I really hope none of you are like me. I have to ask my wife a million times what pants go with what shirts. My two year old son can pick out what clothes he wants to wear, and guess what? It matches. My two year old son knows what colors coordinate and I still can’t seem to figure it out. (more…)

I made a statement in my last post about how educated customers are buying customers. You may have customers on your site who don’t know a thing about your product. If you are selling tangible products, especially tangible products that are technical, it is a good idea to load your site up with as much information to help educate your customers as possible. With one of my sites, I at first just had a snippet of information on each product. I began to realize that some of my customers needed more information. I personally hate sites that are cluttered with stuff, so I kept my brief snippets of information and just added links to user’s manuals and technical specs. I made sure the links opened up in a new window so if my customers closed out they would be right back at my site.

I would recommend that any user’s manuals and technical specs that you offer your customers should be hosted on your site. You don’t want your customers to be wandering around on the world wide web. You want to keep them corraled on your site. When I first added the manuals and tech specs, I had the links open up on the manufacturer’s site. I later got the manuals and tech specs in PDF format from the manufacturer and hosted them on my site. This helped keep my customers on my site. The moral of today’s story is to do your best to educate your customers.

The last article I wrote was about the importance of placing your phone number on your website. In that artcile I talked about how valuable it was to have your phone number on each page of your website and how a 1-800 would really boost your sales. Virtual office is a step above a 1-800 number. I recently opened up an account with GotVMail. With GotVMail you can set up an account where you can have a professional greeting answer each call. After the greeting, you can set your account up with many different extentsions. For example, you can have extension 1 be sales, extension 2 can be support, and so on. If you are a small company, you can have all the extensions directed to you. You can set up your account so if you are unable to answer the phone you can have the call directed to up to five more people. You can potentially run a business where you have people in six different states answering calls for you. I highly recommend GotVMail for your virtual office services.

I have found that one of the best ways to convert a visitor to a customer is to have your phone number on your website. Customers like phone numbers. Phone numbers give customers a sense of security. They know if there is a problem with their order, they can call you. Many customers would rather have a human take their order. If you don’t have a phone number on your site, you exclude customers who want their order taken over the phone. To really convert visitors into customers you should not just put your phone number on your contact page, but on every page. The easier you make it for customers to purchase from you the more sales you will receive. If a customer is looking at a certain product on a page, why should they have to click three times before they find your phone number? Why not have it on every page? This way customers can quickly call an order from you. To really really convert visitors into customers having a 1-800 number will really do the trick. Some potential customers will skip over your site just to find your competitors website that has a 1-800 number. 1-800 numbers make things easy for your customers. They don’t cost your customer a dime to call you and it gives your online business more credibility.

Have you ever looked at your stats and seen that you had a ton of unique visitors, but yet you had little or no sales?  To get visitors to your site takes marketing.  You could have the best marketing strategies in the world that attract all kinds of visitors to your site, but your website itself may be scaring them away.  What good is a strategy directs visitors to a site that can’t keep them.  One of the biggest things that turns customers away is a hideous-looking site.  First impressions are lasting impressions.  A site that looks professional and attractive gives a sense of security and trust to the customer.  On the other hand, a site that is lacking in quality and design, to put it nicely, makes you want to run before they scam you somehow.  Okay, so you say that you agree but don’t have many resources to put into your site.  There are many ways to get million-dollar looks on a budget.   A web template can get you off to a great start with minimal bucks.  You get a professional look that can be easily customized with your info.   The downfall is that many people could potentially use the same template you choose, but the chances that you would ever see them on the web are slim to none.