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Just recently a good friend and expert programmer (Michel Komarov) came up with this interesting twist on the popup window concept.

It’s possible you’ve seen something similar to this probably not done in the same way. You’ll know what I mean when you check this out for yourselves.

What I especially like about what Michel has created is it’s unobtrusiveness. Despite the fact that popups work like gangbusters sometimes you want something that’s a little more subtle and perhaps even subliminal (to a certain degree).

With that said go take a look at what he’s created, it costs nothing to use and Michel even gives you all the code you need along with installation instructions, all for zero cost! (Don’t ask me why, something like this could easily be worth around 50 bucks).

Michel’s Komarov’s Interesting Twist On Popup Windows

Even if you don’t need it now, be sure to bookmark the page because I’m willing to bet that you’ll need it sometime soon!

(I almost forgot) …when I spoke with Michel last time he hinted that he might create a WordPress plug-in for this (I hope he does it!).

I’ll keep you posted as he develops this interesting script.

Popularity: 30% [?]

How do you know if your marketing works if you’re not testing?

Do you casually glance at your website traffic stats, hold a finger in the air and say …yes that headline increased our website sales? Or do you scientifically test one headline against another and synchronize this with the number of orders you get?

To help make sure you’re on the right track here are 6 “hot” tips for successful split testing…

1. Test at least two versions of whatever it is you’re testing, this would be the contol and the variation

The control version is the one that’s getting you the best results so far, the variation is the version you’ve created that you want to have beat the control.

2. Equally test one version against another

You’re looking for each version you’re testing to be exposed to the same environmental factors. In the case of your website this would be making sure each version gets the same amount of website traffic form the same source.

3. Measure the actions of each split test

Now you have equal amounts of traffic going to each version you’re testing how will you determine which is more effective? This is where you need to state clearly the objective you’re aiming for, it might be more subscribers or more sales. Then you need to measure this for each version you’re testing.

4. A big enough sample of results.

It’s no use testing 10 visitors to each versions of you’re testing, I promise this won’t tell you anything of any value. On the other hand if you looked at 300 visitors for each test variation you’ll begin to see a more representative picture as to which version is the winner (which then becomes your control in future tests).

5. You need patience

Testing takes time, if your website doesn’t get much traffic on a regular basis it’ll take longer for you to get the results you’re looking for. On the other hand a high traffic site will get your website testing moving along much quicker, leading you to a high converting website in a fraction of the time.

If traffic is something you need more of recently I launched a traffic course called “Flood Your Site With Traffic” if you don’t have this yet click here to get yourself a copy today.

6. You need to understand the results

This one needs more investigation because sometimes you’ll find yourself in a situation where one version A of a test out performs version B by 5%, yet version B communicates your websites values more effectively. So which version should you choose? Over time you’ll become more experienced at testing and your “gut feeling” will play a significant role in deciding the winners of split test where the results are close.

To get you started with your split testing I recommend you take a close look at using Google’s excellent website optimizer.

Get started with your split testing today:

Google Website Optimizer…
http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer

Split testing doesn’t stop with regular websites either… you can also split test the headlines and the content of your blog posts using this special WordPress plug-in…
http://websiteoptimizer.contentrobot.com

Here’s a useful online tool that helps you to calculate the effectiveness of your testing…
http://www.splittester.com/index.php

There’s one last thing you’ll come to realize once you’ve been split testing your website for a while… even your best testing is uncertain at best.

Why? Because of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principal which states that we can’t be certain of anything because the very act of looking changes its nature. This is why as Mark Joyner says in his excellent book Mind Control Marketing… “Drawing broad conclusions from your testing can be hazardous to your financial health”.

Popularity: 84% [?]

Here’s all you do…

Whenever you build a website always believe that what you’re building will be successful. Have an expectation for success as you build each web page believe that the universe is conspiring “for” you to help make this happen… that’s inverse paranoia!

As you’re designing your website in Photoshop, as you’re converting your design to HTML always have in your mind that every action you take is exactly the right one that will lead to your ultimate success.

Positive expectation combined with inverse paranoia is extremely powerful and works every time without fail.

Make sure your expectations are in line with what you want to have happen and guard them carefully.

Imagine as you’re creating your websites, creating your products, looking for new ideas that everything is conspiring to help you succeed. Even when things don’t go right know that it happened for a reason that ultimately benefits you (even if you can’t see it right now).

The fact is you can never rise any higher than the expectations you have of yourself …so expect the best from every situation, expect that the website you’re building is going to be a total success, expect your products to be great, expect your ideas will be the best and most profitable ever!

