What can I do to get more sales from my website?
Website marketing is a broad term for the tasks used to get more visitors to your site and to convert them to profitable action.
3 General types of website marketing
1. Online communications (email marketing)
2. Website traffic growth (get more people to your website)
3. Content Optimization (making sure your websites persuades people to buy or make contact e.g. a good looking, easy to use site and offering customers what theyre looking for)
No quick fix
Improving the effectiveness of your website through website marketing relies on a combination of efforts over a period of time to get the best results.
Website marketing is not a one-fix solution, but more of an ongoing process of providing skilled resource in a progressive way and then following and monitoring gradual improvement.
Online Communications
Online communications is about targeting potential customers with email flyers to attract attention to your business and website. For email marketing to work effectively you, or your website marketing company, need a specialised email marketing application and expertise to target and approach potential customers.
Cost
Most email marketing companies require a set up fee, a monthly service fee and then a pay-as-you-go per-message fee.
Website Traffic Growth
There are two main types of marketing efforts that improve website traffic;
1. SEO
Search Engine optimisation (SEO) builds up free website traffic from search engines via unpaid search engine advertising.
There are many and varying ways to improve what number you’re listed at in Google’s (or any other given search engine) search results. Here are 3 key ways;
1. Technical aspects - your website designer should be aware of these so your site is search engine friendly.
2. Quality content improves the value of your site’s relevance to the keywords being searched by your potential customers.
3. Links in and out of your website to other trustworthy sites give credibility to your site.
2. Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine marketing refers to website marketing aimed at maximising your paid search engine advertising. Google accounts for over 80% of all searches, so generally when people talk about paid advertising, Google is their first stop.
Signing up with Google to advertise is the easy part and anyone can be signed up, and paying Google within a matter of minutes. However with a modest budget of $10 per day, if you don’t know what you’re doing you can easily waste precious advertising money. Google are more than happy to take your money while you learn their advertising model, fine tune your campaign and un-avoidably make mistakes.
Cost
Most companies charge a set up fee and an ongoing monthly fee. The ongoing monthly expense depends on the structure of the management plan. There are 2 main structures:
1. Flat rate - the management fee and advertising/SEO are included
in the flat monthly fee. Be sure to choose a company that is transparent about where your money is going - you don't want to be paying large management fee's and only a small amount towards advertising.
2. Variable rate - you pay a fixed management fee plus your chosen advertising budget directly incurred from Google or other search engine.
SEO is greatly affected by the comptitiveness of your industry and your current situation, so most companies will offer a free SEO analysis, after which they will report on all the areas of SEO improvements and provide a fee rate.
Content Optimisation
Content optimisation’ sounds a lot more complicated than what it really is. The goal of content optimisation is to improve your website’s information to persuade browsers to take action e.g. enquire about a product and/or special offer, call you to discuss what they want, email you for more information, sign up for your newsletter etc.
A copy writer is a professional who can write content for your site that is meaningful and interesting for a person looking at your website for the first time. Creating content (‘copy’) that continues to induce and consistently achieve high performing lead-generating websites is a task that takes skill, time and is ongoing.
Cost
Hiring a professional ‘copy’ writer can cost upwards of $100/hr, however your website design company should be able to provide these services at a reduced rate, and you could expect to pay $90-$200 per page. (There is plenty of online help, on how to write your own copy if the budget won’t cover the expense).
What can I do to get more sales from my website?
1. Ensure that whoever you pay to do your website achieves 2 important marketing objectives; search engine optimisation and effective (optimised) content.
2. Be patient - website marketing takes time; you will need to be patient for results to show. Be wary of anyone that can claim to get you listed no. 1 on search rankings within a short period. They’re not likely to be able to return the results promised without costing you a lot of money.
3. Keep up-to-date - you can make affordable changes to your site content that are just as important as paid search engine advertising. Revise and update your site’s content, offer your customers continued value through your site etc.
4. Committment - website marketing is ongoing, just as you are improving your website and search engine rankings, your competitors and new players to the market are edging for more market share.
Do I need Online Marketing?
More than 200 million times a day, people use Google and its partner sites to find what they're looking for. If you want to expand your market and increase your profit, online marketing is a very valuable, and if done correctly, very affordable marketing tool.
