Post by leunas on Nov 22, 2006 15:57:25 GMT -5
This morning I received an offer about an opportunity to get some traffic to my site. The offer was from Alexa. The sales speech and price seemed pretty okay, but there was a tiny problem with the email.
He never mentioned the website URL where I could actually buy the product
That is very a simple thing to do: remember to put a link to purchase page. The guy never mentioned it. The guy who sent me an email probably thought that I would “find my way to the offer” - but no way am I going to spend time to find that page. And I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of others who won’t bother as well. I’m not even sure if I could find that page. Same type of behavior can be found from sites selling games.
Hiding the buy button
In the past Reflexive - a great game portal and makers of some fine games - didn’t have a direct buy button (at least not one that could be easily spotted!) in their website. I once actually had to ask one friend of mine where the buy link it is located? He said that “you first need to download the game, and then the buy button is inside the game”. How some player who wants directly buy some game can know or remember that? I personally think there should be a buy link anyway - and by looking at their website today, you can see the direct buy link for each product (after clicking “more info”). When I was searching for one DVD I googled for “buy [product name] extended edition DVD”. I was actually looking for a buy link. Now, if the website misses a buy link - they probably miss some sales.
If there’s possibility to serve more customers even better, it should be done. There’s at least two major reasons why I think the buy link shouldn’t be hided:
I don’t think there’s need to put hundreds of “BUY NOW” buttons everywhere, but there should be clear ways to buy the product. There’s no need to be shamed about putting a visible link. You are doing a favor for those who actually want to buy the product. They don’t want to spend time searching for the button, they want to spend their time buying & playing your game.
www.gameproducer.net/2006/11/22/dont-hide-the-buy-button/
He never mentioned the website URL where I could actually buy the product
That is very a simple thing to do: remember to put a link to purchase page. The guy never mentioned it. The guy who sent me an email probably thought that I would “find my way to the offer” - but no way am I going to spend time to find that page. And I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of others who won’t bother as well. I’m not even sure if I could find that page. Same type of behavior can be found from sites selling games.
Hiding the buy button
In the past Reflexive - a great game portal and makers of some fine games - didn’t have a direct buy button (at least not one that could be easily spotted!) in their website. I once actually had to ask one friend of mine where the buy link it is located? He said that “you first need to download the game, and then the buy button is inside the game”. How some player who wants directly buy some game can know or remember that? I personally think there should be a buy link anyway - and by looking at their website today, you can see the direct buy link for each product (after clicking “more info”). When I was searching for one DVD I googled for “buy [product name] extended edition DVD”. I was actually looking for a buy link. Now, if the website misses a buy link - they probably miss some sales.
If there’s possibility to serve more customers even better, it should be done. There’s at least two major reasons why I think the buy link shouldn’t be hided:
- Buy button helps people find your site from google (if you use text) - those who are looking to buy certain game might use google (or some other search engine).
- It improves customer experience: if somebody wants to buy something, there should be clearly visible ways to do that.
I don’t think there’s need to put hundreds of “BUY NOW” buttons everywhere, but there should be clear ways to buy the product. There’s no need to be shamed about putting a visible link. You are doing a favor for those who actually want to buy the product. They don’t want to spend time searching for the button, they want to spend their time buying & playing your game.
www.gameproducer.net/2006/11/22/dont-hide-the-buy-button/