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Posts tagged ‘growing your business’

13
Feb

How to Expand a Retail Online Business: 4 Recommendations

            Having researched the subject of online retail stores growth, I’ve come to a conclusion that four simple invariables are essential for such businesses to develop any further.

  • Traffic
  • Conversion rates
  • Order amount
  • Returning customers rate

 Traffic

            When it comes to traffic, it is almost impossible to underestimate advertising.  Increasing the traffic through additional ad campaigns will lead to increased turnover, even though an average conversion rate may slightly go down. There is no reason to be concerned, however, if average conversion rate and order amount are acceptable and stay that way. To achieve positive results a webstore owner will need to invest in Search Engine Optimisation, Pay-Per-Click, e-mail and social marketing, affiliate and referral programmers.

Conversion Rates

            Conversion rates are very important, and keeping their number grow is just as necessary. Optimising activities such as constant update of website content and design, as well as functionality and usability enhancement will definitely help your conversion rates improve. That can be achieved through additional analysis and web development and will guarantee general profitability and increasing turnover. With such conditions website conversion rate will not need any extra ads or investments because existing customers will be attracted to your updated website yet again. Do not forget to keep your pricing friendly and always check out your competition.

Order Amount

            Order amount can and should be increased on average with the help of promotions, special deals, product bundling and bulk discounts. It takes some more development and insignificant profit loss, but in the end of the day it will prove its worth in long term revenue.

Returning Customers

            Returning customers rate should be continually improved. This is accomplished by consistent communication with clientele, loyalty and referral programmes as well as special offers for existing customers. The rule of thumb in this case is cost per acquisition that works for larger amounts of orders and directly affects the costs, making it less expensive to initially convert a potential customer to the actual client. End result is similar to the one with increased order amount – the average profitability goes a bit down, but the website owner saves on marketing costs and gets more money in the long run.

About the Author: Elena Bizina, works at Marketing department of DataLink UK Ltd company – a provider of a number of bespoke solutions, some of which are Magento and Sage integrations for small and medium businesses. Elena takes particular interest in eCommerce to learn from top professionals and share with beginners like herself. In the past – an English teacher and a Business Development Manager, at present – a full-time mother and a part-time Assistant to Marketing Manager whose core responsibilities are researching the eCommerce industry and writing about it.

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7
Feb

The Entrepreneur’s New Year – Tips to Having the Best Year Ever in 2012

Goals, dreams, to do’s, follow-up, connecting with old and new clients, coming up with a new plan, working, working, working … AAAHHH, it all seems to be too much at the beginning of a New Year.  It’s just too much to even think about and so much easier just to not do it.  But when you do, it can be so beneficial for the entire year.  You set the pace and the success right now for what you can accomplish this year.  So go ahead, get out there and do it.  Here’s a little help.

Tips to grow your business in 2012:

Get Organized

Clean out the old and bring on the new.  It’s so important to put away last year’s work and start with a clean start for not only you, but your clients too.  It can be as simple as going through your client’s folders, putting anything you might need this year in a new folder and everything else stays in their old worn out folder.  Put all your client’s 2011 folders together, put a rubber band around them, and put them away marking them 2011.  Also make sure that everything is in alphabetical order in your current file system.  Never know how by the end of the year that totally slips and the z’s are by the e’s, but it just happens.  How awesome to see a-z once again. Now continue this throughout your office.  Done!

Get a new planner

(Yes, I know you have one already – but don’t skip to the next step just yet.) This planner doesn’t have client work in it.  It doesn’t have school functions and times to pick up the kids.  This planner is your business growth planner.  (Make sure to mark it accordingly.)  The planner needs to have each day on a new sheet, divided by hours.

Get Planning – Set out time to work your business

In your new planner, for the next month shade in time you plan on working on YOUR business.  For me it’s in the morning from 6:30 to 7:30 and then at lunch.  I will probably work other times on my business, but this is the time that I have scheduled just for it.  I am a morning person and this is when I do my best work. Take that into consideration for your plan.  When are you at your best? For just one week write down what you are going to do in that time.  Each Friday or over the weekend you are going to take that one step and plan out your next week.

Get Writing

(You knew as a marketer, I’d say that didn’t you!) You are going to write one article a month.  No excuses.  With that article you are also going to send it out, add it to your blog, create a couple of tweets from it, and also add it to your newsletter.  Can you see the traction you can get with just one article?  And don’t forget you can hire a publicity virtual assistant to do this for you.

Get Social

Okay, I know you are already on Facebook and Twitter, but this year you are actually going to get more involved.  In your planner, you need to schedule time (at least several times a day) to get active on Twitter and Facebook.  (Or whatever social media you use.)  Schedule the time and then send great quality tweets and tips.

Get Help

You just don’t have to do it alone.  Hire a virtual assistant or someone who can help you accomplish all these goals.  If you have a virtual assistant already, start sending things over to them to do.  It’s all about the action steps of getting it done.

Get Happy

Remember you own your business for a reason.  Enjoy it!  Don’t get so caught up in the to do’s and client work to not remember why you are doing this in the first place.  Take some time to reflect where you are and just be grateful for being there.  Commit to enjoying your business more this year and the rest of all this (the to-dos’, the client work, etc.)  will just seem to fall into place.

Can you see how you can do this? You can grow your business. Yes, it will require that you make a commitment to it, but don’t NOT take advantage of that new year feeling.  You will be amazed that after a short time, this will be so routine, you won’t even realize that you haven’t been doing it forever.

About the Author: Diana Ennen is the President of Virtual Word Publishing,  and co-author of So You Want To Be a Work-At-Home Mom: A Christian’s Guide to Starting a Home-Based Business with Jill Hart and also VA the Series: Become a Highly Successful Sought After Virtual Assistant (Kelly Poelker). 

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3
Dec

Growing Your Business Exponentially, Not as Hard as You Think!

The Road To Exponential Growth

If you want your business to get ahead and experience exponential growth at some point, you only need to do one thing…Something!  But there is a catch, you need to do something that adds value to your business every single day and only then will you be certain to get ahead.

It doesn’t have to be a big thing, you don’t need to land the multi-million dollar contract, or send out fliers about your products on a daily basis. Just do one small thing every single day, without fail, and you’ll see results.


But I Want Results Now!

Doesn’t work that way…sorry. Keep in mind this is a snowball effect, and at first it won’t seem like your getting anywhere, then one day you’ll realize you have a snowball bigger than a house and more business than you know what to do with.  It’s the compounding effect of all your daily efforts that will lead to that explosive, exponential growth you want, no way around it.

Remember

You may only be moving your business ahead a fraction of an inch at a time, but over time those inches add up to feet, and the feet to yards, and the yards to miles. The idea here is to not get discouraged early on when growth is slow, and all your daily work is hardly perceptible in the big picture. The key is to keep doing something so that you can one day enjoy the compounded effect of all your hard work.

A good exercise is to brainstorm all the things you can do to add value to your business that would take less than 10 minutes of your time.

What are some of the little things you can do everyday that take less than 10 minutes?

  • Email someone in your network, just to check in
  • Explore social networking
  • Stop by an outlet that may have an interest in your product/service and introduce yourself to the person in charge
  • Look at a process of yours and find one way to make it more efficient
  • Begin optimizing your website, nothing big just little pieces here and there
  • Call a supplier to see what new products they have in the pipeline
  • Google your competition
  • Call a competitor and inquire about their services, how do they match up to you?
  • Make a new contact in your niche
  • And 1000′s of others…

What did you do to grow your snowball today?