Simple steps to making more web sales

Written by Matt Eliason


Not making sales like you think you should? This article looks at addressing buyer behaviour and outlines simple steps to increasing conversion rates.

Today there are a range of e-commerce software packages that make building online stores easy. Generally they are database driven and have shopping cart functionality built in. They are written by programmers and providerepparttar core element of an online store.

But having a website needs to be more than having just an online catalogue.

One ofrepparttar 131653 biggest mistakes that most online retailers make is they do not take into account typical buyer behaviour. The conversion from real world to online provides many benefits torepparttar 131654 retailer, but present some real challenges forrepparttar 131655 customer because their buying decision is made more difficult in an online environment.

What to I mean? Lets use a client’s site that sells sterling silver jewellery as an example.

Their site was: -well structured, -items pages were neatly laid out, -product images were clear, -add to cart button clearly visible -there was a short description ofrepparttar 131656 item. -a page describing their 14-day money back guarantee, -a privacy page saying your details would be kept secure.

But sales were slow.

They tried discounting.

But sales were still slow.

What was missing? What could be done to encourage visitors to purchase?

The answer lies in addressing buyers needs and purchasing behaviour. Lets think aboutrepparttar 131657 buying process when we are in a physical store.

Imagine ifrepparttar 131658 sales person just handed you a card with a photograph, price and short description ofrepparttar 131659 item on which to make you buying decision, would you buy? Lets go one step further – that they even let you look atrepparttar 131660 item throughrepparttar 131661 glass counter top. Would you buy? At this stage we are providing more thanrepparttar 131662 average website, but I bet you still have not said yes to buying.

What arerepparttar 131663 steps that we follow in our purchase decision process? First we would ask to holdrepparttar 131664 item. Even without askingrepparttar 131665 sales person a question we will be making evaluations based onrepparttar 131666 weight and feel ofrepparttar 131667 item. Doesrepparttar 131668 clasp look strong? If there are any gems, doesrepparttar 131669 setting look well built sorepparttar 131670 stones won’t work loose and be lost? How does it look against skin (fair, olive dark complexions)?

Answering No.1 The Question About RSS - Why Should I Care?

Written by Andrew Henry


Answering No.1 The Question About RSS - Why Should I Care?

Author: Andrew Henry

Website: http://www.pheedcentral.com Email: andy@pheedcentral.com Picture:http://www.moneyandmotivation.com/images/Ah.jpg

This article may be reprinted in full providingrepparttar signature details remain intact and full credit is attributed torepparttar 131650 Author.

Answering No.1 The Question About RSS - Why Should I Care?

There is an obvious need inrepparttar 131651 marketplace for a common sense, non-techie guide to what RSS is and how you can use it to enhance your online presence.

A Since there are still many website owners who are unclear as to why they should care about RSS, I thought I'd takerepparttar 131652 time to outlinerepparttar 131653 things they care about.

Once you get started with RSS you'll probably quickly realizerepparttar 131654 potential it can have to help you in many areas that you hadn't previously realized.

Before we get stuck in, let's just make it perfectly clear again that this is designed to helprepparttar 131655 widest possible audience by reducingrepparttar 131656 technical content so that anyone can improve their business by understanding how RSS can help, and how to implement RSS inrepparttar 131657 most appropriate way for them.

There are many sources of information on RSS that go way intorepparttar 131658 technicalities of it, but we'll leave that aside for now and just show you how to take action to implement RSS andrepparttar 131659 implications that will have.

Once you know How to use RSS you'll probably start looking for Where to submit your feeds (sometimes called 'pheeds') and find other feeds. To this end I've created www.pheedcentral.com for you to locate a vast amount ofrepparttar 131660 places you'll first start to look for. This should give you enough resources to keep you busy and productive for quite a while.

What is RSS?

RSS is most commonly used as an acronym for Really Simple Syndication (there are various other definitions such as Rich Site Syndication, Rich Site Summary and more, but they all refer torepparttar 131661 same process) and in its simplest form is just a way of displaying information that is available from a remote location.

