Getting sales for your online business is extremely difficult. But if you operate solely online, know that your website can effectively get you more sales. By implementing a few improvements, you can increase the likelihood that your website is found online and more visitors convert and purchase your product.
If you want to go this route, you’re being smart. Websites are virtually free marketing (aside from hosting costs) and the changes that you make to your site can either be free or affordable.
This article will go over the cost-effective ways to increase sales on your website. But, before we dive in, let’s first establish the goal of your online business:
Identifying the Goal of Your Online Business and Website
You might be surprised that we start by first identifying your online business and website goal. Unfortunately, defining a business goal is one thing that many of our clients struggle with.
Let’s put this in perspective.
Your website is the front page of your business. It should tell visitors what your business does, who you are, and the details about the product/service that you offer. If your website does not do this, customers will not likely understand what you do or what value you provide.
You unfortunately can’t do this properly without knowing what your main goal is. Your goal should entail:
- What you hope your website to accomplish
- The main drives of your online business
- The main products that you are hoping people purchase
- Future growth and scalability
It’s important to be able to identify these aspects of your goal first. You must also be able to provide an elevator pitch for your brand. If you can’t provide an elevator pitch, then your visitors will never understand what you do.
Clearly defining your online business, its goals, and the goals of your website are vital to your success. If you’re stuck here, consider reaching out to a content marketing agency for guidance.
9 Affordable Website Improvements to Consider for More Sales
If you are comfortable with your online business and website goals, then you can start to map out the improvements that your website needs to generate sales. Note that we’re writing this section assuming that you already have the basics of a website in place.
Creating Product Landing Pages
Product landing pages help you direct customers to your different product pages. These landing pages will be SEO optimized for the keyword of your industry/product/goals and can easily educate your visitors about the product, and more.
If you don’t have landing pages by product, you’ll want to create them. You can have multiple landing pages, and this will also increase the chances of people coming to your site and finding your product as you can continually add SEO-optimized product pages.
If you are an eCommerce website or Shopify website and sell individual products, then you’ll be updating these for Google’s Product Review update too.
Revisit Your Website Copy
You might have some readable copy on your website right now; however, chances are that copy will need to be updated. Perhaps it’s simply outdated and needs a reboot, or perhaps things have changed significantly in your company.
It’s good to revisit your copy every now and then. It’s also important to proofread it every year and to make sure that it remains evergreen and is following the most up-to-date SEO best practices.
There’s a trick to writing good landing page copy. If you’re not sure how to do it, visit our blog that talks about this more in-depth.
Start or Revive Your Business Blog
Business blogs are one of the best forms of virtually free content marketing. This is because blogs live on your website for as long as you maintain your website’s hosting.
You can easily update your blogs and optimize them for SEO so that they can be found through strategic keywords.
First thing’s first—make sure to start your business blog. If you have some blogs up but they are old, then you’ll want to revive your blog.
Blogs are one of the most cost-effective ways to increase sales on your website.
While they may cost, they generate tons of leads and long-term sales opportunities. If you’re not sure how to start one, we’re here to help with content marketing managed services.
Develop Your Blog Strategy Using MarketMuse’s Free Strategy
In addition to reviving your blog, you’ll want to come up with a good blogging strategy, one that makes sense for your goals (here is where our goal conversation comes in handy).
You want your blogs to speak to the type of audience that you wish to have as customers and to the pain points of those customers (in relation to your product).
There are loads of products out there that can help you with strategy. We use a few, and one free one that we use is the AI-platform Marketmuse.
By tapping into AI-driven content strategy, you can effectively see what your customers are searching for, the topic niches that your competitors aren’t going after, and competitive keyword gaps.
Optimize Your Business Blogs Using MarketMuse’s Free Account
In addition to the content strategy, you can also optimize your business blogs using Marketmuse’s free account for content optimization.
The free account is not necessarily the best for large businesses and businesses with heavy blogging calendars, but there are affordable pricing options as well that allow access to the full platform.
Nonetheless, optimizing your blogs is another cost-effective way to improve sales. By optimizing your blog, you will be finding the best ways to connect with your customers. This will also bring in more strategic and targeted keywords to ensure your blogs reach the right customers.
Use a Link Cleanup Tool Like LinkWhisper
If you’re blogging regularly, you’ll also need to be linking. LinkWhisper is a free WordPress plugin, but you can also pay a nominal annual fee as well. This tool will integrate with your WordPress account to find and automate internal linking enabling you to get your linking SEO up to speed.
This is one of the best tools out there for internal linking strategy, and it basically takes the manual labor off your plate. This will help you rank better in Google, bringing more sales to your website.
Improve the UX/UI of Your Website
Your website user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) will help to convert visitors once they land on your website. This is a fundamental aspect of website design as a UX/UI optimized website will provide a positive user experience.
UX directly impacts page layout and SEO optimization. And your website’s UI, which encompasses menus, commands, and other interactable elements, will contribute to brand identity and product quality.
If you want your content to stand out in search rankings and secure customers, UX and UI need to be carefully planned. This is true for all pages and sections of your website—including your blog.
Add Call to Actions to Your Page
A call to action or CTA is a pop-up, widget, on-page box, or blurb that encourages your website visitors to take an action. The CTA might also have a link or button to press that encourages your visitors to click a link.
Examples include signing up for a newsletter, providing an email address in return for an eBook, or signing up for a free consultation.
CTAs are free—you or your marketing team comes up with the tagline and can be added to any website via code or template.
Without these items, though, your visitors may seem lost or not feel encouraged to do anything while on your page. CTAs encourage visitors to stay on your site and engage with your business longer.
Turn a Blog or Two into an eBook
eBooks are another great way to increase sales through your site for little to no cost. An eBook can be a downloaded PDF or it can be an eBook structure on a website. It is, nonetheless, an incentive that you can offer. It can be HTML-indexed or provided in exchange for an email.
By providing an eBook to your webpage visitors, you are giving them free access to information and encouraging them to trust you as an authoritative source on your subject matter.
Take Advantage of Free Marketing Through Website Optimization
As you can see, your website is extremely powerful. There are many things that can be done that are free or otherwise affordable to increase the value proposition and conversation rate of your website.
Small changes, like improved website copy, UX/UI improvements, writing a blog, and optimization can provide drastic changes to your website and increase sales opportunities.
Take advantage of free marketing with small website improvements. And reach out to okwrite.co for how to tackle your next big blogging strategy.
