Website Promotion in 10 seconds

During the first ten seconds that a visitor enters your site, it is your goal to induce a click from the prospective buyer.

Here are two successful methods for grasping the attention and interest of your visitors:

1. Understand exactly what your users want, and give it to them. This seems obvious, but becomes complex when you have thousands of visitors hitting your storefront daily. How can you cater to each of them with a limited amount of space on your homepage? You can build out a portal style site map of your store… a "quick navigation" that breaks down categories and sub-categories. This provides a quick screenshot of your entire operation.

Aside from giving the prospective buyer an overview of your offerings; users are able to drill down deep into your site with one click. The text-based site map also proves invaluable for search engines. Check out this site, www.sun-protective-clothing.com. The site provides an excellent example of a homepage based site map. GoogleBot loves it…and it's navigation friendly for shoppers.

2. Another method to inducing the first click is providing a strong call to action or incentive. By featuring discounts and free shipping offers, the offer may intrigue the user to commit another click.

Once you have the prospective buyer "on the hook"… don't kill the sale with poorly written product descriptions. Nothing kills a sale quicker than a product that is as enthralling as reading the ingredients of a box of tofu. You have invested the time and effort to build your store, don't miss out on sales due to poorly worded product descriptions.

Being personable is also important. Instead of having the most exciting part of a television product description be it's "titanium silver color"… talk about how the consumer's home will be the place to come and watch the big game (on a screen so big you can see the sweat coming out of the players' pores). Speak about how the "picture in picture" capability means there will be no more flipping back and forth- saving the fingers precious energy for snatching up potato chips. Do all you can to involve the person's emotions and senses into the product description. Sure, the technical stuff should be included, but put it at the bottom of the description.

Do testimonials work? Can testimonials be rigged and seem unauthentic? Sure. It seems like most testimonials are generic. If you include the first and last name as well as an email address of the testimonial, you will earn trust and credibility.

After you have converted a "browser" into a "buyer" follow up the sale- customer service will separate you from your competition. Thank them for their business. The purpose of a follow up e-mail is to reassure the customer they made the right decision- to remove the feeling of "buyers remorse". Make them feel comfortable with their purchase. It won't go unnoticed.