Just because you think 1 headline is better than another doesn't mean that your visitors will respond better to it. In fact, it usually works out exactly the opposite - the headline you think is best will probably generate LESS of a response than the one you were using before! Say you have a simple three-page direct sales web site. On the homepage you have a headline, some introductory sales copy, and a link to the next page which contains your main sales letter. Your main sales letter really "sells" your product or service, and then links to your order form. After awhile you notice that you are not getting nearly as many orders as you think you should be getting based on the amount of targeted traffic your site receives. The problem could be with your homepage, your sales letter, your order form, or a combination of any of these. How in the world are you going to figure out where the problem lies?
You could do what many people do - guess - and base your changes on that. But chances are you will not guess correctly, and your sales and profits will still be slim. Even worse, you might end up making things worse, in which case your sales and profits would actually decrease! Guessing is no way to run a home business. It is what most people do, and it's one of the big reasons that most people are not making much money. Basing your marketing decisions on your own opinions is a certain way to go broke. Now, on the other hand, if you had a proper tracking system in place it would be quite easy to solve the problem. Starting with the homepage, you could focus on tweaking one page at a time until your sales were where they ought to be. Perhaps your tracking system tells you that for every 100 visitors to your homepage, only 5 of them are clicking the link that takes them to your main sales page. This is a serious problem! But since you have an exact baseline figure to work with, it wouldn't be too hard to improve upon. Simply tweak your headline, copy, etc. and then reset your tracking system to see what the results are. If after your changes more than five out of every one hundred visitors is going to your sales letter, then your changes helped and you can repeat the process again. What if this time only one out of one hundred visitors clicks to your sales site? Undo the changes and start over. Maybe after doing this for a week you're now seeing that for every 100 visitors, 42 are now clicking to your sales letter. That's much better, and you are probably happy with that. Great! Move on to the sales letter and repeat the process. If only 5 out of 100 people that reads your sales letter actually clicks to the order form, you need to tweak your sales letter. It may take a little while, but as long as you are tracking everything you will know what is working and what is not. Finally, work on your order form the same way.
When all is said and done, the average site will probably be able to increase it's profits by at least one hundred to five hundred percent. Think what that would do to your bottom line if you could increase your profits one hundred to five hundred percent with your existing traffic! This example is actually just the tip of the iceberg. With a good tracking system you can track and improve the response to almost anything this way - downloads of your ebook, ezine subscriptions, software downloads, a general lead generation system, surveys, etc. etc.
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