The economy is clearly not as robust as it was 4 years ago. If you listen to some talk radio personalities, you’d think the world was coming to an end. However, there is a silver lining. Between gas prices and tighter economic times, e-commerce continues to grow. In fact, according to Emarketer the power of the web is two fold - people are shopping online more and they are doing more online research before buying. If you are doing business on the web, this means you have an opportunity to grow your business in a weaker economy - but you will need to make every visitor to your website count.

To increase conversions you have to be able to connect with visitors, beyond just the “typical” website experience. To really connect with visitors you have to keep them engaged, and keep them on your site. There are many ways to keep visitors on the site longer, and keep them interested - a strong site design, competitive pricing, good technology, a company blog, live chat - there are new ideas every week to help. One of the most effective at engaging customers and keeping them on your website longer is to keep a current blog with helpful information - if you help your customers make good decisions, they will keep coming back. This is CRITICAL as more and more brick-and-mortar business goes online.

The web has proven that, even for highly competitive items experience matters. Why do some sites prosper even after spending less on advertising? How have some sites experienced brand growth without being the leader in their respective fields? When everything goes online, the differentiator is going to be trust. Things like a current blog and live support online build trust. There is no magic bullet for building consumer loyalty on the web, but you can make an effort to build trust effectively and make an immediate impact on sales.

Why not get started now? Add a blog to your website and approach it with the mindset of helping your customers make decisions, or help them get more out of the products they are already buying, and get them feeling positive about engaging with your brand. Making the web more personal is critical to growing in a tough economy, and it’s the first major step towards making every visitor count.

Tags: B2B-blogging, Blog Optimization, Blogsite, business-blog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 5:55 am and is filed under Business Blogging. 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.