Tracking & Troubleshooting for Increased Sales

So many times, online business owners are confused about where their sales come from. They think they are helpless after a visitor arrives at their site. Nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, as the site owner, you are extremely powerful. With just a little tracking and troubleshooting, you can dramatically improve both your site visitors' experience and your overall profits. TRACKING Knowing where your visitors are coming from gives you a lot of ideas. While the site stats that come with most hosting packages are OK, there is a lot of room for improvements in most cases. Between hits, clicks, unique visitors, and page views who really knows just how many people end up at your site and from where? Once you understand which ads, banners, or PPC search engine lists pull better, you are able to spend your advertising funds more effectively. ACTION STEPS: Track Your Ads Spend a little time investigating tracking services. ProBizTrack at Become Your Own Affiliate Another idea for those who sell electronic products via ClickBank (or other services) is to sign up as your own affiliate under several "nicknames." Then you can use your various affiliate IDs in ads. NOTE: You will have to pay your affiliate program's fee on any sales made through the affiliate links, but you'll get some good information in exchange. TROUBLESHOOTING Once you have narrowed down where your visitors are coming from and which ads are pulling best, you'll want to be sure visitors have a good buying experience when they reach your site. You know your site. You are familiar with which pages link to what and how the shopping cart works. First-time visitors will have no clue! Don't assume your site is a breeze to navigate. Pay attention to elements like: ease of navigation, shopping cart application, and location of "help" buttons & links. Make every effort to give your shoppers a simple and quick way to buy from you. ACTION STEPS: Conduct A Survey Conduct a survey of your visitors. Find out if they were able to locate what they were looking for. Ask how their experience with your payment gateway went. Question how their contact with customer service was. One simple way to do this is to create a survey using Survey Monkey at http://www.madmarketer.com/diane