The number one question I get asked is "what can I do on my website to increase sales".  I usually evaluate the site and check for many different factors.  But the most common factors are that people have traffic they are just not tapping into!

There are 2 pieces to really improve sales from existing traffic.

1. Capture your audience.  

2. Communicate with the people that are ALREADY on your site!  This means:

a. Get people to sign up!

Whether you offer a free guide to something amazing that is relevant to your site, or a subscription to your blog...whatever it may be.  There are many many ways to get people to sign up on your site.  Find the way that works best for your ideal target clientele.

b. Setup an abandoned cart notice!

For e-commerce, one of the best ways to increase sales is to reach out to those that have already been pondering a purchase on your site.  The abandoned cart notice does just that.

c. Send offers!  

Whether it's an offer to subscribe to your awesome blog or some sort of promotion on your website...OFFER IT!!!  They won't think about you unless you intentionally become a thought in your audiences minds. You don't have to have an e-commerce site to take advantage of the traffic that is already on your site!  If you don't have a blog, you should really consider starting one.  There is a really good article here about how to decide what you should blog about.

Now, if you are having traffic issues on your site (traffic is low) I've written an article previously about ranking either with paid ads or Organically.  Check out the article here.  We can also evalutate your website with you to discuss ways that you can improve the traffic on your site.  Feel free to contact us to schedule a time we can review your site with you and offer up some FREE suggestions on your website.

We are your unfair advantage, here's another reason why:

We offer free integration with Google Sheets for all of your data.

With Google Sheets, you can create, edit, and collaborate wherever you are. For free.

Google Sheets is an online spreadsheet app that lets users create and format spreadsheets and simultaneously work with other people. Google Sheets allows businesses to integrate their data with 3rd party apps to expedite and in some cases automate every-day business processes, such as operations, reporting, shipping, updating Clients & exployees, etc.

Feeding Data Into Google Sheets 📝

Let's begin with a few ways that you can feed your data to Google Sheets. Once it's in Sheets, you can create charts, dashboards, or conduct the analysis to get the answers you need. Later, we'll talk about how Sheets can be an intermediate step in a workflow, and how it can go from there, out to other services or platforms.

• Feed your WebsiteForge product data To and From Google Sheets
• Feed your WebsiteForge order data To and From Google Sheets
• Feed your WebsiteForge Members To and From Google Sheets

These can be utilized in many different ways.  More to come on this below.
Also, soon, more areas of your WebsiteForge members area will be integrated with Google Sheets.

Google Forms 🎫

These days with the Google Docs Platform, it couldn't be easier to create a form and log the responses into a spreadsheet. It is now a built-in option to route your Form responses directly into Sheets. Forms can be a much more natural feeling method for users when you're looking to have them input data; consider this approach if it makes more sense than opening up your spreadsheet for collaboration.

Zapier ⚡

Introducing Zapier into your workflow can open up many powerful options to meet your needs. With Multi-Step Zaps you can do things like have an email with an attachment trigger a zap that will upload the attachment to dropbox, then have it notify you about the attached file in a communication app like Slack.

That is just 1 example of a multi step zap.  You can see all kinds of integrations with Google Sheets and Zapier here. 

Here's a good example of how to use the already great tools in WebsiteForge and maximize your social presence.

If you aren't already familiar with how our social media integration works I will summarize it by saying it's like having a dashboard from your website to broadcast to your social media.  With zaps you can take it a step further by expanding which social platforms you broadcast to.

Now that you see some ways that Zapier works, you can start to play around with the options at your fingertips.  Being able to push your WebsiteForge module data automatically to a google sheet and then triggering events from Zapier can help you automate tasks like never before!

If you would like assistance setting up an integration, feel free to contact support.

Often people think I only need XYZ service to make my website work.  But when most people try to get a decent looking website up using a cheap hosting option they deeply regret it, often times they quit the project they started, or end up losing thoursands of dollars hiring different "Specialists" to just "make it work like they want".

You don't want to find a storage unit to park your car in and never touch it again...You want a pit crew you can count on to keep your business engine running smoothly.

This is what sets WebsiteForge apart.  We don't piece together random elements from 20 different coders to try and just "Make things work".  We have in-house Designers, Programmers, Project Managers and tech support so that you get the very best option for your business.

We are your unfair advantage, here's another reason why:

WebsiteForge's Managed Services Broken Down for you...

Our monthly managed services are so much more than "just hosting".  It's an all in one bundle of savings that no one comes close to offering!     WebsiteForge offers an incredible monthly package that includes Hosting AND Services:

Personalized communications can make a repeat customer;

Outside research from Narvar has revealed that the modern retailer needs to look carefully at the quality of the communications experience they are providing before and after the "buy button" is pressed.

"Customers Judge their online shopping experiences in large part based on how retailers communicate with them after they click the 'Buy' button.  And the more thoughtful, intuitive, and personalized the communications are, the better."

The study also found that millennials and baby boomers strongly believe that fast and direct communications about an order are the number one factors in securing their loyalty.

Key findings:

• Millennials are 20% less likely to contact a retailer via email than baby boomers and are five times more likely to use live chat on a website

• Fast and direct communications about an order are the number one factors in winning the loyalty of millennials and baby boomers - that's over things like retailers sharing recommendations and product reviews

• Millennials are the age group least likely to want to be contacted by a retailer over SMS

Did you know you can customize(personalize) your automated notifications about orders to your customers?

There are some really helpful variables listed in this help article that can help you personalize your communications with your clients.

In this help article, you can see how to customize the invoices and order related notices that your customers receive.  If you have not done this already I strongly recommend doing so.  It can mean the difference between a 1-time customer and a repeat customer!

