trinorthlighting - 11:03 pm on Feb 23, 2009 (gmt 0)

We all know that the economic downturn has been affecting all types of businesses. So, if you manage an ecommerce site what can you do? Well, we are sharing some things that we have done recently to increase sales.

1. Add products- That is the number one thing we have been doing. Instead of selling 1000 products start selling 2000 products! This will naturally increase your sales overall then just wait till the slower economic times are over and you might pleasantly find you doubled your bottom line.

2. SEO-By adding new product lines make sure you SEO all your new pages real well while constructing them. Additional content will mean additional traffic and possibly higher ranking in valued keywords or high rankings in new targeted keywords.

3. Email Newsletters- Offer weekend sales, cut prices on inventory that is not moving. Get people to your site via newsletters to make purchases.

4. Start a forum or blog- This is something new we have tried and it enables customers both past and present to share ideas, photographs, talk about how they used your product and even write reviews.

5. Send out a print catalog- Print catalogs are relatively cheap to produce, pick your top 10 products and use your customer database to mail out catalogs. People change their email addresses, so emailing newsletter does not reach 100% of people. Sometimes people move as well, so if your catalog delivers to an address where a new person is living you might have just picked up a new customer.

6. Write additional technical details about existing products-Make some how to do videos, post them to You Tube. Not only will your customers love the videos but you will also find traffic on You Tube as well. Make sure you link your videos to how to do pages and to product pages as well. The past month we have picked up 4000 additional referrals from people watching four YouTtube videos we made alone. Plus, if you make good videos people might blog about them giving your website extra links. Extra traffic means extra sales, extra links means an increase in Search engine rankings.

7. Get busy on message boards in your industry- Become the subject matter expert and the go to person on message boards that discuss products like you sell. Answering questions will help bring in traffic and sales. A good example is helping someone on a "Do it yourself" project. Help the person to your own "Do it yourself" instruction page and make sure that page has links to product pricing.

8. Make a lot of "Do it yourself" instruction pages for products that are complicated to install. Remember, if someone can save $1000 from hiring a contractor verses doing it themselves, that might make or break a sale.

9. Keep an eye on your inventory- If it slows, move it out. Customers like sales.

10. Last but not least, expand your marketing. If you are not taking advantage of free marketing things such as Google Base then you should spend some time there. There are other free shopping engines you can submit products to as well out there and may be even expand is some pay per click marketing.

Does anyone else have other things to share? If so, please do share the wealth of knowledge.