO have developed and changed. Much of this is to do with Google’s efforts of improving its search results, which has led them to look more favourably on brands.
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The number one goal of any ecommerce store is to convert hits to your site into sales. I’ve compiled these top ten sales conversion killers to help ensure you make more money from your website.

Difficult to Locate Products

It sounds simple, but if customers are unable to locate the item they are interested in, then they can’t buy it from you. Be sure all items are easy to find and that you have the most advanced search engine for your site. The easier the product is to find the more likely you will get a purchase.

Missing Item Information

Product listings that do not provide a clear description of what the consumer will be receiving are another conversion killer. Always provide clear, concise and complete product information for all of the products on your website.
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