9 Easy Ways to Skyrocket Your Online Sales

By Leva Duell
Posted Thursday, June 24, 2004

Apply these marketing strategies to skyrocket your online sales.

1. Keep search engines in mind when designing your site. Include
keywords and META tags in your web pages to improve your ranking
with search engines. For information on how to improve your search-
engine ranking with keywords, go to
(http://www.FiveStarWebDesign.com/keyword.htm).

2. Design your web site based on your Unique Selling Proposition.
Why should prospects buy from you instead of your competition? What
sets you apart? What makes your products and services unique, better,
and more desirable? Do you provide hard-to-find expertise, the best
customer service, lowest prices, highest quality, fastest service, or
strongest guarantee? Back up your claims with testimonials, statistics,
results of studies, and other data. Stand out from your competition.
Offer more. Make your offers unique. Be original.

3. Put the benefits of your site and your USP right on top of your
home page. Many web visitors never scroll down past the first screen of
information. Give your potential buyers the information they need as
quickly as possible.

4. Include an "Opt-in" form to collect your visitors' email
addresses. An opt-in form captures the email addresses of interested
prospects and gives you permission to email them. Getting your visitors'
e-mail addresses and building opt-in email lists is essential to staying in
touch with your prospects and turning your visitors into buyers. Offer
something valuable to get your potential buyers' email addresses such as
a newsletter, free report, consultation, discount, or special offer.

5. Stay in touch. Visitors rarely purchase the first time they visit a site.
They want to get to know you before they are willing to spend money.
Communicate consistently with your prospects through online
newsletters and email messages. Give potential buyers reasons to return.
Provide valuable information in your ezine. Mention what's new on your
site. Provide special offers and discounts to your subscribers. Invite
them to visit your web site again and again. These techniques work. Try
them and watch your prospects become buyers.

6. Ask for feedback. Find out what potential buyers want. Use feedback
forms and email surveys to conduct market research. Ask what products
and information they're interested in. What benefits are most appealing.
What price they would pay. Analyze the feedback and adapt your site as
needed.

7. Write compelling sales copy. Effective copy works just as well on the
Internet as it does in direct mail. Attract potential buyers with benefits.
Start each web page with a compelling, benefit-oriented headline. Tests
have proven that the more you tell, the more you sell. If people aren't
interested in your products or services, they won't read past the first
paragraph. If they are interested, you can't tell them enough.

8. Motivate readers to do what you want them to do with action
verbs. A call to action such as "call now," "order now," and "click here"
can dramatically increase sales. Give precise instructions. Tell them
exactly what to do. For example, tell them to subscribe to your ezine and
give you their email addresses. For more examples of action verbs, see
"Increase Sales, Subscriptions, and Traffic With Action Words" at
(http://www.profitablewebstrategies.com/action.htm).

9. Make purchasing easy. Take a good look at your ordering process.
More information at
(http://www.profitablewebstrategies.com/ordering.htm).

10. Include your URL on each web page. This will make it easier for
people to go back to your web site.

Take a look at your web site and see how many of these elements are
missing. Implement these proven direct marketing strategies now to increase
your online sales!

P.S. Read more in-depth articles at (http://www.profitablewebstrategies.com)

This article is an excerpt from Inside Secrets to Developing a Profitable
Web Site. More info at (http://www.profitablewebstrategies.com/ebook.htm).
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About the Author
Web design built on proven marketing strategies!

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