Mumprenuers Tips | Nikki Backshall | Social Media Expert UK » ecommerce tips

5 Ways to Sell More Products and Services Online

Nikki Backshall — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:16:15 +0000

Here are my top five tips for selling more, all of which can be used within most business models. Put just one into practice and you will be earning more – try all five and the sky’s the limit.

1. Use Social Media to Make New Contacts

When you add Social Media to your arsenal, you have just as much reach as the big players. In fact, Social Media is allowing the little guy to shine as it’s all about the personal touch.

Using video not only drives laser targeted traffic to your business – it enables your customer to view you, your products or services and creates a bond of trust. Most sales offline are based on trust and recommendation, so video is an excellent tool to use as creating that trust without meeting in person is harder to do.

Sites like Facebook and Twitter allow you to directly connect with your niche, but the real power lies within the ability for your audience to share your information around. If you haven’t yet created a Twitter account or set up a Fan Page on Facebook – then I would highly recommend you do so.

Make sure that you post things of use and never blatant sales pitches as this really doesn’t work. Make sure that your profile links on social sites like these point to your blog rather than your money site.

2. Get Yourself a Blog in Addition to Your Money Site

A blog is a really, really good idea because when done correctly, you are giving out great info and creating a customer bond without even trying to sell anything.

Blogs are great tools for delivering info, adding special offers, creating an email list and filtering prospective customers through to your main money site. They are also excellent because you can update them regularly and use keyword rich post titles so that your customers can find you easily online.

I’d highly recommend WordPress.org as the blogging platform of choice as it is so versatile. It can be added to your existing website under a sub-domain of yoursite.com/blog, the flexibility of it will allow you to seamlessly blend it into your main site and the features and benefits of all the plugins you can use to enhance your blog are way too long to list.

Check out my post on content ideas for your blog if you need inspiration.

3. Re-Sell To Your Customers

Oh, I know it sounds simple but you would be surprised at just how many business owners who don’t do this. The simple point is; You are selling an excellent product or service, you have very satisfied customers who are obviously interested in whatever you are selling – so why not sell them something else?

You must have your favourite retailers? The ones that you always end up going back to because they sell what you want and are reliable – you know the kind I mean.

How often does an email from one of these retailers pop into your inbox with some special offer? You may not have intended to purchase that day, but when the 2 for 1 offer lands, you can’t resist clicking through….. and spending money! It doesn’t have to be retail, you can apply this to any business model.

You can do this in a number of ways, all of which I advise you do;

Set up a newsletter for past and prospective clients.
Send a follow up after sales message – include a special offer
Cross sell on your site. If they are buying one product, offer a discounted second product or show a list of related items
Make sure you keep your email newsletter regular so that your customer is comfortable with receiving them and opening them up
Use your Social Media sites to stay in touch with customers, so that they can always hear about your latest offerings and spread the word
Say thank you and treat your customers to exceptional customer service. If you do this, they will come back to you without much nudging! They are your biggest asset – so look after them.

4. Use Customer Testimonials and Reviews

As I mentioned before, selling is all about trust, so what better way to let your new customers know that you can be trusted, than letting them see some comments from previous customers.

Depending on what you are selling, you can use user reviews, which are incredibly powerful. Amazon turned the world of online selling with this exact method. It builds customer trust and loyalty.

Testimonials for a service you have provided also go a long way to building a great relationship with future clients. Don’t be afraid to ask for testimonials for the great service you provide. Most folks will be more than happy to send a few words. If you can get them to add a pic and a link to their business, then it really does solidify the deal!

And if they are kind enough to agree to a video testimonial – then all the better. Imagine you have a gardening business that you are promoting online, once you have completed your job – you can take a little Flip Camera (I use one of these) with you to the customer and ask if they’d mind giving you a little video testimonial. If they’re not camera shy and they are delighted with the work you have done, then they’ll happily agree. If not, you can still take some footage of the work you have completed and add a written testimonial from them. There are numerous business models that this works incredibly well for.

5. Drive More Traffic

It goes without saying that the more targeted customers you get to your site, the more sales you will ultimately enjoy. Using the ways we have discussed above, especially Social Media, will certainly afford you plenty more traffic. But don’t forget about the search engines. If someone searches for something you sell on Google – you want to be appearing at the top of that search, or at the very least within the top five sites.

The easiest way to get more traffic is to do some keyword research, find out the terms people are using to find your site or sites like it and make sure you optimise your site correctly.

You can read more about how to do this on previous posts I have written;

Ranking in Google

Do You Really Want to Rank for That?

