Tips and articles
AIDA on the web?
No, nothing to do with opera. Just applying some well-known sales techniques
to web sites.
If you've been on ANY selling course, you should know that AIDA stands
for
Attention
Interest
Desire
Action
and these are the 4 stages in a sales meeting. You must get the prospect's
ATTENTION, keep their INTEREST, arouse their DESIRE for what you are selling,
and finally get them to ACT in the way that you want them to.
The same applies to web sites. Your Home Page must stand out well enough
to get folk's ATTENTION. That means that it should be fast loading, and
it should immediately convey what's on the site.
Keeping your visitor's INTEREST is achieved by having content that is genuinely
useful to your prospects - not just a sales pitch and a description of
what you are selling. Free information is the currency of the Internet,
so make sure you hand out a lot!
Arousing their DESIRE for what you are selling means the ability to satisfy
those desires quickly. If you are selling directly off the site, you MUST
be able to accept credit cards and to process them online. I tried to order
some wine recently from one online retailer. I went right through the selection
process, choosing my wines, only to be told at the end that they would
phone me for my credit card details. Result - no sale for them!
If you are not selling directly, but are aiming to generate sales leads,
make sure that you can respond quickly to enquiries. Use autoresponders
to send standard information. Respond to emails promptly. And there are
even services which allow web site visitors to click on a button and get
you to phone them right away.
Finally, you must get your visitor to ACT. Make it easy for them. Use good
virtual shopping trolley software. Put an email link on every page. Have
easy-to-use contact forms with check boxes and pull-down choices. And yes,
I HAVE seen some commercial web sites with NO way of contacting the business!
About the Author
Ian Traynor is Senior Partner at Traynor Kitching & Associates, a
York, England marketing consultancy offering online and offline marketing
and sales advice. You may E-mail him at Ian.Traynor@tka.co.uk
October 1999
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