The top 10 tips to selling online and other ramblings

If there is one question I always seem to hear it’s, “What can I do to improve sales on my web site?” To help you out, I have put together the top 10 things I always

tell people they should look at first. Then, just to make it all easier, some tips on either how to self educate or where you can look for tools to automate the process.

So for those who are new to online selling or things just don’t seem to be working even with your best efforts to get more sales, these tips (in no particular order) should point you in the right direction.

1. Know your customer & your visitor. You need to do your homework and this includes the dreaded customer demographic profile. Sorry, but not everyone is part of your market. Make sure your page focuses on people actually interested in what you have to offer.

2. Speak the language and I don’t mean English or French. The terms you use on your sales pages are very important. Using jargon or large words may confuse some visitors and that’s not in your best interest.

3. Have a page headline that matches your ads as close as possible. When people arrive at your page they expect to find exactly what they found in your ads. I’m sure you don’t like clicking on a search result only to find something completely different, so don’t do it to your visitors.

4. Have a headline that is interesting. A good headline gets the interest of the reader and tells them what to expect. I keep a headline list on my desktop so I can use them for inspiration.

5. Tell your visitors why they need your product; be honest. I don’t know about you, but way over the top claims drive me (and your visitor’s) nuts. Sometimes outlandish claims work, but being truthful and creative is best.

***Tangent alert! Ok yeah this is an off topic rant, but here is one thing I have to mention. It’s important to understand that online selling does change so I recommend you read books on topics like landing page optimization so you can keep on top of the tools that make it all easier to do. If you’re really serious about making money online you are going to have to spend some money on education and tools. Ok off my soapbox and back on to the last 5 tips***

6. Bullets and more bullets. Use page formatting such as bulleted short lists to your advantage. Short sentences can help the reader get your message quickly.

7. Use the “busy read model”. The busy read model, ok well that’s what I call it, is a simple concept meaning people are just too busy to read every word, so people skip or skim the text. To get around this, make sure you have bold section titles and your key ideas are brought to their attention.

8. Check the readability of your page. Who are you trying to impress? In my experience big words don’t sell well, not that they don’t sell at all, but you have to write your content so it’s easy for the reader. Take this article for example, I could discuss site optimization, it’s efficacy and the magnitude of the significance or just keep it simple and tell you it’s important to work on your page!

9. Test your pages. Look, no matter who you are or how many years you have been marketing or selling, testing is required for maximum sales or conversions. If it’s broken or just doesn’t sell and you don’t test, how will you know? Testing needs to be part of your motto.

10. Tell your visitors what you want them to do next. Too many page designers just expect people to know what to do. It’s like a movie that just ends, are you happy or sad? More like confused! Should you get up and leave or will there be more to the story in the credits? When you tell visitors what you would like them to do next, it does not mean they will, but it‘s better than not telling them at all. (I’ve added an example at the end of this article.)

There you have it, 10 things that you can learn and apply to make more sales online. If you want to know more you can pickup a copy of the book I co-authored, Landing Page Optimization for Dummies. It gets into much more detail on how it all works and what you can quickly do to make more money online. Click here (told you I’d tell you what to do!) to check it out.

Don’t want to do that? Try one of these:

1. Check out our “Make ‘em Buy” suite of automatic sale page tools
2. Buy the book I co-authored "Landing Page Optimization for Dummies"
3. Click here to find more interesting articles or member posted questions
4. Add your comments or thoughts on this post (look down).