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Added for You - Without Conversion Rates You Don’t Know If You’re Mickey Mouse Or Mickey Mantle
At Home Income Just Needing A Computer t after that time they won’t get the lovely sorbet. This was Paco’s way of showing how stores could be more imaginative. The store knows that that section of the store is going to be jammed with people for that 15 minutes and can capitalize on impulse sales. That’s how it works in the retailing world, but what about online? Instilling urgency online is a major factor overlooked by many business websites. Some examples of how you might want to start employing this technique online are listed below.This is a common question people as due to affiliate marketing working so well and people seem to genuinely benefit both the website that is advertising as well as the website that is hosting, people tend to look for problems that just don’t exist. One of the “problems” that has followed affiliate marketing for years is the idea that it is a multi-level marketing scheme most people have heard of the pyramid schemes.So to answer that question we need to first ask: what is multi-level marketing? It’s much better known as a pyramid scheme. In most traditional cases, pyramid schemes are illegal. They work by constantly signing up new people to sell a product that doesn’t actually exist. The people at the top of the pyramid make money be collecting a commission off of all the sales that happen below them in the pyramid structure.Therefore when you look at Affiliate marketing it is, in no conceivable way, multi-level marketing. In most cases, a site that wants to advertise pays another site to direct traffic to them which is similar to word of mouth outside of the internet. There are multi-level affiliate marketing set ups that have one site direct traffic to another site and then that site directs people to the site that pays both previous sites, but even in this case, the customer isn’t tricked or misled and there isn’t any sort of financial transaction that takes place, either. Multi-tiered affiliate marketing is simply another way for web pages to create traffic and revenue. 1) Time Expiry Offer. Just as in the above example, you could let your readers know they will miss out if they haven’t subscribed or bought your product by a certain time. 2) The First Number. Your website could offer the first 50 subscribers a free e-book or could advertise that the first 50 items sold will be at a 30% discount. This could be combined with a counter showing the number of places/items left, so that the browser thinks “I have to subscribe before those places are taken up”. 3) The Nth Number Competition. The website states that if you are subscriber number 1000, you get a free website makeover, again combined with a visible counter of the current number of subscriptions. This could be tied into a referral deal so that if the subscriber is not the lucky number and does not get the deal, at least he could be offered something for making the referral while his friend might still end up being the lucky number and win the prize. So how does conversion relate to all these changes? The conversion rate should and can be measured in every instance. The Science Of Online Marketing There are two incredibly significant lines in Why We Buy: “Science is by and large the study of very small differences” and “When you change one thing, everything changes”. The first ‘very small difference ’ and ‘changing one thing’ situation I came across Internet Marketing - No Retirement Without Purpose I couldn’t agree more with the headline of this article and it’s one I’m afraid I can’t take credit for. I found this line in Paco Underhill’s book, Why We Buy – The Science Of Shopping, and found myself comparing many of the things he has measured in the retail world to the tests I’ve done with online, visitor-based activity. The conversion rate on a website is easy to measure. Unfortunately, businesses too busy concentrating on their bottom line most often overlook it. The point of this article is to define what a conversion rate is and show you how you can begin to start improving your own website’s conversion rate and therefore your bottom line. At the same time, I will relate my observations to Paco’s on offline retailing.Why have I joined the millions of others who decided to jump into internet marketing? For me this was never a position in which I envisioned myself. All my life I was an active worker, the early part of my life being spent as an ocean lifeguard for fourteen years. From there I became an elementary schoolteacher for 9 years. Ultimately my journey led to my becoming a restaurant owner.The restaurant business, as anyone who has worked it knows, is fast paced. It is not for the lazy or faint of heart. There is always more to do than time allows so you always find yourself playing catchup. Over a period of 25 years I had owned or operated 5 or 6 businesses. (who’s counting) The last one proved to be my downfall and I was forced to go out of business.I had been my own boss for too many years to now work for someone else. I searched about for something to do. One of my restaurant customers had told me about a business he had started on the internet. He was selling retro bowling shirts and other associative products. He told me, he and his wife had bought a