Creating a Profitable Website Designed to Sell
1.1 What you need to start selling software or merchandise on the Internet
To promote a service or a product through a website is to promote mood, color, and feeling. This must occur quickly and repeatedly. Selling eBooks is no exception. Your website must take a very unique approach. Although, you may not design a very elaborate site for selling eBooks, it still has to be designed for success. First and foremost, it has to be functional.
Every time a reader succeeds in executing a task on the web site, your reputation is enhanced. Every time a reader is frustrated by the site, your reputation is diminished.
Tools and approaches that make marketers and advertisers succeed offline are often drawbacks on the web. The compelling image is slow to download and frustrates the impatient scan reader. The catch phrase is of little use to a reader hungry for information, which is especially true in the case of eBooks.
The conception about flashy homepages has changed. When you arrive on a home page and are met with a fancy Flash intro, you are no longer impressed. Waiting for a large image to download, your frustration would grow. Your potential customers visit your website looking for something unique and important. Anything that slows them down is an annoyance. You should portray your eBooks with accurate, well-written, up-to-date content. Many marketers and advertisers still don't understand the web. The key is to make your website as content rich as possible. Make it as simple as possible.
In this chapter, we would be discussing some of the important aspects of designing a killer website for your eBooks. If I were to list out 3 things that are an absolute requirement for your website, they would be...
• Simple, clean, a very user-friendly design
• Reliable host and domain name
• Secure and dependable payment processing system
Let us first look at some of the aspects of designing a website.
1.2 Designing a money making website
Build It for Speed
It's a fact of modern life - people are in a hurry. This means that you have between 10 and 30 seconds to capture your potential customer's attention. To minimize your load time, keep graphics small. Compress them where possible. Use flashy technology (JavaScript, Flash, Streaming Audio/Video, animation) sparingly and only if it is important to your presentation.
Target Your Market
Know who your market is and make certain that your site caters to their needs. It is critical that your site reflect the values of your potential customers. You could have a separate page for each eBook if the subject varies. Is your market for a particular eBook mostly business professionals? If so, the page must be clean and professional. Is your eBook aimed mostly at teenagers and young adults? Then your page could be more informal and relaxed. The key here is to know your market and build the site to their preferences.
Credibility Is Crucial
The most professionally designed site won't sell if your customers don't believe in you. A clear privacy statement is one way to build your credibility. Provide a prominent link to your privacy statement from every page on the site as well as from any location where you are asking your visitors for personal information. Provide legitimate contact information online. Testimonials, expert reviews, customer comments can increase the credibility of your eBooks. Use them well.
Content is King
Good content sells any product. Ask yourself the following questions. Does your copy convey the message you wish to get across to your visitors? Is it compelling? Does it lead your visitor through the sales process? Have others review, critique and edit your copy to ensure it is delivering the intended message. Always double-check your spelling and grammar.
Website Layout and Site Map
When starting to design the layout of a site, it is often a good plan to step away from the computer and sketch a layout using good old paper and pencil.
Pages should be based on a grid, with space allocated for navigation, headers and footers, body text and whatever other elements that will be repeated throughout the site. This sketch will serve as a pattern for the site's appearance and should not change very much, if at all, from page to page.
Taking this approach means you can essentially have your site designed by creating a single page that can be reused, with perhaps minor modifications, as a template for all the other pages in your site. You need to consider how the various content types of different parts of the site will be accommodated within the design and be sure that it meets the needs of all sections.
Consistency is at the heart of good web site design and this applies not just to layout but also to every aspect of a site. If there are major shifts in the appearance or color of any part of a site it will be assumed by the user to have a meaning. This is fine if you are using it to highlight information or to indicate that the user is in a different part of the site; it can be very confusing otherwise.
Besides consistency in color, positional consistency is important. Navigation bars, navigation text, location indicators, logos, footer information and so on should be in the same place on each page. The width of margins, the positioning of images, the amount of space around text and images, the positioning and style of captions for images and so on should also be consistent. All pages should be well connected and navigation should be quick and simple.
The best websites today use a single template for all the pages of a section on the website or for the entire website, if the number of pages is few. The use of ‘Frames’, however, is passé. Using a template offers the consistency to your site and helps to build a brand image of your site. The template includes the graphic design and header of your page including the main menu bars. Content is thus positioned separately from the template.
