One of the things that I like to stress to clients is conversion rates.  This is the fastest way to get more sales out of your website.  In fact you should be constantly tweaking your online sales copy, shopping cart process, and opt-in strategies.

Small changes can have massive effects on your bottom line!

Here's an analogy for you:

Suppose I left San Francisco Bay on a journey across the sea to New Guinea.  On my journey I'm ignorant to the fact that my compass is off by only one degree.  After weeks of sailing I reach another shoreline and to my shock, I end up in Queensland, Australia.  The compass was only off one degree!

This analogy is similar to the conversion process on your website, small changes can reap big rewards!  

Let's look at an example of what a 1% difference would look like in your sales process.

For the sake of argument lets say that you are selling widgets that sell for $1000 apeice.  After running a thousand visitors past your salesletter you convert at 1%.  Here's what your results will look like:

1000 visitors X .01 (conversion rate) = 10 Sales X $1000 dollars = $10K in sales.

Now let's look at the same scenario with a 2% conversion rate:

1000 visitors X .02 (conversion rate) = 20 Sales X $1000 dollars = $20K in sales.

Wow, what a huge increase!

Sometimes running a pay-per-click campaign will break even, or even lose a little money.  At this point you have two options, ditch your campaign for those keywords OR tweak your conversion rates to make your ads profitable.

Many times businesses have no idea how to do this in house, no worries, that's what we're here for **shameless plug :-)** !

Here's a great article about getting your site to convert better, I ran acros this a few days ago and I'm a big fan of the Noble Samurai crew:

 Read the full article here, you will be glad that you did!

The other day I got a call from a friend of mine asking whether or not he should be using email marketing for his business, he's a recruiter.  I told him heck yes!!

Sending Bulk Email Has a Slimy Feeling to It!

I understand that most people have a negative feeling regarding email, and I get why they feel this way however, when done right you can build a great client base that will keep on returning to your site time after time to read your content.  When you build a list in a way that customers or propects are looking forward to receiving your email, they will love to hear from you!

Additionally, bulding an email list is one of the most profitable things that you can do for your company, think of it as an asset to your company!  The reason that I say this is because that is EXACTLY what it is!

Here's what I told my recruiter friend:

I get an email from Monster.com every week that tells me a list of jobs that are open in my area every week.  Not that I'm looking for new jobs but I read every deatil of it from top to bottom.  Dice.com has a similar feature but they take it one step further, lately I've been getting emails from one of their staff members letting me know that there is a job opening that I'm qualified for along with a link to more about the opening. 

Heck yes you should be creating an electronic email list!

If nothing else he should be sending out an online newsletter to his prospects with some good information on the state of the job market in the region, tips for getting hired, what is a reasonable salary to expect in the market, etc.  Anything that he can do to keep his prospects coming back to their site.

In order to understand this further you have to think like an 'information consumer' would think would think.

Since a persons employment status can have a tendency to change at certain times throughout the course of our life, there's a good chance that one of his prospects doesn't need a new job today, but may need one six months down the road.  If they keep hearing from the company weekly or every other week, who do you think they are going to call when they are in need of a job?

Answer: The one that is on their mind!

Who is on their mind?

Answer: The one that has been communicating with them for the last six months.

How to Email Market Your Business, and How Not to Market Your Business

In this case I would send out a weekly online newsletter to my list that had a few different things in it.

First and foremost I would include in that email a list of jobs that I am trying to fill for my customers like "10 Hot Jobs" or something similar, with links to the positions on my site.

Secondly, I would use some snippets of posts that I put on my blog as content for the newsletter (you do have a blog don't you?  Hint: you're reading this on my blog).  Just put in the title and maybe 50-100 words of text from the article that you are linking to.  Link the title of the snippet to the actual URL of the post on your blog.  You should have enough relevant content that you have generated over the week on your blog already.  Repeat the process with 2 or 3 snippets from your blog to bulk it up a bit and then send it off to your prospects.

It doesn't take that much time to do, and it keeps your prospects connected to the news in your market.

If you are going to send out offer after offer with nothing of substance other than 'buy this' 'buy that' you might as well not start this process because all that you will do is piss off your list.

I subscribe and unsubscribe to lists all of the time, the ones that I kick to the curb on a regular basis are the ones that do nothing but send me offers.  I don't mind buying things, trust me on that, but what motivated me to join a list in the first place was to receive information!  This kind of marketing is what makes people feel dirty, avoid it at all costs!

