Small business? Top 10 tips for increasing % response and conversion

The flip side of the money saving coin is making more money in the first place. If your small business operates online there’s plenty of things you can do to increase the number of site visitors, improve response and boost % sales conversion. Here’s our top 10 tips for making your website work harder for your small business and generate more sales:

search engines love freshness. If you update and refresh your website regularly, search engine bots and spiders will start to drop by more often to check out what’s going on. And your site’s visibility will slowly improve. Weekly is good but daily is even better
take on-site SEO (search engine optimisation) into account. Get someone who knows their stuff to review your site. Or learn how to deal with basic on-site SEO yourself – there are plenty of free eguides available. Websites that are properly optimised for search engines stand a better chance of a decent ranking in the search engine results pages. And the more visible you are, the more visitors you’ll get
encourage more inbound links. On-site optimisation is one element of SEO, the other is inbound links. When your site is up to date, entertaining, easy to use and all that good stuff, people will link back to your website naturally. Search engines use quality / quantity of inbound links to help them decide which sites are the most trusted, enjoyed and respected. Just bear in mind Google and co. don’t really appreciate large amounts of bought links
improve response by making sure visitors have a seamless, simple and quick on-site experience without hitches, hiccups and clumsy bits. The better your user interface, the more visitors will buy from you
provide a choice of payment methods so you account for all tastes and temperaments. Some people might be happy paying by credit or debit card, others much prefer the speed and security of PayPal. You can claim back PayPal charges against tax, so you don’t lose out when you transfer money from PayPal to your regular account
search engines and people enjoy blogs. Add a blog direct to your small business site’s url, focus on your key words and phrases and post regularly – once a day is perfect – for a substantial boost in site visibility over time
make sure your products and services are competitively priced. If you’re far too expensive compared to your competitors, no matter how amazing your website is you’ll lose sales
use really good quality photos – blurry, fuzzy, poor quality images are off-putting
do marketing… and keep doing marketing! Marketing – like SEO – is a journey, not a destination. Schedule an hour a day at the end of every working day for marketing your small business via press releases and articles, new site pages/fresh content, link building, link bait, social media marketing, special offers, competitions, email marketing, newsletters… variety is the spice of marketing life!
step away from your website now and again and take a long, hard look at it. Does it still fulfil its function? Is it still 100% ‘fit for purpose’? Is it up to date, benefit led, easy to use, clear, exciting, inspiring and all that? If you can’t be objective, ask someone you trust to review it for you and suggest improvements

Published July 21, 2011 & Filed in Discount Coder Chat

Tags: increase small business response and conversion

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