How To Dramatically Improve Your Websiteกs Convers

How To Dramatically Improve Your Websiteกs Conversion Ratio

by: Dean Phillips

According to the socalled experts, a decent conversion ratio is right around one percent. In other words, one out of every one hundred visitors to your website converts to a sale.

Personally, I think a one percent conversion ratio sucks! My website consistently converts right around ten percent. And so do a lot of my Internet marketing collegues. I can assure you, the websites of superstars like Marlon Sanders, Terry Dean and others convert a lot higher than one percent.

Why? Well, besides knowing what we’re doing, we’re also ultracompetitive and don’t settle for mediocre results. And with very few exceptions, a one percent conversion ratio is mediocre.

Unless you’re selling a bigticket item and making $100 or more per sale, itกs extremely difficult to make any real money with only a one percent conversion ratio.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and if your website is attracting mega traffic like Yahoo, then obviously you can do quite well with a one percent or lower conversion ratio.

But what if you don’t have mega trafficand most websites don’t. Then what? What if you’re selling a $20 ebook and you’re only attracting a hundred visitors a day to your website? With a one percent conversion ratio, that means your website is making a measly $20 a day. And believe me, thatกs much more common than you realize.

However, what if you could improve your conversion ratio to five percent? All of a sudden, you’re making $100 a day with the same amount of traffic. Improve your conversion ratio to ten percent and voila, that $100 a day turns into $200 a day!

So, how do you go about improving your conversion ratio? Well, the first thing you need to do is make sure you have a trustworthy and credible website. People buy from websites they trust.

For instance, is the design of your website up to par? Is it easy to navigate, or are you using distracting flash or stupid, meaningless graphics that don’t mean a damn thing and take forever to load? Simplify your website. Get rid of the flash, graphics and popups!

Do you have your own domain name, or does yours contain names like, กGeocitiesก, กAngelfireก or ‘tripodก? Be a professional. Get your own domain name.

Prove what you say. Back up your claims with cold, hard, indisputable and verifiable facts?

Put your name, telephone number and street address on your website?

Use authentic customer testimonials, complete with first and last names? Make sure you get your customers permission first.

Offer a fair and reasonable moneyback guarantee? Thirty days is good. Sixty or ninety days is better!

Make it easy for your customers to pay. And offer a variety of payment options. I can assure you, if you’re using Paypal only, you’re losing sales. There are a lot of people out there, myself included that just won’t do business with Paypal. Itกs too much of a hassle!

And most importantly of all, you have to have a powerful sales letter. A strong and effective sales letter can blast your earnings into the upper stratosphere!

YOU MUST HAVE A POWERFUL SALES LETTER!

If you aren’t capable of writing that type of sales letter, hire me to write it for you.

Follow the steps set forth in this article, and your websiteกs conversion ratio will improve dramatically!

About The Author

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: [email protected]

Make Money Online! Internet marketing expert, Dean Phillips will teach you how to make money online, starting today…Guaranteed! For details just visit my website.

Website: http://www.letsmakemoney.net

This article was posted on September 29, 2004

by Dean Phillips

5 Power Tips To Double Your Sales

5 Power Tips To Double Your Sales

by: Michael Southon

กHow Can I Double My Sales?ก that must be the silent prayer of thousands of webmasters.

There are two ways to do it: you can either double your traffic or you can double your conversion rate.

Letกs say you have a conversion rate of 2% (1 sale for every 50 visitors) and you get 100 visitors a day you’re getting 2 sales a day. You could get 4 sales a day by increasing your traffic to 200 visitors a day.

But you can get the same result with your existing traffic by doubling your conversion rate (2 sales for every 50 visitors).

Here are 5 ways to double your conversion rate:

(1) Direct Response: Make sure your website is a กDirect Response Websiteก. A DRW is a site where the only options are to Buy, Bookmark, or Leave. The more options you give your visitor, the less likely they are to buy.

(2) Free EBooks: Include Free EBooks as bonus gifts with your product. This can easily double your sales especially if the Free EBooks are genuinely useful. Here are some places you can find Free EBooks:

http://www.freeebooks.net/

http://www.ebookdirectory.com/

http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/download.html

(3) Testimonials: Make sure you have plenty of testimonials on your website. Preferably, they should be from customers who have achieved results from your product (e.g. more traffic, more sales, saved time etc).

(4) Follow Up: Youกve probably heard this over and over again but itกs worth repeating people have to see you your message about 7 times before they buy. The biggest mistake you can make is to try and sell your product on the first contact alone.

It just doesn’t work, and the statistics bear this out: the 1st contact produces 2% of sales, the 5th to 12th contact produce 80% of sales.

So in your ezine ads and at your website, offer something free in exchange for an email address. And then follow up with sequential (or followup) autoresponders.

Here are some sites that offer free followup autoresponders:

http://www.autoresponders.net

http://www.informationbyemail.com

http://www.getresponse.com/orderfree.html

http://www.rapidreply.net/free_features.htm

(5) Backend Sales: Itกs no secret that successful businesses make up to 80% of their sales from previous customers. Why? Because people who have bought from you before are much more likely to buy from you again (they know you, they trust you, they were happy with your product).

The hard work in marketing is getting a customer. Once you have a customer, theyกll buy from you over and over again.

Contact your previous customers and let them know about another product that compliments the product or service they bought from you. Experts reckon that the value of กa lifetime customerก lasts about 3 years make use if it.

If you follow these 5 tips, you may well find that you can double your online sales with the traffic you already have.

Wishing you every success!

(c) 2001 by Michael Southon

About The Author

Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3 years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this simple technique to get massive free publicity and dramatically increase traffic and sales. Click here to find out more: http://www.ezinewriter.com

This article was posted on August 30, 2002

by Michael Southon

Leading eCommerce Consultant Admits You Should Onl

Leading eCommerce Consultant Admits You Should Only Listen to One Real Expert! (And it’s not him..!)

by: Eric Graham

Let me share with you a secret that most marketing experts and consultants don’t want you to know… (many of them don’t even understand this secret themselves.)

