Your business website is essentially your storefront, business card and most significant marketing piece all rolled into one. How it affects your visitors and customers is then essential to your success. Provide a memorable experience and customers are sure to return time and time again. Let’s take a look at five keys to creating a website that sells.
Key #1 Make your website interactive.
As the internet continues to grow and evolve it’s becoming more important to create a community around your business. To accomplish this you want to engage your visitors and customers. This can be accomplished a number of ways. You can:
* Provide a forum
* Post surveys or polls
* Enable visitors and customers to review or rank items. For example a “How valuable was this article?” question and a scale of 1 to 5 stars or a ranking from 1-10.
* Offer a blog and inspire comments and feedback
* Host contests and sweepstakes
* Publish video and audio content as well as written content. This gives users another way to access you and your personality.
Key #2 Make sure your website provides value.
People go online for a number of reasons. They go online to research a potential purchase, to seek solutions for a problem they’re having and to be entertained. If your website provides all three; products, information, and entertainment then you’re in tip top shape. The good news is your content can provide both the information and the entertainment and when written well, can also inspire purchases. Here are a few ideas to provide value for your customers and prospects:
* How to articles, videos, and audio
* Tips articles, videos, and audio
* Case studies
* Workbooks and reports
* Interviews with experts
* Product reviews
Key #3 Make sure your website is easy to navigate.
It takes a visitor about 20 seconds to make a decision about whether they’re going to stay on your website or click away. If your site is laid out nicely, with products and services, information, prices, FAQs, and content easy to find then people are more likely to hang out – the longer they stay on your site the more likely they are to make a purchase or to return again.
To make your site easy to navigate consider:
* Keeping your site simple.
* Keep your pages uniform with the same options and appearance.
* If you have a lot of content, great! Use drop down menus and organize your content by topic for easier access.
* Offer a search function where users can search for products, services, or content topics quickly and easily.
* Provide a way for users to easily go back to previous pages. A back key is an option however if every page has the same options and drop down menus, including the ability to quickly return to the home page, a visitor will always be able to find what they need.
* Test your website’s appearance on different browsers to make sure every visitor has a good experience.
Key #4 Make your website easy on the eyes.
Ever visit a website and the text was so small or the colors so incompatible that you couldn’t read a word? Readability is critical to a selling website. Make sure:
* Your colors are easy on the eyes,
* Your graphics aren’t distracting
* And keep formatting like underlining, bold and italics to a minimum.
* Spacing between sentences and paragraphs is adequate
* Font size is large enough for people to read and font is easy to read
Key #5 Give them a soft sell.
People expect to be sold to and they’re looking for it – they’re wary. Instead of hitting website visitors with a hard sell, provide information, solve their problems and show them the benefits of your products or services. They’ll be much more receptive and appreciative.
Creating a website that sells requires a structured approach and a desire to create the best experience possible for your visitors. Once you’ve created your website, consider testing it and asking associates, friends and family for their opinion.
Does your business enterprise need a boost? Consider using special reports to add revenue and build a business contact list for future use.
What are special reports?
Special reports are short reports that contain helpful information on a subject. The reports are anywhere from a few to 30 or so pages in length. If you have the know-how, you can write them yourself or hire a writing service to do it for you. There is very little work involved in creating them but they are versatile tools for building an online business.
One popular subject for special reports is how-tos. They direct a reader, step by step, how to do something. If you are knowledgeable with computer software and hardware, that is a perfect niche for special reports on your website. People are always having trouble figuring out their computers and you could help.
Marketing special reports
There are options for marketing your special reports. If you are trying to build a business list of customers, use these special reports as a freebie when any visitor signs up to be a part of your email mailing list. For this type of promotion, use a shorter report like a five page report on how to navigate problems with Windows Vista (if your website has a computer niche).
You can create a five-part course and use the first part as the free promotion. It is your hook. Once they sign up for the mailing list, you can grant them access to the other installments through emails that also advertise your website products. Signing up for a business newsletter subscription can also be the reason to gift a free special report.
