Business from a Website

14. The Sales Process at Website

In a conventional business you get to meet the customers, look at their eyes, facial impressions, body language and they get chance to look at you, your shop, brochures, products, etc.

On the internet during the marketing process you are not going to face the customers like a conventional business. So it is much more difficult for you to sell your products to a customer online.

The only way you will communicate with your customers is through your 'Sales Letter' (also known as 'Web Copy' or just 'Copy') on your website or through your email (or advertisements). The worst part is, when they visit your website, you cannot sit next to your visitors and force them to read your sale letter. So you have to put in extra efforts to write your sales copy to persuade your visitors to read the whole page.

This section guides you in creating a powerful sales letter. There are numerous books available on this subject. But in my experience there are no fixed rules for writing a sale letter. A copy that works perfect for my product and my method of marketing may not bring in expected results for you.

The end result of your sales copy depends on various products like how you brought your visitors to your website, where you advertised, what you promised to pull them to your website and the demand for your product. There are many other factors that can govern the effectiveness of your sales letter. The colours, graphics, your dominance over language, font size and the way you present, all must appeal to your target audience. It may be difficult for you to believe. Even a small change to your sales copy could have major impact on your sales.

We discussed in one of the earlier chapters that a sale letter could be short and sweet in just 1 page or can run as lengthy as 10 pages with lots of information. Your ultimate aim is to convince your visitors to buy your product. The fact is that 'a long copy' works better than a 'short copy'. If people are interested in what you write, they will read as much as you can write.

The following are the generalized ideas that you may consider while writing your copy. Remember: to implement these ideas you must first understand your target audience and the benefits that your product will give them.

Grab Attention

Be it the caption of your sales copy at your website, subject line of your email or heading of your advertisement, the first thing you must do is to grab the attention of your prospective customer. The intention is to make them read further. Be creative and form the words that will grab attention. People use certain words known as "trigger words" like secret, tips, hot, discover, insider, free, warning, etc. Try to make it memorable so that even if they do not get attracted the first time, they remember your heading and search you later when they need you.

Writing to Please Your Audience

Earlier in the products section we told how to understand your target audience. Now put yourself in your prospects place. Think about why they will be at your site. Imagine what they will think when they read your copy. Get inside your visitors minds. You have to trigger their emotion that is associated with your product. It can be anything, desire, lust, greed, fear, envy, angry, whatever. It's strong. You can tap into that emotion.

Building Relationship

Best way to do this is to talk to your visitors through the sale letter. Let the message flow naturally, in logical order, as if you are talking to them personally. Include some story or your experience and make it interesting.

Benefits not the Products

From the 'Heading' till the end of the sale letter, talk about the benefits that your product will give. Never mention about your product till the end of your letter. By the time you talk about your product at the end of your sale letter, your prospects have already read all the benefits and advantages with an open mind, without thinking that something is being sold to them.

Benefits not the Features

Repeatedly stress the benefits of your product/service throughout your sales copy and not about the features of your product. What is the ultimate benefit that your target audience can expect from your product / service?

For example, you have a book called 'How to buy new mobile every year without spending a rupee'. The feature of the book is 'to save money for your customers on their monthly bills'. The benefit is 'they can buy new mobile handset every year without spending money'. You know everyone wants to upgrade their handsets to the latest model.

The Offer

Your page should create a desire for your offer and urgency to grab the offer instantly. Your sale letter should focus on just one action of your visitor. Your offer could be to sign up for your free list or join your members' site or buy your product. Never give options on your sales page.

Ask for Order

You have to ask for the order. Though it is not at the beginning of your sale letter, you must ask for the order. Offer incentive for ordering immediately. Show them in step-by-step how to order.

Guarantee

It is natural that any human will feel the pain if he / she has to part with his / her money, especially when they are not aware of the value of your product. Though you have listed the benefits of your product, you need to make them more confident in order to make them pay you. To do so, backup your product with an extraordinary money-back guarantee. Don't worry, if your product is good you will not get returns.

Payment

After lots of efforts you succeeded in convincing a person to buy your product. Now if you do not make it easy for them to pay you, the order is going to slip away from your hands. You have to provide all the possible methods to collect the payment.

First and foremost, you must be able to accept credit cards. If not you will lose more than 50% of your orders. You can open a merchandise account with your bankers to accept credit cards from your website or you can apply for the same through agents.

Alternatively you could register with companies like 'PayPal', 'eGold' or 'StormPay and ask your customers to pay using credit card through them. One problem here is that your customer needs to register with those companies before they pay you (latest update: your customer need not register with PayPal to pay through credit card). Some people do not have the patience to go through the registration process, especially if they are not regular buyers on the net.

If yours is a physical (tangible) product, you can take order and ask them to pay when they receive the product (payment-on-delivery basis). In this case, it is a good idea to phone and confirm with them before you dispatch the product.

Or you may provide you bank account number of your multi-city bank account and ask your customers to transfer funds or deposit cash or cheque in your account. Finally, you can ask them to post you the cheque or demand draft (it's most unlikely they will take pain to do so - still there is no harm asking!!!) and send the product on receiving the payment.

Testing

Like any other part of the online business, testing the sales copy is essential. Initially, you must create at least 5 different versions and test 2 versions at-a-time. This is called A-B split testing. There are various programs available to do this test. If you have Google Adwords account, you can split test your website, free-of-cost. They call it as "Website Optimizer".

You will learn more about it when you practically start working on your website.

If you need personal help in creating a strategy for your website or in optimizing your sales process or in using Google Adwords, you may join "The Great Indian Internet Marketers Team" at www.MayIhelpMakeYourWebsite.com.

Business from a Website

14. The Sales Process at Website

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