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SITE-SELL! Issue #007
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SITE-SELL! The World's Most USABLE E-commerce E-zine ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >A free, twice-monthly e-zine dedicated to showing you ... > ... how to MAKE YOUR SITE SELL! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ December 29, 1999 Issue #007 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SITE-SELL XPRESS NEWS... ******************** SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT ******************** For those of you who have been waiting for the printed version of MYSS!... It's ready, and it's absolutely beautiful... Suitable for reading at your leisure in the sun room... or while sitting in the bath! Take it with you on the plane... or to the cottage on the weekend. Or, as one recent reader said... "I really want to yellow-highlight MYSS! and make notes, but that really messes up the monitor!" The *REGULAR* printed price is as "ridiculously" low as the Electronic Version's price... ... only CAD$45 (US$30). In just six months, MYSS! has been proclaimed (by just about every Net marketing guru) as the best book about selling on the Net. Order now at... https://secure.sitesell.com/order.html ********** OTHER NEWS ********** 1) From the EDGE RealNames backed down on their policy of selling generic words two days after our comprehensive review of "how to get the most value for your $100 (per RealName)" appeared in our Sales from the EDGE e-zine. Selling generic words has critical ramifications for entrepreneurs who want to use RealNames. Don't miss the EDGE to read what's REALLY important in e-commerce today. The EDGE keeps MYSS! "evergreen" -- and it keeps MYSS! owners from wasting their time on all the day-to-day white noise of Internet marketing. :-) Get the EDGE now (Electronic Version, Print Version, or the Combo), while it's still free, by ordering MYSS! at its still "ridiculously" low price. https://secure.sitesell.com/order.html As one reader said... "The EDGE alone is worth the price of MYSS!." ----- 2) 5 Pillar Affiliate Program Not a member of the 5 Pillar Program yet? Better hurry. We've got several sensational new products slated for release in Q1 and Q2 2000. After that, we close the program... Nope, no new applications. As an added bonus and as a thank you to existing affiliates for making MYSS! the #1 e-commerce book on the Net, we recently gave 5 Pillar Affiliates a free Link Tracker program -- this program is BETTER than similar programs that sell elsewhere for $50 or more. Link Tracker is a vital tool for any affiliate of any program. Check it out after you join by downloading from the 5 Pillar Club. There's no cost to join... Join now at... http://www.sitesell.com/affiliateprogram.html And you'll also receive what affiliate guru Allan Gardyne has called the best manual on affiliate programs at any price. And it's FREE to 5 Pillar Affiliates. ----- 3) Put Ken to Work for You Our "Analyze This" Sweepstakes has grown to become very popular. It started after I reviewed the Web site of the Beverly Hills Hotel... http://articles.sitesell.com/bhh/ I used to accept $5,000 per day to review and strategize on Web sites. Now, I don't even have the time to accept this -- we're just too busy with major upcoming launches. But I *will* do it for you... ... *IF* you win the Sweeps. If you'd like me to analyze your site, please enter... http://www.sitesell.com/cgi-bin/contest/contestStart.pl P.S. Both the BHH article and the Sweeps are "invisible-to-the-visitor" traffic-MULTIPLYING tools for affiliates. No other company comes up with so many ways to help their affiliates build their businesses. Only affiliates know the secrets of these terrific tools. Read all about these, and other, ground-breaking techniques, in the 5 Pillar Affiliate Report, which arrives weekly in the e-mail boxes of all 5 Pillar Affiliates. ----- 4) Billion Dollar Summit I turn down about a speaking invitation per week. But this one was just too interesting to pass up. If you can afford the asking price, it promises to be the most rewarding e-vent of the year.... http://www.abraham-netrageous.com/ My topic will be "how to site-sell." Thinking about what I would say at this prestigious gathering caused me to ruminate on what I've learned about site-selling... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Site-Selling... My Thoughts after Three Years If you remember only one thing about site-selling, it's this... > *****Become your customer.***** While we focus specifically on how to make a site that sells a single product or service, "becoming your customer" is vital for every aspect of e-commerce... o developing/positioning products for Net sales o traffic-building o order fulfillment o customer support o automating your processes. ----- The Whole Enchilada... in 17 Words Recite the following 17 words as your e-commerce mantra. If they become as natural as breathing, your site will SELL! 1) Feel customer's needs. 2) Make navigation clear. 3) Load fast. 4) K-I-S-S. 5) Write actively and clearly. 