Constructing Great Keyword Rich Titles

There’s plenty more in the archives, so have a dig about! If you found this post helpful – perhaps you could give it a tweet or hit the ‘like’ button below and share it on Facebook.

And of course, if you have any comments or thoughts or your own tips you’d like to share, then please do leave them below,

Nikki

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Ecommerce Tip 3 – Beating the Competition (Hint: It’s not hard)

Nikki Backshall — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:55:03 +0000

So here’s the thing; you want to get some more traffic, you check out what your competitors are up to and decide that there are too many to deal with – so you wander soulfully off, with your tail between your legs.

Seriously? Are you going to be defeated that easily?

You know, it’s better to see that there is competition in your chosen niche than find your way to the top of a market that isn’t in demand. If there are plenty of other companies vying for the top spot, luring customers in various ways and making a pretty penny into the deal – then this is a ripe market that you can exploit quite easily.

We’ve spoken about SEO Basics before and Why You Need to Know About Search Engine Optimization – so I won’t go over old ground too much, but unless your market is saturated and your competition is in the league of Amazon or Apple (even then you can squeeze in for some juicy, low-hanging fruit) you really have nothing to worry about.

The simple strategy for beating your competition lies within their webpages – they are giving you all the information that you need – you just need to go and have a look.

Simply studying what they have done and doing it better yourself will ensure that your business will rise to the top. Google doesn’t care who is running the site – whoever comes out top in their search, is the one who is best matched for their customers search query.

So, it’s back to basics – see what keywords they are targeting, make sure that you are optimised for them too, make full use of your title tags, meta description, page content and anchor text. These simple things combined with GREAT content will be enough for you to win any battle. Remember that most of your competition is there by fluke – they have optimised unwittingly and have no idea about search optimisation. So you already have the advantage.

Of course, if you’re scared of hard work then forget it, because an ongoing campaign to create great content that is well optimised is a huge time consumer – but if ever you have any niggles or doubts, just look out of your window one morning and watch as Karen dashes out the door with an armful of kids before heading to the office to have ‘the man’ barking orders at her all day….. still seem like too much effort now?

Photo Credit Alessandro Paiver

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Ecommerce | Small Business Tip 23 – Be Niche Specific

Nikki Backshall — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:16:47 +0000

You Are Not Amazon – So Do Not Try to Be…

Here’s a problem I see over and over – stores who aren’t really sure who they are or what their target market is.

It’s all a bit of a mish mash and it’s also highly off-putting to your customers.

Here’s the thing – we already have an Amazon, so we don’t need another one. Unless you can build it bigger and better (I’m gonna suggest that you can’t) then leave it alone and specialise within a niche.

The main reasons for having a target market to aim for is because you can build a sustainable business with raving fans. You can become the expert within that field and be the ‘go to’ guy that people turn to for specific products or services.

If you try to be a jack of all trades it just won’t work. You’ll never have time to get really, really good at the one thing – you’ll just be average at all of it.

Plus when you consider the social media aspect of it, it’s far easier to build a tribe of fans within one niche than across the board.

Another point to consider is the SEO aspects of building anything other than a niche business. Google will find it very hard to bring you up in the search results if it’s not entirely sure what you are – plus, don’t forget, you’ll only be average at everything so you’ll be crushed in the serps anyway.

So get really, really good at one thing. If you are a store – try and specialise in a certain market and don’t just sell the products SELL the products. If you sell belts then you want to stock the lot – everything from high class leather to gunge belts with skull buckles. You want to be the go to person for a belt, you want to be top of the results pages for belts. You’ll blog about them, tell your fans about the hsitory of belts, the different styles from the different countries, the types of materials – you’ll have passion and you will grow a tribe of followers via Twitter and other social networking sites.

If someone types belt into Google – you’ll come back at the top of the list because everywhere Google looks – you are there – the seller, the expert – the tribe leader!

So don’t try and be Amazon – get good at one thing and then, and only then,should you consider adding a little bit more to your repertoire!

This post is from Tip 23 on the 55 Ecommerce Tips that Rock

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Ecommerce Tip 1 – Constructing Great Titles

Nikki Backshall — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:36:50 +0000

Following on from the popular post ‘55 of the Best eCommerce Tips‘ I have decided to dig a bit deeper and break them down in this new series.

So let’s begin with number 1

Constructing SEO and Customer Friendly Titles

There are two good reasons for thinking about your titles, the first is whether anyone will search for it and the second is whether anyone will click on it.

Before you write a title for your content- this could be anything from a blog post to a sales page, you need to think about what your potential customer/reader is going to be searching for.

Lets consider for a moment that you are looking to purchase a belt buckle. If you put the term ‘belt buckle’ into Google, which one of the following results would you click on?

