Stats usage

Getting an email address from a visitor to your site isn’t as easy as it used to be.  These days people are already inundated with hundreds of daily spam messages and most of them are aware that each time they add their name to someone’s subscriber base, they risk another deluge of spam arriving in their in-box offering them everything from liposuction to medication like viagra.  The best way to circumnavigate reluctance to share their personal information is to offer them something that they want in return for the information.

The first thing you need to do is consider what visitors would consider a value exchange.  Would it be a report on something related to the subject area of your site?  Would it be an e-book or workbook on a similar theme?  How about a list of resources that people interested in your site subject area would find useful?  Maybe an audio podcast they can download and listen to that will either educate or entertain them and be based on the subject area of your site? Or perhaps you could send them some cosmetic surgery or marks and spensers vouchers? Whatever you choose, it should be a quality product and easy to transfer automatically so that the visitor can be enticed with a “download immediately upon subscribing to our site” comment.

Creating these products doesn’t have to be expensive.  You can either produce them yourself, or outsource via a number of sites such as rentacoder.Com or elance.Com.  Make sure that you are very clear about what the product should be before you post the project however, and be very clear that you want original material and all rights to the product once it’s complete.  What you pay for the product will depend on your budget (which in turn is dependent upon what the conversion from visitor to subscriber is worth to you), and the kind of quality you can expect.   Extremely low budgets can expect products that require additional “fixing” to improve the standard of the product before it’s used as a conversion incentive.

Once you have your product, take the time to create a welcome page that promotes what the product will do for the visitor if they download it.  What can they expect to learn from it?  Educate them on how much they will get out of the product. How much they will save using their vouchers, how much more beautiful they'll look after the face lift, how much they will enjoy listening to the free music tracks.  Use language that enforces this and gets them to act now (chances are if they decide to do it later, they’ll forget)  so that they can immediately access the download of this product. 

Conversion incentive products are a great way of bringing new people onto your subscriber base but make sure that your product is of high quality, and that you are able to market it effectively.  If you don’t see an upsurge in your conversion rates once you offer the product, it’s probably the page that markets the product that’s at fault, so you need to consider if the page is saying what the visitor needs to read in order to get excited enough about the product to sign up as a subscriber.

Most of us passively surf the Internet.  We click on links from emails and websites that we routinely visit and find new websites that we’re also interested in, but often we just scan the text and then click on to the next site on our web journey.  Also, all too often we never return to those sites because we don’t remember their names and after a day or so don’t even remember the visit!   If you have a site that wants to convert those surfers into visitors who come back then you need to get them to take an additional step before they move on to the next site so that you have them “tagged” and can get them back again!

The way to do this is by using active headlines – some kind of “call to action” so that the visitor is interested or intrigued enough to be knocked temporarily out of his passive surfing zone.  Have the words free laser hair removal with a live link like this nice and big. Or perhaps if you sell corporate events london, have a flash sequence with images of the event in order to catch peoples attanetion. You don’t want to hold him up, just slow him down long enough to provide you with an email address - so make sure there is 'join our mailing list' box linked in to some kind of email marketing software package that processes it for you automatically. Once you have this, then that part of the conversion process is complete – your accidental surfer is now a subscriber and the next part of your conversion system will pick him up.

So what kind of headlines will call this surfer to action?  Well you could offer a free report – something directly related to your subject area (it’s the subject area that will have brought the surfer there initially).  Perhaps it could be a headline “Click here to receive your FREE report on the Best 10 Tips on Catching the Biggest Trout this Season” or “Subscribe here and receive a free guide on choosing the best tent for your next adventure vacation” – depending on what your subject area is.  The reports don’t have to be long – they could be anything from a report of 2-3 pages (which should also give more information about your site and giving teasers about what they will find there), to an ebook of 50-200 pages.  You could produce these yourself, employ someone else to do them for you at a relatively low cost, or see if there is some kind of PLR content available (often a very low fee) that allows you to put your own information on the content and use it as a conversion tool.

Remember, although the report or ebook you’re offering should give good quality information, the main thing is to get the visitor to be interested enough to hand over their email information so bullet point what they will learn from the item you’re going to send them, make the process of signing up simple, and use active language that will move them to action. 

Happy Converting!

