How to Increase your Online Sales

The Basics

Even today, many merchants create a website thinking that as soon as they are online the customers will suddenly flock to their store buying lots of things, making them lots of money in the process.

This simply isn't the case. If you create a website on the Internet then no-one is going to visit it unless they know that it is there. At this point you are probably thinking 'Search Engines' and of course getting listed on Search Engines is part of the answer, but the complete answer is a much wider concept... MARKETING!

You need to be using at least 5 of the following marketing methods....

• Search Engine Natural Listings
• Search Engine Pay Per Click
• Internet Advertising
• Direct Mail
• PR
• Traditional Print Advertising
• Telesales
• Joint Ventures
• Affiliate Marketing
• Radio
• Television
• Leaflet Drops

Remember that with any form of marketing such as those listed above, they are only worth doing if you can track your return on investment. It's no use spending £1000/$1000 on an advert in a magazine if you have no idea whether it is making you any money or not. Even if your sales increase when the magazine is published the cause might be something completely different like a seasonal change or similar. RomanCart has ways to track and measure the response rate of all of these. For example if you placed an advert in a magazine, you would put a promotional code on the ad for example giving free shipping. Then when people buy from you as a result of seeing the ad, RomanCart will show exactly how much money you made from the add. It gets more interesting than that though... The value of a customer is not how much they buy from you with their first purchase, it is how much the spend with you over the next 1,2 and 3 years. Once you have been using RomanCart a while, the system will know your average 1,2 and 3 year customer spend and so can show you how much the projected future value of the advert is. This type of information is incredibly valuable and is normally only found on bespoke marketing systems costing millions.

Don't forget that there are 3 ways to increase your profits.

1. Get more customers. - This must be done, but it is the most difficult and expensive part of marketing. Search engines, Advertising and all of the above list are used for this.
2. Get your customers to buy from you more often. - This is done by communicating with your existing customer base. Sending regular emails, direct mailshots and even phoning your customers - especially your best customers can have a huge effect on this and is what separates hugely successful businesses from most other businesses selling the same products.
3. Get your customers to spend more with you on each transaction. - This is done with Up-Sell and Cross-Sell, communicating with your customers and prospects and also having a website which is really easy to navigate.