By following this law of inverse paranoia and positive expectation you have a power in your hands that is virtually unlimited.

Go ahead and try this out now!

Imagine your desired outcome for your next website design project and keep this in your mind as you create and complete your project.

You’ll find your results will be nothing less than spectacular! It works for me and it can work for you too! Let me know how you get on wont you?

Popularity: 74% [?]

I don’t know about you, but when I was in grade school, my teachers had one thing they said every time we took a test… “Keep your eyes on your own paper or you’ll flunk the test!” This is great advise if you’re in school. But once you’ve graduated, this rule may have out lived it’s usefulness.

Now don’t get me wrong here. I’m not advocating cheating or stealing other peoples information. Just remember, this blog is about making your websites better, stronger and certainly more profitable.

No matter how creative you think you are, EVERYONE has times when those great ideas just don’t come out.

When I’m stuck and can’t get my mind focused on solving a website design problem or feature, I often do just what my grade school teacher told me not to do. I look over at someone else’s work!

By watching what others do on their sites, you’ll be able to see the website design and marketing principals, functions or procedures that you might never have considered before. Then use that as a starting point (or inspiration) for your own unique website design or marketing solution.

I’ve also found that when I go outside my market and see how other industries present content and design their websites, I learn things.

So if you’re stuck on how to design your next website, or in how to structure your offer, just lean over and see what little Johnny’s already done and how that might be the answer you’re looking for.

One word of caution… make sure Johnny’s a great website designer or marketing expert before you turn to him for inspiration!

Popularity: 33% [?]

I don’t know about you but when I come across a website that can help me build mine, drive traffic or boost sales I always bookmark it. Here are the 7.5 slightly baddass links I’ve found to help you create big selling websites…

1. 19 Tutorial Websites And 97,200 Visitors In 3 Months
I’m sure you must know by now that creating tutorial videos to show people how to do certain thing can generate some good traffic when you submit them to places like YouTube.com and Video.Google.com.

But did you know there are quite a few websites out there specializing in tutorial videos where the traffic is even more targeted?
www.wipeout44.com

2. 37 Viral Post Ideas You Can Use Today
Regularly posting to your own blog is a superb way of generating excellent traffic to any offers you might have not to mention establishing you as an expert when you give people useful content. Here’s a blog I found recently that gives you some excellent ideas that turn your blog posts into viral marketing tools.
www.skelliewag.org

3. The Cosmo Headline Technique for Blogging Inspiration
Here’s an excellent blog post that reveals a simple technique for creating some really eye catching blog post headlines.
www.copyblogger.com/cosmo-headlines

4. 50 Common Web Design Mistakes
Go through this essential list with a fine tooth comb to see if you’re making any of these mistakes then get them fixed ASAP! you’ll thank me later.
www.designrefugee.com

5. Free article spinning and content rewriting using JetSpinner and JetSubmitter.
This is such a powerful idea! Take your content, re-write it using this software and reconstitute it across the web avoiding Google’s duplicate content filter.
JetSubmitter.com

6. 85+ Free Killer Resources Every Designer Should Know
This website gives you all the inspiration you need to get your website design off to a flying start. Whilst it’s aimed at website designers these killer resources are for anyone who likes to design things themselves.
www.snap2objects.com

7. How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic – The Ultimate Guide
The number of excellent resources that have come out since the beginning of the year on attracting links and building traffic has really mushroomed. Here’s an extensive and thoroughly uncompromising list of the best resources you’re ever likely to find that help you increase your traffic.
http://www.copyblogger.com/increase-web-traffic

7.5 Top 10 ideas for testing your headlines
Having the right headline on your website can make or break your website sales, so getting it right is critical! This article will give you 10 things you can test to find that winning headline…
www.grokdotcom.com

Popularity: 60% [?]

A couple of weeks ago I gave you 17 essential big selling website strategies I hope you found them useful.

I was taking a look through at the other website selling strategies that I can share with you and I’ve found 7 more I think you’ll find very interesting…

Here you go…

1. The “Early To Rise” Strategy
The “register for my early product launch…” strategy tells your prospects that if they sign up to your early product launch, they will get to purchase your product so many hours/ days/weeks sooner than the general public. You could tell them that it could sell out even before it’s launched to the general public to create urgency. You could even list some of the well-known people in your industry who have already registered to buy it early (with their permission).

2. The “Penny Seminar” Strategy
The “it’s like attending a live seminar for pennies on the dollar…” strategy tells your prospects that your product is an audio or video recording that will help them gain their desired benefit. It could be a real seminar that was recorded or a bunch of interviews of known experts in your particular market. Plus they won’t have to hear sales offers or to leave their homes to benefit from it, and they can listen to it in their spare time.

