Boost Website Sales: How to Make Better Conversions

Wonderful World of Websites | Website Wonder Woman

Introductions: Boost Website Sales

It's the dream, isn't it, to boost website sales from your online store. You start a business, get a website and expect the sales to roll in. But it doesn't usually work like that (unless you've given your website a LOT of hype beforehand!).

Having a website won't automatically bring you in sales and leads for your business and, believe it or not, it's often a massive misconception.

I always say that your website is your business' home online, much like a shop or office would be if you were a bricks and mortar business. But if you did have a shop or office would you fill it with a few bits, stay at home, never tell anyone about it and wonder why the sales are not coming in? No, exactly!

Boost website sales - a post-it-note sits on dollar bills with 'online Sales' written on it and a graph showing an increase

So, How Do you Boost Website Sales?

Let's discover how to improve online sales, or if you don't have a website yet, what you need to know that will help you boost website sales when you decide to take the plunge!

The first thing I would say is, before you look at different ways to drive traffic to your website (much like advertising and marketing of your new shop on the high street), decide what your website contains first.

Your Home Page

Is your home page (your shop front/window) appealing? Does it entice people in? Does it encourage people to look at more, or is it full of the type of stuff that puts people off, e.g. welcome to my website, I'm Lisa blah blah blah (would you stand in your shop window and expect that to entice people in?). Likewise, does it contain reams of text? (now even TK Maxx don't put everything they have to offer in their shop windows!) In other words, does it appeal to customers, and will it boost website sales just because it looks amazing? No. It really needs to encourage interest in your products and services from the moment a potential customer arrives on your landing page.

If you get stuck these two blogs may help you out:

Tracking Success

But it's not just the home page you need to consider. A key thing you must do to boost website sales is give it a job, and then track it to see if it is completing that job effectively.

Let me explain!

So, for example, on my website, I want people to book a call with me. Yes, I want to make sales and people can buy off my website, but unless it's a low-cost purchase, potential clients would rather speak to me first, to talk about their ideas or to see if it can be done. So booking a call with me is their first step to working with me, or what I like to call, the Website Mission!

Throughout your website, you can then have clear calls to action to get people to do what you want them to do. You can have secondary missions, such as joining a mailing list, etc., but keep pushing them towards working with you. If they are not ready yet, but want to keep in touch, they will organically sign up to your mailing list.

If you want to know more about Website Missions and the customer journey, you can sign up for my free masterclass, 10 Ways to Convert Clients on Your Website:

 

So, Now Back to how to Boost Website Sales!

OK, you now have the above suggestions in place, and your website is really user-friendly. What next?

Payment!

You need to actually have some way for people to complete a purchase, and let me tell you now, 'contact me to buy' is rarely going to work. They want to buy here and now! Customers are not interested in sending emails back and forth; they will lose interest, especially if it's a low-cost item!

They may want to speak to you pre-purchase (so get them booking in a date on your calendar, not a thousand emails until you agree on a day and time). However, most people just want to give you their credit card details and get what you are offering, right now!

Think about it. This is why sites like Amazon are so popular, with their Prime Delivery. You don't see visitors to Amazon wanting to contact to buy, they want to spend their money and get it the next day (or as soon as possible!). That's how you boost website sales.

So, make sure you have an easy way for people to purchase instantly on your website, without the need to strike up a conversation. Even if you don't have e-commerce, this can easily be done with a PayPal, Stripe or Square Pay button.

Boost website sales - arrows in a traffic jam, heading towards a laptop

Driving traffic to your website

Now that you've primed your website to do its thing (think of it as training your employees up to work on the shop floor and sell to customers), it's time to actually market the thing!

There are literally thousands, if not millions, of people out there who want to buy what you are offering, so how do you get in front of them to boost website sales?

This is the step people miss. They create the website and then go back to social media, do a few posts (never mentioning their website after the launch date or directing people back there). The next thing you know, they announce they give up on their website, as they look at social media as a separate entity from their website, instead of getting them to work together.

Let's go back to our example of running a shop. What would you do to actually get people to the shop? Or would you just open the doors, pull up a chair behind the cash register and wait for it to start ker-chinging?

