Getting people to visit your website is a lot like getting people to come to your store. There are many different tips and tricks, all of which change over time. Follow the steps below to help promote your site and increase sales. The list is ordered by our opinion of the effectiveness, or return on investment, you will get.
You have probably spent a lot of time and money building your existing customer base, make the most of it.
Get your URL out
Your URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the technical term for your website address, www.yourname.com. Get it in front of your customers by putting it on the following:
Create a customer email mailing list
Have a signup sheet at your location for customers to sign up to receive information about new products, upcoming sales or specials. We can help you set up and manage a mailing list system.
Send out updates
Make sure all of the businesses you work with have your new URL and email address. They won't know unless you tell them.
Link to/from business partners
Many businesses link to other businesses they deal with. Talk with them to get on that list. The most places potential customers can come across your site, the better.
Business Area Sites
Many business areas have websites that track them. It could be a listing of manufacturers or possibly summaries of what each business does.
Hometown links
Get your site listed with the chamber of commerce, local newspapers and phone books.
Use incentives to get more customers to your site. We can help by installing an incentive management system into your online shop.
Coupons
Give new customers a credit for creating an account on your site. Send out emails to customers with a coupon code for $10 or 10% off. Offer free shipping or other incentives.
Referrals
Use the power of your existing customer base to spread the news about your site by giving existing customers a discount when they bring new customers to the site.
Many online sites offer to advertise for your site in a variety of ways. Below are links to some advertising programs:
Registration
Although most search engines will automatically find your site by 'crawling', it is a good idea to 'register' with the major search engines. Most search engines require the business operator to register the site, and some even charge to list businesses. (There are businesses that offer to register your site with multiple search engines for a fee, however we think you will get little return from them.) Here is a list of the major search engines and links to their registration page:
There are many other search engines, but most of those actually use the ones listed above to deliver results, so there is no need to register with them.
Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be a difficult process. We will help you take the basic, generally accepted steps needed to prepare your site for search engines.
Some company offer advanced optimization services, often promising your site will be placed high in the search engines. It requires you to manipulate your web pages in specific ways that will theoretically get you better results in search engines. However, your efforts last week can become obsolete the next as the search engines continually update their searching algorithms. We do not recommend using these services.