3. The “It’s Not A Reunion” Strategy
The “this call isn’t one of those marketer reunions…” strategy tells your prospects that your free teleseminar will contain many marketers who will give them useful information to gain their desired benefit. It tells them there won’t be a lot of small talk during the call, like personal stories and chit chat. The call will get straight to the point without all the fluff.

4. The “Cheat Sheet” Strategy
The “plus you’ll get a handy cheat sheet…” strategy tells your prospects that they will be able to gain their desired benefit even quicker because you’re providing a cheat sheet as a bonus. A cheat sheet usually gives people simple shortcuts that can be used to improve their lives faster and easier with your product than before.

5. The “Small Group” Strategy
The “I’m going to only help (no.) people (your product’s benefit) in the next (no.) months/years …” strategy tells your prospects that you are going to personally help a small group of people to achieve their goals. The smaller the group, the higher amount you can charge. You can guarantee you’ll help them all succeed because once they are successful, you are going to use their success stories to advertise a light version of your consulting or personal help to the general public. They will believe you will help them succeed so you can sell it to the masses later on.

6. The “It’s Obsolete” Strategy
The “every other (type of your product) is obsolete…” strategy tells your prospects that your brand new product will make every one of your competitor’s products useless. So even if they already own your competitor’s product, they will still want to buy yours, especially if you really give them a bunch of non-disputable reasons why.

7. The “Lite Diet” Strategy
The “get the lite version of our product for free…” strategy tells your prospects that they can get a partial version of your product for no cost. It will allow them to try it out and tease them with only a few of the benefits. If they like it or you tease them enough, they will want to order the full version to get all the benefits, features, bonuses, etc.

Popularity: 44% [?]

Private label rights (PLR) products can be a real time saver if the quality is there too. Yesterday as I was searching through my emails there was one message that caught my eye. I took a closer look and it turned out to be an offer for a PLR package of 1,000 Secret Marketing Strategies.

Normally I’m a bit wary of PLR products because the quality isn’t usually that great and every man and his dog usually already has a copy stashed somewhere on their harddrive. Except in this case this product was created by someone who’s name I knew and who was selling a limited quantity. These 2 things alone usually point to something worthwhile.

So I though what the heck and purchased the PLR license to all 1,000 Secret Marketing Strategies.

This morning I’ve gone through a few of them and picked out 17 of the best big selling website strategies you can take advantage of right away…

1. The “Hard Way” Strategy

The “don’t buy this if you like to do things the hard way…” strategy tells your prospects indirectly that your product will give them an easy way to gain their desired benefit.

Believe it or not, many people continue to do things the hard way because they have a phobia about trying new things or using new technology.

You can ease their concerns by telling them if you (a doctor-diagnosed technophobia) can do it, anyone can do it.

(I used this “hard way” strategy in my last blog post here) 

2. The “It Could Be You” Strategy
The “this could be you: (a picture of a person benefiting from your product)…” strategy tells your prospects to imagine that they are the person in that picture.

For example, if you’re selling an Internet marketing type product, you could show a picture of a famous Internet marketer or a marketer holding a bunch of money.

3. The “Value Through Time” Strategy
The “since (month) (year), we’ve add well over ($) worth of (types of products/information)…” strategy tells your prospects that if they purchase your product package or membership site, it will just become more and more valuable over the months and years. You could even list every item you’ve added since that time.

4. The “Vanishes After Pre-Launch” Strategy
The “this bonus won’t be available after the pre-launch phase…” strategy tells your prospects the bonus won’t be offered if they wait till after the official launch starts.

You can tell them the date when the official launch begins, the retail value of the bonus and also mention the price of the main product will be lower during the pre-launch phase.

(I used something similar to this on the squeeze page for BigSellingConversions.com. I used a popup window with a countdown timer, as soon as the time runs out the page with the offer redirects and the offer is gone for good.)

5. The “Multiple Commissions” Strategy
The “(no.) ways to make commissions…” strategy tells your prospects that you offer multiple ways for them to make money with your affiliate program.

You could offer commissions on your front end product, upsell products, one-time offer, backend products, resell rights to your front end product, etc. You can tell them their link will be included in all your marketing communications pop-ups, members area offers, exit ads, etc.

(This is another strategy I use for my affiliate program here.) 

(more…)

Popularity: 44% [?]

Back in January I ran a 7 day test using this interesting new online website visitor tracking service called Crazy Egg. (Here’s the article I originally wrote Don’t boil this crazy egg).