Making money
All of your special reports don’t have to go towards list building. Besides your other products or services, you can sell special reports on your website. Many reports sell for between $5 and $20 a piece, but if you offer very valuable information, you can command a higher price. Sell single reports or create various courses to interest your customers.
People love to learn about money-making opportunities. They will pay the money for any information that is a how-to guide to making money on and offline in various ways. How have you made money? Begin there with the subject of your special reports.
As your business grows, create an affiliate program. This gives customers a way to help you make more money and also make some for them. Offer certain special reports as additional compensation for reaching a certain selling level in the affiliate program.
There are a number of ways to use special reports. As you build your library and your lists, alternate the free promotional reports and continue to sell your entire library, creating combination offers such as Buy Two, Get One Free.
While your special reports are building your contact list, they are also making you money. With such a low cost to create them, your profit margin will rise.
I’m happy to find out that my site – Mompreneur Asia ranks in first page of Google Search Engine Results Page for “work from home mom” and “Work at home mom”.
work from home mom – Rank No.9 (Total Search Result: 34,300,000)
work at home mom – Rank No.10 (Total Search Result: 32,900,000)
*Click to have better view (Results date – 05.08.09)
My site also ranks in the first page for “work at home mom singapore”, “work from home mom singapore” etc.
If you want to have the same results, you can always learn the right techniques and get massive free traffic!
Hope to share with you more again very soon! :)
Blogs are popular ways to create an online presence for personal and business reasons. You can build a blog for free and begin posting content right away. But, what good is that content if no one is reading it. Here are ten ideas to bring in the traffic your blog needs to survive.
Of all the successful blogs on the Internet, hundreds more have failed. Running a blog is like running a business website. Unless you are willing to put the time in and treat it seriously, you won’t be blogging long.
That is not to say that the failed bloggers weren’t serious about blogging. Mostly, new bloggers aren’t prepared for the work that goes into creating a successful blog. Just building the blog doesn’t mean that people will necessary come to you. You pursue the audience and give them a reason to see what you have to say.
1. Fresh Content – no one wants to visit a blog day after day and see the same posts. Update your blog content at least twice a week. This will be easier if you write several posts ahead of time and upload them at the appropriate times.
2. Article Marketing – the niche you’ve chosen for your blog is one that interests you. If it is interesting you will spend more time doing it. Create content not only for your blog but also to be submitted to article directories. Use the resource box to advertise your blog so people can find you.
3. Social Networking – these sites are everywhere. Join Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo, Twitter or a dozen others and make connections. You can join groups of likeminded people who are also bloggers or entrepreneurs.
4. Viral Marketing – this is where you spread the word about your blog. Talk to friends, family and even strangers. Give out business cards that have your blog address on them.
5. Use RSS Feeds – RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” Readers can subscribe to your feed and get email updates when new content is posted. It is an easy way for them to keep up with your blog without spending all day online.
6. Submit Blog to Search Engines – doing this allows your blog to be ranked. Google and Yahoo! are two of the most popular search engines you want to crawl your blog pages. It doesn’t guarantee top ranking, though. You’ll have to do a little more work for that.
7. Joining Forums – as a blogger you are a budding entrepreneur. Right now you are marketing yourself to find traffic and then profit. Become a member of business forums, work at home forums and others to meet new people and share ideas. You can add a link to your blog in the signature line so others can find you.
8. Visit other blogs – show your appreciation to those who visit you by also posting comments on their blogs. It is a kindness that shows others you are not just out to advertise your blog alone. Add links to your blog in your comments.
9. SEO Marketing – whatever you write, use relevant keywords. Keyword density between three and ten percent is good for getting higher page rankings in search engines. Base your keywords on a research you do to find the most popular words used in search engines for your niche.
10. Social Bookmarking – submitting posts to social bookmarking sites allows others who are members of those sites to track you back to your blog.
Using any of these ideas will start the traffic moving in your direction. It takes time but you will build the readership you want.
If There's a will, There's a way! 
is my motto.
