Free-Reprint Article Written by: Peter Koning See Terms of Reprint Below.
***************************************************************** * * This email is being delivered directly to members of the group: * * [email protected] * ***************************************************************** We have moved our TERMS OF REPRINT to the end of the article. Be certain to read our TERMS OF REPRINT and honor our TERMS OF REPRINT when you use this article. Thank you. This article has been distributed by: http://Article-Distribution.com Helpful Link: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act - Overview http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/dmca1.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------- Article Title: ============== Want to sell more online? Give less choice! Article Description: ==================== In the pre-dot com rush most online businesses published as much product and marketing information as they possibly could. Although these sites were content rich, they gave the visitor so much choice that the merchant was left unable to easily funnel visitors towards a sales objective. The times have now changed, but most of these sites haven't. Here's what merchants need to do. Additional Article Information: =============================== 867 Words; formatted to 65 Characters per Line Distribution Date and Time: 2006-12-19 16:24:00 Written By: Peter Koning Copyright: 2006 Contact Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For more free-reprint articles by Peter Koning, please visit: http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content/d/index.shtml#Peter_Koning ============================================= Special Notice For Publishers and Webmasters: ============================================= If you use this article on your website or in your ezine, We Want To Know About It. Use the following URL to let us know where you have used this article, and we will include a link to your website on thePhantomWriters.com: http://thephantomwriters.com/notify.php?id=4108&p=load HTML Copy-and-Paste and TEXT Copy-and-Paste Versions Of Article Are Available at: http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content/db/k/sell-more-online.shtml#get_code --------------------------------------------------------------------- Want to sell more online? Give less choice! Copyright (c) 2006 Peter Koning Viral Sales Generator http://www.ViralSalesGenerator.com In the 1990's it was common for online businesses to load up their sites with one or more menus having a rich choice of options and content for visitors to dive into. It was thought that by giving as much information such as white papers, case studies, technical details, benefits, reseller sales material, and so on, that the visitors to the site would eventually find what they needed and make a purchase. But today site visitors are less patient than ever. It's been found that the average visitor will click away from your site in less than 3 seconds. Also, we all know how much information overload we have in our inboxes and download folders. So websites that give so much information and choice to the visitor are actually under-performing compared to sites that guide the visitors along a path towards a specific goal, such as signing up for a free report, coupon, or to place an order. "Information overload is a critical and consistent problem, and in this study we found that Web users were more likely to say that a site had too many links as opposed to too few links," said Jeff Rosenblum, co-founder and research and strategy director of Questus, in January 2006 Recently a discussion on choice has surfaced on the internet. Marketing Experiments recently discussed the pros and cons of having choice on a website. According to a seminar they gave in October, 2006, "Too many choices fragment a prospect's attention. In a split test, we simplified from 3 columns to 1, the subscription process from 2 pages to 1, and reducing the number of subscription options from 3 to 2 resulted in conversion rate increasing 42% and revenues more than doubled." Also a recent excellent article by Dr. Ralph Wilson discussed the differences between a "linear" site - very little choice, guiding a visitor along a path to the goal, and a "menu" site lots of options and choices, navigation to reach all over the site. He doesn't judge one better than the other, but it's obvious there are some things we can learn from linear sites and possibly adapt our overly choice-rich sites to guide our visitors along a path to buying, more than we may have in the past. A linear site will get you fewer sales of other products, but you'll get more sales of the products you are offering to the prospect. This implies that if you are selling one main product, you should have a linear sales process to optimize your conversion. Dr. Ralph Wilson's bottom line on conversion potential is that a Linear Site has higher conversion potential because of specific focus, perhaps lessened somewhat because of limited choice of products. A Menu-driven Site has lower conversion potential because of greater shopper freedom, perhaps raised some because of product choice. You can pick any of thousands of vendors and see how they have so many options on their site it's not funny. Want to see a linear site? Go to any internet marketer's site they know how to turn visitors into hot prospects and then into customers. Most internet marketer sites are simply a sales page with an order