Using the tips above you will be well on your way to connecting with the people that you want to be in front of the most!

BY THE WAY:  You can subscribe to our friendly, warm and fuzzy, newsletter over there in the sidebar >>>> :-)

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It’s no big secret that I’m a big fan of good coffee, heck I love a good cup of coffee and Seattle’s Best is one of my favorites!  My family is not a big fan of Burger King, but one thing that got me going back to Burger King is: they have Seattle’s Best coffee. 

So I’m not just a casual fan but a fanatic…

This is what lameness looks like!  

'How about lavender?'  'How about not...' 

Awhile back I ran out of our normal coffee (we used to use Costco’s brand that is roasted by Starbucks) and it was starting to taste weird to both my wife and I, we decided to switch over to Seattle’s Best French Roast, this stuff is really good, so good that if they have coffee in heaven, this is how it would taste (well not really, Heritage Black Gold is THE BEST coffee in the world) but I digress.

Anyway, I’m on a mission in Meijer to get some Seattle’s Best French Roast and while trolling the coffee isle, I notice that they don't carry Seattle’s Best anymore.  I figured that they quit selling it, maybe sales weren’t that great over here in the Eastern Time Zone so I just picked up some Starbucks and left.  When I got home I told my wife 'Meijer isn’t selling Seattle’s Best anymore' booo...

About a week later, I’m in Kroger looking for some coffee and noticed that they don’t carry Seattle’s Best anymore either.  So I’m looking around at what they do have because the Starbucks just isn’t getting it. 

With this in mind I’m picking up coffee bags, sniffing the wonderful aromas that come out of the vent when you squeeze the bag and I pick up a strange looking bag with a big number 4 on it, it smells ok so I study the bag very closely, to my horror it’s Seattle’s Best, with some kind of a lame logo that you can barely read.  

What the heck??

Oh well I thought, I’ll just pick up some French Roast and be on my way right?

Uhhh, not so fast…

It appears that the marketing department saw the movie Spinal Tap one too many times and now they are marketing their coffee in ‘Levels’, level  1, level 2 level 3, up to level 5.  What a bunch of idiots!  They didn’t have the French Roast so I just bought some Starbucks and went home disappointed.

In my brain, I flashed back to my original trip to Meijer and was wondering if they actually DO sell Seattle’s Best and perhaps I just didn’t recognize it.  On my next trip I was shocked, they still do, only with their ‘new lame logo’…

I put on my marketing brain and analyzed what happened here:

1. They changed their logo and packaging so much that EVEN THEIR MOST RABID CUSTOMERS couldn’t recognize it.  How stupid is that?
2. Their product line changed so I couldn’t find a ‘level’ that I liked.  Why do the level thing anyway?

Look at this and then look away quickly before 'the ugly' gets on you!

One of the ugliest cars that I’ve ever seen in my life was the 1999 Ford Taurus, it was a special kind of ugly, mud fence ugly.  My sister had one that we called ‘the jelly bean’, she used to tell us how ‘practical’ it was and how ‘good on gas’ it was and how ‘reasonably priced’ it was.  Just like a girl that you would meet with a ‘good personality’ which, back in the day, was code for ‘fat’ ‘ugly’ or both… 

My brother and I are both car guys and we were talking one day about the prototype unveil in Ford’s Board Room, imagine all of the Ford 'big wigs' sitting there with an easel that has a cloth draped over it.  Everyone is sitting there in anticipation of what is under that cloth.  The marketing schpeil is over, excitement is at it’s peak, the cloth is pulled away and there it is, the prototype of ‘the jellybean’ is right there in front of them.  People make comments like ‘wow, look what you’ve done!’, ‘wow that’s modern looking’ and then leave the board room thinking ‘that’s got to be the ugliest thing that I’ve ever seen!’

This scenario had to have occurred in the Seattle’s Best Board Room.  Everyone said ‘wow, that’s modern’ ‘hey, that’s trendy’ but in the back of their mind they are thinking ‘boy, that sucks’, but no one would say it because they are all probably ‘yes men’ and were afraid to voice their true opinion.  I used to work for Brand Packaging, I know how the designers think, and it’s not good.

What a disaster!  I’d love to see their sales figures after this new packaging nightmare.

Rockin' old logo

Their old logo rocked, I don’t see how you could change it, especially when your loyal customers can’t even recognize your brand anymore.  Not only did they change their logo, but I couldn’t find the roast that I liked anymore so I have no more use for the whole company.

