Merchandising Your Web Site

by Brian Clark

Forget the hype about easy money from the merchants with affiliate programs. Put the big brand names in affiliate programs out of your mind. Don't worry about how you're going to turn clicks into sales. There will be plenty of time to think about those issues later -- but before you can make intelligent decisions about the options available to you, you've got to answer the question "what products would my audience be interested in?" The answer to this question comes most effectively from an analysis of the context of the relationship between your web site and its visitors.

Think Psychographics.

Sit down and make a list of everything you know about your audience. Don't just focus on the demographic aspects (such as average age, sex or profession); spend a lot of time thinking about the psychographic aspects. What is your audience thinking about when they visit your site? What urge, habit or interest brought them to your web site in the first place? What itch does your web site scratch for your visitors? Does it create fans and regular visitors, or constant stream of new passersby?

From that list, you now need to ask yourself even tougher questions -- what needs does your audience have that your site doesn't fulfill but are still closely related to the needs you do fulfill? What itches are still left unscratched? Don't slide into the "we'll be everything to everyone" planning pit -- just because everyone eats doesn't mean you should try to sell food from your stock market rumors web site. Focus on the most closely related needs and expand out from that.

Be Able to Describe Your Audience.

I'll use an old example for you -- from 1997 when we launched an online search engine positioning tool called "Rank This" (www.rankthis.com/). Online audiences generally aren't shy -- and the users of Rank This never hesitated to ask questions, report problems and seek advice for their specific circumstances. Within a few months, we had a good feel for exactly who was using the site and it differed from the people we thought we were building the site for.

They were relatively technical webmasters charged with web site promotion duties. Most of them were involved with business websites and tasks like search engine promotion were part of the duties of their "day job." Frequently, their technical expertise exceeded their promotion and marketing expertise. Most had messed up already before ever visiting us -- they'd submitted to the search engines themselves or paid someone else to do it, but couldn't find themselves in the results and didn't know what to do now. They weren't afraid to spend their company's money again if it would make it right. They used Rank This because it saved them time from doing this kind of analysis manually, and they used Rank This instead of other tools because it was free. They wished Rank This could make it even easier for them, if not automatic. Oh, and they tended to use Rank This for a long time, with average "visits" of over 12 minutes in length.

Learning to be able to describe your audience in a brief paragraph should be one of your first affiliate goals -- this kind of psychographic profile of a "typical user" is going to be your yardstick for measuring all of the affiliate program offers available to you on the Web, and your guide to which ones you're even going to investigate.

Begin Merchandising.

With this psychographic profile in hand, you can begin the task of merchandising -- a process that almost always focuses on "what products and services would interest my audience," not "what retailers might my audience buy from." Generate a list of the types of items that merchandise your web site's focus well without worrying yet about who sells them, how much they cost, what your commission rate would be or even if they exist for sale at all.

Stepping back briefly to the Rank This example, many merchandising options should be painfully obvious: any effective tools for search engine positioning and monitoring; other results-oriented online marketing services (burnt once, twice shy!); tutorial and educational materials on web site promotion and marketing. Whenever we stepped too far outside those topics (even just one step removed like "webmaster tools" or "online shopping cart software") we'd see responses plummet from outstanding (20%+ click-through rates on a sustained basis) to pretty dang crappy (less than 1% click-through rates). Our audience -- at least when they were visiting Rank This -- were obsessed with one question: "How do I get traffic to my web site?"

Search for the Right Partners.

Once you've built your little shopping list of products, then ... and only then ... is it time for you to hit the Web and look for merchant partners (heck, let's think of them as your affiliates for a moment) that can fill those niches. In most cases (save "single product companies") that means they will absolutely have to give you the ability to link directly to a product. If they don't give you that ability, look for another vendor -- you'll never be able merchandise your web site effectively without being able to focus your visitors' attention on individual products. As you poke around on the Web, you'll be amazed how many merchants (even large ones) still don't give you this basic capability.

For some types of products (especially consumer-oriented products), you'll be picking between a handful of merchants. Then let the potential merchants you've identified compete against each other. Which one gives you the best relationship terms and commission rates? Which ones have the lowest prices for your site visitors? Which ones will treat your site visitors as well as you'd treat them yourself? In other cases, especially niche and specialty products, you're more likely to only find two or three merchants to choose between and might not be able to be as picky.

Never forget it's as much what you're linking to as how you're linking to it that matters. While technique and testing of how you offer these products to your audience will still play an important role in maximizing your effectiveness as an affiliate, the groundwork for generating sales happens during your merchandising planning and product identification.




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About the Author
Brian Clark is the Producer of the revenue-sharing news and education site ReveNews.com. He is also the President of independent online production firm GMD Studios, which publishes ReveNews.com as well as a number of other online media and service brands.