How to convert site visitors into customers

and increase your Value per Visitor.

Advertising Copy - responsible for 20% of success.

There are tried and tested techniques that you can adapt from the direct mail and mail order field, e.g:

• The purpose of the Heading is to attract the prospect's attention - use the Page Title to do this, repeated as <H1> on the page.

• The purpose of the sub-heading its to draw them into the body of the page. This goes into the META Tag "Description", and also <H2> on the page.
• Tell a story; ask questions; discuss a problem. And use testimonials!
• You can think of the  web page as a sales letter. It must grab their attention, generate desire, answer objections and lead to a call for action.

What is your most wanted response: place an order, maybe, but more important could be to get their opt-in email address for your mailing list?

The Offer - Responsible for 40% of success!

• You can offer your own product, or someone else's via an affiliate deal, or someone else's via resale rights.
• You can offer an information product (such as an e-book), software or music delivered electronically, or physical media such as paper, CDs, tapes or training courses.

But in either case you should add lots of freebies, to increase the perceived value, e.g. e-books or free reports.

And once the customer gets to the buy page many people have found that you can often double your profits by upselling to a related product or service. A pop-up can be used for this, or to capture their email address if they do not purchase then.

Payment

Can be via PayPal or ClickBank, or through your own credit card facilities.

Follow up - which brings you the real profit afterwards

Some people say that you only need to break even on the initial "teaser" offer. You then upsell to a larger product at point of sale, and follow up with a "back end" much higher value product offered to previous customers.

• Email list. According to Frank Garon and Terry Dean, and their followers, the only purpose of the web site is to capture a free email list subscription. You then send out regular emails, or "E-zines", which act to build up a relationship. They can be found over at www.InternetCashPlanet.com and  www.bizpromo.com.
• Higher value back end sales. Once you have the distribution channel in place, such as a targeted responsive opt-in (did I say that already?) email list then it is much better to sell fewer but high ticket items: more profit with less hassle.
• Relationships. People buy from those they can relate to and trust, and often not until after seven or more points of contact.

John Wragg