The secret is… There is only one true expert who can show you how to drastically improve the effectiveness of your website and your marketing. With dozens of socalled guru’s, consultants and experts ready and willing to give you (or charge you for) their advice, there is actually only one person you should listen to on a regular basis. Only one! And his name is Eric Graham… No, no… just kidding…

The only ขexpertsข that you should listen to and trust are your visitors. The visitors that come to your website or view your ads are the only true experts. They will share their expert opinions with you by the actions they take while on your website.

Not sure what headline to use at the top of your page… You have a couple of options:

Pay an ขexpertข consultant like me to look it over for you and give you copywriting recommendations, for a few hundred dollars an hour.

Or…

ขAskข your visitors which one is best, by split testing each element of your headlines and letting your visitors vote with their credit cards… The one that converts to sales best wins!

Trying to figure out how much to charge for you new ebook? You can hire an expert… I can talk to you all day about advanced pricing theory and explain to you how prices with a ข7ข in them (such as $17, $97, $777) usually convert better. I can walk you through an analysis of the price points of competing/similar products…

Or…

Simply test 3 or 4 different prices to see which one is most profitable. Often the greater perceived value of a higher price actually converts better than a lower price. But you won’t know if that’s true for your product and your visitors until you test it. Again your visitors will teach you more about pricing than any consultant ever could. You just need to ขaskข these experts by testing.

If done properly, the questions you can get your ขvisitor expertsข to answer about your website by simply testing, is endless.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you should never hire a consultant or expert after all my clients happily pay me a lot of money to help them improve their conversion rates. And I am worth every penny! 😉

But what you need to understand here is that the best experts, became experts by studying and testing, testing and testing different elements over and over until they developed a set of ขbest practicesข. So, by hiring someone who has been in the trenches you can save time and money in the long run.

However, every website, business, product and visitor demographic is different. Just because something works at one website, doesn’t automatically mean it will work at yours. The best consultants will tell you that you still need to test everything. So in the end it’s still your visitor who’s the true expert.

Just imagine the results you could achieve over the next year, if you took the time to test only one new element every week. Even if half of the tests were failures and didn’t produce improvements in your conversion rates, you would still discover 26 ways to improve your sales. Even if each improvement only boosts your conversion rate by 1/10th of 1%, you would have improved your conversion rate by over 2.6% (and probably much more!)

Look over your current sales statistics, and ask yourself, ขHow much more profit would I be making if my conversion rate jumped by 2.6%?ข

With most sites currently converting at an appalling 1% to 2%, a 2.6% improvement could triple your sales…

Let me ask you a question: Imagine you have a website selling information on how to learn to play the guitar, getting 1,000 visitors per day. And I came to you and showed you how I can change a few things about your page, improve your search engine positioning and triple your traffic? Would you be excited? Sure.

Then, why not get equally excited about optimizing your website for maximum conversion rates?

Many online businesses will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars optimizing their sites for the search engines. But then they waste 99 out of every 100 visitors that they spent so much time and effort getting, simply because they failed to invest in ขasking the expertsข (their visitors) first. Had they taken the time to optimize their site for conversion rate, before driving the traffic their results would be 10x more profitable.

The great news for you is, so few online businesses are currently testing anything! This means that you are in a position to absolutely dominate your competition by simply listening to the true experts… Your visitors!

Copyright 2004 Eric Graham

About The Author

Want to improve your conversion rates? Eric Graham is the CEO of several successful online companies. A top authority on eCommerce & Internet Marketing, heกs an indemand speaker & consultant. Visit www.websiteevaluations.com today for an indepth evaluation to boost YOUR websites conversion rate!

This article was posted on September 14, 2004

by Eric Graham

Improving Your Conversion Reduces the Need to Cons

Improving Your Conversion Reduces the Need to Constantly Promote Your Sites

by: Jack Humphrey

I just got off the phone with Michael Fortin, one of the top copywriters and conversion experts on the web.

We were doing a teleseminar for our members on conversion and testing for website owners wanting more out of the traffic they already enjoy, rather than constantly having to promote their sites to support low conversion rates. Specifically, we were talking about all the things you can do to test different กcalls to action.ก

A call to action is anything you are trying to get people to do on any particular site or page of a site. It could be buying a product or service, getting people on an announcement list or newsletter, or getting people to click on your advertising links.

Most web publishers are so happy when they finally have a site up that they consider their work done and get right to marketing it. Once the traffic rolls in, they enjoy whatever sales or clicks they get and try to make more money by driving MORE traffic to the site.

Then they start building another site. And another. And another.

This is a disturbing trend that is creating a massive amount of waste. Both in resources and time. Especially when it comes to niche publishers who are building massive networks of sites on different topics in order to capture emails, generate advertising revenue, sell affiliated products and services, or to build their lists to generate backend sales to their subscribers.

The waste is generated when people are in too big a hurry to build more sites, add more products, and get more traffic to sites that can convert sometimes 1000% BETTER than they do now.

They are moving at a hectic pace, in this scenario, to build build build, when their income goals can most often easily be met without so much waste.

One example of waste is when someone builds a contentdry site that has nothing but Adsense and some links on it. People hit that kind of site and can’t wait to find a reason to leave. The thinking is, กGreat! My กclick thru ratioก is sky high! I am getting almost everyone to click on my ads!ก

But hereกs whatกs happening in reality: you are working VERY hard to get traffic to such a site, only to กburnก it on a 35 cent click! No email capture, no followup, and most importantly no desire on the part of the visitor to EVER see your site again!

Would you rather have someone come through your site and click immediately on an advertiserกs link, never to return? Or would you rather have someone come to your site, read some great content, sign up for your list and not click on ANY links that first time?

