Can you believe it’s already July 1? This year has been so odd, and yet it still seems to be flying by. I am beginning to suspect that my parents were right and time just goes faster as we get older!
I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I’m trying to get used to it!
As we head into the second half of the year, and we continue to deal with all things shut-down/quarantine/reopening related, there are a lot of things that we, as business owners, can do to ensure our success through these challenging times.
There is no roadmap for surviving these conditions. But there are clues. This is not the first time our country, or world for that matter, have hit road bumps that immediately and drastically changed our way of living.
Think about the crash of 2008, 9/11, any of the other life-altering things that have impacted our society in a huge and unexpected way.
The only thing we can do, in any of these situations, is to adjust and do what we know works. What we have seen others do who are doing well under these same conditions. We are not all in the same boat.
But we are all in the water. And it is choppy. So let’s look at those who are navigating the waters with skill and grace and do some of what they are doing.
One thing that everyone agrees is as important now as ever is making the most of your tools and assets.
This includes your website.
Now I know, your website may be outdated, not performing as well as you’d like, or potentially not even built yet.
Whatever stage you are in, below are 9 things you can do to increase sales on your website and have it working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of whether we can leave our houses, have to wear masks, or whatever the next issue will be. 
Offer ads and promos that relate to your visitor. Years ago pop up ads became so popular that everyone got annoyed and frustrated by them. As a result a lot of browsers now include popup blockers that will render any intrusive ad useless. To make your ads more useful you want to offer relevant ads to your visitors.
If your visitor is on a page that refers to one topic, offer an ad about that topic. And offer more than one kind of ad. Maybe you have popups, but you also offer inline ads and sidebar ads. And maybe some ads are offering to sell something and others aim to get new subscribers. Whatever the ask is, make sure it is relevant to what they are looking at and that you give them more than one opportunity to respond.
My favorite tool for this is Thrive Leads by Thrive Themes
but there are others out there that you can use to customize what your visitors are seeing based on the content they are viewing.
If you’d like to take advantage of a FREE 21-Point Web Site Audit just click below to reserve your spot!
Create a sense of scarcity or urgency. We’ve all heard about creating a sense of urgency, but how can we do that honestly for an evergreen program? For something that is always available, with no enrollment limits and no supply limitations?
There are several ways to add scarcity or urgency. You can add bonuses that will expire on a certain date. You can include admission to a live event (online or in-person). You can pull past products and offer them for a short time. You could even offer 1 on 1 sessions for a select few, maybe the first X number of purchases.
Whatever you choose, the key is to get creative and find ways to add value and give your prospects a reason to take out their wallet and make that purchase today rather than waiting until later. Because as you know, later rarely comes!
Provide bonuses for all purchases. People always want to get a value. They want to feel like they got a great deal and made a smart decision. The best way to do that is to offer bonuses that don’t cost you anything. Free reports, checklists, webinars are all great bonuses to offer.
There are a few keys to your bonuses that will make or break the success of your offer. Make sure that the bonus will enhance the primary purchase rather than be an integral part of it. Write out your offer with all the bonuses without worrying about whether or not you have the bonus created yet. If you do it this way you will likely add much more valuable bonuses than if you limit yourself by what is already created. You can always create the reports or checklists to make your offer absolutely irresistible.
Offer a range of payment options. There are more payment options now than ever before. We are no longer restricted to cash, check, or charge. Now we can accept payments by PayPal, ApplePay, GooglePay, and even more.
Making it as easy as possible for your visitors to make a purchase and check out quickly will remove one of the many hoops your visitors will have to jump through. So find a processor who allows you to accept major credit cards, ACH payments, and as many other forms of payment as possible. This will only serve to increase your sales, reduce your customer service inquiries, and ultimately increase your profits.
Simplify your customer journey. Did you know that most websites lose 45-85% of profits due to missed conversions? That’s crazy, right? That means that if your website currently brings in $1,000 per month it could potentially be bringing in $1,800 to $6,700 per month!!! What would your business look like if it brought in 45-85% more sales each and every month? How would that impact your bottom line? Your lifestyle?
One of the easiest things you can do it to take a look through your website as though you are a customer. Notice the areas that are difficult to navigate, the things that are not easy, or make you slow down, even give up and leave the site. Make a list of those items and work to fix them. These are all areas of friction that can interrupt your conversions and keep you from making what you should be from your site.
Use an abandoned cart process. Did you know that 76% of shoppers abandon their cart and never complete their purchase? Imagine if you were able to recover some of those sales. What would that do for your business?
Each shopping cart and email marketing system handles these different ways, so find out how yours works (together or independently) and work on getting an abandoned cart sequence set up and running in your business. That is free money there for the taking, once you know how to set it up.
You can also, while you’re there, take a look at your checkout process. If you find you have a large number of abandoned carts there might be a reason for that. Go through and place a test sale yourself. Find out how easy, or difficult, that process is. Make notes and improve any areas you notice that can make your customer experience smoother.
Tell them exactly what you want them to do. Remember, your clients and customers don’t know what you want them to do unless you tell them. My team and I are hired to audit websites all the time that have way too many calls to action on each page, leaving visitors confused and frustrated. So many just leave. We can see this in analytics reports when there is a short time spent on page or a high bounce rate.
Make it simple for your visitors to do what you want them to do. Tell them! A single call to action is the most effective way to get them to do what you want. Offer them something free if getting people on your list is your focus. Link to sales pages if you are ready to make sales. And tell them what you want them to do. Specifically. Simply. Directly.
Improve your SEO. It may seem simple, but the more eyes on your site the more sales you are likely to get. And the best, and easiest, and cheapest way to get more eyeballs on your site is to improve your SEO so you show up higher when your people are searching for you.
There are a lot of things you can do to improve your SEO without being, or hiring, a guru to improve your SEO. The best thing you can do that will simplify and strengthen your SEO game is to install and use the Yoast SEO plugin on your site. It provides a lot of simple ways you can add keywords to your pages and posts, control the blurb that shows up on results pages, and set up your site-wide keywords and meta-description. I love things that simplify my life, and Yoast SEO is absolutely one of those things. You can thank me later.
Become obsessed with your customer. Anyone can write out who their avatar is and figure out how they like to spend their time. It doesn’t even take that long. But only a select few will become obsessed.
According to Jeff Bezos of Amazon, ”The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.” What would change if you were this obsessed with your customer? How would your website and customer journey look different? What would have to change on your website for your visitors to feel like you had put it together just for them? When you begin thinking of your website in these ways you will begin to see all of your key metrics improve, including your sales.
As the traffic grows it becomes more and more important for you to optimize that traffic. Turn as many visitors as you can into sales and increase the amount of each sale by as much as possible while still delivering a stellar customer experience.
These 9 ways, while only a portion of the things you can do, are simple and fairly quick things you can do that will likely have a direct impact on the sales you see from your site.
