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The Sale Is Made Before People Get To Your Website

by Donna Maria

If you can't see the video, click here.Since I hate seeing people invest in one good thing to the" data-site="Donna Maria's Indie Business Blog">

I talk to many people who are investing a lot of resources in their websites. Since you cannot sell anything without a good website, this is a good thing. What many people don’t embrace, however, is the fact that e-commerce at a website happens after a sale is made. In other words, a sale is consummated at a website, but it’s actually made long before anyone lands on your home page.

If you can’t see the video, click here.

Since I hate seeing people invest in one good thing to the exclusion of other things that are also good and helpful, I shared my thoughts on this topic here at our FaceBook Page. It generated so many questions, comments and ideas that it prompted me to share in more detail here. This video explains it, with additional important points below.

  1. People gather information before they make a purchase. Before most people buy anything online, they use the Internet to collect information needed to help them make good purchasing decisions. Once they collect the information they need, they narrow down their options and decide where to go to make the purchase. Only then do they log onto a site with credit card in hand.

  2. People filter information through the lens of their friends. To narrow down their options, people turn to their friends. While there’s plenty of good information online to enable everyone to make informed buying decisions, the data is far more valuable when it is filtered through the lens of a trusted friend. This is where social networking comes in.

    As a small business owner, you must interconnect your blog, email newsletter and other branded media outlets (more about this here) with the social networking sites used by your customers and their friends. When you do this, you put yourself at the heart of their important conversations and buying decisions. And if you are helpful to them, they will welcome you.

    As you inform and participate in a non-sales-y manner, you will by default be enhancing their lives by helping them make wise buying decisions.

    The return on this investment comes when the people who choose to do so you end up at your shopping cart with a debit card in their hand.

  3. You have to earn the sale. Gone are the days (if they ever existed) when you can show up online with a good product and enjoy enough sales to make your business profitable. No matter how good your website is, you have to do the work to get people there. This means connecting with and engaging your target customers in ways that make a contribution to their lives on a regular basis.

    It cannot be hit or miss. You can’t show up at your FaceBook Page or your blog whenever you feel like it. You have to appear regularly to reach out to the people there and demonstrate that you are making an investment in them.

    If you don’t invest in them, why should they invest in you? Especially when they can go somewhere else to get the same or similar products and services?

Question: How do you stimulate sales before people get to your website?

If you can't see the video, click here.Since I hate seeing people invest in one good thing to the" data-site="Donna Maria's Indie Business Blog">

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Tagged as: Blogging, blogs, debit card, ecommerce, facebook, Internet, marketing, purshase, research, sales, shopping cart, small business, Social Media, Success, twitter, web 2.0, websites

posted on April 21, 2010 ·

Facebook comments:

  • http://twitter.com/SironaSprings Ruth Esteves

    I let people know what I'm up to through Facebook, my blog and Twitter. I like to show photos of what soap I've been making or experimenting with, and of the classes I teach. I hope to build some credibility and rapport with folks that are already interested in handmade soap.

  • http://www.indiebusinessblog.com Donna Maria Coles Johnson

    Ruth, that's fantastic! When people show me what they are making as they do it, it sort of makes me feel like I'm part of the process — like I'm getting a glimpse of something special. That heightens my interest, makes them memorable, and gives me more reasons to tell my friends about them and link to their pages so my friends can see too! I'm glad you teach — that makes it even easier to engage people because people always want to learn something. When I taught soapmaking classes a while back, after a class, I'd sell a ton of soap. It was a nice double whammy for me — to share something I love and earn money from the sharing and the products. And it meant I always had something to talk about. Good for you!

  • http://newenglandmultimedia.com/ Michelle Quillin

    This is an excellent post about the powerful opportunity indie businesses have to build and nurture relationships with their target audiences, Donna! Those relationships you build will make all the difference when your prospective customers are on the hunt for someone selling your products or offering your services. 

    From 1999-2009, ALL of our website and video production projects were pursued “the old fashioned way” (cold calling), except for those customers who contacted us after seeing our work elsewhere. In late 2009, we started using Twitter, Facebook, and blogging in tandem, and within months everything changed. We haven’t made one phone call or pursued one account since then, yet we’ve been so busy with ongoing projects that we now have to delegate non-business tasks we used to manage ourselves. Your work should speak for itself, but unless people know you, your work is speaking to an empty auditorium. 

    ~Michelle for New England Multimedia

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