6) Ask for "the order." Seriously, if you write the above 17 words on a Yellow Post-it and stick it to your monitor, you'll do just fine... Now let's push it one step further. Re-read the above 17 words. Think about them. Notice the last 5 rules/13 words? They all spring from the first rule... Feel customer's needs. If you "become your customer," you should naturally implement the last 5 rules. Easy? Nope. It's natural to lapse back into your own viewpoint. Remember this... the best way to make your site SELL! is to... Make Your Customer BUY! -----SIDEBAR----- Yes, I know - - I cheated and counted "Keep It Simple Stupid" as one word for Rule #4. C'est la vie. :-) -----SIDEBAR----- ----- Two Different Perspectives Building traffic and designing a site to SELL both benefit by putting yourself in your customers' shoes. However, I take two radically different viewpoints, depending on whether I'm working on site-selling or traffic-building... For building traffic, I picture hundreds of millions of people inside my monitor. My job is to attract the ones who have an interest in my product or service. Don't bother with the rest. To make a site that SELLS, I pretend that *I* am inside the monitor, and that I am talking to just one person at a time. Even though hundreds or thousands of people may be on the site at the same time, I write and design the site as if I am talking to *just one.* As I said... I pretend that I am inside the monitor, talking to my visitor (singular), just talking. Of course, I want to look my best... I "dress" appropriately for my target market. But after that, what I say, how I say it, and how I organize it all, will win or lose the day. It's a powerful approach that works. Here's how I discovered it... ----- A Simple Conversation Builds The Basis for Site-Selling... My background is medicine and toy design. Teaching and practicing emergency medicine became the hobby after the tenth of our 23 licensed toy/game inventions, Pooch Patrol, became a hit. -----SIDEBAR----- Full bio at http://www.sitesell.com/author.html -----SIDEBAR----- In late 1996, I "accidentally" became interested in the Internet. I had started writing a computer program for an investing strategy based upon a cynical theory about penny mining stocks. Due to time constraints, I had used the strategy infrequently. Despite that, my original $5,000 experimental stake grew by more than $150,000. But by late 1996, my strategy could not identify any strong investment candidates. So I decided to use the Internet to broaden my choice of stocks by following more markets. I gathered all my loose-strewn notes and rough database... and converted that chaos into the "ultimate penny mining stock software." Originally intended for my own use, I planned to use the software and the Internet to generate more high-potential investments. The Internet absolutely captivated me. It's the digital Wild West. Right now, everyone has the same chance to successfully market a product on the Web. After my first month on the Net, I was hooked... and not just for penny mining stock research. I realized that the Web was really the ultimate "high-density marketplace." What do I mean?... Manhattan can sustain high-niche retail stores because millions of people are on one tiny island. Well, with the Internet, you have tens-and-soon-hundreds of millions of people sitting right inside your monitor! I figured that if my "niche-investing" software product was of interest to me, it would also be of interest to others on the Web. So I said, "Let's see if it's actually possible to sell something on the Web"... At first, I thought that my investing software would be virtually impossible to sell! You will never have to sell a product as difficult-to-sell as my first Web product. Here's why... o It was in a little known investing niche -- not many people know about it. o Those who do know about it, have a negative impression about it (rightly so). o There were lots of "get rich quick" Web sites in this category -- yes, even back then! o I am an unknown in investing circles -- not only was I not Warren Buffet, I was a doctor... much worse! o I could not even permit a trial download (due to the unique nature of the niche). o I figured that I had to sell the software at a high price. Why? Because I could only sell a limited number of copies (selling too many would kill the golden goose!). All in all, not an easy task. Actually, I almost decided *not* to proceed -- PennyGold (my name for the software) was a near-impossible-to-sell project! But then I thought back to an incident that happened years before I had even heard about the Internet. I was wearing my part-time doctor's hat at the time. A patient in the clinic had a terrible migraine. I new medication called Imitrex had just been released... a true wonder drug for migraines. I had already used it a few times with great success -- patients literally left the clinic smiling within an hour! The clinic was closing, so I did not have time to administer the drug and observe the patient (since it was new, I preferred to observe patients for any side effects). However, I offered to treat him at my home He accepted, so off we went. After injecting the patient, we chatted. It turns out that he managed a mutual fund. So, of