Google Adwords

WRONG!

Do you really think it is that easy? Let’s get a grip here for a minute, the world and their dogs would be doing it, if it was that easy!

A more accurate representation would be: Write a small advert for your website, pick your keywords, submit. Result – Fair amount of visitors to your website, no sales to speak of, or even at all, cost a fortune. Result:  Won’t be doing that again in a hurry.

Do not worry, because by following some simple steps, you can get right back on track. Read on and let us help you succeed with Google Adwords.

There are several factors to be considered when planning a successful Google Adwords campaign. Each one of equal importance. However, Keywords are the common factor of all.

The first aspect to take into consideration, before planning your campaign, is the Google Adwords Quality Score. The Quality score is awarded on keyword relevance. The keywords used to trigger the Adwords adverts must be relevant firstly to the Adwords advert, but of equal importance, the page the visitor lands on must also be accurate and related to the initial search, too.

The reason being, that Google are not stupid. There are literally thousands of advertisers out there, looking to gain an advantage over all their competitors – so Google will ensure that when they send a visitor to your website, via your campaign, that your website is ABSOLUTELY related to their search.

Why is this so important?

Well, think about it. Google are a multi-billion dollar corporation. Their reputation relies solely on the quality of their searches. If they allow unrelated websites, for particular searches, then their validation, and reputation of their  search engine infrastructure would go down the drain – overnight. You think they are going to allow that? Of course not. Hell would freeze over first.

So, ensuring that your adverts don’t just lead to your homepage, but to the URL that the keywords are relevant to is of utmost importance, too. You need to achieve as high a quality score as possible for greatest results, as the higher the quality score, the higher position the Adwords advert will achieve and also the lower the cost per click, adverts with a higher click through rate will be shown more often.

Quality Score – The New Benchmark

Low quality scores as well as being higher cost per click, can result in the advert not being shown or account suspension, either temporary or permanent, so adhering to the guidelines is crucial. With that in mind, we now know to choose our keywords carefully. Use the Google content keyword tool to check whether Google thinks your chosen keywords are relevant before submitting them for use with your Adwords campaign.

Now we know that the most relevant factor for a successful Adwords campaign is keywords, so we need to look at which keywords to choose to trigger your Adwords adverts.

Using the Adwords keyword research tool, which you probably have done already to identify searched keywords for your items, you have probably selected the high volume searched keywords. These are the keywords that will have cost you dearly, as these keywords are also the ones with the higher competition. They will also produce a low conversion rate; this is because they are less targeted keywords. To achieve success, higher click through at lower cost per click and good conversion rate, you need to target lower searched keywords or key phrases. Key phrases are the most effective, as they tend to be more descriptive, therefore closer to what the searcher is looking for.

Example: Football badges has a high search volume, so will cost more per click and has a lesser chance of converting to a sale than Chelsea Football Badges. If a person types in Chelsea Football Badges and your Key phrase is Chelsea football badges, and your Adwords advert includes these keywords also, you are far more likely to get a sale at a much cheaper cost per click. Revising your keywords so that they are highly relevant to your page content, rather than your overall site content is your true aim.

Use the Google Adwords keyword tool to find an exact match, or phrase match, to help you identify lesser searched keywords, or preferably key phrases with lower advertising competition to streamline your Adwords campaign. (Not forgetting to check the relevance of your keywords with the website content feature). Providing you have a good, overall advert, and quality landing page, then you are on the road to success.

As has been said previously, the keywords that trigger the adverts must be relevant to the advert itself.  So, it is important to include the keywords in the advert. If you notice, when you do a search on Google, the keywords you have searched for show up in bold on the Adwords adverts, making them more visible. If you have used a keyphrase such as Chelsea Football Badges it is a good idea to use this as your Advert title. This will then be emboldened and your advert will stand out more. Another good tip for writing a good advert is to show a price that is including the price of the item in the title – this also gives you more chance of achieving the click through to your website.

Avoid the timewasters!