bigger house with a barn they converted to a warehouse. He was "making a killing."That’s when I decided to get into internet marketing. Little did I know what I was in for. I had about as much knowledge of the internet as a roach. Oh, I knew how to send an email and get around a little. I had no knowledge of how to build a website, what was involved in selling etc. I didn’t know the difference between a search engine and a search warrant. I had two failed websites before I started to see some success.There was one thing I did know however, and that was this In Cyberspace No-One Can Hear You Shop According to Paco, the main problem with websites is that, owing to media attention and the love of technology, retailers went online without knowing why. It’s true that in the late 90’s businesses were going online because their competition had, or because they feared that they would be left behind by not embracing the new technology. Not great reasons to spend time, money and resources on a website. The painful thing is that, since going online, most of these websites have not changed much for the better. Yes, they look nicer now, but the number of glorified poster sites I still see never ceases to amaze me. In order to combat this lack of purpose, I propose you look at four goals and adapt them to your own business requirements. One of these goals should be the primary focus of your entire website design. 1) Prospect Acquisition To deliver qualified leads and prospects through the website. 2) Sales/E-commerce To sell products and services online directly through an e-store. 3) In-House Cost Saving To cut costs, usually resources such as printed material or time, by automating in-house processes online such as timekeeping systems and human resource procedures. 4) Customer Service To improve customer service by providing answers to queries and complaints online automatically where possible. With the goal clearly defined, it is easier to measure the effectiveness of your site because you know what to look for. Conversion is defined in relation to the goal you’ve chosen. So measure prospect acquisition as the percentage of visitors who give you their details out of the total number of visitors to your website. Measure conversion on sales as the percentage of people buying a product against the total number of website visitors. Conversion on in-house cost saving is simply the number of people using the system as a percentage of the number of people supposed to be using the system. A good internal policy here will mean this is a 100% conversion rate. The number of people using the resources and systems you have put in place as a percentage of total visitors to the support web pages can give you your customer service conversion. So why measure conversion? Because it allows you to accurately measure the impact of changes you make by measuring the performance of your website before and after the change. With that valuable information in hand, you can make adjustments accordingly. The Butt Brush Factor In many instances in his book, Paco refers to ‘The Butt Brush Factor’ — the way people, women in particular, don’t like enclosed spaces where other people constantly bump into them from behind. It usually led to the prospective shopper feeling frustrated or feeling uncomfortable and leaving the store or going somewhere else. You might be thinking, “well how does that relate to an online experience?” It is true that no-one usually bumps into you from behind while you’re sitting in front of a computer, but how many times are you made to feel irritated, uncomfortable or just downright frustrated by a website? How often do you leave one and look at another because the first one doesn’t have what you’re looking for? This ‘Butt Brush Factor’ is incredibly relevant to websites, more so I think than even in ordinary retail. Here are some examples of common online ‘Butt Brush Factors’ that you will see in many business websites. 1) Latest News. The landing page has the latest news about the company links. What exactly is the point of having a bunch of latest news links on your landing page? What good is that to a browser arriving at your landing page knowing and caring little about your company? A browser wants to know what you can do for him right there and then, not how your company stock is doing. An ‘About Us’ section is a much more reasonable place to put these links. 2) Awards. A landing page with awards screams, look at us, look at what we’ve achieved, aren’t we clever? It also completely wastes space on the most important page of your website. It can be compared to what Paco said when he talked about going into a car showroom and seeing manufacturer awards. That is unlikely to make much of an impression on the average shopper. 3) Poor Headlines. ‘Welcome to Company Name’ is the most common waste of a headline I ever see. Probably the company is unknown to the visitor so you’re wasting his or her time. A headline, which communicates the need of the target audience and how you can solve that need, improves reading and click through by up to 35% in recent tests we made. 4) Submit Buttons. Why tell the visitor to ‘submit?’ Submit actually means “To yield or surrender (oneself) to the will or authority of another” according to dictionary.com, so why ask innocent web browsers to do that in order to read your monthly newsletter? Subscribe to our newsletter is much more friendly, I would say. 5) Bad Use Of Flash. This is a common problem with media companies in particular. I understand why they do these all singing all dancing interactive flash websites, which often are works of art and showcase their ability. However ‘skip intro’ is a common link on the majority of these websites. That is because some people find them a waste of time. Why have an intro at all? Why not just have a showcase of what you can do on a normal fast, efficient website which tells me what I need to know quickly? If I decide I have the time to look at flash animations I will. 6) Poor Use Of Imagery. I’m guilty of this myself. We used to have a picture of a squirrel flying through the air with ‘what’s your objective’ on our landing page. It might have worked had we been selling nuts or seed, but a company improving website conversion? Not really relevant! It was more a result of my ego, pride and photographic luck in capturing said squirrel with my digital camera, and then thinking of a way I could use the picture, than thinking of a good picture which was relevant to what we were trying to say and using that. This kind of thing is repeated on many websites — people with briefcases, bridges, animals and other general graphics, which can be turned with words into anything you want the image to say. But on first glance, they don’t really show any relevance. All communication should be relevant and, ideally, persuade the user to do something. Again, conversion is an important measurement here. It can be applied to all of the changes you make to your site as you eliminate these ‘Butt Brush Factors’. Later in this article, I’ll explain how. Attention All Shoppers… “For the next fifteen minutes, in the frozen food section, free passion fruit sorbet for everyone” is a perfect way to instill urgency in shoppers to go to that section of the store and get the freebie. They know they only have 15 minutes, and they know that after that time they won’t get the lovely sorbet. This was Paco’s way of showing how stores could be more imaginative. The store knows that that section of the store is going to be jammed with people for that 15 minutes and can capitalize on impulse sales. That’s how it works in the retailing world, but what about online? Instilling urgency online is a major factor overlooked by many business websites. Some examples of how you might want to start employing this technique online are listed below. 1) Time Expiry Offer. Just as in the above example, you could let your readers know they will miss out if they haven’t subscribed or bought your product by a certain time. 2) The First Number. Your website could offer the first 50 subscribers a free e-book or could advertise that the first 50 items sold will be at a 30% discount. This could be combined with a counter showing the number of places/items left, so that the browser thinks “I have to subscribe before those places are taken up”. 3) The Nth Number Competition. The website states that if you are subscriber number 1000, you get a free website makeover, again combined with a visible counter of the current number of subscriptions. This could be tied into a referral deal so that if the subscriber is not the lucky number and does not get the deal, at least he could be offered something for making the referral while his friend might still end up being the lucky number and win the prize. So how does conversion relate to all these changes? The conversion rate should and can be measured in every instance. The Science Of Online Marketing There are two incredibly significant lines in Why We Buy: “Science is by and large the study of very small differences” and “When you change one thing, everything changes”. The first ‘very small difference ’ and ‘changing one thing’ situation I came across i Send Your Best Representative through Flower Delivery Service such as timekeeping systems and human resource procedures.Flowers speak the language of your heart no matter what language you speak. They are considered to be the best medium to express your emotions to even those who would not understand your tongue. Whether you want to convey your ardent love to your beloved or you want to extend a hand of friendship, whether you want to congratulate someone or you want to convey condolence, you say it best – when you say it with flowers.Flowers are not the prerogative of any particular caste, creed, gender or religion. They are as universally used as their language is. Flowers surpass the barriers of religion, nationality or language and spread love and warmth through their beauty and fragrance. Therefore they are the best gift that you can present to any one on any kind of occasion. Not just as gifts, flowers are also used for any kind of decorating purposes around the world.With the proliferation of internet marketing, flower delivery to any corner of the world has become an extremely easy and smooth activity. Now you can order flowers to get delivered to any part of UK with the help of some of the leading flower delivery websites. These websites would require you to fill some simple forms that demand the location and time of your flower delivery, which would help them to perform just what you have in mind.In this increasingly hectic schedule, you may not find the time to personally be present everywhere at any occasion. And