Looking for More Sales on ECrater? Don't Spend Any Time on Marketing Until You Know These 11 Things!

Over and over I see people who sell online note that they are not getting any sales and then immediately ask how they can get more traffic, assuming that more traffic will increase their sales.

If you are not getting any sales on eCrater, then you are likely missing the big picture by trying to increase traffic instead of increasing your ability to sell. You must take the time to setup your store in a manner that comes off as being dependable and professional. Fail to do so and you can get all of the page views you want and still see absolutely no sales.

So, instead of immediately setting out to get more people looking at what you have to sell, consider the following eleven points:

Words Sell.

Unless someone knows exactly what they want and it happens to be what you are selling, it is your choice of words that is going to decide whether or not you make the sale.

If you cannot convince a customer to look at your product and then tell them what kind of benefit your product will bring them, you cannot sell to anyone who is uncertain of what they want.

If you are not familiar with writing to sell, then you can drastically increase your sales by learning the basics of the art of copy writing. Both www.copywriting.com and www.copyblogger.com have some good, free information that you can use to not only get people to look at your product instead of someone else's, but to get them to buy what you are selling as well.

Your product title is an advertisement headline.

If you are selling on eCrater and people are viewing your products outside of your store, then your product is very likely to be mixed in with a lot of other peoples products.

While good keywords help to get your title viewed, failure to treat your title as an advertising headline will get your product lost in the crowd.

Rather than simply loading up a bunch of keywords, use the 90 characters you have for an eCrater title to promote the benefit that your product has to potential customers or your unique selling proposition if you have one.

If you are looking for a sweater and see "Large Brown Sofia Womens Sweater" and "Brown Sofia Womens Sweater (L) Keep warm and look great! Free Shipping!", which one would you check out first?

Your product description is your sales copy.

Once you have gotten someone to choose your product over someone else's, you still need to sell it to them, and this is where a good description will make the sale while a bad description will get them looking elsewhere.

People generally buy things to meet a want or need, so be sure to tell them how your product will benefit them and provide any customer testimonials that you can find. If you can convince them that your product will benefit them, then the last step to making a sale is to show that you are credible.

To show credibility, customer reviews and feedback can go a long ways. Whether you decide to include them in the product description or include a link where they can view actual customer comments somewhere else is up to you.

You might also consider including a link to your web site, mention a newsletter, etc. as doing so is not against the rules on eCrater and can give someone who is on the fence the nudge they need to give you a chance.

One last consideration should be to make note of any special benefit that they will get from you, if you can come up with one.

Your home text should make your store both memorable and credible.

While many people place a short description of what they sell in their home text, not very many take the time to boost their credibility, make their store memorable, or explain benefits of shopping with them rather than someone else.

With a little thought, you should be able to get your home text to do at least one of those if not all three while still letting people know the types of things you carry.
Make note of any unique selling proposition you might have, any particular benefit that your products provide, your home website address, and anything else you can think of to do these things. When telling your customer what you carry, spice it up a bit to grab their attention.

Your About Us page should establish trust and placate fears.

If someone wants to know who they are buying from, the first thing they will likely do is check your "about" page. If it is poorly written or you did not even bother to fill it in, then you have likely just lost a sale.

Use your normal voice and tell potential customers a little about your operation and perhaps yourself. Let them know where your website is, how long you have been in business, any news articles written about you, where to check you out at the B.B.B., and anything else you can think of to garner credibility.

Your Contact Us page should overcome fears.

Provide as much contact information as you feel comfortable with. If you can provide a phone number, an email address, an instant messaging address, and/or a postal address, people will generally decide that you must be reputable.

If you fail to provide any contact information, then anyone checking to see if they can contact you in case of problems will typically move on.

The Terms and Conditions page can avoid lost sales.

Use this page to tell people how you do things. Tell them how you pack and ship products, how you process returns, what your privacy policy is, and anything else that might help them to decide to shop with you.

This is also a good place to make note of any special offers and place customer testimonials related to your service if possible.

Your store logo should look professional.

Image goes a long ways towards establishing trust with most people. If you cannot put up a nice looking logo, then consider simply putting up the name of your store until you can find someone to make you a nice logo.

You might also consider providing some information on your logo such as your web address or blog address if you have one.

Your store image should look good or provide information.

Like the store logo, your store image can be important in getting people to perceive your operation as being professional. If you cannot come up with something that looks fairly nice, consider instead providing potential customers with useful information such as shipping discounts, special offers, or any unique selling proposition you might have.

Let your customers name your store categories.

Often times your customers will have either more or less knowledge of the items you sell than you do. Because of this, they may well think of them in different ways than you do.

If you can find out who your target market is, you can find out what words they typically use to refer to things and then name your categories in ways that not only increase your search rankings, but also let your customers find what they are looking for quickly.

Choosing your category names in this way will also get your customers to automatically believe you know what you are doing, lending a bit of credibility to your sales copy.

Product Images can give extra information.

Since you are allowed ten images for each eCrater product, consider using up a couple image slots that you do not need by adding small ads giving people critical information about your product such as shipping, free bonuses, etc. If you are selling antiques, you might even spend the time to dig up old advertisements that are in the public domain and include them as extra pictures as well.

Build your credibility and learn to sell before you spend money on marketing.

If you have not considered any of the above steps, perhaps you should do so. After all, if someone sees your products but you cannot convince them to buy anything, what good is more traffic?

Focus on establishing credibility and selling your products before you spend money on advertising and you might just be surprised at the results.