Have you ever invested thousands of dollars to attract traffic to your website? You probably expected big profits. Visitors began pouring in, your hopes soared. You rubbed your palms in anticipation of the sales you would be making.
But, alas, no sales came in. People may have been visiting your website in droves, but no one was buying!
If the experience above sounds familiar, the explanation may simply be that your website isn’t turning visitors into buyers. This situation is a common experience, and can be more than a little frustrating… especially after you have invested a small fortune in money and effort to bring buyers to a website.
Many online businesses spend heavily on advertising with little to show for it. Often, the culprit is a website that has trouble persuading visitors to commit to a purchase – yet the website never gets fixed.
This approach similar to baiting a broken mousetrap with a thousand-dollar chunk of cheese: even if you attract plenty of mice with your fancy bait, your chances of catching any of them are slim at best. |
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If you would like to escape this trap (or if you would like to avoid it altogether), then transforming your website into a persuasive sales-generating machine is all you will need to do.
Highly profitable websites have 3 common features. All you have to do to enjoy the same results is to give your website the same sales-boosting advantages. Fortunately, doing so is easy and simple once you know where to focus.
1. Good websites captivate and maintain visitors’ attention
Here is a grim statistic: the average website loses 70% of its visitors within six seconds of their arrival. Why does this happen?
Most of the time, the answer is simply that the visitor does not know what the website has to offer. Think about the last time you visited a website and did not have a clue what it was all about. Chances are, you didn’t stay long enough to find out.
Internet buyers have countless alternatives open to them, and are therefore notoriously impatient. Once you make your visitors aware of what your website has to offer to them - and therefore give your visitors a reason to stay – you will automatically put yourself miles ahead of your competition.
The single best way to overcome this obstacle is to place a large headline on your website stating exactly what you offer, and which communicates a compelling benefit to the visitor.
For instance, a website selling dog treats may have a headline that states:
Now Your Dog Can Enjoy Delicious Treats That Will Make Its Fur Lustrous and Smooth
If your website offers tax accounting services, the headline may state:
Keep More of Your Hard-Earned Cash Out of The IRS’s Hands and In Your Pocket – Where It Belongs. Give Yourself An Instant Pay Raise Starting Right Now.
Above all, the headline speaks directly to the desires that motivate your customers to buy. People who can use your product and service will immediately become captivated and stay at your website to find out more.
2. Great websites avoid flashiness, and focus on engaging the buyer
Untold sales are lost every day by websites that go out of their way to be flashy and attractive.
The reality is that simple, clean, and unassuming websites outsell flashy, image-packed sites by a margin of more than thirty to one. One need only visit the most successful websites on the Internet to see this truth in action: Amazon.com, Google, and Ebay are just three well-known examples of websites that avoid animations, colorful graphics, and use a simple, clean layout that produces results.
A famous company that sells gift chocolates originally showcased a website packed with images, graphics, and animations. Sales were going nowhere – probably because visitors found the image-rich website a hassle to use. The minute the company switched to a simple, clean, no-nonsense design with plenty of white space, sales soared to unheard of heights.
If a simple and focused design works for a product such as chocolates, where most of value comes from the merchandise’s image, then imagine what such an approach could do for your sales.
As I often tell my clients: on the Internet, “Simple Sells.” A website that is clean, professional, and focuses relentlessly on the offer will keep the buyer focused and motivated. Beautiful web sites may get you plenty of compliments… but simple, clean, and focused websites will effortlessly bring you sales. Which would you prefer?
3. The Best websites focus on the buyer’s needs
Does your website focus more on showing off your product and talking about your company, or does it put the spotlight on your buyer’s most deeply-held needs?
Most companies prefer to use websites to talk about themselves and show off their dizzying variety of products. The trouble is… no one cares! Buyers are human, and humans will invariably care more about their own problems, and the irritation they cause, than about anything else.
Therefore, having a website that focuses on the visitor’s itch - and offers a way to scratch it for them - will have no trouble at all captivating a buyer’s attention. Such websites can motivate almost anyone to take out their wallet and buy.
Let’s look at two flower websites that offer identical products. The first website decides to show off every flower under the sun and brag about its selection. The buyer, of course, is then stuck with the task of choosing the ‘right’ flower from a dizzying assortment. Almost invariable, Internet buyers will flee when confronted with a confusing range of choices.
The other website, on the other hand, presents a mere three options on their front page: Flowers for Romantic Occasions, Memorable Flowers for Special Events, and Thoughtful Flower Gifts. The website presents the options in terms of the problem the visitor is trying to solve. Anyone can identify their own problems. Therefore, the excited buyer immediately knows exactly which option to choose.
After that point, the website presents the buyer with a tight selection of flowers ideal for his or her chosen purpose. As a result, the buyer regards the selection of flowers presented as being tailored for him or her. The predominant thought is, “this is for me.”
Which of the two websites do you believe will make more money? Which one will win over more eager, satisfied customers? Is it the website that likes to show off its dizzying selection, or the one that reduces the buying process into a relaxed experience that focuses on the buyers’ needs?
The answer, of course, is obvious when compared side-by-side. Yet an overwhelming majority of websites choose show off their variety instead of making it easy to buy.
You, of course, know better.
Daniel Lorente is the author of How To Prosper in the Coming Recession and The Unfair Advantage Guide to Attracting All The Customers You Can Handle. President of the Aphelion Marketing Institute, he gives seminars and publishes Internet Sales Review magazine for professionals across the world. Daniel Lorente also speaks at conferences and trains executives on becoming more persuasive.
Daniel can be reached at 1-800-440-8057, or by e-mail at daniel@aphelionmarketing.com.
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