| You
may be asking yourself, "how
do I increase revenue on my web site?" Are
you experiencing any of the following situations:
- My visitors
look at one or two pages and then leave.
- Visitors stay
for a while but still don't buy anything.
- My site cannot
be found in the top positions of the major search
engines
- There is not
enough traffic to generate sales.
There
are four types of Web sites:
- inner-directed
- information-oriented
- transaction-driven
- relationship-oriented
Inner-directed
Web sites
These sites are created from
the business’s point of view. The home page typically
features the firm’s logo and accomplishments.
Inner-directed Web sites lack a focus on specific products
or services. They typically fail to encourage urgency
or visitor involvement. These sites typically feature
photographs of buildings, lists of accomplishments,
and testimonials from satisfied customers.
Information-oriented
Web sites
Sites of this type provide more information
about the firm’s products and services. These
sites function like electronic brochures in that they
communicate the same types of material as found in brochures.
Information-oriented Web sites reflect more of a customer
focus but fail to communicate urgency or establish a
two-way information exchange with the Web site visitor.
Transaction-oriented
Web sites
These sites assume that
every visitor is ready to buy and, accordingly, place
an emphasis upon price product features and benefits
and place a premium on urgency; price is used to encourage
visitors to order “right now!”. To date,
the most successful examples of transaction-oriented
Web sites are the numerous Web sites created by airlines,
book stores, concert ticket outlets, and computer industry
hardware manufacturers and software makers.
Although transaction-oriented
Web sites are the fastest-growing category of Web sites,
transaction sites depend heavily on price incentives
and—accordingly—often fail to offer visitors
a reason to return until the next time customers are
in the market to buy. They, likewise, make no attempt
to create long-term customer loyalty.
Relationship-oriented
Web sites
These are usually community
type sites that attempt to forge long-term bonds with
Web site visitors by establishing an ongoing dialog
with them, fine-tuning the relationship between buyer
and seller, and rewarding previous customers so they’ll
not only buy again, but also recommend the firm to their
friends. Relationship-oriented Web sites are intended
to advance customers along the customer development
cycle. There's a lot of competition for web site visitors.
Many small to medium businesses with a Web site don't
have the advertising budgets of the multi-nationals.
Here are some
tips to help you to improve the effectiveness of your
site:
1. Win
the Trust of Your Audience - The first step
is to show that you are a person who can be trusted
-- so try to give your audience something of value --
advice, interesting "inside" information or
helpful tips. Indicate why your opinion here should
be valued -- give a little detail about your background
and your credentials. To win their trust, you must know
something about your audience:What sort of people are
they? How old are they? What are their special interests?
2. Appeal
to the Emotions - We all know that people respond
to emotional appeals more readily than to intellectual
appeals, so utilize this in your advertising. There
are three steps to follow: First, arouse an emotion
-- anger, fear, resentment, envy, greed, sympathy. Second,
give a reason for the emotion -- "your children
are precious to you, don't risk their future by ..."Third,
give your audience an appropriate course of action to
follow -- "Call now to ensure your place in this
new ..."When appealing to the emotions, your most
powerful tools are words -- learn to use them to create
the desired effect on your readers.
3. Rationalize
- This is giving people good reasons to believe
what you're telling them. We all do this to ourselves
everyday. How many times have you said something like
this to yourself, "My old car is going to start
costing me money soon; I'd be better off buying a new
one now"?
Tell your would-be
customers that they'll save money in the long run by
spending it now and you've given them a reason to act
immediately summarize and repeat your key points --
use logic and reasoning only when necessary Be convincing
in your presentation, so that your audience forgets
to ask about the points you skip overUse plenty of emotional
words and focus on the audience. Consider how you can
use these persuasive techniques to sell your products
or services.
First
(Page) Impressions Count
It very difficult to judge the impact of a web site
on a first-time visitor. In the 'real-world' of commerce,
we are able to observe people's reactions as they walk
into a store. If a potential customer walks into our
store, takes a few steps inside, screams, turns and
runs we take notice! If a hundred potential customers
repeat this behavior - we take action, discover and
rectify the cause of the problem. In our virtual stores
and online destinations, we don't have this privileged
information - we can only guess until an irate visitor
sends us an email or an associate points out problems
on our pages.But there are some tried and true strategies
that will prevent you from increasing web site traffic!
Banners
and Popup's
One of the best ways of turning people away from your
web site is "Banner Overload". Banner advertising
is a way to raise revenue from your site, but can also
be very distracting. One of the problems of banner ads
is that they distract from YOU, from what your site
is about. Instead of banners,
you could experiment with text links. Most affiliate/merchant
programs offer these. A text link, along with a thoughtful
description of the product can make your visitor's site
experience more pleasant and not induce shell (sell)
shock. Another excellent
way to drive visitors away from your site are multiple
pop-ups. Many site owners use these to "push"
in-house offers to clients or to advertise another site.
Pop-ups do have their place, but should be implemented
with the utmost caution. If you are looking for a way
to gain more income through advertising, consider using
(one) pop-under instead.
Doubling
your customers without doing more marketing - is it
possible?
OK, so you have read the
marketing books about how to get traffic to your site
and you've used some or all of what you've learnt. But
what happens when they visit your site. Maybe they go
on your mailing list, if you have one, maybe they buy
or maybe they do nothing at all and never return. Industry
statistics indicate the average web site converts a
maximum of 1% of visitors to customers. That's not many
when you consider how much work you have to do to get
them to your site. Imagine if you could increase your
conversion ratio from 1% to 2 %, that's 100% increase
in your revenue or to 5%, which is a 500% increase in
your revenue with no extra marketing costs.
Take the following
examples from the many surveys and reports which were
last year: In a pre-Christmas survey from resource,
25% of tested Web stores had technical glitches that
prevented orders from being placed. According to the
Yankee Group, only 30% of companies respond to emails
within 24 hours while Forrester Research claimed that
two-thirds of shoppers abandon their shopping carts
at checkout due to a lack of human contact.
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