Use of a cascading style-sheet for displaying the content is another useful mechanism to ensure consistency on all pages. The style-sheet stipulates the content layout, use of font and spaces, presentation of paragraph titles, margins on the page and other parameters. These strategies that ensure consistency are important particularly in the case of eBooks. If you allot a single page for every eBook you sell, each page should be visually similar.
Increase Response Rates
In the majority of cases your visitors want information and they want it now. How beautiful your site is will not be as relevant to them as long as it loads fast, has consistent layout and makes it easy to the user to evaluate its usefulness to them. Besides, the site should contain relevant information and a clear and well defined action plan. For instance, instructions on how to buy eBooks instantly should be clearly mentioned on each page. This will improve response rates. If a visitor decides to buy an eBook, a reliable payment processing system should come into play instantly.
Design for Search Engine Optimization
When you are designing the layout always ask yourself what impact anything you plan to add to your site will have on the experience of your visitors and the capacity of search engines to efficiently index your pages. Add pages in order so that navigation through the website is consistent and progressive. Make your pages easily visible to Search Engines.
Always add a Site Map
A site map is just a simple list of web pages on your site. It gives your visitors a quick guide to what can be found there plus it's very useful to the search engine spiders. You can also use it to keep track of all eBooks on your site and see its structure and content all in one place. If your website is without a Site Map, there is every possibility that some of
your visitors might leave your website within 10 seconds failing to find what they were looking for. A Site Map also improves your chances of selling more eBooks to the same visitor. Every visitor can get an idea of what kind of books you are selling. He/She may be interested in buying more than one eBooks.
1.3 Navigation Structure
The aim of a web site's navigation is simply to allow users to get to the eBook they require. For sites that have a large number of eBooks and web pages the navigation plan has to be properly researched and designed. You have to consider different types of visitors and simulate the most common steps they would take to find what they want on your site and the navigation plan has to optimize this movement. For example the steps required from searching a catalog of eBooks, selecting from the catalog, adding them to a shopping cart, proceeding to check out, to entering the payment particulars is a specific sequence that should be facilitated by the navigation system. If the sequence is haphazard, it could lead to frustration or the user may miss an important step and you would have an aborted sale.
1.4 Site Usability and Convenience
There is no mystery to usability. It simply involves creating a site, which is accessible to the majority of people, is easy to use and get around and delivers on its promises. You can have a site that meets the most important standards of usability by planning it well and always keeping the end user in mind. Remember that web sites should not be designed for their owners - they should be designed for their users.
Problems with usability could be said to stem from just two sources: the site itself and the user. In fact the site is always at fault; if a user, however experienced or inexperienced, has problems navigating, getting information or understanding the site.
While websites have become far more complex, web users have become less rather than more experienced as more and more people go online. It is a mistake to think that the majority of users will be web or even computer savvy and will understand subtle clues about content. Most will not.
A usable site will:
• Help users achieve a goal, usually to find the eBook they are looking for
• Make it easy for them to achieve that goal
• Make it possible to achieve the goal quickly
• Make achieving that goal a pleasant experience
1.5 Building Interactivity and Personalization
Make your website interactive. Add feedback forms as well as email forms that allow your prospective customers to ask you any questions they might have pertaining to an eBook. Personalization of your website is another key element that can lead to customer delight and can increase your sales. Personalization technology provides you the analytic tools to facilitate cross selling and up selling when the customer is buying online. More on this is discussed in the section on Marketing.
It tries to restore to the online business the magic of personalized attention that is one of the chief reasons why most people still prefer in-store purchase. People still prefer to go to libraries or stores like Barnes and Noble for books. You can use personalization to match your customer with the right eBooks through either rules-based or customer analytics based processing. Thus as your software stores customer information and preferences, it can help categorize them into groups. At the same time, observations over time can suggest eBooks to cross-sell and up-sell. Thus when a person buys an eBook on Internet Marketing, a book on Ezines or Search Engines can be recommended. Amazon pioneered personalization on the net – when you a buy a book, it shows you other books in the similar genre saying “people who bought this book also bought these”, inducing you to buy more.
A consumer survey from the Personalization Consortium found that 56 percent of respondents say they are more likely to purchase from a site that allows personalization, and 63 percent are more likely to register at a site that allows it.
Personalization can lead to customer delight and can increase your sales.
