Selling Online Successfully

Setting up a website and selling online has become so easy to do now, but actually capturing a regular, decent volume of sales requires some careful planning and perseverance. In this guide, we will show you how to maximise your visitors to your website and how to convince many of them into making a purchase - none of the following advice involves money being spent - but it will involve some elbow grease! This is just a rough guide to selling online - but hopefully you will find some useful tips here that you may not have been aware of before. We will tell you how to:-

• distinguish yourself from your competitors
• manage your product categories so search engines can identify what you sell
• display and describe your products in such a way to aid your visitors AND search engines
• create interesting and compelling content
• keep your site constantly up-to-date to attract repeat visitors
• find optimal pricing levels
• build trust - by being on the customer's side
• build trust #2 - have trusted websites link to your website
• market your website online
• persevere; actually no....nobody can teach you this, but we'll give you encouragement!!

Distinguish yourself from your competitors

Many companies are selling online successfully without really distinguishing themselves from their competitors. They have most likely established themselves in their market so they simply become a known brand, or are spending a lot of advertising money to aid online sales. It is entirely possible to make a good living selling online without really distinguishing yourself from your competitors. However, if you're a small business/start-up, you're just making it harder for yourself! It costs more to advertise a product/service that appears indistinguishable from other vendor's products/services. Why create this hard work and expense for yourself?

Create something that distinguishes your products/services from your competition. Unique selling points can include:-

• offering better value than your competitors (don't just say this on your site - prove it by making price comparisons)
• offering a more comprehensive range of products for sale than your competitors
• offering a superior service/better quality goods than your competitors
• offering a better customer service/after-sales care than your competitors
• offering more information than your competitors - news, opinion, advice etc - be THE resource website for your market; offer unique information that isn't available elsewhere

By distinguishing yourself in some way, visitors are far more likely to remember you and come back to your website, as well as recommend you to others.

Visit your competitor's websites and see how they are selling online - find out about their prices, services etc. By learning about your competition, you can learn how to distinguish yourself from them.

Product category management

Your product/services categories are the heart of the navigation of your site - this navigation guides your visitors to your products. If your category names are vague, you will confuse your customers - keep them explicit and clear. Research the search engine keyphrases that are relevant to your market (see our Search Engine Optimization Guide for more advice on this) and try to build these keyphrases into your product category names. For example, if you're selling motorbike accessories, and you sell gloves, don't just call your category 'gloves' - be specific and call the category 'motorcycle gloves' as this is a much more useful search term for your users AND for search engines when they index your website. If this category is broken down into sub-categories, such as ladies or men's gloves, call each sub-category specifically 'ladies motorcycle gloves' and 'mens motorcycle gloves'. This might seem like a redundant use of the term 'motorcycle' but it actually helps you GREATLY in getting good ranking positions for the search term 'motorcycle gloves' as well as 'ladies motorcycle gloves' and 'mens motorcycle gloves'. If you look at the screenshot below, you will see how the puresilva e-commerce software optimises such a category:-



(click to enlarge)

Don't create too many categories though, even if you're selling online a wide variety of products. Too many categories and your site suddenly becomes much more difficult to browse for your visitor. Keep your main categories down to 10 or less. You can always break these main categories down into sub- and sub-sub categories. Search engines will follow all these categories, so your sub-categories will also get indexed - do not worry!

Product names, photos, and product descriptions

Make your product names clear and succinct - don't call them by an obscure product code, unless that product code happens to be well known in your market and a useful search term. Again, try to include a useful search term in the product name. For example, if I'm selling Nike Air Jordans, I might use the product name "Nike Air Jordans basketball shoes" just to include the full product name as well as the basic category name it belongs to. It's explicit while including an extra instance of the keyphrase 'basketball shoes'.

Make sure you have hi-res, clear photos of your products you are selling online. Photograph them from different angles, and try to include 3 or 4 images per product. This helps your visitor 'weigh up' the product and makes it much more tangible.

Mention the product name often in the description without it sounding unnatural. This helps with your keyphrase density (and your product detail page should be optimised to the product name). We have developed our own keyword density tool to check your product page with. Keep descriptions detailed and interesting; the description is your sales pitch - it can be the dealmaker or dealbreaker - it's also more content to be indexed onto search engines. Don't just copy and paste some sales literature - keep it fresh and original, and ultimately useful for your visitors.

Create interesting and compelling content

Sales hyperbole ('unbeatable value', 'the best X on the net') tells your visitors nothing useful, since most of your competitors will also use this unoriginal style. Make your competitors look stale by avoiding these clichés. You need to compel users into making a sale with simple facts - give visitors clear and simple reasons why they should buy your products. Give a sales pitch in plain English, which is much more powerful than blunted and worn-out phrases.

Also, more discerning visitors are put-off by spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes; don't put them off! (something we still spot on THIS site from time-to-time!).

Fresh content - keeping your site constantly up-to-date to attract regular visitors

Give your visitors a reason to bookmark your site - keep adding new content - start a blog about the industry you're in; write articles telling your visitors new useful ways your product/services can be used. Search engines also like websites that are constantly updated and favour them.

Experiment with pricing to find optimal prices

When selling online, your item prices should be set to 'optimal' to maximise sales; this value isn't always apparent until experimenting with the price of each item. Your visitors may like your items, and be convinced by your promises of service, and trust your company, but the price may prevent them from buying. Create special offers - putting items/categories on short special offers to learn where these optimal prices can be found.

Be on the visitor's side

People visiting your site are looking for signs of trustworthiness when browsing your site - a lack of trust is a guaranteed deal-breaker. One tip to get your visitors to trust you is to have a nice big telephone number on the top header part of your web-page, that features throughout the site. Let people know your 'open hours' for the phone too - they won't expect you to be 24/7 if you're a small business. It means there's somebody physically running this site - someone to talk to at the very least. It's also good for your sales as you're more likely to convince somebody by talking to them than you are by text on your webpages.

Reassure your visitors - give them a money-back guarantee if possible. Write your terms and conditions in plain English, and keep them to an absolute minimum - see how FEW words you can write your terms and conditions in.

Get trusted websites to link to your website

Marketing online - spreading the word

You can bring visitors to your site by:-

• joining trade/retail directories
• having other companies link to you (through reciprocal linking)
• displaying a link to your website on e-mail/messageboard signatures

Reciprocal linking is where you agree with one website to 'swap links' - you put a link to their website from your website, and they link back to your site from their website. This is a good also for Google ranking - Google rates your website higher if websites who are in a similar industry to you link to yourself. Important phrase there is 'similar industry'. If you accept links from any company including ones not related to your industry, this will have no effect on your Google Page Rank (and may even be detrimental!). A good website to find people who already want to swap links is http://www.link2me.com/

Trade/retail directories are good to drive targeted visitors to your site.

Having your website on your e-mail signatures and on messageboards (when you post there) helps spread the word.

Persevere!

Simple advice, but in the age of the slogan 'work smarter, not harder', it's often over-looked: persevere with your website. It will not be an instant success. The quietest, most unsuccessful time will almost certainly be the first few months of your site's existance. Your level of success is determined by a number of things, and the most important one is how determined you are for it to succeed.