Thursday, August 2, 2007

How to Increase Sales and Conversion - Small and Medium Internet Retailers

I have been working in eCommerce industry for quite sometime now and has worked with some major internet retailers and quite a few small and medium internet retailing companies.
 
Before we get into to topic lets look at what internet retailing has done. This channel (Internet Retail) has made the retailing world flat. The scenario was different few years back. Huge stores who can offer great discounts got more sales and to invest on such a store was merely impossible for small and medium retailers. But the game is different online. A small or medium player can compete with Wal-Mart and there is no monopoly in here. It all depends on how search engine friendly your website is and how effectively you do online marketing. It does not stop there, you can still increase your conversion using tools like LiveChat.
 
Search Engine Marketing - SEM can improve your site's visibility on Search Engine's. This means that you are inviting a lot of eyeballs into your site. These are potential leads. To get your visibility increased you can use Search Engine ptimization (Natural or Organic Search), Pay Per Click Marketing (Paid or Sponsered Search), Affiliate Maketing, Link Building and Comparison Engine Campaigns. These are few ways in which you can invite eyeballs or in other words you can bring traffic into your website. Every component mentioned has its own advantage for ex: SEO is time consuming but long standing wherein PPC is quick and instantaneous.
 
You can carry out any of these based on your BUDGET.........BUDGET?????? this is the biggest headache for small etailers. For businesses that do not have a huge budget on marketing can still do all these in a structured manner. For Instance: Initially they can spend on paid and affiliate marketing increase sales and revenue and then step into doing Search Engine Optimization. Pay Per Click or Paid Marketing can bring you instant sales so is Affiliate which is one step ahead you get the sale and pay a commission for it use this for other activities. While you these also try to get maximum conversion. Today there is huge competition in online retailing, the maximum you convert is good for you. So you can use LiveChat as a sales tool to convert maximum leads. There is a lot ways to do get success out of LiveChat (I would post a thread on LiveChat advantages separetly).
To do all this small and medium internet retailers can look at Offshore Companies that can reduce operational cost.

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