Both of these are front page results so neither are doing a bad job, but lets look a little more deeply. The top one is more customer friendly as it has a more professional feel. When people are in ‘buying’ mode they are more cautious about where they click and this title and meta description is your chance to shine.

You need to ‘sell’ the click – make the customer choose you over the next guy and there are various ways to do this. In the examples above you can see the use of pipes in the first title. This is a great way to showcase some products without looking like you are keyword spamming. Let me show you the difference without the pipes;

You might think it’s a subtle change and you would be right, but it makes a difference to your clickthrough rate as the version that is seperated with pipes looks more professional.

The bottom example isn’t utilizing keywords at all and whilst it’s good to get your brand out there, it won’t get you clickthroughs if no-one has really heard of you.

The Meta Description

The meta description tags are where you get to reinforce the customers decision to choose you. Again, if we look at the examples above, the top one has a far more enticing description, it gives me more confidence about shopping there and they have also managed to get their company name at the beginning of the description.

The main point, once you have established keywords and optimised pages and actually made it to the holy grail of Google front page (or close) is to now get that customer to click. These few words of blue and green are often a customers very first impression of you – heck – Google is giving you a priority ad space, so it makes sense to really utilise the opportunity.

Top Tips

Keep your title tag to no more than 65 characters or roughly 8 words. If you go over that it will end abruptly like th…
Keep your meta description to no more than 150 characters – around 25 words
Use words that inspire confidence like ‘guaranteed’ ‘unique’ ‘best’
Don’t fill your meta description with keywords, use this space to sell that page
Consider adding words like ‘telephone orders welcome’ as it gives customers another way to deal with you but again – it builds the trust factor
Test your results until you get it right
Try to weave in your keywords but always write titles for the consumers not the search engines

In the next installment, we’ll dig in to the power of good images and as ever – please feel free to leave any comments below.

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‘Setting Up a Shop’ eCommerce Guide

Nikki Backshall — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:50:03 +0000

Setting Up a Shop

Setting Up a Shop the right way will determine your long term success. If you already have an eCommerce store and are wondering why you have few customers, low conversion or little traffic then perhaps it’s time to consider some aspects of running an online store that often don’t occur to a new estore owner.

How to Get Customers

Often overlooked, but kinda essential, customers that buy stuff are crucial to a stores survival – without them your store is a failure!

I don’t even want to mention how many stores I see come and go within the Mumpreneur niche and it’s normally because of a lack of understanding of how to get an ongoing stream of traffic.

You do need to know about keywords and SEO – tedious and boring but actually essential. If you don’t know what people are searching for then you can’t optimize your store to meet their needs. It’s no skin off their nose as they’ll just buy from your competitor.

When I say keywords (and feel the draft from you yawning), I mean that you need to be finding out what people are typing into that little search box over on Google – we’ll call this a key-phrase, you then need to check and see who else has optimized for that key-phrase as you want a high search volume (from the customer) vs a low competition. Once you start optimising your own store for the actual keyphrases people are searching on, you’ll soon start to rise up the ranks in the search results pages! You want to be on page one of Google – don’t settle for anything less!

Now obviously there is a lot more to it than that, so if you think you can handle learning about keywords then pop your name and email in the boxes below and I will send you my ‘Mastering Keyword Research’ report, which goes into all of this a bit deeper. This does mean that you’ll be on my newsletter list, but you can unsubscribe if you feel that you’re not getting any value! (pffft…as if)!

How to Get Customers to Buy Something

So now that you are the keyword queen and have established how to get tons of targeted traffic to your store, it’s only a matter of time before you retire to your counting house and wallow in a stash of cash – right?

Hmmm – well back up missus – not so fast! These folks are not buying anything, so now what? There are numerous reasons as to why your customers are not converting as well as you think they should but one of the main ones is TRUST. If you don’t come across as the respectable establishment that you are, then I’m afraid that no-one is going to be parting with their credit card details today thank you!

Some of the main things that you can do to show your integrity as a merchant is to have a ‘trust’ sign, something like McAfee security badge which shows that they have verified you and test your site regularly. This isn’t any ol’ badge, if the customer clicks it, they will be taken to McAfee and shown your details are on their records – sweet!

Make sure that you have a business telephone number

Pref a 0800 or similar as your customer wants to know that they can contact you. For the shy ones who hate to talk, consider having a ‘live chat’ service. If you can be available as a live person for customer service in your busy periods, you’d be amazed at how many more sales you can convert.

And if you have all this covered but you still don’t seem to be converting then you need to start testing your landing page. It could be anything from bad product images to the wrong kind of ‘Add to Cart’ sign. Simple tweaks can yield great results.

