The Make Your Site Sell! 16-Point Checklist

By Ken Evoy

1. Product Quality -- Does your product solve someone’s problem, or deliver a benefit, in a high-quality way? If not, STOP -- kill this product. If yes, read on...
   
   Two extremely effective sales techniques are the free trial download (software) and the money-back guarantee. But if your product is of poor quality, these techniques will actually kill sales.
   
   Great on-site consumer testimonials are another super way to sell your product. But guess what? Bad product = zero testimonials.
   
   Everything becomes a lot easier if you are selling a great product.
   
    
2. Competition -- Consider the competition. Don’t enter a crowded field if you don’t have some kind of unique edge (for example, a unique product or a unique approach).
   
   You need more than just a strong product. It should be relatively easy for your customer to find you before your competitors (that’s tough if you have 80 competitors). And there must be a strong, unique reason to buy it from you.
   
    
3. Market Size -- Wide appeal is great, but the Internet is ideal for niche products. A specialty item that can be otherwise hard to find, particularly if it is a collectible, is a good choice.
   
   Just make sure that the target market for your product exists on the Internet in good numbers... and/or that the product is compatible with what people do on the Web.
   
   And if it’s a niche product, it should at least have a wide geographic target market. A niche product for Albanians is unlikely to succeed!
   
    
4. Promotability -- Can your product be promoted at low-or-no-cost? Once you have determined that your customer is indeed on the Web, can you reach him? While doing your competitive and market size research, did you find evidence that your target market will be able to find your type of product by entering keywords into search engines (SEs)?
   
   If not, consider one or more of the following...
   
    
   • Kill this product concept.
   • Do some more SE research to see if your product can be found.
   • Determine if your product has some extraordinary feature that allows some other highly efficient, low-cost way of building traffic to your site.
   • Jump to a test market -- testing on the Net is a lot cheaper than testing offline!

    

5. Profit Margin/Pricing -- Even though the cost of doing business on the Web is low, a product with a great profit margin is still a wonderful product to sell. If you’re selling a product with powerful benefits, you can price more aggressively than if you’re selling simple "shoppable" items like milk or books.
   
   There’s nothing like a product that you can sell high... but costs little to make!
   
    
6. Supply and Exclusivity -- If you develop your own product, you’re 100% sure of your supplier... you!
   
   Exclusivity on a product is the next best thing.
   
   Otherwise, make sure that you are protected. Is your supplier reliable? Is the price to you guaranteed? Quality guaranteed? It would be a shame to develop a successful Web business, then have the rug pulled out from under you due to lack of product control.
   
    
7. Advantage for You to Sell Via the Web? -- Evan Schwartz, in his wonderful book Webonomics, describes information-rich products as being the ideal ones for the Web. By that he means videos or software, but not Tide detergent.
   
   PennyGold is a great example. I can weave tons of good information about penny mining stocks into the selling process of PennyGold, even giving away part of the strategy in the process. But if I was selling Tide detergent, well I’m sure there’s a lot of information about the chemistry of Tide, and lots of R&D going on, but no one cares -- it’s what Schwartz calls an information-poor product.
   
   If your product is information-rich, you can develop a huge edge over any other kind of sales medium.
   
   Schwartz’s book is certainly info-rich -- I highly recommend it to anyone serious about marketing on the Web. Its principles are timeless. Webonomics.com
   
   Start writing your site towards the end of product development, not after completing it. Your Web site may bring up some practical, promotional issues that you had not considered during product development. You may need to adjust the product to help the Web site do its job. This is especially true for digital and knowledge-based goods.
   
    
8. Advantage for Customer to Buy Via Web? -- Is there an advantage to the customer to buy via the Web? For example, availability, price, convenience, or speed of delivery.
   
    
9. Sizzle Factor -- Does the product lend itself well to some marketing "sizzle." Can you build some romance into the picture?
   
    
10. Support Required? -- Is the product basically "plug and play"? If your consumer can use it immediately with no special help, this is a big plus. Otherwise, either make your product more user-friendly or prepare for tech support expenses and/or returns. Factor this in.
    
     
11. Legals/Regulations -- Make sure it’s safe and legal in every jurisdiction where you’ll be selling it. Verify that you are n ot violating any existing trademarks, at a minimum. Do your own trademark search at Thomson & Thomson...
    
    If it’s worth the money, and if you own the rights to the product, go ahead and register the trademark.
    
     
12. Cost of Transportation -- The product must be cheap to ship (as a percentage of the cost of the item). Infoproducts/software are the ultimate, obviously. Free trial downloads of software mean that you have shipped the product, free, before it’s even bought! If your product is good, the consumer will return to buy a password to release the software from its "trial" status.
    
    Can you ship your product via the Net (zero cost)?
    
     
13. Cost of Inventory -- It should be cheap to maintain inventory. Infoproducts strike again! But if you want to sell high-end bikes, maybe you can get an Internet exclusive from that snazzy Italian manufacturer. Then just arrange to ship directly from his North American or European warehouse! Hey, your inventory costs just dropped to zero!
    
     
14. Potential for Repeat Purchase? -- Your product must have the potential to develop repeat business. Once you have a customer, if you treat her well (see below), she will buy again. It’s OK to launch a business with a single product if you can sell enough of it to make money. But that single product must provide a springboard to repeat sales (ex., more soap, or software upgrades), or sales of other related products.
    
     
15. Community -- Does the product lend itself to building community? Perhaps via a newsletter? Or through a Chat Room or E-mail Discussion List?
    
     
16. "Fun" for you? -- Does selling the product give you pleasure? Your Web marketing efforts will suck a lot of your time, and will require a lot of creativity.
    
    If you enjoy it, time and creativity both come easier.
    
    If you do not feel a passion for your product, consider looking for either...
    • something else that does excite you, or
      
       
    • someone else who can get enthused about your product and market it for you. I put "fun" last, just because it’s such a special consideration that I didn’t know where to rank it! For you hard-core sales professionals, "fun" may not matter. But for the husband-and-wife team marketing a "labor of love" based on a long-time hobby, obviously "fun" should be ranked at the top.

For additional info. about this excellent resource for both 'newbies' and seasoned e-marketers, click here for Make Your Site Sell!

For additional info. about the latest ebook created by Jimmy Brown and Ryan Deiss called "How to Create Best Sellers Online", click here for subscribing an outstanding FREE eCourse.

Profits.CC welcomes your feedback. Click here and voice your opinion about this article at our discussion forum.