Making Money Online - Website Presentation

By using bullet points, sub-titles and breaking down your text into short paragraphs will make it less monotonous for the visitor to read.

Keep your sales copy relevant to your product, and whilst obviously you will need to explain all about your product, try not to drone on too much. I have seen a lot of sales copy that is repetitive and boring; all it does is make your eyes glaze over.

The style and colour of your fonts can be a deciding factor for a lot of surfers as to whether or not they will stay on your website. Fancy italic fonts may have their place – but not on your website! Italic writing is hard to read at the best of times and will appear as virtually unreadable to some on a web page.

Using small font sizes can alienate your web site; think about the user’s eyesight. Anyone of any age can suffer from diminishing vision, why make it difficult for them. If your text is too small it could drive them away.

Effective Sales Copy

Unless you are one of the lucky few that can afford to pay for the services of a copywriter, then you will be writing your own sales copy. But unless your sales copy is effective, you stand little chance of attracting sales.

To gain some good ideas on how to write good sales copy involves building a “swipe” file. You then go on to find some of the best sales copy and put it in your swipe file. I am not telling you to “steal” other marketer’s sales copy, but merely so that you will be able to gain ideas enabling you to create some compelling sales copy of your own.

All of the credible copywriters own a swipe file that is full of ad copy from which they glean their own ideas to create inspiring sales copy for their clients.

Headline

Having a powerful headline is the main priority concerning your sales copy. This will be the first thing the visitor sees when visiting your website. It has to stand out and really grab your prospects attention and compel them to want to read more! If you don’t have a gripping headline - then the rest of the sales copy will pale in to insignificance.

Sub Headlines

Sub headlines are almost as important as the main headline as many visitors will only glance at sales copy. So these subsequent headlines are still important to get right. They will still have to stand out to the reader.

Spend some time creating various headlines and sub headlines until you find some that stand out to you or better still, have someone else look them over for you. Sometimes, fresh eyes can be an inspiration and their opinions and ideas can be invaluable to you.

Features and Benefits

Be sure to list all of the features and benefits of your product in the main body of your sales copy - so that your prospective customer will know straight away how good the product is and what it can do for them.

Testimonials

Whatever you do, don’t use fake testimonials! If you are caught out, these will only serve to damage your credibility. Many marketers give their product away to a few people in return for testimonials.

Closing

In the closing statement of your sales copy, impress on your prospect the urgency for them to buy immediately by saying for example: limited availability, time sensitive, the price will increase after a certain date or after x amount of customers have purchased etc.

You will have noticed on the majority of Internet marketers websites that they have implemented the use of postscripts. As I’ve said before – many visitors just glance through the sales copy so by adding a P.S or more than one, the chances are that they will be read.

Web Writing

When writing for the web, it needs to look different to normal text from a book. Internet users tend to “scan” online text, whereas they will “read” a book. It is rare that a web reader will read every bit of web content, so it needs to be presented in a way so that the relevant content is actually read. This will give the user the opportunity to print content that interests them.

Talking of printing, you may want to consider making your content “printer friendly” by providing a link to allow your visitor to only print relative material. Some web sites offer an alternative such as PDF files which they can download so that the visitor can read about your website offline.

Ensure that all of your “important” content is within the first paragraph; this should capture your visitor’s interest to read further.

Not collecting Email addresses

Many entrepreneurs fail to realise the importance of collecting email addresses. This does not mean you can Spam for eternity, offer an “opt in” facility, you could do a newsletter periodically that shows any new products or any updates that have been done on your website.

• Offer useful “Tips” if you are publishing a newsletter, or even if it is an advertisement for your products.
• If you do it properly, email marketing can be very effective and would reach a large audience very quickly at minimum costs. To do this you will need the permission of the recipient.
• Offer an incentive to capture your visitor’s interest and for them to want to receive your emails.
• Give a choice of A HTML or a TEXT version.

Understated Headlines

If you want people to read your sales copy, then make sure that you have an eye catching headline. Failing to produce a brilliant headline is worse than your sales copy itself, because there is a very good chance that it won’t be read at all. Just be patient when thinking about your headline, because you really need this to stand out and capture your visitor’s imagination.

