Here are 22 things you can do to improve your online marketing right now that will cost you just time.

1. Practice a Purchase – Get one of your friends, and go onto your website and show them how a customer can go through the process of buying an item or getting in contact with you. Note down all of the things they and you notice during the process, the results might surprise you! Usually there will be 1 change you can make that will increase your conversion by at least 10%. For more conversion optimisation, read this great article to on free tools that tell you why people are leaving your website.
2. Ask for Feedback - Add a button that says “Can’t find what you are looking for, email us your question”. You are not your customer, let them tell you what they want.
3. Add more keywords to a webpage – Some of your pages may be lacking in keyword density. Login to your CMS and just add a paragraph of text to the pages that are looking a little empty. Remember: Google can’t see images but it can see text, so tell Google what your page is about. Even Google change their logo on their homepage!
4. Change your homepages main image – Make the image users see when they first hit your site something a little fresher. If they are coming back for a second time, nothing is more persuasive than seeing a website is changing and evolving. Its a signal that the website is alive and that the company is reputable.
5. Offer an incentive to your affiliates – Offering an incentive to your affiliates might just give them that extra 10% motivation to spend more time promoting your program. More promotion means more sales.
6. Add a page of content – Write an article and add it to your site. The more pages Google can see on your website, the more chances you have of ranking for any particular keyword. I call this “Buying more tickets to the Google Lottery”!
7. Change the colour of your buy now button as a test – This button might be your main call to action button like “Apply Now”. You are trying to get a bump on your websites conversion. Red = Stop and Green = Go. Are your buttons telling users to stop or go? Copy the best in the business www.amazon.com
8. Invite your staff for a website feedback day – Sure its going to be a little political, but you are going to get 2 ideas that will be brilliant and easily actionable to increase sales.
9. Update your about us page with your latest info – Most people ignore this page although users want to know who they are dealing with. If your about us page still has the 2005 press release you added, remove it and update it with something new. Sell yourself.
10. Call every phone number listed on your website – If one doesn’t work. Update it.
11. Convert PDF’s into HTML pages – This is an easy win to get new content on your site and give you a few more tickets to in the Google Lottery. This will work especially well if your PDF’s are behind a secure area that Google cannot index.
12. Update your news section – Add your latest news. If you have no news. Make some up!
13. Add a second picture to your product pages – 2 images are more persuasive than 1. Potential customers want to see what they are buying and if you were to show the back of the product aswell as the front it may overcome some of the objections that have held some of your potential buyers back from taking immediate action. Tip: If you can only do 1 image. Make 1 image ½ the front and ½ the back! The images will be slightly smaller but you will communicate more information this way. www.newegg.com do an amazing job with their product imagery.
14. “Oh by the Way…” – Add a little upsell to your thank you page. Think of this like the confectionary at your supermarket. Right next to the cash register before you are about to pay you can just throw in a pack of gum. Its not sold in a big way, its just “Oh by the way, if you want a pack of gum i’m $1.00.” Add gift wrapping, upgrade, upsell or promote an affiliated offer. Their credit card is out on the checkout page, its time to get them to throw in that pack of gum. You can be really creative here! The best in the business at this are www.vistaprint.com upselling you from FREE business cards to a DVD subscription!
15. Update your 404 page – This page always gets traffic. Does your page look horrible and nasty or is it helpful and informative? Here are some good 404 pages to model.
16. Add misspellings to your Paid search campaign – There is a huge amount of misspelt keyword traffic out there. Its time you cashed in on it.
17. Protect your brand name – Type in your brand name into Google. See who comes up, if competitors are camping on your brand, politely email them and ask them to take it down.
18. Review your sitemap – Your sitemap is used by both Google to help index your website and by some users to browse your site. Check to see what Google can see on your site and navigate to your sitemap to see if its usable or not, check out some google Sitemaps.
19. Fix the top 404 pages – Ask your web master or web hosting company to send you your top 20 most 404 pages on your website. Fix them. You might get a bump in traffic
20. Ask a friend in another industry to shadow shop on your site – Give them 5 things to do on your site and get them to just send you their feedback on their experience. Ask them if they would go back to the site without you asking them to? If they would, you are in the money. If not, you have some work to do. The ultimate test of your website is: “If you didn’t own it, would you go to it?”
21. Read the last 100 contact us forms – Read what users are sending you. You will find 1 core insight to your customer that just might help you improve the site dramatically.
22. Ask a taxi driver what their top 5 websites are – Taxi Drivers meet a lot of people everyday and learn about a lot of websites. They are generally quite basic in their use of the internet. (Ouch that is a big generalisation!) Whatever sites they are visiting right now are ones that you need to review and strategise about.

Go on! Add any other tips you have as a comment.

P.S> Checkout my upcoming online marketing workshop. Its $66 for 3 hours of chock filled actionable tips and tricks to supercharge your online marketing. This seminar isnt really for the hardcores its more for people who need some help.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.