Having problems increasing your online sales? You might have thousands of website visitors and great article content but for some reason you can’t convert them to buy. It basically tells you that there might be something wrong with what you are doing right now. Here are some pointers you may want to look into:

1. Use High Quality Images

It’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words. Since there is no way for your online visitors to touch and test your products, using high quality photos will somehow make your products look real. Don’t just put any photo you have for it may damage your image. Try using professional photos to create credibility. If you want to use background photos, you can get free and low-priced high quality images at sites like Stockvault.net and SXC.hu.

2. Limit the Options

While it is good to offer numerous products on your website, you should limit the number of products to display per page and add more information - such as key benefits, shipping options, and answers to common questions. Too many choices can be intimidating and/or confusing, so some customers end up not buying.

3. Problem Comes Before the Solution

Try to establish a relationship first and hard-sell your products. Online visitors love to shop for free information related to their problems. Try to connect with them by giving away information and sharing your experiences or even stories from loyal customers.

Ever wonder why many families refer to Disneyland as “The Happiest Place on Earth”? Underneath this enchanting place, where fairy tales are real and many childhood dreams come alive, are some hidden treasures for entrepreneurs. If you have a chance, try to visit Disneyland and observe how they operate. Before the day ends, you will learn these things:

1. Find Your Passion. From Walt Disney’s simple ambition to make great cartoons, it expanded to Disney movies and theme parks. As they say, if you love what you’re doing, you don’t have to work for the rest of your life. In case your business is not your passion, Lifehack has an insightful guide on how to enjoy what you are doing no matter what.
2. Embrace technology. From silent short films in the 1920s to digitally-enhanced movies today, The Walt Disney Company constantly anticipates and adapts cutting edge technologies to their business.
3. Create Magical Moments. Give your beloved customers the fairy tale experience they deserve by giving them Disney style customer service - exceeding their expectations and being more responsive to their needs.

Some entrepreneurs say that success is relative. Some small businesses are after market share while others focus more on profitability. Regardless of what your business objectives are, here are 3 helpful tips for succeeding in your endeavors.

Be Water My Friend

You should try to be flexible with your strategies and general direction of your business. If what you’re currently doing doesn’t seem to work, try another way. Learn how to react to new opportunities and adapt to future trends. In the words of the late martial artist, Bruce Lee:

Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it into a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Love Thy Employees

Don’t be like one of those rotten leaders who treat employees as slaves. There are different ways to instill a sense of ownership to all your employees such as having an employee recognition program or sharing a stake in your company through Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). However, make sure you pay attention to your hiring policies to get those passionate and highly qualified employees.

Choose Your Customers Wisely

Don’t be a one-size-fits-all business to satisfy all people. Instead, take time to find your niche and learn more about your target customers. It’s all about your customers, so offer something they want and not what you want.

Despite the technological advances in terms of business networking, the use of business cards remains relevant until now. Aside from being practical, compact, and easy to carry, it is also loaded with important info about you and your company. You can check out samples of our business cards as a reference. Here are some tips to help you maximize the use of your business cards:

1. Always bring your business card. Some entrepreneurs leave their business cards at their office or don’t carry one if they don’t have any meetings or conferences. Try to keep at least 10 cards within your reach because you never know when you’ll meet new prospects, alternate suppliers, or other entrepreneurs. Also, don’t wait for your card to run out before ordering another batch.
2. Attach your business card in every communication. Even if you are not meeting other people, you can still share your business card by attaching it with your thank-you cards, correspondences, holiday greetings, project quotations, and newsletters. You can also leave it at the restaurants, hotels, and other business establishments.
3. Write something. A number of business cards end up in trash cans for many reasons. You can minimize this by writing something on your card such as your alternate e-mail address or mobile number. This will add some personal touch in your business card.

Many entrepreneurs dream that someday their business will be the number 1 player in its industry. But once you reach that much-coveted position in the market, a bigger challenge now is how to stay on top as long as possible.

One key strategy to maintain your strong position is to make sure you have relevant products all the time. You should constantly check every product line you’re selling and observe if there’s any downward trend. The bottom line is you introduce new products and manage the graceful exit of your obsolete products. Here are some tactics to ensure your relevance:

Monitor technology changes

New inventions or improvements might render your product truly useless. Classic examples include the obsolescence of the typewriter because of PCs, pagers due to SMS or text messaging, and someday possibly snail mail because of email. That’s why it is very important that you understand how technology will affect the future of your business.

Suggested activities include reading journals related to your industry and regular online research. It would help greatly if you can keep an eye on what changes might be in the pipeline of your customers lives.

Pay Attention to Changing Market Trends

As they say, nothing is constant but change. The buying behavior and preferences of our customers also change for a lot of reasons and you should be one step ahead to make your products really relevant. If you are in the fashion industry, for instance, you should know the 2007 fall trends many months ahead of time so that you can offer products customers will be dying to buy come time. The website TrendHunter.com is very useful for this task.

Setting up an online business is affordable and easy. You don’t need to learn the technical stuff (although it helps) like HTML advanced coding or programming. In some cases, you don’t even need your own product to sell because there are many affiliate programs like Clickbank and Commission Junction. (Sign up if you qualify, then use a chunk of code with your tracking ID, and you can sell their merchants’ products on your site.)

The main problem now is how to design your website to attract your online customers. The term design sometimes deludes many entrepreneurs to focus on creativity alone. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Here are some of the common design blunders that may affect your online business:

No General Outline

Some entrepreneurs set up websites without knowing its importance or connection to their small business. You should have a clear purpose for putting up the website. Some use it as a support to motivate customers to visit their brick-and-mortar business while others rely on the website itself as the main source of income. This will greatly help you create an appropriate design and publish suitable content.

