Copyright © 2004 Steve ShawSo you have a web site, you have traffic, but it doesn't ... well ... sell? But what can you do about it? Often some very simple changes to your web site can mean
difference between success and failure. Based on my own experience and extensive testing of what works and what does not, here is a quick list of simple changes you can make to turn your site around and rapidly improve your profit levels.
1. Are You Grabbing 0pt-Ins From Every Corner Of Your Site?
It is as true now as it ever has been - a large proportion of your profits will come from a list of subscribers that sign up at your web site. Very few people buy first time - that's why it's so important to attempt to initiate some sort of ongoing relation with them. And that's where email usually steps in.
Without some sort of ongoing contact, they are unlikely to visit your site again. But if you maintain contact via email, you are much more likely to maintain a presence in your visitor's brain, and they are much more likely to revisit your site and, at some point, purchase from you.
Without their email address, they visit once, and are gone forever.
On my sites, I often use three different overlapping methods that give me a high chance of capturing their name and email address:
A. I use an 0ptIn0ver (using software at http://popupmaster.com) when they first arrive, and they simply have to click Okay to subscribe. This makes it as easy as possible for them to subscribe (they don't even have to type), and this method captures name and email address of a large proportion of my visitors.
B. I use a prominent subscription form on web site itself, preferably on every single page.
C. If they still haven't subscribed, I display an exit popup - but without disrupting order process. Again, using http://popupmaster.com software, I can prevent popup from appearing if visitor clicks on my order link.
Some marketers have claimed that by using this type of technique, they manage to convert up to 97% of their visitors into subscribers. Even if you don't convert at a similar level, you can be sure that you are capturing a large proportion of your visitors.
Of course, it is also very important to make your visitor an attractive offer, in exchange for their email address. The offer needs to be relevant to your web site, and valuable to your visitor. For example, I often offer some trial software, or a valuable ecourse, in order to capture their details.
You should also continually test and tweak your 'offer' to maximize your response.
Once you've got their email address, you need to use it. Plug them into an autoresponder campaign - I personally use http:/ akanomi.proautoresponder.com to manage all my mailing lists - and follow up with them, several times. If you can, don't stop at now fairly standard seven email follow-ups - plug in message after message, up to 30 messages or more. Send them more regularly to start with, and gradually space them out until they are sent say once a month. Using an autoresponder, you can set all of this to work on auto-pilot.
2. Do You Use An Effective Headline?
The headline on your web site is one of most important elements in making a sale, and only real way to test its effectiveness is to test out different headlines and continually improve your conversion rate.
A good headline, in comparison to an ineffective one, has been known to improve sales levels by up to 21 times! Imagine what that could do for your sales levels. If you are barely scraping $1,000 a month, a good headline could bring you instead a whopping $21,000 a month - or $252,000 a year.
