The internet should be every business’ ultimate weapon for finding, attracting and earning more customers. It’s that simple. Using digital channels like search engines, websites, email and social media, you can deliver targeted messages to potential customers without having to knock on any doors, make any cold calls or purchase pricy print ads. On top of that, you can make sales without the need for a physical retail location.
The internet has a leg up on traditional marketing mediums because it can provide never-before-seen capabilities like massive reach, personalized content and deeper relationship-building opportunities with customers. But the internet is a big place that can suck up a lot of time if you aren’t sure what you’re doing – it will help to have some digital marketing experts on your side.
In this article, we’re going to explore the best methods for selling more using the internet, including website upgrades, content marketing, email marketing and more.
Website Upgrades
When trying to sell more online, your website is your starting point. Without a website, potential customers will have a difficult time finding you, and will likely navigate towards your competition instead. Your website not only gives your business a presence online, it’s used to receive traffic from other channels across the web like ads, email and social media. If you’ve already got one, there are a few strategies you should consider that will make it easier for your customers to find you and easier for your business to make sales.
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) ensures that when someone searches for your brand or a product/service you can provide, your website shows up in the organic search results. It’s an art and a science, and without strong SEO, your customers just won’t be able to find you.
The world of SEO optimization is a vast one with seemingly endless best practices, tips, and to-do lists, but there are some basics that every website should adhere to. It all starts with keywords. Your keywords are the terms relevant to your business and the products/services your sell. By adding select keywords to your site, you have a greater chance of attracting searchers when they look for those specific terms. While avoiding ‘keyword stuffing’ and adding too many in unnecessary places, your keywords should be strategically placed:
- Throughout your main website content (text)
- Headings and subheadings
- Image alternative text
- URL
- Navigation menu
- Page titles
- Page descriptions
Aside from adding keywords do your website, the user experience is another aspect that’s taken into consideration by search engines when deciding which websites to show to users. There are a number of ways to upgrade your user experience, but it’s all about making your website look good and function efficiently. Images, whitespace, bullet points, design consistency, clear call-to-actions and formatted hyperlinks will make your website content easier to browse and navigate. And to make your website run quickly and efficiently, avoid large images, videos and heavy use of plug-ins that will slow down your page load speed.
Design Refresh
Optimizing your website to improve the user experience leads us to our next important point about upgrading your website – design. Users may turn away from your brand if your site looks unkept and out of date. So if your website looks like something from the 90’s, it’s probably time for a website refresh. The good news is that without completely wiping your existing website in exchange for a new one, a design refresh can be done in a way that retains all your URLs and the positive SEO you’ve built up over the years.
When starting on a website refresh project for clients, our developers and design team like to emphasize navigation and ease of use. We consider the sitemap and website structure, and come up with a plan that will make your website friendlier for both users and search engines. That includes your main navigation, menus and URL structure. Then we work on design elements like the header/footer, call-to-actions, images, graphics and more that make your website look and feel great.
Ecommerce
Ecommerce is the act of completing electronic transactions for good and services bought on the internet. If you want to sell using the internet, you’ll need ecommerce capabilities. To do this, you have two options:
- Use a third-party service that directs your customers off your website in order to complete a transaction.
- Build ecommerce capabilities into your site.
The beauty of going with option two is your customers will stay on your site. That means they can browse your products and services and make a purchase all the same place, allowing you to retain not only your customer’s information but website usage analytics. This method also builds trust among your customer base, when they’re able to purchase from you without being shipped off to another website that looks and feels different from the one they were originally shopping on.
To help customers sell online, our website development team is trained in building Shopify websites along with WooCommerce for WordPress websites. Shopify is one of the largest and most powerful ecommerce platforms in the world, used by some of the biggest brands like Red Bull, Gymshark, Nescafé and Sephora. Shopify sites are not only highly functional but visually appealing, and will allow your business to list products and complete transactions online – all from your website.
Content
Creating content for your website is a great way educate and entertain your audience, improve your search engine rankings and sell more. Without any content, your website would be empty. But in order to make the most of your website, you’ll want to take things further than just a basic home, about, contact and services page. Here are a few types of content worth considering for your website:
Blog
Creating regular blog posts on your site is a great way to engage potential and existing customers. Using longer form content, blog writing is an excellent opportunity to educate and feature the products/services you sell. Aside from earning plenty of search traffic, the blog will help elevate your brand to the level of ‘thought leader’ if it can consistently provide useful content.