Isn’t that tragic?

Freakin’ coffee is the ultimate continuity plan!  My grandmother has always used Folgers coffee, for ages!  Folgers had a customer that would, and still does, go to the store twice a month and buy coffee for 10 bucks, imagine replicating that a million times, that’s money in the bank!

Money in the bank that Seattle’s Best won’t have from me and my family, too bad because I really loved their French Roast! 

They lost a great customer who would have made them at least $32 per month…

I hope someone at Seattle's Best reads this so I can get my coffee back!!

Each and every year the internet is changing at a breathtaking rate of speed, and 2011 is no different. The major search engines are always adjusting their mathematical algorithms, in an attempt to improve their performance. The following tricks and tips just might help you receive more free traffic than ever from the search engines.

Tip #1 – Try and only use unique content on your site. The search engines will penalize your website if they find too much duplicate content appearing on it.

Tip #2 – Only use somewhere between a 3% to 5% density of your principle keywords. This will keep your material readable, and it is enough for the search engines to find it, and give you credit for it.

Tip #3 – Set up your content to be distributed across the internet via RSS feeds. If enough other sites start using it, with back-links pointing to your site, the search engines could significantly increase the free traffic they are sending you.

Hopefully, you will find these 2011 internet tricks and tips useful, and the year will be a successful one for you because of them.

Whether you are starting a new website, or already have an existing one, you should find the following development and marketing tips useful. With a business website you need to take a long term approach to it, as opposed to just trying to cash out as much as possible, in as short a time as possible.

What you want to do is try to get individuals who are interested in your business, coming back time and again because of the helpful information your site provides. In order to accomplish this, your site needs to provide knowledge that your visitors will benefit from. This expertise can be in the form of news about your industry, or helpful hints that will improve your reader’s skills.

10 Development and Marketing Tips

Tip #1 – Speed Kills – Make sure your website is fast. People on the internet today do not like to wait for anything. If your site has too many pictures or graphics, it will run very slowly and you will lose repeat visitors because of it.

Tip #2 – Know your Market – No website can be everything to everybody. Make sure you know who your customer is, and give them what they want.

Tip #3 – Your Word is Everything – Please do NOT try to sell, sell, sell. Instead, try to teach, teach, teach. Teach your readers why the most expensive version of product 1 is the best deal. Then teach your readers why the least expensive version of product 2 is the best deal.

Tip #4 – Buyers LOVE Guarantees – Yes, some of your customers will take advantage of it, and it will upset you. But, for each one that does, you will get 10 more buyers that won’t.

Tip #5 – Payment should be Quick and Easy – Find yourself an excellent credit card processor which offers PayPal, that does not have so many levels of security that half your customers cannot make a purchase. Pay a little more in fees if you have too, but it will be worth it.

Tip #6 – Focus on your Customer – Make it easy for them to find exactly what they want quickly without having to jump through hoops because your site is too complicated. The old saying, “Keep it Simple Stupid” (KISS), certainly applies here.

Tip #7 – Be Consistent – If you update your site daily about the most important news in the industry, keep doing it. If you are always adding the most recent products that are coming out in your field, keep doing it. If you always have the lowest prices on the internet, keep doing it. Your present visitors are coming to your site for a reason, they like it, so do not mess it up by constantly trying to reinvent the wheel. If your site is not doing as well as you like, then add to it, improve it, but do not stop what you are presently doing.

Tip #8 – Content Rules – Simply put, the more content, the higher quality the content, the more money you are going to make. Take Amazon.com as an example; don’t they have independent reviews for all of the products they sell? Of course they do, and their customers read them, like them, and make purchasing decisions based on them. Not all these reviews are positive either, exactly like your content should be; it should be as truthful and as honest as you can possibly make it.

Tip #9 – Remember the Search Engines – If you want free traffic, and who doesn’t, the search engines are the ones that provide it. Make sure each page has a separate title describing its content, use keywords that are highly searched in your titles, insert your keywords and description for each page, and update your sitemap each time you add a page.

Tip #10 – Get a Quality Host – Please do not select your websites host on cost, but instead on reliability, reputation, and speed. There are a ton of fantastic website host out there today, so use one of them. The following are a few you might want to consider, Go Daddy, Host Excellence, or Gator Hosting.

If you follow the above mentioned tips to the letter, and you have a product or service that is in demand, it will be next to impossible for you not to make a very nice income off of your website.