Today’s brides come from a very different mindset than those of even a few years ago. If you look through their posts on various forums you will see just how comfortable they are buying online. They do it everyday in their regular life and they expect to be able to do it in their wedding planning. Very few wedding professionals give them that opportunity.

In almost every specific situation I find that the problem is very basic. Their website presents their business, but never “asks for the order”. If you have ever been in sales, you have heard your sales manager to remind you to “ask for the order”. Yet very few of our websites actually do just that. As wedding professionals we create service packages and describe them very well. Offer compelling pricing. Sometimes we even have interactive functions where a site visitor can see if a particular date is available or add options and tally a new price, but we are missing the most important function. The function that actually allows them to BUY. When we get close to that part … we tell them to call us or send an email. You are building your entire online marketing to convince people to buy from you then NOT giving them a way to do it. Can you imagine Amazon’s sales if after you found the book you wanted at the price you wanted, and that it was in-stock, they told you to call them to order the book? In that situation Amazon’s sales rate would probably be about the same as most wedding professionals.

As Amazon and every other successful internet marketer knows, your website can do something very special … it can ask for the order and make a sale. Which is something that brochures, business cards, bridal guide ads, even your Goggle Adwords can’t do.

Fortunately, the cure is very simple. Just add a “shopping cart”! These services are available from third-party websites and are as easy as listing your product/service in a form on their website, adding your PayPal and then just placing a snippet of code to your webpage. My favorite shopping cart service, and the one I use, is 1ShoppingCart.com. Not only is 1ShoppingCart extremely simple they also have great sales support tools such as auto-responders, coupon and discount options and reports.

I was unconvinced of the value of a shopping cart, until Marc Fuller pointed out the incongruity of putting forth effort in internet marketing and not being able to actually being able to make an internet based sale. Now I would not want a marketing website without it having the ability to take an order. Even if the order was just for a free 20 minute initial consultation. Get the order! Make it simple and direct for today’s bride to engage your services.

Today’s bride views the internet as a natural market place, don’t try to change her … let her have it her way. And profit!

reprinted from Think Like A Bride, September 2008

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