in the bargain, often you miss out important moments in your as well as your dear ones’ lives. In such a situation, you can send the best representative you have in the choicest of flowers, beautifully decor 4) Customer Service To improve customer service by providing answers to queries and complaints online automatically where possible. With the goal clearly defined, it is easier to measure the effectiveness of your site because you know what to look for. Conversion is defined in relation to the goal you’ve chosen. So measure prospect acquisition as the percentage of visitors who give you their details out of the total number of visitors to your website. Measure conversion on sales as the percentage of people buying a product against the total number of website visitors. Conversion on in-house cost saving is simply the number of people using the system as a percentage of the number of people supposed to be using the system. A good internal policy here will mean this is a 100% conversion rate. The number of people using the resources and systems you have put in place as a percentage of total visitors to the support web pages can give you your customer service conversion. So why measure conversion? Because it allows you to accurately measure the impact of changes you make by measuring the performance of your website before and after the change. With that valuable information in hand, you can make adjustments accordingly. The Butt Brush Factor In many instances in his book, Paco refers to ‘The Butt Brush Factor’ — the way people, women in particular, don’t like enclosed spaces where other people constantly bump into them from behind. It usually led to the prospective shopper feeling frustrated or feeling uncomfortable and leaving the store or going somewhere else. You might be thinking, “well how does that relate to an online experience?” It is true that no-one usually bumps into you from behind while you’re sitting in front of a computer, but how many times are you made to feel irritated, uncomfortable or just downright frustrated by a website? How often do you leave one and look at another because the first one doesn’t have what you’re looking for? This ‘Butt Brush Factor’ is incredibly relevant to websites, more so I think than even in ordinary retail. Here are some examples of common online ‘Butt Brush Factors’ that you will see in many business websites. 1) Latest News. The landing page has the latest news about the company links. What exactly is the point of having a bunch of latest news links on your landing page? What good is that to a browser arriving at your landing page knowing and caring little about your company? A browser wants to know what you can do for him right there and then, not how your company stock is doing. An ‘About Us’ section is a much more reasonable place to put these links. 2) Awards. A landing page with awards screams, look at us, look at what we’ve achieved, aren’t we clever? It also completely wastes space on the most important page of your website. It can be compared to what Paco said when he talked about going into a car showroom and seeing manufacturer awards. That is unlikely to make much of an impression on the average shopper. 3) Poor Headlines. ‘Welcome to Company Name’ is the most common waste of a headline I ever see. Probably the company is unknown to the visitor so you’re wasting his or her time. A headline, which communicates the need of the target audience and how you can solve that need, improves reading and click through by up to 35% in recent tests we made. 4) Submit Buttons. Why tell the visitor to ‘submit?’ Submit actually means “To yield or surrender (oneself) to the will or authority of another” according to dictionary.com, so why ask innocent web browsers to do that in order to read your monthly newsletter? Subscribe to our newsletter is much more friendly, I would say. 5) Bad Use Of Flash. This is a common problem with media companies in particular. I understand why they do these all singing all dancing interactive flash websites, which often are works of art and showcase their ability. However ‘skip intro’ is a common link on the majority of these websites. That is because some people find them a waste of time. Why have an intro at all? Why not just have a showcase of what you can do on a normal fast, efficient website which tells me what I need to know quickly? If I decide I have the time to look at flash animations I will. 6) Poor Use Of Imagery. I’m guilty of this myself. We used to have a picture of a squirrel flying through the air with ‘what’s your objective’ on our landing page. It might have worked had we been selling nuts or seed, but a company improving website conversion? Not really relevant! It was more a result of my ego, pride and photographic luck in capturing said squirrel with my digital camera, and then thinking of a way I could use the picture, than thinking of a good picture which was relevant to what we were trying to say and using that. This kind of thing is repeated on many websites — people with briefcases, bridges, animals and other general graphics, which can be turned with words into anything you want the image to say. But on first glance, they don’t really show any relevance. All communication should be relevant and, ideally, persuade the user to do something. Again, conversion is an important measurement here. It can