I've been asked to write a column about internet marketing for Scensitivity: the Journal of the National Association of Holistic Aromatherapy. I thought I'd start putting my notes together here, in hopes that some of my visitors might find them useful.

This summary represents approximately five years of research and experience in selling Essential Oils and Aromatherapy products online....with various degrees of success!

I think there are some built in difficulties in marketing a product that requires the sense of smell to evaluate quality in an environment that is strictly visual. If you sell soap, you can at least show a picture of a bar. We lack the vocabulary to truly describe olfactory sensations (ie, smells) so selling products which rely on the olfactory system for their effect is doubly difficult. But the continued existence of Nature's Gift proves that it can be done!

Why are you on the Web?

You want to sell a product! You want total strangers to find your site, and send you money...trusting that you will, in return, ship them something that will delight them.

SELLING on the web When I search on Excite.com for "Essential Oils" the search engine says there are 575,772 "hits".. over half a million pages competing for my visitors. And I suspect that if one were to search for "homemade soap" or "hand crafted body care products" the results would be similar. Why would a stranger decide to spend their money on my web site, instead of any one of the half million others?

BECAUSE I DESIGNED MY SITE TO:

Inspire confidence
Be easy to navigate (you can't buy what you can't find!)
Answer as many questions as possible
Educate the visitor
and...after all the above: SELL my products.

RESOURCES

There are long lists of "how to sell on the web" newsletters. Most of them aren't worth the bandwidth they take up. There are some online sites that offer helpful information. There are also some "online courses" that offer a money back guarantee...for several hundred dollars. They sound good. (They were written by salesmen!) I'm involved, now, in trying to get my money back from one of them.

I have found ONE source that offers a bargain priced guide to selling online that I wholeheartedly recommend.

Ken Evoy's "Make Your Site Sell" is an $18 downloadable book ($25.00 Canadian) that gives more usable information than I've found in three years of searching online. (Back when this was written, the downloadable book cost $18.) today it is FREE>

Ken offers free "sample" downloads (the table of contents and two complete chapters...a lot of useable info for free!) so you can have a taste of the information and see if it is for you. And right on Ken's page, before I even GOT to the free download, I saw a technique that I KNEW I could apply to my site. And did.

(You've seen the "our clients say" sprinkled through this site? Ken's idea. Ken's code. My adaptation!)

Found another one in the 'free sample' download chapters....

I can NOT recommend "Make Your Site Sell" highly enough to anyone running a business on the web. The free trial download has good info in it. The $17.75 (USD, it's $25 Canadian) is the BEST money I have spent on the net in a long, long time. This one is a "run, don't walk!"

UPDATE... The downloaded 'E-book' is now FREE...

Basic Rules

It's not "just because I say so"...honest. I have made all these mistakes.... Business has increased since I corrected them. Appropriate web design can and does make a difference.

NO large graphics.
I don't care if your logo is charming and beautiful and expresses the spirit of your business beautifully. If it takes more than 10 seconds to load, you'll lose your audience. Another site is just one click away. Keep your opening page, including graphics, under 20k.
No Frames!
Frames make it impossible to bookmark your site (you do want return visitors, don't you?) Frames make it very difficult to get listed on most search engines. They also drive a lot of viewers nuts.
No fancy backgrounds.
Most visitors will be viewing your page in low resolutions. Busy backgrounds are hard to read! No slowloading backgrounds ....see rule 1.
How can I find...?
Keep your site navigation simple. Make sure that every page lets the viewer know where they are, how to get back to your home page and, if your site has several different areas, how to get to them. Remember, new visitors have the inconvenient habit of arriving at your site in the middle, not always knocking on the front door.

Keep It Simple Sweetie!
Fancy Java scripts, revolving marquees, style sheets that depend on a specific browser to work, all limit the ability of the public to enjoy your site. The more "high tech" your web design, the more viewers you will eliminate. The world is full of people with old software, slow modems, and small, low-resolution monitors. Write for them!

Make it legible, not "pretty". I've seen a soapmaker's site with bubbles rising through the text on the page. Horrible example number one. Busy backgrounds make it hard to read the text describing your products. And people buy based on words, not based on graphic images.

Trading Links and WebRings?

Links to sources of interest to your potential customers can help bring you more customers. My personal philosophy is to limit the number of links leading out of my site. I work too hard to bring people here to want to send them away.
WebRings and Banner Ads? I don't THINK so! Why encourage them to leave when you want them to stay and explore? I would vastly prefer to bring people to my site with good search engine listings and by actively contributing in online forums that relate to my business interests.

It's been my experience that people following links in web-rings tend to be window shoppers, rather than serious shopping. People who are seriously planning to make a purchase are more apt to use a search engine. During the brief period of time that I participated in a soapmakers web ring, an aromatherapy web ring, and a toiletries makers web ring actual traffic (number of visitors) to my site increased, but sales volume decreased. That's the wrong direction!