You might be asking yourself, “How Do I Sell My Product or Service Online?”

The simply stated, and often confused answer is “Know Your Web Site Traffic”
Deceiving is for the pornography business on the internet and for attracting gambling addicts. That’s what made annoying pop ups so popular to advertising spammers. To understand how to sell to your potential customers on the internet you must first understand what the various types of web traffic are, that is, who is visiting your site and why.

A person might find your web site because:

1) By Mistake:
Ending up at your web site by mistake. This could be because you named the title of your web site with a false description and they found the result on Google then immediately closed the window.

2) Finding An Answer:
Many people might end up at your web site because they type in a very vague and general term looking for answers. This is what made the innovation of AskJeeves.com so wildly popular. People use the internet looking for answers.

You have to provide them with that. Stuff your web site with as many keywords as popular without overdoing it. Many search engines use a series of algorithms and spider robots that evaluate the percentage of times you place any specific keyword on your site and might ban you because of it.

People surfing the internet read a web site from a left to right pattern.

The red marks in the picture below indicate a very strong eye focus, the yellow less intense, and the white space is where a surfers eyes did not look at all. Placing your products and services (your selling points) should generally go in these “hot spots” to achieve the best results as only 5% of all surfers overall who go to your web site will actually buy something. For more information on the study check out the Nielsen Eye Pattern Study of reading web sites.

F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content

3) Evaluating Alternatives:
The best thing about the internet is that people can quickly and easily evaluate alternatives. Pricing, quality, and more can be evaluated in a blink of an eye on the net and you need to keep your business up to par with the competition. Keeping a spreadsheet of your sales and analyzing them everyday and analyzing traffic to your web site is at the backbone of success.

When sales dip, you might want to consider why and see if a new entry into your industry might have started using penetration pricing (or gaining attention and sales by starting out with very low prices) of products that you offer as well. Match them if you can or show on your web site how your quality exceeds all else.

4) Looking For You:
This is the golden type of web traffic. Those potential customers looking for you because they heard of you off a discussion forum, saw your ad somewhere offline in print or on television, or they might have found you by directly typing in your web site address. Either way, you have them by the neck. However, roughly only 35% of targeted direct leads end in a sale. A startling 70% of all people who visit your site will be unsatisfied and leave your site.

But why? It’s simple really.

You have to think like the buyer.

You have to map out your web site in a precise manner. You have to make your web site read like the human eye does. You have to place “buy now” and “pricing” information in the right places. You have to provide enough information but not too much that distracts from your overall goal of selling the customer. Speak in clear and concise language when doing your web sites copywriting.

You might even want to consider hiring a professional to do your web sites copywriting as well.

Matthew Peschong
Minnesota Web Site Design