Increase Sales by Displaying an Incentive Calculator
on Your Sales Page
By
William
Bontrager
Does your sales page print
cost/profit ratios or other numbers to show prospective customer how much
they could gain from purchase of your product or service?
Might your sales improve from publishing such numbers?
This article reveals a method that may be many times more effective than
the mere publishing of numbers. It's a calculator allowing prospective customers
to estimate number of sales and/or other factors. They then click a button
for the total profit or other benefits calculated from their own estimates,
which can be sufficient incentive to buy.
Allow prospects to sell themselves.
Yes, publish tables and formulas with representative or example numbers.
But also provide the calculator to let prospective customers see results
using their own estimates based on their perception of their own potential
or ability.
Those with greed or gambling tendencies may overestimate their ability to
perform, and the resulting calculations can sell them. Those who understand
their own abilities may estimate closer to their actual potential, and the
resulting calculations can convince them of the viability of your offer --
provided your product/service has actual profit potential, of course.
The example and the working JavaScript calculator used in this article are
for a new professional book "print on demand" (POD) service offered by a
client and friend of ours. The example calculator on the demo page, where
you can also obtain the source code, is at
http://willmaster.com/a/19/pl.pl?demo193
If you have a book you want to print and sell, know that the numbers in the
example calculator are real. It can be convincing, even without knowing anything
about the printed books' quality, their binding, or anything else about the
service.
(I can't guarantee the prices won't change, of course, because the POD service
isn't our own. To those who might read this in the future, the prices were
correct when the article was first published and the JavaScript first
developed.)
The following is a section describing how the incentive calculator works,
using as example a calculator created for a real-world web site, a POD service.
A few other examples of use that the incentive calculator might be customized
for are listed below the tutorial section. You'll think of more uses.
The description of how it works is designed to provide information sufficient
for a moderately-skilled JavaScript programmer to modify the calculator to
meet other sites' requirements.
How It Works
The example incentive calculator, along with links to download the complete
source code, is at
http://willmaster.com/a/19/pl.pl?demo193
The JavaScript code may be either in the HEAD area of the page or in the
BODY area of the page above the form.
The Form --
You'll notice that the form has three fields for the prospective customer
to enter data into, a set of radio buttons, and three fields within which
to print calculation results.
In order to do the calculation, the form needs a name. In the example, we
use name="incentivecalc"
The three fields for the prospective customer to enter data into are:
1. name="pages"
The number of book pages is entered here. This is a
"print on demand" service and part of the book cost
is based on the number of pages.
2. name="retail"
The retail price of the book.
3. name="copies"
The number of books the prospective customer
estimates will be sold.
From those three items, the value
of the three results fields can be calculated:
1. name="sales"
This field will contain the total sales, retail
multiplied by copies.
2. name="cost"
This will contain the total cost, the cost of
one book (calculated using the number of pages)
multiplied by copies.
3. name="profit"
The profit field contains the result of subtracting
cost from sales.
In the source code, notice the READONLY
attribute in the input tags for the three fields that contain the calculated
results. Most browsers will not allow a user to type information into form
fields with that attribute. But JavaScript can change the field's value.
The radio buttons in the form demonstrate versatility that may be built into
an incentive calculator.
The top button causes the cost of each book to be the actual printing
charge.
The bottom button causes the cost of each book to be the printing charge
plus cost of order fulfillment, which includes everything that needs to be
done to print the book and deliver it to the customer.
The form button has an onClick="CalculateProfit();" attribute. When this
button is clicked, calculation occurs.
The JavaScript and Building Your Own --
Detailed descriptions of the JavaScript code and a couple paragraphs on how
to go about building your own incentive calculator are embedded as an HTML
comment in the source code.
Other Examples of Use
The calculator can be customized to:
~~ Calculate the number of extra visitors at the end
of a certain time period if __% recommend the site
and __% of those recommended then also recommend
the site to their own friends. Let the user type
in the current number of visitors per day and the
two percentages.
~~ Calculate example monthly check amounts for
two-level affiliate commissions. Let the user
type in the number of personal sales, the number
of second-level affiliates, and the average number
of sales by those affiliates.
~~ Let the user type in the number of miles s/he
drives in a given year, the price of gas/petrol,
and the consumption rate per mile/kilometer to
calculate an estimate of the total savings after
installing your mechanical fuel saver device. A
display of before and after fuel cost might provide
additional incentive.
Those are just a few examples. Your
own business may suggest ways you could use the idea.
Will Bontrager
About the Author:
William
Bontrager Programmer/Publisher, "WillMaster Possibilities"
ezine
mailto:possibilities@willmaster.com
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