But start with the keywords, download that free report cos it will help you understand what’s involved far better than a short blog post. And make sure that you have Analytics installed because you can’t test what you can’t measure!

Read the report and then come back and let me know if it helped you!

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55 Ecommerce Tips That Totally Rock

Nikki Backshall — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:58:09 +0000

1) Your site title is an important SEO benefit but more importantly it will attract click throughs when constructed properly. Use it wisely!

2) You must ensure that the images you use in your shop are of high quality. Customers will be quite put off by low quality pictures as they will perceive the product to be the same.

3) Establish who the competition is, look at what they are doing and then do it a whole heap better. Also look out for opportunities of joint ventures and collaborations.

4) Make sure that you have your payment terms clearly displayed on your home page. This is a convenience and an added trust factor for your customers.

5) Have you started to capture email addresses from your customers? Make sure that you have a sign up box with a special offer for customers or you are leaving money on the table.

6) Use a picture on your ‘About Us’ page where poss and an introduction video is even better. Write a great page as it’s often clicked and checked by a customer prior to them making a purchase, so use it to build trust.

7) High traffic is irrelevant – it’s conversion that counts. Concentrate on using targeted keywords for targeted buyers.

8) Consider using promotional items like fridge magnets in your parcels. Most people do actually pop them on the fridge and therefore have a constant reminder of you and your business.

9) Put your most important info above the fold on the home page. Images, Special Offers, Contact Details and Secure signs have all been tested and proven to work well.

10) Consider using a blog. Ecommerce sites are not consistently updated but blogs are, so by putting out fresh content that leads to your site, you are also keeping your site regularly spidered and indexed by Google.

11) Don’t send all of your links to your home page. Spread the link juice throughout your site so that different products rank well in the SERPs

12) Don’t add anything like ‘We’re a Brand New Store’ or anything to suggest that you are a newcomer to the business.

13) Give your customers the WOW factor. Ways you can do this are by sending a free gift with their purchase, sending their purchase FAST, email a thank you to them or follow up with a special offer. Anything that makes them think ‘Wow, what a great company and a great service’.

14) SEO is important but build your site for the customer and not the search engines. Any long paragraphs of keyword stuffed text will not only put a customer off, it will also get you penalised by the Search Engines.

15) Never, EVER, ever have hidden text/keywords on your site. You will get your arse kicked and may even get de-indexed.

16) Social Media creates a natural footprint for your customers or potential clients to check you out. Don’t say anything online that you may come to regret because once it’s out there, you can’t retract it – so use social media wisely!

17) Don’t be boring – use your blog to inject a little bit of personality to your brand, whilst also building the trust factor.

18) Don’t make your customers jump through hoops to buy from you because – they won’t! Making them register to see things like shipping costs is old school and detrimental to your business.

19) Educate your customer and help them make that decision to purchase. If your product enable you to do a demonstration via video or even pictures, then add it to the product description or on ‘how to’ article pages within your site (with links to the product). This will dramatically increase your sales.

20) Difficult customers that are dealt with in the correct manner, can often become your biggest and most loyal customers, so be patient and be nice!

21) For SEO purposes, make sure that your product names are in the title tag of the corresponding page – before your company name if you are using it here.

22) Become an expert within your niche. Don’t just sell the product, blog about it, the history, facts, stats etc. People like to buy from an expert and will actually pay you more for it than a competitor!

23) Don’t try to sell everything, be niche specific. You are not Amazon so do not try to be, focus on niche products to a niche audience.

24) Create loyalty by finding ways to reward existing customers, special offers, competitions, bonus points, discounts & freebies etc

25) If you offer a live help or chat service, make sure that you actually log in to it and be on hand to answer queries. If you consistently get too busy, consider dropping it so that customers are not left waiting.

26) Make sure that you constantly update for FAQ’s page with any new queries that come in. Not only is this great for the search engines it also saves both you and your customers precious time.

27) A good place to remind customers about your newsletter is on your ‘thank you’ page after their purchase. They are already committed to you through their purchase and are in the best frame of mind to now sign up. Add an incentive like 10% off your nest order to clinch the deal!

28) Keep the customer informed about the progress of their order BEFORE they have to come and ask you. It shows that you are a professional, caring company and adds an additional layer of trust. Plus, if there were any problems with their purchase, they are far less likely to kick off if they have already had contact from you and decided that you are a good company to buy from. Folks don’t like to admit they are wrong and tend to go with their initial appraisal.

29) Utilise free services such as Google Base as these can bring you highly targeted traffic and more links within the SERPs.