course, I started telling him about my penny mining stock strategy. As I told him about the returns, he had this polite but... ... dubious look in his eye. "I don't think you believe all this, do you?" He replied... "Ken, people tend to remember their winners and forget their losers." Without saying a word, I turned around and took a file out of my credenza. Putting it in front of him, I said... "This is every trade that I've ever made using this strategy. Take a look." When I close out a position, I staple the BUYS and SELLS together for easy future reference. So it was a snap for him to see the results. His eyes bulged as he saw... "Buy at $0.08 -- sell at $0.41. Buy at $0.12 -- sell at $0.60" And so on... His first words... "This is amazing. Let's start a fund based on this." I laughed. "No, the market is to small for a sizeable fund. Ultimately, it would not be worth your while." The point, of course, is that within 20 minutes, I converted a doubting professional investor (with a migraine) into a convert (without one!). While I was contemplating the "impossibility" of selling PennyGold via the Web, I thought back to that day and I asked myself... "Why can't I do the same thing with my Web site?" I realized that I could. The Net is an interactive medium. I should be able to reproduce what happened during that conversation on a Web site. That, dear reader, is how it all got started. And "talking to your customer" remains a key concept of how to create a Web site that SELLS. But... ----- Did the PennyGold site sell 100% of its visitors? No... far from it. In fact, it converted only 0.5 to 1% of all visitors into buyers. Experts consider that to be a great success rate, especially for such an "impossible-to-sell" product. To understand why, let's flash forward to a second pivotal conversation. This one occurred *after* I had sold out PennyGold. Yes, that "little experiment" did prove to be a success. I sold all 1,000 copies in two years, not the three that I thought it would take. There is now a waiting list for PennyGold, just in case an owner wants to sell back his license/unique serial number (he must also sign an onerous agreement to keep it totally confidential and never use the strategies again!). -----SIDEBAR----- Along the way, the "PennyGold experiment" took a major turn that I had not initially anticipated. Once PennyGold was up and running and doing well, I decided to take all my notes about Web-selling and write a book on how to do it. I figured it would only take "a month or so." Well... ... one year later, I finished Make Your Site SELL!. It has become generally accepted by most Web marketing gurus as the best resource of its kind at any price. But that's another story. :-) The following story occurred after MYSS! had grown into a substantial success -- it relates to sitesell.com, not PennyGold. -----SIDEBAR----- Back to that second pivotal conversation... One day, someone from Keynote Systems called me out of the blue. Keynote offers a service that monitors the performance of your Web host. Basically, they "hit" your Web site many times per hour from various points around the globe. If your site is down, they'll send you an alarm. They also send you a daily e-mail that tells you what percent of the time your server was up, how fast it was, and how it compared with others. If you have a serious Web business, you need an "independent monitor" like this to watch over your Web host. It's a competitive arena -- there are several, good server monitors out there. So Keynote had come up with a clever offline way to generate more business... ... telemarketing! She was, of course, pleasant. We chatted and joked a bit. She explained their services. She answered my questions. Then she reached her "closer..." "The best way, Mr. Evoy, is to see for yourself. Would you like to test our service, free? There's nothing for you to do. We'll set it all up, get it going, and monitor sitesell.com for you." Well, after some pleasant "analog" human-to-human conversation, I couldn't be a bad guy and refuse, could I? After agreeing, she took quite a bit of information about our business. And that was that. They ran the test. After I hung up, I decided to check out the site. I noticed that they offered the same trial on their Web site... Keynote http://www.keynote.com/common/freeappraisal.html > And that's when it hit me!... Suppose I was surfing the Net... I find Keynote in a search engine. So I visit their site. There's no way that I would have signed up for the free trial! "Holy mackerel! The Net is an incredibly weak selling medium." I thought about why telemarketing was so much more powerful... why it made the "sale." It all revolved around the power of human-to-human interaction... 