THE Five Tests To Help Increase Online Revenue In 2010

Welcome back to the Docnet blog: we hope you’ve had an enjoyable Christmas break and New Year, and are ready to kick-start the new decade with some online marketing best practice and innovation tips for your web site.

To help get your momentum up, we’ve picked five simple tests to help make your web site more profitable in 2010, based on trends we’ve observed moving forward into the new year. Whether you want to do this yourself or get some outside help (get in contact with us and we can help ensure you do them right), the fact remains: online retail is evolving, and e-commerce web sites can’t afford to be left behind the curve.

1. Make customer registration on your web site optional.

While no self-respecting marketer would go out of the way to not add a customer’s details to a database, the sale is, ultimately, more important. Barriers to the sale might be reluctance to give up these personal details, or not enough time to register. Remove these barriers: provide an incentive to encourage as many visitors to register as possible, but allow them that choice.

2. Access your web site via a Smartphone

A relatively simple test, but one that will give you a great perspective on how people view your site (literally)! Is yours designed with Smartphones in mind? This is particularly important if you’re selling music, DVD, books, games or events tickets, as more and more Android, Blackberry and iPhone users are purchasing these items via their handsets. If your site doesn’t display and function correctly on these handsets, you can guarantee you are losing out on sales.

3. Invite customer reviews

If you’re still reluctant to let the ‘unedited voice of the public’ on to your web site, it’s time to re-evaluate you attitude. So long as you do everything you can to provide an efficient service and stock high-quality products (which we’re confident you are doing anyway!), customer reviews are nothing to fear. They can go so far as to help improve your search engine optimisation and lend trust to your site, encouraging more sales – and who wouldn’t want that?

4. Cultivate a social media presence

While some marketers are still unsure exactly how to calculate the return on investment of having Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts, you only need to look at these real-life business Twitter success stories to see what benefits it can bring. To nab a phrase from the Lottery, ‘you have to be in it to win it.’

5. Invite feedback on individual pages

If you have a large web site, it’s going to be tough to keep tabs on all the various links and features you have running smoothly. Why not invite your customers to give feedback: not just on your entire site, but individual pages as well, both positive and negative? There are now services that allow site visitors to report feedback directly, whether it’s pointing out an error in the copy, reporting a link that’s not working or just complementing you on the good work. This can give visitors the positive impression of contributing to the site, and help keep your caretaking responsibilities under control.

For more advice on how to kick-start your online marketing and e-commerce in 2010, why not get in touch with us for a 5 minute chat? Call 0845 521 0444 or fill in our simple contact form today.