How do you increase traffic and sales from a website?

Question

I run a website for my wife's business at www.akrongrove.com.
How do I increase traffic and sales?

Answer 1

Everyone's answer is good general advice. There's no one strategy for marketing that works for everyone so you'll have to keep trying different methods until you find one that works. If you have the money, try to have you website professionally designed. The more professional your website looks, the more reputable you will appear. I'm sure you wouldn't want to punch your credit card number into a website that appears fly-by-nite.
Next you've got to advertise like crazy. I've found that services like Google Ad-Words are only effective if you appear in the top five search engine display. This can get pretty expensive especially for a small business. Upward of $20 a day or $600 per month.
You could submit you site to all of the seach engines. You usually have to pay to get a high search position. Yahoo, won't even bother with you unless you've got $3000 a month to spend. You should really add Meta-Tags to every page of your site. Overall, online advertising simply doesn't work unless you've got the money to hit the web with so much coverage that your message makes an impact and motivates people to visit your website.
Beyond online advertising, try traditional print and radio, tv advertising. Radio is actually pretty cheap. Call your favorite station and ask how much to put together a spot. You can get a local television spot for about $500-$600 and run it on Lifetime network or Oxygen. Check out www.spotrunner.com Take out a Yellow pages ad. Any display advertising ops you can find. Chamber of commerce is a good place to start. They have newsletters that go out to all their members. There are an endless number of things you can try but most of all your goal is to get your products in front of people that want them. This is called target marketing or segmenting the market. Your audience is probably women 16 - 60 so you might want to choose to advertise in newsletters and magazine that target womens groups. Remember, people have a short attention span so repetition is key.
Write some press releases and articles for your online store and send them to every home and bath magazine you can find. Believe it or not magazines are alway looking to fill space with unique products like yours. Be sure to include a photo.

Send a free gift basket to Oprah.

You can also try sponsorship opportunities. Just find a few local events such as concerts, trade shows, museums, etc (basically any event that attracts a large group of people in your target market) and ask the event planners if they have sponsorship opps. As a sponsor of the event, your company name will be placed in the event handbook and website as well as on floor signage. Costs vary from event to event.

There are other good suggestions from the other answers to this question and I'd suggest to try them all.
God Luck

Answer 2

Buying advertising, whether it be on a search engine, other sites, or in newspapers/magazines, etc. is a good idea... but keep thinking of innovative ways to promote your site. The more unusual, the better, a lot of times. If you go to craft shows, definitely promote your site there... you'll not only make an initial sale at the show, but have a good chance of making future sales from those customers after the show is long over. Also, looking at the site itself, you might want to invest in a professional web designer. While it might be functional, the more attractive and professional your site looks, the better... especially when you're dealing in things like beauty products. Also, start a mailing list and send out newsletters (either by e-mail or snail mail), advertising new products and such. And finally, you might want to try and find another third-party biller (or even get your own merchant account), besides PayPal. While a lot of people do have PayPal accounts, there are still many who do not. Finding a way to accept credit cards can do wonders for an online business.

Those are just the things off the tip of my mind :-) Hope they help, though!

P.S. Was just looking on PayPal's website and they actually have options now where you can accept credit cards. I believe fees apply, but you'll get that no matter what. Being able to accept credit cards is worth it, though. I'm not sure if they have anything set up yet, though, where you could start an affiliate program, but that is also something to look into. Give other people with websites a reason to link to you, by giving them a commission on any sales they might send your way....

Answer 3

1) Write short articles to establish yourself as an expert in your field and submit to article directories and websites that cater to your target market (long term "viral" effect)

2)You need a way to collect visitors email addys on your site (double opt-in recommended) Do this by offering a free gift or maybe a % coupon for first purchase, etc.

3) I suggest you add a "tell-a-friend" script to your site. You'll be surprised at the extra traffic this will send you in the long run.

Also there's a few other "tweaks" you could do on your site to improve traffic and sales...I know of a place you can get your site critiqued by some of the top marketers online for free. (It was originally a private forum but the word got our about "back doors" I think)

No catches...it's just a great place to learn.

Contact me at davidlee.patterson(AT)gmail.com if you're interested for the URL

Answer 4

There are some ways:

1. Post in forums. If your site is about jewelry, search for jewelry forums in Google, get a forum account and post actively there. Include your signature with a link to your site.

2. Submit your site to Google Sitemap. This way, Google will crawl your site faster increasing your chances of appearing on Google Search Engines.

3. Join TrafficSwarm to get some traffic by reading other people's website first. In return, they will go to your site. Check out http://www.wanginternet.com/traffic

For various ways to make money online instantly, see http://www.wanginternet.com

Answer 5

You can either improve your organic search ranking (go to SEO, Search Engine Optimisers) or pay to Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) to place your text ads through Adwords.

If you dont want to do both, then go for WOM (Word of Mouth) by starting a Blog on a topic you know best - but again you will face the same problem - how to market your blog? So probably going to SEO or Search engines or both is your best bet?

Answer 6

my suggestions
1. Advertise it and implement some search engine optimization.
2.U can make ur web more popular by submitting it to search engines.
for free submition , u can use Yahoo
It's url is http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html...
If u want to use paid sevices which can give u more profit,then u can use Google.
3. I suggest that you create a account in Google Ad-word, which is a facility provided by Google. To adverstise your web site in other sites..... Though it is a paid service, but it is a better way to promote your web site.

Visit the following web site to know more about it..

https://adwords.google.com/select/?hl=en...

4. pass it to everyone, and ask everyone to pass it to others

5. Maybe you can have some events (like a bbq)or maybe some deoration.

Answer 7

For finest SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION outcomes We highly recommend using Google Search Bot: http://is.gd/gsbsoftware Applying this computer software I've got ranked our site to first page of Google on a extremely high competing keyword.

Answer 8

This site has a great ebook on the subject. I implemented the technique and my traffic is starting to increase as a result.

Answer 9

You have to pay for position through search engines like google, and yahoo. You want to place yourself around fourth or fifth on the page.

Answer 10

How much do you participate in your topical community? If people trust you they will trust your recommendations more than the average person. And also people who know you may put in a good word for you or help you mmarket yourself for free.