Is Your Site Formatted For Business?

Is your site selling as you hope?

I guess, since you are reading this, it means either your site is not selling, or not as much as you want it to.

This seems to be a common complain among a great number of Internet marketers today, especially in light of the increasing number of sites selling the same products or services on the net today.

Let us assume that your site is receiving ample traffic, which means that your promotion techniques are producing results, but your site is not formatted to sell.

There are five basic requirements that every business site must meet in order to sell effectively.

1. Credibility
   Establishing net-credibility is the most crucial factor for the success of Internet Marketers, and its importance could not be over emphasized.
   
   In the "real" world, the way we look, act and/or speak contributes a great deal to the degree of credibility we may or may not gain, what you may call:
   
   "The Physical Presence".
   
   On the web though, there is no physical presence in that personal sense, which makes it all the more difficult, and equally important to gain credibility.
   
   So how can you achieve the effect of "physical presence" on the web?
   
   The answer to this question is truly simple, make the words you write talk to your visitors as if you are actually talking to them in a real face-to-face conversation, avoid the passive language, and draw a picture with words of what you want them to visualize.
   
   You need to converse with your prospects, talk to them not at them, avoid hype and hot cliché, be brief to the point, honest and straight forward, not a word more, not a word less.
   
   And ..... most importantly, tell your visitors something they don't already know, show them what you know, your expertise and how are they going to benefit from dealing with you, let alone buying from you.
   
   Last but not least, you MUST have your own domain name, without it, you literally have no Net Identity.
   
   
2. Be The Prime Source
   We just spoke about telling your visitors something they don't know, that is what being "the prime source" means.
   
   Each of us has expertise in some field, and most likely both your site and the products/services your offer are related to what you know and do best, right?
   
   Why not share some of that knowledge and experience with your prospects? Give them a free piece of what you know that they don't, that would be of great value to them, and value here is of a key importance.
   
   You see, a lot of the material being circulated on the net today is rehashed, not original, so it does not always produce the results hoped for, since there is a great chance that your prospects have heard it before, and probably from the prime source of this specific information.
   
   Let me make one thing clear here, it is OK to learn from others, it is also ok to research on or off the net and become an expert on some new topic, use the info you gathered, but add your own touch, perception, a piece of you, don't just copy what others have said already, it wouldn't do much good neither to you nor to your prospects. That is what value is all about, something new and useful.
   
   This approach should tremendously increase the chance of them trusting you, and buying from you, and not from the other guy, since you know what others don't.
   
   
3. Free Is A Key
   Many Internet marketers think that offering lots of Free stuff is THE KEY to turning prospects into buyers.
   
   I have a slightly different opinion, let us reflect on that.
   
   It is true that the net is basically about information, Free Information that is, but I know for fact that people would not buy from you simply because you offer some free stuff, after all, many other sites are doing the same, and so many sites are offering only free every thing.
   
   I am not saying that offering free items on your site is not useful, on the contrary it is very effective if used properly, and it is believed to produce the best results if applied in the following manners:
   
   # To attract prospects to your site, emphasize your free gifts in your ads and promotion campaign to generate more traffic, free is attractive.
   
   # To educate your prospects and gain credibility, you need to show them how much you know.
   
   # This is very important: To add more perceived value to your product/service which makes the deal more appealing and lucrative (free bonus gifts).
   
   My point here is: don't count only on offering free stuff to get your prospect to buy from you. People don't buy out of gratitude, they buy out of trust.
   
   So, instead of being mislead to believe that offering free items is the key to your success, rather integrate this brilliant method cleverly with your overall strategy.
   
   
4. User Friendly
   The way you design your site will determine how your prospect is going to act, how long he/she is going to stay, and how much he/she is going to see.
   
   Effective web design is most crucial to your success, now, I am not saying you should spend a bundle on web design alone, I am just saying that your site should be designed to sell, not to entertain.
   
   A common misconception based on the term (Home Page) resulted in forcing many marketers out of business fast.
   
   Why? Because they treated their business site as their home. It isn't.
   
   Don't pack your site with images, gadgets and tons of text, it will take too long to load (who would wait?), irritate your prospects, confuse them, and at best, if they waited for your site to load, they will leave faster than the time your site took to display.
   
   Choose a good web host with efficient tech-support, and a fast server, this is really very important, you may settle for a free host due to budget constraints (we all get that) but then make sure to trim your site pages all you can, to save precious loading time.
   
   Make your site clear, easy to navigate, use short phrases, short paragraphs with lots of white space in between.
   
   The moral here: pleasant to the eye makes them buy, of course not fool proof, but it does increase your chances and response rate a great deal.
   
   If your prospect does not identify your navigation bar easily, they will not look for it, they will simply leave.
   
   Make it very easy for your prospect to find the order form on your site, and easily place an order, if that is not done, you lose a potential buyer.
   
   
5. The ACCOL Golden Rule
   I saved this for last because it is the back bone of any online business.
   
   Accept Credit Cards Online. Why?
   
   Listen, You have worked so hard and spent hard earned dollar on creating and promoting your site, and in generating traffic, you have already educated your visitors, gained credibility, offered them free gifts for acquaintance, motivated them enough to become potential buyers.
   
   So far so good, you are looking great, but imagine this, your potential buyer is now all up and ready to order, then , where is the Credit Card Online secured order form? what , you don't have one, Good bye buyer.
   
   You potential buyer is gone, to some other site that makes it more easy to order online.
   
   Let me tell you a story, I was looking for a new host to my site, trying to choose between good service and good price, and finally, I found one that is great (no names please), I was so excited, 100 Mb space, unlimited POP mail and aliases and autoresponders, 24 hours tech-support, the whole works, and above all, the price was really right.
   
   I decided to move my site there right away, looked for my credit card, all ready, *** BANG ***, they don't accept credit cards, so to my own disappointment, they lost me, and honestly, I could not understand why they did not.
   
   The point is: do you really expect your customer to find his/her check book, write you a check, look for an envelope and stamps, go to the post office and mail you the check?
   
   Come on, let us get real , you are not selling the potion of life, or are you?
   
   Bottom line: no secured online credit card order form, no business, plain and simple.
   
   One more thing about credit cards, they boost your credibility, it means you are a serious legitimate business who is here to stay for sometime, not one of those "fly by night" scammers, and believe me, there are many of those around, and the bad experiences are abundant.
   
   Start applying those Golden rules now, and see the result, you will be amazed how easy and fast it is to turn your site into a cash machine, literally over night.
   
   Feel free to let me know the result, and good luck.