Whilst a lot of businesses simply have a website so that they can have an online presence, so that people can find out company information and contact details, the majority of businesses going online are doing so to sell more products.

But many people fall in to the trap of thinking that because they have spent thousands on a new website that it will immediately attract a lot of traffic, and that all of this traffic will turn in to buyers. Indeed an awful lot of companies are very disappointed at the Return On Investment (ROI) that their website brings them.

Firstly they may have had their marketing department work closely with their web designer to create a site that they think will work well, however when it comes to marketing on the Internet, the normal marketing rule book simply does not apply. Many traditional marketing methods just do not translate in to sales when they are applied online.

So if you have a website and want to make more sales online then what can you do? Well firstly before you do anything else you need to make sure your customers can place an order as simply as possible, and as fast as possible, you also need to ensure that your potential customer can find what they are looking for easily and quickly. Once you are happy with this process then you can begin to look at how to expand your online sales.

Firstly and most obviously you need traffic and the more of it the better, but there is a common misconception that if you spend thousands on a website then traffic will come flooding to it, sadly this is not true and you could find a three page site written by a teenager is getting more traffic than yours is. Gaining traffic is down to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), which you could do yourself, but will find it far more easier to find a web development company to do this for you (Just note not all web design companies offer this service). SEO is the method used to move your site up the search engine rankings.

Good SEO will increase traffic and hence increase your sales.

Secondly once you have a prospective buyer you need to be "Upselling" to them. This is the process whereby at the end of the shopping cart you can offer items to the buyer by using words such as "People who bought/looked at this item also bought XYZ". This method is great for boosting your sales and can often add 25-50% more on to a sale.

Thirdly offer customer reviews on your site, as people love buying products that other people are raving about.

Fourthly set up an affiliate scheme so that other website owners can make a commission by referring buyers through to your site from theirs, as when properly implemented this can boost your sales by thousands of percentages.

Lastly set up some way of capturing the email details of potential customers, if you do this by offering a competition prize as an example, you can build a huge mailing list very fast enabling you to sell to people online time and again.

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