“Would You Like Fries With That?”

The concept of add-on sales is nothing new. A customer comes in wanting a mask and leaves with a mask, snorkel, de-fog, comfort strap and protective case — and is glad you helped protect his investment. The add-on sale has a corollary in web design. It’s this:

The customer comes to your website looking for an answer to a specific question. He finds the answer he is looking for and, in the process, finds a link to information pertaining to a class, trip, activity or equipment item that you’ve put there to entice him to remain on the website longer than it takes to just get the information he was originally seeking.

Just as there is a direct relationship between the amount of time customers spend in your store and how much they buy, there is a relationship between how long people spend on your website and how much the ultimately purchase. Therefore, you not only want to get people to come to your website, you want them to stay a while.

The way our sample site does this is to have one or more promotional buttons that appear on the right-hand side of each page. These buttons are designed to get visitors to learn more about something that most likely wasn’t why they originally came to your website. When visitors spend additional time on your website, it’s like making an add-on sale at the counter. See example.

The promotional buttons on the sample website are designed to be updated globally on a regular basis. This means that a few simple changes are reflected across the entire site, without having to re-code each of the 200+ pages. (Let’s face it: The easier it is to update your site, the more likely you will be to do it.)

Complex Navigation Made Easy »

::: TOP ::: SUBSCRIBE ::: CONTACT US ::: ABOUT US :::