Successful Business
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Boost Your Online Sales
Got a product or range of products that aren’t selling as fast as you would like them to?
Selling online is an art and a science, and the smallest changes can therefore have profound effects on your success. In this report, you will discover five strategies that will drastically boost your sales – all in less than 7 days.
1. Redesign Your Site With Psychology in Mind
If you were manager of a store like Tesco Express or the Co-Op, then one of the biggest aspects of your job would be to make sure that you organized the stock and the layout of the store in general in a way that was highly conducive to sales and that would encourage people to discover your products and offers and to buy, buy, buy. And it would be your job meanwhile to ensure that the products they bought were the right ones – the ones that you had large quantities of, or the ones that you got the most profit for. You would be constantly moving things around, trying different combinations and layouts, and seeing what worked best for your profits.
Well if you run a website that has a webstore, or if you are in the process of building a web store, then things are no different. It's still your job to make sure that your products are going to sell as best as possible and to apply a little thought to even the smallest details of your store.
Avoid Distractions
If you've ever visited a landing page selling something like an e-book then you will be familiar with the long narrow strips of text that they feature. The reason for this? It is devoid of distractions meaning people will stay on your site and be more likely to click 'buy' rather than to be distracted by an article.
Use Contrast
Contrast works in two ways x both physical visual contrast that will make your colors and images stand out, and contrast in terms of the products you are going to have on display. With regards to the first, I am obviously referring to the use of contrasting colors to draw attention to the items you want people to look at, and this is a very simple way to direct people's gaze. And by the second point I mean placing items of differing prices next to one another to accentuate them in different ways. By putting a very expensive item next to a very cheap one for instance you make the cheap one seem really cheap and you let people click buy without feeling guilty (because they can say 'I'll just go for the cheaper one then'), whereas the expensive one becomes the luxury item that people who want to go for the most elite option can go for.
Think Color
Color psychology can also play a big role in your sales success. Light, “cool” colors like blues are fantastic for getting people to spend longer on a page (because they’re calming), whereas colors like red raise the heart rate and encourage impulseive behavior. Think about how you can take advantage of these facts!
2. Make Them Work For It
You might think that making someone work to get to your buy button would be a bad move as it would put them off, but actually in some cases it can be very useful. The other reason those landing pages work so well for instance is because they force the viewer to scroll down for ages, at which point they feel like they've committed to buy.
Meanwhile if you have something that everyone is looking for and you know people want, then hiding it somewhere on the site can be a great way to make them look at the other offers you have. Consider your best deals as 'bait' and you can then tempt them to buy more.
You can even make your product seem more “exclusive” by creating certain conditions that exclude members or make them take more actions. For example, you may sell an item only to members of your exclusive Facebook group!
3. Upsell
POS stands for Point of Sale, which is the point at which the customer gets out their credit card to buy. On your website that's wherever they enter their details and this is the perfect opportunity to offer them something else to add to their order. That way you can offer them the option to increase their purchase incrementally (which never seems like much) and you can do it when you have already gotten past the 'barrier to sale' which is the effort involved in committing to buy. They already have their card in their hand... so why not add a gift wrap? Or a small token if it means they can combine postage?
This is highly effective because it lets you slightly increase the amount the person is spending with you once they have already committed to buying. Getting out the wallet and deciding to buy is a huge “barrier to sale.” Once your customers are at the checkout then, you’ve done the “hard part.” There is no reason not to try and increase the value of their purchase.
4. Collect Serious Data
If you run an online business, then collecting data is one of the most important aspects of it and is something you need to prioritise as a crucial element. Failure to recognise the importance of collecting data about your customers, about your products, about the market and more can lead to your missing out on some seriously big opportunities and even cause you to barrel headlong into some serious mistakes. Read on and we'll take a look at why data is so important, and at what you can do with it.
Who's Buying?
The first thing to look at is who is buying your products, or perhaps clicking on your ads. In other words – who are your customers? Where do they live? What's their budget? And what are their hobbies and interests?