I will take scenario #2 any day of the week. And I won’t have made a single penny off of that person with that initial action. But I will in the future!

If you have a site that you constantly test and tweak for performance (beyond its ability to repulse your visitors into clicking on an advertisement just to get to a QUALITY site) then you have a real business.

You can test and track SO MANY variables to make a site more profitable than it is now. Every site on the web can perform better than it does right now. Every single one!

The people who understand this never stop testing their calls to action to get their visitors to do more than something that results in a onetime action.

Traffic is the most expensive thing on the web both in the time it takes to get it and the resources you have to use up for each and every hit.

The traffic you have now might be all the traffic you EVER need on a daily basis to make a killing with your site. You will never know until you test and track everything about your site.

The headlines, the offers, the optin forms, the guarantees, testimonials, bullets, adsense placement, followup… In short, every webmaster on the net has a lot of work to do on every site they own if they really want to reap the kinds of profits their sites are actually capable of pulling in.

Most people get a site up and are happy with the sales or clicks they get and move on. NO! You are leaving so much money on the table thinking you are done with a site right after you put it up.

That site is the worst it should ever be! Wasting another domain fee, hosting fee, bandwidth and the costs associated with getting traffic to a brand new site before you have optimized your current site for the very best conversion it can pull is NOT good business practice.

I know people who have literally thousands of domains. And one thing I can guarantee you is this: They are making a pittance, even if they are making $60,000 a DAY, in comparison to what they COULD be making with far fewer sites and more testing and tweaking of that smaller group!

And Fortin seems to agree. He is going to be at my seminar in New Orleans September 9th 11th to expose everyone who attends to just how much money they have left on the table over the years because they have never tested different aspects of their calls to action.

It is enlightening, as well as depressing to find out how much money you COULD have made all this time had you tested from the beginning!

But the point is, you cannot go back to get all those lost subscribers, sales, or clicks. You can only start testing today to capture more money from each site you own. Thereby alleviating the need to have a massive network of sites all performing at half their potential or much less!

Copyright 2005 Jack Humphrey

About The Author

Jack Humphrey is Managing Partner at Content Desk. He is also the author of Power Linking 2005, now in its 4th edition. http://www.powerlinkingprofits.com. To learn more about the profitable niche publishing industry, check out http://contentdesk.com/mardigras.

This article was posted on August 09

by Jack Humphrey

How I Boosted My Conversion Rate by 33% Overnight

How I Boosted My Conversion Rate by 33% Overnight

by: Rosalind Gardner

Once upon a time, I used to work as an air traffic controller.

As you might imagine, rapid technological advancement requires that controllers do a lot of reading to keep up with, and execute, procedural changes in their work.

As such, the first fifteen minutes of every shift was set aside to review new material in the ‘read and Initialก file, posted since your last day of work.

In addition to operational changes, the ‘read and Initialก contained administrative news on local, regional and national levels.

Some reviews would be easy. Iกd read one short memo about an upcoming retirement party and then Iกd be off to the coffee pot.

However, there were other days when an hour wouldn’t have been enough time to properly digest everything. But you were stuck with only fifteen minutes.

So, how did I make sure I fully understood all the information before sitting down to work on those กinformation overloadก days?

Well, fortunately for me, I had the best crew partner on the planet.

After quickly skimming the notes, heกd tell me all the nitty gritty details. In the telling, weกd both learn and understand the changes better.

I often learned more from hearing him explain what he understood, than if I had read the companyกs legalese a hundred times.

Why is that?

Because I learn best by first hearing information, THEN reading about it.

Knowing that, it surprises me that it took me so darned long to appreciate my friend Shaunกs suggestion that I put audio on my site.

Months after he told me how audio had boosted his conversions and how simple it was to do, I finally took half an hour to prepare a recording.

Incredible!

My sales skyrocketed by 33% overnight.

Iกve heard of conversion rate improvements of over 400 percent, simply by adding an audio snippet.

It makes sense.

Most of us are inherently lazy. Why read when you can listen instead?

Too, printed text isn’t capable of capturing and holding attention like a human voice.

Adding your picture and an กAbout Usก section to your site goes a long way to fostering trust and credibility, but your voice will take it home.

In addition to increasing your conversion rate, audio may also help reduce your email and overall workload.

I use Jay Jenningกs Sonic Memo on my site, and after a review of all the other audio programs out there, I believe Jayกs is the best.

If youกve been looking for an easy way to drammatically increase your siteกs conversion rate, I highly recommend talking to your visitors, using Jayกs technology.

© Copyright Rosalind Gardner, All Rights Reserved.

About The Author

Article by Rosalind Gardner, author of the bestselling กSuper Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other Peopleกs Stuff Onlineก. To learn how you too can suceed in Internet and affiliate marketing, go to: http://NetProfitsToday.com.

This article was posted on March 30

by Rosalind Gardner

How 5 Easy Tactics Can Seriously Boost Your Websit

How 5 Easy Tactics Can Seriously Boost Your Website Sales

by: Charles Preston

The art of turning website visitors into paying customers depends almost entirely on good sales copy. What is that?

Simply put good sales copy is the content of your copy and presentation of your copy put together in such a way that it increases your visitor to sale conversion rate on a consistent basis.

Itกs an ongoing process in which you will always try to beat your กcontrolก. Beating the control is marketing lingo for engaging in a never ending process of constant improvement to your sales copy in order to beat your last highest visitor to sale conversion rate. The more you practice this the more money you will make!

This article will give you 5 quick tactics to get you started in playing your own game of กbeat the controlก which in turn will put you on the road to higher sales conversion and more money in your pocket.

Tactic #1 Know your numbers

I am always surprised when I speak with clients who wish to increase their sales from their websites and when I ask them how many visitors they are getting per month, how many sales per visitor, average unit of sale, etc they don’t know. You must be able to measure results and that begins with knowing where you are at currently. Below are the most important factors you need to be tracking …

How many unique visitors do you get per month. This is not the same as กhitsก. Most hosting companies provide a stats package that you can log into and see how many unique visitors you get each month. If they don’t I suggest switching to a hosting company that does.

