Thanks for asking!
I'm quite pleased to see this type of question being asked here, and
it's been an enlightening and enjoyable experience to research and
offer ideas. I've highlighted idea sections with $'s.
I do have to point out that there's no one magic bullet that will
magically increase sales. On the other hand, there are proven
strategies that will A) enable more customers to find you, B) help
influence customer's decision to buy and C) help potential customers
remember your brand and product. I'll describe a variety of ideas and
options, and then make recommendations that meet your criteria.
Online merchandising can be compared to bricks and mortar. Your
offsite advertising is the welcome mat, the website is the brochure,
your order pages are the cash register.
Advertising is your method getting customers into the store. On the
web, this equates to being easily findable in the search engines,
banner or text ads in appropriate media, and branding, making your
brand known in the circles that matter. I'll cover this in more detail
a little later on.
Marketing is selling. Site visitors may be thought of as belonging in
one of three categories:
Customers who want YOUR product -- BUYERS!
Shoppers who want A product -- POTENTIAL BUYERS
Visitors who MAY want a product - FUTURE POTENTIAL BUYERS
The marketing strategies to sell to each group are different, even
though each group does have several common needs. By focusing first on
your customer's needs, and fulfilling them, you'll be able to increase
the number of visitors who become buyers. As a start, here's a guide
to allocating your advertising and marketing efforts. Once you're
converting sales, you may shift focus to attracting even more
customers to your store.
Buyers will buy, unless the website does something to make that seem
risky, difficult or impossible. They'll buy more quickly, can be cross
matched to additional products, or upsold, if you make that possible.
20% of your efforts should focus on this group.
Shoppers are willing to be persuaded to buy your product. They're in
the market for your product or one similar, it's up to your website to
speak to these potential buyers in the manner of a knowledgeable,
personable salesman. Once they've made a buying decision, their goals
are the same as the Buyers category. 50% of efforts should be focused
on this group.
Visitors are "just looking". Your site or product looks interesting.
Your goal is to offer them a reason to buy, or even better, buy now.
30% of your energies should target this group.
BUYERS NEEDS
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Easily locating your particular product to buy [x]
One click access to each product [x]
Price and Buy Button on the product page [x]
Assurance of reliability and purchase security [*]
Key:
[x] Your site has this characteristic
[*] Your site needs this characteristic
Marketers Needs:
Upsell - add more products to order
Crossmatch - customers who bought this also liked that
Word of Mouth from satisfied customers
These customers are ready to buy. Offer them an incentive to buy more.
Everybody loves a bargain.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Bundle products
---------------
One of the people I asked to look over the site said she wanted to
purchase multiple courses at the same time. You might try a Build Your
Own Bundle, or offer three products of your own choosing for the price
of two, plus $10.
Also liked this!
----------------
While true personalization (customer relationship management) might be
beyond your needs for now, you can make simple recommendations based
on your own quick analysis of customer behavior, simply by looking at
orders for more than one product. Offer a discount on two or more
products purchased at the same time, or a rebate or credit on future
purchases.
Enable multiple product purchase
--------------------------------
Because you're using Paypal as your payment solution, you'd need to
either present a list of bundled products with their own buy buttons,
or utilize PayPal's cart (or Mal's Cart) for multiple purchase on the
same order.
Volume vs. Price
----------------
The discount may lower sales income, even with increased sales volume.
A cost/benefit analysis will help you find the best price point for
increasing income and/or sales. As is, your products are probably one
of the lowest priced on the market, and are of very high quality. You
could likely increase prices to cover the discounts without sales
volume loss.
Time to implement these suggestions: 1-2 hours
Upfront Cost: $0
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
SHOPPERS Needs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ability to easily find your product on the web [*]
Plenty of info to influence a buy decision [1/2]
Persuasion to buy YOUR product [*]
Reminder(s) or Bookmark Utility [*]
One click access to each product [x]
Price and Buy Button on the product page [x]
Assurance of reliability and purchase security [*]
Marketers Needs:
Call to Action
Foot in the Door (special offers)
Upselling additional products
Crossmatching customers to additional products
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Sales Copywriting
-----------------
Your product descriptions are very extensive and informative. However,
most buyers are enticed into buying via persuasion and emotion, vs.
information, even us geeky technical types.
