Walling on Your Sales Website

What’s it meant to accomplish?

The Sales Funnel

• Most people surfing the web will never see your URL…
  • Most people who see your URL will not click on it…
    • Most people who click on it will not be interested in your site long enough to become a prospect…
      • Most prospects will not buy your product.

Therefore, you will spend time…

• …making sure more people see your URL
  • Getting written up in blogs
  • Testing and increasing advertising that works
  • Monitoring forums and offering your product as a solution
  • Etc
• …turning browsers into prospects:
  • Engage them with your content
  • Convince them that they stand to gain by providing you with their email address
• …nurturing an ongoing relationship with your prospects:
  • To turn more of them into buyers
  • Honing your website sales pitch to increase your sales conversion rate

Improving Conversion > Getting More Traffic

• To increase sales by 10% each month, either:
  • Generate 100 more visitors to your website
  • Increase your conversion rate by 0.1%
• Your number one goal….is turning browsers into prospects
  • A prospect is someone who has expressed at least a small amount of interest in your product
  • On the web….ask someone to provide their email address
  • Convincing someone to give you their email is easier than convincing them to buy your product
  • Once you have an email, you have the chance to begin building a relationship with the customer
  • As well as to gently remind them, through relevant emails, to return to your website
• Offering something in exchange for an email address is guaranteed to work better than offering nothing
  • The best rewards are:
    • A contest
    • A relevant 4-5 day email course
    • A relevant white paper
    • A webinar
• Your mailing list is crucial to your success

Know Your Customer

• Understand what your ideal customer wants to find:
  • On your website,
  • In your product,
  • What triggers will make them buy
• (Ask yourself) How should you introduce your product to your customer?
• What should your copy say on the first page they see?
• What is going to convince them to provide you with their email address?
• What is going to convince them to purchase your product?
• What keeps your customers awake at night?
• What are they afraid of?
• What are they angry about?
• What are their top three daily frustrations?
• What do they desire most?
• Is there a built-in bias to the way they make decisions? (Example: engineers are exceptionally analytical)
• Do they have their own jargon?
• Who else has tried to sell them something similar?
  • How have they failed or succeeded?

Calls to Action Only

• In a successful sales website,
  • Every page has a single, primary call to action (that you want your user to take)
  • Any page they land on should include a prominent call to enter their email address
  • Perhaps a secondary call to purchase your product (or learn more about it)
• Every page needs a call to action
  • A visitor may first interact with your website through your Tour, Testimonials, or Pricing page
  • All of them should urge the user to take an action that gets them closer to providing you with their email, trying your demo, or making a purchase
• Eliminate extraneous functionality and duplicate information
• Make buttons look like buttons. Make your buttons so clickable that people can’t help but click them
• No One Reads. Text is a terrible selling tool
  • Audio, video and images are always better

Core Pages

• The Core Pages:

  • Home
  • Tour
  • Testimonials
  • Contact Us
  • Pricing & Purchase

• The #1 goal of your home page is to convince your visitors to click 1 link

• The key metric with home pages is abandonment rate

  • (The number of people who leave without clicking a link)

• The solution:

  • A simple home page with very few options, and large, clickable buttons

• If you choose to have an image for your home page,

  • ….choose one that shows the result of your product
  • A home loan website should show people living in a house
  • A backpacking website should show people on top of a mountain

Your Hook

• Your hook is your four-second sales pitch and it should be the headline of your home page

  • 5-7 word summaries of your product
  • When it launched, the iPod’s hook was “One Thousand Songs in Your Pocket”
  • Each one conveys an image in your mind
  • Each one describes what the product does and (in most cases) who it’s made for

• Hook ideas:

  1. Explain what your product does and for whom
     • Such as “Simple proposal software made for designers.”
  2. Make a promise to the customer espousing a benefit of your product
     • Such as “Save Time. Get Paid Faster.”
  3. Describe the single most remarkable feature of your product

