Setting up shop to offer your products or services online and using Authorize.net to accept payments are great first steps towards attracting new customers for your business. Still, many businesses face a constant challenge of attracting new and existing customers to their websites.
Here are six ways to drive more traffic to your site, potentially increasing sales and online success.
1. Create a strong opt-in offer
Building a strong e-mail list is one of the first steps to online sales success. In order to build a list, though, you'll need to do more than just ask visitors to sign up for e-mails. You'll need to incentivize them to do so. How? Use an opt-in offer such as a discount or coupon code. For example, you might give all new e-mail subscribers a special code for 20 percent off their first purchase on your site. Of course, you'll need to promote your offer both on your website itself and through your social media profiles.
2. Build a sense of urgency
A highly successful sales tactic is to make customers feel as though they have to buy your product now. Talented sales people can do this in-person, but it's possible to pull it off online too. You can create urgency among customers by offering limited-time coupons and discounts, counting down available inventory of popular items, offering freebies for visitors who buy products by a certain time and advertising flash sales that last for 24 hours or less.
3. Create sharable content
You've spent a lot of time refining the product pages of your website, but it's essential to pay attention to your blog and social media opportunities too. Instead of broadcasting information about your products exclusively, share free info or tips that customers will be drawn to naturally. Linking to a helpful article orwriting a quick post with tips related to your industry appeals to new and old customers alike. The trick is to create content that your viewers will not only want to read, but will feel compelled to share with friends and co-workers too.
4. Incorporate responsive site design
To provide your customers with the best experience possible, consider incorporating responsive design into your website. What does that mean? Put simply, it means that site visitors will have a high-quality browsing experience whether they're using a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. The goal is to make sure that potential customers can easily browse your products and complete an order no matter the device they happen to be using.
5. Post customer reviews
Posting customer reviews on your website itself and on your social media profiles will help to engender a sense of trust with shoppers. After all, people want to know what others think of your products before they buy. Of course, it's important that you're careful not to edit or cherry pick your reviews. Don't hide negative reviews but respond promptly, clearly and professionally so that potential customers know you're serious about fixing problems and meeting their needs.
6. Make paying easy for the customer
Once you get them to your site, you want to do everything you can to make it easy to purchase. If you have the type of business that has repeat customers, you can reduce shopping cart abandonmentand make it easier for customers to pay by using Authorize.Net’s tokenization service, Customer Information Manager (CIM). By securely storing your customers' payment data with CIM, you eliminate the need for customers to re-enter information for every subsequent transaction, providing a quicker checkout process.
Learn about accepting payments with us.
