The internet is an incredibly competitive place, and there are so many different areas that you need to manage to keep ahead of the competition. With Google’s preference for long-standing brands and the selling of top result search engine space, the process of increasing your presence online gets even more difficult.
To increase the appeal of your online service, you’ll need to be able to capture the attention of anyone who gets to your site, and then ensure that there’s enough on offer to seal their custom.
Here, we’re going through a few relatively easy features that you can implement to increase the appeal of your online service to help improve your sales.
You can’t sell in person, so you’ll have to do it through text
Particularly when you’re trying to sell your services, the copy on your website has to do a lot of the legwork. You’re not there in person to make the sale, so the text on the screen has to do so, which is quite challenging to achieve.
One of the best ways to accomplish this is to relay that you understand the customer’s needs and even go as far as directly answering potential questions.
One of the best sites to showcase this is First Round. First Round poses and answers all of the questions that you could have about their service.
They run through questions about timing, their decision-making process, the investment process, terms, and the experience of working with them as a company. It’s all clearly shown on their homepage, making for easy and helpful reading.
People trust others’ opinions, even online
Reviews have become the go-to source for a business credibility and value to customers. As much as there is a definite skew on many review sites towards the negative, as people are more compelled to report a negative experience than a positive experience, they are still trusted as a quick and easy resource.
However, you don’t need to have an extensive and open review system available a few honest reviews from real clients can do the trick.
A great example of a powerful yet straightforward use of testimonials can be found at Duct Tape Marketing, who have selected, depicted, and named two customers alongside their testimonials.
It takes up only a small section of the homepage scroll, and yet the testimonials are long enough to relay a lot of helpful and convincing information. The use of the customers’ faces, names, and roles certainly help to reinforce the section as a selling tool.
Consider integrating a method of offering something for free
If there’s one sales technique that has been proven to work on land and online, it’s offering something for free. It could be a free item with a sale, or the ability to perform an action which usually costs money for free.
With the ability to use a service, or part of a service for free, people are encouraged to try it as it is risk-free. They have nothing to lose, and they’re already on the site, so they may as well take up the free offer.
Some online services have converted to offering their primary service for free. Trussle will give you free advice on your mortgage, which is the second line on the homepage. It also states how much you can save by using their free service, immediately switching the offer from just being free to having tangible value.
So, it’s not just a free service offer, it’s also a money-saving offer, giving it two counts of appeal to potential customers.
Enhance the appeal of your online service by upgrading your copy, infuse some helpful customer testimonials, and see if you can showcase a free part of your offering.
