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The aim of a sales page on a website is to give your customers only two options; buy your product or leave your website. Why let them leave without giving yourself another chance to sell to them? You don't have to... You can set up a system which will give you many opportunities to sell your product or service to each single visitor to your sales page.

The secret is to use what is known as an autoresponder which is an email utility you can use to save the contact details of your visitors and then to send them emails at set intervals.

To make use of an autoresponder you can either use the services of a third party supplier or you can purchase and install a script onto your website. To begin with it's a lot easier to use a third party autoresponder.

Irrespective of whether you use a third party service or your own script, you will have to use a form to capture your visitors contact details. This form can be built into any HTML web page be it your sales page, or a page designed specifically for use as a popup.

The underlying concept behind the use of autoresponders is that people rarely buy on their first visit to a website. Research has shown that most people need repeated contact with an advertising message before they respond to it and purchase the product or service.

Autoresponders were designed for just this. You can load a series of advertising messages into your autoresponder and adjust it to send the messages at set intervals. That said, people react badly to advertising; in fact most people just plain ignore advertisements.

To get round this, you have to design your email series so that it is not perceived to be advertising. A good way to do this is to design your email series to include plenty of useful information; give your subscribers some good quality free information in each email and weave your advertisement into it.

For example, let's assume you are selling an e-book titled "101 Dieting Tips". You could create a series of 7 emails, each containing a single dieting tip. At the end of each email you could inform the reader of your e-book containing 101 tips and include a link to your sales page.

The bottom line is the content you include in your email series must be of very high quality; after all you are going to ask for somebody's contact details in exchange for it.

Bear in mind nobody is going to sign up for your email series just you write it, or you include good content. In truth visitors to your website aren't interested in you, they are interested in themselves. They have a problem they are trying to solve, and that's why they ended up on your website; they thought they could find a solution there.

Another point worth considering is you are a relative unknown to the person visiting your website; they don't know you or trust you. It's because of this distrust that many people won't buy your product or service on their first visit. If you can get them to subscribe, your email series should build up their trust to the point where they will buy your product or service.

First you have to get them to subscribe, and you do this by advertising you are giving away "free" tips which will help solve their problem. Your opt-in form must be prominently displayed on your sales page, build it into the content. You should also design a popup form that displays your opt-in form either when people first get to your site, or when they leave.

Finally, a properly designed opt-in form which causes many of your website visitors to subscribe to your information series will incorporate these three design tips:

1) Use a heading, in a larger font and of a different color to the rest of the form, which includes a major benefit. In other words, in as few words as possible, explain the biggest benefit your visitor will receive from subscribing to your information series.

2) In as few words as possible explain two or three additional benefits your reader will receive from subscribing to your opt-in list. A list of bullet points is the best way to do this.

3) Your primary objective is to get your visitor to join your opt-in list, so ask them to subscribe. Get into the conversation going on inside their mind, use words like "Yes! Send Me the Tips Now!" on the submit button of your form.