12 Web Site Must Haves

Necessary Web Functionality to close more sales

1. Information Forum- give your clients a chance to ask questions, receive information on your product and upcoming promotions, and create a real interactive way to get consumer data.

2. Live Chat- This is more mainstream now and almost a necessity. It is a great way to engage customers who are on your website NOW. It requires having a customer service rep, but is a great way to engage the Information Now client who may have a question.

3. Free Web Offers - This drives your web business and is key to online merchandisers who don't have brick and mortar locations. Create excitement and traffic to your website. This also means that your website and product need to be good enough to create repeat business from web offers.

4. Video - You tube channels are free and a great way to reach the general public. Viral videos can produce a million hits within a few days. You can also use video to demonstrate product or service use to clients who are more audio and visually stimulated people.

5. Client Login - Locks them in as a client and allows them value for being a repeat customer because they won't have to input data again.

6. One to One Marketing - Try and create marketing specific to your client. Amazon does a great job at this with suggested items before checkout.

7. Contact info on every page - Customers need to know how to contact you

8. Contact Us - Again the more ways to contact you Immediately the better.

9. E-mail Marketing - Great way to drum up business from current and past clients as well as from niche areas. Needs to involve Scarcity, Urgency, and Real Value to generate more leads to the website.

10. Toll Free Number - More ways to contact you the better

11. Online Payment Processing - Self explanatory and required for any merchandising company

12. Social Media Access (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)- need to have consistent content on all of these FREE sites. There is no reason not to promote your product on these avenues. It needs to be consistent, you can't slack on Twitter or Blog posts, people will eventually subscribe if you consistently provide value and information about your product.