If You Build It, Will They Buy?

Secrets of Websites that Sell

With tens of millions of users surfing the Web daily for more than simple browsing, there is a good reason for the explosion of business-to-business and business-to-consumer sites. The Internet is simply a great place to sell.

The problem is, you can pay to advertise on high-volume traffic sites or on search engines and attract a lot of visitors to your site - and still have no guarantee of sales.

When people arrive at your site, it should get them to buy something. That's why the effectiveness of your site hinges on its conversion-to-sales ratio:

1. If many of your visitors make a purchase, you have a high visitor-to-sales ratio. (If that is your situation, you can dramatically increase your sales revenue by bringing more visitors to your site, a topic I will cover in a future post.)
2. If on the other hand you have many visitors but few sales, you have a low visitor-to-sales ratio.

If you fall into the second of those categories - many visitors, few sales - you need to do things differently and get your siteto work harder for you after visitors land on it:

• Make it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for. If they find it difficult to find products or information about your service, they will likely leave. The first thing a visitor sees has to be what you are selling.
• Make it speedy. You have about five seconds to grab visitors' attention after they click to enter your site. If after that time they are still staring at a message that says, "Downloading image 15 of 24," expect them to leave. Internet users demand it NOW!
• Keep it balanced. A well-built e-commerce site should blend speed, functionality and eye appeal - all these aspects. But don't overlook the last of those by making your site too plain.
• Make your content engaging. I encourage my clients to build in what I call "touch and feel potential" for their products - site features that allow visitors to "test drive" products or see them in action.
• Gather information about your visitors. Offering your contact information just doesn't cut it, because you get nothing in return. Include a form page where visitors can enter their contact info to request more information or ask to be contacted. Above all, don't require visitors to enter their information before they view your offerings, since that will only drive them away. Remember that although your primary goal is to sell visitors a product or service, you have another goal too: to find out who they are, so you can service their needs and sell to them in the future.

As I close, let me share one secret with you. Using your site to build a list of potential clients can be costly - but it is very key to marketing your new innovations down the road. Even if it costs you as much as $1.00 per valid contact, a list of 5000 consumers who have already shown interest in you can generate huge first-day profits when launching a new product. I've seen it work - and it can work for you.

Trump University member Richard F. Guyon is CEO of NEXRUN Technologiesand CTO/SEO Advisor to Global TESOL College.Richard also designed the World Trade Center Memorial Tribute Site. To thank Richard for his contribution to the World Trade Center Memorial Tribute site, the New York Fire Department has invited him to march with them in New York next September 11th. We're proud that Richard is part of Trump University.

For more insights into marketing strategies that spur sales, enrol in Trump University's new course, Keep Them Coming Back: Customer Retention Strategies that Work.