How to Reach Customers and Increase Sales

Your customer base is ready to explode, you just have to know how to reach them. Once you’ve got them, you need to build a flow that will lead them from the storefront to a conversion, optimizing every step they take along the way. That kind of planning takes research, and it leads to increased profits for all.

Create Attractive Displays

You can use projections from last year to determine what this year should bring. Through analysis of your projections, you can form realistic goals for growth. For example, a small retailer may see that sale of impulse items was lower and opt for more elaborate displays to try to up those numbers.

In the web world, you have flexibility between optimizing for mobile and site traffic. Pre-built templates are inexpensive, integration is usually simplistic and your site will render properly from any browser a user chooses.

Also remember that mobile users are more motivated. They are likely on the go, and looking to purchase something online or in a store. Be sure to include contact information such as store address, phone number and a map to the location.

Make Yourself Available

With the “tel” parameter in HTML, you can add a phone number that users can call from their device or VoIP. This is useful to put people in touch with your store or your customer service. Wrap the phone number of your store in the tel parameter and the number will become clickable.

There are a few options for how to present your phone number. Typically, an HTML anchor is used where the tag appears blue and underlined. You can also choose to wrap a “tel” tag around any “img” that may be present on the page. Then you can establish a “click to call” button and design something to fit the theme of your website.

Brand Your Packaging

Invest in the right materials to promote your brand. In the early 19^th century, tea salesman Thomas Sullivan began shipping his customers their orders in silk tea bags. Customers would steep the tea leaves within the bags, thus starting a trend that continues today. That brilliant piece of branding differentiated Thomas’ business.

Always have the customer in mind. You can order custom packaging with your logo from corrugated box companies, and send your custom boxes with faster shipping options. Amazon built an entire business out of that practice

Analyze Customer Behavior

Study everything your customer does, especially if you rely on e-commerce sales. Look for where users go, which pages are most popular and what road blocks prevent you from closing a sale.

Even a company blog can be the source for good data on customers. Do they leave comments? What are the reader demographics? Before a site redesign, it would be helpful to know your highly trafficked pages so you can try to preserve the integrity of that experience and slowly test new ideas. There are all sorts of ways to apply data you’ve collected to your sales, so it never hurts to see how your site is doing.

Gather Customer Feedback

Yelp is a great source for customer reviews, but it’s not valid for every business. Feedback comes from blog posts, social media chats and other forms of public discourse. Finding that data involves searching the web for specific terms.

You can automate this process to an extent using Google Alerts. Large companies like Target or Wal-Mart will print out a giveaway chance with a survey attached for customers to review their service. For smaller companies, incentivizing reviews eats into budget and may not reveal genuine feedback.

Another method is to reach out to customers directly, especially regulars, and ask them what could be better. Try to make the process of gathering feedback as painless as possible.