Fundamentals of selling still apply online

Instant gratification is barely fast enough.

On the Internet, "if you want to sell to me, make it easy for me to buy and make it fast," said Doug Pitt, of ServiceWorld Computer Center Inc.

Speed and convenience are the watchwords.

There's an entirely different generation of people buying off the Web, said Steve Kirks, of Gabriel Communications, but "the fundamentals of selling still apply to the Web": How do you bring them in, how do you keep them in the store and how do you sell them?

Bringing them in depends on getting the word out about the site.

The site address should be on everything business cards, stationery, etc. "You do yourself a disservice not to have it on everything," Pitt said.

Online, a company's keyword choice and banner advertising can drive traffic to a com-pany's site. Metatags provide information to the search engine to associate keywords with a site, said Mike My-lenbusch, Cisco systems engineer. "Your web developer can do that for you, and I recommend having them do that."

However, the client must provide the developer with good keywords associated with what the business and the Web site are trying to accomplish, he said.

And "you can purchase higher spots on the food chain" through banner ads, Mylenbusch said.

Particularly for new sites, banner ads may be more effective than a search engine, Pitt added.

When a company buys a domain name, it also can buy others related to it. "You're not stuck with one," Pitt said.

Kirks noted that when TravelNow.com registered its Internet domain name, it registered every possible combination of words with "travel" and "now." Now they're doing "travel" and "Spain," "travel" and "Japan," etc.

You might also register names with similar spellings, Kirks said. For example, Pitt said, Bass Pro is also registered as Pro Bass.

Plurals, singulars, misspellings, all are viable domain names. Web surfers can misspell it all they want and still find the company.

After bringing people to the site, the site has to keep them there. And the things that keep them there do not necessarily have to be related to the business or the site, Pitt said.

For an example he pointed to an auto dealer site that offers a list of the top 100 campgrounds.

E-mail greeting cards are another popular item. It has nothing to do with what the site is selling. It gets them there and keeps them there.

"Don't add things that require more maintenance on your part," Pitt said. Structure things so they run on their own. "A hook, an added service, is a way to keep you on my site."

For example, one audio retailer has a forum on its front page where people can post audio questions and other audiophiles respond, Pitt said.

The site owner doesn't have to do anything.

To sell on the site, credit card transaction ability, site security and posted policies on purchases, security, returns etc. are essential, Pitt said.

It is important to track traffic on the site. Products like Web Trends will capture the information, Mylenbusch said, showing which pages are most or least popular.

The goal is to take that information and use it to improve the areas a company wants to drive traffic to.

Also, e-mail is a great source of sales. Get e-mail addresses, Mylenbusch said. E-mail is still the best way to market on the Internet.

But that means using legitimate addresses addresses provided by people who gave them to the company because they want information not mass e-mailing spam to blind addresses.

And part of good site design is that repeat visitors should not have to fill out information every time they visit.

The site should not be intrusive, Mylenbusch said. If they're going to fill out information, just have them do it one time.

Select a design company that will be able to design that into it.

Other useful tools for marketing are newsgroups, e-brochures and e-zines, Pitt added.

However, Pitt also recommended to not get too comfortable with a particular method.

If it's a good method, everyone will end up doing it, which means it's time to do something else.

"You have to keep reinventing this Web thing," he said.