Internet Business

Staying awake at night wondering how to pump up your sagging Internet sales?

After all, your reports say you’re driving the right audience to your site. AND your sales pitch appeals to these visitors. AND you sell high-quality product(s)/service(s).

But few visitors are buying. Why?

Consider How Your Site Appears To Visitors

Consider the possibility that your web site is turning visitors away. Forever!

Internet visitor turnoff happens every minute of every day. How do you minimize it?

Well, suppose you’re a customer in a “real” store. You want to buy a light bulb. But the store is so big that three employees can’t give you directions to the right aisle. Maybe you can’t even find someone to give you directions! Is this how your site navigation appears to visitors?

Another example: Based on the length of the checkout lines in the supermarket, you know it’s going to take at least 15 minutes to give away your money. Will you walk out? Your web site visitors can just click out of your site!

Hey, My Site Is Perfect!

You say these “real” store situations don’t apply to your site? Do you think you’re objective?

With a wee bit of effort, you can create a money magnet web site! Check out this list of tips for keeping visitors at your site so they WILL buy or contact you.

Ten Tips Plus One Bonus Tip

1. Use a popup to ask if your prospect’s visit satisfied their reason for clicking to your site.

A few visitors find this annoying. Others will be happy to comment. Trial a popup, and remove it if it is unpopular. Success depends on how quickly visitors can answer your questions.

2. Survey past visitors.

3. Ask ten people in your target audience to test drive your site.

4. Click on the home page.
Where does your eye go first? Is this location the FIRST item you want visitors to see?

5. Test the site using several different browsers.
Your software might give you this option. Sometimes there’s a flaw you won’t see in your own browser.

6. Encourage your visitors to contact you and make it simple for them to do so.

Turnoffs are addresses like webmaster@site.com, email@site.com, and customerservice@site.com. The address should contain a person’s name.

7. Your site’s purpose needs to be clear and easily understood by the visitor.

If you want a customer to contact you for more information, say so. If you want a customer to buy, say so. Keep visitors guessing and they’ll exit quickly. And PERMANENTLY.

8. Check out the structure, copy, and look of your competition’s sites.
Take advantage of other people’s web knowledge.

9. If your site has links, check them often.
There’s nothing worse than a visitor clicking on a link and getting an error message. This includes internal as well as external links. Again, the software used to build the site checks for certain links. Use it regularly!

10. If you have a FLASH intro or other cutesy gimmicks, remove them.
Why risk losing visitors who might be offended? These gimmicks are way different than the popup question mentioned before. The popup is a feedback mechanism. Gimmicks are more than annoying — they’re unprofessional.

BONUS Tip:

Consider revising site design based on your findings from the previous ten tips.

Most people start with a small site and then add pages gradually. Sometimes the site size gets out of hand, or the site loads slowly, or it navigates like a boat taking on water.

Find the problems and change the design!

Happy web site creation and revision. Make your site a money magnet!

Copyright 2005 Valerie Mills

Valerie Mills,a copywriter/designer specializing in direct mail and web advertising, has written sales letters, web sites, and brochures for the finance, self-help, and technology areas. She also audits sites for usability, sales appeal, structural integrity, and readability. In addition, using her experience as an educator and corporate trainer, Valerie has written several articles and a parents’ guide to coach kids of all ages about money and personal finance. Contact vmills@teachyourkidsaboutmoney.com Refer to web site http://v.mills.home.att.net

Tags: internet marketing, internet sales, online marketing, web site marketing, web site sales, web sitesinternet marketing, internet sales, online marketing, web site marketing, web site sales, web sites

Share This

If you’re selling a product or service on the Internet, one of the best ways to increase your sales is by offering a free trial, also know as a teaser, demo or limited version. By enabling your potential customers to review your product and providing them with an easy ordering process, you can increase your sales immensely.

Free trials are not exclusive to software programs. There are many ways you can offer a free trial no matter what product or service you’re offering. For example, if you’ve written a book, consider offering it in an electronic version, better know as an eBook. You can include your entire book
within the eBook and choose to lock out certain chapters.

In order for your potential customer to gain access to these chapters they will be required to purchase the full version. You can include an order form and instantly take orders, right through your free trial Ebook. When you receive an order, you simply send your customer a predefined user ID and password that you set up when you create it.

A good program to assist you in creating an Ebook is Ebook Edit Pro. http://www.web-source.net This program will compress your HTML documents into a self-contained “executable” file. This HTML may be a web site you’ve created or HTML you’ve specifically prepared to be compiled into a downloadable .exe file for distribution. This .exe file is a completely freestanding program and requires no installation. When clicked on, the program instantly opens your book on your client’s desktop. In addition, WebCompiler will enable you to lock out certain pages of your Ebook or an entire directory.

The key to using a free trial version is to offer your product for download from your website and allow it to be freely distributed. Provide some valuable free information, but save your most important information for the unlocked version. Make your locked chapters sound very intriguing and create curiosity. Tell your potential customers what they will receive by purchasing the full version, provide a complete list of all the benefits, and provide them with an easy ordering process.

To further increase your sales, provide your potential customers with instant gratification. You can completely automate your entire ordering process simply by using a CGI script. There are scripts online that will allow you to make your product available for download, take the customers order, approve it right online, send your customer a password and send you a confirmation of the
order, all completely automatic.

- CGI Resource Index - http://cgi.resourceindex.com/

After you’ve created your product, consider setting up an affiliate program for massive distribution. There are many affiliate CGI scripts available to assist you in running your own affiliate program.

- The Affiliate Program - http://theaffiliateprogram.com/
- ProTrack - http://www.affiliatesoftware.net/

If you’re selling a service on the Internet, you can offer your potential customers a free trial as well. For example, if you offer a search engine submission service, you can provide your customers with a limited free submission to the search engines.

To entice your customers to purchase your full service you can, not only submit their site to your full list of search engines, but you can create doorway pages, insure their pages are optimized for the search engines and provide a resubmission service every month for a year. In addition, provide your clients with a free report of each submission process.

Prior to doing your customers last submission, contact them and inform them that their submission contract will soon be expiring. Tell them how they can renew their submission process and offer another enticing freebie such as, “If you renew your submission contract before (date) we will also submit your site to over 1000 Free For All Sites.”

This type of free trial will not only increase your current sales, but it will promote future sales as well.

The possibilities are endless. By offering your potential customers something of value for free, providing instant gratification, and an easy ordering process, you can dramatically increase your sales.

Copyright © Shelley Lowery

About the Author:

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design course, “Web Design Mastery” (www.webdesignmastery.com) and “eBook Starter - Give Your eBooks the look and feel of a REAL book” (www.ebookstarter.com)

Visit www.Web-Source.net to sign up for a complimentary subscription to eTips and receive a copy of Shelley’s acclaimed ebook, “Killer Internet Marketing Strategies.”

You have permission to publish this article electronically, in print, in your ebook, or on your web site, free of charge, as long as the author bylines are included.

Tags: internet marketing, internet sales, internet sales tips, sales promotions, site promotion, traffic buildiinternet marketing, internet sales, internet sales tips, sales promotions, site promotion, traffic buildi

Share This