1.6 Security and Firewall
Every company on the Internet today, regardless of size, requires some measure of perimeter access control (firewall). Even Microsoft, with all its in-house expertise and intricate security measures has been susceptible to outside intrusion. With the emergence of more insidious and sophisticated viruses/worms, security measures are more urgent than ever, more so for your website, which would involve a lot of transactions. Besides, proper security can also put an end to someone illegally downloading and distributing your eBooks.
There are several different options available, all of which depend on the size of your website, how much money you are willing to spend, and how important it is to your website to ensure that your information is secure. It is important to bear in mind, that there is no "silver bullet"; no absolute guarantee when it comes to Internet security that your website will be foolproof. However, there are a number of measures that can at least ensure a maximum level of security.
All firewalls act as a gateway between two networks. Generally this gateway exists between a corporate network and the Internet. The firewall is set up to let a pre- determined group of people onto the network while keeping others out.
There are 3 basic types of firewall designs. Moreover, firewalls differ greatly in terms of functionality and feature requirements. There are firewalls that are extremely flexible and configurable operating on dedicated computer systems. This type of firewall is often used by those organizations that require the ability to configure it to suit their own needs, and have the resources and personnel necessary to do so.
At the other end of the spectrum is the type of firewalls that come as part of an appliance or some other system, and that have limited configurability and flexibility. Finally there are those firewalls that are built into routers and VPNs.
One important factor in determining security requirements is the structure of your website. Obviously, very large websites with huge Internet transactions will require more sophisticated firewall solutions than the smaller websites.
1.7 Domain Name registration
In the physical world, you can distinguish a business because of its structure, window displays, or signs. You can tell that a bank is a bank, or a book store is indeed a book store.
On the Internet, however, it is an entirely different story altogether. Your domain name is the only clue to your online business. You do not have visual clues: no location, no look, and no store design. Instead, users have to type in a word or a set of words to reach your site. Your prospective visitor has no way of knowing what your site is all about until he/she finds it and reads its contents. Who can ever tell that Amazon.com sells books? Or that Excite is a search engine?
Your domain name can spell your success on the Internet. A good domain name is the best asset you can ever have. It can make your business stand out in the crowd, or just float aimlessly in space.
The need to provide immediate clues to an online business led to the prevalence of generic domain names. Generic names instantly provide the user with an idea of what a business is all about, what to expect and look for in a site. For instance, Etoys.com is a toy store.
The temptation of the generic name has been so powerful; that some companies even paid ridiculously high prices to get the name they want. The domains Loans.com and Wines.com were both bought for $3 million each. Telephone.com was acquired for $1.75 million, while Bingo.com sold for $1.1 million.
However, generic names do not necessarily create the “buzz” that you’d like surrounding your website. Branding has always been about proper names: McDonald's did not name their store Hamburger. Hertz is not called Car Rental. FedEx is not Mail Carrier. Kodak is not Photographs. Microsoft is not Computer Software.
For better branding results, your domain name should be memorable and easy to remember. Remember the following tips when creating a domain name.
• The domain name should be short
• The domain name should be simple
• It should be suggestive of your business category
• It should be unique
• It should be easy to interpret and pronounce
• It should be personalized
• It should not be difficult to spell
• It should not be difficult to remember
Domain names can be registered through many different companies (known as
"registrars") - a listing of these companies is available at ICANN: http://www.icann.org. You can register for 1 to 10 years - prices can vary anywhere from $10 to $20 per year. Most web hosting companies, will handle the registration process for you, but make sure that you are properly listed as the owner of the domain when it is registered. If you have registered a domain name for a specific period, make sure you renew it in time. You can be surprised at the number of cases, where site owners have let a domain name slip by if they have not renewed in time.
Finally, whatever you do, do not go for cheap or free domain names. There are many sites that offer free domain names. These are generally long domain names. Besides, a surfer would instantly know whether you have your own domain name or a free one, and this can spell doom for your eBook business. Some investment is always essential for any business, even if your website is only about selling eBooks. Most people would not trust your website if you have a free domain name.
1.8 Web Hosting
There are thousands of web hosting companies that claim to be the best. Choosing a web host for your website requires a lot of research. Your aim should be to select a host that offers you good value for your money – a host that is secure, reliable, and provides a range of tools for managing and maintaining your website.
The Web Hosting industry is incredibly competitive today, and they know that users are becoming increasingly sophisticated, so they have no choice but to provide their clients with better and better service, or else risk losing them to any one of the waiting pack of others.
