Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Learn To Dance The Online Sales Quickstep.

Have you ever clicked on a link, or ad that seems to be offering you the exact answer to your question? A perfectly worded ad that seems to have all of the answers that you may have been searching for, for hours. You click on the ad, then you are transported to the page only to find that in order to find out what you are looking for you must go through a rigorous search, and click until the cows come home in order to find exactly what it is you were looking for.

By the time you have found the page that promised you all the answers to your troubles, you are feeling so hassled and tired of navigating the website. You sigh and only half read the information on the website, further more you don’t really take in what the offer is all about and decide that it is probably not what you were looking for after all. Then you see some other offer and decide to click on that link instead. Will you ever visit that page again? It is unlikely.

On the other hand, when you click on an ad, or link that is offering you a solution to all of your problems, and you are transported directly to the spot that has all the answers, you begin to read with gusto. In fact, you are so glad that you have found a solution to your question that as you read you become more and more exited about what is being offered.

Then right at the perfect time there is your opportunity to purchase all the answers in one easy click, so you do. You leave the website with your new purchase in hand, congratulating yourself on finding the perfect solution so easily.

Think about both of these scenarios and ask yourself which one would you prefer? The easiest access of course. Now consider your own website, and ask yourself which scenario is the most likely to happen to a visitor when they are transported to your website? Do you place so many barriers in your customer’s way that by the time they find the answer, they no longer feel like looking for it? On the other hand, do you give your visitors what they want right away, and get a sale or reaction from them while they are still keen to find an answer?

Web surfers are known to have very short attention spans, because of this it is important to grab their attention, and give them exactly what they are looking for as soon as they ask for it. Don’t make them work too hard, and don’t place barriers in their way to finding the solution or answer that they desire.

Often when potential customers are browsing on the web and are looking for answers, or solutions to their problems, they may be tempted away from their current search by an ad that you may have placed on Google. The trick is that you need to provide a gateway for your potential customer that displays the information they are looking for immediately.

If you make the prospective customer search or have to navigate through a mass of pages, you will be guaranteed that they will loose interest and most probably click on another ad, or abandon their search altogether. Either way despite your flashy ad and promises to a solution, you have failed to answer the question you promised in your ad in a timely manner.

By offering the shortest distance between their click on your ad, and the desired information the potential customer is most likely to be in a buying mode and look over your offer more thoroughly. Keep in mind that when you do get a customer looking for a solution, they click on your ad, and the page opens give them one answer at a time. Don’t bombard them with a heap of other solutions or links.

One page should equate to one desired effect, whether it is information, solutions, or a sale. Don’t confuse your potential customers with too many options and most of all don’t make your potential customer navigate your whole website in order to find an answer to their question. Because if you make your potential customer work too hard for their answer you will loose their attention, and you wont get a sale despite all of the trouble you have gone to.