Over the years I’ve helped hundreds of companies with their online sales. Some websites struggle to get one sale per month, while others receive multiple orders every hour of every day. What’s the difference? Marketing. Specifically, marketing that drives traffic to your website, followed up by marketing that converts visitors into customers.

According to Neil Patel, less than 25% of ALL websites ever receive ANY traffic. I’m not sure where he got those numbers, but I recently reviewed a website for a potential client and what I discovered was true of about 75% of all the websites that I look at, so I suspect his numbers are accurate. Because I see these same issues in so many websites, I decided to post my reply to this company in this article. Here is my response:

At first glance, your website appears to be clean and professional looking. It is using a modern and robust content management system. You have Google Analytics installed, which is recommended. Technically, there is nothing wrong with your site. So why isn’t it performing? Let me explain.

It appears as if there are 38 products listed on your site. All products have good quality, high resolution photos that looks like they were professional shot. They are all consistent and all have white cutout backgrounds so the product appears to float on the page. These photos are great for the primary product photos, however you would probably get more sales conversions if you added some secondary photos and videos of the product “in-context” – that is action shots of how the product is actually used. Multiple images of your product, and even videos of your product being used should be considered the norm.

You need testimonials and reviews on your website. This is huge. Social proof is one of the main selling points for anyone buying online and you can greatly ease their mind by having testimonials and reviews on each and every page of your website.

Make it easy for someone to do business with you. Your phone number is on the contact page, but we recommend adding it to the header and/or footer of every page.

The single biggest problem you have with your website is that no one can find it (your site is not listed on alexa.com, which means it gets very little traffic). An Alexa rank by itself may not indicate sales volume, but it does show relative traffic volume over time. For example, the number one site on the internet (Alexa rank of 1) is Google. The number 2 site (Alexa rank of 2) is YouTube. Facebook is number 3. Alexa ranks approximately 28 million websites. For reference purposes, WebStoresLtd.com sits at 132,259 (21,303 in the United States). Your site does not make it into the top 28,000,000 meaning you do not get enough traffic to show up.

Guest post by Andriana Moskovska

Modern consumers demand transparency and authenticity, which has paved the way for the growth of influencer marketing as an industry. According to statistics compiled by the team at SmallBizGenius, 2018 saw businesses receiving a 520% return on investment after implementing a strategic influencer marketing campaign.

As evidenced by the 49% of consumers who rely on influencers’ recommendations before deciding to buy a product, it’s no longer a question of whether this tactic is effective or not; it’s a question of how you can incorporate influencer marketing into your current strategy and yield the desired results.

Before you launch your influencer campaign, take a quick look at some of this year’s trends to keep your marketing efforts up-to-date.

More Marketers Are Choosing To Collaborate with Micro- & Nano-influencers

Micro-influencers have 1,000 to 100,000 followers, while nano-influencers have between 1,000 and 10,000. These types of influencers have a fewer follower count than celebrities and macro-influencers but generate higher engagement rate.

The genuine interaction between these influencers and their network of followers increases their authenticity and trustworthiness factor, which is why many brands looking to generate organic reach and engagement are placing their bets on these types of influencers.

Instagram is Still the Preferred Platform for Influencers

Marketers around the globe spent over $5 billion on influencer campaigns on this platform. With over 1 billion active users, Instagram’s popularity as an influencer marketing channel isn’t going to die down anytime soon.

In addition to the massive number of users, the communities on Instagram, which are mostly made up of members of the younger demographic, make it easy for influencers to interact, share their skills and expertise, and grow their network.

Influencer Marketers’ Primary Challenge is Spotting Fake Followers

Fraudulent accounts with fake followers posing as influencers are deceiving marketers into collaborating with them. Although various methods to combat this type of fraud have been released, they remain prevalent across many digital platforms.

Make it a priority to check the authenticity of the potential influencer before reaching out for a collaboration. There are plenty of tools readily available which allow marketers to check if the account is using bots or purchasing followers or fake engagement.

The Use of ROI Metrics

The end goals of influencer marketers are mostly focused on increasing brand awareness and customer loyalty. Although influencer marketing is effective in helping brands drive high levels of engagement and expand their reach, calculating the return on investment is still a daunting task for many marketers.

Some of the ways to track the effectiveness of a campaign are […]

Every person, and certainly every entrepreneur, should read “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne (you can also listen to it as an audiobook or watch the movie). In this book, we are told that the Great Secret of Life is the law of attraction. The law of attraction can also be called the law of creation. In other words, life is not happening to you, you are creating it. The Secret shows us how we can manifest anything in our lives – money, people, fame – whatever we truly believe in. The Universe will then conspire to work it’s magic and make it come true in our lives.

