Using your Website as a Sales Platform

Selling online should be no different than selling in person. Once a customer is connected with a sales consultant, it becomes about engaging in a conversation around the product in question. In person, the two parties see each other and observe facial expressions and body language. Often in these situations the customer and the seller develop a trusting relationship (especially when the seller provides guidance/expertise). On the web, the communication experience between a customer and sales consultant can not only come close to an in-person sale but with video, real-time analytic and custom toolsets, it can actually exceed the traditional experience.

Lets break down the online sales process into 5 steps: 

Hunting for Business Ideas? Consider Looking in These 8 Hot Industries

There may be a lot of economic uncertainty, but that doesn't mean it's a bad time to launch a business. For a few business ideas, take a spin through this list of eight online industries expected to see healthy U.S. revenue growth in 2013 that are hot for startups, according to industry research firm IBISWorld.

Social network game development -- People are spending more time on social networks like Facebook and they are also spending an ever increasing number of hours online, thanks to the rapid adoption of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Consumers are spending more time playing games that are embedded into their social network: The industry has grown by an astonishing 184 percent per year on average for the past five years, IBIS reports. By the end of 2013, U.S. sales in the industry are expected to grow another 32 percent and hit $6 billion. 

Sales Productivity

I firmly believe the market today is unlike any we've seen in a long time, if ever. It's a zero-sum market in which many niches are saturated and success involves taking something away from a competitor -- and sometimes the competitor is yourself. This kind of market resembles retail, where most niches are also filled and securing a place for your product or brand may mean displacing another on the store shelf.
We are at it again -- and why not? It's the start of another year, and people are doing predictable things like having kickoffs of all sorts of things. I just launched a new website and several new initiatives in research and thought leadership, so I am no exception.

Tα βήματα για τη δημιουργία e-shop

Μέσα στην κρίση της αγοράς, με αυξημένη την ανάγκη περιορισμού των λειτουργικών εξόδων των επιχειρήσεων, πολύς λόγος γίνεται για τη δημιουργία ηλεκτρονικών καταστημάτων στο Διαδίκτυο προκειμένου να αυξηθεί ο τζίρος. Ας δούμε, λοιπόν, το θέμα όσο μπορούμε καλύτερα.

Το πλεονέκτημα του ηλεκτρονικού καταστήματος είναι ότι πουλά για εσάς 24 ώρες/365 ημέρες τον χρόνο

5 Ways to Make Your Website Look More Professional

Online shoppers feel confident buying from websites that look professional.
Increase the Trust Level and Enjoy Greater Sales

Here’s a list of 5 ways to look more professional and increase trust in your brand:

Tip #1: Professional Looking Logo

A logo is truly important for any corporate identity.  Customers will remember your company a lot better if it’s well represented by a professional logo.  Invest in getting it designed by a graphic artist.  You can use http://www.99designs.com.  Read my article How to Make a Logo

Email Marketing Tips That Can Increase Online Sales

Do you have a large email mailing list? Are you making the kind of money that you’d hoped you’d be making in your online business right now? Or are you struggling from day to day wondering how you can earn a nice living online? Well if this describes you, you should know that your situation can be fixed if you’re willing to work to change it.

To make money online, you need to use email marketing. 80% of your total business profits will come from sales on the “backend” (repeat sales from existing customers). So if you’re thrilled with the money you’re making now on the front end, imagine how much more money you could be making if you kept selling to the people on your customer list?

5 Customer Service Tips to Boost Online Sales

Brick-and-mortar retailers sell more when they have more staff on the floor to help customers. This also applies in the online environment. Here are five tips to help your customer service boost online sales.

Brick-and-mortar retailers sell more when they have more staff on the floor to help customers. That’s the conclusion of current studies, which demonstrate that a higher payroll correlates with higher sales—and profits, because increased sales numbers more than compensate for increased payroll.

Measuring the Travel Flash Sale Segment

Daily deal or Flash Sale sites have been rising in popularity, Fab.com is a newer entrant that has quickly gained interest from consumers and even passed some of its retail counterparts. Looking at Compete.com we see that between Fab.com, Gilt.com and Ruelala.com, Fab.com has driven more traffic than its competitors since launch and now sits at about 1.4 million unique visitors as of May 2012.

What is the Best Strategy for Ecommerce Copywriting?

It might not seem like much, but ecommerce copywriting is an important strategy that helps you rank high in search engines. Quality ecommerce copywriting can actually have a higher rate of converting traffic into sales.

Writing a unique copy for each product can actually make a huge difference. Even though the manufacturer’s copy contains all the accurate information regarding the products, it still is better to write one of your own. The only problem with the manufacturer’s copy is that every other merchant selling that product will have the same text and the search engine will not rank every website with the same content. Also, at times it is too technical for a buyer to understand.

