Internet Marketing 1

Selling on the Internet – Problems and Solutions.

There has been a gradual change over the last few years with the lowering amount of sales websites are receiving online, along with fewer enquiries and a poorer responses from existing customers; it can only get worse!

What is the cause of this shift?

Mobile.

Mobile accounts for over half of all traffic to your website and, if your website isn’t mobile friendly/responsive, getting sales from it is going to be difficult.

The online behaviour of a visitor to your site is radically different to one sitting at a desktop PC. Whereas the person sitting at his desk looking at your site is giving it the majority of their attention, compare this to a mobile user who could be sitting in a coffee shop, on a train, in a bus stop or in front of the television, is flicking from one site to another at a moments notice and is easily distracted. The need to quickly capture the attention of a visitor on a mobile device is infinitely more important than on a computer.

Email.

We’re constantly bombarded with emails containing adverts. I personally get up every morning and whilst munching cornflakes sitting in my pyjamas, sift through at least 50 emails checking and deleting what appears to be simply an advert without even opening them. I then start the whole process again when I get to work.

The open rates of emails are poor.  My own experience of sending emails also confirms that approximately 28 in every hundred emails sent are opened and only 1.5% of receivers that open an email click on any of the links contained in it. This is very disappointing but, on the whole, email marketing is still a very effective method of communicating and reaching your customers.

What can we do?

Mobile is the problem but also the solution – the majority of first time visitors to your site will more than likely leave within 10 seconds never to return, so capturing their attention within those 10 seconds when they have one eye on the tv or flicking between your site and facebook is difficult, so what can you do?

What did we do in the old days without the internet when we relied on postcards in shop windows or adverts in magazines? The majority of the time we included a telephone number and people saw the advert and hopefully gave us a call. So by making it easy for visitors to call us by including a button on your mobile friendly site that allows visitors to simply tap and call us to ask a question and begin a relationship with us is immediate, it increases response and identifies the prospects with the best potential.

If adding a button like this that stays visible as the page is scrolled is beyond your capabilities, then, at the very least, your telephone number should be highly visible on your site.

Visitors to your site aren’t necessarily looking to buy, they’re looking for information. By offering something for free, a tutorial ‘how to’, (for example ‘How to look after pearl jewellery’) or a discount code in exchange for an email address, it allows you that all important first contact that then helps you to remain in contact with your visitor and begin the sales process. It is no longer simply enough to have a website that just lists products and expect to gain sales.

To Follow: Internet Marketing 2