1) Attract customers to your website - Keywords, Keywords, Keywords!
Pay-per-click search engines - Overture, Google Ad Sense, FindWhat.com ....
2) Convince them to buy NOW
3) Get them to RETURN
Before you do ANYTHING else, you'll want to sign up for an account at Overture.com. This site has extensive tools for determining which keywords are appropriate for your web-site, and you'll also receive $10 in free clicks from their users. This site gives you the widest exposure on the Internet, and even a brand-new site can generate very low cost high quality traffic by using their services. Even if you don't use the pay-per-click feature the free tools to help you with your keywords are essential to all internet marketing.
1) Attract customers to your website
FREE SEARCH ENGINE LISTINGS - By an overwhelming margin, most people end up on the web-sites they do through search engines. Type in a couple of words or a phrase (known as Keywords) and the engine returns the web-sites which most closely match those keywords. The internet has grown to be as popular as it is because these search engines can quickly link you to websites which have the exact information that you're looking for. They're free and easy to use. If you're not familiar with search engines, click on one of these links to see how they work: Yahoo MSN Google AOL
The first step is to identify the keywords which people will use when they're looking for a website like yours. The best way to do this is to sign up with Overture. Overture is the biggest pay-per-click company (see below), and they'll give you $10 in free clicks when you sign up. They have a section on their website where you can see which keywords are right for your site, and it will even let you know how many times these keywords were 'clicked on' last month. Click Here to sign up now.
The first step to obtaining a good search engine rank is to register your website with all of the major search engines. You can do this by visiting each search engine and locating the 'List your Site' link on the site. This process can be pretty complex. There is a quick and fairly inexpensive way to do this. It's called SubmitFire, which I highly recommend - you can see what they can do for you by clicking here.
Unfortunately, it's not easy to for a new website to get a high listing on these search engines. All of these search engines use very sophisticated technology to try to make sure that the listings they return match the keywords that the user uses to narrow down their search. This 'accurate matching' is very important because the popularity of these search engines is dependant on their ability to match keywords with relevant websites. If you're looking for 'ink refills' and you end up at a site selling televisions you're not going to use that search engine again.
All the free engines base their rankings on search relevancy. If you want your website to be #1 (or as close to it as possible) you have to convince the search engine that your web site is the best site on the entire internet for a keyword or set of keywords. In order to do that you have to gain an understanding of how the engines rank sites:
Keyword Density - Keywords are words or word phrases which you think people will type into a search engine when they're trying to find a site like yours. For example, the keywords for my ink-refills site are 'ink, ink refills, printer ink, ink refill kits, ink cartridges...). The first step is to identify the keywords which people will use when they're looking for a website like yours. The best way to do this is to sign up with Overture. They have a section on their website where you can see which keywords are right for your site, and it will even let you know how many times these keywords were 'clicked on' last month. Click Here to sign up now.
Once you know the keywords that you're trying to attract, keyword density is a measure of how frequently your keywords appear on your home page. Too little and you won't show up in the listings for those keywords - Too frequently and the search engine will determine that you're trying to 'spam' the search engine and will eliminate your site from its listings. The ideal keyword density is between 2% and 15%. Click Here for an excellent free tool for seeing what your keyword density is.
Meta Tags - These are the 'Title', Description', and 'Keywords' lines in the head section at the top of your home-page. Your keywords should also show up here with prominence. Click Here to learn more about Meta Tags.
Link Popularity - One of the newest (and most important in the case of Google) factors in your overall ranking is your link popularity. It's simply the number of other sites which link to your website and the relative strength of those links. It's better to have 10 links from strong sites than 1,000 from weak sites. Download the Google Toolbar to measure your Google Page Rank and to measure other site's page rank. Click Here to check your link popularity
Many people have links pages where they place links to other websites, and they ask these other websites to link back to them. This is called a reciprocal link agreement, and they are very helpful in increasing your link popularity. It can be difficult to manage a large number of links, and I recommend that you use LinksManager.com to manage these very important links. It will be well worth your while!
Summary of Tools for managing and increasing your FREE search engine rankings:
SubmitFire - list your site on all major search engines.
Overture - Determine which keywords are the correct keywords for you to focus on.