We focus more on conversions, or have been so far, so I want to make a special shout out to the engine optimisers today. The stats that we use, the figures that we crunch in order to work out how best to increase conversions and customers, without that traffic reaching us in the first place we would have very little to do.
So I was talking to a college whilst waiting in the morning to use the office vending machines when he told me about the SEO rapper he’d found on you tube (attached at the end of this article – click on the “read the rest” link). The first thing I thought when I watched it was how funny it was. I mean, the guy is rapping about work! The reason it is funny though is because what he says is solid stuff. He is offering good advice about building and designing your site. Now he’s not saying anything new, he’s not saying anything that I didn’t already know or do myself, but because he is talking about the fundamentals it is a great reminder of the basics of what we should be doing. We get caught up sometimes so much in the details and the intricacies of it all, that we forget the fundamentals. Well, our friendly seo rapper has helped remind us.

John was building the female hair loss page at the time he found it, and I really believe that it had effected the way that he has built and altered the page. The navigation of the site is good already, and as you can see that has been in place for some time, but recently he’s been getting more and more adventurous and creative with the way he deigns the page. This time, he’s just gone back to basics and kept it simple. I think that the page looks good and will do well.
If you want to see the rapper, you’ll have to click on this link… Read the rest of this entry »

Who is your customer?  I know that you will sell your product or service to anyone who is willing to buy it, but all successful businesses can usually identify who their “target” demographic buyer is.  If you haven’t identified yours, then you are probably not using the right marketing language to get them to convert once they come to your site.

Look at your product or service.  No matter what you are trying to sell, whether it's laser hair removal or a london corporate event, you have to know your customer. Analyze any sales report information you have on similar products or services. Who is the main buying sector?  Are they young professionals?  Are they parents?  Are they busy top executives, homemakers, or students?   Where do they live?   What other things interest this demographic?  Are they hip and trendy, or more traditional in their outlook?  Are they wanting the “in” thing at any price, or tried and tested at a cost effective price? 

Once you know who your target buyer is, you will have a far better chance of being able to create marketing copy for your website that will appeal to what they want.  For example, if your target buyer is a 20-something single businessman, he’s probably more interested in what looks good and will attract positive attention than what the item costs.  He will be attracted by marketing campaigns that state “Stand Out From the Crowd” and “Lead the Pack” than he will by ones which just list features that can be found on other similar items online and elsewhere.  On the other hand, if your target buyer is busy mom on a tight financial budget then using marketing copy that has headlines such as “Need to Find Extra Time in Your Day?”  or “Increase your Time for Less Expense” (if these are appropriate to your product/service) are going to have them clicking to convert through to the next stage in your process.

Having identified your target demographic, you’ll not only be able to use this to increase your conversion rate, but you’ll also find that you are able to run a more effective advertising campaign where you put ads for your website in websites and other media where this demographic is likely to hang out – this is where the analysis of what interests this particular demographic has its main power.

It may seem like a lot of hard work to identify your target demographic, but you’ll find that it will increase not only your conversion rate, but your profit margins and so in the long term, the time spent will pay off.

When offering a product or service, it’s all too easy to get caught up with the enthusiasm for what you’re selling, whether that's corporate events or a weight loss surgery loan.  This however can be dangerous because converting your visitors into clients, or even subscribers isn’t about you.  It’s about them, and what they came to your site hoping to find.

What is it about your product or service that will benefit a visitor to your site?  What do you think the average visitor has in mind when they enter your website?  What are they looking for?  These are questions you need to answer so that you know how to use language in your web copy that speaks to the visitor and shows that you have what they want.

Webpage stats are a great way of getting this information.  Depending on the statistical tool you have available you might be able to tell not just which pages they entered and left, but also how they got there.  By analyzing how they found you, you can identify what it is they’re looking for.  For example, if you know that they are clicking through from a specific search keyword, then this keyword is something you need to highlight more on your site.   If you know that they are clicking through from another website, take a look at that website and see what it offers because this is obviously something your visitor was also interested in. For example, if the visitor has made a search for breast reduction birmingham, and they then land on a webpage that talks about breast reduction with reference to clinics in birmingham, that person is likely to convert.

Use the information you have to focus your advertising towards the majority of visitors.  If you find that most of them are based in the US for example, target your marketing towards testimonials that are US-based.  Use US current terminology and spelling.  On the other hand, if you find that your client base is mainly Australian, then you should adapt your marketing to “speak” to them.  Learn what the culture of the visitor profile is likely to be attracted to – is a free offer if they subscribe onto your database going to be more persuasive then a percentage rebate for members for example?  A word of warning however, don’t use your website stats analysis change too many things at once.  Introduce one new idea at your website – such as a heading suggesting benefit to the visitor - and monitor how it impacts your conversion rate.  Changing too many things at once means that you won’t be able to tell which change was the one that really made the difference and therefore should be expanded upon!