Below are just some suggestions for how you can drive traffic and boost website sales, but I suggest you pick one or two to start with and then build on them. If I were to pick any at the start of your journey, it would be social media, email marketing (start building your list as that's where the money is!) and blogging (showing your expertise, but don't forget a call to action)

Boost website sales - a diagram with a Website cloud in the centre and arrows pointing to it from various sources like blogging, affiliates, referrals etc

So, which one are you going to choose to start out with?

If you need some help planning your Website Success Strategy, then I have a free course that helps you do just that!

Or join in on one of my regular Website WOW Weeks, just click the button below to sign up to the next one!

Conclusion on How to Boost Website Sales

I've covered just a few key tips in this blog on how to boost website sales, I know. However, if you visit the links to my other blogs, join in one of my free courses or get in touch with us, I am certain you will start seeing a turnaround in performance. Remember, you reap what you sow!

Help ChatGPT find your website a laptop with a megaphone coming out of the screen

I know that sounds ridiculous, but spend a few minutes browsing small-business websites, and you will see why it matters.

For example: A homepage might say: "Helping you achieve your goals." That's great, but what goals? Who are you helping?

A web visitor might work it out from the logo, photographs and navigation. Machines have less tolerance for ambiguity.

Compare that with: " We provide commercial cleaning services to offices, schools and healthcare businesses across South Wales."

Suddenly, there's much less to decipher. Who are you? A commercial cleaning company. What do you do? Clean commercial premises. Who for? Offices, schools, and healthcare businesses. Where? South Wales.

Clear website copy isn't unsophisticated copy. If you want to help ChatGPT find your website, clarity can be a big advantage.

3. Create Proper Pages for Your Main Services

One mistake I regularly see is businesses trying to squeeze everything they offer onto one service page. Imagine a building company offering extensions, loft conversions, kitchen renovations, and garage conversions. Giving each important service its own useful page creates far more context than mentioning all four in a short bullet list.

A strong page can explain:

  • what the service involves;
  • who it is suitable for;
  • common questions customers ask;
  • the process;
  • relevant experience;
  • examples of completed work;
  • geographical areas covered.

This is not only useful information for potential customers, but also useful for conventional SEO and will help ChatGPT find your website and understand exactly what your business provides.

However, a word of caution. The important word here is useful. Creating 30 near-identical pages simply to target 30 slightly different phrases isn't the answer. Websites are ultimately for people, so create pages because you have something worthwhile to tell them.

4. Answer the Questions Your Customers Really Ask

3d speech bubbles with Q & A in them for Help ChatGPT find your website blog

This is where good blog content becomes particularly valuable and can help ChatGPT find your website.

People often interact with ChatGPT and other AI bots in a conversational way. Rather than searching for something like: "loft conversion Cardiff", they might ask "Do I need planning permission for a loft conversion in Cardiff?" or "Is my house suitable for a loft conversion?". You get my drift.

Think about the questions customers ask you on the phone, in emails, during quotations, or at meetings. Those questions can become extremely useful website content. And don't limit yourself to just obvious FAQs. Some of the best content comes from the questions that require actual expertise to answer: comparisons, costs, pitfalls, misconceptions, alternatives, and situations where one option is better than another. That is where your knowledge becomes valuable. Put that into blogs, and it will help ChatGPT find your website.

5. Don't Just Say You're an Expert - Demonstrate It

Almost every business website claims some variation of: "We pride ourselves on providing a professional, high-quality service." The problem is that anybody can write it. Evidence is much more persuasive.

If you want to help ChatGPT find your website and understand why your business might be a credible source, then you need to give your website substance.

That could include detailed case studies, named authors with relevant experience, customer reviews, original photographs, accreditations, qualifications, awards, research or data you've produced, and genuinely knowledgeable articles/blogs.

A case study saying: We recently completed this project for a client in Newport", isn't particularly informative. Explain the problem. What did the customer need? What did you recommend? Why? What difficulties arose? How did you solve them? What was the outcome?

That is useful information for humans, and it gives search and AI systems considerably more context about your real-world expertise.

6. Make Your Location Clear

Naturally, this is particularly important for local businesses.

