You may have asked yourself, “How do I start my own website or web store?” Well, before you sign up for a website shopping cart solution, take a look at a few sites and see how they work. If you’re interested in selling shoes, key in a related search term and look at the results. Browse a few web stores. See which ones interest you enough to stay on and which ones actually compel you to buy from them.
In this installment of our free online shopping cart advice series, we’ll take a look at why content on web pages need not be verbose. We’ll also look at what you should consider when optimizing a web page.
Have you noticed that text copy (content) in magazines and other print media is much longer than in similar content online? Text copy found online is also usually devoid of witty titles and catchy tag lines. Everything seems to be very straight to the point. Why do you think this is so? Is it because Internet surfers are more intrigued by images rather than text? Or do Internet users perhaps have much shorter attention spans?
Studies have shown that visitors to a web page decide whether or not a page is worth staying on in less than 10 seconds. So site designers must somehow convince visitors to either stay on the page or commit to an action, like clicking a link within that limited time frame.
Content-wise, there are 2 things web store owners need to consider when working on their sites:
Free Online Shopping Cart Advice Tip #1 : Tell Visitors Where They Are And What They Can Do Here
Visitors to your store can come from all over the Internet. Some may have landed on your site through links from emails, forum or blogs. And some would have ended up at your site through search result pages. As soon as a visitor lands on your page, he or she should not be greeted with long-winded text explaining every detail of your site. No one likes to be greeted by a wall of text unless they’re doing research on the Dead Sea Scrolls or something to that effect.
Keep it simple. Let the visitor know that they’ve landed on a “Professional Sports Shoe Shop”, for example. Quickly present or draw attention to options like the On Sale link, Featured Products link and Product Search feature. Using images to get attention and at the same time relaying information that could lead directly to sales is definitely advisable.
For example, using an image to declare special savings from a purchase – “50% Off Nike LunaGlide. Offer Expires 15 Jan 2010” – effectively creates urgency and invites a response at the same time. The idea of quickly occupying a visitor’s mind with carefully planned options is so that the “unsupervised” option of closing the window or hitting the back button is as far from the visitor’s mind as possible.
Free Online Shopping Cart Advice Tip #2: Convince Visitors To Do Your Bidding
You need to fit all conversion or positive action possibilities into the first fold of the page. This could be in the form of text and images. If the first tier of information or call to action material provided is insufficient to convince a visitor to make a purchase, provide links that will lead to more information or more call-to-sales devices like “Click Here & Learn How to Save $30 From Your Purchase.”
Every extra step a visitor takes without making a purchase needs to be greeted with an invitation to purchase. If all else fails, offer the visitor a discount coupon so there’s still be a chance for a purchase to be made at a later date.
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