Fifth Annual Small Business Summit 2010 - 16 March

December 23, 2007

Small Things That Can Have Big Impacts Online

Recently I was having a look at the web site of http://whineranddiner.net. This web site, run by a home base business, was created by Microsoft Office Live and sells eco-chic luxury elevated wooden pet feeders and beds that are artfully hand-crafted from wooden wine crates of European and Californian vineyards.

i went to purchase one of the feeders and was taken from the site to a PayPal site - a very disappointing but not uncommon experience on many small business web sites.

Web this web site and others that use PayPal should do is integrate PayPal into the web site so users are not taken from the main web site, to another site. This small change can make your web site look more professional and serious. To lean how to do this check out PayPal's instructions here.

I would guess the owners of Whiner and Diner might not know how to do PayPal integration, but Office Live and other web hosts would be doing a great service to their customers by showing them how to do it or point them to PayPal's link.

I also had a look at TimeZone247. While the web site could look better, one thing stood out, they are using SitePal's avatar to boost sales on their web site.

The sites owner, Angie Rose said that her speaking avatar has helped to boost online sales.

Angie’s site was trailing along in sales at a rate of about 5 watches per month. However, after adding her SitePal character, appropriately named Angela, her sales shot up to over 85 watches per month. This is an amazing increase in excess of 1500%.

Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends Radio had similar results on her own site.

Maybe you're using Google Analytics to view your web site traffic and help you know what pages are seen more, what time traffic is highest and etcetera. A more robust tool, such as Visistat 5.0 could help you get a better and more detailed view of your traffic and also, if you are using cost per click keyword marketing, help you sell better online as well. Check out a PC Magazine article on it here.

Selling online can be tough, but there can be big rewards if you're willing to take some small steps to increase sales.

tags: officelive , paypal , sitepal , visistat | 0 comments