Online business allows people to get into the commercial world and become their own bosses without large start-up costs.
It’s also a key driving force behind thousands of established companies. With the Internet being available wherever we go, the amount of money earned and spent on the Internet keeps increasing and is now challenging spending in traditional land-based stores.
The fact people use the online world for practically everything means you don’t have to rely on customers to walk into your store any longer. They’ll turn up whilst shopping, watching TV, and eating breakfast.
To take advantage of this lucrative market, you have to go about things in the right way. Here are seven tricks to boost your online business and increase sales.
1. Start a Campaign
Plan your campaign. It’s no use going in with all guns blazing if you have no idea what you’re trying to achieve. Create a detailed plan with short-term objectives and long-term ambitions.
Define the message you want to expose as much as possible. You need to look into establishing a brand and not just closing a sale.
Return customers are where the money is.
2. Affiliate Adverts
Google AdWords is the main affiliate program for online advertising. For every person who clicks on one of these adverts, you gain some money.
You can also create your own adverts to run on Google. The money isn’t great. You won’t make anything of note until you can bring in thousands of customers a month.
What it will teach you is what works and what doesn’t. Your SEO and social media campaigns will reflect themselves in the success of your adverts. If more people visit your business, you’ll have more ad clicks.
3. Reputation
The trusted brands which have been doing business for over a decade have carried on for this long because of a strong online reputation.
It makes new customers feel safe and old customers believe they’re getting the best deal. One rumor can make or break the reputation of a website.
Focus on treating your customers right and responding to criticism in a professional way.
It takes a long time to build up an online reputation. Don’t expect any real results for at least six months to a year.
4. Make Yourself Accessible
Customers must find it easy to discover you in the first place. You should be available through Google, all major social media sites, YouTube, and via mobile devices. They should see your website on anything and everything.
Your website should be easy to remember and simple to input into the address bar.
Link back to yourself whenever you make a comment on another website. Tell people about yourself in chat rooms and on Internet forums.
The first step to making yourself accessible is to make sure you appear on Google when you type your business name into the search engine.
5. Shop Front
Your website should gear itself towards online shopping. It should have a design which is easy on the eye and simple to deal with.
It shouldn’t have complicated features and functions. Look at it from the eyes of someone who has never used the Internet before. Dedicate it towards this audience.
Different customers have certain tastes. Review the current trends in your industry and figure out what works and what doesn’t. This is the most important part of creating an effective shop design.
6. A Friendly Reminder
As already mentioned, the success of your business hinges on the number of return customers you can snag. Start with a basic RSS feed to reconnect with these customers.
This simply alerts previous shoppers to any new updates. The next step is to start a newsletter and encourage people to subscribe. Set up some SMS alerts and send the (very) occasional promotional email.
7. Build and Test
Become more than one company. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. You set up a number of shops with an entirely different brand but all selling the same products.
Test different marketing methods and see which one has the most success. When you’re done testing, you merge them together and focus on one.
This gives you valuable information about what works and what doesn’t. It requires a lot of work in the immediate future, but it’s worth it.
