Traffic

[Ihorns4u]

My website works well for point of sale during the holidays. However, the rest of the year is hot and miss. How do you get consistent sales year round?

[Ihorns4u]

It’s iHorns

[Ihorns4u]

Thank you for your response. It is helpful.

So I am an artist and I sell my art at art shows and on my website. During
a three day art show I give away approximately 750 business cards. I post
almost every day on Instagram (posts and reels) which also posts on
Facebook. I have sales channels set up in both Instagram and Facebook. I
have approximately 1600 followers on Instagram +/-. I do seasonal paid
Instagram advertising and offer discounts. Last year I had 6,683 sessions
which was an increase of 14% from the previous year which was the first
year I had a website. My sales were double in year 2 what they were in
year 1, which i think was great in light of inflationary times. I look at
the website analytics about every other day to see how the traffic is
flowing, but mere traffic flow does not equate to sales. Simply put,
during the non-holiday times, sales are unpredictable and random rather
than consistent. During the holidays, they are consistent and frequent.

My art is not fungible. In other words, if I sell candles and you like my
candles, when the candle burns up, you are likely to purchase another. My
art is not consumed in terms of being used up. While people are repeat
buyers, it is not because of product consumption.

I have done no email marketing. Perhaps I should do so, although I am not
certain what content I would include in such marketing so that it is not
just another piece of junk noone wants to read.

Thank you again.

[BrianFawkes]

It depends on the products you offer, but generally, sale numbers are bound to fluctuate throughout the year. People end up following trends before going on shopping sprees - as you said, the holidays will be busier than other periods. 

Expanding your inventory and building your brand's authority can help, though. Also, keep on implementing new ways to drive organic traffic to your domain. That means both off and on-page SEO shenanigans. After all, the better you do on SERPs, the wider your playing field will grow.

[Ihorns4u]

Thank you for your reply. It was helpful. As for brand development I post almost daily on Instagram which also posts to Facebook (a mix of posts and reels). I do some timely paid advertising on Instagram. Finally, I mostly develop my brand through doing art shows around the western United States.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by SEO shenanigans and I am unfamiliar with what is SERP. Thank you

[BrianFawkes]

In broad strokes, Search Engine Optimization has two "sides": on-page and off-page SEO. As the name implies, on-page means focusing on optimizing your published content for readability, making it more scannable, including images for better flow, etc. This is supremely important since Google's crawler "spot checks" each URL whenever someone types in the cluster of keywords you compete in on their PC. So, which Search Page Results (SERPs) they get, depends on how Google rates the sites within that niche. Hence, you can slowly climb the SERP ladder by focusing on the lower-difficulty keywords and aiming to overtake your immediate peers, one category of keywords at a time.

Off-page SEO is more complicated since it involves the "tidiness" of all of your domain's URLs, the link juice running through your site, ensuring there are no broken links, etc. Also, it encompasses strategies for diversifying your site's backlink profile through various link-building methods. If more domains link to you with do-follow links, they endorse your content and Google starts granting your URLs more weight - thus ranking them higher in SERPs. As a result, visitors will be more likely to find your site sooner and also more inclined to convert into paying customers.

Hope this helps and good luck!