Essentially what this online tracking service does is it tells you which links are the most popular ones on your website. You can then use this information to optimize your websites ability to convert visitors into subscribers or customers.

Here’s the page I tested: BigSellingConversions.com

As soon as you login to your CrazyEgg account you’re shown a really well laid out and easy to navigate dashboard that shows all the tracking campaigns you’re running.

Here’s a screen shot of the page I tested out…

So you can see that during this time I had 25 visits and 17 clicks in total for that page.

To be totally honest with you that figure of 25 visits is something I’ve not been able to verify with my Google Analytics stats that I was getting so I have to question the accuracy of the tracking. I’m going to run another test on another site to see how accurate the tracking really is, right now I’m just not convinced by it.

For the purpose of just showing you what you get when you use this still very interesting online tracking tool here are my other results…

CrazyEgg provides you with a couple of ways to look at the data you get back on the clicks the links on your site has gotten. The first way is a heat map…

Then you can switch to overlay mode and you get something like this…

What’s interesting is how many people clicked on the check box, even though the form would still work without the checkbox being checked. The reason for doing this is to use the idea of commitment and consistency, when you commit to doing something by taking a positive action you’re more likely to follow-it through to the end by being consistent in your actions.

Is CrazyEgg worth using?

Definitely, but with one caveat… make sure you also track your visitors using a service like Google Analytics to compare the visitor numbers.

Based on the what I learned the numbers of clicks were not high enough to get any kind of significant information from them. Ideally you need around 200-300 visits to the page you’re testing to get meaningful results.

Go check out CrazyEgg.com now and see what you can learn about how people are using your website. It costs nothing and takes about 5-10 minutes to set up.

Popularity: 39% [?]

So what’s the answer?

There are 2 things you can do…

1. Increase your conversions
2. Increase your traffic

But which do you think is easier and will bring you the quickest possible results?

If you think it’s traffic you’d be dead wrong because the answer is in fact conversions!

Improving your website conversion is the key because all it can take is one small tweak and you can boost your sales almost overnight - but get this…. with the same amount of traffic.

So what areas should you focus boosting conversions on?

Here’s a short list to get you started…

1. The conversion of your traffic from your squeeze page to your sales page

2. The conversion of your sales page into your upsell offer

3. The conversion of the upsell offer to your thank you page.

Here’s where it gets really interesting because when you focus on making improvements to the conversion of your squeeze page (where your traffic arrives) you automatically see massive improvements in sales.

Why’s this? simply because more people make it from your squeeze page to your sales page. The more people make it to your sales page the more people will ultimately buy from you, and so on through your website.

This is the “exact” thing that I did (and continue to do) with my own products. Focus on improving the conversions of your squeeze page (or optin page) first then work on making improvements in the other areas.

I’m sure by now you can see exactly why you should be doing this.

Recently I created a website to help you increase your conversions… I think you’ll find very interesting because it’s a classic example of everything I teach.

There’s also free report on conversions waiting for you to pick up there, so if you’d like to boost your conversions overnight by making a few small changes to your website then this is just for you…

http://BigSellingConversions.com

If you don’t know how to get started improving your conversions create a Google account for yourself then activate Google Analytics and the Google Website Optimizer.

These tools will show you just how well your website is converting now and from this you’ll be able to measure the effects of any changes you make.

It’s all about testing, tracking and letting the numbers point the way to what “really” make you money online.

You can create a Google account here for free.

Popularity: 32% [?]

I hope you’ve been enjoying this series of “The Law of….” posts.

If you missed the others you an catch them all here: The 7 Laws

The idea behind them all is to help you understand what motivates people to buy and then by pushing all the right buttons increase your sales conversions.

For me website design is much more than just making websites look great, it’s also about optimizing them for a specific response from your visitor. This means I deal with not just pictures but words as well (and it’s what this blog is all about).

This next law is a very interesting one that’s often overlooked…

Let’s face it, sometimes we buy because we NEED to buy. When the tube of toothpaste is depleted, I amble on down to Wal-Mart and buy a new tube. I NEED toothpaste. When my electric bill comes in each month, I pay it. I NEED electricity. Every 3,000 miles I pay to have the oil changed in my SUV. Why? Because IT needs it!

We buy a lot of things because we need to. That’s the law of necessity. You already knew that, I am sure.

But, did you know that you can CREATE need in your offers. And NO, I don’t mean, “You need to buy my product now! You need what I’ve got! Buy from me, buy from me!” That won’t get ya a sale EVER.

Let me give you an excerpt from Jimmy D. Brown’s sales letter for Profit Pulling Newsletters as an example…

(more…)

Popularity: 37% [?]