New software tools like Offermatica (available at www.Offermatica.com) are focused on providing merchants or direct marketers with these types of optimizations.

Customer Case

For example, one company sold games for children and adults online and generated traffic around search terms largely selected by brand names of games they sold. This strategy was effective, but words were competitive and they wanted more revenue per purchase. Using Offermatica, they providing an automated list of top-selling products on pages where target products were displayed, company increased their AOV by 20% against a control group.

In another case, a company represents travel products that have radically different gross margins. The company should continue to drive traffic from external and internal search to low-margin properties, but could also begin to purposefully display higher-margin alternatives in same region and price range to increase profitability of their acquired customers.

Finally, a consumer products retailer that generated much of their traffic around a limited range of brand-name products tested a gift-with-purchase strategy to try to increase conversion rates on expensive brand-based terms.

None of these marketing approaches are earth-shattering. They reflect well-trodden paths lain down by traditional retailers, catalog retailers, and even late-night infomercials. They are also very effective.

Any retailer can drive traffic if they pay enough, and anyone can refine traffic to pay relatively little for relatively low traffic. The search engine future, however, belongs to those who can sell enough to pay enough for a large, growing base of online customers.

Matthew Roche Offermatica www.offermatica.com

5. Write articles.

Writing articles will provide you with a powerful way to promote your website or business. Your articles can also be very effective in gaining more subscribers to your ezine.

To increase your articles' reach, create a list that people can subscribe to that tells them when you've written new articles.

Your list will give your readers an easy way to get your articles by email and can also help you to increase sign ups to your affiliate program if you let your affiliates use your articles as a promotional tool.

6. Let your visitors try out your product before they buy it.

You could supply your visitors with a demo version of your software product, or you could let them try out your service for a limited amount of time before purchasing.

If you sold an informational product you could make a chapter or excerpts of several different chapters available on your site.

You could also make your chapters available by autoresponder by creating a multipart report that delivers your extracts or sample chapter.

7. Offer sales and discounts to your customers.

Your customers that have purchased from you already are far more likely to be receptive to your offers than someone that has just visited your site for first time.

Treat your customers like gold by providing them with special sales, bonuses, and offers that are only for them, and you'll be able to create a loyal customer base that generates long term profits for you.