A basic condition for a site’s success is to be a good seller. Of course, by this I don’t mean selling the website itself, even though Internet is full of multi-figure site transactions. Take for example the recent Instagram takeover by Facebook for around $ 1 billion, or Interclick bought by Yahoo for $ 270 million. But to close the brackets, what do these sites have in common? It’s their aptitude to attract eyeballs to their online showcase by being sales-oriented.
There are types of websites that do sell on an explicit basis: online merchants, web services and apps, blogs which sell advertising space, NPOs collecting donations. However, generally speaking, all websites (even non-commercial ones) have to convert visitors into some form of leads: subscribers, Facebook fans, prospects for direct purchase. These conversions mean sales at some point.
If you are the proud owner of an online asset, read on to see how you can optimize it for instant sales.
1. Be reachable on search engines
To obtain income, you basically need to perform a two-step process: attract visitors on the site (marketing) then guide them towards completing the transaction (actual sales). To tick the first one on the list, you should do consistent SEO – on-page techniques and link building. Leverage organic traffic as much as possible, especially if your business is on a tight budget and doesn’t afford advertising or if you’re a startup (in which case paid advertising does little).
2. Make it appealing at first glance
Contact Us and About pages are crucial elements for the user experience. A good About page gives the sense of human closeness and the feeling that someone’s there. On the contact page, be sure to include your physical address and, if possible, a phone number so that potential buyers can reach you by all convenient means. Web forms are a great conversion method. Optimize them to be short, visually attractive and easy to fill in – there are some simple rules to this.
3. The buyer connection
What are you offering? Why should one choose you? Visitors typically look over your site for no more than 8-9 seconds. If they don’t find a great answer to these two questions meanwhile, they bounce.
If you are selling goods or services, display the products catalogue in a comprehensive way. Make sure you use human endorsement here if possible, such as customer testimonials and real life photos. The content of each landing page has to be a good match to the referrals. A good sales technique, even if a bit old fashioned, is to recommend alternative products to people’s searches.
And a friend’s advice: always use the power of reminders. Set an alert to signal you when to send newsletters to your subscribers and what’s the time to update your Facebook or LinkedIn page. These are foolproof ways to strengthen your existing leads engagement and even extend your network.
4. Engage the public audience
These techniques are not meant solely for e-commerce platforms. You can have a bundle of promoted products on your news-related blog for example, it’s always beneficial to give away physical items. If you prefer to organize contests and need professional help, you can use dedicated software such as Wizehive.
5. Dedicated e-commerce systems
6. Extra tip no 1: Use customer reviews and testimonials
7. Extra tip no 2: Guarantee safety
