How To Improve Sales Through Your Website

Anyone who has been marketing online knows that the lifeblood of a business is the traffic of a site. More visitors equal more sales. Here are some procedures that you can use to tweak your sites with to improve sales without the need to get more visitors.

The first method is to apply your personal touch in your sales message. Nobody wants to be sold to by a total stranger, but many people will buy what their close friends recommend to them. If you can convince your audience that you are a personal friend who has their best interest at heart, they will be convinced to buy your products. Remember to speak to an individual in your salesletter, not to your whole audience.

The second method is to publish testimonials and comments from your customers. A good idea would be to publish both good and bad comments, that way prospects will be convinced that these testimonials are for real. When prospects see testimonials on your website, they will have the confidence to buy from you because people follow the herd mentality. When others have purchased and proven the products reliability, they will jump on the bandwagon and buy too.

Use visual representations for the problems and solutions that your product offers. Not everyone will read your text copy from beginning to end, but most people will pay attention to images on your website.

Offer quality bonuses to accompany the product. When you offer bonuses that complement your product, your prospects will feel it's a very good deal and it would be stupid to miss it. Be sure to state the monetary value of your bonuses so that people will be even more compelled to grab your good bargain.

The third method is to... ask for the sale! Many people entice their prospects with the benefits of their product, sell to them with stories of how it has solved many problems, even offered killer bonuses but forget to ask for the sale. Give a clear instruction on how to buy your product (e.g. "click the button to buy now!").

The fourth method is to place a sense of urgency within your sales letter. You could write something like "There are only 300 copies being sold, so act now!" or " Hurry...This offer will be closed for good in 48hrs!." Keep in mind that when you state such urgency you are indeed serious and the offer will in fact be taken down in 48hrs or what ever the case may be. This adds particular credence to a product that you created (one of a kind,original).

5 Important Protocols in Website Design

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every small detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are five important protocols to observe for your website to perform well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Don't use to much banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting Marketable website real estate. Provide more in demand content with relevant affiliate links weaved into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have an easy and precise navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Indicate which page the user in on with page linking

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. They will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily when you place links within each page. This can be done by using a table placed on either the left or right side of each page. Once you've built your site simplely place a link to each page on all of the pages. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on within your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.

Why you should choose Google Adsense

If you decide to incorporate Adsense into your website there are several factors to consider. Some webmasters think it depreciates their brand, still others see it as a useful tool for visitors which creates revenue and makes their content profitable.

The choice can largely come down to the commercial goals and the purpose of your website. Many businesses who sell products decide to place Adsense adverts within their website. This would appear to be a strange choice, opening up opportunities for rivals to promote their service or product to your potential customer base.

Many publishers claim that they are only doing this to allow companies who provide contributing services to advertise. These claims have some merit, as those who for example sell pillows could provide those who sell bedding with an opportunity to advertise.

Although this would make sense, there are still those online retailers who allow rivals to penetrate their audience. Many claim that there are still benefits in allowing your direct competitors to advertise within your website. One of these is that ultimately if visitors wish to see your competitors they would be able to see them through a Google search regardless. This may be true however the thought of an established brand like coco-cola having a Pepsi advert in their website is not even a possibility.

Another factor is publishers do not think that Adsense is effective in making conversions. They sense that visitors who would click on adverts are not highly qualified customers, as they would quickly navigate to the materials or products that interest them if they were.

Despite Adsense being a questionable choice for online retailers, it is a good supplementary service for other varieties of online publishers. For example, a website which provides a free service like dictionary.com gets high levels of traffic, and is able to make their service profitable through adsense. This has been the case for Bloggers who originally provided content free of charge, being unable to reach the scale that is necessary to contract with advertisers directly.

This could also apply to other previously free services, including wider forms of information broadcast, and news for example. In 2006 a man who later published a selection of Videos claims to make $19,000 a month through adsense, saying that he was also contacted through Google to help him increase the CTR (Click Through Rate) that he achieved. The thought of success like this has been a major consideration in strengthening online publishers to opt for Adsense.

Many publishers also claim that adsense makes their website look more professional. Those who are able to contract with advertisers are generally seen to provide a service with large appeal, and therefore those unfamiliar with the program may feel that the Adsense advertiser is in this position.

Adsense however, is also aligned with those publishers who use the service purely to provide links to adverts. Everyone has done a Google search, clicked on an Adwords advert and came into a website which reads top ten resources on it. This is a major problem, as it is generally something that surfers find frustrating.

Regardless of the disadvantages and the websites for which the service may be inappropriate it is still a useful tool for website visitors. Those who visit a website, and click on a link provide revenues for the publisher and those who provide free services are able to generate revenue.

The only fear that Google has, is that rival PPC programs offer better deals to publishers and they decide to go elsewhere, therefore taking advertisers with them. However, ultimately it is best for advertisers and publishers if they largely remain in same PPC circuit.