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5
Steps To Organize Your Website To Sell!
If
you're ready to get your website in shape to SELL this year, start by
giving yourself a great big pat on the back! For many just the thought
of organizing a website to be profitable can feel like a nightmare, but
it sure doesn't have to be.
Great organization
can be achieved by following my simple, 5-Step process:
1. Keep it
Consistent
If you've ever
visited a model home community then you already know
that home builders hire interior designers to furnish and decorate
their houses to SELL. The designers select a color pallet (usually
three colors) and cycle through those colors with varying percentages
in each room of the house. The entire decoration style whether French
country, Venetian, Contemporary or any style is consistent throughout
the house. Why? Because it creates warmth, is inviting to the home
buyer and helps them visualize living in that house.
YOU can follow this
same formula to achieve a consistent look and
feel on your website. The same "look and feel" across your website is
one of the best ways you can showcase your business, appear
professional, build rapport with your customers and help them visualize
doing business with you.
Start by making sure:
- Your font sizes and typefaces are consistent
across ALL of your
pages. Page headers (titles) should be the same size, color and font no
matter the page.
- Contact information is consistent. If you use a
website URL, email,
phone number, address or a combination of these, make sure it's the
same for each page it's placed on.
- Keep colors for borders, accents and
information boxes consistent.
As your customer, I shouldn't see holiday light borders on one page and
race car borders on another.
- That you limit the use of loud colors or
flashing graphics. Don't
distract your customer from the most important thing they need to do
while visiting your website with too many fancy moving objects.
Remember, less is more.
What can you do with
your website to decorate it for success?
2. Follow the
2-click Rule
I recently saw the
new KIA Fest Car Commercial, have you seen it?
The salesman is dancing to the music from Flashdance and taking
customers immediately (while dancing) to what that one special car they
came to find. In the end he's working so quickly and with so much
enthusiasm that he works up a sweat, dives into a chair and they pour
water on him, right out of the movie!
Although it was
hysterical and I laughed, we could all learn a lesson from this guy. Help
your customers quickly find what they need.
You can do this
easily using my "2-click Rule." Look closely at your
website's navigation...can your customers quickly find products or
services in 2 clicks or less? If not, it's time to get busy!
Modify your site's
menu structure so that access to the products,
services and support pages are not "buried" inside interior pages of
the website. Right from the top-level products page you should offer
the option to select the product category that your customer needs
without losing sight of the rest of your website.
If you have a very
large website (10+ pages) consider using a
dynamic menu (drop-down menus etc) that unfolds so your customers can
quickly locate what they need without even leaving the current page.
There are tons of free dynamic menu scripts available at Dynamic Drive.
Check them out at http://www.dynamicdrive.com
3. Group Like
Items Together
Sit down with the
list of products or services you are selling.
Organize them into groups (or categories) that make sense to your
customers and that compliment the items. If you sell shoes online,
don't place summer flip-flops on the same page as Winter hiking boots.
You can take
categories and grouping one step further by considering
a shopping cart with the ability to suggest products which go nicely
with a customer's current product or service selection. This is called
"cross-selling" and its a method that can help boost your sales. For
instance, if you sell jewelry and I've selected a colorful necklace,
recommend the matching or coordinating bracelet and earrings if they
are available.
Not only do you make
it easier for customers to notice items they
might not have thought to look for, typically the shopping cart will
provide a one-click link that will easily add the new product to the
cart without even exiting the current page.
4. Place your
FREE Items on the Home page
Show your customers
the value of doing business with you by offering
them a taste of your expertise available from the HOME PAGE. If you
sell vitamins, offer a free report on nutritional information; if you
sell workout memberships, offer me tips on exercises I can do to stay
in shape and so on.
In many cases new
customers won't decide to purchase from you until
you have built a relationship with them. Free reports are a wonderful
way to build rapport and create a customer list you can continue to
market to. Be sure your free report is linked to a great customer
management tool. You can visit my resources page for a great list of
tools I use to manage my business at http://www.superbwebdesign.net/resources.htm
5. Make
Customer Service Priority #1
Show your customers
you are here to stay. Prominently display (upper
right hand corner of your site and the bottom of every page) at least
two methods they can use to contact you with questions or concerns. Use
slightly larger font and perhaps BOLD to make it stand out.
My recommendation is
you provide a phone number AND an email
address. Make sure you respond quickly (within 24 hours) to any
contacts you receive.
Website designer
Krista Garren publishes the "Design Like an Expert"
monthly ezine where you can learn to learn easy, fun and money saving
website design strategies to build a MONEY MAKING website. Learn more
about this ezine and sign up for her FREE report at http://www.designlikeanexpert.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Krista_Garren
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