I love this quote by the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland: “Everyone wants some magical solution for their problem and everyone refuses to believe in magic!”

I believe that is really the point that The Secret is trying to make. Every religion requires us to believe in something that we cannot see. This has been true throughout history. We have to have faith. We have to believe in magic. And when we do, that magic actually shows up in our lives.

Now you might have to be a bit mad (like the Mad Hatter) to believe in something you can’t see. Whether you call that force the universe, God, wizards, ghosts, astrology, tarot, or whatever, it is difficult to believe in something you cannot prove. J. Nochole Smith says, “We humans like to be sure, and how can you be sure of something you can’t quite explain or prove? In life, and in business, looking at data and facts is an absolutely essential element in smart decision making and planning… but it’s not the complete picture.” You can read her complete post here.

In the legend of alchemy, the practitioner is spoken of as having the “magic” power of transmuting lead into gold. But what if we can take whatever we are given and make something incredible out of it. I believe we each have the power to do this. So is magic real? The only way to find out is to experience it for yourself.

Certainly, […]

Guest Post by Hassan Khan

Image source: https://www.yo-kart.com

Often thought of as the unique selling proposition of the world of e-commerce and marketing, chatbots are short for chat robot technology which has the ability to simulate human interactions, in this case sales assistant and consumer interactions, through artificial intelligence. This software can interact with consumers, answer their queries as well as their concerns in the format of a regular conversation which uses text and sometimes even voice and images.

The realm of telegenic marketing is fast evolving with innovative ideas and strategies being introduced. It is considered that chatbots are an asset to e-commerce stores due to their ability to cultivate a shopping experience that resembles real life commerce. To what extent can chatbots assist the e commerce business? That is something that must be discussed in detail before a company chooses to adopt this novel strategy.

Improving Consumer Interaction

A research conducted by Sprout Social came to the conclusion that 5 out of 6 messages that require a reply go completely unanswered by most companies with a waiting time of around 10 hours being the average for those which do get a reply eventually. It is frustrating for customers to […]

This is still the question that most business owners ask. However, I always tell my clients that if they do everything else well, the search engines will take care of themselves. This means that we need to look at what is going on with your website and your overall web presence to see why you are not listed on page one of Google.

You should also understand that Search engines are not the only source of traffic (in fact, I would argue, they are not even the primary source of traffic for most sites.)

I would argue that search engines are not the primary source of traffic for most websites. Click To Tweet

You hear stats all the time that Google accounts for somewhere between 70% to 90% of the search market. While this clearly makes them the market leader and dominant player in the search world, that does not mean that they are the only ones driving traffic to your website! Various studies indicate that organic search drives somewhere between 34.8% and 51% of total website traffic. Social media drives another 5% to 25.6% of traffic. Paid traffic accounts for maybe another 10%. Where does the rest of the traffic come from? The answer is often YOU! People either click on a link that you put out on the internet (such as a directory listing or blog post), they enter your url directly into the address bar, or they get there through an email that you sent them. This is as much as 60% of the traffic that comes to your website and it is traffic that YOU (not Google) control.

I recently had a conversation with a client who had discovered that he was “invisible” to the search engines and was really concerned about this. Then, I got a message from a another client asking me how come he didn’t show up on page 1 of Google. Despite the fact that most of your traffic comes directly from your own efforts, these companies (like most of us) value the free, organic traffic that Google sends our way. So, I did an analysis of his website and here is what I found, and the solutions  that I recommended: […]Favorite

Last week I read numerous articles about how the Facebook Newsfeed would soon become a legacy product – it will essentially go away in favor of private messaging. See one such article here.  Here is why this is significant: Nothing lasts for ever. If you are relying on social media sites as your sole place to post articles, drive traffic, or establish a web presence, then you are basically “renting” space. When (not if) a platform changes, gets bought, or goes away, you are vulnerable yourself. It is critical for your business that you have your own home on the internet (that is, that you have your own website and can control your own visitors). This is why it is so important to grow your email list where you own the customer. Having 10,000 fans on Facebook or Instagram is NOT the same as having an email list of even 1,000 true fans. Not only are email open rates better than organic Facebook reach, but no one can take them away from you. yes, they might unsubscribe, but some third party, like Facebook, isn’t suddenly going to change their business model and stop giving you access to them.

