10 Tips To Increase Online Sales During This Recession

No wonder, why I am telling the same story which everyone know – the slow economy and recession. But, the numbers which I got from eMarketer surprised me.

Unlike in previous years, 2008 was sluggish for B2C sites.

The retail category which has hardly hit were computer software, digital entertainment and office supplies. While fitness equipment, books and magazines did well.

Seeing the above graph, one can interpret that the entertainment, luxury items and office supplies were vastly effected. Under luxury and entertainment we can term – music, videos, jewelry, watches, toys, PDAs and events tickets. So, the buyers have become too cautious in 2008 about what they are spending on. And they have spend the money were they really want to. They just did the purchases for their family needs – health, fitness, books, furniture, flowers and apparels.

What notes you need to take during this time of recession -

1. Concentrate more on organic search rankings. As it is a free tool to get the target audience and it is the best way when you have tight budgets.
2. Appropriately allocate the ad and marketing budget.
3. Have a proper messaging to your campaigns - you are here to fulfill your consumer’s basic needs and not to thrust your product on to them.
4. Target the niche audience as far as possible. This will help in more conversions and a better ROI.
5. Do measure your ROI for all your different campaigns separately and regularly. Invest more in the campaigns which is giving you better ROI. Have only ROI-driven strategies and use only quantifiable tactics. If you can’t prove it is working, then slash it.
6. It requires more effort and time to get a new customer. Better get more business from the existing customer. Concentrate more on customer marketing.
7. Try cross-selling other products/services to existing customers. This will save time and your customers may want to buy from you rather than other sellers.
8. If you do not have products/services to cross-sell, then partner with other sellers and scratch each other’s backs.
9. Increase your affiliate network. Motivate your top affiliates and help them with promotional materials and educate them to get more business during this situation. Better show them these 10-tips :)
10. Have coupon based or other promotional strategy. Re-look and constantly check, if it working and is it yielding more profits in a shorter span.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. You can get the prospects to your site, but the big question is can you make them buy? I also want to add that this is the best time to increase the market share for your business and beat the competitors before they beat you.

I would appreciate more suggestions from the various thought leaders in this e-Commerce market.

(Source for the above two graphs: eMarketer.com)