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Added for You - Improve Web Sales Figures Forever And Ever Amen!
Most people would agree that the bulk mailbox fills up all too quickly with unwanted mail from every possible internet marketer trying to promote their goods and/or services. But, what if you as a business person could turn these unwanted emails into welcomed email? More junk mail may just be the way to more wealth.It seems so basic of a concept but it truly is a sensible way to get leads for your existing business. Imagine all that mail just waiting to be opened. Look for phone numbers, and other contact information contained within the body of the emails.Next, get busy sending emails out to these contacts and even calling these leads. The goal is to establish rapport with these business people. They do not want to be sold on your opportunity, however, there are many services you may be able to offer to assist them in their current business.There are many resources that are available to help business builders with their online business. By being a messenger rather than a sales person, this new contact will be more receptive to your friendly and helpful approach rather than a sales approach. Programs that may be of interes
Some variables you might want to test;
- Headlines. (We improved bounce by 36% on one page with a better headline).
- Scan Proofing (Bold benefits so that the reader gets the point without having to read – 33% improvement in bounce).
- Bullet point benefits versus long copy. On one site last year we actually improved sales from nearly zero conversion to 2.4% sales conversion on a landing page by changing long copy to bulleted psychological benefits.
- Testimonials and other social evidence. Add these to pages where you can, we increased conversion of one lead generation system to 1.5% overall from nothing simply by adding client testimonials to a page with the registration form on it.
- Calls to action. It sounds stupid but if you don’t have a way to capture the sale or the lead then really please don’t expect to be inundated with phone calls. It doesn’t work like that. Put calls to action in different places and test which method works best.
- Graphics. Test how to use them. All communication should lead to change and graphics are no exception, use them to persuade, inform, brand or intrude. Don’t use them for the sake of using them.
Ok so you have a blog, and you're posting to it daily, you're using allthe latest methods, of Blog and Ping, Tag and Ping and you're also using the Social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us.While these are all great marketing techniques you shouldn't limit yourself to just a few traffic generating methods.Now its time to kick your advertising into over drive by simple converting at least one post a week into an article.Choose one of your best posts, and the expand on it. You don't need a 2000 word article, 250 to 400 words can work just as well or better.While there are hundreds of article submission sites available today, I would suggest sticking with just the top 10 or 20 if you try to do more then that, what you end up doing is wasting your time on submitting, that you could be spending on creating more articles.So how does submitting articles drive free targeted traffic to your website?There are thousands of Ezines today that are always looking for fresh new content to post in their Ezines (Online magazines) If they use your article in their Ezine then you get the credit.For
The painter smiled knowingly, winked, dipped his brush into his paint tin, before evenly applying more paint to the wall in calm considered strokes. Then without looking away from his work he continued, “When you asked me to paint this wall, you knew why you wanted it painted. Yes, I told you what it was going to cost you and I told you why it was going to cost you what it’s costing you. But you knew what the problem was, you knew you had a crack appearing in the paint. What I would do is calm down, take a few deep breaths and ask yourself the same questions. First you need to know exactly what it is that isn’t working, find the cracks in your wall.”
The CEO laughed, slapped his head and went back to his office to consider this gem of wisdom. This article explains what the CEO should’ve done before asking impossible questions of his staff and what I’ve learned from our own failures and successes.
You Need To Know, Not Guess.
It’s easy to bawl at people when things don’t work out and you don’t sell what you expected to sell through your web site. It’s easy to blame the programmer who talks about missing include files and something called ‘pee h pee’ or ‘asp’ not working properly, as if a venomous snake could help you.
What will help is finding out what the problem is so you can learn how to put it right. When it comes to web site sales, we’ve learned that it could be any number of a great many things that you’re doing wrong. So first you need to diagnose the problem.
1) Get Web Analytics
Start measuring the website traffic. This is the only surefire way you can learn about how people do or don’t do what you want them to do. Now people keep telling me that web analytics is a science all to itself. I find it easy now because I know what to look for given a particular problem. I used to get things wrong all the time, but practice makes perfect. Getting things wrong is a pain in the rear, especially if it costs money, but I put it down to research and development. Simply put if you make a mistake put it back to the way it was before the mistake. Now I just watch out for trends which I think are good and trends which I think are bad.
For instance, one trend I look for are pages where people enter your site and leave those pages without doing anything. This is called a bounce rate. If you have lots of bounces you have a problem. Once for example, I released an article which was re-printed in a very popular newsletter. I got about 6000 free visitors from a very on target newsletter, so with our good monthly conversion rate you would expect I would get lots of subscriptions to my site.