How many sales do you get per 100 visitors. This gives you your conversion rate in percent. The average according to shop.org is around 1.82% or roughly 2 sales for each 100 visitors. I have found that this number can be dramatically improved by making even the smallest changes to your website copy and or layout.

What is your average sale price. Take all your online sales each month add them up then divide by the number of sales.

Tactic #2 Move the big guns up to the front.

Statistics show that you have about 10 seconds to entice a website visitor to go deeper into your site before they click the back button and forget you ever existed. Remember that your online prospects are looking for information to solve their problem and if they don’t see anything on your homepage immediately upon arriving that leads them to believe that you understand their problem you lose.

You must greet your visitors with a large headline that says something to the effect of กwe know what your problem is and we can fix it better than anyone else hereกs why…ก. Then in your copy give them as many reasons as possible as to why your company is the better choice out of all your competitors. Give them testimonials, and other kinds of proof that you or your product gets results.

Tactic #3 Use simple language.

Speaking to your online prospects in a conversational tone increases conversion rates. Avoid the tendency to try to sound professional using corporate sounding gibber jabber. Remember these are real people and they respond to real language being spoken by a real person. Be authentic and forget about what your competitors are doing. Find your own voice and I guarantee that more of your prospects will respond to that than to the same old tired impersonal ivory tower cliches.

Tactic #4 Put the emphasis on what you can do for them

A lot of businesses make the mistake in thinking that potential customers actually care how long they have been in business or how much they say they value customer service and so on. Avoid platitudes like the plague consumers are immune to them now. Your copy needs to be written in terms of not how special you think your company is but in how good you are at solving problem x for the visitor and then back it up with all the proof you can find. Try using the word กYouก more often than the word กWeก.

Tactic #5 Lead your visitors to the call to action.

So if you have done a great job at enticing the prospect to keep clicking deeper into your site from the homepage with a compelling headline and copy that speaks to the prospects problem and the rest of your website copy does a good job of convincing the visitor that you are the obvious choice to do business with your job is still not done. You need to ask for the sale or lead the prospect to the call to action. At the end of any page of copy or maybe even within the main body of your content you need to tell them to buy your product or contact you today! If itกs not a high priced item or service this is all that is required but if you are selling something over $100 you might need to break your sales process into small steps by offering the visitor a free report or free trial or sample of your product or service just to get them into your sales cycle. Make it easy for them to build a relationship with you and give them a good incentive to do so.

The copy on your website sells your product or service. The website itself and the graphics are their to support the copy. The copy needs to be easy to read (break it up with headers, short paragraphs and bulleted lists) use conversational language, give the visitor substantial reasons to do business with you as soon as possible on the homepage.

Try different headlines and free offers. Keep track of your conversions and see whatกs working and what doesn’t. There is always a better formula that will make you more money and by beginning the process of searching for that formula you will be gaining a significant advantage over your competition.

About The Author

Charles Preston is President of Click Response a website design company that specializes in Business Website Design that increases online sales. http://www.clickresponse.net

This article was posted on September 10

by Charles Preston

Copywriting & Conversion Techniques That Will Driv

Copywriting & Conversion Techniques That Will Drive Your Sales Through The Roof

by: Mark Flavin

What This Article Shows You:

What exactly is conversion and why it is the single most important factor to your success?

How can I get more sales out of the same amount of traffic I already have?

How the words you use determine how much money you will make?

Traffic conversion is the single most important factor to the success of your business.

That is not a question it is a fact, and I can prove it.

What exactly is conversion?

Conversion is turning lookers into buyers. It is taking visitors and making them paying customers.

If you don’t have customers if no one buys your product or service then your business is a failure.

Evidence: Look at all the กDotComก (some called them กDobBombก) companies of the early 2000กs. Many of them had plenty of visitors & offered a great service but most did not have an effective way to turn those visitors in to satisfied paying customers so they failed.

FACT: You will fail too if you can’t convert.

Sorry, but it is the truth the point of business is to exchange a product or service for money. That is how it has worked since the Ancient Egyptian days and the Internet did not change that at all. Everyone no matter if you are online or offline everyone must convert their visitors into customers or they will wind up just like the infamous Pets.com (down the drain).

But don’t think that we will not continue to provide great traffic creation tips just like we always have.

We will always provide 510 traffic creation tips. But additionally, we are going to push the envelope into the justasimportant area of traffic conversion, and also give you many different ways you can use your website to convert those visitors youกve worked so hard to get into happy customers.

Think of it this way, your Free traffic Tips Newsletter just got an injection of steroids… and is now even beefier 🙂

I would like to share with you some shocking conversion facts that Bryan Eisenberg recently presented:

FACT: ก50% of Visitors are LOST because visitors can’t easily find contentก Gartner Group FACT: ก40% of Repeat Visitors are LOST from negative experienceก Zona Research FACT: ก85% of Visitors ABANDON a new site due to poor designก cPulse FACT: 70% of people who are ready, willing and able to buy online don’t complete the sale.

Remember that last fact from Lesson 1? (It is unbelievable.) It was that 7 out of every 10 people who have their credit card out, know what they want to purchase and want to make the purchase online CAN’t!

Think about it. If you can improve your websiteกs conversion rate, you have the potential to increase your sales by over 233% without spending any more money on advertising or working any harder to draw traffic to your site.

How do you improve conversion on your site?

Just as there are many different ways to increase traffic, there are many different ways to improve conversion. Today we will cover copywriting what your website is saying to every visitor.

What is copywriting and Why is it important?

Copywriting is the process of turning words into cash. Selling your product through words.

More specifically, web copywriting is the process of developing the wording of websites that sell something.

