How to Increase sales 50% using small tweaks [video]

In this post I show you how to get a 50% increase in sales by making 1% improvements to your sales funnels… sound impossible?  It is just simple mathematics…check out the two minute video at the bottom of the page to see how this works… but before you do, check out the few paragraphs below which attempt to explain “why” you need to care about this….if you want to optimize your income.

You know every now and again somebody will say something that will really make you think? Well on this subject, it was my wife… this is what she said to me… “you know, I think I prefer my e-reader to a book”….”why is that?”….”because I don’t have to turn the pages”.

What? How much trouble is it to move your hand from one side of a book to the other to turn the page? Not much, right? But how much effort is it to turn the page on an e-reader? You only need to tap at the bottom of the page, right side to advance, left side to go back a page. So not much difference, you might think.

But this is the kind of thinking that can make the difference in Internet marketing. In today’s instant gratification lifestyles… making the visitor click one more button, or visit one more page than is strictly necessary is enough to put people off and lose you a sale.

So for example if you have just obtained a subscriber via an opt-in form and then you offer them a product, but in order to register them for the product you require them to sign-up again… you will definitely lose a proportion of customers that think “oh – I have just signed up…I can’t be bothered to do it again”.

That is not because they think that your product is not good enough… it’s is because we live in a “convenience driven world”… a world where people make buying decisions based on convenience more and more…I even heard a friend say that he buys the most expensive milk cartons in the store because they are the easiest to open.

So, if you would like to increase your conversions…you want more people to take action…think about the user experience and use systems to automate as much as you can for the visitor – so in my earlier case you can use PayPal integration with your email service so that when someone buys a product they are automatically added to a “buyers list” without having to sign-up again.

This is just the tiniest glimpse of the world of “conversion” optimization…and I will be posting more later… along with some of my split testing results, but for now just be aware of the massive potential available for optimizing conversions…just think about the smallest of differences, poor effort into your systems to make them easier for your users…and you will reap the rewards.

Here is the video…How to get a 50% increase in sales (i.e. profit). with just a few 1% improvements in your sales funnel….

Have Fun, Get Stuck In and Take Massive Action!

P.S. If you need to contact me for any reason you can get in touch through the contact page.

How to Sell Without Selling

how to sell without selling

If there is one thing I hated, and still hate doing – in fact can’t do… it’s the hard sell.  In fact my first email campaign went a full 21 days without mentioning the “S” word.  Well I have discovered that it doesn’t have to be like this at all….  and where did I learn this?  When camping in a field with no internet access!

But before I spill the beans, just think about both the best and worst buying experiences that you have ever had…

For my wife and I, our worst experience was when we literally had to evict a double glazing salesman on Christmas Eve – after no less than four hours of hard sell.  Nightmare…and no sale!

Enter – “the complete opposite”.  Imagine, if you will, a camping experience where everything has been laid out before you to perfectly “match” your need and to enhance your experience.  When we arrived at the campsite to check in, we were helped by some lovely staff, who showed us around and pointed out all the facilities.  We then selected our preferred pitch (we found just the right one… to get both the sea view and the evening sun – perfect) and returned to the check in desk to notify the campsite of our selection and to pay.

Both my wife and I were surprised by what we heard next?  “would you like a croissant or a pain-au-chocolate, or a French loaf for tomorrow morning?”….. errr, “that sounds nice, yes please”.

Without even a… “how much will that be”.  And so it went on.  Everything had been thought out to offer you what you would need next.  Newspaper if you wanted it.  Ice blocks for the cooler box… and yup we got through plenty of these.  Or even a fridge if you wanted to hire one by the day!  Chips on the lounge decking if you wanted them, or perhaps a cappuccino?  Any food?  Home grown veggies? Even home grown sausages! It was amazing…

So, I took away some major lessons from this amazing camping trip…

When is selling not selling?  When you are offering something to help somebody at just the right time that they need it or they would like it.  By solving problems for people – they will readily and happily part with their pennies.  All of these things I am talking about at the campsite were very reasonably priced and were over and above what we had ever been offered at other campsites we had stayed at.

Price elasticity. This may be a bit of a stretch from this scenario, but I know it to be true from other cases I have experienced, and that is that offering somebody something at just the right time gives you some “price elasticity”, i.e. you can charge more with less resistance – and still be offering your customer a product / service that that are pleased with and that they will rave about.

Let me ask you this – if you had just crawled out of a dessert and were literally “dying” for a drink… how much would you pay for a glass of water?  Having had that thirst quenching glass, but still quite parched… how much would you pay for the second glass?  And now pretty full and not really needing any more… how much would you pay for the third glass? – you get the idea.  Offer something at the right time and you don’t have to sell it. It sells itself and at a higher price!

The power of a captive audience.  Anybody that has been to the cinema will know about this as you get charged over the odds for a drink, a bag of popcorn, well just about everything.  But in this campsite is wasn’t like that – prices were very reasonable, comparable to those in the shops… so you didn’t feel “ripped – off” and you would happily come back for more!

The power of repeat sales to one customer…. In the morning, when you went to collect your croissant… guess what?  “Same again for tomorrow?”…. “yes please!”.  So buy giving great value – and helped by having a captive audience – plenty of repeat buyers.  This has a huge effect of extending the “lifetime customer value” (the amount that each customer spends with you) which is an important factor in business.

So, I have seen a great real life, non-internet marketing, example of “selling without selling”.  So I will now be trying to apply this across my internet businesses and I hope that you can see the benefits of this approach and that you will apply some of these lessons too.

Hope this helps you – let me know your experiences… how can you apply this in your online business.  Please leave me a comment to let you know your experiences.

Cheers for now.

Chris.