Prices not shown

It is vitally important that prices are made available without having to search your website for them. At the end of the day, your potential customer will need to know the price, so why make it difficult for them. The attention span of some users is low, and they may not have the time or inclination to hunt around your site.

Price is an essential part of information that your potential customer needs to make an informed decision on which product would best suit them financially or otherwise. So be sure to show your prices so that the customer can see them easily. There is little more annoying than having to scroll down (especially if it’s continuous text) to try to find the price of the product.

Even worse is when the customer has to click to another page on the website to find out how much the product they want to purchase is. This is a definite no-no, besides it is a complete waste of time as the customer will still click out of your site if they consider the price to be excessive.

Some online entrepreneurs think that by placing the pricing on another web page on their site, they could persuade the customer to buy because they will read more of their sales copy. This will be perceived as annoying to the prospective customer and off they’ll go anyway!

Customers staying loyal
 
Don’t be under the illusion that once you’re “prospective” customer has become a paying customer that they are going to stay loyal to you. Never ever under-estimate loyalty, you will need to work just as hard to have that customer return to your website as you would to attract new customers.

With so many online stores available, prospective customers have a wide choice, literally at their finger tips. Include current or previous customers when you plan your marketing. Remember, current or previous customers are still part of your target market and may welcome new products as they could enhance previous products they have purchased from you.

Impersonal website

It is a well known fact that the Internet being the vast entity that it is can be very impersonal. Add a touch of your personality to your content, it is comforting for users to realise that there is a real person owning that site.
Introducing yourself and your business, adds some personality to your web site. On the other hand, don’t spend too much on hyping yourself up especially in your opening page. You could easily create a link to a page about you and your business or some other area of your site.

Copying from Other Websites

Stealing (known as plagiarizing) other people’s web page content i.e. graphics, text etc is not on. Not only is it illegal, it’s downright unethical, get your own material. In any case, it is possible for search engines to notice page duplication, and may not accept your site for listing on their databases.

By all means use other peoples copy to get an idea of how you will be able to produce your own, but that is what you should restrict it to.

Avoid online Mistakes

A lot of E-commerce websites fail due to simple errors that can easily be remedied. Some of these include:

• Not current or wrong information

Check that all information on your website is current, especially on prices. Out of date information will be percieved as neglect and will mar your online reputation. Make sure that you update on a regular basis. There is nothing worse than seeing “Christmas” goods on sale still being offered in February. This will affect the integrity of your website very quickly. The exeception to the rule here being – if you were selling off your surplus christmas goods by holding a sale.

• Complicated website navigation and purchase procedure

Simplify your navigational and checkout procedures, if you don’t make it easy, prospects will click out of your website. The biggest “turnoff” for customers is having to fight with complex navigational procedures, they do not want these kinds of hassles. They want to be able to glide around your website and have an easy checkout experience.

Some websites have these fancy navigational systems because they are under the illusion that it makes their site look good. It is not worth sacrificing your customers shopping experience with you and lsolating them as a customer because they simply found it far too difficult to navigate your website.

• Poor customer fulfilment and late delivery

Make sure that resources and procedures are available to support your website. This will ensure that orders and emails can be processed quickly. Customers will expect their purchase – be it physical or digital, to be despatched without delay. If your customer’s purchase is a physical item and you are experiencing stock problems, you must keep them informed every step of the way.

Furthermore, if the delay is going to be quite significant, then you must give them the opportunity to cancel the order should they so wish. Your customer has the right to look elsewhere for their purchase if the delivery will be delayed for too long.

This will depend on the goods you are selling of course, for example, if you sell specialist goods that will not be that widely available elsewhere you could placate your customer with a discount voucher towards future purchases as a form of compensation.

Customer support

Customer support is paramount and gives reasurrance if there are any problems or questions. E-commerce businesses are very different when compared with “bricks and mortar” businesses in the offline world. If a customer has a specific enquiry for any reason, in the offline world they would be able to visit the physical premises and speak face to face with you or a member of your staff.

Customer support is therefore a vital component of your E-commerce business and should be taken very seriously. As there will be no face to face contact regarding any quieries your customer may have, you should ensure that you have other means of support that will fulfil your customers needs.