Consider hiring a professional sales writer to write one of your
product descriptions. I recommend some independent study in this area,
before you buy. Sales copywriting can also be combined with search
engine optimization copy, for a double-whammy. I'll list several study
sources in the Resource section below.
Time: 1-10 hours
Cost: $250 +
Customer Service Testimonials
-----------------------------
In addition to product usefulness testimonials, include one or more
entries that emphasize excellence in customer support or service.
Potential buyers like to know you'll be there if they have
difficulties with the product. Customer expectations of poor customer
service from online merchants is so widespread, that a little bit of
first-hand reassurance goes a long way.
A very effective way of offering testimony of good customer service is
to identify a such a customer, and seek permission to publish a valid
e-mail address for others to confirm their testimony. Offer that
customer an additional product in exchange for personalized answers.
Time: 1 hour
Cost: One product
Tell 'em you told 'em
---------------------
When customers reach the end of the page without a buy decision, you
should offer an additional hook, in the form of a bookmark utility,
free e-mail newsletter (Tip of the Week or Month), and, always,
descriptive text link(s) to more information about that product, or
additional products. You want to keep visitors reading your site for
as long as possible.
Time: 1/2 hour to 5 hours
Cost: $0
Recommend a Product
-------------------
More specific than a Site Recommendation script, a Product
Recommendation script sends out a targeted e-mail to a well-selected
potential customer. Optimized as sales copywriting, this is a very
effective advertising tactic. It'll pay for itself in only a couple of
extra sales. Track the campaign by referral to a special URL.
Time: 1-2 hours
Cost: $0-$35
Special Offers
--------------
Put together a special offer. Use cookies to identify first time
visitors, and SSI to add a special "Today Only" text offer include on
the first product page viewed by that customer.
Time: 1-2 hours
Cost: $0
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
VISITORS Needs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ability to easily find your product on the web [*]
Information to influence a positive buy decision [*]
Reminder(s) or Bookmark Utility [*]
One click access to each product [x]
Price and Buy Button on the product page [x]
Assurance of reliability and purchase security [*]
Marketers Needs:
Branding
Sales Pitch
Method of additional contact
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Nerdmaker.com Bookmark Icon
Help your site's bookmarks stand out from the crowd, by creating an
Internet Explorer favicon file.
Favicon.com
http://www.favicon.com/
Time: Less than 1 hour
Cost: $35-$25
More Information
----------------
For those not quite ready to buy, or visitors in a hurry, offer more
information (and your sales pitch) via e-mail. People LIKE to read
interesting e-mail, especially about things they're interested in.
Deliver more info (your sales pitch and a special offer) via an
auto-responder. Assure customers they're not being placed on a mailing
list.
Time: 1-2 hours
Cost: $0 if your domain mail has an autoresponder setup.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Gather Information from your Buyers and Visitors
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Your customers represent a gold mine of fabulously useful marketing
information -- information you can use to understand your buyers
needs, wants, and behaviors, and use to help locate like-minded
individuals.
A post purchase survey is a must. Provide incentives, if the
percentage response is not enough to garner opinions and demographics
from the majority of your customers. Use an auto-responder (linked to
the e-mail address of purchase) to deliver your survey at an optimum
interval after purchase. Keep the survey short. You can rotate various
questions to different customers, but remember to solicit (the same)
demographics from every responder. (Time: 2 hours setup - Cost: $0)
Sample of Survey Questions:
Demographics (age, occupation, gender, income range, etc.)