5 Awesome Ways for using WebsiteForge to re-market to your Clients:

These days there are so many ways to stay in touch with your clients.  You have Email, Text, Phone calls, Live Chat, and so many other ways. 

1. Recover Abandoned Carts

2. Target, Re-market, and Upsell to previous customers

New Customers vs Existing Customers:

It's 68% more expensive to acquire $1 from a new customer than it is to upsell current customers (forEntrepreneurs)

You can see a general overview of the mailer here.

3. Announce your new products

Did you know you can setup automatic notices to go out, not only to your customers, but to Facebook and Twitter too!?!  This is a great way to inform your customer base and new potential customers about the items you have.

4. If you don't want to offer coupons offer STORE CREDIT!

We are your unfair advantage, here's another reason why: 

It's hard to think of a group of buyers that are more likely buyers than your existing customer base that has had an abandoned cart... 

Imagine walking through a store and picking up an item, reading the items details, maybe even putting it in your cart or trying it on.  For whatever reason you take it out and put it back on the shelf.  Now, what if an employee, approached you with a 10% off coupon - not available to other buyers - but simply because you were carefully considering buying it but had not yet done so...  I think it's safe to say, for a good number of people, that might be enough to get you to buy.

Now imagine your website management software gives you a FREE tool to reach those buyers...

You can stop imagining now because WE DO!  WebsiteForge offers you a free customizable Abandoned cart notice.  For WebsiteForge clients, you can contact support or take a look at this step by step guide on how to enable and configure your notice.

Increase your conversion rate by motivating customers to recover their abandoned carts. Send automated cart reminders, easily customize email template and offer coupons to encourage your visitors to come back to your store.

•     Use customizable sending schedule
•     Add info about the shopper's cart they abandoned
•     Track sending history
•     Add a coupon code to incentivize your buyers

See what some of our customers that have taken advantage of this free feature have to say about it:

Shane Merem

There are many really great features in our Visitor Tracking Area.  One of my favorites is the "Zero Search Results" section.  I want to talk about how to understand what you are looking at in this area and how to address a potential issue.

Now keep in mind there could be some junk in this area that bots cause.  We are going to overlook those and focus in on items that could be real customers doing a search on your site and not finding what they are looking for (if you do happen to carry the said item or offer that service)

I have received permission from our friends over at ShopBakersNook.com to use their data as an example.

 So if we look at the screenshot above you will see "Keywords" in blue links.  These are the keywords that were searched on your site, that resulted in 0 (Zero) results.  There could be some legitimate reasons for this.  For example, you may stop carrying an item and now it is no longer found on your site.  (That's fine, and this is the appropriate response that should be seen)

However, there may be users looking for things on your site that often spell things differently than you do.  You can see on line item 2 here the search for "Coloured Sugar Sprinkles".  I know for a fact they carry colored sugar sprinkles, but they do not spell "coloured" that way.  We have a fix for you!

Head on over to the "Full-Text Search Settings" area.  If you have not set up a full-text search as a 404 be sure to check out this article on setting it up!

In this area, you can add Synonyms.  this will help you taylor your search results to your users needs.  Adding in the synonym "coloured=colored" will make them mean the same thing.  You can also add in other variations that you can think of that users may accidentally type in. 

Now you can see a whole page full of results when I search for "Coloured Sugar Sprinkles"

The "Zero Search results" area data get's wiped out every 4 days.  You can have a report emailed to you every 4 days so that you have records of this data and can update your synonyms whenever it is convenient for you.

If you see data in your zero search results area and you are not sure what it means, you can contact us at any time and we can help you out!!!

Monday Google made it official, they are "Mobile-First indexing".

What is Mobile-First indexing?

"Mobile-first indexing means that we'll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they're looking for."

Designing a website that doesn't involve a cookie cutter template design starts with choosing the right website designing host. One that allows you to design a unique website that is pleasing not only to the eyes, but enticing to viewers is WebsiteForge.com.

What is WebsiteForge.com?

WebsiteForge.com is an easy to use professional ecommerce web design platform that allows you to build, manage and edit your informational or ecommerce website. Most importantly, the site not only saves you money when it comes to building a website that truly helps draw in traffic, but they also help you create a website that functions the way it should to help draw in financial means so you can become profitable. Not all hosting sites that offer free or small fees for building one are capable of offering these assets.  No experience needed.  But experienced users too, will enjoy the familiar tools and control that comes from our expert mode.

What are some of the assets WebsiteForge.com offers?

Some of the assets WebsiteForge.com offers are:

• Specific websites built particularly for your needs and business
• A very easy to use Content Management System (CMS)
• A professional project manager that helps ensure your website is designed and setup properly to draw in traffic
• Custom graphic designs tailored to your personal or business needs
• Unlimited access to bandwidth and customer support when help is needed
• Automatic and unlimited website updates to ensure your site is always running the way it is design too
• The professional ability to have your website setup with search engine optimization
• Most importantly uniqueness, which is essential for drawing in traffic to your website.

Why is uniqueness important to your Company's website?

To your website's visitor, your website is the face of your business.  Consider a successful company like Apple.  Whether it's their stores, products, websites, even their packaging - they all share Apple's unique styling.  That uniqueness and consistency, if designed professionally, makes your products and services feel more dependable and on a higher level.  Whether intentionally, or sometimes (sadly) un-intentionally - your website's design let's consumers know who you are as an organization.  It's wise to consider, the Designer making cookie cutter designs, hoping their design will be purchased and used by many different websites - at NO point did they have your company in mind.

How can you contact WebsiteForge.com?

If you would like to build a professionally unique website that attracts new viewers and keeps your business or profession growing you can contact WebsiteForge.com by calling 1-888-558-2446, or by visiting their website.