Too Techie

With thousands of cool fonts, eye-catching colors, and flashy web templates, there is no limit to your creativity. However, it is not just about you and your likes but your dear customers. These things, while very creative, will often distract your online customers from reading your product offerings. Keep things simple yet effective.

Simple Things Matter

In our effort to come up with an attractive site, we might forget the basic elements such as use of the back button, posting contact information, not checking broken links, and failure to update our website regularly. Learn what customers are searching for in a website. Also, find out from BloggingStocks what you can learn from iPod about killer designs and gather insights from our Logo Design Blog.

If you talk with your customers and ask them what sets your company apart from your fierce competitors, do you think they can tell the difference? If not, you should try to differentiate your business. Mavenblog expounds on how to make your company unique in terms of price, focus, product/service, and customer service. As a supplement, included below are the 4 easy steps you can implement in your business:

Step 1. Know Your Enemies

Differentiation is worthless if you don’t have a standard to compare with. You should gather all info about your direct and indirect competitors, like marketing materials, web content, prices, press releases, and even financial statements if available. This will help you find the chink in their armors and dodge their strong points at the same time.

Step 2. Look in the Mirror

Find out if you have something to offer that your competitors can’t. If you have, make a list of these things and proceed to step 3. If not, you will need to make some adjustments to be unique. Use the weaknesses of your competitors as your guide towards differentiation.

Step 3. Hype the Difference

Create compelling marketing campaigns anchored on your uniqueness and its benefits to all your customers. Consistency is vital to your success here, so make sure your all your initiatives are always well connected.

Step 4. Be True to Your Word

Don’t just say it, prove it! A clever marketing strategy can lure customers to trust your company and try your products. If there is a wide gap between your promise and performance, all your efforts will be wasted. Do your utmost to delight every customer.

When it comes to selling, some entrepreneurs have an ongoing debate about which is generally better: on the phone or in the field? Although selling’s importance varies from industry to industry, some business experts recommend that you don’t choose which method is better. Rather, you should use both to have better sales performance.

Field Team

The field team are your good old traditional salespeople who visit your clients. The advantage of this team is its power to build more personal relationship. Also, a face-to-face communication motivates customers to share more details about their preferences and complaints.

Inside Team

Your inside sales team is composed of contact center agents who spend countless hours over the phone to close a deal and generate new leads for prospecting. Generally, this team is relatively cheaper because you can sometimes outsource the work to contact centers in various countries. In some cases, your inside sales team can also be your customer service team.

Integration

You should pay attention on how to seamlessly integrate both teams so they work optimally. Some helpful activities include weekly coordination meetings, setting of shared goals, sharing of information and best practices. When it comes to motivating your sales team, check out Biz Plan Hack’s advice.

Having a comprehensive e-mail list is one of the key challenges faced by many startup businesses. This list will help you promote your products or services in a very practical way and kick off your prospecting initiatives. Here are some basic tips you can apply without spending too much money:

Online Tactics

1. Include a sign-up form on every page of your website and place it where online visitors can easily see.

2. Use a call to action to motivate online visitors to sign up. Support it with freebies or coupons.
3. Add an “Email to Friends” option with every interesting article and press release you post on your website.
4. Make the subscription link a part of your email signature and ask all your employees, family members, and friends to add the link to their email signatures as well.
5. Submit articles and press releases to several online article and PR directories and include the subscription link at the footer.

Offline Tactics

6. Put a subscribe link in your invoices and receipts.

7. Gather email addresses during trade shows.
8. If you have the postal address of your existing customers, send a card or catalog and request to join the e-mail list to get more interesting information and big discounts.
9. If you are running tri-media ads (TV, radio, and print), prompt your customers to visit your website and subscribe.
10. If you have extra money, conduct a free enriching seminar and the only entrance fee is an email address.

According to MavenBlog, having a database is just one of the 7 fundamental must-do’s of a small business marketing strategy. Read the other 6 to complete your strategy.

The online world made it possible for me to become a full-time freelancer. All of my clients come from outside of my home state. Here are examples of where I met clients and people online:

Through blogs (especially in earlier days). We bloggers left comments or sent emails to each other. Over time, we learned about each other and became friends.

Through an interview. I found the client because I interviewed (by email, of course) a co-worker of his who connected us.

Through referrals. Two other clients come from referrals from someone I met on the Internet - one through his blog and the other from working on a Web site together. An online networking group, also brought in more clients and friends.

Through searches. One gig came from the editor’s using the search engine to find me. He did a great job because my experience fit well with what he needed.

Obviously, the Internet offers many routes for meeting people and finding gigs (emphasis on gigs as the chance of finding a full-time job is only about 8% as reported in a career-related column). The following lists ways to meet others online:

• Blogs: Leave a comment and link to another person’s entry from yours.
• Forums and email mailing groups: Join discussions.
• Email newsletters: As an editor, I respond to all reader emails and survey feedback.
• Online groups: Mailing list and forum discussions.
• Web site: One that’s content-rich and frequently updated (this is where a blog or blogging-tool can help).
• Emails: Contacting people. Compliment a writer on an article. Congratulate a business on a recent success.
• Articles: One of my first freelance gigs came from a guy who contacted me based on an article I wrote. There, I met another editor and we recently connected and helped each other.
• Chats: You might attend a chat where there’s a guest. Usually chats are secondary — meaning you meet the person some other way before you talk in instant messenger.

You never know who you’ll meet through the Internet. Interact with the virtual world — you never know who you meet.

About the author

Meryl K. Evans is the Content Maven behind meryl.net, helping companies build relationships with clients and prospects through content.