Many small businesses get confused about the types of things that should be included on their website in order to maximize sales, so I’ve decided to write about Building Websites That Sell. This is the first post in a series of three that I will be writing on this topic.

A good product or service website should never just be an online catalog of your offerings. To maximize your sales, you need to make sure that you are using your website to it’s fullest potential. To begin, let’s take a look at the three main purposes that your site should fulfill;

1. Customer Acquisition (Winning new customers.)

This involves the whole process of converting your site visitors into customers. Your website, and especially your copy (text), should clearly communicate what you are offering. You should outline the benefits of your products or services, and provide clear and relevant information on the right pages. Your entire website should be geared at helping people to buy the products or services that they have come looking for. Your website is also a brand building tool, so remember to clearly portray your brand image and what you stand for throughout the pages.

2. Customer Retention (Keeping customers)

You can increase the chances of a customer buying from you repeatedly by using timely reminder emails, promotional offers and incentives for them to keep coming back to your site. A weekly newsletter gives you the ability to deliver relevant and useful information containing good reasons for your subscribers to come back. Why not add a form into your site that allows your visitors to sign up for a weekly newsletter? Use your site as a communication tool, to get closer to your customers. Through it you can learn more about them, customize content for them, and keep the conversation flowing. It’s your job to make it as easy as possible for customers to communicate with you through your website - so consider using such tools as a contact form, call back request forms, live chat, a forum and a facility for customers to check their order status easily.

3. Customer Extension (Selling extra things to your customers!)

An extremely effective way to really boost your sales is to sell additional relevant products or services to the same customer. By using your existing information about the types of things that were previously purchased, you can get a good idea of other products or services (or upgrades) that your customers might be interested in, and present these things during the sale, or in a follow up email.

By ensuring that your website effectively fulfills the above three purposes, you can get a great start towards maximizing sales through your website. Why not take a look at your website right now and see if you can make any changes to enhance customer acquisition, retention and extension?

Keep an eye out for my next post where we’ll look at all the elements that should be included throughout your site pages, in order to guide your visitors confidently through to make a purchase!

1. Jason R Says:
   June 23rd, 2008 at 3:24 am

   Some great advice Heath!! Simple, but often overlooked. Looking forward to part 2.

2. Yuyud Says:
   July 14th, 2008 at 9:46 am

   Good advice, but there is a question, how if the website not for selling product or service just giving information or as infopreuneur. How to make the visitor still come back?