“Finally, a shopping cart designer who listens to the needs of small business, site developers AND search engine marketing specialists.”
Jim Hedger, SEO & search marketing consultant
Jim Hedger, SEO & search marketing consultant
Twelve tips for getting your visitors to purchase from your site(s)
Your web site gets vast numbers of visitors, but the number of buyers don't come close to what you had hoped. This is a common problem with a lot of sites - even the big companies have this problem at times. If this is true for you then how can you turn your site into the selling machine you had hoped it would be? First, you must answer a few questions and answer them with honesty and integrity.
- Does your product description focus on emphasizing the benefits and the results the customer will get from purchasing and using the product?
Move your sales copy from the features of the product to the benefits the end user will gain from purchasing your product. You can list the features while translating them into the benefits the user will receive from the product.- Research
During this process we determine, with the aid of the client, the major competition. If they have web sites, we review those web sites to determine what they do right and wrong.- Are you conveying enough strong benefits?
"Take 10" - the old advertising term for brainstorming. At least that is what we called it. Here you want to brainstorm and come up with as many benefits of the product that you can. From the list you rank them in order of importance. Since we are working with a medium that enables people to take their time, you can cover all of the benefits from the most important to the least. Therefore, you can discuss the benefits and then summarize them. If you have more than five you can bullet the top five in such a way as to drive the importance to the reader in a stronger way.- Does your sales copy stimulate the emotions?
People buy based upon impulses driven by emotions more than they buy based upon well educated decisions. Impulse buying is the crutch the Internet market thrives upon. Imagine yourself sitting on a yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea on a cozy afternoon off the coast of Crete. You're sitting there with your significant other after joining a really lucrative business venture. You have received your first million and just wanted to get away for awhile. We hear about this all the time, mostly from Multi-Level Marketing members. What did they offer that no one else had? Nothing, but the insight on how to drive emotions in people to the point the customer purchased. All simple emotions.- Is the headline strong enough to grab and draw you in?
We can take a lesson from the news media, especially newspapers, for this idea. Newspapers put their most compelling copy on the top front fold in hopes of selling more papers. This is your goal here. Stop the potential customer dead in their tracks and use their emotions to sell the product. The newspaper companies made a boon on December 7, 1941 because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. People wanted to know more! Your sales copy needs to be this strong, but not unbelievable.- Does your sales copy call the customer to action?
I know of one web site that puts this to extremely good use. When you visit the web site and go to the section where the price is listed it indicates that a special price exists and it will be ending the day of your visit. This tactic, although, not exactly truthful in nature does drive the potential customer to purchase. The successfulness of this site is astounding. Your site could also be this successful.- Do you have any usability issues with your web site that need repair?
People don't really want to wait for a slow loading site to finish downloading to their computer. You must remember that not everyone has fast connections to the Internet. In fact, the majority of people surfing the Internet get less than the advertised rate of their modems. You must also consider navigation and usability. Is your site easy to navigate? Does your site offer more than one path to every page? Is your site accessible to the disabled? If you are employing Flash intro pages, you may find you are losing a considerable number of users. You must employ good reasoning for Flash pages or you may just be telling your customers that you don't want their business.- Testimonials from satisfied customers are like gold?
Nearly every where you point your browser you see sites with testimonials. People expect to see testimonials and sometimes refuse to purchase if they can not read what others thought about the product that interests them. A good way to get testimonials is to send a customer survey out to your customers. You can offer them a free sample of a new product or something they did not purchase to get them to complete and return the survey. After the survey has been completed you will then be able to add it to your testimonial page. You don't want too many, so you may have to determine the best ones to use. Testimonials are more believable when it includes information on how to get in touch with the person who wrote the testimonial. Ask your customer if this would be possible - don't take the chance that it is.- Do you have a merchant account?
This one is not all that important. What is important is "do you have a means of accepting credit cards online?" You may even want to consider using a check processing service to handle checks for those that don't use or have credit cards. There are a lot of people that don't want credit cards or can't get them. Don't shut your door on them; they could be your most valued customer.- Are you absolutely sure there's a market for it?
Have you found anyone else selling similar products on the Internet? If you have, then there just may be a market. If you have not, have you done any opinion polls to determine the marketability of your proposed product line? Why are major companies always doing opinion polls? Because they know they need to validate the importance of a new product, its packaging, and what techniques they need to employ to get the product to the right market.- Does your web site employ colors that are easy on the eye?
Have you ever visited a site where the colors just drove you away. Your thoughts probably focused upon the idea that the designer was on drugs to have the idea that those colors work. You want colors that are easy on the eye and promote a feeling of relaxation, trust, and contentment.- Do you offer a guarantee?
Many people have been burned by online dealers and are wary of dealing with unknowns. Since your visitor doesn't know you, that makes you an unknown to them. People love guarantees, so offer them and make them as unconditional as possible.- Can you compete with your competitors in the global market?
Do you have any competitors that are cornering the market? Are potential customers just "window shopping" for price? If you answered yes to either of these questions you will need to evaluate the platform you want to sell from. Perhaps you can compete on dependability, quality, benefits, or price. The best platform would be a mixture of the four in the order of importance being quality, dependability, benefits, and finally price. How do you determine which platform to use would require extensive research on your part.
Once you can answer "yes" to the above questions without prejudice, you are on your way to earning more sales. As with all businesses, you will be continually fine-tuning your services and site and be on your way to increasing your sales. You will never sell to every visitor you get, but you do want to sell to more than just one or two a month.
Contact us today at 405-329-8500 or use our contact form to schedule a demo and learn if Merchant Metrix is right for your business.