be applied to all of the changes you make to your site as you eliminate these ‘Butt Brush Factors’. Later in this article, I’ll explain how. Attention All Shoppers… “For the next fifteen minutes, in the frozen food section, free passion fruit sorbet for everyone” is a perfect way to instill urgency in shoppers to go to that section of the store and get the freebie. They know they only have 15 minutes, and they know that after that time they won’t get the lovely sorbet. This was Paco’s way of showing how stores could be more imaginative. The store knows that that section of the store is going to be jammed with people for that 15 minutes and can capitalize on impulse sales. That’s how it works in the retailing world, but what about online? Instilling urgency online is a major factor overlooked by many business websites. Some examples of how you might want to start employing this technique online are listed below. 1) Time Expiry Offer. Just as in the above example, you could let your readers know they will miss out if they haven’t subscribed or bought your product by a certain time. 2) The First Number. Your website could offer the first 50 subscribers a free e-book or could advertise that the first 50 items sold will be at a 30% discount. This could be combined with a counter showing the number of places/items left, so that the browser thinks “I have to subscribe before those places are taken up”. 3) The Nth Number Competition. The website states that if you are subscriber number 1000, you get a free website makeover, again combined with a visible counter of the current number of subscriptions. This could be tied into a referral deal so that if the subscriber is not the lucky number and does not get the deal, at least he could be offered something for making the referral while his friend might still end up being the lucky number and win the prize. So how does conversion relate to all these changes? The conversion rate should and can be measured in every instance. The Science Of Online Marketing There are two incredibly significant lines in Why We Buy: “Science is by and large the study of very small differences” and “When you change one thing, everything changes”. The first ‘very small difference ’ and ‘changing one thing’ situation I came across How the Web Works ebsite? How often do you leave one and look at another because the first one doesn’t have what you’re looking for? This ‘Butt Brush Factor’ is incredibly relevant to websites, more so I think than even in ordinary retail. Here are some examples of common online ‘Butt Brush Factors’ that you will see in many business websites.How the Web WorksBecause you're taking this course and reading this lesson, it's a pretty safe assumption that you can get on the Web and move around with certain adeptness. To access any given web pages, we are most likely to use its web address which is technically called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and click on hyperlinks and graphics to move from one page to another. In general, the Web is a pretty seamless world; you often move from one Web site to another and may not know you have done so. If you want to add your Web page -- and eventually your Web site -- to this virtually seamless environment, you'll need to understand a bit about the workings behind the Web scenes.Of Clients and Servers Simply put, the Web is a gigantic network. What that means in geek-speak is that there are, in the most general terms, two roles that a computer can play on the Web: client or server. Anything else deliverable over the Web including documents, images, sound files is stored by the server and clients access those files. Occasionally, a computer can play both roles, but more often than not, a computer is one or the other.For example, when you type the URL http://www.yahoo.com/home.html into your Web browser, your client is sending a request to the Yahoo Web server -- ( identified as http://www.yahoo.com) for a Web page called home.html. When the Web server receives your request for home.html, it looks to see if the Web page exists, and if it does, the server sends a copy to you so that you can view it in your browser. An error message is received to let you know that the page you wanted could not be found whenever t 1) Latest News. The landing page has the latest news about the company links. What exactly is the point of having a bunch of latest news links on your landing page? What good is that to a browser arriving at your landing page knowing and caring little about your company? A browser wants to know what you can do for him right there and then, not how your company stock is doing. An ‘About Us’ section is a much more reasonable place to put these links. 2) Awards. A landing page with awards screams, look at us, look at what we’ve achieved, aren’t we clever? It also completely wastes space on the most important page of your website. It can be compared to what Paco said when he talked about going into a car showroom and seeing manufacturer awards. That is unlikely to make much of an impression on the average shopper. 3) Poor Headlines. ‘Welcome to Company Name’ is the most common waste of a headline I ever see. Probably the company is unknown to the visitor so you’re wasting his or her time. A headline, which communicates the need of the target audience and how you can solve that need, improves reading and click through by up to 35% in recent tests we made. 4) Submit Buttons. Why tell the visitor to ‘submit?’ Submit actually means “To yield or surrender (oneself) to the will or authority of another” according to dictionary.com, so why ask innocent web browsers to do that in order to read your monthly newsletter? Subscribe to our newsletter is much more friendly, I would say. 5) Bad Use Of Flash. This is a common problem with media companies in particular. I understand why they do these all singing all dancing interactive flash websites, which often are works of art and showcase their ability. However ‘skip intro’ is a common link on the majority of these websites. That is because some people find them a waste of time. Why have an intro at all? Why not just have a showcase of what you can do on a normal fast, efficient website which tells me what I need to know quickly? If I decide I have the time to look at flash animations I will. 6) Poor Use Of Imagery. I’m guilty of this myself. We used to have a picture of a squirrel flying through the air with ‘what’s your objective’ on our landing page. It might have worked had we been selling nuts or seed, but a company improving website conversion? Not really relevant! It was more a result of my ego, pride and photographic luck in capturing said squirrel with my digital camera, and then thinking of a way I could use the picture, than thinking of a good picture which was relevant to what we were trying to say and using that. This kind of thing is repeated on many websites — people with briefcases, bridges, animals and other general graphics, which can be turned with words into anything you want the image to say. But on first glance, they don’t really show any relevance. All communication should be relevant and, ideally, persuade the user to do something. Again, conversion is an important measurement here. It can be applied to all of the changes you make to your site as you eliminate these ‘Butt Brush Factors’. Later in this article, I’ll explain how. Attention All Shoppers… “For the next fifteen minutes, in the frozen food section, free passion fruit sorbet for everyone” is a perfect way to instill urgency in shoppers to go to that section of the store and get the freebie. They know they only have 15 minutes, and they know that after that time they won’t get the lovely sorbet. This was Paco’s way of showing how stores could be more imaginative. The store knows that that section of the store is going to be jammed with people for that 15 minutes and can capitalize on impulse sales. That’s how it works in the retailing world, but what about online? Instilling urgency online is a major factor overlooked by many business websites. Some examples of how you might want to start employing this technique online are listed below. 1) Time Expiry Offer. Just as in the above example, you could let your readers know they will miss out if they haven’t subscribed or bought your product by a certain time. 2) The First Number. Your website could offer the first 50 subscribers a free e-book or could advertise that the first 50 items sold will be at a 30% discount. This could be combined with a counter showing the number of places/items left, so that the browser thinks “I have to subscribe before those places are taken up”. 3) The Nth Number Competition. The website states that if you are subscriber number 1000, you get a free website makeover, again combined with a visible counter of the current number of subscriptions. This could be tied into a referral deal so that if the subscriber is not the lucky number and does not get the deal, at least he could be offered something for making the referral while his friend might still end up being the lucky number and win the prize. So how does conversion relate to all these changes? The conversion rate should and can be measured in every instance. The Science Of Online Marketing There are two incredibly significant lines in Why We Buy: “Science is by and large the study of very small differences” and “When you change one thing, everything changes”. The first ‘very small difference ’ and ‘changing one thing’ situation I came across The Problem With A Wholesale Dropship Business common problem with media companies in particular. I understand why they do these all singing all dancing interactive flash websites, which often are works of art and showcase their ability. However ‘skip intro’ is a common link on the majority of these websites. That is because some people find them a waste of time. Why have an intro at all? Why not just have a showcase of what you can do on a normal fast, efficient website which tells me what I need to know quickly? If I decide I have the time to look at flash animations I will.In today’s world there are lots of ways to make money online and one of the most popular ways is to start a wholesale dropship business. In fact there are people who have even been very successful without their own website but just using Ebay to sell wholesale dropship products.However, one thing that is commonly misunderstood by many people about running a wholesale dropship business is pricing as it refers to the world wholesale. Many people think that just because they are working with a wholesale supplier they will be able to find products they can sell much less than anyone on the planet.But nothing could be further from the truth. Just think