Favorite lesson
Time to complete course
Perceived benefits as opposed to competitive products
How they learned of your product
What factor was most important in their purchase decision
Favorite websites
Favorite e-mail newsletter
Product $ value estimate AFTER course completion
Use the information gained to refine your keyword copy, find excellent
advertising venues, evaluate pricing, decide which product benefits to
emphasize,
Ask a small number of customers if you may call them to discuss your
products, and their satisfaction. There's nothing better than hearing
it in the customer's own words. While nobody likes nagging, some
customers will be very flattered by your personal interest in their
product satisfaction. (Time: 1 hour a month - Cost: Long Distance
Charges)
Find out why customers DIDN'T buy. Use a cookie-activated pop-up and a
$5 gift certificate (Amazon, or other popular site) to garner answers
from those that weren't convinced to buy, bookmark, or otherwise make
an overt effort to remember your site or products. Another
auto-responder will automate this task nicely. (Time: 1 hour - Cost:
$10-35 per month)
Track your visitors paths and actions. Your visitors are the best
source of discovering barriers to purchase. Remove the barriers, add
easier path transitions, and you'll feel confident that the highest
number of visitors are buying. You can do this with site logs and an
analysis program like WebTrends. But WebTrends is intimidating and
expensive. Learning curve is high, also.
Clicktracks is better suited to your website and the time you have
available. "ClickTracks displays website visitor behavior directly on
the pages of your website. It's a completely new web stats method that
improves over traditional log file analysis. You can see campaigns,
site navigation and ROI instantly." A hosted solution is available for
$49 per month, or software for $495, with a free 30 day trial.
Findability
$$$$$$$$$$$
One proven method of increasing sales is to increase the number of
potential customers who find your products. Right now, it's difficult
for customers unfamiliar with your product name to find you under
possible search terms that they'd likely use.
What search terms do you target? Your product names are not linked in
any way to your website. By using Flash product links, most search
engines (including Google) have no way of knowing what products your
*site* sells. They can follow the links, but have little indication
about the page subject. Keyword locators on the homepage are critical
to your site's overall findability. Search engines place a great deal
of emphasis on links and link text, but cannot read or index
Flash-based text. Flash navigation will hurt your search engine
rankings.
Your product pages offer better keyword density, but 1) not enough to
concentrate on specific keyword phrases, and 2) too many overall.
I'm using Search Engine World's Keyword Density Analyzer to aid my
analysis, with settings:
Include Page Title
Ignore Words of 1 character in length
Use our default stop word list
You can reproduce my findings by visiting the page and entering your
page URLs into the URL textbox.
Search Engine World Keyword Density Analyzer
http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/kwda.cgi
Determine which keyword phrases you wish to be located by, and include
these in the copy of your pages. Individual words bring visitors. 3
and 4 word keyword phrases attract buyers. You should develop at least
20-30 keyword phrases, and optimize various pages of your site for
those phrases with human useful/readable information about your
products and the subjects in general.
Possible keyword phrases to target:
photoshop 7 training cds
dreamweaver mx training cds
visual basic .net training
It would be advantageous for you to break your product pages in to
several sections. You need an overall product description page,
including selling points and some pretty pictures, plus a separate
section page with all lessons listed, very much as you have it now.
Link this list to your product sales page. Add additional content by
breaking individual sections of the tutorial description into their
own pages, and linking them inline. This will allow visitors seeking
specific instruction in one area to better find you.
Let Customers Point the Way
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
When in doubt, test! Let your customers tell you what they prefer.
It's obvious that you have the page building skills to offer visitors
different page variations. You can test new versions of your copy,
site design features, or offers using a redirection script. SEE what
sells best. This is particularly effective in tandem with eMetric
analysis.
Reliability
$$$$$$$$$$$
One of the major determiners in the buy online decision is the
customer perception of safety and reliability. Offer customers enough
information to trust you with theirs. You should add:
Name, Address, and Contact Phone numbers on the homepage.
Contact Page
Privacy Policy
Credit Card Security info
Link to your PayPal profile
Your site is beautifully presented, so it may not be good news to hear
that black on white (or offwhite) says "more reliable" to potential
buyers. Study and experimentation are the best ways to prove or refute
this premise. Offer a choice of background colors (via script
redirecting to different pages) to determine if switching to white
will make a marketable difference.