The most widely used application of RSS is to share website content from a central repository to multiple sites. This is repparttar 131662 way that a lot of news information is now shared online.

The information is shared in several formats, ranging from complete content to summarized information with links torepparttar 131663 full content. Sharing in this way allowsrepparttar 131664 site that is republishing to chooserepparttar 131665 way that fits their purpose and some content providers go so far as to even provide different color options ofrepparttar 131666 feed they provide.

So Is RSS For Me?

The question of whether RSS is likely to be useful to you will almost certainly be answered by one word... Yes.

So, who could use RSS?:-

1) Webmasters who are required to provide regularly updated content on particular topics which their website is aimed at. As most savvy webmasters will be aware, there are many reasons for wanting fresh new content forrepparttar 131667 visitors of your site. These reasons can range from wanting a 'sticky' factor that will keep people returning torepparttar 131668 site forrepparttar 131669 updated information, torepparttar 131670 fact that search engine robots will tend to return more often if a website has pages that are regularly updated.

2) Website owners who want to managerepparttar 131671 content of their own websites without having to individually modify each page requiring an update. In this instance it's possible to use RSS to save you a lot of work by producing centralized information files which use RSS supply inrepparttar 131672 information to external sites (controlled byrepparttar 131673 same person) simultaneously. If you are familiar with Server Side Includes (SSI) you'll appreciaterepparttar 131674 power of this (don't worry that is as Techie as we'll go).

3) Website owners who have content which will be of interest to other webmasters who don't have time to try and reproduce repparttar 131675 same excellent information that is already being provided. In this case,repparttar 131676 site owner will use RSS to make their content available to anyone with an RSS Reader, those sites will then displayrepparttar 131677 original content whenrepparttar 131678 page is loaded by usingrepparttar 131679 RSS Reader to call uprepparttar 131680 information each time. This way, whenrepparttar 131681 information changes,repparttar 131682 page reflectsrepparttar 131683 new information withoutrepparttar 131684 person republishing having to change anything.

When syndicating content to lots of external sites, bandwidth usage can become an issue forrepparttar 131685 content provider (we'll talk about how to avoid that later)

There are other methods of syndicating website content but RSS is set to becomerepparttar 131686 most effective and widely adopted so we won't waste your time describingrepparttar 131687 alternatives. We'll go into more detail on why RSS is going to become more widely adopted in later chapters.

4) How To Create An RSS Feed Now that you know why you could use RSS we'll cover how to get started and create your own feed. (Feed isrepparttar 131688 term used to describe a syndicated content channel using RSS)

As we've discussed,repparttar 131689 3 most likely things you'll probably want to do are:

A) Use an RSS Reader to display another websites content on your own site.

B) Provide content of your own to other sites that you control,

C) Create an RSS feed of your own content for other sites to use (with their reader)

Here arerepparttar 131690 basics for each ofrepparttar 131691 instances above:-

A) Using RSS to display information from other content providers on your own site isrepparttar 131692 easiest thing you can do with RSS. These Readers, or Aggregators as they're also called, are readily available and you'll find that we've already created a list ofrepparttar 131693 most popular at www.pheedcentral.com so you can take a look and pickrepparttar 131694 one you likerepparttar 131695 look of. In most cases there is no charge to use these readers and they're very straightforward to configure.

B) To make content available to several of your own sites, you obviously need to have a main file somewhere that containsrepparttar 131696 information you want to make available to your other sites. This file will be located on your server and enable other sites to display your information feed/channel.

Another benefit of syndicating content to your own sites (and to other peoples sites) is that ifrepparttar 131697 content is related torepparttar 131698 theme ofrepparttar 131699 sites you're feeding it to (which it should be if you're to add value by supplying it) thenrepparttar 131700 search engines will also see that you have regularly updated information themed to your own site content and this will help when it comes torepparttar 131701 search engines deciding where to rank your pages inrepparttar 131702 displayed results.

Cont'd on page 2 ==>
 
ImproveHomeLife.com © 2005
Terms of Use