Sales & Productivity Newsletter
For Results, Goals & Success

Welcome to the NEW Gulas Group Sales & Productivity Newsletter. This issue deals with common mistakes made by Web store owners. These types of mistakes encourage visitors to "bury the bone", resulting in lost sales, visitors, and reputation. Several strategies are discussed to help avoid these situations. We hope you will find it useful and if so, pass it on to other friends and colleagues.

As the previous article stated, bonding with everyone in a prospect group is key to outside sales. Incorrect speculation about decision-makers and failing to establish bonding and rapport results in the bone being buried out of reach. The same holds true in Internet selling. The only difference is that the Internet is much less forgiving.

So, how can you apply what you just learned to keep your online buyers from "burying the bone"? When selling on the Internet, it's all about knowing your market (bonding) and instilling a deep-trust among your visitors (rapport).

SITUATION:
Billy Bob figures the Internet will be an easy way to reap some quick profits on his new widget distributorship. In a rush to get a web site up for the holiday season, Billy Bob contracts with a young and very affordable, web designer. Just in time for the holidays, the new site is launched.

PROBLEM:
By February of the following year, it's become evident that Billy Bob's Widgets.com is not doing so well. After months of trying various discounts and promotional offers, traffic to the site is minimal, sales are dismal, and shipping costs, charge-backs, returns, and credit card abuse are eating up Billy Bob's profits. It would appear that Billy Bob's Widgets.com is just another "e-venture" heading down the "e-toilet" but unnecessarily so.

SOLUTION 1 - KNOW YOUR COMPETITION AND MARKET:
Some simple marketing research would have revealed that the largest demographic of widget buyers are Asian and Indian women between the ages of 40 and 60. Billy Bob might have also discovered that there were already hundreds of online competitors in the Near/Far East.

Lesson Learned: All the sales-savvy web sites, discounting, and promotions can't take the place of a single, well-researched, Internet marketing strategy.

SOLUTION 2 - BUILD A SITE THAT INFORMS, IS EASY TO USE, AND RELATES CLEARLY TO YOUR BUYING PROSPECTS:
Common sense-itivity helps your customers feel more comfortable about doing business with you. What is common sense-itivity? It includes at a minimum: an appropriate web design supported by clear, concise content; "no-brainer" ease-of-use; and reliable functionality that meets the needs of your largest target demographic.

Lessons Learned: Billy Bob should have chosen a light, delicate, and feminine color scheme that matched his buyer demographic. He might have also chosen larger font sizes for easier reading, and perhaps even created mirror sites in the various native languages.

SOLUTION 3 - BUILD RAPPORT AND TRUST
Rapport and trust are critical if you hope to turn visitors into buyers. What appears to you to be seemingly insignificant web site issues are major issues of trust and rapport with your visitors.

Lessons Learned: Billy Bob should have exhausted every effort to build rapport and trust with his visitors. The money Billy Bob saved with his "cheap" web designer cost him much more in the long run - in dollars, reputation, and consumer confidence. He also learned that his web site has only a few seconds to inform, establish trust, and create interest before a visitor hits their back button. Billy Bob now has a real appreciation for a professional looking design, smooth navigation, a clear statement of his business and the benefits of doing business, robust "contact" and "help" options, and a clear privacy policy.

SOLUTION 4 - COMMIT TO GENERATING INTEREST AND BUILD BRAND RECOGNITION
The Internet is so vast now that even the best sites will fail unless time, effort, and cold, hard, cash are spent promoting them.

Lessons Learned: Billy Bob truly understands that launching his web site is only the first step of many. He knows that generating targeted interest for his products will be an intensive and ongoing process as well as a financial obligation. In all future projects, Billy Bob will anticipate and budget dedicated marketing resources to help establish his brand and drive targeted traffic to his web site.

By following these simple tips, your Internet venture can see positive results and avoid many of the pitfalls the "Billy Bobs" of the world are making. For more information about our Web Effectiveness and Internet Marketing services, please contact us or take one of our free assessments online at: