Your free website can make you money. Conversion is the key to success. Effective SEO will draw in visitors but how can you keep them and turn them into customers and keep them coming back for more? Knowing what makes people tick is helpful to knowing how to turn them into customers. Advertisers and marketers have been tapping into the human psyche for years in order to make the sale. You can use this knowledge along with basic Internet marketing knowledge to make your personal website an ecommerce type of website.

What Motivates People to Buy?

There are specific motives that turn visitors into customers. These motives have been used in advertising and marketing for several years. In the Smashing Magazine article, How to Use the Seven Deadly Sins to Turn Visitors into Customers, ZURB describes the Biblical Seven Deadly Sins as motivators for consumers. According to the author, pride, gluttony, sloth, envy, lust, greed and wrath all in some shape or form motivate people to act upon your offer on your business website.

• Pride is used to make visitors want to own items that people will associate with successful or important people and companies. The person who is motivated by pride will be receptive to owning the biggest and the best so that they can feel that they are connected to an important person or company.

• Gluttony is the desire for more, more, more. This is a powerful motivator and can be used to turn visitors into customers by tapping into their desires to own all they can. This is the easiest motivator to use since people that respond to gluttony already want to buy, they’re just looking for more things to get.

• Sloth plays on people’s desire for an easy way to do an act. If you can make it easy for them to buy your items with little or no effort, they will become customers. People that respond to sloth also want products that take the hard work out of their lives.

• Envy is related to pride. People that respond to envy want what you have and what other people also have. Making your items sound too good to live without is a way to use envy as a motivator. Gathering followers in social sites is a good example of envy. "I have more than you" is the common theme of people who respond to envy in advertising.

• Lust is more than just sexual desire. In marketing, lust is the desire to own things that you can’t really afford. Use lust to make your visitors want to buy your items by playing into their senses. People that respond to lust are very sensual. They respond to taste, smell, and tactile sensations. Play up the beauty of you products and their sensuality.

• Greed can be used as a motivator on your ecommerce web page by letting your visitors know that your products and services will give them power. People that are motivated by greed want power and they want more than the next person has.

• Wrath may seem like a strange motivator to get people to buy your products and services, but wrath can be used to spur activity and content. Give people a chance to vent and comment on a subject. Add a forum and blog so that people can leave comments. Everyone wants to have their side of the story heard and tapping into wrath is a way to do this.

Make It Easy for Visitors to Become Customers

Your ecommerce website needs to be easy to use. A landing page with a well-written sales pitch and links to the other parts of your free website is vital. Be sure your website is easy to navigate with a link to your landing or home page on each page of your website. Test your links to be sure none are broken, especially to pages that your products reside. Offer visitors a variety of payment options. Don’t limit yourself to nationwide shipping, offer international shipping if it is feasible for your area. An ecommerce type of website needs to be well-designed and extremely user friendly so that your visitors convert to customers and keep coming back.

Visitors should be able to access your products with just a few clicks from your home page. Once they find your products, pictures and product descriptions will give them the information they need to decide if they want to buy them or not. Quality content and easy checkout are keys to getting them to the last step of actually purchasing their selections. Avoid cart abandonment by making the process streamlined and easy to use. Use these tips to turn your free website into a money maker.