LinksManager.com - manage your reciprocal links
Google Toolbar to measure your Google Page Rank (the best measure of your site's overall strength)
PAY-PER-CLICK SEARCH ENGINE LISTINGS - Pay per click means that you pay a charge every time someone clicks on the link to your website.
It's possible to get the #1 listing on Google, MSN and Yahoo - these websites all participate in pay-per-click programs. That's the good news. The bad news is that these programs can cost Thousands of Dollars. DON'T GET DISCOURAGED. Used correctly these programs can dramatically build a new business at a very low cost, and it's the single most important step to starting a new website.
As I said above, these sites all allow you to bid for a listing position. Be the top bidder and you'll show up #1. There is a strategy, however, which will let you start your business slowly but surely and without great expense - BID LOW! Even if you get the 10th position you'll generate traffic that is highly targeted and likely to purchase from your site. You can get this traffic for as little as a nickel per click - that means that you can get 20 potential customers for one dollar! You won't be in the top three listings, but you will still be included and will generate traffic which your new website wouldn't be able to get otherwise.
If you do nothing else, sign up with these pay-per-click sites - it's free to sign up and it's the only way to start generating some traffic TODAY, and it can be done at a very low cost. Here's direct links to the top pay-per click sites:
Overture - this is by far the biggest and most important pay-per-click company. They have relationships with Yahoo and MSN (plus hundreds of smaller search engines). Click on the link and receive $10 in free clicks. You definitely should sign up here and bid low on the top 5 keywords for your website.
Google Ad Words - Google is the biggest search engine, and they're now accepting pay-per-click to rank high on their search pages.
FindWhat.com - Quality traffic at low per-click prices
Search123 - Quality traffic at low per-click prices
Enhance Interactive - Receive $10 in free clicks
2) Convince them to buy NOW
Now that you're receiving some traffic, your home page needs to convince the customer that they need to purchase your product. If you're the lowest cost supplier, let them know that. If your service is better than anybody else's make that prominent on that site. Here's some ideas you can do to convince customers to buy:
Provide something FREE if they spend a certain amount of money. Our ink-refills site gives the customer free shipping if they order more than $30 in product. As soon as we added this feature to our website our average sale went from $23 to $39 overnight, and our conversions (sales per hit on our website) increased also because the customer felt as if they were 'getting something for nothing'.
Sell your strengths right up front. These Headlines:
'LOWEST PRICES ON THE INTERNET'
'HIGHEST RATED CUSTOMER SERVICE'
'UNPARALLELED QUALITY'
will attract attention and convince the customer that they need to buy. People believe what they read, so put your competitive strengths in writing right up front.
Get feedback from your customers about how outstanding your product is, and display a link to this information right at the beginning of your web site. Current customers referrals are highly regarded by potential customers, and you need to solicit them and display them proudly.
Provide something in addition the product. One of the most popular pages on our ink-refills site is our 'Refill Tips' where we provide refill tips and trouble shooting techniques for people who refill their cartridges - even people who don't but from our site. I've received a lot of feedback from these non-customers that they are now purchasing from us because of the 'refill tips' resource. If you're an expert in your area, give away that expertise, and it will return to you in increased sales.
Keep your site simple - people decide whether to buy within the first 30 seconds, so put your best foot forward and leave it alone. Show what you have with pride and let the customer dig deeper into your site (and your product pages) once they're 'hooked'.
3) Get them to RETURN - turn first-time customers into long-term customers
This is the most important step in long term profitability. Have your customers return to you. You'll find out that obtaining customers can be costly, but it costs nothing to have them come back to you again and again. Our philosophy is to 'break-even' on first time customers and make our profits when they come back to the web-site, and it's working. Here's what works for us:
Enclose a sticker, a refrigerator magnet, or a business card with your website on it.
Have a link on your homepage for the customer to bookmark your site. We give customers a discount coupon if they bookmark the site.
Collect email addresses and send out emails with sales information.
Ship orders the same day that you receive them - quick delivery is one of the biggest reasons that customers return to the same web-site.
Put a piece of candy with the shipment
These are just ideas, but in general, the techniques to get customers to return are in two general categories, and you should try to cover both of these:
Make the re-order process easy and convenient - bookmark the site, business cards, etc.
Differentiate your company - quick shipment, a piece of candy, etc.
I'm sure that you will be able to think of ways to accomplish the above two items with your business, but you should start thinking about return customers early in the web-building process.