Articles
Getting $$$ Out Of Your Website
Everybody wants to have a website. It is just good clean fun. However, if you want your website to generate cash, the fun quickly disappears as it is replaced by that phenomenon called work. If you sell a product, whether it is a CD, your used book collection, or a litter of puppies, you should have a website designed around selling that product.
Many of us are either design or sales challenged, especially me. I have done what I can to design my website around a few key selling points to market my CD, Queenie. I have seen my sales increase dramatically since redesigning my site in early January of 2004, and the current purple redesign utilizes the power of CSS Style Sheets. Of course I want to share the advice that got me a ton more traffic around the world, plus surges in CD sales.
Tip 1 – Modesty is a wonderful thing, in other words, don’t Flash your customers
The truth hurts. A totally Flash based site is still a nearly sure way to drive customers away from your site. The first mistake is the beloved Flash intro. I have a fast computer because I am a computer ADDICT running multiple PCs and Macs. Most people are not computer geeks! Flash intros clog up AOL and Earthlink faster than you can say, “dial-up.” Yet it amazes me how the big “superstar sites” of music are saturated with lavishly designed Flash movie intros that even take my computers a minute or two to load. A little Flash is great though, just confine it to assets like music players, short movies embedded in your site, and photo galleries, stuff like that. Case in point: a good indie friend of mine has a Flash-based website that I CANNOT view on my Macs, which all run Safari. Major Label artists almost always have Flash-based sites. File the Flash Website under Reason No. 5782 Why Major Label Artist CD Sales are Declining at a Rate of 5-7% Per Year.
Tip 2 – All roads point to product
Make it redundantly, pathetically, moronically easy to get to your product. Put a link to the “purchasing” part of your site on every page 2-3 times. Make it virtually impossible to miss. If it is something for sale on eBay, then put a link to the eBay listing right in the middle of the index page. One of the reasons I chose CDBaby as my CD retailer was because they make it ridiculously easy for customers to buy CDs. They can and do ship my CDs anywhere on the Earth, including Japan, and reliably. My future plans include extending my site with versions in German, Spanish, and French as I have a great deal of listeners overseas. Don’t you think that a German person would rather buy a CD from an online store that is completely in the German language and accepts Euros instead of American dollars?
Tip 3 – Go into detail
And another thing—go into detail! People want to read about what they are buying. They want to know they are getting something good. They can be told through pictures, which truly are worth a thousand words, depending on what you are selling. Words help, too, as I would have to know a lot about an independent artist CD before considering buying it. Reviews are nice. Previews are much better.
Tip 4 – Get your own domain name
It is worth the $15.00 per year, trust me!!! Having your own domain name looks more professional, makes your site easier to find, and makes your site more visible to web robots. Even if you are a very small time operation, at least buy your name or the name of your online store.
Tip 5 – Expand your repertoire
Shoppers love variety. I go to my favorite sushi restaurant and I like the idea of being able to order any one of 97 zillion different types of seaweed roll, even if I do somehow get the same thing every single time. I have not practiced this tip very well as I have only one CD, but I plan on offering a variety of stuff in the future for sale on my site. If you are a band, sell mini-CD singles of your songs, T-shirts, buttons, swag. One great service that will do almost every type of merchandise swag for you is http://www.cafepress.com as long as you upload the correct 300dpi resolution files. I don't sell a lot of merchandise because I'm so busy, but you should!
Above all, the best thing you can do to sell more stuff is to make life simpler and easier for your customers. Think of yourself and the way you buy things online and go from there. Then think of what your friends buy online and what sites are attractive to them and why. And never, ever spam people. Happy selling!
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