Wrong! My analytics program told me that I was getting a 90% bounce rate, which in all honesty infuriated me. So I went to the article in question and compared it to another article which had a low bounce rate of about 38%. The one with the better bounce rate had four related links within the article content (often referred to as embedded links). Had I simply put embedded links in the other article I might have reduced bounce by 50% or more which would then transpose to 3000 more people getting deeper into my site.
Had 3000 more people got deeper into my site (and further into the persuasive process), I know that more of them would have subscribed than before. It’s just a statistical fact that when people read more than one page they subscribe with greater frequency. I checked, only 9% of my visitors subscribed immediately last month from arriving at our site, the other 91% took more than 2 pages before giving me their email address. In fact since we added embedded links to all our pages we have reduced overall bounce considerably and subscriptions have improved as a whole.
The same thing happens with sales. Reduce bounce to your landing pages by comparing the ones that sell well to the ones that don’t. It’s a method that’s more scientific than guessing and it will improve sales if you gradually improve bounce rates site wide. If you don’t have any good bounce rates on sales pages, test something, which brings me nicely onto the next way to know what the problems are.
2) Test things.
You can’t test anything until you have got web analytics. So if you haven’t already done so, do not pass go, do not collect $200 just go and get a good web analytics system. There are plenty to choose from. IRIS Metrics, HitBox, WebTrends are three we’d recommend but there are now plenty of others on the market that allow you to follow what people are doing on your site.
Once you have a system then you can learn to test. For instance if you haven’t got any sales pages that are selling then you have an easy time of it. Any improvement is good. So take the worst page (the one with the highest bounce rate) and change maybe the headline to imply a unique customer benefit. Measure this. If bounce improves keep it. If it gets worse change it again until it gets better.
Some variables you might want to test;
- Headlines. (We improved bounce by 36% on one page with a better headline).
- Scan Proofing (Bold benefits so that the reader gets the point without having to read – 33% improvement in bounce).
- Bullet point benefits versus long copy. On one site last year we actually improved sales from nearly zero conversion to 2.4% sales conversion on a landing page by changing long copy to bulleted psychological benefits.
- Testimonials and other social evidence. Add these to pages where you can, we increased conversion of one lead generation system to 1.5% overall from nothing simply by adding client testimonials to a page with the registration form on it.
- Calls to action. It sounds stupid but if you don’t have a way to capture the sale or the lead then really please don’t expect to be inundated with phone calls. It doesn’t work like that. Put calls to action in different places and test which method works best.
- Graphics. Test how to use them. All communication should lead to change and graphics are no exception, use them to persuade, inform, brand or intrude. Don’t use them for the sake of using them.
It's tough for any business to do without direct mailing these days. You might mail prospective customers using the Internet or maybe you prefer to rely on the postal system. Maybe you use a combination of both. Whatever your preference, the writing on the wall for any business is clear: you need direct mail. Used effectively, this is your trigger to sales.How do you go about it? You need lists. Maybe you already have one. Use it as a first phase to tell your customers about what you have for them that's new. If you don't have anything new, set about correcting that. Whatever it is - a promotion, free offer, discount, - use direct mail to make sure your customer knows about it. Your product, your company name, must be top of mind for him. This will only happen with reminders.Are emails effective for direct mail? Not always. Thanks to the huge amount of spam mail pouring into people's email boxes every day, chances are your promotion email might also get relegated into the junk folder. Yes, it's a cheap method of mailing but is it effective? The problem is, you never know for sure. It could get deleted without reading or it could get read
You Need To Know, Not Guess.
It’s easy to bawl at people when things don’t work out and you don’t sell what you expected to sell through your web site. It’s easy to blame the programmer who talks about missing include files and something called ‘pee h pee’ or ‘asp’ not working properly, as if a venomous snake could help you.
What will help is finding out what the problem is so you can learn how to put it right. When it comes to web site sales, we’ve learned that it could be any number of a great many things that you’re doing wrong. So first you need to diagnose the problem.
1) Get Web Analytics
Start measuring the website traffic. This is the only surefire way you can learn about how people do or don’t do what you want them to do. Now people keep telling me that web analytics is a science all to itself. I find it easy now because I know what to look for given a particular problem. I used to get things wrong all the time, but practice makes perfect. Getting things wrong is a pain in the rear, especially if it costs money, but I put it down to research and development. Simply put if you make a mistake put it back to the way it was before the mistake. Now I just watch out for trends which I think are good and trends which I think are bad.