Get your Small Business Enhanced with Email Marketing

Have you ever wondered how a lot of online businesses get to the pinnacle in just a few weeks? The main reason for their success is not really because of their superb products or their trendy website appearance, but because of employing online marketing. Marketing, as you may already know, is a way to get more consumers through advertising your own business. What these successful businesses do is they invest their time in online marketing so they can gather more consumers for more profit.

This Tea Company Steeps Its Business in Social Media

Selling tea over the internet isn't the simplest proposition. There's no way for online consumers to smell or taste a delicate chocolate chai or a bold pi lo chun green before they place an order. "A fair amount of guesswork is involved," admits Ilya Kreymerman, chief technology officer at Adagio Teas.
But the folks at the 13-year-old company, which operates online and from three stores in the Chicago area, don't like to leave their internet customers guessing. Instead, Adagio's patrons are encouraged to offer recommendations through Facebook, Twitter and Google+. And the conversation doesn't end there. Adagio is on the leading edge of a movement toward extracting actionable data from the social media stream, cultivating insights about products and trends from its robust customer community.

What is the Meaning and Value of “Content” in Selling?

Expand Your Definition of Content to Create Value for Your Prospect

There is a lot of talk about content in marketing and sales these days. A company no longer has just brochures, datasheets or a company website, it has a pool of content about the products and services it markets. The company makes strategic and tactical decisions about how to most effectively communicate that content to potential customers, whether by blog, tweet, email, brochure, slide deck, webinar, datasheet, phone call or other means.

How to Keep Your Email Campaign Out of Your Prospect's Spam Folder

Email marketing, or e-marketing, is a great way to reach prospects. You can send out emails without having all the costs associated with regular direct mail – costs like printing, envelope-stuffing and postage. The major drawback to e-marketing is that it's hard to be sure that your email even reaches the recipient. With direct mail your prospect will at least glance at the mailing before tossing it. With e-marketing, the messages can end up snagged by an automated spam filter and never make it to the prospect's inbox. It pays to do a little extra work and make your emails less likely to be flagged as spam.

10 Online Shopping Personality Traits

Retailers have typically approached marketing from a product-centric standpoint, but behavioral commerce technology now on the market enables retailers to take a more people-focused approach for giving shoppers an incentive to complete a purchase.
As online shopping gains momentum, shoppers are looking for online retailers to provide them with more personalized shopping experiences. Marketers can tailor these experiences to specifically defined target audiences by understanding the shopping personalities and buying behaviors of customers. Because when you've discovered what drives specific shoppers to buy, you're able to increase sales and margins.
Shopping behavior data derived from a behavioral commerce analytic platform used by several prominent online retailers was analyzed to determine the 10 most common shopping personality profiles.

3 ways guest posts can allow you to promote your travel site

Do you know that guest posting can allow you to promote your travel website? Indeed there are a lot of benefits that are associated with guest posting and should allow you drive some interesting traffic to your website. In this article I will be speaking about 3 main ways how you can promote your travel website through the use of well –crafted guest posts.

How to Increase Online Customer Loyalty By 82%

You know the facts. Increasing customer loyalty…

• yields big profits over the long haul

• creates raving fans that promote your products for free

• is cheaper than finding new customers

But the question remains. How can you increase customer loyalty online?

Creating A Web Page That Sells

==CREATING A WEBSITE THAT SELLS==

The website that we'll be dealing with sells an eBook based on hair styling tips, but these concepts should translate very easily into any website that sells a product or service.
In this article, we touch on subjects such as:

The use of graphics on a web page

Copywriting insights

Web Page Headlines

Benefits, not features

And more.
Our hope and desire is that you find this article of value, and that you find thoughts and ideas you can put to use in your own online business.
Let us begin...

Want to Turn Your Brand’s Fans Into Expert Advisors? Try This Startup

Name: Needle
Quick Pitch: Needle offers expert live chat service to online retailers to help customers find the best products and increase sales.
Genius Idea: “Fansourcing” — Turning superfans of your brand into part-time advisors for the rest of your customers.

Best Way to Sell Furniture Products Online

Like most of the other industries, furniture industry has also become online. Shopping online for furniture with plenty of websites having various features is more favorable among customers rather than driving from showroom to showroom to get what they want. It is the most convenient way to shop from home and therefore, nowadays, this is the preferred way to shop.

If you have furniture showroom, have a website featuring all of them. Understand a customer's taste, style, requirement and preference. You website for the furniture is better viewed with a digital images. These digital images must include product sample pictures. There are many software available that can give your photo a 3D image and a customer can rotate it as per his or her willingness.

Free Apps To Help You Sell More: SumAll

SumAll is a data analytics tool that you can use as a BigCommerce client. It helps you use your own revenue data to make better decisions and make more money. It’s one of the most popular integrations from our integrations directory which is currently at almost 200 integrations (many free) and growing daily!
Your BigCommerce store can be easily synced up with SumAll and within a matter of minutes, realtime information about your revenue history, customer groups, sales patterns, and sales trajectory can be accessed. Here’s how it looks: