How to Increase your Online Sales

Even today, many merchants create a website thinking that as soon as they are online the customers will suddenly flock to their store buying lots of things, making them lots of money in the process.

This simply isn't the case. If you create a website on the Internet then no-one is going to visit it unless they know that it is there. At this point you are probably thinking 'Search Engines' and of course getting listed on Search Engines is part of the answer, but the complete answer is a much wider concept... MARKETING!

You need to be using at least 5 of the following marketing methods....

• Search Engine Natural Listings
• Search Engine Pay Per Click
• Internet Advertising
• Direct Mail
• PR
• Traditional Print Advertising
• Telesales
• Joint Ventures
• Affiliate Marketing
• Radio
• Television
• Leaflet Drops

Remember that with any form of marketing such as those listed above, they are only worth doing if you can track your return on investment. It's no use spending £1000/$1000 on an advert in a magazine if you have no idea whether it is making you any money or not. Even if your sales increase when the magazine is published the cause might be something completely different like a seasonal change or similar. RomanCart has ways to track and measure the response rate of all of these. For example if you placed an advert in a magazine, you would put a promotional code on the ad for example giving free shipping. Then when people buy from you as a result of seeing the ad, RomanCart will show exactly how much money you made from the add. It gets more interesting than that though... The value of a customer is not how much they buy from you with their first purchase, it is how much the spend with you over the next 1,2 and 3 years. Once you have been using RomanCart a while, the system will know your average 1,2 and 3 year customer spend and so can show you how much the projected future value of the advert is. This type of information is incredibly valuable and is normally only found on bespoke marketing systems costing millions.

Don't forget that there are 3 ways to increase your profits.

• 1. Get more customers. - This must be done, but it is the most difficult and expensive part of marketing. Search engines, Advertising and all of the above list are used for this.
• 2. Get your customers to buy from you more often. - This is done by communicating with your existing customer base. Sending regular emails, direct mailshots and even phoning your customers - especially your best customers can have a huge effect on this and is what separates hugely successful businesses from most other businesses selling the same products.
• 3. Get your customers to spend more with you on each transaction. - This is done with Up-Sell and Cross-Sell, communicating with your customers and prospects and also having a website which is really easy to navigate.

Your website home page is the most important part of your website most visitors will make up their minds in less than 10 seconds and either take action and explore your site and buy, or drop out. With this in mind it is absolutely imperative that you have your top ten selling products on your home page ready to buy right away. Far too many stores have text such as 'We've been in business for the last 25 years, we're a great company...' etc. However this is all irrelevant to a customer who just wants to buy your products.

Even when you do this, how do you know that your website is as good as it can be? RomanCart provides Site Split Testing functionality, so that you can have 2 versions of a web page. 50% of your visitors will see one version, 50% the other, then RomanCart will show you how much money was made from each of the 2 different pages. Then you can refine the most effective page further to really optimize your site for selling.

There's other things about your website you should consider. If you are selling in the USA and the UK, then most customers in the USA will leave immediately if your website shows prices in Pounds Sterling, likewise UK customers will leave if all the prices are in dollars. With RomanCart you can create 2 versions of your website, one for the UK and one for the USA, paste a simple piece of code onto your home page, then customers in the USA will see the USA version and customers in the UK will see the UK version. This will normally hugely increase your sales as customers will be seeing website information relevant to their own location.

Finally - make sure your website is really easy to navigate. Get someone other than yourselves to site down in front of you and ask them to add a number of products to their basket. If they have any difficulty finding them then you need to consider how to make it easier. With RomanCart you can easily add a product search to your website which can really assist this type of problem.

You can do all of this with RomanCart! - Click on the button to the right NOW and start using it on your website right away!

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