30) You don’t have to sell your products cheaper than the next guy (who probably isn’t making any profit). People pay extra for a professional and excellent service.

31) Include promotional flyers in your parcels. Discount vouchers to encourage return visits, catalogues to showcase your other products etc

32) Have a search facility, customers like to be able to search for what they want rather than wading through tons of pages. On the flip side – only have this available if it is a good search facility. Searches that result in shoddy results could mean that your customer won’t find what they are looking for even if you sell it.

33) If you often get asked a lot of questions about your products then include a keyword rich FAQ’s page, very good for SEO purposes.

34) If you hold your own stock the ship orders FAST. You’re now in the shadow of eBays ‘want it yesterday’ mentality. Within the past couple of years, people have gone from waiting a few weeks for their purchase to now expecting it within a few days of ordering. If you can’t meet those demands – have a clear and precise shipping policy so that you’re customer is aware. It’s also wise to include this information again on their receipt and any follow up emails.

35) Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and go through your buying process to the very end. Is it easy? Are there steps you could eliminate? Are there add-ons that you could insert?

36) Raise your profit margin and encourage larger orders by offering free shipping for multiple item orders or orders over a certain amount. You could also factor the cost of shipping into your products and offer free shipping on everything. If you do this right then the rise in sales will counteract any loss made on shipping and you will be in profit.

37) If you are selling the same product as someone else, add something to the title tag that makes yours stand out from the competition.

38) Try new things in your store. Promotions, layout, offers etc But test, test and test some more. You need to fail in order to succeed so fail fast and move forward.

39) Your internal links are incredibly powerful. Learn how to structure these correctly to optimise your store to its full potential.

40) If your thumbnail image says ‘click here to see a larger image’ make sure that a larger image actually appears!

41) Study your after-sales care. One-off buyers do not create a business, you want to create a base of loyal, returning customers that rave about you to their friends.

42) Remember the 80/20 rule. 20% of your customers prob make up around 80% of your sales – so work on creating the ultimate customer experience.

43) Be contactable. Have your companies telephone number clearly displayed on your stores home page and make sure that all of your calls get answered or dealt with swiftly.

44) Use testimonials if you have them. Electronic signatures and video also add the extra trust factor.

45) Have a prominent area to feature special offers or products. Keep it either on the same day each week or do it daily so that customers become accustomed to where it is and look for it.

46) Try and incorporate a reviews section. If you can do this on each individual product and get the software for customers to leave reviews themselves, then this is great for customer confidence. If a product gets continually bad reviews then stop selling it. Since companies like Amazon and eBay introduced reviews and feedback, it’s become a mark of trust that buyers like when they can have it.

47) Make your site easy to navigate. Customers won’t hang around to dig for a product so hand it to them on a plate. If they want some green earrings, they won’t want to go through a process of clicking like this:- home page >> jewellery with stones >> silver jewellery with stones >> earrings >> earrings for pierced ears >> green earrings – keep it as simple as you can! Less clicks = more sales.

48) Respond to customer complaints swiftly and politely. Bite your tongue if need be as your reputation is your livelihood.

49) Make sure that you have a prominent and strong guarantee and refund policy. Offering a great policy will increase your sales.

50) Avoid having flash banners that tell folks you’re in the top 50 of something or other. It looks lame and most people know that these ‘trophies’ are just meaningless. Unless it’s a badge worthy of showing – don’t show it. Also avoid those entire ‘listed in the blah, blah’ directories – so what? Your customer couldn’t give a hoot and it makes your site look cheap.

51) Add a best-sellers section to your website. It encourages more sales as people are naturally curious to see what other people are buying and also use that as an endorsement of the product to buy it themselves.

52) Make sure that your spelling and punctuation throughout the site is faultless. Use a spell check to make sure as it’s something that will make your site look very unprofessional. And it’s not even that you’re a bad speller, most folks won’t condemn you for that – but they will condemn you for not being bothered to ‘check’ your written word. If you can’t be bothered with that then maybe they can’t be bothered to buy from you.

53) Use an 0800 number for your biz if you can or at the very least have a separate line so that your business calls can be answered in a professional manner, rather than your 2yr old as you’ve nipped to the toilet! If your company is getting very busy then consider hiring someone to answer the phone our re-route your calls to a call centre.

54) Don’t make customers fill out unnecessary fields in the buying process. If billing and delivery addresses are the same, let them check a box to say that rather than having to type it all out again.

55) If Google isn’t indexing all of your pages then you probably don’t have enough links OR you have some duplicate content issues. Double check the pages that are not being listed and find out why. Address the problem and re-submit (or add) an XML site map to Google.

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