The reason this works, is because it will also save you money on your campaigns – Why? Because if you are showing the price, then potential ‘clickers’ will either be interested, or not. They will already know what the price is, so if they are not in the ‘ball-park’ of that price range, they will not click your advertisement – therefore saving you money, and saving you from ‘timewasters’.

Adverts need to be compelling, and you need to entice the searcher to click on them. Words that attract are often advertised as features or benefits; ‘free’ or ‘discount’ are good compelling words; ‘buy one get one free’ is also used to good affect.

Spend some time browsing other Google Adwords adverts to see which make you want to go and look or might make you want to buy. Take ideas and tips from them. Learn how to write good Adwords adverts. After all, it is the combination of all these factors that bring the click through to the sale – and this is what you need to achieve for a successful campaign.

Trialling keywords and adverts for a period of time and running others to see which are more effective is a good idea, don’t just settle for mediocre results, when you can always improve and always achieve higher.

Don’t lose your shirt!

It is all too easy to get caught up in the moment when trying something new, and exciting. And let’s face it, when you know you are pretty much guaranteed to increase your visitor count, via Adwords, then it is all too easy to get carried away.

Very many people have lost a LOT of money using Google Adwords – and this this because they have not followed some simple, fundamental rules:

1. Know how much you can afford to LOSE.

That’s right. There is a chance your Google campaign might not work, and therefore only be prepared to ‘bid’ what you are prepared to lose. For example, if you have a £200 advertising budget, then make sure you stick to it – UNTIL you have ended the campaign, and have analysed the results, and KNOW that it is a worthwhile campaign – hence you can then increase your budget.

2. Start your keyword bidding SMALL.

Start small, and then gradually increase, depending on what you can afford, and your desired search positions. It is quite possible that for some of your potential keywords, you could be paying £1 a click, but by paying 50 pence a click you may well receive less click-throughs, but you are also paying levels that you can afford – again, until you have analysed your results, to see what works.

3. Always be checking, and testing your campaigns.

Chances are, that you will not just be able to create an Adwords account, and start flying high from day one. No, what is more likely, is you will receive a variety of different results. Some expected, and some maybe not. BUT, you must check your results; then you can tweak your bidding amounts, keywords and content, to create the desired effect – the right results.

Adwords is not for everybody – not by any stretch, but if used properly, and with a degree of caution, you could quickly be creating campaigns, that not only bring in great traffic – but bring in substantial sales.

Good look, and remember to test!

Karen Batty

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Dropshipping Forums..

You have now found yourself being drawn to the great business model, known as dropshipping. A business model that the home business industry has been crying out for, for many a year.

No longer do you have to place Kleeneze, and Betterware magazines into people’s letterboxes, just to make £50 a week (although, I am sure many of their distributors earn much more). No, with the start of the internet revolution, there has been very many so-called ‘business opportunities’ that have been branded around, and brought to the table.

Let’s be honest, most of what you read on the internet about making money, and securing additional income, is absolute nonsense, and most written by people who themselves, have never run a serious business. All these people have done, is latched onto the fact that there is something ‘new’ happening – The Internet (or ‘tinterne’, as some refer to it).

Dropshipping is not new, and actually started in the United States many years ago; before being recognised in the UK, as a viable opportunity for many people looking for supplemental income. The main reason it has now entered the mainstream in the United Kingdom, is partly, because of the internet becoming so accessible to almost every house-hold.

eBay has also played a major role in creating the train that is dropshipping. Dropship suppliers suddenly started appearing all over the show (like people do, when they smell a trickle of cash – they decide to take a piece for themselves).

BUT, with so much competition, comes the responsibility of business owners to create unique selling points (USP’s) to differentiate themselves from everybody else – their competition. THIS is why, enlarge, forums, not just dropship forums, but forums in area industry, have started to appear in every Google search.

