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Focus! Focus! Focus!

by: Peter Simmons

The success of your online business relies on you making sales, actually selling your product or service to paying customers. The more the better. To get those sales you need to communicate well with your potential customers and make a good sales pitch. What you say and how you say it are therefore very important and can make the difference between your business succeeding or failing.

When you sell your products and services online, you communicate largely through text. What you say in that text directly influences the customer's decision to either buy or not buy your product, in the same way that a real-world sales conversation would. Your potential customer wants to hear interesting and important information that will help them make that decision. That decision begins from the moment they arrive at your website.

Lets imagine you are looking to buy a particular product. You learn that the product is available on two different websites. You visit each site and read their text.

This is what Site A says to you in effect:

• let us tell you about us,
• here's some very basic product details we feel we should give you,
• here's an inadequate photo of the product we had lying around,
• this is why we are in business and why we think we are great,
• yeah we know we've made it difficult for you to use our site. We didn't want to make the effort to find out what our customers want,
• this is where we are located (usually accompanied by a picture of their building).

Site B says:

• yes we sell the product you are looking for. here it is...,
• let us tell you all about it,
• here's some good reasons why you should buy it immediately,
• here's some good reasons why you should buy from us (and not our competitors),
• Its easy for you to buy from us. Just do this...,
• Let us know if we can serve you better or answer any questions you may have.

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