In 2011, we’ve seen lots more e-commerce retailers step up from just applying a few generic title tags and doing a bit of sporadic link building and start working on building a real brand – which is great to see.

Now, as we start to think about what we’re going to be changing once we’ve got over those inevitable NYE hangovers, here are a few tips to help you get more from your website.

Start using Twitter for lead-generation:

By using tools like Topsy or even the advanced search feature on Twitter, you can find people who are asking questions about the products that you’re selling.

Once you’ve found these people, giving them a helping hand and maybe directing them to a guide or blog post you’ve written (which should entice them to click through to your products) is an easy way to generate some good traffic and a few more sales.

Start building an outreach:

Get talking to the bloggers, editors, VIP’s and experts within your industry, as those relationships will help you to improve your social reach, generate links and get valuable feedback on improving your proposition.

In addition to building a media outreach, you should also start looking for your brand evangelists – the people that love your brand and love sharing your content, promoting your new products and generally promoting you.

These people are priceless and will come from generally being nice to customers and going that little bit further than you need to.

Get your content up to scratch:

With the busy Christmas period over for another 12 months, now is the perfect time to sit down with your sales team (utilise them – they speak to your customers every day) and improve the content on your website.

You should be thinking about channeling your customers and providing the most suitable information at the right stages – so focusing on what people are looking for and what might influence their decision to buy. Think about the role of your pages and how your content can get customers to move on to the next step in the buying process.

If you’re making major changes to your website, I would advise conducting a/b split tests using Google’s Website Optimiser.

Think about how you can get more clicks:

Making your meta description and page title more appealing is a great way of getting more traffic to your website. Building the right selling points into your listings will entice more people to click-through, so subtly getting insight from your customers could be a great way to win in 2012!

I would also recommend using Tom Anthony’s SERP Turkey; a tool which allows you to test the click-through rate of your listings.

Invest in rich media:

Adding video and image content to your product pages is a great way to get more people buying from your website. People are subconsciously drawn to videos, and images provide a more digestible way of illustrating key benefits to perspective customers.