Forums can definitely help you. They can help you to become educated on a subject that you previously were not knowledgeable about. Of course all forums comes with their ‘clowns’; you know, people who ‘think’ they know something about every topic imaginable, but in reality, just like the sound of their own voices – we have all seen them ;-p

Although, such people also add to the light entertainment that forums can create – some would say, a community can also be created via forums. I personally think that there is no community in forums. Saying that, many people on forums, really do spend a large portion of their day, helping others on their chosen topic – In this instance: Dropshipping. Such people can be invaluable to your business research. All forums have a hardcore of key members who CAN help you. And these are the people you need to listen to.

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If like most e-commerce sites you’re looking to increase sales and conversion rates during 2010, it’s important to understand the reasons behind users buying decisions. There are a number of factors which when understood could help you turn more visitors into customers.

Here are 7 factors which influence your conversion rates:

Prices and availability -  People go online because they expect to find a great deal for less. They also expect to find the item in stock and with them within a few days. Therefore it makes sense for the business to ensure prices are always competitive and items are in stock. Plan well ahead and always keep your competitive edge intact.
Product positioning and merchandising – Similar to any high street shop, where products are positioned within your e-commerce site can have a huge effect on conversion rates. Merchandise your site in such a way that best sellers are never more than two clicks away from the homepage or main category pages, that products are always categorised and that there’s always a clear call to action.
Product offers and promotions – Take another example from the high street and make sure to always have a few offers online. Some visitors might find free delivery offers appealing, some find discount offers appealing and some find buy one get one free offers appealing. Plan well ahead and draw yourself a type of promotional road map to maintain your competitive edge and make your offer irresistible to both new and existing customers.
Level and expertise of your staff – Before making a purchase some visitor groups might place a call or send an email to the business. The way in which your staff is able to response, and in particular how quickly and thoroughly will effect your online sales and bottom line revenue. The key is to train your staff and adopt business practices which put customer support ahead.
Trust and credibility - Before handing over their money and personal details, visitors are looking for signs that the e-commerce site is credible and trustworthy. These signs can vary from displaying a physical address to listing terms and conditions in a clear and easily readable manner. Other trust factors are displaying a telephone number, displaying 3rd party accreditation and professional affiliations.
Seasonal fluctuations and trends – Some types of products might be selling better or worse at different times of the year. For example, you’d assume that greeting cards will sell better during the major holidays compared to the time in between. Use your historical data to promote different products at different times of the year. If you haven’t gathered enough historical data, try one of the trends perdition tools such as Google Trends.
Level and depth of your information – When visitors arrive at your e-commerce site and hopefully at the product page you should aim to answer all the questions they might have. Any uncertainty due to the level and depth of the information on the page can cause visitors to go elsewhere. When adding new products or services, ask a few people to read your descriptions to ensure there are no unknowns and later on tweak as you go along.

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Article by spectacles seller Glasses Direct. Sellers of spectacles and sunglasses online.

Here is a very good video I found on YouTube this morning. It is titled Optimizing Ecommerce Product Images. Although the video features two American marketers, what they talk about isn’t region specific so is good advice if you are in the UK.

Because of how dropshipping works you may be thinking “well I can’t do that because I don’t have the products to take photos of!”. Good product images can really help sell items, so spending money on buying the products yourself direct from a dropshipper to take photos of them is an investment. And once you are done you can then sell them on to recoup your expenditure anyway.

If you sell hundreds of products then it may become a slight issue. So perhaps only do it with your best sellers to begin with. You could clearly see in the video what a difference it makes so don’t underestimate the use of product photography.

This is a guest post by Ran Nir, the founder of online marketing agency Conversion Counts and a Google Analytics Consultant.

Google Analytics offers free enterprise level analytics software for everyone which just a few years ago would have cost an arm and a leg. Google Analytics will be an important tool to achieve your business goals provided the initial configuration is carried out correctly. Although Google Analytics offers some very complex solutions, the 10 benefits below are my favourites to increase conversion rates and revenues. They all require a basic understanding of Google Analytics and in many cases no additional configuration.

