A few weeks ago, I was playing golf with a friend of mine who owns a chain of martial arts studios. While we were playing he began telling me about how he had just spent over $50,000 having a website designed to promote his business.
I’ve got to tell you a funny story that happened to me recently…
A few weeks ago, I was playing golf with a friend of mine who owns a chain of martial arts studios. While we were playing he began telling me about how he had just spent over $50,000 having a website designed to promote his business.
He went on for over thirty minutes bragging about how beautiful the graphics and pictures were and how much he spent on this and how much he spent on that. He even told me how his graphic designer had created a large flash animated header to go at the top of every page showing him breaking a brick in half.
Well… After I had given him plenty of time to “tell me all about” his new website, I asked him a few questions.
Q - “So how long has your site been online?”
A - “…About thirty days.”
Q - “Is it getting much traffic?”
A – “Oh yeah. Tons! I’m spending over $500 a day on pay-per-click traffic at Google and Yahoo. I think we are averaging over 1,500 visitors a day!”
Q – “What’s your conversion rate?”
A – “…Huh? My what?”
Q – “Your conversion rate. You know… The ratio between the number of visitors you are getting to the number of sales you are making.
A – “Umm… Well, I’m not sure. We’ve only made 11 sales so far. But my web designer says that once the search engines index my site the sales will pick-up.”
After a few minutes of stunned silence, I said to him, “Let me get this straight. You dumped $50,000 into a website, and you’ve spent $500 per day for he last 30 days driving traffic to it and you’ve only made 11 sales?!”
“Well… Yeah. Why? Is that bad?”
“Is that BAD?!?! Dude! That’s HORRIBLE! You’ve been financially RAPED by a pack of nerds!”
Now it was his turn for stunned silence. After thirty seconds of looking like a deer caught in the headlights, he finally muttered, “…but ..but, the site looks so cool. And they tell me that traffic and sales will get better when the search engines come by…”
“Look. I don’t care what they are telling you. You don’t have a traffic problem, you have a CONVERSION problem. A big one!”
After giving him a second to let the reality sink in I said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll bet you $250 that I can VASTLY improve your website’s conversion rate in one day. You make the changes that I tell you to make and if your sales don’t improve significantly, I’ll give you $250 cash.”
All he said was, “Eric, You’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Okay. The first thing I want you to do is lose the animated flash header.”
“What?! Are you nuts? That thing cost me over $3,500! They even came out to one of my Dojo’s with their lights and cameras to film me breaking that brick. You haven’t even seen it yet. Come on… I know if you see it you will think it’s cool!”
“I don’t need to see it. I just need you to remove it. It’s hurting your sales.”
After a bit more protesting and grumbling he said. “…Alright. Fine. I’ll take it down for now, but if sales don’t go up its going right back up and YOU OWE ME $250!”
…four days later I get a call.
“Eric… Man, I can’t believe it! We lost the flash header and our site went from one sale every two or three days, to four or five sales EACH day… What do I need to change next?”
Because his site had so many things that needed to change, I recorded a two-hour screen capture video, detailing each step he needed to take to improve his conversion rates.
After watching the video and implementing just a few of the suggestions so far, my blackbelt friend is experiencing much better conversion rates and overall sales.
…So what do I want you to learn from this story?
The first lesson is this:
Most web designers don’t have the first clue about how to convert traffic!
Just think about it...
Over 99% of all web sites today are designed by programmers or graphic artists -- NOT marketers. Most of these guys have never earned a dime selling anything online except their overpriced (and under performing) web design services.
Sure... They can make you a beautiful, great looking website with all the fancy bells and whistles. Just one problem... It won't sell anything!
(I’m sure that somewhere out there in Cyberspace is a group of very nervous nerds, hiding under their desks from one very angry blackbelt!)
The second lesson is:
Small changes to your website can produce huge results.
By getting an expert, outside evaluation of your websites design, copy, usability and sales effectiveness, you can quickly turn a poorly performing website into a raging cash machine!
Please feel free to reprint this article in your publication, web site, ebook, ezine or newsletter! Simply leave the “About the Author” byline and links intact.
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