Your Photoshop product (inherently) will appeal to right-brain,
creative types. All other products are of main interest to logical
left-brainers. You may which to acknowledge that dichotomy a bit in
your site design, with variations on a common theme, rather than
portions of the site that appear totally different.
Web Developers Virtual Library Top 10 Sites Compared
http://wdvl.internet.com/Authoring/Design/TopTen2001/index.html
Court Corporate Buyers
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Develop a Course Training page specifically targeted to corporate
buyers. Offer a layered discount for multiple licensing. Purchase a
small mailing list of corporate training directors, and devise an
e-mail marketing campaign to get your name and products in front of
these key buyers.
Put Your Products and Name Where the Buyers Are
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
You're likely more of an expert in the subjects of your courses. As
such, it's not as likely you'll come into contact with "students" at
the purchase point in your own hangouts. Look for beginning and
intermediate forums and mailing lists. Join, and occasionally make a
not-too-technical comment or post. Try for an attitude of friendly and
helpful, without pushing your own products. This technique isn't
quick, but gets name recognition, and will provide loads of input on
where to best advertise your wares.
Many people are looking for new jobs and retraining at present.
Consider advertising to jobhunters, who are likely to be looking for
inexpensive ways of learning new skills. Create a page that targets
keyword phrases such as: "learn technical skills" or "retraining"
along with your product names. Use it as the landing page for
pay-per-click advertising.
Look into Overture. Google is the largest general search engine, and
Google AdWords are a terrific sales tool, but Overture counts too. Use
their built-in tools to find suitable search terms at reasonable
prices, and look at this Search Engine Relationship Chart to see how
Overture listings propagate to other search engines. This is an
excellent media for a small, monthly investment in findability. Read
Overture's Advertiser materials closely. They offer many tips for the
very best performance. Possible phrases:
[photoshop training @ $0.25-$0.50 per click]
[photoshop 7 training @ $0.10-$0.25 per click]
[dreamweaver mx training at $0.12-$0.15 per click]
[dreamweaver training course @$0.10 click]
[visual basic .net training @$0.10-$0.20 per click]
Search Engine Relationships Chart - .pdf format
http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginechart.pdf
Develop Partnerships
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Seek out complimentary partners. Content partners (reprint or
syndicated) can add customer useful articles and information to your
own sales content.
Partner with membership communities to offer continuing learning
opportunities, as your customers master concepts and move to new
levels of usage.
Partner with complimentary product websites to offer bundled products,
or simply recommendation (and a special offer to customers) to your
own buyers after purchase, in exchange for the same.
Build a community of users of your very own, just by offering a simple
forum.
The Bottom Line
----------------------------------------------------------------------
There are more ideas here than can be accomplished within the time and
budget you've stated. I hope you'll find you can pick and choose among
them to form an ongoing marketing plan. Marketing doesn't really have
an endpoint. I'm sure you want to concentrate most of your energy on
adding new products, however, you also need to allocate time for
advertising and marketing efforts in order to sustain your position
and grow your business.
In my opinion, the steps that will help most immediately are:
-- Add a classy sales hook (or three) to each and every page
-- Enable an easier method of purchasing multiple products
-- Bundle products
-- Add special offers
-- Increase your search engine rankings with copy refinements
-- Advertise on Overture
-- Split long pages into sections.
-- Survey a few of your customers to learn where to best advertise
-- Add a Corporate Buyers page, emphasizing benefits of your courses
over other methods.
