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Avoiding common mistakes when first selling online

The excitement and lure of making money online and selling our products through a web site is often quelled when nothing happens and people are just not buying. At this point, often the web site owner will start to re-examine what they are doing.

Here is where having the answers to why people are not buying will save you days or even weeks of changing your mind or changing your web site for no reason. Like any selling, online or off, it’s more of a scientific approach than you might realize.

Part of that scientific approach is knowing where and what to change on your web site to make it sell. You might only be a few lines of page content away from making sales! When first starting out, here is where people often get off on the wrong track, or what I like to call, ‘the common mistakes’.

Not understanding the buying visitor or ideal customer - Let’s face facts, not everyone will buy from you even though, in a perfect world, everyone will want your product.

Before you do a re-write of your web site or change anything make sure you know whom you’re selling to and keep that person in mind when you plan the changes to your site. By focusing on this ideal visitor your message will be heard more clearly by them and they will act more often to your message.

Web site content and message aimed at your visitor– You have your ideal customer in mind but does your online message meet their needs or yours? Do you tell your ideal customer of the benefits of using your product or services or are you just listing features?

In order to sell a visitor on your product, you must speak to their specific needs. For example, if your customer needs to drill a hole they can use an electric drill, hand drill, cordless drill, etc. But think of the customer that has to drill a hole in concrete where they have no access to electricity.

Now that is a very specific customer! You can then get that message across: “Our drill is cordless so use it anywhere you need to! Our special concrete hammer to makes the job that much easier!” You can tell your customers exactly why your drill is what they need.

Matching your advertising to your web site – Now that you have an ideal customer in mind and know what they want, you can focus your marketing on getting that person to your site, known as quality traffic. Often web sites drive the wrong traffic to their site in the first place in the hopes of making a sale. But honestly, if you were the drill seeker, which ad would you respond to:

Ad #1 Unique cordless drill designed for work in remote places; includes bonus special concrete attachment.

Ad 2# Need a hole? We have all sorts of drills, cords and bits!

Not only does ad #1 instantly get the point across it will get the person who is looking for your solution to click the ad. From there they read your sales page or landing page that also has a message that matches your visitors’ needs and you have dramatically increased your potential of a sale.

Don’t stop there; many ways exist to tweak your page for closing the sale. While some of these tweaks are more obvious than others for beginners who are just starting out with selling online, you need to check out the Make ‘em Buy tools. These tools are specifically designed to quickly diagnose what you can do today to make more sales at your site.

It’s all really about getting the knowledge and education to supercharge your online sales.