• Spend a few minutes brainstorming your hook

• Discuss it with a friend or colleague in your target market

• Once you’ve decided on a hook, put it as the header on your home page

• Consider using it as your tagline

  • Allows you to tell someone in 3 seconds what your product does

What Else to Include

• Include medium-sized screen shots of the major screens filled with data
• Include a one-minute screencast (video demo) of each page
• Do not launch without testimonials
• You will have beta testers, friends and colleagues who try your software
  • Get a handful of testimonials and create this page
• Monitor mentions of your product using Google Alerts
  • Add choice quotes and backlinks to this page
  • Include any relevant logos to break up the page
  • Shows people that you will link to them if they write about your product
• Provide both a contact form in the browser and a separate email address
• Always provide a toll-free number, even if you let it go to voice mail and return the calls
• There is a great service called “Earth Class Mail”
  • Allows you to pay around $20/ month for a P.O. Box in a number of major U.S. cities
  • They scan the first page and you receive an email notification
  • You can visit their site and tell them to shred it, forward it, or archive it

Pricing & Sign-up

• Unless you have a good reason to do otherwise,
  • Put this as the link on the far right of your top navigation
  • Add subtle highlighting either by bolding the text or changing the color
• No small text on pricing page – no paragraphs of description. Only large fonts
• A call out to a 30-day free trial in large text
• The pricing plans are shown with minimal description and in large fonts
• One plan is highlighted as the best deal. It really makes you want to click it
• Logos are shown just below the offerings
• If you have add-on modules or services offer them here
• If you have nothing else, allow customers to buy an extra year of support at a discount…
  • or purchase priority support for an additional cost
• If you don’t offer a free trial, then at least offer a 30-day, no questions asked, money back guarantee
  • It may sound like crazy talk to do this with something like software, but…
  • people will purchase the product because of this guarantee

Email Marketing

• Email is the most pervasive online communication tool
• Email has real potential to create substantial long-term value as you build your list over time
• Never email someone without their permission
• Only send relevant emails to a small group of people who signed up
• Every email you send will include an unsubscribe link
• Never sell or rent out your email list. To do so would destroy the trust of your list
• Targeted means the subscribers are interested in the laser-focused niche you’ve chosen
• If you sell beach towels, offer a free report on the Top 10 Expert Tips for Saving Money on your Beach Trip (an actual report I gave away on JustBeachTowels.com)
• I recommend shooting for a PDF report from 5-15 pages
• The key is finding a topic that your audience will not only be interested in, but will be ravenous for
• If you target a niche with a common interest….providing ongoing content every 2-4 weeks is the best way to build a relationship
• Think of your mailing list as a blog with a new post every 2-4 weeks
• To gain SEO benefit from your newsletter content, you should also post it to your blog
• Use an autoresponder series, which is…
  • A series of emails sent in a specific order to new subscribers with pre-determined gaps between each email
• Start your mailing list not by sending broadcast emails every 2-4 weeks, but…
  • ….by building your autoresponder series with a 2-4 week gap between each email
• The key is to be relevant. Maintaining high relevance is critical to keeping people subscribed
• Monitor the following news sources and report to your audience on new happenings in their niche:
  • Google Alerts
  • The popular blogs in this niche
• Time of day and day of the week you send your email will have a major impact on how many people open it
• Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days, between 7am and 10:30am
• Write engaging subject lines in 7 words or less
  • The shorter the better
  • Ask a question in your subject and answer it in the emails
  • Use the recipient’s first name in the subject line
• Have One Goal for Each Email
  • Is this a relationship-building email filled with information?
  • Or do you have a call to action for it?
• Every fourth or fifth email can contain a more sales-y message
• Six months before your launch date, use your audience ….to send traffic to your startup’s home page
• Offer them a deal if they provide their email address to be notified of the launch
• Create buzz around your product by:
  • Guest blogging
  • Sending interesting updates to your social networks
  • Commenting on blogs and forums
  • Generally engaging your target audience
  • Always sending them to your home page
• One week before launch (preferably on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday):
  • Email your list of targeted email addresses
  • Let them know that your product will be launching next week and…
  • Since they are on your mailing list, they will receive a special price
• On launch day, email your list. Almost immediately, sales will start rolling in
• Thirty Six Hours After Launch:
  • Send your list a final email informing them that the deal will end in 12 hours
  • You will receive another few sales before you close down your special pricing