Well this post may be a little late for you webmaster trying to sell Valentines Gifts, but it could help any type of retail site when it comes to improving their sales. The tip is telling your visitors what your best products are, and making it easy for them to find. It’s similar to up-selling a product.

Don’t Sell a Lousy Martini

Imagine you are having dinner at a nice restaurant. You ask the waiter for a martini. He goes and gets it, you taste it,  and blah it’s awful. They used rot gut vodka that was in the well. You are used to drinking the good stuff, like Grey Goose. Who’s fault is that? The waiter doesn’t know what you like, right? I say it’s the waiters fault. He should have up-selled you by asking if you would like that martini using a premium vodka. Even if he guesses the wrong kind, it will remind you that you like Grey Goose, not rot gut well vodka. The end result if up-selled? The waiter sells more, and you get a great martini. Everyone is happy, and the good new is you can do the same thing on a web site as well.

Selling More

There are several ways to up-sell a product or service, but a great way to start off is to simply tell the visitors right away about your top  products. This corporate gifts site,  GiftTree, offers a great example of this. In their left menu on the top, you can find links to their best sellers, and their top ten gifts based on category. The homepage itself, has product thumbnails of some of those best selling products. With a gift site, it’s even more important to offer recommendations. Compared to many other retail sites where a visitor already knows what they want, the visitors in this case know they want to buy a gift, but have no clue what to get. Hand holding the visitor, and guiding them to the best purchase is essential here. They need the visitor to find a product, and find it fast to close the deal.

Tell your visitors about your best products, and sell yourself. It’s often a win form them, and is definately a win for you. Is your best product selling as you expected? Maybe you just need to do a little more up-selling.

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