Top Ten Ways to Increase Web Sales
By Judy Cullins
Posted Monday, September 13, 2004
You have only 10 seconds to impress your potential buyer.
Your visitors don't care about you. They care what you can do for them. Give them a reason to buy. If you haven't reaped the sales you deserve apply these ten tips.
1. Write dazzling home-page copy that gives your potential customers a reason to click to your product.
Use benefit driven headlines that lead them through your "click here" to a short sales letter or bulleted benefits of your service or product that signals "buy now." Before I learned this ultimate powerful technique, my Web sales were flat. Since incorporating "passion copy writing," my brand new Web site sales jumped from <75 in August to over <2665 by December 20, and went ovwer <3000 a month during the next year.
2. Preplan and Know your Web site's purpose.
Without a clear purpose, your visitors will be confused and leave. If you are a coach, make sure that is clear. Put up your audience concerns and challenges. Then follow that by what solutions you can give them. If you have a book to offer, make sure you compel your visitor to go to your order page.
When visiting other professional sites, I often go away wondering what are they selling? What do they want the visitor, to do?
3. Sell your products and services through brave, bold, headings.
Headings can ask a pertinent question about you visitors challenges, such as "Are your web sales puny?" Or, "Are you frustrated not being in the career you love? Headings can use a benefit statement such as Quadruple your Success (you name what it is) with one feature it works with, such as the Online Promotion Tool Kit (name your product or service).
4. Use sparkling testimonials from the rich and famous on your home page and all others about each product or service you offer.
You may already have them for your product and service, but do you have them for your ezine, free articles, and Web site?
5. Support your home page "Passion Approach" copy with proper links to product sales letters, stories, and service.
Let's say you have a bold heading "Quadruple your Web sales in Three Months with Opt-In Ezine Articles." Next to it say, "click here." Where will you take your visitor? To your sales letter, of course!
6. Make your layout clear, clean, and consistent.
An unorganized, unclear site tells people you aren't professional (and we all want to be professional, don't we?).
You need to organize each page in the same layout-such as left centered, right centered, or centered. Go to other Web sites and choose a design that resonates with you. Keep every page in the same format.
7. Use color, font changes, small graphics to spice up your site, but remember to use a lot of white space.
Only use graphics occasionally and be sure they are small because larges graphics make your site load slowly. When forced to wait over ten seconds, your targeted visitors who might buy from you, leave!
Easy-to-read and clear navigation helps keep your visitors on your site longer. If you are like me, and have a content-dense site, include long copy so long as you present it in short chunks.
It's a good idea to check your site often to see if you have any glitches. Another good idea is to visit your site with a visitor mind set. What turns you off? What do you like?
8. Put your information in short paragraphs.
When a visitor sees a long line of print, he gets discouraged because he want his information fast, clear, and concise. Make each paragraph only 4-6 lines. Online readers want easy-to- read material they can get the main points from and they want it faster than light rays. Remember clear, compelling copy is always the rule.
9. Be consistent with your heading and body fonts.
Do not use all capital letters in your articles or headings. They are hard to read. Use only a few for emphasis; for the rest, make them upper/lower case such as *Sell More Books with a Powerful Back Cover*.
Do not use the same font for headlines and titles as you do for the body of information beneath. This mistake makes it hard to distinguish the two. If you are a non-techie like me you can use "Times Roman" for the heading and "Arial"b2 point for the body. Notice no tails in Arial (called Sans Serif), good for some headings too.Times Roman and the other serif-style fonts (with tails) draw attention and are more dramatic. From exper- ience, I found these fonts work well for sales letters.
10. Use dividers such as ========== or ---------- when you change topics.
These can add variety and help your visitors to see your message more clearly. These are often used on business ezines. Each publisher makes their ezine their own by their personal choices.
Remember your home page must give your visitors a reason to buy. Use these "Marketing Pizzazz" techniques throughout your site. Think right now, what is it I need to act on next to manifest more dollar success on my site?
About the Author
Judy Cullins: author, publisher, book coach Helps professionals manifest their book dreams eBook:_Ten Non-techie Ways to Market Your Book Online_ (http://www.bookcoaching.com/discounts.shtml) Send an email to mailto:Subscribe@bookcoaching.com The Book Coach Says... includes 2 free eReports mailto:Judy@bookcoaching.com Ph:619/466/0622