about it.Do you really think you will be able to get products cheaper than Wal-Mart, Amazon or overstock.com who purchase 1000s of items from wholesales suppliers?Not exactly, but that does not mean you can not be successful with your own wholesale dropship business. The key is to not focus too heavily on what everyone else is selling for and trying to add value to your product.There are going to be other business selling the exact same products as you online for a cheaper price, but that does not mean you can not have a successful business selling the same item.Here are a few tips on counteracting a lower price than yours.1. Write your description of your product in a more persuasive manner to increase impulse purchases. For instance, if you are selling on ebay write good persuasive description and be very descriptive.2. Try offering a free bonus with your 6) Poor Use Of Imagery. I’m guilty of this myself. We used to have a picture of a squirrel flying through the air with ‘what’s your objective’ on our landing page. It might have worked had we been selling nuts or seed, but a company improving website conversion? Not really relevant! It was more a result of my ego, pride and photographic luck in capturing said squirrel with my digital camera, and then thinking of a way I could use the picture, than thinking of a good picture which was relevant to what we were trying to say and using that. This kind of thing is repeated on many websites — people with briefcases, bridges, animals and other general graphics, which can be turned with words into anything you want the image to say. But on first glance, they don’t really show any relevance. All communication should be relevant and, ideally, persuade the user to do something. Again, conversion is an important measurement here. It can be applied to all of the changes you make to your site as you eliminate these ‘Butt Brush Factors’. Later in this article, I’ll explain how. Attention All Shoppers… “For the next fifteen minutes, in the frozen food section, free passion fruit sorbet for everyone” is a perfect way to instill urgency in shoppers to go to that section of the store and get the freebie. They know they only have 15 minutes, and they know that after that time they won’t get the lovely sorbet. This was Paco’s way of showing how stores could be more imaginative. The store knows that that section of the store is going to be jammed with people for that 15 minutes and can capitalize on impulse sales. That’s how it works in the retailing world, but what about online? Instilling urgency online is a major factor overlooked by many business websites. Some examples of how you might want to start employing this technique online are listed below. 1) Time Expiry Offer. Just as in the above example, you could let your readers know they will miss out if they haven’t subscribed or bought your product by a certain time. 2) The First Number. Your website could offer the first 50 subscribers a free e-book or could advertise that the first 50 items sold will be at a 30% discount. This could be combined with a counter showing the number of places/items left, so that the browser thinks “I have to subscribe before those places are taken up”. 3) The Nth Number Competition. The website states that if you are subscriber number 1000, you get a free website makeover, again combined with a visible counter of the current number of subscriptions. This could be tied into a referral deal so that if the subscriber is not the lucky number and does not get the deal, at least he could be offered something for making the referral while his friend might still end up being the lucky number and win the prize. So how does conversion relate to all these changes? The conversion rate should and can be measured in every instance. The Science Of Online Marketing There are two incredibly significant lines in Why We Buy: “Science is by and large the study of very small differences” and “When you change one thing, everything changes”. The first ‘very small difference ’ and ‘changing one thing’ situation I came across Why American Businesses Should Use Locally Based Agencies for the Translation of Their Sites t after that time they won’t get the lovely sorbet. This was Paco’s way of showing how stores could be more imaginative. The store knows that that section of the store is going to be jammed with people for that 15 minutes and can capitalize on impulse sales. That’s how it works in the retailing world, but what about online? Instilling urgency online is a major factor overlooked by many business websites. Some examples of how you might want to start employing this technique online are listed below.Many American companies prefer to deal with agencies and translators located in the USA. This is mostly because they feel that payments are easier and communications faster.However, as far as communications are concerned, it is as quick to e-mail a file to a supplier in New York as it is to one in Paris. And the international payment facilities found nowadays on the Net, such as PayPal or Moneybookers, seem to me easier than posting a check to Boston. Besides, most European agencies, as well as all Asian, accept dollars.A European translation agency, Wordbase Translations Company, created by professionals with more than 15 years’ experience, makes it very clear why it is advantageous to use native speakers