WHY WON'T MY WEBSITE WORK?

So you've built a website, but you're not making any sales, or maybe your sales just aren't as steady as you would like them to be and you're sitting there wondering, why? Well, I have a couple site and marketing strategies for you to look at in order to help you battle the dreaded 'no sale.'

Let's start off with the site that you've just built. How is its loading time? If it doesn't load within 10 - 13 seconds over 56k, then you are probably losing customers. Not everyone has the benefit of broadband yet and that is something very important to keep in mind. Users can be very impatient towards a slow site and once they get to your site, you want to do everything possible to encourage them to stay. So if your site takes longer than 13 seconds to load, don't fret because it doesn't necessarily mean that you will have to close shop and go back to working for the man. Nope, your site just needs a little tlc. Start with your graphics, they look great, but will your site survive without 1 or 2 of them? If so, get them out of there. As for the rest of your graphics, download a nice image optimizing program and start whacking away at those bytes. You'll be surprised at the difference this can make. It has been my experience that most graphic file sizes can nearly be cut down to half of their original size.
How is your color scheme? I have seen a lot of site with very unattractive or clashing color scheme and I ask the question, why? What purpose does it serve to have a clashing color scheme? It doesn't, unless you are trying to deter visitors from coming to your site altogether. If you're like the rest of us and attempting to conduct business on the Internet, then you want to deter a visitor from leaving your site. So take a look at your color scheme and make sure that it doesn't clash. Also, try to stay away from using extra bright colors because looking at something like that can make you feel like you're suffering from radiation poisoning. In general, you should use lighter colors that match well together. This is not only easy on the eye, but also goes along way in giving your site a certain professional image.
Is your copywriting in the final draft stage? Even if it is, it's always good to keep reworking it until you find something that makes a solid connection. The text on your website can be one of the most important factors that makes or breaks your site. This is simply because people will read your text and if it doesn't read well, then people are going to become confused. To insure that this doesn't happen to you, double check your spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. A single, tiny little error can cost you a customer and it can also cost you your image. People are not mind readers; they only know what you tell them. So make them understand. Explain things clearly and make sure it all flows to where if you read it out load or silently to yourself, it sounds good. Don't worry if you don't get it on the first try. This is a trial and error thing. If you don't succeed the first time, try again until you start receiving an adequate (by your standards) response.

So now you've tried all that with your site and your still not making an up-to-par sales volume and you're still wondering, why? Well, it's time to talk about marketing. Marketing is the hardest game the Internet has to offer and if you don't play it right, you're not going to win. Let's talk about what it takes in a brick-n-mortar situation versus a click-n-mortar situation and then we'll draw a conclusion from that.
Assume that you've just opened up a DVD rental shop on your local city block. You put big signs in your windows that advertise your specials, you buy up a couple local TV spots, and finally you put up a billboard in your area. So how do you get customers then? Well, the formula is relatively simple. Have you ever heard of viral marketing or guerilla marketing? Basically, it's the idea of having your advertisement everywhere people look so that no matter what, everybody will hear about your business sooner or later. So, with that said, lets be a consumer in that same city block. The first thing you notice when you're driving to work is that a new business is moving into XYZ building. You pass by it every other day and finally you notice that the store opens up to the public. Now, instead of noticing that a business is moving in, you notice the big signs in the window advertising their basic deals. So now let's assume that the work week is over and you take the family out to the park. While you're driving home, you notice a billboard for that very same rental store. Making the connection, you are now starting to become curious as to what lies within that store (especially if you like movies!). Then, on Sunday, you're just sitting back relaxing, watching some TV and then. a commercial. It's an ad for the DVD rental store. At that point, you will probably be half tempted to go into the store and maybe sign-up for a membership. The video store has succeeded. or have they? Nope, they haven't succeeded yet because they were able to successfully market to you, but what is going to make you keep renting DVDs there? How are they going to draw new customers? The answer lies within the term 'consistency.' That's right; the rental store will have to keep advertising at least the same amount every month until their sales reach a high. At that time they can back down from marketing for a month or two, but then they'll have to go full offensive again. Well, now that we have discussed brick-n-mortars, let's move on to click-n- mortars. The problem we face with marketing website is that they are not like brick-n-mortar stores. If you opened a DVD store within your city block, you nearest competitor might be 15 minutes away, giving you a slight advantage. However, that isn't true with the Internet. Your competitor is always a URL away, and that gives everyone a slight disadvantage. Plus, instead of advertising to a small group of people within your city, you are now advertising to millions. So how do you do it? You just have to apply the same principles that you applied to the DVD store and then multiple them to fit Internet capacity. The Internet is a huge place, to have one or two ads up isn't going to help you out much. Remember this; it takes the average internet user seven to nine times of seeing something before they act on it. So placing one or two ads greatly strains your odds of having maximum exposure. Instead, you have to have multiple ads and run them consistently. Also, don't expect to make tons of sales your first time advertising either. It almost never happens this way because first you have to pass the 'break-in period.' The break-in period is usually the first two or three weeks of advertising in multiple spots where you won't really make any sales. This is because people are cycling through that seven to nine times factor and it won't catch up for a couple weeks. Let's assume that we're Internet consumers and not entrepreneurs. We go to a search engine and see a certain website come up in the results. A day later we see a banner for the same site, then a pop-under, then the search results, then a banner, a pop-under, etc... It's all a big redundant cycle, but that's what it takes. Sooner or later we're going to take a look around that site to see what it's all about and then after making a couple more trips to it, we'll probably end up buying something or referring it to a friend. Sweet success! But the game isn't over, not by any means. That redundant cyclical advertising method must to be kept in full vortex mode so that the person that just purchased from you, and others, keep seeing your ad over and over again.

Conclusively, we can say that once your website is totally optimized to convert visitors (and it's proven to convert) and you have your marketing cyclone up and running outside of the initial 'break-in period,' there shouldn't be anything that stands in your path to success. After all, look at all the other successful websites out there.

Let me close with one final thought. People will tell you that there are intricate secrets in both marketing and business that no one else wants you to know about, and that these secrets are the key to success. Don't be fooled. There are no secrets, unless the secrets are creativity and innovation.