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Take these 4 steps and your website will make you more money - Guaranteed

Dear Business Professional

Many businesses, large and small, make expensive mistakes with their websites by turning them into brochures rather than salesmen. Brochures often look great - but do absolutely nothing when it comes to generating cash for your business.

The problem is that most websites TELL.

What you need is a website that SELLS.

A website that SELLS makes MONEY.  A website that tells doesn't.

Don't get me wrong, the Telling website may look stunning: tons of graphics, drop down menus, Flash animations.  Even sound. It may take a while to load but, hell, it looks the business.

Except it isn't the business.  It's just corporate flattery.

The Selling website on the other hand makes money. So there we are: two different styles, two different priorities.

Which do you want? If you want a website that Tells, click here.

To make your website SELL it needs to do just 4 things in sequence.

1. It has to get the ATTENTION of the visitor

2. It then has to INTEREST them

3. Next it has to make them DESIRE what you sell

4. Finally it has to get them to take ACTION and buy it.

This is standard sales stuff, but your site has to do this against the backdrop of how people actually behave on the internet.  It's no use designing a complex sales path online if people wander off course and click on the wrong link - because people surf fairly randomly. They click where they want on the merest whim because doing so is

• fast

• easy

• cheap

• without consequence.

HOW TO GET ATTENTION

Let's kick off with getting attention.

The fact is the best way of getting attention is to shout out your major benefit right up front with no introduction because visitors typically assess a website when they first visit it in JUST 10 SECONDS FLAT.

That is all the time you have to get their attention and keep them on your site.  The trick is to treat your website as if it were a NEWSPAPER and newspapers use

1. HEADLINES THAT GET ATTENTION

So use a headline to get your customer's attention - pack your main benefit message into your headline and you WILL get the attention of your target audience.

2. INTEREST

This is a  Secret that 98% of web designers just don't know!

To create interest, you need to develop and explore the main benefit you offer so that it begins to take on tangible value in your visitor's head.

The way to do this is to state up-front that you understand your visitor's problems.  This builds empathy and takes down the sales barriers.  It gets people engaged on a self-interested basis, not a defensive one.

Then, and only then, do you tantalise your visitor with the outline promise of a solution to their problems -  whilst leaving a lot of questions unanswered, questions that you imply you will answer if they read on.

Suddenly everything is much more personal.  Your solution is no longer a vague promise, it is something that solves a problem they have just been reminded of.  You've brought their problems to the front of their mind and offered a solution if they stay and read on - and so they will.

Now throughout your pages, you also need to keep on using headlines because even people in a hurry will read them and you can use them to draw people in almost without fail if you use the right words. I've rather shamelessly done this in the headline above where I wrote

This is a Secret that 98% of web designers just don't know!

It worked didn't it?  And it does for everyone else too so exploit this technique - but don't overdo it:

EXTRAORDINARILY POWERFUL TIPS USED ONLY BY BILLIONAIRES THAT GUARANTEE TO MAKE YOU £MILLIONS OVERNIGHT

Perhaps not!  You'd probably read on out of sheer curiosity but you wouldn't be convinced.

3. DESIRE!

Okay, so that's ATTENTION and INTEREST covered.  How the heck do you create DESIRE online?

You need simply to restate what you do in terms of what the visitor actually wants.  Let's consider a Driving Instructor.  He or she sells driving lessons but nobody really wants driving lessons, what they want is the FREEDOM that comes with being able to drive.  These are quite different things.  One is a dry academic requirement, the other is a powerful emotionally charged WANT.  A desire no less!

So how do you go about finding out what your visitor wants?  A powerful and fast technique is to think through the answer to this question:

Why do my customers want what I sell?

Once you've answered this question, start supplying the answers on your site in your headline and the rest of your pages.

Here's a small exercise: Why are you reading this? Because you want a website that will make you more money.  Now look at the headline on this page:

Take these 4 steps and your website will make you more money - Guaranteed

These words created a desire in you to read further, they tapped in to a desire you have - and offered a way of fulfilling your need.

Here's a more brochure-style heading:

Commercial Reality specialises in advising businesses how to market their products and services on the Internet.

How long would you have stayed on this site if you were greeted with that headline?  The chances are you wouldn't have read this far!

4. ACTION
The sub-plot here is Action Now!

Simplistically, with no action, you have no business.  If someone doesn't do whatever you want them to on your website - book a service, order a pizza, ring you up, send you an email, whatever, then you have FAILED.

Furthermore it is absolutely NO USE getting them to think - "Hmm, that's interesting, I'll do something about that later" because the chances are they won't. 

People are just simply too busy and they WILL FORGET.  So you need to do everything you can to make them do something immediately.  How do you do this?

• Make it super easy for them (that's why the TX24 CALLBACK service is one GREAT product).

• Point out that if they don't do it now, they will not benefit from a Special Offer etc.

• Explain that taking the next step is painless and without risk.

• Use wording that catches people's attention and triggers actions.

That's it. 

If you'd like to get more insight into these processes and pick up some in-depth tips visit the Commercial Reality home page and sign up for a free 6-part tutorial.

PS People usually need to visit a site several times before they are prepared to go to the next step with you and the best way of getting people to come back is to provide the one thing that everyone on the internet is looking for: Information.  You need to make your site rich in information about whatever it is that you do.