How to Increase Repeat Sales For Your Online Shop

Existing customers are the lifeblood of your business. Persuading satisfied customers to buy more of your products is a far easier task than winning the confidence of new prospects. Why? Existing customers already made the decision to buy from you at least once and should now be comfortable with the benefits you bring them. Prospects have yet to make that mental leap. People tend to stay with a trusted incumbent and it takes a major event for them to change.

Here are three ways you can stimulate the urge to buy more stuff from your website:

1. Communicate regularly with existing customers to remind them you’re there and encourage repeat orders. Email newsletters, Facebook pages, regular Tweets all keep customers up-to-date on new products, discounts and other news of interest.
2. Make repeat ordering as simple as possible. Allow people to set up an account so they don’t need to enter payment and delivery details each time they order. Create an order process which reduces the number of necessary clicks to the bare minimum.
3. Run loyalty programs. Make sure that anyone who purchases gets showered with discount deals and advance notice of any promotions you’re running and preferential service.

Can you outswim the local SEO sharks?

The question we get asked by clients more than any other is ‘How can I get my website to position 1 with Google for (insert popular search term here)?’

It’s like the old joke sadistic scuba diving instructors tell the newbies just before they  jump into seas where sharks are likely to show up. “If anything over 15 feet appears please make a big circle around me facing outwards and wait for him to go away. If that doesn’t work and he starts to look interested in us as lunch then everybody swim like hell for the boat. And remember you won’t need to out-swim the shark, you just need to swim faster than your buddies.”

Safari guides tell their own lion-themed variation in the Serengeti.

What does it all mean in SEO terms? Don’t worry too much about the big boys, focus on out-performing the local competition and you’ll probably be alright.

Formula One Drivers know the most important thing they need do each season is beat their teammate. Ask yourself – what can  I do to make my business a local success? And if you haven’t already done so the first step is to get listed with Google Places.

Will your product sell online? Here’s one quick way to find out

No-one likes uncertainty and it’s really important to reduce the unknowns if you’re thinking about starting up a business. If you have an idea for an e-commerce product it would be good to find out whether people are likely to buy it before you begin spending money. Big companies would assemble some focus groups, commission research and run tests. Trouble is that you probably don’t have the budget for this type of activity. So what to do?

One quick and dirty way to find out what’s happening in the real world is to research what’s selling on ebay. Here’s how.

• Sign in to ebay. If you don’t already have an account it’s dead simple to set one up.
• Enter a description of the item you plan to sell into the search box. The first thing to notice are the drop down prompts showing popular searches. For example if you enter bike the prompts might say road bike, racing bike, mountain bike. Search the niche you’re intending to target.
• Click on Advanced which is just to the right of the search box.  Enter your search term in the box. Scroll down and tick Completed Listings in the left menu. Scroll down again and set the minimum number of bids to 1.
• Click Search. The results will show you all the auctions which ended recently where there was at least one bid. You’re looking for all those where the price is in green which means the auction ended in a paid sale.

Make notes, think about margins, shipping costs. Is this an area where you might be able to turn a profit?

9 ways to improve your ecommerce website’s seo performance

Yesterday was one of those ( very enjoyable) days when it seemed like all anyone wanted to talk about was e-commerce. I found myself answering loads of interesting questions which all boiled down to one essential: “what’s the smartest, quickest way to get online and start selling products?”

The fact is that nowadays you can sell almost anything online – take a long look through Amazon’s vast array of departments or browse through Google’s shopping section to see what I mean.

The whole process starts with a good business website, the plain fact is that no-body will take you seriously if your website’s not up to scratch. And be sure to choose a search engine friendly shopping cart system so buyers won’t give up in frustration when they’ve made the decision to part with their cash.

The next thing on your list of must dos is visibility – you can build the best site in the world but if no-one comes to visit all your efforts will have been for nothing. Remember, the Field of Dreams strategy was a proven bust back in the 90s. Sure you can always use pay-per-click – and you probably should – but a well optimised website will bring you ‘free’ clicks.
Here are 9 tips which should help your e-commerce website improve seo performance:

1. Optimize only the ‘content pages’ not the administrative pages like contact us and about us.
2. Always add  content to go with your images.
3. Focus. Concentrate on one keyword or phrase per content page.
4. Remember the seo basics – use unique page title and meta descriptions for each product page.
5. Create search engine friendly headings (H1s).
6. Keep an eye on keyword density in the body text. Keyword stuffing is never a good idea but make sure the keywords are well represented on the page.
7. Whenever possible use keywords in URLs
8. Use alt tags for all your product images
9. Create a good html sitemap not only useful for search engines but also for visitors

Bonus Tip

Update your product pages frequently in order to increase the crawl rate.

How do you get more people to buy your products online?

Lack of credibility is a conversion killer. If you’ve ever tried to work out why visitors browse but don’t buy it’s highly likely to be one thing – credibility. The plain truth is people don’t trust you no matter how persuasively you argue the case. The leap from browsing to purchasing is huge and requires confidence. This is why most of your sales will either be repeat sales or word of mouth recommendations.

How do you get more first timers to buy? Third party recommendations or testimonials. Real ones – especially if you’ve ever sold to any big name brands. Be sure to add as much detail as possible:names, locations, verbatim quotes, pictures. Anything which brings the testimonial to life. Add in the awards you’ve won, stories in the press about you and you’re starting to makes some headway.

Watch the numbers change.