For instance, one trend I look for are pages where people enter your site and leave those pages without doing anything. This is called a bounce rate. If you have lots of bounces you have a problem. Once for example, I released an article which was re-printed in a very popular newsletter. I got about 6000 free visitors from a very on target newsletter, so with our good monthly conversion rate you would expect I would get lots of subscriptions to my site.
Wrong! My analytics program told me that I was getting a 90% bounce rate, which in all honesty infuriated me. So I went to the article in question and compared it to another article which had a low bounce rate of about 38%. The one with the better bounce rate had four related links within the article content (often referred to as embedded links). Had I simply put embedded links in the other article I might have reduced bounce by 50% or more which would then transpose to 3000 more people getting deeper into my site.
Had 3000 more people got deeper into my site (and further into the persuasive process), I know that more of them would have subscribed than before. It’s just a statistical fact that when people read more than one page they subscribe with greater frequency. I checked, only 9% of my visitors subscribed immediately last month from arriving at our site, the other 91% took more than 2 pages before giving me their email address. In fact since we added embedded links to all our pages we have reduced overall bounce considerably and subscriptions have improved as a whole.
The same thing happens with sales. Reduce bounce to your landing pages by comparing the ones that sell well to the ones that don’t. It’s a method that’s more scientific than guessing and it will improve sales if you gradually improve bounce rates site wide. If you don’t have any good bounce rates on sales pages, test something, which brings me nicely onto the next way to know what the problems are.
2) Test things.
You can’t test anything until you have got web analytics. So if you haven’t already done so, do not pass go, do not collect $200 just go and get a good web analytics system. There are plenty to choose from. IRIS Metrics, HitBox, WebTrends are three we’d recommend but there are now plenty of others on the market that allow you to follow what people are doing on your site.
Once you have a system then you can learn to test. For instance if you haven’t got any sales pages that are selling then you have an easy time of it. Any improvement is good. So take the worst page (the one with the highest bounce rate) and change maybe the headline to imply a unique customer benefit. Measure this. If bounce improves keep it. If it gets worse change it again until it gets better.
Some variables you might want to test;
- Headlines. (We improved bounce by 36% on one page with a better headline).
- Scan Proofing (Bold benefits so that the reader gets the point without having to read – 33% improvement in bounce).
- Bullet point benefits versus long copy. On one site last year we actually improved sales from nearly zero conversion to 2.4% sales conversion on a landing page by changing long copy to bulleted psychological benefits.
- Testimonials and other social evidence. Add these to pages where you can, we increased conversion of one lead generation system to 1.5% overall from nothing simply by adding client testimonials to a page with the registration form on it.
- Calls to action. It sounds stupid but if you don’t have a way to capture the sale or the lead then really please don’t expect to be inundated with phone calls. It doesn’t work like that. Put calls to action in different places and test which method works best.
- Graphics. Test how to use them. All communication should lead to change and graphics are no exception, use them to persuade, inform, brand or intrude. Don’t use them for the sake of using them.
If you haven't yet thought of going global and having your data translated into other languages, now is the time to jump right in, as a matter of urgency, because there has never been such a huge amount of opportunities in the history of Humankind.This is also the fastest and most cost-effective way to boost your income, build global networks, and/or construct alliances and collaborations.This will propel you way ahead of all your monolingual competitors.And it works for all types of businesses, even SMALL businesses - no need to be Microsoft or Coca Cola to start expanding abroad!It is now possible to find excellent translators on the Internet and then expand and globalize without having a single representative in a foreign country.All you have to do is have your website translated and localized, then make arrangements to have email support for your foreign customers or clients translated on an ongoing basis.For human rights organizations, peace movements, charities, etc. translations can also help you with fundraising or promotional work, lobbying with donors, diplomatic missions, Now I just watch out for trends which I think are good and trends which I think are bad.
For instance, one trend I look for are pages where people enter your site and leave those pages without doing anything. This is called a bounce rate. If you have lots of bounces you have a problem. Once for example, I released an article which was re-printed in a very popular newsletter. I got about 6000 free visitors from a very on target newsletter, so with our good monthly conversion rate you would expect I would get lots of subscriptions to my site.
Wrong! My analytics program told me that I was getting a 90% bounce rate, which in all honesty infuriated me. So I went to the article in question and compared it to another article which had a low bounce rate of about 38%. The one with the better bounce rate had four related links within the article content (often referred to as embedded links). Had I simply put embedded links in the other article I might have reduced bounce by 50% or more which would then transpose to 3000 more people getting deeper into my site.