1. Track your website revenue: The Google e-commerce module is very comprehensive, in fact it can be used as a simple stock management system. Both online and offline orders can be tracked using Google Analytics which will provide your business with a complete picture in terms of revenue by category, revenue by channel, revenue by keyword, conversion rate, average order and many more important measurements.

To enable e-commerce reporting, follow these steps:

- Log in to your Google Analytics account
- Click ‘Edit’ next to the profile you’d like to enable
- On the Profile Settings page, click ‘edit next’ to Main Website Profile Information
- Change the E-Commerce Website radio button from ‘No’ to ‘Yes’
- Get a developer to install the tracking code available from Google
- Schedule a daily email e-commerce report so every morning you can start the day with a smile

2. Analyse and fix your sales funnel : You can use Google Analytics in many ways, but the most straightforward is to analyse and optimise a sales funnel. If the goal is set correctly then each stage in the sales funnel can be analysed and optimised to increase conversion. For additional information on how to set goals, visit the Google Analytics support page

3. Locate website errors and fix them : Having broken links on a site is bad news for user experience, site revenue and for your search engine optimisation efforts. Using Google Analytics to find error pages (404s) is really a breeze.

To locate error pages, follow these steps:

- Make sure you have a custom 404 page (you should have one anyway)
- Customize the page title of your error page, for example ‘Sorry Page Not Found :: SiteName’
- Visit your Google Analytics account >> content >> content by title
- Paste your unique page title in the free text under ‘containing’

4. Improve content by analysing the bounce rate : For online retailers, a high bounce rate hits where it hurts – the bottom line. Bounce rate is the percentage of entrances on the page that result in the visitor immediately leaving the site = missed revenue. There are a number of ways to reduce the bounce rate, my favourites are:

- Get rid of low quality traffic if you’re paying for it
- Improve the page content and address some basic usability tactics
- Ensure accurate metadata descriptions so you’re not promising something you can’t deliver
- When selling a product, ask yourself is the price competitive?

5. Track the effect of SEO metadata and content optimisation : If one of your SEO goals is to increase organic search CTR (if not, never too late to start!), Google Analytics can help. Once your changes have taken effect and are visible in the engines, head to Google analytics and follow those steps:

- Compare two dates, before and after your changes, taking into account seasonal and weekly fluctuations
- For site wide analysis, head to traffic sources

6. Track revenue sources : Best practice is to track and report on every channel which can turn into revenue. Using Google Analytics URL Builder it’s easy to assign a unique trackable URL or Tag URL as some people call it. Once the URL is tracked, you can analyse revenue, bounce rate, page views etc and start spending more cash where it matters. 

7. Track outbound links : If you link out from your site or blog, make sure you add onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/link/linkname’); “ It’s nice to know where your users are going to.

8. Compare historical data : One of my favourite features in Google Analytics is the ability to compare historical and seasonal trends. With e-commerce websites I use this information to better understand customer behavior and shopping habits so the right offer is always available at the right time. New offers can be compared to historical offers so your business can see what’s working and what’s not. Great for comparing seasonal keywords, traffic sources and more.

9. Manage sub domains and directory separately : This feature makes it easy to analyse and report, especially for websites with large folders and many pages. If you run a large website, this might be the only way to really turn raw data into actionable information. For additional information on tracking sub domains, visit the Google Analytics support page 

10. Reports by email : A great feature for businesses who like to stay 100% on top of things and get involved as much as possible. Using Google Analytics you can configure different reports to be sent to different people in the company, resulting in less manual work for yourself and happy customers.

The series on Increasing Revenue has now been finished. Here is the full list of all the articles:

Post 1: Looking At The Possibility Of Tripling Online Sales
Post 2: Increase Revenue 100% Without Getting More Traffic
Post 3: How-To: Improve Conversion Rate Of Visitors
Post 4: How-To: Increase Average Spend Of Shoppers
Post 5: How-To: Increase Number Of Times Customers Purchase
Post 6: How-To: Increase Traffic To Your Ecommerce Website

I’ve also added it to the Series page which I’ve created to list the post series which have been published. It makes it easier for you to refer to in the future should you want to refresh your memory on any methods/ideas.

