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Article Title:
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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:
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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:info@whichpokersites.com
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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.
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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.
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