There are various tools out there to help you test your conversion rates like the Google Conversion Optimizer which I don’t know much about, or Hypertracker, which is what I personally use for all my split testing and conversion monitoring. Whichever one you decide to use is up to you. You just need a tool that enables you to test different things to help you increase your conversions.

I have been doing some split tests recently and I will describe what’s been going on with those to give you an idea. Here’s some things I know offhand that work really well. Believe or not, one of the first things that I discovered recently is the uglier something is, the better it works. I don’t know why.

A couple of things I know from past testing is any proof that you can put on there usually always helps.  What you might want to test is audio vs. video vs. no audio or video. That would be one of the beginning tests I would want to do.

Whenever I’m doing any testing on any of my traffic, I typically take very, very radically different variations of a particular page. I might have one that’s a totally different look and feel versus another one. Why would I do that? Well, the reason I would do that is because I’m going to get dramatically different results on my split test. I then will go back in and start doing some minor things. For example, you can add more proof, maybe testimonials, or change some testimonials. If you’re getting people to opt in, make sure that you have something like, “We guarantee your confidentiality”on there.  I’ve also found  using urgency and scarcity also work very well.

I wasn’t getting good results on one of my squeeze pages, so, I put a hacker safe symbol on the page to make people feel more confident when signing up. It worked really well. So, there definitely are a lot of things you can do to change the look and feel of a page.  Sometimes, I just look at other people’s pages to get more ideas and insert them onto my page.

Through testing I decided to add more calls to action which really helped. Sometimes adding more “bling” can help.

Actually, one thing I know that helped me increase my conversions on my squeeze page is adding an “as seen on…” . So, if I dug it, it might say, “as seen on Digg.” If I sent out a press release about, it may say “as seen on…” whatever press release locations picked it up, like Google News or AOL News and stuff like that. Those little things kind of help out in your testing. A lot of times that’s what I’m doing in my personal testing and I’m sure that will help you. By adding extra credibility using well-known media logos etc., you can easily gain more recognition and gain more respect as an expert in your niche.

Best Regards,

Matt Bacak

Need support? Go here ->
http://mattbacaksupport.com

If you are involved in or conducting a tradeshow, you may want to collect people’s name, address and emails to promote to them later on. Now, will you need a website or opt-in page to do this?  No.  Assuming you have a booth, the way to capitalize on this opportunity is to gather as many leads as possible while you are there. A good idea is to collect their business card.

I would set up some exchange, like, “Hey, listen, I’ve got this free newsletter” or “When you put your card in here, you get a chance to win X” – you can win an iPod or a flip camera or whatever the hottest gadget is at the time. Get something as a motivation to get them to give you their contact details and then you could collect all those names inside a fishbowl or something. That’s going to be the best thing to do. Do you need a website to do that? No, you don’t need a website to do that. Do you need an autoresponder to be able to contact them later? Yes, you do.

A lot of times what I would do at tradeshows is I would say, “Hey, look, I’ll give you this free book if you give me your card” kind of deal. I’ve also given away electronics. Sometimes you can actually find a good wholesale deal if you plan on giving away quite a few.  Ipods were great for that.

If you don’t have anything ready at the time of the tradeshow, you can always promise them something else to get their information and then create it and deliver it a week or two later. The big thing with that is you actually have to keep your word and do it. You could say, “Hey, you know, when you give your information, I’m going to give you this. You’ll get it in about two weeks.” Putting a time limit on it will give you the extra motivation to get it done.  That’s the most important part.

My suggestion would be to tell them you’re going to email it to them so that when they give you their information, they will directly land on a sales letter so you can present them with more offers, giving you the opportunity to make a sale. Basically, when you’ve got somebody’s attention it is a big deal.  Since you’ve got them taking action, you’ve got their attention, and that’s probably one of the most valuable assets you’ll have in your business. Without that action or that attention, nothing else happens. So one of the most powerful things that you can ever do is make more offers while you’ve got that person’s attention. And how do you get their attention? Well, they just subscribed, so you don’t really want them to go to a download page. You want to, rather, email them the download page. Land them on a page where they can go and buy something from you.

After the tradeshow you can register your website and subscribe to an autoresponse service, such as Autoresponse Plus, Aweber or Constant Contact. Understand that if you are going to host your site through GoDaddy or something similar they aren’t really set up to send out mass emails. If this is something you require you should use a service like Third Sphere or Direct Horizons. Overall, the more offers of free stuff you can give your audience, the better response you’ll get.

Best Regards,

Matt Bacak

Need support? Go here ->
http://mattbacaksupport.com

A student of mine created a website from scratch and it started to get noticed by the search engines. He began to get more traffic and had about 18 subscribers, but he hadn’t yet made a sale. So, he figured he would stop using pay per click to drive traffic, since his site was already indexed and he wasn’t making any sales anyways. He decided to just build his site organically. Although he had about 18 subscribers, some good traffic and offered a free ebook, he was frustrated that no one was buying anything on his site. So, the question is, was he doing something wrong or was there another reason for his misfortune?