The job of your website is to: 1) Explain how your product fills the wants & desires of your customer 2) Take the customers order as fast & easily as possible.

The point of copywriting is to clearly communicate the value of your product or service to your visitors. In the offline world, a salesperson does this. On a website you are completely dependent on the power of your words to qualify prospects, give your sales pitch, close the sale and take the order.

Based on the statistics given above (85% of Visitors abandon a new site) our websites are not doing a very good job. Some people even condone firing your website. I say: กdon’t fire it, fix it.ก

How do you fix your websiteกs sales copy?

As you will learn in future issues of Trafficology, there are very specific ways to engage the reader at a deeper level. We will discuss how to become a better copywriter, and the things you can do to enhance your copy. But, in this course we will focus on the basic fundamentals of copywriting.

The first step in copywriting is to understand the wants & desires of the people who will buy your product. You learned in lesson 2 how to easily find this information with some basic research.

If you did that research when finding keywords, you can use the same information here. If you did not conduct that research, I highly recommend that you review lesson 2 and learn exactly how to find the customers who will come to your site and will buy your product. This is the fundamental building block of copywriting without it you can’t know for sure which customers to focus your efforts on.

Once we understand the wants & desires of our visitors, then we need to think about how we can frame our offer. Remember, you are not selling a product with physical features you are selling a solution to a problem that the customer is having. You are not talking about the product specifications you are talking about the benefits and how your product fills the wants and desires of the visitor.

What we need to do is create a sales presentation that:

Grabs the visitors attention with a compelling headline

Draws the readers interest by creating a connection between their problem / desire and your solution

Peaks their Desire by making an emotionally compelling & believable case for your product

Motivates the reader to take action and fill their wants & needs by purchasing your product or service.

When you write your web copy you need to walk the reader through each of these 4 steps. Use what you have learned about the readers to reach their deepest emotions and compel them to give you money in exchange for your solution to their problem.

Sometimes visitors already know what they want and you just need to show them the order button. Sometimes your visitors don’t even know they have a problem and you have to explain everything stepbystep. But, every time you need to help your visitors achieve what they really กwantก that right THERE is the point of copywriting and salesmanship on the web.

In future issues of Trafficology we will explain each step of the copywriting process. We will show you how to write copy for different types of products & services, and we will also share with you the best tips from some of the greatest copywriters ever. Yes, ever.

Online or offline, conversion has been the key to business since the beginning of time. On the web, conversion starts with your copy it is your websiteกs salesperson. กDon’t fire it; fix it.ก

I hope this article has helped you, if you would like to recieve more of these tips please visit http://nicetodobusiness.com

To Your Success

Mark Flavin

http://www.nicetodobusiness.com

About The Author

Mark Flavin

age 21

country ireland

websites http://www.nicetodobusiness.com

http://www.nicetodobusiness.com/freetraffictips2.htm

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 05

by Mark Flavin

7 Killer Ways To Increase Your Online Sales

7 Killer Ways To Increase Your Online Sales

by: Tony L. Callahan

Every online entrepreneur I talk to is asking the same question, กHow do I increase my online sales, NOW?ก

Online selling is essentially a numbers game. The more visitors to a site, the more sales that site will make. The number of sales made divided by the total number of visitors to a site is called the conversion rate. A typical site will have a conversion rate of between 1 and 2 percent, or 1 to 2 sales per 100 visitors.

It is obvious that if the number of visitors increases, and the conversion rate remains the same, then sales will increase. Traffic is the first variable that most online marketers attempt to influence when they begin their online marketing campaigns.

There are two basic problems with the increase traffic method. The first is that it is expensive to run advertising and improve a siteกs ranking in the search engines. The second, and subtler issue is that there is no guarantee that the conversion rate will remain constant.

So what about increasing the conversion rate? Using the example above, if the number of buyers could be increased from 1 or 2 per hundred visitors to 2 to 4, sales will have doubled! So what can be done to increase a web siteกs conversion rate? Below I list 7 techniques designed to accomplish this goal:

Provide plenty of testimonials

These testimonials should be from previous customers and should include specifics as to how the product or service helped them solve a problem.

Obtaining testimonials is no problem, just ask. People love to be asked what they think; most will be willing to share their thoughts on your product or service. Implement a process of following up with your customers with a questionnaire. Leave plenty of room for their comments and make it clear that their comments may be used in your advertising.

Improve your follow up

Many people will not buy the first time they see your product. In fact, some experts claim that people must see your message seven times before they are ready to buy. Autoresponder courses are a great way to follow up with the potential customer. There are many free autoresponder services on the web. I use FreeAutoBot.com.

Give away free samples

By letting your customers try before they buy, you can significantly increase your sales. If you sell an information product, provide a few paragraphs or even the first chapter by autoresponder. This technique also helps to improve follow up by guaranteeing you obtain contact information.

Give a bonus product

Everyone likes to get something for nothing, especially if that something is perceived as valuable. Ebooks make a great bonus, especially if they contain original content. If you are unable to create your own ebook, you could give away someone elseกs. FreeeBooks.net is a good resource for finding Ebooks to give away.

Focus the web site

Use the Direct Response Site model. A direct response site is one where the customerกs choices are very limited. Essentially they can buy the product, bookmark the page, subscribe to your ezine, or leave the site. The more options a visitor has, the less likely they are to make a purchase.

Follow on sales are crucial

It is well known that successful businesses make 75% of their sales to repeat customers. Start a free ezine and get your customers to subscribe. Get their permission to send them information on upgrades and new products. On their receipt, mention a product that compliments their purchase. Don’t have a product to offer for follow on sales? Find and join an affiliate program offering products of interest to your target market.

Change the web site copy

Appeal to target emotion rather than reason. People respond more intensely to emotional appeals than to intellectual discussion. Design your copy to focus on the visitorกs dreams, desires, fears or goals. Position your product to appeal to their emotional needs.

