One of the easiest ways to make more money from your online business is to improve the flow of your eCommerce checkout system. You need to make it as easy as possible for people who are browsing for products on your site to make a purchase. There are many ways to improve this flow rate, but even a slight improvement in conversion rate optimization can lead to a significant increase in profits.

The specifics of how to improve your conversion rate will be unique to your website. You’ll need to do conversion testing and reporting to fully understand what it means for your site. But what motivates a person to decide to make a purchase from a website is universal. Roughly stated, a person makes a purchase because they are motivated to buy a product, have the immediate ability to make a purchase and have been “triggered” to buy.

Getting people motivated and triggered to make a purchase can be as simple as sending out an email and having them click through to your product page. But it takes professional website development in order to give a customer the easiest path to purchase. One secret is to make sure that a customer gets an item into their shopping cart as quickly as possible. This gets them out of the mindset of “just browsing” since they are now officially “shopping.”

It’s important to make it as easy as possible for a person to add something to their shopping cart. The purchase button should be as big and obvious as possible. Once a person adds something to the shopping cart, it should be clear that they have something in the cart. And you need to make sure that the customer can see how to go to the shopping cart to enter in their payment information and complete the purchase at any time.

From a web design standpoint, you also need to consider what happens when a customer gets ready to make a purchase. One consideration is whether or not you require customers to register before buying anything. As a general rule, forcing customers to register creates a barrier that could very easily lead to them not making a purchase. You’ll also want to make sure that you don’t ask for credit card information until the last step in the process. Get all of the shipping and personal information first so that the credit card information is easy to get.

These are just a few of the things that you’ll want to do when you think about your eCommerce set-up. eVisible can help you design an eCommerce system that is right for your industry and business.

The world of SEO is changing. Changes in the algorithms used by major search engines such as Google have redefined how a business can improve its page rankings. It’s no longer enough to have a standalone SEO campaign; today, you need to integrate your SEO tactics with other aspects of your online marketing if you want to find success and your social media presence is a big part of this.

The reality is that SEO by itself simply doesn’t work anymore. Combining your social media and SEO tactics is not just a good idea — it’s something that’s a must. A strong social media presence won’t directly increase your page rankings for your main site. However, it can help to spread the word about your brand and links to your site. If other people share these links, that will only help your overall SEO. This is the type of effective link building that works in the new world of SEO.

Small businesses also need to refine their focus on their target audience in order to succeed. More specifically, businesses need to understand the type of online content that customers are looking for in order to deliver this content to them. High quality content not only helps to attract customers but will help with Google rankings.

One way that businesses can help to improve their SEO presence is by utilizing the small business SEO services offered by eVisible. Our site has several free and premium tools available that let small business owners to do some basic but critical SEO work themselves. This can include keyword research, tracking social media involvement and monitoring the readability of content on a site.

Doing this kind of basic SEO work on your own can be extremely valuable for a small business. However, there are still likely to be many aspects of SEO that a business owner won’t be able to do on their own.  One of the most common SEO questions for small local businesses is how they can fit SEO into their (likely very limited) budget. The good news is that eVisible can help businesses of any size improve their online marketing with tactics that include search engine optimization. For a relatively small expenditure, a small business can positively impact their online presence.

Many people understand that it’s important to include public relations efforts as part of your online marketing campaign. However, in order for this to be successful, it needs to be more than just hiring a firm for press release writing and distribution services and emailing a release out to a few media outlets. You need to have a clear strategy for your public relations efforts if you want them to augment your existing marketing efforts.

A lot of businesses make major mistakes with their public relations, whether they hire press release submission services or decide to do it themselves. Here are 10 things that you need to make sure you do if you are going to put out your own press release:

Don’t Underestimate the Power of PR for SEO: While a press release doesn’t have SEO value on its own, it can lead to online sites writing stories about your company or running the release whole — including your business’ link.

Make Your Release Newsworthy: A press release serves as a way to announce news to the media. You need to make sure that each press release contains information that a reporter or editor will think is relevant and interesting to their readers and not just promoting a business.

Keep Focus: You’ll be tempted to write about every interesting aspect of your business in your first press release. Resist this urge and keep focused on one story you want to tell and save the others for future releases.

Keep Control of Everything: From the words in the press release to the pictures used to accompany the release, you need to make sure that you have control of all aspects.

Find the Right Journalists: A press release isn’t very useful if no one can read it. You need reporters and editors to decide to run the release in order for people to read it, which means putting thought into who you are sending it to. Finding people who have written about your business or your competitors is a great start.

Follow Up: Once you’ve sent out a press release, call or email the reporter to see if they are interested. Even if they aren’t, you might strike up a conversation that leads to a different story.

Be Prepared for What’s Next: Have a gameplan for what happens if a reporter is interested in doing a story. Not being prepared can lead to lost media opportunities.

Structure Your Release Properly: This means having a great headline and a first paragraph that entices people to keep reading.

Write the Whole Story: Don’t make reporters — often short on time — have to do more work to get a press release “ready for publication.”

Anticipate Anything: You never know when a chance for an editorial PR link will come up.