Conclusion
I’ve managed to fit a lot into the 6 articles so I hope all the information contained within them can help your business. Even if you are only able to implement one or two of the tips it should have an impact on your sales. Most of the points mentioned can also be expanded upon in more depth. So if you feel I have been a bit brief with some elements have a good search and you will find even more info I’m sure.

Reach The Customers!

This article focuses on traffic. In percentage terms the amount you can increase your traffic using the content below will vary. But young businesses should be able to increase their traffic a notable percentage.

First off; you must be going for targetted visitors who can convert into customers, not just any old visitors. Give me 50 targetted visitors over 5000 random ones any day! A while back I wrote an article with 7 ways not to promote, worth a read to check you aren’t doing any of those methods.

I’m now going to split this post into 2 parts, Long-Term and Short-Term.

Generating Traffic In The Long-Term
SEO – search engine optimisation, it is all about the SEO! Get your website ranking highly in Google for popular terms in your niche and you will receive thousands of visitors every month. You can either pay a company to do SEO for you, or do-it-yourself.

Paying someone is going to cost a fair bit of money, I can’t give exact figures because I do all my SEO myself but I know it isn’t cheap (well it can be if you hire someone crap!). If you have the time I recommend you learn yourself. It will take a while to learn, take action and see results, we aren’t talking weeks here – we are talking many months and possibly years.

It is a massive subject so their is no point me trying to cover it in this post. Instead here are some websites I’ve used to learn SEO which have served me well.

Search Engine Guide – A huge archive of articles, the whole blog is about search engines but pay close attention to the specific SEO category. Covers everything from the absolute most basics upwards.

Problogger – This blog focuses on bloggers, so you can ignore most articles, but the SEO category has lots of good articles with information that can be used regardless of whether you run a blog, ecommerce site or just a content site. Go through the archives and have a good read as their is lots of content so don’t just skip through it as you may miss important stuff.

Those are the main 2 that I’ve used so I highly recommend them. Everything else I’ve learned has just came from being active online looking through forums, searching etc. There are a fair few SEO specific blogs, perform some searches for terms like ‘SEO blog’, ‘SEO tips’ etc and you will find lots of resources.

One thing I will say is make sure the SEO advice you read is relatively up-to-date, anything over a few years old may now not be sound advice. The search engines are changing the ways they rank websites all the time, so if an article tells you to do tonnes of link exchanges, quickly leave the website! Generally from an SEO point of view I say the fresher the better.

Generating Traffic In The Short-Term
If your website isn’t ranking highly in the search engines you need to use other methods in the short-term to get potential customers to your website.