Inside your blog posts, you have the opportunity to feature all sorts of other content. You can add product photos, tutorial videos, and link to other areas of your website using hyperlinks. An article packed with relevant keywords along with links, photos and videos could have a better chance at ranking highly versus a website page. For example, if you’re in the business of selling T-shirts, your ‘T-shirts’ website page may have a tough time competing for a spot on the first page of Google’s search results, but your ‘Favourite T-shirt Styles of 2023’ article will likely have a better shot.
Video
Video is an extremely useful method of communicating a message and selling products and services – it’s more engaging, and people are far more likely to watch than to read. If you want to demonstrate how a product is used or how a service works, an instructional video is a great way to do it, as an alternative to a big wall of text. This way, you can show how a product works in action or how it’s built while highlighting features and the full range of capabilities. You can also use video to introduce your team members and showcase your company with footage from company events and around the office.
Thanks to TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, short-form video content is on the rise. But when considering using video on your website, longer-form may be the way to go. Shorter videos may perform better from an analytical standpoint, but longer videos give you more opportunity to showcase and sell your products to a smaller number of users that may be more likely to buy.
Case studies & testimonials
If your website is already loaded up with blog posts and videos, case studies and testimonials might be your next best option when it comes to creating content to help you sell online. Especially if you’re trying to make transactions on your site, case studies and testimonials will go a long way in building trust and giving customers that extra needed push to make a purchase.
Case studies are similar to blog posts in that they are typically longer form, and may even live inside your blog under a separate category. Case studies are a deep dive into a specific project. If you want to leverage case studies to sell more, they can be written in a certain angle that highlights your business’ ability to help a customer solve a problem.
Testimonials are usually in a shorter format, displayed as direct quotes from past customers. This content doesn’t need its own page, and can instead by woven into services pages, product pages, and other places like the about page or home page. Testimonials are great trust building tools, as they provide first-hand experiences with your products and services from people who have already purchased.
Social Media
Social media is a great opportunity to reach your customers on another channel and find new customers that otherwise wouldn’t find your website. There are literally billions of social media users across a range of platforms, so if you aren’t using social media you’re missing out. Regardless of who your audience is, you’ll be sure to find them on either LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok or elsewhere.
Using social media, you can communicate with people directly, develop connections and build trust by sharing content that both informs, educates and entertains. You have the option of building a following and reaching people organically (for free), or you can develop paid social content that targets specific groups of people.
When it comes to creating social media content, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If you’ve already got content on your website like blogs, videos, case studies and tutorials, those can be repurposed for social media. You just have to mind the length and optimize the format for the social platforms. Plus, you can use special campaigns like contests, giveaways and polls to build your audience, engage with people and learn more about your potential customers.
Email marketing is a completely different avenue that you can use to market and sell your products and services outside your website and social media channels. It’s an entirely separate way to reach potential customers. Plus, did you know email is the highest converting sales channel? Not only is it a great place to sell, email marketing is an excellent opportunity to relay valuable information to people that could help them reach their goals. You can also use email to promote blog and social content, introduce your new products, send special promotions and send abandon cart notifications to recover sales.
Email marketing doesn’t need to be as labour-intensive as it sounds. In fact, thanks to automation and scheduling tools like MailChimp, everything can run in the background once setup. From the moment people subscribe to your list, email marketing automation can kick in to welcome people, offer deals and build relationships.
Ads
Paid ads, commonly known as pay-per-click marketing, is an extremely effective way to reach people actively searching for products and services you sell. Ads are the most targeted channel for selling more on the internet.
It works by paying advertising platforms like Google Ads for your website to appear on their search engine result page. When people search for terms that align with the keywords in your ad and on your website, your ad will appear. And you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
If you don’t want to pay per click, another form of paid advertising over the internet is known as ‘display’, where you pay for impressions (eyeballs) rather than clicks. Typically sold per thousand impressions (CPM), these visual ads are great if you want to reach as many people as possible. For example, if you have an upcoming event or a new product you want people to know about, Google or Facebook will display ads to an audience of your choosing on their website and partner websites, earning you thousands upon thousands of impressions.
If you’re looking to sell more of your products and services using the internet, Caorda can help. We’re a full-service web solutions company with dedicated teams for web development and digital marketing. We can do everything from ecommerce website builds to email marketing, paid ads, blogging and social media.
Contact us today to get started selling more online: