Advanced Promotional Options and Ideas

Marketing features help you increase your bottom line by selling more products. A site that is professional and well laid out helps customers make important buying decisions:

• Send This Page to a Friend This enables a customer to tell friends about your site or product by completing an online form (see Figure 6.15). An email is sent to the individual with a link to the page and a message from the sender.

  Figure 6.15. Send This Page to a Friend provides a convenient way to let customers tell their friends and family about your site.

  

• Multiple product image views Let your customers view multiple images of your product (see Figure 6.16). The default setting allows up to two product images. This is a great feature for products that come in multiple colors and for electronics; many buyers want to see the back of the product for input/output configurations.

  Figure 6.16. Multiple product image views enable you to upload multiple images of your product. It's perfect for products with multiple colors or if you need to show different angle views.

  

• You Save display Show a message and percentage of how much the customer is saving (see Figure 6.17).

  Figure 6.17. The You Save display shows the amount saved in either percentage or a dollar amount. This lets customers know exactly how much they are saving.

  

• Cross-selling Similar to the Related Items feature, cross-selling enables you to display other products the customer might be interested in (see Figure 6.18).

  Figure 6.18. Cross-selling enables you to display other products to up-sell the total order package.

  

• Random best-selling item display Randomly display best-selling or featured items. A different set of products appears every time someone comes to the site or refreshes the page (see Figure 6.19).

  Figure 6.19. A random best-selling item display shows a list of the most popular items sold at your store. This gives customers ideas of which items are hot.

  

• Recently Viewed Items section Customers can easily get back to items they were interested in or previously viewed. A list of recently viewed items is displayed at the bottom of the page (see Figure 6.20).

  Figure 6.20. A recently viewed items section shows a list of products the customer previously viewed. This enables the customer to easily navigate back to previously viewed products.

  

• Secure Shopping graphic Let your customers know that your site and their credit card transactions are safe and secure. A Secure Shopping graphic enforces that message (see Figure 6.21).

  Figure 6.21. A Secure Shopping graphic lets customers know that your site and their credit card transactions are secure and safe.

  

• Shopping cart cookie tester Test to see if customers have cookies turned off. If so, a message appears notifying them how to turn the cookies back on, or they will not be able to order from your store. This feature is standard with version 3 of Checkout Manager; no programming is required.

• Randomly displayed testimonial Randomly display testimonials from your customers. A different testimonial appears every time the page is loaded. Customers feel secure when they hear that other customers were happy with you, your products, and your services.

• Email newsletter subscription Customers can join your email newsletter by filling out an online form. Monthly email newsletters help you stay in front of your customer and new product releases and specials.