Feature: Enhancing Sales Over The Web
Any good sales campaign achieves results by combining a number of elements including planning, targeting, presentation, negotiation and delivery. This is a straightforward process but how does it work when the Internet is your sales tool?

A good website is your perfect sales team, integrated into your business, one that follows instructions to the letter, doesn’t need to be paid a salary, never takes holidays and always work hard. It is constantly available to your existing and prospective customers and gives out a consistent corporate message. It provides brand awareness, gives detailed product information and even asks for the order and closes the deal.

So if a good website is your perfect sales team why do some websites generate a poor return on investment? There are a number of reasons why websites miss the mark. A website should be customer focused and be extremely easy to interact with. It should instil the website visitor with confidence and be easy to buy from.

The key to enhancing sales over the web is planning. Companies would only send a sales person out with the correct tools, equipped to impart information, answer questions precisely, and most importantly close the deal. They would also define the target markets, the objectives and finally the expected sales revenue. Exactly the same principles apply with a website. If you are about to commission a new website or invest in enhancing a current site one fundamental question needs to be addressed – what are the overall objectives for the website?

If you operate successfully offline you will have a good knowledge of what works for your business and this knowledge should be incorporated into your online operations. In addition this online sales team must be easy to find, when your prospective customer is looking for information. All the necessary information for customers to place the order should be made available online for example including full product details (size, weight, colour as appropriate) pricing, contact details and delivery timescales. Making your website easy to navigate and including factual and concise is critical and will encourage busy customers to access more detailed information and then to place their order.

Four key points to enhance sales over the web:

1.	Have a consistent approach to presenting information - this delivers high impact information at a glance and helps users to find their way around the site.
2.	Use a layered approach to information - so that the user can drill down into detail only when they need to.
3.	Know what you want customers to do next at each stage and make the action point obvious – for example do you want them to add an item to their shopping cart or request a detailed quotation?
4.	Make it easy to contact a real person – this increases your customer confidence when buying online.

Zarr has a wealth of experience working with companies who increase their revenue by selling online, and streamlining their business process to fulfil these increased orders. To ensure you are fully utilising your website as a sales channel call Hannah Reynolds on 01788 820900. Zarr also offers a website audit to ensure organisations are making the most of the web – click here to find out more.

Zarr Offer: Start-Up Success
Zarr is exhibiting at the forthcoming Business Start Up 2005, exhibition at the NEC on June 3rd and 4th. The exhibition is a leading event for entrepreneurs and people who want to start up or grow a small business. Zarr has a number of free tickets for the show. If you would like to visit the exhibition please give Andy a call on 01788 820900 to arrange for your free tickets.

Web Insider: A growing E-commerce Market
According to the Sunday Times on April 24, 2005 the UK e-retail industry generated £14.5 billion in revenues in 2004. Annual UK online spending is forecast to grow from £526 per head in 2004 to £666 per head in 2007.

Top Tip: Money Matters A major concern about on-line trading by individuals and companies alike is the fear of fraud. Market Research Company Ipos Reid polled 8,500 people in 16 countries and 46 percent said online credit card fraud was a “major” concern for them, while 26 percent said it was a “moderate” concern. The French were most likely to be concerned, with 63 percent citing credit card fraud on the Internet as a major concern. Despite this, less than 1 percent of respondents had experienced online fraud.

Zarr News: Innovator of the Year
At the recent Rugby Business awards Zarr won the prestigious Innovator of the Year award and was nominated for awards in four other categories. We were also pleased to be short listed to the final five companies in the highly competitive Business of the Year award. Congratulations also go to Zarr’s client, Modelenium, who are runner up in the E Commerce category of the Coventry Evening Telegraph business awards.

Case Study: U-Fit increase their sales team U-Fit is a successful manufacturing business, based in the Midlands. They manufacture doors, windows and conservatories and sell to the trade and direct to the public. U-Fit wanted to increase sales without expanding their sales force. They wanted a robust web based solution, able to take orders 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from people throughout the UK. In an industry that lacks trust they realised that they would need a professional approach and a site which visitors could rely on. The site is built around a number of product databases, each of which covers a separate product range – doors, windows and conservatories. As an example there are 100 window styles, each priced using a pricing matrix, and each window comes in a variety of colours, glass, handles and other extras. This gives a great deal of control to the visitor to select the exact product they need. Working with U-Fit Zarr designed a complete e-commerce web site using a bespoke product database based on their product matrix. The site incorporates full shopping cart and e-commerce facility to take orders and payment on-line and with tools like a recommend a friend facility, newsflash offer subscription facility and a virtual tour of the factory there’s plenty of opportunity to promote special offers and upsell to customers. The site has been in place now for 18 months and is supporting the growth of U-Fit. Within the first 8 months the site had generated £350,000. To build your sales team online call Hannah Reynolds on 01788 820900.

New Zarr Star
Zarr welcomes Paul Reynolds to the team who will be providing dedicated technical support to Zarr's customers and supporting our hosting infrastructure. Paul worked for Zarr during his University holidays 2 years ago and we welcome him back as a full time member staff now he has completed his degree in Management and Computer Science.

Coming Soon
Zarr’s June newsletter features the recipe for a successful online business.

Contact Zarr
If you are interested in finding out how your business can benefit from the latest web technology or if you need help with your online business strategy contact Zarr Internet Services on 01788 820900.

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