One of the top producing sites online has this seldom used tactic in place to increase sales. If they are using it, it might be worth finding out how to try applying it to your site.

In a recent article I mentioned how important it was to pay attention to what some of the most successful websites online are doing. You can bet with the amount of money that they are generating that they don't put something on their site without a lot of testing behind it.

Let's take a look at another trick that Amazon has been using for awhile. It obviously must be working or else they would have removed it a while ago.

If you log go to amazon.com and log in, you will find a little treasure chest symbol in the upper right portion of the screen.

This in an interesting tactic which plays heavily on human psychology.

The treasure chest works like this. When you click on it, you are offered specials of the day. These can be pretty heavily discounted items which they are offering to you but there is a catch:

• Once you pass up on the item, it will not be offered to you again
• You need to act on buying it at a fantastic discount at that moment or the opportunity is lost

There is a strong psychological draw. Do you risk passing it up at this price knowing it is a one time only offer?

How To Apply This To Your Site

Is there an opportunity for you to offer an occasional "one of a kind" specials on your site? If you have a slow selling item or service, why not offer it at a substantial discount in a one time package deal?

You can help motivate sales and have the opportunity to sell some backend products to the customers when they order.

Being a member of the Small Business Web Site, you have a good tool available to you. In the download section, you can download the web army knife program.

One of the great features of this program is the "Timed Popup Window" function. With this tool, you can create a window that pops up after the amount of time that you specify. (I have had good luck with 30 seconds).

This is what happens:

• A window popups up
• Inside the window you put an offer with a special price with the link to order it from
• The window is timed to close after a certain amount of time. (I found 8 minutes to be effective)
• The window has a visual count down which tells the customers how long they have to order this special until it disappears.

It's a might seem a little gimmicky, but I have found it quite effective on some of the ebook sites that I have it in place on. The discount does not have to be too deep in order to be effective.

The influence on the customers shows them that this lower price is going to be disappearing shortly. The effect is that it motivates more people to buy.

Using this tactic is probably not suitable for every site. For example, I would not consider it appropriate on this site. It is worth testing on a more direct sales oriented site however.

Drawbacks

• One drawback to using the timed popup is the fact that more popup window blockers are coming out everyday. As it is right now AOL, Earthlink and the google toolbar all allow you to easily block popup windows.

Popups will still appear to a majority of visitors at your site but eventually they will become less and less effective.

• Using the timed popup window is not as thorough an option as Amazon has in place. In their case, the offer really does disappear for good once you pass on it. Anyone even a little bit internet saavy could probably figure out that your special offer could be had again. (It probably doesn't occur to most visitors but it is a possibility).

Amazon has extensive customized scripts in place which are probably out of the average webmasters capacity to program.

Applying This To Your Site

You don't have to use a popup window of course. You could figure out another way to offer exclusive bonuses. This could even include just a "special of the day" that is truly at a discounted price and won't be available tommorrow.

As always, keep an eye on your results through testing. You may be pleasantly surprised to learn your overall sales go up. If amazon is using this psychological tactic, it is worth trying it out if appropriate.