These ideas are provided by Stephan Spencer from his article on “Be a converter” with MultiChannel Merchant.

Idea One – Stop talking about yourself. Business content expert Gerry McGovern says that it might be hard for you to hear this, but customers care little about your company. Customers care about themselves, their loved ones and their community, and they tend to dislike sites that are organization-centric.

Idea Two – If any of your content — including your headings and page titles — begins with the name of your organization, then your site is too self-centered. There is little question in visitors’ minds of who your company is and you’ve already got your logo at the top and links in the footer that provide more company-specific information if people really want to know. So instead of talking about yourself, talk about benefits that your visitors can understand. Use second-person speech — you, your, yours.

Idea Three – Use unique pictures. It’s frustrating for Web consumers to look around for detailed product photos, only to find that every online retailer has the same low-res stock photograph of the product they’re interested in. If you can provide unique product photographs, you’re ahead of the game. If you can offer 360-degree Flash or video perspectives of your products, even better.

Idea Four – Fewer words, smaller paragraphs. On e-commerce sites, visitors don’t read so much as they scan. They won’t spend more than 8 seconds determining the worth or worthiness of a particular Web page, and they’re highly unlikely to scroll down below the fold (the fold is the point at which content is below the initially viewable portion of the screen). So when you’re writing content, stick to the important information, present it quickly, leave no room for mystery or ambiguity, and keep it all on one page.

Idea Five – Use the active voice. Active voice narrative is much stronger and more confident than passive voice. Don’t know the difference between the two? In this sentence I am using the active voice. In this sentence, the passive voice is used.

Idea Six – Make a clear offer. Give your readers a compelling value proposition that is relevant to their needs. Don’t get too flowery with your prose — just tell people what you’ve got and what it will do for them.

Idea Seven – A call to action on every page. Every page on your site should invite visitors to do something — buy a product, download a whitepaper, sign up for a newsletter, or navigate deeper into the site. A page without an offer is a waste of time and an invitation for visitors to leave.

Idea Eight – Personalize. The more you know about your customers, the better enabled you are to provide them with custom-tailored options, recommendations, and information.

Amazon.com is a great example: If you’re signed in and you’ve bought products from Amazon in the past, the front page is custom-tailored with specific recommendations for you. Individual product pages are also customized to show you how quickly you can have something shipped to you, and to give you the ability to order with one click. Amazon makes it advantageous for visitors to stay logged in.

Photo by net_efekt