Had 3000 more people got deeper into my site (and further into the persuasive process), I know that more of them would have subscribed than before. It’s just a statistical fact that when people read more than one page they subscribe with greater frequency. I checked, only 9% of my visitors subscribed immediately last month from arriving at our site, the other 91% took more than 2 pages before giving me their email address. In fact since we added embedded links to all our pages we have reduced overall bounce considerably and subscriptions have improved as a whole.
The same thing happens with sales. Reduce bounce to your landing pages by comparing the ones that sell well to the ones that don’t. It’s a method that’s more scientific than guessing and it will improve sales if you gradually improve bounce rates site wide. If you don’t have any good bounce rates on sales pages, test something, which brings me nicely onto the next way to know what the problems are.
2) Test things.
You can’t test anything until you have got web analytics. So if you haven’t already done so, do not pass go, do not collect $200 just go and get a good web analytics system. There are plenty to choose from. IRIS Metrics, HitBox, WebTrends are three we’d recommend but there are now plenty of others on the market that allow you to follow what people are doing on your site.
Once you have a system then you can learn to test. For instance if you haven’t got any sales pages that are selling then you have an easy time of it. Any improvement is good. So take the worst page (the one with the highest bounce rate) and change maybe the headline to imply a unique customer benefit. Measure this. If bounce improves keep it. If it gets worse change it again until it gets better.
Some variables you might want to test;
- Headlines. (We improved bounce by 36% on one page with a better headline).
- Scan Proofing (Bold benefits so that the reader gets the point without having to read – 33% improvement in bounce).
- Bullet point benefits versus long copy. On one site last year we actually improved sales from nearly zero conversion to 2.4% sales conversion on a landing page by changing long copy to bulleted psychological benefits.
- Testimonials and other social evidence. Add these to pages where you can, we increased conversion of one lead generation system to 1.5% overall from nothing simply by adding client testimonials to a page with the registration form on it.
- Calls to action. It sounds stupid but if you don’t have a way to capture the sale or the lead then really please don’t expect to be inundated with phone calls. It doesn’t work like that. Put calls to action in different places and test which method works best.
- Graphics. Test how to use them. All communication should lead to change and graphics are no exception, use them to persuade, inform, brand or intrude. Don’t use them for the sake of using them.
Introduction To Business Opportunity ProgramsBusiness Opportunity Programs have always been very popular with many people. They offer the ordinary person the chance to make money from home without the usual costs of setting up in businessThere is usually very little if any stock to buy, no overheads much to speak of, no investment in publicity materials etc - all these services are provided free by the program owners. Typically an online opportunity program will provide participants with banners, text ads, email ads, ezine ads etc - even a full website, all completely freeThe only cost involved is a small monthly membership fee - although even this can be avoided until you get used to the program, as many programs will allow you to join for freeDo These Programs Really Work?The honest answer in brief is - some do: many don't!!The first question to consider is whether the program is in fact legalMany people down through the years, that business opportunity programs have been around, have lost money - sometimes all their life savings. For this reason most governments in wey 9% of my visitors subscribed immediately last month from arriving at our site, the other 91% took more than 2 pages before giving me their email address. In fact since we added embedded links to all our pages we have reduced overall bounce considerably and subscriptions have improved as a whole.
The same thing happens with sales. Reduce bounce to your landing pages by comparing the ones that sell well to the ones that don’t. It’s a method that’s more scientific than guessing and it will improve sales if you gradually improve bounce rates site wide. If you don’t have any good bounce rates on sales pages, test something, which brings me nicely onto the next way to know what the problems are.
2) Test things.
You can’t test anything until you have got web analytics. So if you haven’t already done so, do not pass go, do not collect $200 just go and get a good web analytics system. There are plenty to choose from. IRIS Metrics, HitBox, WebTrends are three we’d recommend but there are now plenty of others on the market that allow you to follow what people are doing on your site.
Once you have a system then you can learn to test. For instance if you haven’t got any sales pages that are selling then you have an easy time of it. Any improvement is good. So take the worst page (the one with the highest bounce rate) and change maybe the headline to imply a unique customer benefit. Measure this. If bounce improves keep it. If it gets worse change it again until it gets better.
Some variables you might want to test;
- Headlines. (We improved bounce by 36% on one page with a better headline).
