Marketing

Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important factor because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them. By knowing your target market, you will gain more loyal returning visitors that come back again and again for more. What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on DIY, but a professional builder might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with technical information about a particular subject of interest but a well-educated individual will find that website interesting. Take your audience's emotional state into consideration when building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that. When you consider the design the layout for your site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your target market. Are they old or young people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site's general theme. Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your target market is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your target market, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience....

Convincing your prospects to purchase from you is a hard job, but have you ever thought that you are making the process twice as difficult for both parties if your prospects are convinced but do not know how to buy from you? No matter how good you are at convincing your prospective customers, they will not buy if they find the process cumbersome. First, to make it easy to buy, you will want to check that people can find your order form easily and hassle-free. You can write a clear, concise paragraph to direct your prospects to your order form so that you can minimise the chances of them getting lost. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by putting a prominent link to your order page from every other page on your site. Also, do you offer multiple payment options? Some people may feel comfortable paying via Paypal, some may only want to pay with their credit card and others might want to send a cheque. The more options you offer, the better your chances of covering your prospects' desired payment method. After all, it wouldn't make any sense to sell hard to a prospect only to find that they will not be able to pay you when they want to. On the other hand, you will want to prove that you are a credible merchant. Is your order form secured using encryption technology? You would want to look into SSL for this. You can also offer a money back guarantee so that people will feel confident about buying from you. How about after sales support? Who do they contact when they have problems after purchasing? Alternatively, you can add customer testimonials, your contact information, address, and so on to boost your prospects' confidence. Make them feel safe about buying something from you, a total stranger to them on the other end of the Internet. As a conclusion, it would be very pitiful if you sold hard and sold well to a prospect and something goes wrong when he or she is ready to pay. Eliminate any chances of that to maximise your profits....