Do you deliver a product immediately online after a purchase? If so, here is a tip that can save you a lot of customer service headaches.

Normally what happens with a digital product purchase is the following. When someone buys from the site, they:

1. Pay for the product on your order page
2. After the payment is accepted, they are then redirected to your order fulfillment page to download the product that they just bought

Here's the tip.

By adding one step in this process, you can save yourself some extra work.

Regardless of how good your download instructions are, there will always be customers who have problems. You can eliminate a lot of these problems by sending them an email at the time of the purchase with the download instructions in the email. This not only helps them out, but it gives you more opportunities for sales as we will see in a minute.

This follow up email after a sale is accomplished very easily.

Instead of directing them straight to your download page, direct them to a page which asks for their name and email address.

Emphasize on this page: "Please make sure your email address is correct as your download instructions will be sent there".

This form with the name and email address will send this information to an autoresponder. They are then sent to the download page where they can instantly download the product.

As a backup, the autoresponder will in fact send out the download instructions to their email address.

If there is any confusion or problems on the instruction page before downloading the product, they will have the instructions in their email.

I have used this technique very successfully by implementing Aweber for my autoresponder service.

So now your steps for an online order are the following. Your customer:

1. Pays for the product on your order page
2. After the payment is accepted, they get directed to the confirmation page which takes their name and email address. This page generates the autoresponder automatically to send an email to them.
3. They are then redirected to your page to download the product that they just bought.

Another great benefit is that you can do the following in your "Download instruction email". You can:

• Reinforce the purchase to reduce "buyers regret" by pointing out the great benefits of your product
• Remind them of how the purchase will appear on their credit card. This will reduce the number of credit card charge backs by people who don't recognize the name on their credit card statement
• Give them an unannounced bonus. Maybe a special report of value to them to thank you for being a customer. A happy customer is very likely to be a repeat customer
• Gives you an opportunity to sell them another product that may interest them ("upsell")

You should try out this sequence. You will soon realize all of the excellent benefits of adding one small step to the purchase process.

As I explained, I accomplish all of this automatically by using Aweber for my autoresponder service.