Implement these seven tips, and watch your online sales increase.

About The Author

Copyright 2002 Tony L. Callahan, All Rights Reserved Tony L. Callahan is president of his own Internet marketing company, LinkPromote.com. He also publishes WebLinks Monthly, a newsletter full of tips, tricks, tools and techniques for successful web site promotions. http://www.linkpromote.com/wlmonth/subscribe/index.html.

This article was posted on September 04, 2002

by Tony L. Callahan

Why You Should FORGET About Website Traffic!

Why You Should FORGET About Website Traffic!

by: Willie Crawford

The headline read, กA funny thing happens when you don’t promote your website… NOTHING.ก Experience has taught me that thatกs a fairly accurate statement. If you are not promoting your website, you’re not building your web business.

However, there is one thing you need to focus on MORE than generating traffic. That is converting that traffic into buying customers. If the visitors aren’t converting, and you’re spending money to generate traffic, then you’re probably worse off than you would be if you did nothing.

If you can improve your conversion ratio, then your existing traffic and new traffic is worth so much more to you. First, improve your conversion ratio, then aggressively seek new traffic.

Consider an example of a site getting just 500 unique visitors a day, with a conversion rate of 3%. Letกs assume this site markets a report that costs $49 and offers the site owner $30 profit after all expenses. This site is making 15 sales a day or $450 in profits. If this site can increase itกs conversion rate to 5%, it would be making 25 sales a day and $750 in profits… a big increase with no additional expenses!

Increases in conversion rates of 23% are very common. Conversion rates of 20% or more are also not unheard of. After a site has increased its conversion rate, earnings from backend sales also skyrocket. Thatกs because a VERY high percentage of first time customers become repeat customers if you offer them backend products. Increasing your conversion rate for first time visitors has an exponential effect on your bottom line… not a linear effect!

What are some way that you can increase conversion rates?

In a word… TESTING!

Test new headlines

Test new opening paragraphs

Test new guarantees (different wording, longer or shorter time periods, etc.)

Test offering different bonuses

Test offering no bonuses

Test new header graphics

Test removing header graphics

Test offering payment plans

Test different upsells on the order form

Test rearranging the elements on the order form

Test different wording in the call to action

Test different colors used for emphasis

Test different background colors

Test different prices

Test using different numbers of testimonials

Test putting testimonials in different places on the page

Test using audio or video on your page

Test long copy vs short copy

Test using different number of กorderก links

Test using different images within the page copy

In other words, test everything. Test one element at a time on your page, and track the difference that this made in your conversions. Do split testing where you compare the results on 2 or 3 different pages. Then use the page that did the best as the control and move on to testing the next page element. Thatกs how you increase your conversions over time from 23% into the double digits.

Seasoned marketers will tell you that marketing is nothing more than tracking and analyzing your numbers. This is true. You need to know exactly what result each change on your page had. Fortunately, there is software out there that makes this job very easy. Some of it is even free. There are also manuals that explain how to test most effectively. These manuals are how I was able to not be intimidated by the math and calculations that you DO need to do.

If youกd like to know what split testing software I use, and what I consider to be the best book Iกve ever read on the topic is, just send a blank email to my autoresponder at: [email protected]. This information will totally blow your mind and put you ahead of 99.999% of your competitors. Thatกs not hype, thatกs a fact.

You test because you cannot guess what the market wants. Top marketers and copywriters such as Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy, and Gary Halbert all relate that when they tried to guess what the market wanted, they guessed WRONG! Thatกs why they are consummate testers.

Testing often reveals surprising results. Iกve heard of marketers improving result for example by REMOVING the guarantee. Iกve heard of marketers improving results by doubling their price, or getting rid of a header graphic on a webpage. Those little things often prove to make a big difference and over time these differences can equal an over 1000% improvement.

After youกve gotten a decent conversion rate, THEN you need to focus on getting more traffic. The secret to doing this is to learn what those getting tons of highly targeted traffic are doing, and do something similar. Study why the techniques that they use are successful at attracting not just any traffic…but highly targeted traffic, then apply those lessons.

Youกve invited to join me and 2 very successful marketers as we reveal ways of generating highly targeted traffic. This traffic is people who come to your site, looking for what you are selling. This is the only type of traffic you should put your time and other resources into generating… and itกs a lot easier than you think. For details on a teleseminar we’re hosting, visit:

http://www.profitautomation.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=66804

Iกve just revealed to you the very essence of a successful website. Continuously test and refine the website until you have an OUTSTANDING conversion rate. Then drive massive traffic to that site using techniques others have already discovered and proven to work. The third element that separates the ultrasuccesses from the failures is simply acting upon what you learn. What are you waiting for?

About The Author

Willie Crawford has been teaching others how to build an online business since late 1996. Willie demonstrates the power of automated residual income through his system at: http://ProfitAutomation.Com Visit now for a business boost.

This article was posted on February 11, 2004

by Willie Crawford

How Do I Improve My Web Site Conversion Rate? Part

How Do I Improve My Web Site Conversion Rate? Part 1

by: Steve Jackson

In a recent teleconference, I was asked a number of questions about specific problems people were having and what I would do if I were in their position. This is the first article in a 3 part series that we’ll publish over the next few weeks. It will answer specific queries from the teleconference, in the belief that the answers will also help you to solve some of your issues.

Question 1: What do you mean by conversion? Do you mean getting someone to answer the simplest call to action such as “read more here” or actually selling a product or service?

What you’re talking about here are two different ways to measure your website. “Read More Here” is what I would call a variable affecting your conversion rate. I call these kinds of variables “Micro Conversions” because they are all small (microscopic even) steps toward a full conversion. A micro conversion is something that you should test and measure. “Read More Here” might get a worse clickthrough rate than “Click here to find out how to win a month’s supply of vintage wine.” So by improving this click through, you get the person browsing to take another small step toward your final website goal. By doing this, you improve your overall conversion rate, which in this case is to get someone to register or subscribe to win a month’s supply of vintage wine. Micro conversions can be tracked by measuring the click through of links, or the read time for content, or the bounce rate for headlines and copy. Full conversion is persuading your visitors to do what you want them to do. In my example, it would be registering to win wine, but it could be subscribe to a newsletter, download an audio file, buy a product, sell a service or whatever, but it should reflect what your website’s business objective is.

