Luke Moulton runs the Small Business Big Marketing Podcast; we sat down with him at a recent Internet marketing event and picked his brains for a few online marketing tips that a small business looking to boost its sales can get some instant “wins” with.
Below we share a few quick, actionable steps that you can apply in your business immediately, without having to redesign anything.
Testing
“A-B” testing, “multi-variant” testing or split testing – whatever you call it, it’s becoming a valuable tool for website owners to help them judge exactly what’s working and what’s not with their Internet marketing strategies.
Testing and applying the formats that work best will help to increase conversion rates – and nowadays there are several testing tools that can help you. Here are 3 of them:
Visual Website Optimiser
Zen Tester
Google free testing tool
Just a 10% increase in conversion rates can mean significant extra revenue, so investing a little time in this is advisable.
Optimising For Action
Websites should be geared towards visitors taking a well-defined action. Everything on the page needs to be optimised – this may be down to the colour of the call to action buttons, the wording of the calls to action themselves or the headings being changed to focus on benefits.
Many of the same rules apply to e-commerce websites as well as service-based sites – because higher conversion rates benefit all types of business.
Some other tips are unique for e-commerce sites – like simply taking out the voucher code fields which may distract shoppers from buying from you, or removing the navigation at the head and foot of the page so that visitors are funnelled through your sales system rather than tempted to click away.
Sometimes increasing conversion can be easier than attracting more traffic – when you’ve exhausted all your SEO strategies and run all the Adword campaigns you can do, then focusing on how to convert more of your traffic can make a big difference.
Aim to put your customers in action.
The Trust Factor
Increasing the trust factor on your site will help with conversions too. Gather testimonials, awards, photos and show visitors that you are a real, credible business with a track record of getting results. Include addresses and phone numbers and make it easy for them to contact you.
These three suggestions involve minor tweaks rather than major surgery, yet the impact of applying them can be huge.
You’ll find more great information on conversion techniques and general online business marketing tips throughout our website and on our YouTube channel. Tune in each week for more posts aimed at helping your small business.
