Unless you are dealing with high-ticket items that require several points of interaction between you and your potential customer, you should have your product online and easy to purchase. What constitutes a high-ticket item? That varies depending on the individual, but a good rule of thumb is any price starting at $200 and up.
If your product is of a relatively low cost ($19.99 or less) and that is all you are offering, then you can probably have a direct link to purchase your product. I would bypass the pink spoon (free sample) altogether and go straight for the sale. You do not, however, want to have only a brief description of your product and then expect them to buy. Include your whole sales letter and make it as long as possible (at least one full page). It has been tested time after time and long sales copy always sells more than short sales copy. Beef up your presentation with an audio clip. Better yet, include a video clip where you can talk directly to your customer. Remember that you are educating your potential customer, not trying to sell them. Yes, you want to sell them your product or service, but you want to do this through educating them and solving their most pressing problems and needs.
If your product or service costs more than $19.99, include the pink spoon. This adds one more step in the trust-building process and greatly improves your odds of making the sale.
This is also a good time to talk about the funnel process of selling. The basic idea is that you provide a series of steps, each of increasing committment, that helps the client build trust in you and your products. The first step is to entice your customer with a free taste, something that has perceived value to them. Next, offer them a product of lower cost, anything up to around $29. And so on and so on. There is a lot of leeway with the number of steps and the price points of the products, depending on what you are eventually hoping to sell.
There is not much more to add to this because this is supposed to be a simple process. Have a direct link to purchase your product or service and do not send them to another web page or make them call you first. On the other hand, many customers prefer to talk directly to you, so have a phone number that they can call if they want to. Even in this age where more and more people are buying directly online, there are still a huge number of people that prefer to talk to you directly. Remember, you want to make it as easy to buy from you as possible and that means being available by phone.
Chris O’Byrne
http://OnlineArtsMarketing.com/blog