Creating Home Pages That Sell

It's obvious that the prime function of your Yahoo! store is to generate sales. The generation of that revenue starts on your home page. Because the home page is the most important piece of real estate on your site, you need to create a home page that sells.

Remember these important keys when creating a home page that sells:

• Add personality and simplicity Your page should have a personality. Like a good book cover, it should draw shoppers into your site, giving them a taste of what's to come and sense of something beneath the surface. A good book cover has a simple but enticing tagline that explains its version of a unique selling position. It has a graphic on the cover that tell the reader the book's unique tagline in pictures as well as words. Brief copy explains more of what the book is about on the back covermaybe a testimonial or two and something about the author that adds credibility to the product. A good book cover conveys a lot in a small amount of space and tempts you to open it and read further. Your home page should do the same.

• Use a simple but powerful tagline As we have said many times before, a home page has three important jobs. First, it briefly explains your unique selling position with an effective tagline. Second, it gives an immediate call to action and asks for the sale. Third, it contains some kind of email-capture mechanism that entices shoppers to give you their email addressthis could be newsletter enrollment, special offers, downloads, a contest, and so on. If you can't sell them, recruit them.

• Sell, don't entertain Your Yahoo! store is there to sell shoppers, not entertain them. Drop the spinning graphics, Flash movies, and splash pages. Stay away from animations, 3D graphics, image maps, and background sound filesthey only interfere with asking for the sale.

• Put your home page on a diet Be careful of page bloat. Your entire home page should be no larger than 45Kincluding graphics. It should be only a page. You want your home page to load fast, get your message across, and close a sale right then and there, if possible.

• Use simple navigation Keep your navigation simple and easy to understand, sparse in words and links. Keep the Rule of Seven in mind: No more than seven navigation links for your primary navigation. Any secondary links, such as Privacy Policy and Contact Us, should be text links at the bottom of each page.

Your home page is important and is there to sell. Make sure that's what it does for your Yahoo! store.

Tip: Mystery Meat Navigation

Don't get cute with your navigation graphics. Vincent Flanders, who owns Web Pages That Suck, defines Mystery Meat Navigation like this: "One popular, but horrible, design technique is based on JavaScript rollovers. It's horrible because you can't just look at the links and know where they will take you. You have to mouse over the links to find out your destinationand that's wasted effort which will probably alienate your visitor."

Shoppus Interruptus: Losing the Sale

As you are finding out, succeeding with your Yahoo! business is no easy task. First, you build your Yahoo! store; then you have to drive customers to it, merchandise your store to entice shoppers to buy your product or service, and, finally, make the sale.

You're home-free, right? Not necessarily. The curse of all shopping sites is the abandoned shopping cart. Recent studies have found that up to 75% of all online shopping carts are abandoned before the sale is completed. Imagine this: You walk unto your local grocery store and see dozens of shopping carts filled with groceries abandoned in the shopping aisles. If you were the manager of that grocery store, you would have a heart attack. But that's what it's like every day at most online stores.

All that work building, marketing, and managing your Yahoo! store, and then failing to close most of the sale. So how can you reduce the number of shopping carts that are abandoned at your storefront?

You have little choice of shopping-cart software for your Yahoo! store. Yahoo! provides it, and, as shopping carts go, it's very good. But you can do some things to help reduce the abandonment rate of shopping carts.

The most important thing to do in this case is to give shoppers all the information they need up front so that they are not surprised with unexpected costs, information, or procedures during the checkout process. Building that customer relationship by offering a good shopping experience before the sale will help reduce abandoned shopping carts during the sale.

Here's how:

• Ensure fast-loading pages Keep page bloat in mind. Sell, don't entertain, your shoppers.

• Make it easy to navigate Organize your storefront based on what the customer wants, not how your business is organized. Remember, shoppers don't give a hoot about you or your companyonly what you can do for them. Focus on helping customers understand what you are selling and leading them to make a purchase.

• Streamline checkout Keep the distance between the desire to purchase and the purchase itself at a minimum of steps. A shopper should be able to place an order with you and arrive at checkout within two to three mouse clicks. If not, the shopper might become frustrated and leave your site.

• Give clear information and instructions Make your product or service offering easy to understand. Explain all shipping and handling costs, along with any other costs necessary to complete the sale, before shoppers enter the checkout process. Have this information on the customer service pages of your storefront.

• Tell the customer whether the product is in stock Don't wait until the customer reaches checkout to say that the desired product is not in stock.

• Offer a "save" option If the shopping cart is abandoned, provide a page or pop-up window that appears before the shopper leaves your storefront, offering a way to save the sale. For example, offer a special discount, an add-on product, or free shipping if the shopper returns to the shopping cart to complete the order.

• Specify shipping costs Let your customers know how much shipping will cost before the checkout processdon't surprise them. Add a shipping calculator on the product page. The UPS OnLine Tools enable you to display rates, services, and time in transit on your checkout pages.

• Include your shipping and return policy You can provide a link or include your shipping and return policy on every product page.

• Include your contact information Customers might have questions before they place an order. Providing a phone number or even a live chat enable customers to get their questions answered immediately. You do not want customers to hesitate before placing an order.

• Testimonials and product reviews Build consumer confidence by providing feedback from other shoppers. Customers love to hear feedback and reviews from third-party sources.

• Product guarantees If you offer low-price or money-back guarantees, state this in your checkout process or product pages. Some customers might be comparison shopping and will know that you will meet or beat any advertised price.

Keep these tips in mind to reduce the rate of shopping cart abandonment at your Yahoo! store.

Other Ways to Increase Revenue

Besides earning sales, you can generate revenue in your Yahoo! store in other ways. Consider these tried-and-true ideas to be found money. First, use your everyday email communications to generate revenue.

When shoppers opt into your email newsletter, special promotions, contests, coupons, or preferred shopper club, add a special offer with the email confirmation. Special offers should be included in every autoresponder with a link to a special landing pageor, better yet, a microsite.

Don't forget the customer service emails that you send to clarify or confirm an orderor even when notifying the customer that an order has shipped. This is a perfect time to try to add onto the sale or generate a new order. Thank the customer for the order and, as a thank-you, include a special offer. This gives shoppers another reason to make a purchase.

Tip: Using Employee Email to Sell

Put a link to a special offer from your Yahoo! store at the bottom of every employee email that goes out. Again, link to a special landing page or a microsite.

Another idea using employee email is to allow employees to send exclusive offers to friends and family with special rates and discounts. This could be a good way to move overstock or outdated items in your inventory. IBM offers end-of-life products at excellent discounts to family members of employees. You also could offer special discounts during an employee-appreciation month; employees are consumers, too.

If you advertise open positions on your website, when resumes come in, respond to them with a special offer. Use an autoresponder thanking candidates for their interest in the job offering and include a special discount or coupon for your product or service. Offer them a special 10% discount to thank them for applying to your company.

Besides using email, you can sell noncompetitive products and services that complement your offerings. If you have a travel site, make a deal with a travel-accessory site and bundle your service with its product in return for a percentage of the sale. Carrying this idea further, join the affiliate programs of companies that complement what you sell. You know your shopping audience and the target market that is attracted to your storefront. Go to www.associateprograms.com (see Figure 16.1) and review the many different affiliate programs that are offered there. You should be able to find several that fit your target audience.

Figure 16.1. Associate-Programs.com lists hundreds of affiliate programs in dozens of categories.

Finally, if you have a large amount of traffic at your storefront and have a highly specialized and targeted audience, you might be able to sell advertising or sponsorship space on your storefront.