1) It was easier to build a relationship with me -- human-to-human is still the best way to do this. I quickly became relaxed and trusting, which rarely happens when I visit a site. "Analog" conversation is warm -- "digital" conversation is cold. 2) I'm more patient on the phone than when I surf. Reading a screen is hard work -- navigating is often very user-UNfriendly. Talking on the phone is easy, user-friendly. I feel pressed when I surf -- I want to move on and visit another site -- so many sites to visit, so little time! So I'm far more likely to give up and leave a Web site at any time. 3) Compared to a Web site, a human is far more interactive. If I have a question, she answers it and then returns to where she wants me to go. If she hears doubt in my voice, she can adjust. If I'm feeling good and joking, she can join in that. But if you say a single wrong thing on a Web site, there's no recovering -- you'll lose that visitor in a nano-second. 4) A telemarketer only lets me "see" what she wants me to see at any given time. I can be kept on a path to the "closing proposition" far more easily. This is a big point. On a Web site, the whole presentation is in front of me, all at once. So... o It's easy for me to review it in the wrong order. This seriously weakens the chance of success. o If I have a question, I go to the FAQ. Once there, I see 20 other questions -- at best, this is a distraction. At worst, I may see a question that worries me enough to leave the site. o If I'm interested in the free trial, I see a long form that I have to complete -- ugh, forget it. The telemarketer only "pulled" that info out of me after I agreed to the trial... too late to back out! 5) I am considerate of her feelings (even though she does this all day and probably does not really care!). So I'm much less likely to refuse. But on a Web site... if I get bored or doubtful at any time, I simply leave! Tell me the last time that you felt guilty as you left a Web site without buying... ... heck, without even saying good-bye! No doubt about it. A Web site is far weaker than a telemarketer, when measured one-on-one. But it has several strengths that more than make up for it... 1) A Web site works for you 24 hours x 7 days per week x 365 days per year... for the cost of bandwidth! 2) It can deliver the proposition to thousands of people at a time. 3) It offers 24 x 7 x 365 x thousands of visitors for an incredibly small fraction of the cost of telemarketers. 4) The Net offers far more interactivity and immediacy than other media, like direct mail or advertising. So what's the answer? Simple... Recognize and build upon the strengths of site-selling, and minimize/work around the weaknesses. (That's really what the site-selling volume of MYSS! is all about.) Recall that first pivotal conversation? I simply talked to that fund manager across the conference table in my office. When he showed doubt, I showed him all my PennyGold trades. That's all a good site really does -- "talk to" your visitors. Don't "talk at" them. Have an interactive conversation with your visitor. But remember this -- it doesn't matter what you're selling... You are *not* really there. You can't see your visitor's face. You can't feel what she's thinking. So you have to FOREsee state of mind, objections, wishes and desires ahead of time! You have to anticipate. What's the best way to anticipate?... ----- It All Gets Easier If You... Become customer-obsessed. Remember just one thing... ... your customer. Actually, "remember" is too weak of a word -- ***BECOME*** your customer. Many copywriters just pound out the same style over and over again. Bad -- they're writing for themselves You'll do a better job if you become your customer. If you get deep, deep inside your customer's head, you'll realize that all the principles of SITE-SELLING remain the same. But your site will adapt, depending on who your customer is, and depending on how your customer responds to the benefits of your product, its price, etc. Here are a few examples of what might change... o the look and feel of your site -- that "across the table talk" might occur across a kitchen table, a laboratory counter, or a Fortune 500 conference table, depending upon your audience. o the tone of your copy -- I obviously would not choose PennyGold words-and-tone if I was selling my theory of cold fusion to nuclear physicists o the length of your site -- if you want your visitor to download a free trial of a relatively cheap piece of shareware, you might even be able to condense your site to a single page. Bottom line?... Get into your customer's head. What does she want? What are her worries? Why won't she buy? If you become your customer, this becomes easy to do. It becomes a snap to adapt everything you learn here. To paraphrase Vince Lombardi... Your customer is not everything... she's the only thing! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To learn how to build upon the strengths of selling on the Net, and how to minimize its weaknesses... Read the BIBLE of Site-selling... http://www.sitesell.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Back issues available at... >> http://www.sitesell.com/site-sell-backissues.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TO UNSUBSCRIBE To unsubscribe, go to the following URL and enter your e-mail address. If you use more than one e-mail address, be sure to enter the same one that you used when you subscribed. >> http://www.sitesell.com/unsubscribe-ss.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Written by Ken Evoy, M.D., President of SiteSell.com Inc. (c) and ™ SiteSell.com Inc. All rights reserved.