Most of us have, and it’s often because we don’t trust the business or because we have questions and can’t get fast, easy answers.

Effortless Ordering
Don’t let this happen to your potential customers! Make it effortless for them to complete their purchase using your online ordering system in this simple way: make yourself accessible by including your phone and/or fax number on the top of your order page.

This way, if your customers have any questions about ordering, the presence of your phone number gives them confidence and lets them know that they can reach you if they need to.

This will boost the number of orders you get for two reasons:

Trust. We’ve all heard that there’s safety in numbers; in this case, there’s safety with numbers. More people will order online if they see a phone number, which implies that there are real people behind the website. If your customers need to reach someone, they know they can. A phone number creates a feeling of safety and security for your customers when using your online ordering system.

Some people will order over the phone but not over the internet. Many people are nervous about entering their credit card numbers online. One of my clients increased his orders by ten percent when he started taking phone orders.

Not available to take calls? No problem. You can hire an 800 number service to answer the phone for you and take the order. Or you can let voice mail take the call, and then call the customer back later.

Don't let the lack of a phone number cause you to lose sales with our online ordering system.

Taking a phone order
Let’s say a customer does call you to order your product. What do you do?

Enter it yourself on the internet! This seems obvious, but many people overlook it. They find themselves with orders scratched on pieces of paper, creating unnecessary paper work and unwanted disorganization.

So, when a customer calls to order, just open a browser window, go to your website and follow along to the order page. Once you’re there, you can fill out your customer's name, address, payment info, etc. right into the online order form, just as if the customer had done it himself/herself.

This way, you will have the client data in your online ordering system database
and the customer can start receiving your autoresponder emails automatically. This is a great strategy to keep your target customers coming back.

Remember: it's important to maintain all of your customer data in one centralized database, so that you can track your sales efficiently. No more scraps of paper!

The Numbers Game
Make the buying process smooth and easy for your customers.
Answer their questions and increase their confidence in you by playing the numbers game – in this case, include your phone and fax numbers in your online ordering system

When someone trusts your website and your products, they will not only re-purchase but will refer your site to their friends and colleagues. And as we all know, nothing beats word-of-mouth advertising!

Would you like to emphasize customer retention, customer satisfaction and referrals? Then you would do well to work with an autoresponder for soliciting feedback shortly after a customer purchases something from your site.

Autoresponders

An autoresponder for marketing is a mechanism that sends out email message(s) automatically. It can be one message or a series of messages. You specify the day the email message goes out based on the day the user first purchases your product.
For example:
'Day 0' is today,
'Day 1' is tomorrow, and
'Day 7' is a week from now.
If you already have a website business, you may already have an autoresponder series that goes out when someone makes a purchase. Why not add a message in the series that asks for feedback? Send a simple message that is very personal so that it feels like it is coming directly from you.

For example, you could send a message 14 days after the purchase that says:

—–Original Message—–
Subject: How is it going?

Hi (Customer Firstname),

I noticed that you bought my (fill in the blank)
product about two weeks ago.

How do you like the product?

Thank you,

-(Your First Name)
————————–

By doing this you will get a better response from your customers than asking directly for a testimonial.

If you get a negative response, that’s ok, too. It’s all about helping you to improve your product or service. And when you get a great response from a customer, either call or email them and ask if you can use the message in a testimonial!

An autoresponder for following up after a purchase can improve your understanding of your customer’s purchasing experience, as well as creating repeat sales and referrals.

How are visitors finding your website? If you want to increase your exposure and customer base, then this is one of the most important questions you can ask. There is no point spending money on marketing when you can't measure the results. And the more thoroughly you can discover where your visitors are coming from, the better you can focus your marketing efforts.

The best part is, it doesn't have to cost a lot - or, even, anything - to discover how visitors are getting to your site. By including a "Where did you hear about us?" field on your order form, you can get instant data on how they are finding you.

If you have the 1ShoppingCart system, you are already familiar with this feature, since it comes standard on the order form. But with this system, "How did you hear about us?" is just a textbox. Visitors have to type in an answer, and they usually don't take the time to do it. So what your visitors need is a quick, easy way to give you the feedback you're looking for.

The most effective way to garner this information is with the use of a drop-down menu. With a drop-down menu, you provide pre-made answers for your visitors. They make a quick, easy click and - voila! - they're done. My clients are finding that, since they changed from the textbox to the drop-down menu, the response rate has increased significantly.

Drop-down choices could include:
A search engine
Your newsletter
Magazine article
Banner Advert
Email announcement
A friend
Other

Marketing measurement is a great idea. Make your website all it can be by following this simple, but highly effective, marketing tip.

Multiply this one experience by all the users on the internet, and you find the sobering statistic that shopping cart abandonment takes place 59.8% of the time.

Don't let this happen to you.

In this article, we investigate one of the major variables involved in taking a sale to its conclusion: the order form.

“Am I in the right place?”
This is the question confused users ask themselves when they visit websites with poorly integrated order forms. Many website owners hire designers to build beautiful websites.

All too often, even skilled designers will drop the ball when it comes to the order page because they use a shopping cart system that is not customizable.

The visitor goes to the website, clicks to order the product, and is sent to an order page that looks nothing like the site they came from. Confused and maybe even annoyed, the visitor abandons the cart and the sale.

Customize your order form

If you have a website and you sell products or services online, then you probably have an order form that is stored on a special secure server.

When I say to customize your order form, I mean that you want to brand the order form to your website. Make sure that the look of your order form so closely matches your website that the viewer does not even notice that, when they clicked the buy link, they actually left your site.

What to Look For In A Shopping Cart?

Find a shopping cart system that moves the customer seamlessly from your website to the order form. Use one that allows you to customize the order page with your own graphics and colors, so that you can match the look and feel of your website.

For example, if the color accents on your website are red, then you make the color accents on the order form red. You want to be able to put your graphic logo at the top of the order form, not just your company name in plain text. You should have the background color or texture on your order form match exactly to your website. And so on.

When the visitor clicks on the order link and lands on your secure-server order form, they should feel confident and secure in completing their purchase. Your visitor should have no doubt that they are in the right place.

If you are interested in a trial account of the 1ShoppingCart (MarketersChoice) system with a 3 month trial membership of the Shopping Cart Club,
then just Click Here