Converting website traffic into sales

Posted by Steve on Dec 6, 2010 in Marketing, Website Tools

As the proprietor of an online training business it is important to understand and fine tune the design of your website and the way that website visitors interact with it. After studying several models for EzyLearn I opted for the freemium and money back guarantee model and it has worked exceptionally well for our online MYOB course. It is important to note that this model is important in the relatively new area of online education where website visitors are used to seeing lots of information for free so if they are going to pay for something, they want to make sure that it actually has value.

My goal with EzyLearn online computer training courses goes along these lines:

1. Encourage website visitors to interact (email us, blogging and blog responses, sample our product etc).
2. Act upon what they have experienced with you (upgrade or make the full purchase which is where you monetise)
3. Use the site to it’s fullest potential and as a resource (they keep coming back which is good for Google pagerank)
4. Recommend it to their friends and colleges (affiliate programs and social media is useful here)

This is an excellent article which reflects some of the best ways of converting your website visitors to customers and here are their main points:

1. Have a search box on every page of your site, especially the home page. Ideally, the search box should be in the same location across all of your pages so people know where it is when they need it.
2. Consider adding Autocomplete to your search box, which suggests possible terms when visitors start typing the first letters of a keyword.
3. Have clear and specific product and content titles in the search results. If titles are not accurate, visitors may not click on a result that is otherwise relevant, or they may click on it only to find that it doesn’t contain what they were looking for, which could lead them to abandon their search.
4. Incorporate images into search results. Showing images in results helps visitors find what they’re looking for faster and with fewer clicks.
5. Offer “add to cart/buy now” options directly from the site search results page. By allowing visitors to add products to shopping carts or to go to checkout directly from search results, they’re more likely to complete the purchase.
6. Show ratings and reviews in search results, and allow visitors to further refine or reorder their search results based on ratings.
7. Rely on user behaviour to improve the relevance of search results. Based on the data, you can move more popular products to the top of search results, making the results more relevant.

Are you an affiliate of mine?

Posted by Steve on Dec 4, 2010 in Marketing, Website Tools

Affiliate Marketing Screen shot for Elegant Themes

Affiliate Marketing is where you signup with a company to be able to recommend them and in return receive a commission if the recommendation ends up in a sale. This is done by you having a unique URL that identifies you to the company. Here is an example. Ezylearn is an affiliate for Elegant Themes, who make an excellent range of WordPress themes to quickly enable you to have a professional looking website, all you need to do is write the content. Our special affiliate link for Elegant Themes is http://www.elegantthemes.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=4090_0_1_7 and it’s the special “id” at the end of the URL that identifies EzyLearn.

Most affiliate links are not displayed in full but are either compressed (like this: http://bit.ly/aviJFf) using a special URL compressing site like www.bit.ly or simply included as a hyperlink like this. But no matter how they are used they are effective in bringing new visitors to a website.

The example used above (Elegant Themes) uses a self managed affiliate system that is running on their own web server called iDevAffiliate and it’s very powerful. It is ideal for technical people who know how to set this type of system up quite easily but most people prefer to have someone else manage the affiliate program for them. Companies like Commission Junction and Clixgalore are examples of companies who can help you manage your own affiliate program.

I setup an affiliate program for our online MYOB course earlier this year with ClixGalore and we managed to get a reasonable number of affiliates who wanted to promote our website in exchange for $30 commission. This commission figure represents quite a decent return considering the value of the sale. A fantastic aspect of affiliate marketing programs is that it establishes a win-win relationship whereby once a payment for the goods or services is confirmed a commission is paid. I also encourages a committed sales effort because the commission earned is usually only paid out once the total commission reaches a realistic value of say $100.

When you use a company like ClixGalore you pay all of your money to them and they take care of paying the affiliate as well as themselves from the statistics they gather. At EzyLearn we’ve discovered that they are not the easiest people to deal with and I’ll share more of my experiences with them over the next month or so. I’m happy to say that there are lots of alternatives from companies like zferral.com to open source scripts that are run from within a WordPress website like MagicAffiliate.

We’ll soon be relaunching the EzyLearn affiliate program so stay tuned for more info at this blog. Remember you can subscribe to this blog using the email field below or at the right of my website.

