Increasing sales

[adamnichols45]

Is there any special design we should try and stick to?

ie - yahoo look or amazon look etc etc

Any proven words we should use that increase sales.

[Wlauzon]

Any proven words we should use that increase sales

"Buy now - or else! (we know where you live!" seems to work well, but there might be some public relations issues.

But otherwise and for your other questions, there is nothing that works for all things.

[adamnichols45]

lol i was thinking that to. Although im going to give that a miss. cheers

[KevinC]

I would agree, in my experience there are certainly colors and color combinations that work for different products or services. You just gotta see what the other guys are doing and do it better.

[oldpro]

there is nothing that works for all things

very true...

depends on your target market and the product or service you are selling. a few years back we made major changes to our website. jazzed it up with a lot of flash and splash. big mistake, sales went down the tubes. went back to a simpler more inviting and less intimidating design and sales returned to normal.

on the other hand, if you are marketing to a younger more hip crowd a jazzed up site would probably produce better results than one that has a simple and straight forward design.

whatever design route you take...ease of navigation, effectiveness of headlines and content that establishes trust are musts for success.

[Wlauzon]

Maybe it is just us, but it seems with the proliferation of hand helds, cell phone hookups, and similar bandwidth limited things, it is back to the "leaner is meaner" concept.

In other words, for some types of sites, no flash, no huge graphics (or at least an alternative) and basically smaller pages.

[minnapple]

Make your "buy" button big to the point you dislike it's size. Keep the "buy" button above the fold.

Increase the text size of the product price up to 2x of the other text and make it red. Keep the product price above the fold.

Offer an image enlargement of the product photo and make the enlargement 4x the size of the one on the product page.
Make sure this option is VERY obvious. Keep the product picture above the fold.

Have breadcrumbs on the top and bottom of each page.

Do not cross sell lower priced items on the product page. Upsell higher priced items instead.

Have images on the upper left of the product desciption and to the lower center to right, so the viewer eyes moves through the product description and price.

State your shipping terms directly after each product description. If not the full terms, at least a qk summary and a link to the details.

[ tip: if you are not selling heavy or oversize items, flat rates increase conversions by allowing you to show price plus shipping directly on the product page. ] This decreases cart abands.