The following 21 points are a list of clear concise guidelines that your website should follow if it is to have a purpose. The tips will help add a focus to each of your website pages and increase its sales performance.

1. Use a headline at the top of the first page

You should never create a site where your company name is right on top, unless it represents your strongest benefit to your prospects. Use your USP and a strong benefit as the headline of your site if you want to keep people interested. Spend 80% of your time on the headlines. If you can’t get people interested and excited by your websites headline, then you aren’t going to spend long on your website.

2. Don’t be proud about your logo

Don’t think your logo is going to do the job of engaging with your visitors. You need something that identifies a problem they have or which promises a benefit that you know will interest them.

3. Make sure you place a big benefit above the fold

Don’t make your visitors scroll down to read the benefit your product or service promises to deliver. Most wont bother. Make sure it appears in the first screen that appears when it loads.

4. Offer an ironclad guarantee

Nothing beats a no-quibble, full money-back guarantee for credibility. A tiny minority of your prospects might take advantage of your guarantee but many more will be persuaded to buy from you because of it. And because of the personal nature of our business you will gain the trust and most of the time become friends with your clients.

5. Focus 100% on benefits

Prospects don’t care about how long you have been in the industry or how much education and qualifications you have – in fact, they don’t really care about your products or services – only about the benefits they will bring to them. Tell them what it will do for them.

6. Bullets are a powerful way of advertising

To grab the attention of prospects and create the buying decision, use plenty of quick benefit listings

7. Make ordering as easy as possible

As well as offering a secure order form provide details for placing a phone order, fax (do people still fax?) and postal options

8. Get rid of any graphics and links that distract from the purpose of your web page

Eliminate any unnecessary links or graphics. Using to many graphics on your page will mean that it takes too long to load and visitors will give up and click somewhere else....and if there is a lot of nice things to click instead of buying then sales will be reduced

9. Think very carefully about having ads and banners

This is my pet hate… leading from the above guideline…. If you offer Google Ads or equivalent medium or a banner ad for another website then you are actively saying to your web visitors please leave my site I cannot offer you what you want.

10. Have plenty of white space

It will make you website easier to read and navigate

11. Make use of sub headings

They break up blocks of text, which makes it easier for visitors to read. Some people will only read your sub headings so try and make them tell a story

12. Check that your offer is going to make your visitors take action

Many web visitors want and expect instant gratification. Have a strong call to action

13. Communicate your USP

You’re ‘Unique Selling Point’ what is unique about your product or service? Is it better than your rivals or does it deliver the same benefits or experiences as every other product on the market? You’re copy doesn’t have to be brilliant – it just needs to highlight the benefits your product or service will give your prospects

14. Establish credibility

Before they buy from you, people must believe that you are someone they can know, like and trust. Begin by providing them a clean site with useful information. Provide information that proves your promises

15. Testimonials are one of the keys to credibility

Use every testimonial you get in your business and post them on your site. They will help persuade people to try your product or service because they’ll see that others have already taken the risk.

16. Focus your message

Your website content and its design and all the methods you use to drive traffic to your website should focus on your USP. Your prospects should be able to tell at a glance what makes your product or service different from the competitors

17. Entice prospects with a bag of free goodies

FREE items are the driving force of online marketing so make sure you give away free information (ezines, tip sheets, reports, white papers, free demos or services, free sessions or your health report etc Make sure that whatever you give away is perceived by your prospects to be of value

18. Develop a sales funnel on your site

Keep your goal in mind while you are building your website. If your goal is to attract online sales then be sure that all of your FREE products help move prospects towards a buying decision

19. Use bonuses to add value to your product

Bonuses are proven to add more sales to your product or service. Use information products as bonuses as they have a high-perceived value but don’t cost much to produce

20. Provide a feedback form

Invite feedback so people can send you their questions and their opinions

21. Test and track all your advertising

Test everything to make sure you are using the most effective sales generating copy, methods, headlines, offers, guarantees and traffic generators

There we go...straight to the point and very useful. Let me know how it goes.