• Shopping Directories – Submit your website to all of the major shopping directories like ShopSafe. All the good directories have strict requirements so it means you won’t be listed amongst a load of crap like you are in general directories.
• Review Sites – Get your website listed in all the consumer shopping review sites like Ciao.co.uk. You will probably need to submit your website to be in their database, so search their FAQ’s and if you can’t find how to get listed then drop them an email.
• Pay-Per-Click – All the search engines now have sponsored results, Google call theirs ‘Adwords’. You only pay for the clicks you receive. You will need a decent budget to be able to really utilise PPC effectively though. A good way to get instant traffic.
• Paid Banners & Text Links – Pay for banners and text links on targetted popular websites. Must be done carefully. Ask the website owners for stats on previous ad campaigns they have done for people to see what the CTR (click-through rate) is like. I once spent £50 on a banner and text link ad on a blog in my niche. The whole time the ads were running I received about 5 visitors! Not a good ROI! So make sure you know roughly how effective the ad placements are.
• Offer Products In Return For Reviews – Contact bloggers and website owners in your niche. Drop them a quick email asking if they would like to review your service. You don’t charge them for the product so the reviewer gets a free product and you get some exposure within your niche. Can be very effective because the cost of the product to you could soon be clawed back from the direct sales made from the review.
• Sponsor Niche Forums – Contact forums in your sector to see if they will let you sponsor them. If you can get a good price and the forum has lots of loyal users you could get a fair few visitors and a good ROI. Because of how loyal forum members can be they will have a higher trust in you before they even visit you simply because their forum is willing to let you sponsor them.
• Create Coupon Codes – Create special coupon codes for reductions and free delivery and then try and get word out about your ‘limited time coupons’. Contact blog owners etc to let them know. You can also submit to websites which list retailers coupon codes, search in Google for them as there is a lot of those types of websites so you should be able to get at least a few listings.
• Submit Press Releases – I’ve covered this methods of advertising before, check out this article: Press Releases For Marketing. If you can get featured in the press it can drive a lot of free traffic.
• Social Media – Utilise facebook and myspace groups which focus on topics in your niche to drive traffic. Although don’t spam them, join in the groups properly! You can also tell relevant friends and family who like the sort of products you sell.
• Start An Affiliate Program – Sign-up affiliates to promote you and pay them a cut everytime they make a sale! You could either create an in-house affiliate program or use an affiliate service like Affiliatefuture, using a service like that would make it easier to hire affiliates.
• Offline Methods – Leaflets being one of the most popular for those on a tight budget. You could even design a simple leaflet on your computer at home (you will need the natural flair for design of course) and then print-off a few hundred just to get you going. For small and young online businesses I really don’t recommend offline advertising in the early days. You need to build up an online presence first and then move into offline ads.

Conclusion – A Good Mix
Long-term SEO should be your main traffic generation focus. The amount of highly-targetted visitors you can receive from being high in the search engines for absolutely no money makes putting a lot of effort into SEO very worthwhile.

Having said that it is also important you have a good mix of traffic streams, just encase one of them suddenly drys up. Instead of 95% of traffic from search engines and 5% from returning customers. It would be good to have 60% of traffic from search engines, 10% from returning customers, 10% from banner ads, 10% from directory and review sites, 5% from PPC and 5% from forums you sponsor. That would make your traffic levels a lot more solid and also shows a greater web presence.

Traffic Generation Is A Huge Subject
What I’ve talked about in this post is only the very basics and designed to introduce you to the different methods. There are whole websites about traffic generation, it is a huge subject. So use what I’ve mentioned above as your starting points. And when you go searching for more information on them you will also learn about other methods I’ve not mentioned. Just being active reaps its rewards.

Test, Test, Test
And one last thing, remember to Test, Test, Test! Not all methods will work for you, some will provide a poor ROI and some will provide an incredible ROI, so keep trying and changing things and eventually your traffic, sales, revenue and profits will all keep on a nice upward line.

This is the fifth article in the series looking at how to triple online sales and increase revenue without getting more traffic.

The figure I gave in the second article of the series was to increase the number of times people purchase by 30%. This article covers ways to do just get existing customers buying more often.