So what will happen if the Facebook Newsfeed goes away? Will a competitor step in and take over this space, or is this model past its prime? Will we all stop wasting time on social media and get our lives back? Personally, I don’t think so – we have all become accustomed to communicating with each other via social media channels and we enjoy it.

[…]Favorite

Back in the early days of the internet, most people didn’t know how to get to the content that they wanted unless they knew the website by name, and this web address was type sensitive to make matters more difficult. Then came search engines, the first of which started back in 1993, and just 5 years later, Google and MSN were launched onto the world wide web, triggering our modern way of life with smart devices and being connected.

There is so much opportunity in SEO and SERPs (Search Engine Response Pages) that in 2009, in the early days of ‘Bing, Yahoo merged with them in their attempt to get a firm grip of the market. Try as they might, today Google still controls over 90% of the SEO market share, WORLDWIDE.

SEO is not about having a page filled with ads, nor does it have to be an overly complicated system. In fact, the true winner of website traffic drivers is organic content, as opposed to paid for ads, however you still need to get your content at the top of SERPs results. Nearly 39% of all ecommerce traffic comes from the search bar, after all, search engines were created for users to connect to what they knew was out there, but didn’t know where to find it. You want to ensure that your site has the right content to rank high on search engines.

The web is moving so fast that SEO seems to be changing on a daily basis. It started predominantly on the PC, then moved to mobile and smart devices. By 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice searches, making mobile friendly websites a must have.

The systems behind all of this information is intense, for example: Google’s Rankbrain multitasking algorithm. This algorithm analyses incoming queries and searches and determines the most relevant result to be displayed first, but is not the only search algorithm found behind your WWW searches.

Guest post:

Written by: Junaid Ali Qureshi is an ecommerce entrepreneur with a passion for tech and marketing. Some of his current ventures include Elabelz.com, Progos Tech, Titan Tech and Smart Marketing.  […]Favorite

A ecommerce expert once said that business has moved from the marketplace to the market space. It’s very hard to comprehend this statement considering that the marketplace itself is a space. I believe that what he is saying is that business has gone cyber, hence the use of space (as in cyberspace). There are lots of proofs to back this claim. The internet has also caused an increase in the development of small and medium scale enterprises. This is because it provides the best of opportunities at the minimal of cost to establish your business. Not everyone will have the financial strength to seek help from a very good magento ecommerce agency. Furthermore, the information the ecommerce development company you want to consult uses in serving you is made available km the internet. The internet has made life easy by giving you access to the basics on how to go about on your journey to becoming an ecommerce enterprise owner.

Despite the long epistle of how much the internet can be of help when starting up your own ecommerce enterprise, you could easily get lost while trying to find your way. There are high chances you will or are already making a mistake in the process of building your website. This is probably the reason why your website has not lived up to its full potential. An official website is a necessary for your business and so is having a website that is worth calling and official website. It is somewhat better that you don’t have a website at all than having one that will drive your business to the ground. This article will open your eyes to “Mistakes To Avoid While Building An E-Commerce Website”.

Not having a mobile friendly website

Are you for real? Like you could be a business owner in the year and still not have a website either having a mobile version and/or is optimized for mobile viewing. Considering the fact that your website is an ecommerce website and your potential customers as well as the general public would rather access. This is a mistake you must avoid when building your ecommerce website and you should seek to rectify if you are already guilty of it. By making this mistake you are depriving yourself of the much needed traffic and depriving people of the opportunity to have their needs met. You can either format your website to enable mobile viewers have full access to your website or have two versions (mobile and desktop versions) for your web visitors to choose from.

Having a poor design

If there is a mistake that is more criminal than my previous point then it is the mistake of designing a mistake and calling it and ecommerce website. The aspect of web design is so broad that it should be an independent writeup on its own. It covers a number of issues such as content, navigation, website loading speed and so much more. When designing your website, it is good your choose your content management system based on feedback given by other users rather than  just the description given by the developer. Nobody can assess a product better than it’s user, not even its producer/manufacturer. This is because nobody believes that he or she is doing something that’s not good enough.

Having non-descriptive, unclear or on actions

The issue of call to action is a very tenacious one as you can easily go off track by trying to do the right thing. I have witnessed a case where I had to turn down the opportunity of taking a call to action as the call to action button was just all in my face. It was very flashy, so flashy that I left the content of the message and started on the PowerPoint display before me. Despite all that, it is best that you use a very clear call to action. Always use buttons as against the use of links. You should […]Favorite