How to sell on the Internet?
Now you have a product to sell, a story to tell to go with the product but you dont how to sell in the internet?
Welcome to the world of Digital Marketing. Lets establish a few small ground rules
- You drive the website content including the layout.
- You own the business
- Digital Marketers help you present the content so it reaches the widest possible audience.
- Fundamentals of traditional business still remain
Here are some tips for a website that is a viable selling tool for a business.
- Think like your customer – If you distance yourself from your product/service and think like your customer would, you will be well on your way to selling on the internet. Think of all the questions the consumer might have and the one-sided nature of a website means that you have to pre-empt those questions and answer them to hold the consumer on your site. Remember in shop they can ask you questions but on a website they might not email you for a question so Answer the customer questions without being asked.
- Enrich your content – People scan website rather than reading them so “A picture is worth a thousand words” quite literally on the internet. Appeal to the people on an emotional level by showing them images. There is a reason big companies spend millions on creating a product image.
- Inform and Educate but dont Preach – If a customer is browsing your product pages, there is a need they have to address so the ground work is done. Don’t over sell or preach to the converted. There is no point in telling a person, who wants to buy a computer, what a computer can do. Instead tell them what your computer can do better. Be short and snappy – peoples attention spans are short because they might be browsing during a coffee break or in the 5 minutes before they need to be back at their desk during lunch hour.
- Dont Over-sell – If over selling worked then the pushy salesperson on the street would be richer than Bill Gates. People dont like being cornered into making a purchase. You have to make them think that they really made the decision. Consider the following when you are buying a car – Are you more likely to a buy a car from
- A salesperson who keeps pushing you into deciding by using techniques like, “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to own this car”
- A salesperson who calmly talks to you about where you are going to keep the car? How secure is the the car park? What do you drive at the moment?
The reason the second technique works better is because subtly the salesperson has made you visualise the car in your drive way or the underground car park and made you think about keeping your car safe. Buying a car doesnt happen just like that, people decide to change the car and then visit a garage to buy – so why oversell? The customer has already done the hard work and come to you to buy a car – now just make sure that they buy from you as opposed to the garage next door.
The same applies to websites. People are still people and we like to be in control and on the internet we already are so work with that control or be prepared to lose them.
I think that these are excellent starting points for selling on the internet. If you remember that the internet is just another sales tool and just translate your sales techniques from the offline world to the online world, you will succeed because fundamentally you are still selling to people.
The techniques above help you persuade the customer into buying from you, you still have to reach that customer. Techniques for selling on the internet that apply to digital media only like SEO, content development and Social Media Community Management help you widen the reach for your websites to sell your products/service.
From the perspective of a website for selling, here are some tips:
- Create an effective landing page – If you have an ad somewhere promising the customer the best ever price for a lawn mower, dont send them to your site home page from that ad. Send them directly to the lawn mower product page with the price highlighted to showcase your competitive strength. If the consumer clicks on your link and goes to the home page for your site, they are very unlikely to search for what they want. If you take them to the product page with the highlights standing out, you have won them half the battle. Do you have effective landing pages? Do you need help with your landing pages – contact us and we can help
- Reduce the number of clicks – If your customer has to click through 7 pages before finally hitting that all important “Buy Now” link, there are 7 chances of the customer abandoning the transaction completely. If you have bought a product from Dell, you will know what I mean. You can either buy the product or its variant directly like here or if you want to customise it, you just click once to go the customise page. Notice how all the various customisations happen on the one page. It keeps the customer interested and the live price update helps that process further. Now imagine if Dell made you click through page after page to get all the options you wanted – would you rather just buy from a shop in that case?
- Widen the Net – People like being involved and word of mouth is very powerful and internet is bringing customers together. So if people are saying good things about your equivalent business in a different country, don’t hesitate to share that limelight with them by being a participant in conversations involving the other businesses. Just because you only sell hand-crafted furniture in Ireland doesn’t mean that you cant benefit from people saying good things about hand-crafted furniture in other countries. Remember, your knowledge shows, your direct customers among other, you know what you are talking about – dont hide that knowledge away.
- Contact Xava for the rest – OK so I am using the blog article for a cheeky plug for my business but you have read my article far, you clearly like it and maybe you know your business needs my services, just click and email me! I can help you reach the top of search engine rankings and develop content that appeals to people and search engines alike. I can help you redevelop your website to have effective landing pages but above all I can help you measure and monitor the performance of all your online resources.
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