This is the final article in the Secrets of Creating and Growing an Online Business series. There is now a week’s worth of material dedicated to demystifying what’s involved and what the secrets are to success, all free for you to read and act on.

Yesterday I laid down the ground work of putting together a successful selling website by explaining the shift in your mindset that needs to occur when writing any marketing copy. I will now build on this by providing five specific ways that you can increase the sales that your online business receives through a more effective e-commerce website.

1) Show off Your Testimonials

You have a product with satisfied users so show this fact off! People naturally want assurance that what you’re selling actually delivers the expected results and they will only believe a sales pitch so far. Prominently listing testimonials provides the 3rd party opinions of satisfied users to your potential customer directly on your site. It helps if the testimonials provide specific benefits that your customers received and problems that you solved, rather than a generic “This is an excellent product!”.

If you don’t have testimonials handy then start collecting them. Whenever you receive a positive bit of feedback ask if you may publish it in your marketing material. You can also simply request testimonials from customers that have let you know are highly satisfied.

2) Provide a Money Back Guaranatee

It takes a leap of faith the first time, but if you have an excellent product then it’s difficult to go wrong with this technique. Money back guarantees are everywhere because they are highly effective at transfering the risk of the transaction from the customer to you. It allows the sale to be completed and the customer to use the product even if there are still lingering doubts about this being the correct solution. If your product delivers on its promises you can rest assured that virtually all your customers will keep it, and that the new sales gained will far outweigh having to give the occasional refund.

Be sure to make your guarantee highly visible, particularly in areas on your site where the customer is deciding to buy or not to buy. You will completely defeat the purpose of this selling tool if you choose to hide it as fine print at the bottom - the unsatisfied customers will still find it and take you up on it, but you won’t be receiving any new sales from your generous invisible policy.

3) Setup Referal Programs

Rewarding people for bringing in customers and setting up formal programs for reselling a product could gain you a whole new sales force. There are a number of ways to do this such as providing incentives to existing customers to refer new business, setting up formal reseller programs, or having an affiliates referal system such as Amazon’s. Incentives are usually monetary but sometimes it is much more appropriate to provide extra service or simply some formal recognition (like a special ranking within your product’s community forums). Money is not the sole motivator!

There’s no doubt that you should leverage the power of referals, but the trick is choosing the system that fits well with what you are selling. You don’t want to implement a system that makes your customers feel as if you are bribing them, and you don’t want your product sold through questionable channels. Give it some thought and perhaps experiment with a couple systems. It may even make sense to have separate programs for referals from customers and for people who wish to be resellers of your product.

4) Addons, Tie-ins, Recommendations, Upselling, etc

You’ve sold the customer on your product and they are ready to pay for it. At this point you have a tremendous untapped opportunity to increase the size of your sale and the satisfaction of your customer by a number of techniques for offering additional or better products. If a customer is about to purchase some coffee maybe they would like a new french press to make it in, or try a delicious new flavor for half price as a check-out special? Does the customer know that you offer installation of the new fridge? Or how about a special 15% off on the deluxe model?

Two well-known online companies that aggressively utilize these concepts are Amazon and GoDaddy. Play around on their sites and pay attention to how many times you have the option of increasing the size of your purchase.

5) Start an Opt-in Newsletter

Newsletters are a great way to reach those customers who wish to keep your product in their mind and learn when you have something new. Thanks to e-mail the costs of sending one out are now minimal, but you do wish to make sure that you use a reputable newsletter mailing service and that you employ a double opt-in subscription service (people have to sign-up for the newsletter and then confirm through a link in a confirmation e-mail). You don’t want to turn a fantastic opportunity into a horror story of being accused of spamming.

People need a reason to sign-up for your newsletter. Special subscriber-only discounts and early-bird offers are one way of doing this. You can also include valuable industry information in each newsletter, along with information about your latest product or deal. When choosing the content of your newsletter, ask yourself if you are providing genuine value to the receiver or if you are just trying to make a quick buck. The latter will usually fail and you’ll lose the respect of subscribers.

Don’t Forget to Test

The above are methods that countless successful online sellers use. Simply shop around on the net for a bit and you will find multiple examples of each point. However not every technique will provide the same results for everyone. Be sure to always have a way of testing your new additions to make sure that they are providing the results you desire.

If you require any assistance in implementing these features or if you would like to have a brand new website that makes use of these principles let me know. I am an experienced website developer who can help you achieve your online goals. I offer reasonable rates and will provide a small discount for reaching me through my blog.

Final Words for Successfully Starting an Online Business

Thanks for tuning into this series. In seven days we have covered a lot of ground and I had a lot of fun sharing this information with you. Although seven days of writing long posts is a lot, it barely scratches the surface of what is out there to learn. If you aren’t currently running an online business and would like to do so, don’t put it off irrationally. Start it up, put everything you’ve learned to use, make some mistakes, and learn a whole lot more. Most importantly put your whole heart into it.

Be sure to check out the rest of the articles in Secrets of Creating and Growing an Online Business and keep reading this blog for new information all the time!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 6:36 am and is filed under Business, e-Commerce, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.