"The Lightning Speed Internet Sales Success Course"
          
                                  LESSON #14
          
                             © 1997 B.S.A. / F.M.
                    http://web.idirect.com/~bsa/index.htm
                       _______________________________
          
                                  THE TOPIC:
          
          How to get more people to your web site, keep them there 
          longer and get them to do the ONE thing that is the 
          crucial key to Internet profits.  
          
                                 THE ANSWER: 
          
          People will visit your web site because a) they have 
          been, in one way or another, invited to do so and b) they 
          thought it might be of some use to them. People will STAY 
          for a while if your site has indeed turned out to be 
          useful and enjoyable. The ONE crucial thing you want to 
          do when people visit your site is collect their name and 
          address as aggressively as possible. That's the short 
          answer. Now for some more detailed tactics: 
          
          a) Be the only site of your kind 
             Not usually possible, but if you can be unique, it puts
             you in a good position. Otherwise, just be better than 
             most other sites!
          
          b) Persist 
             Web success won't happen overnight. Give it a few months
             of hard work and faith.
          
          c) Invite people!  
             In other words, promote your site. You have to. People
             randomly finding your site through search engines is not
             enough to keep you in business. Use paid and free adver-
             tising strategies.
          
          d) Offer free information 
             Free disk downloads, free reports (which should be on
             your site visibly, not as file downloads) and so on give
             people a selfish reason to be at your site in the first
             place - and to stay there.

          e) Offer customer support and product information 
             No use selling something if you don't care whether it's
             any good or not. Supply product and service information
             and testimonials for both new prospects and old customers.

          f) Collect names and addresses 
             Get as much information as you can. Be more suspicious
             of people who give their address but not their email
             address or phone number. In your forms, ask for email
             address, mailing address, name, company name, and anything
             else that's pertinent to your specific market.
          
          I keep getting bolder and bolder in my name-gathering 
          strategies for our web site. This is a matter of 
          survival. It has become harder and harder to compete with 
          hundreds of thousands of new web sites being expertly 
          registered on the leading search engines. When somebody 
          DOES find our web site, we want to gather their name and 
          address immediately, unless that person is just not a 
          prospect. It's getting to the point where people don't 
          visit your web site unless you invest time and/or money 
          to promote it on a regular basis. Therefore, you must 
          force your site to generate results in the form of leads, 
          conversions and upsells.  
          
          g) Shake things up regularly 
             Nothing feels quite so good as hearing repeat visitors
             tell you they like your new site structure better than
             the old one. It shows you you're on the right track, and
             it shows you that people are coming back again!

             It's constant work, but you need to do it. Always keep
             asking yourself: what impression do I want to make and 
             what do I want people to DO as soon as they get here?

          h) Make it viewable by everybody who visits!  
             Java and Shockwave are OK if they are sub-pages within
             your site and you warn people before they click through
             to them. But your site needs to be able to do a complete
             selling job for somebody with an old browser and no
             plug-ins.
          
          Remember: The words count more than anything else!