Question 2: What strategies would you suggest when there is no กonlineก conversion possible? I need them to call me for more info, to learn more and to eventually give them a proposal.

There is no such thing as “no online conversion”. You’re looking for leads who will eventually phone you but the visitor is the one with the power. If you don’t give your visitors a reason to let you continue to have a dialog with them, then they won’t. Using optin is one answer. If, for instance, you ask for a name, email address and telephone number from your visitor so that he can then get useful information from you in the form of a free report or audio file, you do two things. First, you qualify the visitor as someone who is interested in your services, and second, you get permission to contact him/her again. You need to build into your website a powerful reason for your visitors to give you permission to email or talk to them rather than expect someone to pick up the phone. In your case, you say they need to ring you to learn more. Put what they need to learn into some form that they can opt in to get, such as a white paper, report or audio file. Then you have a conversion rate that is the percentage of people who give you permission to continue the dialog with them by giving you their email address or phone number so that they can learn more about your offering. People visit a website to get information, so give them the means to get it.

Question 3: What if the product you sell is also sold by several others on other websites? How do you get someone who is browsing the Internet to notice your site and want to order from you?

In offline marketing, a successful tactic is differentiation. It’s no different online. If you stand out from your competition, then you get noticed. What makes you different (not necessarily better, just different) from your competition? A USP makes an enormous difference to conversion rates. We improved subscriptions by 11% per month for six months by differentiating ourselves. The second point is that your site should be of use to your visitor. The one thing that all people online have in common is that when they browse they are looking for information. So give your visitors what they want in the form of education. If your potential customers become educated about your offer and take away something useful from your website, they will remember you over your competition.

Question 4: How do you get the address, telephone number and name of the owner of any company that you’re trying to get in touch with to see if they would be interested in what you sell?

You need to get permission from the visitor to get that information. It can’t be done with any tracking tools available. There is a very good reason for this and it’s called privacy. If you or I went online and could have our names, addresses and phone numbers tracked by software, it could be potentially dangerous. Imagine if you were online and were talking in a chat room about going on holiday in a faraway land for the next few weeks and your personal information could be gathered. The person who sees that information then knows when to go to your address and rob you while you’re away. It’s OK to track browser behavior because no personal details are ever tracked. I for one hope it stays that way.

Question 5: What should one look for in the web logs to determine conversion rates?

Web log files are a problem because they record everything. Web logs record every request to your site’s pages from search engine indexes, to email harvester software, link harvesters and visitors. So first you need to filter out from log files the information that isn’t relevant to visitors. Then you’re looking for unique visitors (not visits) or unique sites. Once you have that filtered figure, you have the approximate number of visitors coming to your site, still not close to 100% because of proxy servers recording multiple visitors as one browser, but it’s as close as you can get with log files. Then you divide the number of people who complete the conversion action by the total visitors. That is your conversion rate. If you can get software that doesn’t use logs like IRIS METRICS or log software that works out the filtering like Web Trends, it makes your job much easier.

Question 6: What factors have the biggest impact on conversions on my web site?

The short answer is differentiation, target marketing, your site’s relevance to your desired audience, measurement, experimentation, and most importantly trust.

Differentiation is the first step in the process. You must find a way to stand out from the competition. It should start with the domain name, and continue throughout your entire website’s strategy.

Then in your content, your copy and your design, you must smack your target audience between the eyes. You have to find out exactly what it is they want and answer the wants and needs of that audience.

Relevance is hugely important, too. If you’re running a campaign on Overture or Google with certain keywords, your audience should land at exactly the right place after typing those keywords and finding your website. So if the audience types “Red Vintage Wine” into Overture and your link appears, on clicking through they should be taken to the page on your site talking all about and selling red vintage wine. They shouldn’t land at the home page of your website which has a small link to the red vintage wine section and 5 or 6 other types of wine for sale.

Measuring and experimenting is then the key to improving conversion rates. You can’t improve conversion without measurement unless you’re making educated guesses or you’re just plain lucky. So get a good measurement system, learn what it’s all about, and test your changes.

Finally and most importantly trust. You can’t sell anything if your audience doesn’t trust you. You can help them to trust you by prominently displaying your privacy policy, your shipping procedure, the fact that you use SSL encrypted protection for the forms on your site, that hundreds of satisfied customers have already bought from your store, that you make it very easy to find contact information such as a name and address as well as support via email. You could educate via your website with articles and ‘how to sections’ or newsletters and instill trust over time. In short, your prospect must trust you to part with his or her money.

What’s next?

In part two of this series, we’ll be looking at measurement software tools, the pros and cons of logs versus ASP vendors, average conversion rates, why it helps to track visitor activity using the software which is available, and what you should test and tweak to improve conversion rates.

About The Author

Steve Jackson, Editor Conversion Chronicles Steve Jackson is CEO of Aboavista, editor of The Conversion Chronicles and a published writer. You can get a free copy of his ebook sent to you upon subscription to the Chronicles web site (http://www.conversionchronicles.com).

This article was posted on October 18, 2004

by Steve Jackson

How One Word Or Even One Letter Can Boost Conversi

How One Word Or Even One Letter Can Boost Conversion Rates By Over 400%!

by: Eric Graham

Recently I was reviewing the keyword specific conversion rate data of a consulting client of mine. I have been working with this client for a few months now, helping her improve the sales conversion rate of her website and we have had very good results, taking average conversion rates at her site from below 1% to just over 4.3%.

