Writings > How to Master the Art of Online Sales

How to Master the Art of Online Sales

Could you increase your sales tenfold through better web design?

A couple of years ago, I consulted with a company that sold high priced workshops on how to invest. Potential buyers were invited to a free seminar where the presenter would sell them the benefits of the full workshop. Different presenters had remarkably different success rates at getting customers to buy. Indeed, the top presenter was able to convince ten times more people than the lowest, and five times more than average.

Your website is in essence an automatic salesman. Imagine what you could do if you could turn your site from a mediocre salesman to a stellar salesman.

How do you do this?

Imagine how sales are made in the real world. For example, when shopping for a car : From the moment you walk onto the lot, you are greeted by a salesman looking for indicators of your buying ability. The car you drive; the watch you wear; the sunglasses on your face. As he talks to you and answers your questsions, he picks up on emotional attachments, preferences, and other buying signals. As you test drive the car, he tailors his sales message based on this insight. He searches for objections you may have and answers them. He pushes for a close, trying different techniques until the sale is made.

Your website should do the same by following these three steps.

1. Elicit Values & Desires of the Customer
2. Tailor the Sales Message to that Customer.
3. Proactively Overcome Objections and Close.

Let's look at these steps in more detail :

Ellicit Values & Desires of the customer

Vistors coming to your site no longer need to be anonymous. They can bring with them vast amounts of information that you can use to customize your sales pitch.

• Geographic InfoWhile surfing online, the IP address of your computer is passed to the webserver. This IP address can be resolved to locate the region and metro area the browser is coming from.
• Time of Day / Time of Week Targeting This obvious piece of information also gives indications to the type of visitor. Different sales messages can be timed in advance of weekend sales. Restaurants can provide coupons tailored to lunch/dinner etc.
• Technical Information - Every browser reveals a certain amount of information about the computer. Are mac users different than PC users. Firefox users are more tech-savvy than IE users. Hi resolution screens might indicate a wealthier more technologically advanced user base.

Visitors also bring with them information from where they've been. This information is typically used for landing page optimization.

• Referrer URL When a visitor first lands at your site, we receive the URL of the site they just came from. We can tell if they clicked on an ad, or a link from a news story that highlighted romantic spa weekends.
• Referring Keywords Yahoo, Google and other search engines also pass the keyword visitors searched on before finding your site
• Advertisment Types If you're advertising online, you can also track which promotion generated the lead. This is the foundation of advertising optimization.

The above information is pretty standard stuff. What is less standard is eliciting further information onsite through behavioral honeypots

• Behavioral Honeypots How can you use the clicks a visitor makes on a website to inform your sales pitch? By creating click-honeypots, you can figure out which features of a product a user is most interested in. This is like the salesman remembering which questions a customer asked.

Tailor the Sales Message

With all this information about the customer, how can you tailor the sales message to further appeal to that customer?

Really interesting story from Toyota to come in a future article.... or contact us and we'll tell you all about it.

When we say tailor, we mean 'tailor'. Overt adjustments to the site can create confusion, but subtle changes of message, visuals and offers can create a custom experience that is transparent to the visitor.

Proactively Overcome Objections and Close

In face to face sales, the salesperson can elicit objections in an effort to find ways to close the sale. Through customer analysis and your new found understanding of the customer, the website must also be able to elicit and handle objections.

How can you use limited time offers to overcome indecision? What behavioral honeypots can you use to identify objections.

We'll spend more time on these last two areas in future articles. The key thought to take away is this : How can you get your website to act like a stellar salesperson?