Part 4 - Create competition

In the fourth installment in our series on how to increase website traffic, and in turn sales. We turn to a core value of democracy. Competition.

Of course there are other people out there selling the same products or services that you are. That is not the kind of competition that we're talking about. We're talking about your customers. Or people in general. They like to find a good deal. People like to find something that is special or one of a kind that they found.

A website that gets people coming back more often, makes more sales. Again I defer to on of our favorite websites, www.woot.com. They have perfected this model. Each day they have a new product, that is usually priced much lower than the competition. They only have so many of this product, whether it be 10, or 1000. In any case though, once they are sold out, that's it. No more.

So some ideas for you and creating a competition on your website. Give something away for free. Pick a product or service everyone would love, and give one away, say once a week, or once a month, or how ever often we want people to come back. Let them enter their email address, and get a chance at winning. It helps to build your newsletter base up, and gets them to come back once per day. Or offer them a chance to email this offer to their friends, to help spread the word.

If giving something away for free is too much for your business model, then give something at a good discount. Why does the grocery store sell that gallon of milk at such a low price? Because they know everyone needs milk. They are hoping that you also grab those oreo cookies on the walk back to the dairy section in the back. Most people will add those complementary products to help make their purchase complete.

So pick the services, or products you can give away for free, or at a deep discount, and start watching people stop by more often.

What do you think about Bry.Net offering a free website to a client? Would you stop back to enter your name into a hat? Let us know, we're trying to figure out what our contest and competition can be.