The Fallacy of Linear Sales Progression Online

I read an article recently about creating forward sales momentum with web site visitors. I love the concept.

The idea is to create site copy that leads users down a prescribed path toward a purchase. I was nodding my head in affirmation until the author stated that the path to a purchase is linear.

This is where the marketer who lives in the trenches of real life tells the marketing academic that he’s just wrong.

Momentum is great, and we should all strive to create forward momentum through our site navigation and copy.  The idea that users will follow a linear path to a purchase is just wishful thinking – nothing more.

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Remember the Basic Economics of Marketing (ROI)

I got a call recently from a friend whose company has developed a new consumer software application. He had been presented with an opportunity to buy banner ad exposures on a newspaper web site.  “The price,” he said, “seems pretty amazing.” (In a good way.)

The newspaper had offered him banner ads on their site at a price of $0.02 per exposure. So, he would pay 2 cents every time the banner was presented to a site user.  This seemed so cheap, he was suspicious. My reaction was the opposite.

This seems to be a common challenge faced by marketers – forecasting return on investment (ROI) BEFORE deploying marketing dollars. Yet I would argue that there are few if any cases in which ROI should not be the primary driver of marketing decisions.

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If You Believe In Your Product, Give It Away

My brother in law’s family came up from Atlanta to visit last weekend.  We are both attempting to learn golf.

He pulled from his bag a coupon/voucher that I could redeem to receive one free golf club from a company called Upswing. Simply call the number on the card – cite the unique sequence number on my coupon, and a putter, driver, or sand wedge is mine for the mere cost of shipping.  How could I refuse?

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Dissecting Your Site’s Conversion Problem

Surround yourself with smart people, and you can’t help but get a little smarter yourself.  I participated in a conference call between a couple of Web marketing experts – Shell Harris and Alyssa Duvall (President and VP of Strategy for Virginia SEO firm, Big Oak) and Howard Kaplan, one of the big wigs at Future Now (the thought leaders in online conversion).

It was a simple revelation, but one well worth sharing here. The problem that most of refer to simply as Web conversion, “I want to increase my site’s conversion rate,” is actually a symptom of two separate and distinct issues. What are those issues you ask???

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The 5 Requirements of Any Great E-commerce Site

In case you haven’t noticed, e-commerce has gotten seriously competitive.

I’m managing a pay-per-click campaign right now where I’m bidding $7.15 per click for a 9^th place listing on Google Adwords. When you’re spending $7.15 for a click, you become HIGHLY conscious of what it takes to turn that click into a sale.

So, let me offer you five things that make an e-commerce site great – and turn a $7.15 click into a high-yield marketing investment.

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