As a web site owner, the sole purpose of your web site is to sell your products or services. Even though the Internet is an extremely interactive medium, it's still the words on your web site that will make or break you.

In this article we're to share a few tips on how to turn your web site into a persuasive sales machine. We'll look at a few examples, and, using the tips we outline in this article, we will also come up with a list of guidelines that you can use to write your own persuasive copywriting to sell, sell, sell!

Visitor Psychology - What's In It For Me?

Your visitor doesn't care about you. They don't care that you've spent $50,000 building the latest release of your widget. They don't care that you have a nice company logo and a neatly designed web site. Oh no. When anyone visits your web site they have one question in mind, and that question is:

"What's in it for me?"

The one and only purpose of your web site is to sell. And to make sales, you have to answer this question for each and every visitor that comes to your site. The best way to answer the "What's in it for me?" question is by relating to your potential customers through the benefits of your product.

Features VS Benefits

If your want your web site to be a 24/7 sales machine it's absolutely critical that you can translate your products list of features into benefits. Benefits sell because they appeal to peoples emotions. Features do not.

1. Keyword rich URL's
2. Built-in contact form
3. Easily add Google AdSense ad's

Pretty boring, huh? Now let's translate this list of features into benefits:

1. Keyword rich URL's: Improve your search engine ranking by including the title of your article in its web site link. It's a well known fact that all of the major search engines prefer web sites with keyword-rich links.
2. Built-in contact form: Make it easy for your web site visitors to contact you using ArticleLive's built-in contact form. No more messy "do it yourself" HTML forms!
3. Easily add Google AdSense ad's: Profit from your knowledge and writing skills by placing Google AdSense ad's alongside your articles. ArticleLive makes it easy to insert AdSense code wherever you choose.

As you can see, we've bolded the main benefit of each point. We're sure you'll agree that the benefits list makes ArticleLive sound much more appealing than the boring feature list.

Social Proof

Next time you're out and about, try this:

Walk up to a public crossing where there are a set of traffic lights. When there's no traffic (make sure you double check), walk across the road before the walking man goes green. If there are other people waiting at the crossing with you, 9 times out of 10 they will also start walking. This is an example of social proof.

Here's another example:

On a Monday or Tuesday find a relatively quiet restaurant and have lunch there. Instead of sitting inside, sit at one of their outdoor tables. Over the course of your meal I guarantee at least 5-10 people will come into the restaurant and order their lunch on what would've normally been a quiet day for that particular restaurant.

These are just 2 examples of social proof that we've have noticed when we're out and about. Social proof relies on the concept of "if he's doing it, then it must be good, so I should do it too".

The best way to implement social proof on your web site is via customer testimonials or referrals. By showing your visitors that people have already purchased and are using your products or services, you eliminate most of the pre-conceived doubt and skepticism they carry about you and your company, and believe me; everyone has doubts, even for the best of companies.

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