button, and maybe one link for affiliates to learn how they can promote the product. Internet marketers have learned by testing and measuring, that it is better to grab a visitor's attention, pull them into the site, and present the benefits in a direct fashion. Using a linear site and other internet marketing techniques, a pair of internet marketers recently sold over $10 million of StomperNet a Search Engine Optimization membership site, in 3 weeks. More and more online shoppers are getting used to seeing sites with less choice and so this concept is becoming more accepted. Websites from the 1990's need to consider updating their marketing strategy to use this concept, which to most internet marketers is obvious. What about your site? Visitors to your site have come there for a reason. If your site is wide open and offers them everything they could possibly wonder about, that's great but is it presenting it in the right order to lead them to an action such as buying your product? Probably not, since people tend to hop all over a site and without any persuasive message the odds aren't good that they will take action. People like to be led so why isn't your website doing that? It's a well known fact that people will find excuses not to buy something even if they were perfectly qualified to. For example, if one sales page gives the option to buy, but has links at the bottom to various other areas of the site - .vs. another sales page having just a couple of purchase options, which do you think will perform better? So try removing some of the choice from your site, and think of guiding your visitors in maybe offer an opt-in page which then leads to more information. By pulling your visitors into a funnel you will be able to measure each step along the way, and also build a relationship with your prospects at the same time. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Koning has over 20 years of experience in IT sales and marketing, has studied the latest sales techniques of internet marketers, and is the founder of http://www.ViralSalesGenerator.com, a viral marketing platform for online merchants. Get a free 30 page report on Viral Marketing at http://www.ViralSalesGenerator.com today. --- END ARTICLE --- Get HTML or TEXT Copy-and-Paste Versions Of This Article at: http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content/db/k/sell-more-online.shtml#get_code ..................................... TERMS OF REPRINT - Publication Rules (Last Updated: May 11, 2006) Our TERMS OF REPRINT are fully enforcable under the terms of: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.2281.ENR: ..................................... *** Digital Reprint Rights *** * If you publish this article in a website/forum/blog, You Must Set All URL's or Mailto Addresses in the body of the article AND in the Author's Resource Box as Hyperlinks (clickable links). * Links must remain in the form that we published them. Clean links should point to the Author's links without redirects having been inserted into the copy. * You are not allowed to Change or Delete any Words or Links in the Article or Resource Box. Paragraph breaks must be retained with articles. You can change where the paragraph breaks fall, but you cannot eliminate all paragraph breaks as some have chosen to do. * Email Distribution of this article Must be done through Opt-in Email Only. No Unsolicited Commercial Email. * You Are Allowed to format the layout of the article for proper display of the article in your website or in your ezine, so long as you can maintain the author's interests within the article. * You may not use sentences from this article as an input for any software that steals sentences from others in order to build an article with software. The copyright on this article applies to the "WHOLE" article. *** Author Notification *** We ask that you notify the author of publication of his or her work. Peter Koning can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Print Publication Reprint Rights *** If you desire to publish this article in a PRINT publication, you must contact the author directly for Print Permission at: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ..................................... If you need help converting this text article for proper hyperlinked placement in your webpage, please use this free tool: http://thephantomwriters.com/link-builder.pl ===================================================================== ABOUT THIS ARTICLE SUBMISSION http://thePhantomWriters.com is a paid article distribution service. thePhantomWriters.com and Article-Distribution.com are owned and operated by Bill Platt of Stillwater, Oklahoma USA. The content of this article is solely the property and opinion of its author, Peter Koning http://www.ViralSalesGenerator.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX --------------------------------------------------------------------- *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* To have your article appear in this distribution list, you must absolutely be a client of thePhantomWriters. We offer a paid article distribution service, and this is one of the more than 60 groups where we submit our client articles. To learn more about our program, visit: http://thePhantomWriters.com/x.pl/tpw/index.htm Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thePhantomWriters/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thePhantomWriters/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
