Every year so many people try to start an online business, and nearly as many of them fail. There are many advantages to starting an online business and I’ll try to enumerate just couple of them: - you can work whenever and anywhere you want; - you don’t need to commute to work every morning; - the income potential from an online business is endless and best of all not having a boss to tell you what to do all the time.

However, even with such advantages, the vast majority of people don’t make a penny online. They aren’t serious in an online business as they would do on offline business, because they haven’t had to risk life-saving money to start their business.

In other hand, many people who start an online business don’t have a site that does what it is meant to do – to sell! If you’ve created a poor website, how do you expect it to be a success?

In this article, I’m going try to share with you the main secrets to create a site that convert and sell.

Before you start an online business, ask yourself two fundamental questions … What kind of product you want to sell? Does anybody is interested for your product?

Once you’ve got this information’s, you’re ready to start your own online business.

So now it’s time to reveal the main secrets of creating a site that convert …

Keep it as simple as possible – your site should be as simple as possible, because complicated site shouts lack of efficiency; confuses possible customers and loses peoples trust. Another important thing is by keeping your site simple will mean that your site will load quickly. If people have to wait for half an hour while your site loads then they’re going to push a "back" button.

Make it as simple as possible for people to reach the "order button" and make sure that on every page you have a link to homepage.

Don’t use too many adverts on your homepage. They’re an immediate turn off, and also slow down page speed. Take care when you use "pop ups"! They’re very annoying, and can even crash certain web browsers.

Don’t use extravagant images where they are not needed and avoid flash animation. It might look good, but your visitors will find it very annoying.

Create a good impression to your visitors - It’s absolutely crucial to create a good impression if you want your site to sell! Fraud across the net is widespread, and people are suspicious of sites offering services online. Therefore it’s absolutely necessary that visitors feel they can buy from your site in total confidence. If you gain the customers trust then your site is going to sell!

Here are some ideas to gain trust to your visitors:

Testimonials - testimonials are an invaluable way of gaining trust. If people can see what others think of your product then it gives them a pretty good reason to buy - "other people were happy, and so I will be too!" They’re gaining an opinion from an unbiased source, and the absolute best way to sell a product to someone is through a recommendation. . .

Offer a guarantee – whenever is possible give them a maximum guaranty to your customers. They will be more comfortable if they know they can return their purchase if aren’t completely satisfied.

Display your name, photo, and your email so that people know they’re dealing with a real person they can easily contact. You’d put your contact details inside a company brochure wouldn’t you? So make sure they’re on your website as well.

Answer all questions quickly; if you take five days to reply to a simple query then it sign that you are not serious business and generally untrustworthy.

Have an easy to remember domain name - Take a look at the internet; every successful site has a memorable domain name: Amazon, eBay, Google etc. So to make your online business a success, you must have a memorable domain name, relevant and above all still available

When choosing a domain name, use common sense. Long or difficult to spell domain can make people ignore your web site. Short names register better with people’s memory and are easy to remember.

If you are starting an online business selling say DVD movies, these domain names can be considered: "ultimatemovies", "bestmovies" and so one. Even if the name of your dreams has already been taken, don’t despair; try altering the format of the name; if "bestmovies" is already taken, how about "best-movies".

Another thing to consider - secure a .com extension versus a .net, .info, .org or anything else. There is nothing wrong with the other ending URL but when you have a .com ending URL, it looks like you’ve been online a long time.

Impressive headline – The headline should be eye catching and incite attention of at the first glance. There is an undeniable fact that the success of a sales page lies mostly in the headline. So the rest of the sale page is of no use, if the headline isn’t good enough to sell the product.

The customer’s benefit should be reflected and he should feel that he is directly addressed. Start with ‘you’ and not ‘we’. The customers look out for benefits when he thinks to buy a product or service.

The title should give out a positive feeling to the possible customer. Negativity should be totally excluded as it not only creates a negative impression but the mind will also be not receptive friendly.

Confidence should be reflected in the headline. Don’t include any doubtful words like if and but. Conditional phrases are a strict no. The sentence should be in present tense, instead of past or future.

Offer your visitors more – offering visitors to your site free gift, bonuses will benefit both of you. You will benefit from gaining trust, reputation, and free advertising, while your visitors will benefit from getting more from you.

Follow these principles, and you should produce a successful website.

Bottom line - the best advices I can give is to say use your common sense! Think clearly about everything that you do. Will it be useful to visitors? Does this tell the customer everything they want to know? Does that create a good impression? As a customer, would I buy from this site?

To your success online!