Let me first start by saying that it is okay to stop using pay-per-click. However,  I’ve seen it happen many times myself  that  if you stop using pay per click completely, you will notice that your search engine rankings go down. So, what I recommend doing is not shutting down your account or pausing your account. You may just want to lower your budget to a ridiculously low level, like a dollar. A dollar a day, which is only 30 bucks a month. I highly recommend that you do this just to keep pulling yourself up higher in the search engines.

I analyzed his website and noticed a few things I would change and this should speak to everyone out there. One of the number one biggest website conversion rules is that the more times you make a visitor click, the lower your conversions will be. Said another way, the fewer times you make a visitor click, the higher your conversion rate. There are exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking that’s how it is.  The same thing goes for your opt-in page. The more times you give a visitor the option to click on many different links, you’re going to decrease your opt-ins. So, the fewer times you make a visitor click, you’re going to increase your opt-ins or increase your sales.

My suggestion to him and to everyone else is if you’ve got way too many different options for people to choose from on a sales page or opt-in page, you may want to change it up. If you’re building an opt-in page, make it simple. There should be one outcome and one outcome only and that’s only to grab people’s name and email address.  Don’t have any other links on there.

When I looked at his sales page, again I noticed that he had many ebooks listed and a whole bunch of other stuff for sale. Too many choices will cause people not to buy. My suggestion was this. Take a page, create it specifically to do one thing, one thing only, that is become an opt-in. And create another page that has one thing and one thing only, that is to buy one particular product from you, because a confused mind never buys or opts-in. So take these things into consideration if your site is suffering from these same problems. I can almost guarantee your conversion rates will increase.

Best Regards,

Matt Bacak

Need support? Go here ->
http://mattbacaksupport.com

In the last article I explained the importance of having of squeeze page and using the right autroresponder software program in order to make your squeeze page work well. Communicating with your list is essential to building a solid foundation for your business and in order to communicate with our list, you need a good autoresponder software program. One of my favorites is Autoresponse Plus. Today I’ll explain how to use Autoresponse Plus to properly set up a squeeze page that will allow you to easily communicate important messages to your list.

When you log in to your Autoresponse Plus, at the top you’re going to be able to see the autoresponder. So you’ll br on yhr strs where the autoresponders are. In the upper right-hand corner it’s going to say, “autoresponders”. And what you want to do is you want to click that and then create a new autoresponder sequence of messages. So you want to create a new autoresponder specifically. Let’s call it a new autoresponder bucket. This is where your visitors are going to go and subscribe to your list.

Once you create that new autoresponder bucket, you want to scroll your eyes all the way across the page where that bucket is. It’s going to say “form code” or “form”, and when you click on that, it’s going to give you all the necessary information for your form. But the reason I’m telling you to do that is because you’re going to need that form code so that your webmaster/squeeze page set up guy can gain access into your autoresponder.

As I said previously in the last article, I highly recommend Webmaster4hire.biz. He can actually handle the whole thing for you. They can design and set up your squeeze page for you in no time. Just let them know that you want to create an opt-in page or a squeeze page that can integrate with your autoresponder. Then pass them your autoreponder and any other pdf’s or attachments that your visitor will get once they sign up.

You’ll also need to give them your username and password. I trust them with my information and you should trust them with your information too.

If you want a sample of a working squeeze page, check out my site at PromotingTips.com. Make sure that for your squeeze page that you create a good headline. Give your headline, content copy, images, codes, any files and access information to your webmaster so that they can easily complete the job for you. Don’t leave out any necessary information as this will only delay your job.

If you want to do-it-yourself, you’re going to need a piece of software. I personally use Microsoft Web Expressions. You can also use Nvu to do your squeeze pages. So, check out a sample of my squeeze page at PromotingTips.com. Simply copy it. What you do is you just click on Control-A and copy the whole thing. You can use any web editor program like Nvu, Web Expressions or Front Page. Just copy and paste it inside any of those. The reason you’re going to do this is because that’s going to give you the format and outline that you need in order to make things happen.

Now what you can do is you can modify it like you would a Word document. So, you could simply retype in your own headline, images, content etc. Take out my stuff and replace it with your own. But definitely use that as a model for your own page.

Now, the one thing you’ll need to do is to make sure that the form is going to your form and not mine. So, basically what you do is you pretty much delete the form that’s on there and then go inside your autoresponder and grab the form code that you need and you have to put it inside there. It’s going to give you your login and password information. Just click there, log in and it’ll walk you through how to do it.

Once you get done with the page, what you’re going to have to do is you’re going to have to upload the page or FTP the page. If you are a member of my PromotingTips.com site you can find all of the tutorials of how to upload the page there. But just follow the instructions inside the private area and you should be fine. Once you do one squeeze page, the rest are a piece of cake. Now get out there and make it happen!

Best Regards,

Matt Bacak

Need support? Go here ->
http://mattbacaksupport.com