Fixed Price Website Design

Posted by Steve on Dec 2, 2010 in Marketing, Website Tools

Sometimes the creative input required to create a simple website is daunting for those not involved in sales and marketing. Questions like the once below can often stall a designing project before it’s even half way through:

• What should it look like?
• What are landing pages?
• What is the goal of the site?
• What should we write?
• Which pictures should we use

The problem is made worse if you as the business owner think you know better than the person you hire to do the job. Sure there are aspects of your business or work where you are the expert but a good website copy writer will get the correct information in the right place and present your business professionally. They act as the media for your business, interviewing you for the relevant information and putting that information in well written, purpose driven content.

Now if you agree with my opinion, you’ll realise the value of the fixed price website. Yvette from HatchCreate has the qualifications to present your business and the services you offer in writing on your website and she knows the process of interview, writing, and polishing. Yvette and her writers have made it possible for 123ezy websites to provide a fixed price for a complete website package and she can also provide the same services for a regular email or printed newsletter to your clients.

“Work with the willing” and you’ll look professional and get your results quickly. Try the 123ezy fixed price website order form to see how much a website will cost you.

Every business should have PayPal

Posted by Steve on Sep 16, 2010 in Accounting and Admin, Website Tools

PayPal Merchant Services

The great thing about innovation is the ease of use and the low price. I remember operating my two computer training centres in Dee Why and Gordon where I paid the National Australia Bank $30 per month to have the use of a terminal at each location. Then there was the cost of paper, the need for a dedicated phone line and how hard it was to initially get the “credibility” to have the privilege of having one of these machines. I was happy with the machine for a while, but could I use this machine to receive payments at my website? No. That was a whole new process and another department within the bank to “negotiate” with.

I started using PayPal when I wanted to make training courses available for enrolment online and when I realised how easy it was (just like cutting and pasting a link to a YouTube video) the functionality and enabling power of PayPal become evident.

Now, I use WordPress websites, online form builders and enrolment services and all of these solution providers link seamlessly with my PayPal business account. When you consider that there is no monthly fee and I only pay a percentage of each sale you can see why it is too hard to speak to my bank for a merchant account.

Recently I read about PayPal’s new service of issuing VISA debit cards in the United States and I realised that having a PayPal account is very similar to having an ING Direct account (without the high interest you earn though). It’s all the more reason that I am starting to use my PayPal account more and more.

Even Google staff make mistakes (in Australia)

Posted by Steve on Sep 14, 2010 in Accounting and Admin, Website Tools

Google Apps

I recently received an invitation to attend a training seminar about Google Apps at the GooglePlex in Pirrama Road, Pyrmont. I accepted the invitation and put the event in my iPhone calendar, with a reminder. A week before the event I received an email asking me to confirm that I will be attending, and to my horror I saw the names of hundreds of other people in the CC field. It made me realise one important aspect about business — that they are managed by humans who can make mistakes.

On a more positive note the training was excellent. I already use Google Apps so I was familiar with much of the tools, but what I found fascinating was the Google Apps Spreadsheet. I am familiar with functions in Microsoft Excel, but true to Google’s nature, they displayed a spreadsheet which contained figures that relied upon “live” information about the population of countries in the spreadsheet. The fantastic part is that when the information from the source changes (in this case Wikipedia) then the figures in your spreadsheet will change. You can’t get more live than that!

In summary, although Google Docs might not display information as well as Microsoft Office applications, the fact that your files are stored “in the cloud” and the level of sharing and interactivity with team members (and of course the cost) makes this a very exciting suite of programs to work with.

Killing SPAM in your website comments

Posted by Steve on Sep 9, 2010 in Website Tools

WordPress "Recent Comment" moderation screen

This website like so many others (in fact millions) uses a Content Management System (CMS) called WordPress and one great feature about WordPress is that your website visitors can make comments about your articles. The problem with this is that there are also millions of people who just want to get a link to their own website no matter what it takes. This is another form of SPAM that owners of interactive sites need to be aware of and the good news is there is a service called AKISMET that helps to eliminate SPAM comments on your WordPress website.

I recently setup the Blog-style website for The Cartooning College and as a result saw first hand just how many people try to make SPAM comments on this website alone. The good news about WordPress websites is you can configure them so that comments need to be moderated before they become public and you can delete all the SPAM comments. If the number of emails you get with “comment SPAM” becomes annoying, like it did for the Cartooning College, you can install a “plugin” called AKISMET and this will eliminate most of the SPAM comments.

You can get a good looking website using a professional WordPress template using the 123ezy website and email marketing service from EzyLearn Pty Ltd.