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Posted By John M

Sainsbury’s had a very enjoyable Christmas, reclaiming the title of second largest UK supermarket from Asda, and reporting a like-for-like sales rise of 3.6 per cent in the 14 weeks leading up to 8 January 2011.
Sainsbury’s saw an increase in sales for items such as homeware and electricals. Hold on – what’s this on the Sainsbury’s front page? Huge banners advertising incredible deals on homeware, electricals and plenty more!

We’re not saying that search engine optimization and the way that Sainsbury’s has set up its website is wholly responsible for their impressive figures, but it certainly must have helped them somewhere along the line – especially when you correlate their front page with Asda’s.
A visit to the Sainsbury’s front page has bold, dynamic images for products in its different categories alongside how much money the customer can stand to save. Nothing of the sort on Asda’s front page, which only has links to possible sale items with no description at all.

Sainsbury’s have done really well to convert the traffic that has visited their sales pages for these categories into cold cash. When we have a look at Asda’s front page though, there’s nothing at all there to entice people to click those links, follow through and make a purchase. Just generally indicating that there’s a sale on, as Asda have done, may get a few visitors passing through. Asda need to work on their link building strategies. But if you take some good web design into account, as Sainsbury’s have done in promoting non food-related areas of their business, then sales are likely to be much higher.
The lesson here is to draw people to your biggest and best deals by utilising images and banners in ways you wouldn’t normally to catch attention and encourage people to look. Use this tip across other areas of your website that you want people to visit and purchase from. After all, how on earth are they going to make a purchase if they haven’t got a clue what’s available?