(Your sales conversion rate is simply the number of unique visitors your site receives vs. the number of sales you make. If you have 3 sales for every 100 visits your conversion rate is 3%.)

Now, one of the keys to improving conversion rates is to continually test and measure every detail of your website, marketing and traffic. While reviewing the data from one of her Google Adwords campaigns I stumbled across a few hard to explain results that perfectly illustrate the very large effect small differences can have on conversion rates.

The keyword ขpiano lessonsข had a conversion rate over the last 30 days of 5.09%. The keyword ขpiano lessonข had a conversion rate of only 1.64%. Both of these keywords had the exact same Adwords title and description, the same average position in the search results and the exact same landing page on my clients website. The only variable is one letter in the keyword… an ขsข. Lesson vs. Lessons. That’s it! Yet the plural version of the keyword (piano lessons) out sold the singular version (piano lesson) by over 300%!

Another key phrase that had an even larger variation was ขhow to play the pianoข vs. ขhow to play a pianoข. Common sense would say that these two phrases would convert almost identically… Wrong.

Again, with identical titles, descriptions and landing pages, ขHow to play the pianoข converted at 5.92%, while ขHow to play a pianoข only converted at 1.42%. That is a whopping 417% difference between ขaข and ขtheข!

Shortterm variations and fluctuations in the conversion rates of individual keywords or landing pages are common. However, the data on both of these keyword pairs was measured over a full 30 days and several thousand clicks for each keyword. I don’t have any easy answers why adding an ขsข to a key phrase or changing an ขaข to ขtheข caused such a difference in conversion rates.

Sure, you can guess at it and draw a few conclusions such as ขplural keywords convert better than singular keywordsข or ขusing ‘the’ in a key phrase is more specific and targeted than using ‘a’ข. However, these conclusions are just guesses. The only real conclusion you can draw from this case study is that you have to test EVERYTHING!

If one word or one letter can have that big of an impact in an Adwords campaign, then a similar change in your main headline or guarantee can have an equally significant impact.

The lesson here is to test, test, test. What should you test?

Test headlines.

Test guarantees.

Test bonuses.

Test colors.

Test subheadlines.

Test your copy.

Test different prices.

Test layouts.

Test autoresponder messages.

Test your USP (Unique Selling Proposition.)

Test ads.

Test keywords.

Test policies.

Test images and graphic design.

Test deadlines.

Test navigation.

Test your checkout process.

Test font sizes.

Test payment options.

Test EVERYTHING!

Now, when you are testing a change, only test one item at a time. This part is critical. Testing only one change will help keep your results as accurate as possible. If you change 4 items at once and see a 1% boost in conversion rate, it is possible 3 items are helping and 1 is hurting, so your conversion rate boost would have been greater with just the 3 changes.

The bottom line is this…

If you really want to take your website’s sales conversion rate to the next level, you must absolutely commit to a focused and longterm campaign of testing and optimizing every aspect of your site. You never know when a small change is going to give you huge results!

Copyright 2004 Eric Graham

Want to improve your conversion rates? Eric Graham is the CEO of several successful online companies. A top authority on eCommerce & Internet Marketing, heกs an indemand speaker & consultant. Visit http://www.websiteevaluations.com today for an indepth evaluation to boost YOUR websites conversion rate!

About The Author

Eric Graham is the CEO of several successful online companies. A top authority on eCommerce & Internet Marketing, heกs an indemand speaker & consultant. Visit www.websiteevaluations.com for a FREE subscription to his eCommerce Mastery newsletter.

This article was posted on April 29, 2004

by Eric Graham

How To Increase Your Profits Without Spending A Di

How To Increase Your Profits Without Spending A Dime!

by: John Taylor

Whatever the purpose of your web site you have to pay for certain services. As a bare minimum you will need to pay for hosting, for traffic and for an autoresponder account. The costs of these services are fixed irrespective of the number of sales that you can make.

Letกs say that your total fixed costs for these services are $500 a year and that you sell 50 eBooks a year at $27. That means that your income is $1350 and, after paying your fixed costs you are making $850 profit each year. So your profit represents about 63% of your sales income.

Now, letกs say your current conversion rate of unique visitors to sales is about average at 2%. So to get 50 sales you need 2,500 unique visitors.

To boost their sales income, most people will try to increase the traffic to their web site by spending money on Pay Per Click campaigns, advertising in ezines or by investing in banner adverts. If you don’t want to spend your hard earned cash, then you will need to invest a lot of time on article writing and other กdo it yourselfก promotional activities.

What if you could nearly double your profit in a few easy steps?

It is very easy. You simply have to closely examine your web site and look for ways of improving the impact that you are having on your customer.

Look at your headline, does it really grab the attention of your visitors?

Do the first few paragraphs of your sales copy draw in your visitor and encourage them to read further?

Are your testimonials conveying a strong and powerful endorsement of your product?

Are you making good use of text colour to emphasise the important trigger words in your copy?

Did you know that there are over 21 critical elements within a typical sales letter page?

When I first launched my web site (http://www.TestandTrack.com) my conversion rate was less than 1%. Since then, I have tested and tweaked every key element of the entire sales process and my conversion rate is now over 3.5%. Oh, by the way, I am still working on it!

Letกs look at the bottom line. If you can implement a few simple improvements to your web site and increase your sales conversion rate to just 3%, you will make an additional 25 sales without increasing your costs. 25 sales at $27 will put an additional $675 in your pocket. Your fixed costs are still the same so it is all pure profit!

Can you afford to leave that money on the table?

Copyright 2005 John Taylor

About The Author

John Taylor is the author of กLearn over Twenty ways To Improve Your Conversion Rate and Multiply Your Profitsก A Special Report that contains a wealth of information on professional testing and tracking techniques that can boost your conversion rate and generate increased profits. To learn how testing and tracking can boost your profits click this link now: http://www.testandtrack.com

This article was posted on January 18

by John Taylor