Am I really telling you two different messages here? Not really – you need to think of offering more AND fewer options on your site. Let me explain:
You need to give FEWER options to your visitors in this way – don’t saturate them with choices! A person with too many choices won’t know which choice to make. This means – if you represent 3 companies that sell the same thing, as in automobiles, you should not offer people the choice to buy from all three. You should point out why they should buy from only one of these companies. On a different site, you should promote another of the companies by itself.
If each has a certain characteristic that makes them different from one another, point out that “if you are looking for feature X, then try clicking here for it.” Or have a pop up site come up that points this feature out when they close your site. Give them another option only IF the option is not available on the site you are promoting. If choices are the same between the 3 companies (they sell exactly the same cars at comparable pricing), it is useless to promote them together. You’ll lose sales on ALL companies.
Offer MORE choices when the features are different. If company A sells U.S. cars only, but company B sells foreign cars, and company C sells automobile accessories, then use one site to promote company A, and put a clickable choice something like this at the top menu of your page:
U.S. Cars – Foreign Cars – Car Accessories – Car Repairs – Used Cars – Car Manuals – Blue Book Online – Sell Your Car
Or use the type of wording and linking that you like, but have the links go to other areas with those choices. Link specifically to company B’s foreign car section, and directly to company C’s accessory page. A visitor may feel compelled to do all his shopping at one site, and then you might make other sales at company B or C.
Put the same linking on the other sites you build, but on the company B site, put “foreign cars” as the first link, which will lead them further down on your site page. You should direct the “U.S. cars” link to company B as well, and just forget promoting company A on that site. Company A won’t have anything different to offer than what company B offers (unless there is some difference – and in that case, make a link to point to that).
Giving more related choices adds value, and makes it possible to bookmark your site as a one-stop shopping resource for car sales.
P. Roe does website optimization work, and is working on her sites all the time – many are in number 1-10 ranking on Google and Yahoo! Subscribe to “Wise Little Tidbits” for more optimization tips. mailto:ezineshere@aol.com?WLT http://doubleii.com/webservices.htm