This is very important because it shows you who your target audience should be. You may find that you're actually targeting entirely the wrong kind of audience – that you thought your products would sell to middle aged men, but actually it's teenagers who are more interested which will allow you to correct course. Likewise you might find that you are simply missing out on some potential opportunities.
Who's Looking?
There's a fine line between someone who buys your products and someone who just looks at them. Your job is to find that line and then to make sure that as many people cross it as possible.
Normally, the people looking at your products but not buying will be people who have seen your marketing and have become interested but decide against making a purchase because they think your offering is too expensive, or because they think the competition offer a more compelling purchase.
In such a case then you might decide to use some more direct marketing showing how your product is a market leader, or you might decide to cut the price for a limited time. It's only by testing different price points and different deals though that you'll stand a chance of making them sell.
Testing
And when you start testing, that's when collecting data becomes even more important. If you cut the price of your products and you then find that they start selling like wildfire, you will need to know precisely when the increase in sales began so that you can be certain that it was the change in price that caused the increase.
Likewise you'll want to get detailed information about who was most affected by the price cut. It might be that a select number of your potential customers were driven away by the price cut assuming it meant that the quality was lower. Perhaps then you need to sell two slightly different versions?
What is Selling?
This brings us nicely on to another point – identifying which of your products are selling the best so that you can focus more effort on them and use that feedback to direct future products to develop. You don't want to invest too much time or money into something that has been shown not to sell.
Feedback
Getting data is also important when it comes to promoting your business. If you ever want to get an investment from a big corporation, or if you ever want to work with a big partner, then you will need to get feedback regarding your business so that you can present the raw data for promotional reasons.
5. Use More Persuasive Sales Copy
When you get a professional website design as a company this is an important investment for your business. The idea is that you are creating basically a virtual advert that any one can find in order to get more information about your company and to learn about your service. At the same time your web page design will be created in such a way often that they can order your services or products online and in this sense it then becomes a virtual shop too – or at the very least a portal to your services and more information.
This requires a good and professional website design that is easy and intuitive to navigate, that is pleasant on the eyes and reflective of your business and that will grab the attention of viewers and not let go.
That's not all this is dependent on though. It's also of course dependent on your business being good – of your offering good services and at a good price and of your clever strategies to pique people's interest. And then it's reliant on the content and your marketing spiel...
Your web designer will handle your website design in terms of the programming and graphic design. They might even handle some SEO for you. However, for the most part the actual copy and content will be up to you – the writing that greats your customers when they find your page and the writing that sells your products or describes your company. This is up to you and you need to make sure that you design it to be as effective as possible.
In other words, unless you hire professional copy writing, it's up to you still to sell the product and through the medium of the internet where people have little patience and little time for anything that can be quite tricky. So how do you go about writing content that will grab people and draw them in?
Rule number one is to grab their attention right away. This is always important, but in the case of the internet where we are used to short snippets of information it's paramount. State simply and boldly at the head of each sentence what it is that your company provides and if you're marketing a product likewise state right away what it is that it does. Don't open up with a fun quip or rhyme – state simply 'this device will wake you up on time every morning' or 'we design the very best logos and brands for companies'.
Once you've hit them with the facts, it's then important to start to let them know in detail why yours is the best. Don't be afraid of a little hyperbole, but also be sure to create a narrative that involves the reader and draws them in.
People like stories – which is why many sales pitches online tell of the author's success or describe what life is like with the product. At the same time people like to be engaged directly so use the word 'you' a lot and ask rhetorical questions. 'Do you like paying too much for your car insurance?'.
There's much more to writing a good sales pitch, but this will get you started on the right lines – and combined with good web design it will convert the visitors to your site into paying customers with the best possible efficiency.
With these five changes, you’ll have highly optimized your sales process and can expect to see a huge uptick in sales. Enjoy!
Copyright ©2023 Bertrand Allard
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