Increasing website revenue doesn’t always mean generating more traffic and spending more money. Many ecommerce websites use little or no on-site promotions which is a great shame as these promotions will increase conversion rates by converting more existing visitors into customers. The list below covers both conventional ideas to create a great website promotion and how to market the promotion once everything is ready.
Discount Promotions
1. Website wide discount – offer a discount across the website
2. Category wide discount – offer a discount across one category
3. Product wide discount – offer a discount for one particular product
4. Time limited discount - offer a discount across the website, category or product time limited for one day, weekend or week
5. Discount over a certain amount - offer a discount for customers spending over a certain amount
6. Discount on second product – offer a discount on the second product within one order
7. Discount on future order – offer a discount on any future order, though in my experience it won’t convert as well as the other forms of discount
Product Promotions
8. Buy one get on free - one of my favorites and has the added value of increasing CTR in AdWords (yes, do use it in your AdWords copy)
9. Product bundles – take 2 or three similar products which complete themselves and offer the three at a reduced price (taking onto consideration that delivery costs are reduced)
10. Free gift with any product – offer a free and highly relevant gift when buying any product
11. Free gift with a certain product – same as above, but based around a certain product
12. Product of the day - offer one product every day at a super competitive price which has the added value of increasing the website’s stickiness
13. Category around an event – offer highly desirable products around one calendar event, mothers day for example
Delivery Promotion
14. Website wide free delivery - offer free delivery across the website
15. Category wide free delivery - offer free delivery across one category
16. Product wide free delivery - offer free delivery for one particular product
17. Time limited free delivery - offer free delivery across the website, category or product time limited for one day, weekend or week
18. Free delivery over a certain amount – offer free delivery for customers spending over a certain amount
19. Free delivery entire order when a second product is added – offer free delivery when 2 or more products are brought together
20. Competitions – any paid customer will enter into a prize winning competition
21. Price drop – great for discontinued products, reduce the price further with every purchase until the product is out of stock
22. Cash back offer - offer percentage of the purchase price back (also available via PayPal)
23. Double loyalty points – double the loyalty points given (when applicable)
Channel Promotions
24. Affiliate marketing channel – offer any of the discount, product or delivery promotion just to your affiliate programme
25. Pay Per Click channel - offer any of the discount, product or delivery promotion just to paid search traffic
How to promote the offer
26. On site banners – list the promotion across the website internal banners
27. Website service emails and newsletters – add a link to the website service emails such as account confirmation, forgot password etc and of course to the website newsletter
28. Affiliate programme – communicate the promotion to the affiliate channel and consider adding incentives for promotion conversions from the affiliate channel
29. Pay Per Click Advertising – list the promotion in ad creative and drive traffic to the precise promotion
30. Display Advertising – same as above
31. Website blog – list the promotion on the blog
32. Company official email signature – ask all company employees to include a short message and a link back the promotion
33. Google Checkout icon (for discount code) - Google Checkout offers a neat option to include a discount percentage within its icon (when the promotion is discount)
Finally
While there’s no dispute that search engine optimisation and other online marketing services are a great way to get qualified traffic, website owners often overlook the potential to increase conversion rates and generate more revenue by optimising the merchandising offer and converting more visitors into paying customers. What has been working for the high street for ages, can work even better online.
Hope you find our tips useful.
- – - -
Image by Flickr
[...] promotion and how to market the promotion once everything is ready. (list courtesy of Courtesy of conversioncounts.com) Discount [...]
Great post about promotional methods of increasing revenue. I see a trend in pushing promotions and discounts which could be damaging in the long term. So called price wars are spilling out if the supermarkets on to every web site.
Customers should be able to compare through value-add and not only price and if every site owners focus shifts to discounts, then the future does look grim indeed.