There are millions of sites out there. And they very much like yourself when you first go online with a new site are full of optimism that this new e-commerce site will change your business and bring in new customers and sales.

But in reality, most websites are not good sales tools. This is because they have spent a lot of money creating fancy graphics and flashy animations but have paid little attention to the words on the site. And it’s the content on websites that sell. Chic graphics and fancy animation may entertain your potential customers but they won’t cut the sale.

Just look at the many websites out there in cyberspace, spelling mistakes, poor grammar and chunky text that makes you want to do only one thing … move on to the next page.

SMEs really bear the burnt of this. The words appear to be cumbersome, hurriedly meshed together and desperately lacking in content.

One of America’s e-commerce gurus, Ken Evoy, says: “90 percent of websites are failing to get the order from potential customers browsing the web, because they are badly written, or style/approach is wrong.”

“Remember, people use the Net to find information. And information is contained in words, not graphics,”

It’s true; there are plenty of cool tech on the web that is fun to play with from flash to AJAX, but if you want your web site to sell, you have to think customer every step of the way. Customers want information not fancy graphics.

Isn’t a picture worth a 1000 words?

Wrong, solid compelling text is 1000 percent more important than a cool graphic. After all, when you were searching the web, were you not looking for information more than a nice graphic to look at?

Selling over the internet has 2 main factors. First, your customers are seeking you out, which is good as the leads you get are always hot. Second, there are many companies on the web fighting for your customer’s business. The moment your site lose the interest of your customer, your competitor’s page is just a click away – if your site or it’s content does not hook them, it’s over.

Whenever you want to do web sales, always remember these 2 point. You have a hot lead browsing your site, at any one click - they’re gone.

So what should an your good sales website look like? Always, keep it simple. It’s nice to have animated intros to greet the customer when they enter the site, but too long to load - they’re gone. But if it’s clean, simple and well-structured, and your potential customers get what they came to your site to look or browse for in the first place, you may have a potential sale. It doesn’t have to be fancy, complicated and most importantly, it doesn’t have to be expensive.

I am not saying your site shouldn’t look good. It’s a representation of your business and your products and services and it has to convey the image you want to present to the world. A clean, and simple site can do that. Some of world’s biggest “e-tailers” like Amazon.com, eBay or Craig list, have very simple layout and designs but they sure do bring in the dough.

So let’s get back to how you get your website to sell – it’s the words. If you want to write the content of the site yourself: First, think about what the text of your website is for. You are writing to sell. And the secret of all successful sales writing is to be like your customer.

“Web selling is about selling one customer at a time … one-to-one selling … you and the customer talking together about their needs and wants.” - Ken Evoy

A lot of startups make the mistake of building the their website into a self-praise monument. The site will do plenty of chest thumping for their company saying how wonderful they are, how well they are established and all the technicalities of the products they offer. Were you to meet a chest thumping individual in real life, you will very likely walk away, similarly for your web customer. Know this, the customer is interested in “can I get what I want by clicking here?”

So focus on the core selling points of your product or service. After every sentence you write, ask yourself as your customer: “And why should I want this?”.

Let’s imagine you are selling a new anti-ageing cream. Don’t bore your potential customer with what are the chemical compounds or the amounts of effort your research team went through to create it. Focus on the core selling points of having and using the cream. You might say something like: “Have you tried many products that just take too long to see results? AntiAge is the answer to your problem. AntiAge is allows you to see results immediately after application.”

Benefits before features.

You need to have an idea of the customer you are writing for. Imagine you are sitting in front of them with only 1 minute to tell them what your product or service can do for them.

That in a nutshell is one of the many ways you can get your website to sell for you.

By achieving this, you have already won the most difficult part of web marketing, creating compelling content to pull in the customers.

So don’t waste the amazing opportunity afforded by the internet. Make your website do the job you want it to. If you feel you don’t have the time or talent to craft compelling content on the internet, take a look at our affordable web content creation package. I am confident it will repay itself many times over.