• Newsletters – If you don’t already do them, then it’s abut time you do! If you do then you may want to consider the current regularity of your newsletters. Send them too often and customers can start to just instantly delete them, send them not often enough and you could be missing out on sales. And when you are sending newsletters make sure you are monitoring their success. How many people are reading them? How are they converting?
• Special ‘members only’ offers – Offer people who have already purchased from your special offers. This could also entice new customers! Being exclusive to existing customers if the offers are good they could get people coming back to buy again, if if they hadn’t planned to.
• Special offers after first purchase – Once the customer has purchased once, wait until they have received their order and then give them a special code for 10% off their second order. A nice surprise for them, and it could entice a second purchase quite quickly, especially if the customer was happy withe their first order.
• Supreme service – Mess up a customers order and there is a very good chance they will never buy from you again. So avoid that at all costs, even if it will mean you losing money. Provide an absolutely perfect service and their is a very good chance they will come back to buy from you again.
• Encourage ways for people to remember you – Tell new customers to save emails with their login details and encourage them to bookmark your website in their favorites. Otherwise they could forget about you completely. If they stumble across your link in their bookmarks a couple of months later they may come back for another look around!
• Offer finance – Buy now pay later is very attractive to customers and wins a lot of sales. If you can’t offer this directly then you could inform customers of the Paypal buyer credit service. This would allow them to buy from you now, but pay later! Many customers can’t resist so this is a great way to increase how many times people buy from you.
• Think of other unique and cool ways – Try and come up with other ways to remind customers about you and to get them to buy. For example; if you have all you customers birthdays recorded why not send out a special email on the day of their birthday with a special discount exclusively for them (time limited of course). Or how about sending christmas cards to some customers who have made high value purchases from you. The hosting company that I use send me a christmas card every year, it’s only a small gesture but it honestly does make you feel like a more valued customer.

I don’t consider these methods particularly radical, or anything ‘genius’ but they are effective. As always try them all out and test, test, test. If I come up with any more I will be sure to publish them!

Get customers to spend £40, instead of £20!

The figure I quoted in the second article was to increase average spend by 20%. So this doesn’t mean getting more customers, it means getting higher value individual shopping baskets. A great way to increase revenue, and hopefully profit long-term and possibly even short-term.

Here are 5 ways to increase the average spend of your shoppers:

• Increase Prices – the most obvious one. You may think “oh god no, all the customers will realise and never buy from me again!”. That is just wrong. For a start if you are a small and fairly new business I bet the vast majority of your sales are currently from new customers, not returning customers. And if your product is really good and still represents good value for money existing customers won’t be put off by the increase. The amount you can increase will vary product to product and the nature of your business. If you are high-end, with big price tags you should get away with raising your prices, but if you compete purely on incredibly low prices then you are going to struggle.
  
  
• Cross Selling or Add-On Sales – ‘Would you like fries with that?’ I know you’ve heard that before, but never thought about it hey? That one line is worth millions of pounds per year, without it you may not have had fries with your meal, but instead you just say “erm, yes please” and bang, the fast food restaurant has increased its customer spend and profits. This is called Cross Selling, or sometimes referred to as Add-On sales. You go to buy one thing and are recommended/asked/promoted another product on top of what you already want. Do this on your ecommerce website and you will increase average spend. For example; below existing product listings you can put ‘Customers who bought this item also bought these’, or you could just put ‘Similar items we also recommend’.
  
  
• Offer Bundles or Packs – putting together products in ‘bundles’ or ‘packs’ will mean higher value baskets. In the short-term you make a lower profit per product, but overall the profit you make on that individual basket will be higher. I think this is an especially good strategy for smaller retailers. For Example; it is much better to be making £10 profit on a £50 order, rather than £7 profit on a £25 order that the customer was originally intending to place. And by providing better value for money you should have happier customers who will then come back more often!
  
  
• Clever Customer Service – if a customer queries a product you could give them a quality answer on what they wanted. And at the end of the email you could also say, “or maybe you could go for the ANAME Model which costs a little bit more but you get these extra features; blah, blah, blah. Which would mean you get better value for money.” This will draw the customers to the more expensive product, do this on a regular occasion in a polite and genuine way and you should see the higher sales coming through as a direct result.
  
  
• Special Offers & Rewards – offer rewards for high value baskets. For example, free postage if your order is over £75, I’m sure you’ve seen offers like this before and taken advantage (or been suckered in, depends how you look at it!) of them. Or you could offer 10% off orders where the checkout value is more than £100. Other types of offers also work EG buy 3 items and get the cheapest for free.

So there you have 5 ways to increase average spend. I’m sure there may be other ways but at the moment I can’t remember any/think of any. If I do come up with any more I will be sure to post them up here.

In the meantime put all of the above in to action and watch your average spend increase!