- Scan Proofing (Bold benefits so that the reader gets the point without having to read – 33% improvement in bounce).
- Bullet point benefits versus long copy. On one site last year we actually improved sales from nearly zero conversion to 2.4% sales conversion on a landing page by changing long copy to bulleted psychological benefits.
- Testimonials and other social evidence. Add these to pages where you can, we increased conversion of one lead generation system to 1.5% overall from nothing simply by adding client testimonials to a page with the registration form on it.
- Calls to action. It sounds stupid but if you don’t have a way to capture the sale or the lead then really please don’t expect to be inundated with phone calls. It doesn’t work like that. Put calls to action in different places and test which method works best.
- Graphics. Test how to use them. All communication should lead to change and graphics are no exception, use them to persuade, inform, brand or intrude. Don’t use them for the sake of using them.
Brochures are among the most utilized marketing vehicles in use today. From very small businesses to the largest publicly-traded companies, all use brochures to communicate with their customers and prospects about the products and services they offer. But despite how common the brochure is, not many employ the proper brochure copywriting strategy to take best advantage of the medium. Here are some of the things you can do to ensure that doesn’t happen to you:1. Lead with a cover headline that directly empathizes with your customer’s needsThis can be done a variety of ways. You could ask a question. You can make a promise. You can literally identify the problem. Whatever you choose to do, the right brochure copywriting strategy is one that steers clear of the “marketing speak” trap and speaks to your market directly in a language that it easily understands and appreciates. Secondly, the headline should create curiosity to continue reading the brochure, but this should be a natural effect of a truly empathetic headline.2. Introduce your company and offerings with an emphasis on customer benefitsA brochure usuallange maybe the headline to imply a unique customer benefit. Measure this. If bounce improves keep it. If it gets worse change it again until it gets better.
Some variables you might want to test;
- Headlines. (We improved bounce by 36% on one page with a better headline).
- Scan Proofing (Bold benefits so that the reader gets the point without having to read – 33% improvement in bounce).
- Bullet point benefits versus long copy. On one site last year we actually improved sales from nearly zero conversion to 2.4% sales conversion on a landing page by changing long copy to bulleted psychological benefits.
- Testimonials and other social evidence. Add these to pages where you can, we increased conversion of one lead generation system to 1.5% overall from nothing simply by adding client testimonials to a page with the registration form on it.
- Calls to action. It sounds stupid but if you don’t have a way to capture the sale or the lead then really please don’t expect to be inundated with phone calls. It doesn’t work like that. Put calls to action in different places and test which method works best.
- Graphics. Test how to use them. All communication should lead to change and graphics are no exception, use them to persuade, inform, brand or intrude. Don’t use them for the sake of using them.
3) Target your market
If you’re going to optimize for search engines make sure you get the target market right by selecting the right keywords to optimize for. Basically you want the highest levels of traffic you can attain which also converts highly. PPC traffic, or other traffic you have to pay for should be negatively targeted with factors like price and location for big ticket items. You don’t want to pay thousands for people only mildly interested, you want to pay hundreds for the few who have their wallets open.
Think about the market you have, what makes them tick? What is it about the product that they want? What about the extras and bonus benefits you can offer? Are you telling them everything? Remember above all else that different people have different wants and needs. One of our customers sells amongst other things nebulizers (an asthmatic product). A young mother with children might be closed to the sale by being told the fact that the nebulizer fits in her purse so it’s convenient for her, whereas a guy whose old nebulizer just broke might need a new one shipped pretty quickly so shipping time is more important to him. What you have to do is tell your audience all of these needs are catered for so that you have optimum chance of a sale. Tell your audience the whole story.
The good thing about search marketing is that it’s all possible to measure, so you can see where exactly people have arrived from. It makes it easy for you to concentrate your best time and effort on what works and forget about what doesn’t and it’s a cheaper form of marketing than say sticking an ad in the news paper.
Summary
Had the CEO looked through his web analytics package (or paid someone else to do it) he might have found that his bounce rates were very high on his product pages. He might have seen that the traffic directed to his offers were largely from the wrong kind of target audience. He might have realized that his content and copy was poorly organized and that his information architecture needed improvement. He might have figured out that by changing the size of a graphic on a page he could better influence the outcome of a call to action.
Improving web site sales happens with lots of testing, time and patience, but eventually it comes. It’s about learning how to sell to your online target audience by testing and optimizing pages through observation. Once you have learned the basics of doing this it becomes easy to continue your testing so that you continuously improve. Forever and ever!
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