These steps will lead to somewhat slower, but very reliable growth:
-- Add customer metrics
-- Test variations of page design and page copy
-- Thoroughly optimize all site copy for sales and search engines
-- Work at developing partnerships
Resource Links
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Whitepaper - Consumer Centric Marketing
http://www.seurat.com/us/thoughtleader/whitePapers/0002_ConsumerCentricMarketing.pdf
Sales Copywriting
http://www.boldapproach.com/copywriting.html
Copywriting for the Internet - Tutorial
http://pandecta.com/copy.html
Writing Copy for the Search Engines
http://www.rankwrite.com
High Rankings Advisor
http://www.highrankings.com
ClickTracks
http://www.clicktracks.com/
Government Bidding
http://directory.google.com/Top/Business/Opportunities/Resources_and_Networking/Project_Bids/?tc=1
Search Engine Tools
http://www.searchengineworld.com/misc/tools.htm
Overture Search Engine
http://www.overture.com
Corporate/Business List Suppliers
http://www.focalex.com
http://www.mailleads.com
http://www.infousa.com/
Mal's eCart
http://www.mals-e.com/
Forum Script Software
http://www.phpbb.com/
Google Search Terms Used:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ecommerce "white background"
photoshop video training
writing webpage OR "web page" titles usability
"marketing budget" percentages
photoshop training CDs
dreamweaver training CDs
visual basic .net training CDs
web community marketing
As both a webmaster and site owner, I feel confident that you'll find
these ideas and strategies effective, singly or in a variety of
combinations. Should you have questions about the materials or links
provided, please, feel free to ask.
larre-ga
PS - The LoveSan worm and U.S. Eastcoast power outtages also offered
their own unique "contributions" :-) to this Answer. |
Request for Answer Clarification by
kev314-ga
on
18 Aug 2003 14:49 PDT
I’ve taken your post and changed it into a series of somewhat specific
tasks. Let me know if I failed to include an important point, or
inferred incorrectly. I should be able to implement many of the ideas
by the end of August. I will let you know the effectiveness of
implementation on sales.
Random thoughts
Add a video on how to create a favicon icon
Add a general tutorial/tips section
Assurance of reliability and purchase security
Add a guarantee
Add a we respond quickly testimonial
Add testimonials to every page
Upsell - add more products to order
Add more classes
Crossmatch - customers who bought this also liked that
Add a combination line to every page i.e. You may be also interested
in considering photoshop with dreamweaver; this will allow you to
generate effective pictures for your website.
Word of Mouth from satisfied customers
Refer a colleague and get a free downloadable class (offer sent by
email to purchasers)
These customers are ready to buy. Offer them an incentive to buy more.
Everybody loves a bargain.
Weekly front page specials
Bundle products
Customers who purchased this product also liked the following. Combo
packs at the bottom of each class page Photoshop + Dreamweaver for $x
Dmx+ photoshop+ intdmx…
Enable multiple product purchase
See bundle products
You could likely increase prices to cover the discounts without sales
volume loss.
Increase class prices to 20.00/hour length of class
Consider hiring a professional sales writer to write one of your
product descriptions.
Rewrite product descriptions to create emotional appeal and sense of
urgency(get copy from competitors and modify).
In addition to product usefulness testimonials, include one or more
entries that emphasize excellence in customer support or service.
A very effective way of offering testimony of good customer service is
to identify a such a customer, and seek permission to publish a valid
e-mail address for others to confirm their testimony. Offer that
customer an additional product in exchange for personalized answers.
When customers reach the end of the page without a buy decision, you
should offer an additional hook, in the form of a bookmark utility
free e-mail newsletter (Tip of the Week or Month)
always have descriptive text link(s) to more information about that
product, or additional products. You want to keep visitors reading
your site for as long as possible.
Recommend a Product
-------------------
More specific than a Site Recommendation script, a Product
Recommendation script sends out a targeted e-mail to a well-selected
potential customer. Optimized as sales copywriting, this is a very
effective advertising tactic. It'll pay for itself in only a couple of
extra sales. Track the campaign by referral to a special URL.
Time: 1-2 hours
Cost: $0-$35
?spam?
Special Offers
Have special offer on home page valid for 1 week.
Help your site's bookmarks stand out from the crowd, by creating an
Internet Explorer favicon file.
Done Letter N with glasses
More Information
----------------
For those not quite ready to buy, or visitors in a hurry, offer more
information (and your sales pitch) via e-mail. People LIKE to read
interesting e-mail, especially about things they're interested in.