The best way to proceed, then, is to make a list of what you require. This will most likely include the following: platform, speed, accessibility, reliability, support and service, and of course, price. Before you approach any web hosting company, you need to decide on what kind of services would you require.
Basic Requirements
A site which primarily focuses on selling eBooks would first and foremost require a very secure and safe web host as there would be a number of transactions taking place each day. Apart from this, you would also require enough space on the host server to place all your eBooks. You should also try and predict what would happen to your website in the future. How much would it grow, and how many more tools would you require?
The value of quality support may be worth more to you, or in the case of eBooks whether or not your host will provide you with a free shopping cart. I would strongly recommend a host that provides a shopping cart integrated with a reliable payment processing system. Most hosts would also help you set up a Merchant account for credit card payments. Moreover, chose a web host that offers a valid SSL security for your website. No one is going to buy from your site if it doesn’t have an SSL certificate.
It is important to get your requirements clear so that when you compare hosts you are comparing like with like.
Free Hosts – a definite No-No
Many businesses, especially if these deal with eBooks opt for free web hosting services. This is probably the greatest mistake you would make. Although, your sole purpose is only to sell eBooks, it is still imperative that you do not pick a free hosting service. Like free domain names, this would give a bad impression to your customers. Besides, free hosts are not reliable. This can cost you dearly later. Free accounts are not for anyone even half serious about doing business on the Web. Not when you can get a perfectly acceptable commercial host for as little as $10 / month.
Cost of Hosting
The cost of Web Hosting ranges anywhere from free to thousands of dollars a month for a dedicated server. However, the vast majority of people fall into the category of needing an account that will run in the ballpark of $10 to $50 per month, depending on the features you need and the options available on the particular package you choose.
Many perfectly fine packages for small businesses now run between $15 - $25 per month. Whatever the cost, check if there is a money back guarantee and what their refund policies are; whether there is a requirement to sign up for a minimum period; and if your package is scalable, meaning that upgrades will not be a problem or burden for you when the time comes.
Web Space
Space and traffic are often the basis for many Web Hosts rates, whether or not this has any basis in reality. If you have a basic site that is not several hundred pages in size, and is not going to be visited by thousands of people a day, these would not be a major worry. However, be aware of the Web Hosts' fees and penalties for exceeding basic allocations.
Also, you may need more space than what most people require depending on the number of eBooks you sell. Check out all packages offered by various hosts and figure out which provides you with maximum benefit.
Email Accounts
This is an often underrated feature of Web Hosting Packages, since emails are essentially the lifeblood of an online business. Be sure that your package contains enough emails and aliases for your business, preferably an unlimited number of both. This is one way hosts make their money, that is, by charging a few dollars for each additional account once you realize you need more than say 5 accounts.
Customer Support
One of the most frequent, and justified, complaints that many people have with their Web Host is lack of customer and technical support.
Many Web Hosts offer both email and phone support while others are available only via email. In most cases, email support is fine, but you should be wary if a potential Web Host has no telephone number available in case of an emergency, or in the event you need to speak with someone directly.
Response times to support questions vary widely from Host to Host. Some may take only a few minutes to get back to you while others take days or longer. It is important to find out what type of support any potential Web Host offers. Ask around. References are always a good way to judge a host's performance. And send a test email asking them unresolved questions you may still have.
If at all possible, only choose a host that provides prompt and knowledgeable customer service. A competent host should offer 24/7 toll-free technical support provided by experienced, professionally trained technicians.
Unlimited FTP access
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a method of transferring files to your server. It is highly recommended that you shop for unlimited, 24 hour FTP access. Access to your control panel to enable management of your site is important.
Statistics and Tracking
Several hosts offer some type of statistics package. It is much easier to use the package they provide rather than trying to install one yourself - not to mention it's usually less expensive as well. Statistics show you the number of visitors that have accessed your site, showing where they came from (IP address), when, what pages they visited, duration of their stay at any page and so on. These are extremely important in analyzing the success of your marketing campaigns. It is highly recommended that you chose a host that offers a comprehensive statistics package.
Set aside a good block of time to invest in choosing the right Web Host for your site. It will be time well-spent. In the end, choosing the right Web Host really depends on your individual needs. We have discussed all the recommended needs for a website that sells eBooks. If you follow the guidelines given above you should have no problems with your web host.
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