80% of your Web site is Maintenance!
Once your Web site is up, you must maintain it. That means changes, and each time you make a change, you may make a mistake. I’m really grateful when people point out my
Web glitches. You too can be more proactive by checking your Web site each week.
If your visitors get a link that doesn’t work, see incomplete instructions, or read your dull instead of passionate copy, they will leave your site immediately, and not bookmark it.
Before you invite potential buyers to see your masterpiece you need to check and correct all parts of your site, and especially the home page. Use the last four of the seven tests below to guarantee you loyal customers and clients. The others from 1-3 are in part one of this piece.
4. TEST YOUR PRICE. A price that is too low is as bad as a price too high. Too low a price devalues your product or service.
Potential clients or buyers may think, “If it’s that cheap, it must not be good.” One myth is that eBooks have less value than print books. If your book has information your preferred audience wants, you must price it accordingly. If your service is invaluable, be sure to charge what you’re worth. You can find a free article on how to price your eBooks on the site
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Send an email survey to your friends and associates. Ask them to think like your potential buyers. List the benefits for each product or service. What will they pay for your product or service?
Always start your prices high. Later you can offer a discount.
5. TEST YOUR HOME PAGE COPY. Change testimonials or pictures every so often. Redo your opening page and closing page. Instead of “Subscribe to my ezine,” put a short testimonial from a famous person in your field right before the ezine sign up form.
Always give your visitors a reason to buy. Make your copy “you” oriented. Dan Poynter, author of The Self-Publishing Manual, said this about the free monthly ezine “The Book Coach Says…” ezine is chock full of useful information – totally worth your time.
Make your Home Web page benefit-driven. Limit your bio to a few lines. Concentrate on what you can do for your visitor. Post questions you can answer and put them in bullets to make them easier to read. On my third updated home page, my headline: “Let me help you answer questions about your book”
-How can I get clarity on my message and its value to its readers?
-How can I shorten my learning curve and finish my book fast?
-What are the first steps to writing a great selling eBook?
-What is the best way for me to publish a book?
-How can I write a profitable book for a lifelong income?
-Will my potential buyers think my book is worth the money?
-Now that it’s written, how can I best promote my book?
Test the length of your copy. Check the size of your paragraphs. In general, keep them short, around 1-4 sentences. Imagine looking at a long line of print before you get to the meat? Discouraged, you would probably leave the page, and possibly the site!
Check for passive sentence construction too. Why? Because passive constructions such as “is” and “have” and other linking verbs slow your reader down. They want your clear, concise, and compelling information. Your spell and grammar check give you passive percentages at the end. If your sentences are more than 3-4% passive, you need a professional book coach to check your copy. This article has 1% passives.
6. TEST YOUR SITE LAYOUT. Know where people are entering your site and exiting. Many companies out there can give you this service. If potential buyers keep leaving at a particular page before they go to products and ordering page, your words deceive or bore, and some changes are in order. You can track: where your traffic is coming from, what pages visitors like, what page the majority of visitors enter and exit, and how long are they there, even which ones signed up for your eNewsletter.
7. TEST YOUR ORDER PROCESS. Ask friends and associates to run through different parts of your site. Show your appreciation by paying them for it with free product or service. Tell them you have a thick skin, and appreciate their honesty.
One would-be customer couldn’t finish the order for one of my teleclasses. It took a lot of effort to get that mistake rectified with some free product from me. I know a famous eBook author from whom I tried and tried to buy a book. I even emailed him about it. He said he didn’t take email orders and sent me back to where the problem was. He didn’t care. From that point on I never bought from him or read his ezine. Maybe you remember an experience like this too.
It’s much better to have all links work, so your customers will have an easy ordering experience. Also, be sure to offer your customers several ways to order. Not all people like to order on the web. In the copy for each product or service I sell I offer an order page to mail or fax, an order 800 number and a secure ClickBank and Pay Pal order process.
Know that your job of Web site testing never ends. It’s what we call maintenance, 80% of life is maintenance! Just experimenting with these tests will bring more sales. Keep testing to know what your potential buyers really want.
Judy Cullins 2005 All Rights Reserved.
Judy Cullins, 20-year Book and Internet Marketing Coach works with small business people who want to make a difference in people’s lives, build their credibility and clients, and make a consistent life-long income. Judy is author of 10 eBooks including Write your eBook or Other Short Book Fast, Ten Non-Techie Ways to Market Your Book Online, The Fast and Cheap Way to Explode Your Targeted Web Traffic, and Power Writing for Web Sites That Sell. She offers free help through her 2 monthly ezines, “The BookCoach Says…,” “Business Tip of the Month,” blog Q & A at
and over 185 free articles.
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or
Phone: 619/466-0622 — Orders: 866/200-9743
