10 tips for selling online

Selling on the internet has many of the elements of ordinary sales and marketing, but there are some subtle differences.

For a start, the medium itself has an effect. The internet is good for products where you can make a judgement based upon sight or sound, but poor where smell, taste or touch matter, unless it is a repeat purchase. Some businesses have tried to tackle this by using gimmicks like 3D rotating views, but that still does not tell you if clothes will fit. You cannot (yet) go shopping for fruit and vegetables with a scratch-n-sniff card to check the ripeness of the melons. If you need more than sight or sound then you will have to build trust. Customers will need to have confidence that fruit will be ripe, clothes will fit and so on. You can build trust by establishing a reputation, or by reducing the risk to the buyer by offering no-quibble guarantees.

The key to sales is offering what the customer wants, at a price that they are happy with. In your online store, the buyer cannot easily ask questions of you, so you need to provide all the information that they require to make a decision and make it obvious. It is very easy to drive someone away on the web – the world is only a click away – so put as few barriers as you can to buying.

Do not ask them to log in or supply any details before they can look at your catalogue. There will be plenty of time to get their name and address once they have decided to buy something. It is nice to offer regular customers some form of recognition, like showing their name. But if you ask for it too early, it’s like an over-familiar salesman. Most buyers will leave your site rather than fill in a form.
Do not use Flash, large images, front-doors or other gimmicks. If you are really so sad that you think anyone will watch a ten-minute self-promotion, then at least have the grace to offer a “Skip intro” link. Otherwise, 80-90% of your visitors will leave without opening the door. The rest will watch the first few seconds of the animation and then leave. Ask yourself – do I want to impress geeks, or sell something?
Do make it easy to find your products and services. If your site home page is not the store page, have a clear link such as “Shop Here” in large letters. Do not rely on clever graphics or animations. Do not make it flash or blink – people will think that the rest of the site will give them migraines.
Make it easy to recognise what you are selling. Have pictures that represent the products in each category – some of your buyers may not speak your language, but they know what they want to buy. If you sell branded goods, use the brand logos (get permission) to reinforce your credibility and to speed people through. Link logos to the relevant sales section.
Keep it simple. Make sure that it is obvious how to add something to the shopping basket and use common metaphors. If they cannot see how to buy, they won’t – there is always another store to go to.
Provide good searching. Provide attribute-based searches as well as keywords. If someone is looking for a four-door car on your site, they don’t want to have to guess if you called it “four-door”, “4-door”, “4dr” or something else obscure. Put a drop-down list of the common attributes of your products and add it to your normal keyword searching. Make sure that searching is fast and accurate.
Keep your site up to date. If you have goods that go out of stock, take them off the site or mark them as “Temporarily out-of-stock”. Make sure that your terms and conditions explain what happens if you do run out of stock on items. The internet is very good for disposing of “dead stock” at discount prices, but keep this in a separate section from your regular items so that you can update it easily.
Show special prices and fast-moving goods on your entry page. Provide hot-links through to the main part of the catalogue, but try to avoid having a “Buy now” link on the entry page: you would like them to have a look round at other items, just in case they buy more. However, every item in your main catalogue should have a “Buy and checkout” link for the buyer in a rush. Remember, they will be gone if they think it will be hard.
Offer to keep the name & address of buyers. This will allow your customers to checkout next time without having to type all their details in again. They will thank you for it, and it is an incentive to come again. Give them the option not to do this, though – after all, they might be in an Internet Café.
Make your promises and guarantees clear and unequivocal. Put them as part of part of the checkout process, even if they appear elsewhere on the web site. You need to inspire confidence in buyers who have never met you. If you ever have an issue, just make the refund – unhappy shoppers tell two or three times more people than happy ones.