of the target languages living in their own countries.Their site describes very plainly the services they provide. But it goes beyond that. It has useful information such as a description of different types of interpreting services and a definition of localization services that can be useful for companies that wish to internationalize and who are not sure of the differences between translating and localizing.The full localization service is the cultural adaptation of a product or service to ensure that it is consistent with the specific socio-cultural and legal requirements of a target market. It involves tailoring a product to a specific market in a process that goes beyond translation to address the contemporary and colloquial use of language and cultural nuances, such as notational conventions and differences in symbols, color associations and payment pr 1) Time Expiry Offer. Just as in the above example, you could let your readers know they will miss out if they haven’t subscribed or bought your product by a certain time. 2) The First Number. Your website could offer the first 50 subscribers a free e-book or could advertise that the first 50 items sold will be at a 30% discount. This could be combined with a counter showing the number of places/items left, so that the browser thinks “I have to subscribe before those places are taken up”. 3) The Nth Number Competition. The website states that if you are subscriber number 1000, you get a free website makeover, again combined with a visible counter of the current number of subscriptions. This could be tied into a referral deal so that if the subscriber is not the lucky number and does not get the deal, at least he could be offered something for making the referral while his friend might still end up being the lucky number and win the prize. So how does conversion relate to all these changes? The conversion rate should and can be measured in every instance. The Science Of Online Marketing There are two incredibly significant lines in Why We Buy: “Science is by and large the study of very small differences” and “When you change one thing, everything changes”. The first ‘very small difference ’ and ‘changing one thing’ situation I came across in my online marketing career was a complete mistake. I was working for a large press organization and one day I had to change some HTML code on a sales form. By mistake, I removed a voucher entry field from the form. As a result, people could no longer enter their voucher number to get a cheaper deal. Conversion improved by three times. I told our editor who was amazed but instructed me to put the voucher field back on the form while they figured out what to do. There was a good reason for the voucher; in fact, it was the entire reason the page was there. However, putting the voucher entry field back resulted in a drop in conversion to almost the identical sales that we had been getting before my mistake. The voucher idea was eventually scrapped on that page and sales sky rocketed again. The reason, we ascertained, was that visitors figured that they could get a cheaper deal with a voucher. The voucher could only be gotten by physically buying a newspaper and that limited us to around 10% of the audience. Nine out of ten people visiting the website did so from a place where they couldn’t buy the newspaper at that time, so it was obvious that the voucher idea could only be good for the local readers. This experience was a catalyst for me personally, and from then on, I began to understand the importance of measurement online. In particular, the measurement of conversion. So in order to turn the online changes you make into a science, follow three simple rules. 1) Measure Conversion. Conversion is a percentage, a calculation of the number of people who take the action you desire as a percentage of the total number of visitors to the page. Using percentages makes the actual number of people arriving at a page irrelevant. It becomes possible to compare a busy week with a quiet week. 2) Change one thing at a time. An average page has lots of variables: graphics, headlines, paragraphs, sentences, links, testimonials and probably a lot more. By only changing one thing and always measuring for the same period of time (30 days is good), you will get a fair result. So for instance, if you change a headline, look at the page click-through and if possible the length of time an average visitor stayed on the page for 30 days before the change. Make the change and measure the results for the next 30 days. Then if conversion is higher (more people reading or more people clicking through), keep the change. If it’s lower, revert to what you had before. 3) Experiment. Don’t limit yourself to headlines. Copy, content, graphics, adding competitions, etc. — try them all. But remember the rule: change only one variable at any one time. Summary I’ve desperately been trying to keep this article short; I think I could have written an epic on this subject. If I were in the same room as Paco Underhill, we would have an awful lot to talk about. However what I’m trying to say is that businesses should start waking up to the fact that online marketing is as much a science as Paco demonstrates in the retailing world. Measuring conversion rates online is the beginning of making it scientific.
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