If you are an electrician serving customers across South Wales, make that clear on your website. Your address, service areas, and contact details shouldn't require detective work to find.

Your About and Contact pages can reinforce where you are based, while individual service pages can naturally explain areas you cover. However, avoid creating dozens of thin location pages where the only difference is swapping one town name for another, like "Electrician Newport", "Electrician Cardiff", and "Electrician Cwmbran."

That's not useful content. If a location genuinely warrants its own page, give the reader something specific and worthwhile.

7. Build Your Reputation Beyond Your Own Website

Your website doesn't exist in isolation.

If you claim to be a leading expert in your field but nobody else on the internet appears to know you exist, that's not a particularly convincing signal. Therefore, I want you to think about your wider digital footprint.

Are you listed accurately on relevant professional or industry websites? Have local publications mentioned your business? Do reputable websites link to you? Are there genuine customer reviews? Have you contributed expert comments or guest articles elsewhere?

You see, digital PR, quality guest blogging, and traditional link building still have a place. However, the aim shouldn't be to scatter links across hundreds of low-quality websites to help ChatGPT find your website. On the contrary, it's to build a recognisable business with a credible online presence.

8. Write Content Worth Citing

Graphic woman sat at a computer with pages of content coming out of it

This may be one of the biggest opportunities created by AI search.

If everybody writes a generic article called "10 benefits of X", then there is very little reason for any search or AI system to favour yours above the others. To help ChatGPT find your website, you need to give it something better:

Share your experience.

    • Explain what customers commonly get wrong.
    • Compare two approaches and say when you'd choose each one.
    • Publish original examples.
    • Answer awkward questions.
    • Discuss pricing honestly where possible.
    • Challenge a commonly repeated piece of industry advice if you disagree with it – and explain why.

The internet doesn't desperately need another 800-word blog saying the same thing as the previous 100 ones. What it does need are people who actually know their subject sharing information that isn't available everywhere else. Tricky, yes. Impossible, no.

9. Don't Forget Traditional SEO

As I mentioned right at the beginning of this article, trying to help ChatGPT find your website doesn't mean forgetting Google and other search engines. In fact, as I'm sure you've realised by now, many of the fundamentals overlap.

You still need a technically sound, crawlable website with logical navigation, descriptive page titles, useful headings, strong internal links and well-written pages focused on genuine customer needs. Ultimately, your content should make sense to a person first; I always stress this to my clients. There is little to be gained by contorting every single paragraph into something you imagine AI or search engines want to read.

Cater for your customer. Ensure your website clearly explains who you are, what you do, where you operate, and why you know what you're talking about. That's what they need to know, and by doing that you are already building a much stronger foundation for both traditional and AI-driven searches.

Help ChatGPT Find Your Website - But Write For People

Help ChatGPT find your website a 3d graphic of a person in front of a laptop with books and text

AI is changing how people discover information online, but that doesn't mean websites suddenly need to be written for robots. Quite the opposite. After all, humans, your potential customers, are asking ChatGPT the questions. So, if you want to help ChatGPT find your website, you must make it clear, informative, and more authoritative for the people you're trying to reach.

Follow the guidance listed above. None of it is particularly technical (save point 1); it is simply about making sure you have good website content. The difference is that today, a well-written website isn't only helping a potential customer decide whether to contact you; it may also help ChatGPT find your website and decide whether or not to list it in response to a query, ultimately driving fresh traffic your way.

If you would like help reviewing your website content, or creating quality blogs that appeal to both humans and bots, please do not hesitate to get in touch. My name is Heather, and I'm The Content Creator.

Heather the Content Creator A lady with blonde hair in a bob, smiling, wearing a black top

A bit about the author

Heather founded The Content Creator nearly three years ago, combining her love of writing with a genuine passion for helping small businesses and solopreneurs get seen online. She supports her clients with everything from website copy and SEO to AI search visibility, newsletters and social media, taking the stress out of creating content that not only sounds like them, but helps their business grow.

If you need a helping hand with any of these areas, Heather is your go-to girl! We can speak from experience, too, because she works on our own website, helping us keep up with the ever-changing world of SEO and AI search and making sure our content continues to work hard for our business.

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