Just so you know, I DID try a nice fancy design for that page. You want to know what happened to my conversion? It plummeted down to 1.4%! Now, that I've got your attention, let's look at why it is that a prettier site probably sells less:

1. More graphics take longer to load.

Not everyone has fast internet yet - actually, most people don't. No one wants to wait for hours for a site to upload!

2. More graphics distract your visitors from your message.

Your graphics can actually work against you because your visitors spend more time focusing on them than they do focusing on your copy! Remember, it's your COPY that sells - so if visitor isn't reading copy - he/she is NOT going to buy. Period.

3. Some visitors may not like colors, you may be sending wrong message to different cultures.

Just because YOU love colors of your graphics and you love color scheme of your website does NOT mean that your visitors do too. There it is, those are three MAIN reasons to keep your website AS neutral AS possible.

------------------------------------------------------ So, remember, PRETTY does NOT always equal more sales! ------------------------------------------------------

Ugly sites DO sell and will continue to do so. What matters is what you're selling, your own expertise, and your copy writing. In end, best way to know what works best for your visitors is to TEST, TEST, and TEST some more!

Until next time,

Anik Singal http://www.AffiliateClassroom.com

This article is written by Anik Singal, founder of AffiliateClassroom.com. Anik Singal has developed his own affiliate system that helped him earn well over $10,000 in just 60 days.  Now, he's looking for a few students to train one step at a time. 

Here are some companies offering shopping carts. ·1Shopping Cart.com http://www.1shoppingcart.com - They charge a monthly fee. ·CCNow - See their listing under Billing Companies. ·Miva http://www.miva.com - This is a very powerful shopping cart. ·PayPal - See their listing under Billing Companies. ·Yahoo www.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/merchant - They offer 3 different packages, charge a monthly fee and take a percentage of each sale. They will also drop ship your orders, so you never have to ship anything, Yahoo does it all.

The above companies have cart on their site and you send people to them during buying process. You can also download shopping cart software onto your server for your visitors to use. Be sure to check with your hosting company to be sure software you want to download will work on their server. The following link lists free shopping cart software. However, know that you often get what you pay for, and that technical support may be poor or nonexistent with this free software. So check out Online Orders http://www.onlineorders.net/links/Free/ . They have a section on their site that, as of this writing, lists thirty-nine free shopping carts.

Many billing companies also offer a shopping cart, usually for free. For example, I use PayPal on my site and they have a free shopping cart that works in conjunction with their billing service. The purchase process is easy and I can even change look of their shopping cart to be similar to my site.

Some website hosting companies also offer billing services and shopping carts. You may want to go this route so that everything for your website is done through one company. However, if your hosting company doesn't do a very good job hosting your site, I don't think you'd want to trust them with your billing and shopping cart service.

Here are a couple of website hosting companies that offer shopping carts and more. ·ValueWeb http://www.valueweb.com/ - They offer shopping cart and credit card processing. ·Westhost http://www.Westhost.com - They have Miva Merchant storefront and shopping cart software and Payquake for payment processing.

As with most things on Internet, you have a lot of choices. To make a choice that's right for you, know what you want and consider points I've mentioned above. When you have a billing and shopping cart company that meets your needs, and your client's needs, it will make everyone's life easier and make you more money.