Deliver more info (your sales pitch and a special offer) via an
auto-responder. Assure customers they're not being placed on a mailing
list.
Offer autoresponder email for each class, include tips, several demos,
offers.
A post purchase survey is a must.
Create post purchase survey, email 1 before class arrives
(expectations, ease of transaction,…) email 2nd 1 week after class
arrives. Limit to five questions each
Demographics (age, occupation, gender, income range, etc.)
Favorite lesson
Perceived benefits as opposed to competitive products
How they learned of your product
What factor was most important in their purchase decision
Favorite websites
Favorite e-mail newsletter
Product $ value estimate AFTER course completion
Use email surveys to change website pitches and keywords
Use email surveys to find how client heard of nerdmaker
Use email surveys to determine class expectations of perspective
clients
Ask a small number of customers if you may call them to discuss your
products, and their satisfaction.
Call and speak with at least 10 clients/class. Have series of
questions ready.
Find out why customers DIDN'T buy. Use a cookie-activated pop-up and a
$5 gift certificate (Amazon, or other popular site) to garner answers
from those that weren't convinced to buy, bookmark, or otherwise make
an overt effort to remember your site or products.
Track your visitors paths and actions.
Check WebTrends, Clicktracks or other site analysis software
Search engines place a great deal of emphasis on links and link text,
Add link text to each class on each page.
Investigate Keyword Density Analyzer
I'm using Search Engine World's Keyword Density Analyzer to aid my
analysis, with settings:
Include Page Title
Ignore Words of 1 character in length
Use our default stop word list
You can reproduce my findings by visiting the page and entering your
page URLs into the URL textbox.
Search Engine World Keyword Density Analyzer
http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/kwda.cgi
You should develop at least 20-30 keyword phrases(3-4 words in
length), and add to various pages of your site for
Possible keyword phrases to target:
photoshop 7 training cds
dreamweaver mx training cds
visual basic .net training
dreamweaver training course
It would be advantageous for you to break your product pages in to
several sections.
product description page, including selling points and some pretty
pictures
section page with all lessons listed, very much as you have it now.
?product sales page?
Add additional content by breaking individual sections of the tutorial
description into their own pages, and linking them ?inline? This will
allow visitors seeking
specific instruction in one area to better find you.
Let Customers Point the Way
Experiment on potential clients by offering different website designs
auto redirect to videophd.com
test new versions of your copy, (now how much would you pay, elite,
hurry buy now, lots of headshot videos, comedy, negative/fear,…)
black on white site
Check eMetric analysis.
One of the major determiners in the buy online decision is the
customer perception of safety and reliability. Offer customers enough
information to trust you with theirs. You should add:
Name, Address, and Contact Phone numbers on the homepage.
Contact Page
Privacy Policy
Credit Card Security info
Link to your PayPal profile
Years of experience
Degrees
Check out
Web Developers Virtual Library Top 10 Sites Compared
http://wdvl.internet.com/Authoring/Design/TopTen2001/index.html
Develop a Course Training page specifically targeted to corporate
buyers.
Offer a ?layered discount? for multiple licensing.
Purchase a small mailing list of corporate training directors
Create ans e-mail marketing
Put Your Products and Name Where the Buyers Are
Look for beginning and intermediate forums and mailing lists. Join,
and occasionally make a not-too-technical comment or post. Try for an
attitude of friendly and helpful, without pushing your own products.
advertising to jobhunters
dice.com, monster, local resume shops, retraining places.
Create a page that targets
keyword phrases such as: "learn technical skills" or "retraining"
along with your product names. Use it as the landing page for
pay-per-click advertising.
Look into Overture
Search Engine Relationships Chart - .pdf format
http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginechart.pdf
Seek out complimentary partners.
Contact 10 oem computer manufacturers
Contact 10 clubs/class i.e. vb.net clubs (offer discounts)
Contact 10 software sellers to bundle a class with product
Build a community of users of your very own, just by offering a simple
forum.
Support forum for each class
emphasizing benefits of your courses over other methods.
Competitor comparison chart
|
