Archive for the ‘Internet Sales’ Category

Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo, Testing Makes Your Website Go

April 21st, 2011 posted by Xander Becket 12:08PM | View Full Story

Quick – what’s the one thing you can do tomorrow, in about 2 hours, that can double your website revenue?

START TESTING YOUR WEBSITE.

When you designed your site you guessed what would work. You picked out colors, copy and navigation that looked nice.

But there was never any guarantee that combination would produce the most business.

  • Maybe Headline 1 outperforms Headline 3, but only when Picture 2 shows in place of Picture 4?
  • Maybe the copy that got a 25% conversion rate in July only converts 10% of visitors in September?
  • Maybe your customers respond better to a two-step conversion funnel, instead of just one contact page?

With real-time website testing, you can send one group of visitors to the original page while sending the rest to the new variation, then see which converts better. Choose the better performing one, log your observations, then start building another variation!

This is the #1 most cost-effective and quickest way to impact your bottom line. Every company with a website needs to test.

Take a half hour and listen to this podcast:

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/Always_Be_Testing_Avinash.mp3

In this podcast, Bryan Eisenberg, a renowned conversion optimization expert, interviews analytics evangelist at Google, Avinash Kaushik. By listening to this podcast, you’ll get a nice overview of testing and want to start RIGHT NOW.

Getting it Done

Some organizations have a hard time promoting a “testing culture”. Here are a few tips to make testing easier for you:

Commit 100% – Convince everyone above and below you that testing is a priority. When everyone understands the value of testing and buys in, your job is a lot easier.

Always move forward – There is no “good enough” until your conversion rate is 100%. Keep on going!

Track everything – Keep a running log of your qualitative and quantitative data. Use it to continue making even smarter decisions with each successive iteration. If your visitors hate blue, remember not to use blue.

No spaghetti throwing – Make educated, informed decisions on what to test. Don’t just throw something at the wall hoping it sticks.

Show results – When you get a big win, let everyone know!

Need help getting started in the right direction? No problem, we offer a one-time conversion analysis.

That’s all for now, have a Happy Easter, Passover, etc. everyone!

Bookmark It! Comment!

How to Sell to Everyone: The 4 Personality Types

May 29th, 2009 posted by Xander Becket 12:08PM | View Full Story

Everybody fits into one of four major personality types.

It may seem stereotypical to pigeonhole everybody into one of four boxes, but in the buying process each type has different needs.

Your website text (and sales team) must speak to each personality type individually to be the most effective. Should you go for the competition angle or the exciting angle? It depends on the personality of your customer.

There are a bunch of different names for the four personalities, like:

  • Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic
  • D, I, S, C
  • Assertive, Amiable, Expressive, Analytical
  • Competitive, Spontaneous, Humanistic, Methodical

We’ll break them down by those last four (with celebrity examples!) because they’re the most aptly-named.
…View Full Story

Bookmark It! 3 Comments

The 4 Keys to a Well-Performing Landing Page

May 22nd, 2009 posted by Josh Lasdin 12:08PM | View Full Story

soccer-player

The other day I attended a very informative webinar given by Anna Talerico from Ion Interactive. I was so inspired by her talk that I decided to recap the webinar with a nice blog entry.

As Anna stated, there are four key aspects that make up a high-performing landing page. What is a landing page? Landing pages are used as a high point of conversions typically in conjunction with a PPC Ad Campaign, or Email Blast. These four fundamentals state that your page should be engaging, dynamic, disposable, and agile. I’ll break each of these down for you.

…View Full Story

Bookmark It! 4 Comments

How to Get More Website Leads without More Traffic

May 15th, 2009 posted by Xander Becket 12:08PM | View Full Story

Traffic

Stop trying to get more traffic and start converting the traffic you already have.

That might sound weird coming from an internet marketer, but hear me out.

5 years ago the easiest way to increase leads from your website was to get more traffic. This meant search engine optimize, buy cheap clicks on PPC ads, or even buy some banner ads.

Clicks were cheap or free, so why not buy more?

Nowadays clicks are expensive. Sometimes REALLY expensive. If your website already has a steady traffic flow, the smart thing to do is to analyze what those visitors are doing on your site and adjust to give them what they want.
…View Full Story

Bookmark It! 2 Comments

The Danger of Using The Web for Branding

May 1st, 2009 posted by Xander Becket 12:08PM | View Full Story

Traditional advertising grew out of the old distribution model.

Companies made their product, sold it to stores where people buy the product, and those stores sold it to the consumer. This worked for everything from toothbrushes to televisions.

Then these huge companies wanted to increase sales of their product. Since all of the competition is right on the shelf, they needed to differentiate themselves from the other products.

One way was price: sell the lowest price product. But the better way, and a longer term solution, was branding.

…View Full Story

Bookmark It! 2 Comments

The 10 Businesses with the Highest Cost Per Click

February 20th, 2009 posted by Xander Becket 12:08PM | View Full Story

Pay per click can be expensive!

Yesterday Luke, Bill and I had lunch with Jeremy, Justin and Carl from Cleveland Brothers.

We were talking about pay-per-click advertising and Luke said that the keywords with the highest cost per click (CPC) would make a good blog post.

So here it is!

I looked into this a little while ago and remember that clicks for personal injury lawyers are pretty expensive, at about $20.00 apiece.

I thought that was about the highest CPC out there.

Boy, was I wrong!

It turns out that every one of the top 25 most expensive keywords belongs to one of 10 industries. I averaged their click costs to give you:

The 10 Most Expensive Industries to Advertise Online:

…View Full Story

Bookmark It! 5 Comments