Increase Revenue by Using Your Website

Listen up all you small, local businesses! I've been telling you (my small business clients) this for years, but it is falling on deaf ears so it bears repeating.

Your Web site is a great marketing tool/channel. It isn't simply an online brochure. You must use it as a marketing channel and treat it like any other marketing effort by tracking the return on your investment (ROI). You must also be fervent about constantly improving it. It will cost you far more money to guess than it will to actually know what's working.

Your Web site is open 24/7. You're not limited to retail hours. If you don't already sell from it, consider what you could sell online. It doesn't have to be every product you have, just something that you feel is easily sold online. This will allow you to work smarter, not harder [hmmm....where have you heard that before? :-)] and to increase sales with little extra effort.

A BIG plus to adding eCommerce to your Website? It increases your revenue AND it makes your business more saleable!

Here's 10 things you'll want to track:

• number of sales (orders, leads, phone calls, etc.)
• number of unique visitors (all visits except repeat customers)
• conversion rates (traffic divided by sales)
• traffic from search queries (people using a search engine from their desktop or mobile device)
• direct traffic (they already know your Web address and type it directly into their browser)
• visitor loyalty (are your customers returning to your site and buying again?)
• traffic from social media sources (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn - anywhere you have a social profile)
• traffic from email newsletters (Please tell me you're building an email list and communicating regularly with your customers.)
• traffic from offline marketing campaigns (radio, TV, newspaper, etc.)
• traffic generated for online advertising (paid online advertising like Google AdWords or Bing adCenter)

Most of the areas listed above can be tracked by setting up a free Google Analytics account and connecting your Website URL (Web address) to the account.

If you would like assistance setting up and monitoring the data, let me know. I've provided these services for many clients and I work in it daily. I can help you get set up and interpret the data.

Challenge for August:
Find 1 thing from your local business that you can sell online.

Note: It doesn't have to be costly to sell from your Website - you can do it using a simple PayPal account. In fact, you don't even NEED a Website to use PayPal to sell products.
I can help you get started!