The 5 Simple Website Add-Ons That Could Help Boost Revenue
With everyone having a website presence, it can be challenging to stand out from the crowd and generate a profit. Here are five add-ons that will help you do both.
By Greg Doran •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Traffic is the most important component of any website-monetization strategy, according to online-learning platform Udemy. You likely spend quite a bit of time and resources to draw traffic to your website. Are you doing everything you can on your site to maximize those efforts? No matter how many visitors your website currently gets, there are a few methods you can use to increase consumer engagement, time spent and repeat visits along with adding additional revenue streams.
Take advantage of your current level of site traffic with these tips:
1. Add a secondary-ticket integration. Did you know that with current technologies any digital property that wants to sell event tickets online can do just that? Adding a secondary ticket integration to your site is easy and offers your business huge income-generating potential.
Related: Five Ways to Re-Energize Sales
If your business involves music, sports, theater or any type of live entertainment, you can have access to an application programming interface, or API, that allows for any web property to show event tickets to their visitors -- big or small. For instance, if you run a music blog, you may want to provide your visitors the opportunity to purchase tickets to upcoming concerts or festivals in their area. In the travel space? You can offer your customers tickets to the hottest events in the city they are heading to.
2. Add an option to sign-up for your company's newsletter. If you don't offer a free product such as an e-newsletter on your site in exchange for visitors' email addresses, you're missing out on a great opportunity to generate both new sales and more traffic. By offering an option to sign up for your company's newsletter on your site, you can request that recipients provide their email address in exchange for it.
How can you make money from an email address? A study done by Ecommerce Quarterly found that while newsletters don't generate as much traffic as search, they result in some of the best conversion rates via email lists. That's because the list of addresses you generate from your site is tailor-made to fit the products and services you offer. Unlike random lists that spam out information to people who may not be interested in your niche, your site's visitors clearly have an interest, so knowing how to target them can help generate sales revenue.
3. Provide a feedback section. How can you provide your site's visitors (potential new customers) with what they need and want from you? Integrating customer-feedback tools onto your website gives you the opportunity to take the pulse of your visitors through direct qualitative feedback.
There's a wide range of feedback tools available for integration, from crowdsourcing product-opinion software like UserVoice to simple page feedback tools such as Five Second Test or concept tools like Userlytics feedback tools. Other offerings include ForeSee Results, which meaures site exits, and general online survey tools like Survey Monkey.
No matter which type of tool you use, you must then act on the information you receive to create a more customer-centric site. By doing so, you'll increase the chances of turning one-time visitors into long-time customers -- a surefire way to increase revenue.
4. Offer sharing capabilities. Maintaining an active social-media presence is a no-brainer to help drive new traffic to your site -- and in the process identify and capture new customers to grow your revenue base.
At a minimum, you'll want to include links to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn that are easily accessible from your home page and other key areas of your site. This will allow readers to share your content with their own networks, generating more eyeballs for your messaging with no additional push from you. Beyond the basics, other social media and video sharing sites to consider adding links to on your site include YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and Flickr.
Related: How to Become a YouTube Partner
5. Make affiliate or partner programs available. Once you have a steady and reliable stream of traffic going to your website, then it's time to up the ante with your monetization efforts. Consider affiliate marketing, which involves partnering with another company to advertise certain products on their website that may be related to your areas of specialization (or vice versa).
In addition to offering physical products, you might consider informational products like eBooks. Don't have relationships with major retailers or thought leaders to partner with them yet? Some sites offer opportunities to provide affiliate products without needing to directly contact the product manufacturer. But as you gain more experience, connections and site visitors, you may be ready to reach out to major retailers and other potential partners directly about their affiliate programs.
No matter which monetization strategies you choose to use, remember: when it comes to website add-ons, something is better than nothing. Do what you can -- with the time and budget you have -- to increase your traffic and boost your revenue.
Related: The Hottest Ecommerce Businesses to Start in 2014 (Infographic)
