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Rob Snell sent a message on Twitter (he tweeted this):

robsnell: Just got my #pubcon transcript. Email me or DM for a copy. It’s rednecktastic! I went CRAZY giving away secrets. Was I on crack?

I was intrigued by his comment, so I emailed him and he sent me a rough copy of his Pubcon Transcript (If you want a copy, email rob [at] ystore [dot] com). I just finished reading the rough copy and Rob said some great things that I just want to reiterate what he said at Pubcon, here on this blog. What I’m going to do is highlight his comments and then add my two cents to bring light to context or something. :) [Please note: Not all things said are from Rob and I will note the non-Rob comments, enjoy!!]

Contents (Quick links; these will bring you to a section as labeled):

Fix Checkout

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Ethan: We have seen between 20% and 25% increases in conversion rates right off the bat by fixing someone’s checkout.

Policies

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Ethan: So it is important, again, to reiterate in the process the shipping policies, the return policies, privacy policies, your third party insurances.

Ethan: that is the most important button on this page and it is very much in focus

A Picture/Image Is Worth. . .

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Ethan: Your images sell your products. Make sure you are telling the story with your images. Use multiple images if possible and make your own product videos.

Site Search

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Ethan: Don’t neglect your site search.

Tell em’ (Rob Snell from now on; unless otherwise noted)

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Rob Snell: Tell folks what to buy.

People are busy. They have got a lot of choices. They don’t want to have to wade through all this information.

Buyers guide (increased 50% conversion)

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I recommend that anybody with multiple categories of products write a buyer’s guide for every single major category on your website.

“This is your situation. Look at this product. If you are in a different situation, look at this different product.”

we have had a 50% increase in conversions when buyer’s guide pages were used as entry pages.

Content for Products

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This is my rule of thumb. I want you to write one new paragraph for every $10 in item price.

We play 20 questions with every single product. What I recommend is that you start at the top with your best selling products and you work your way down.

“What is a customer concerned about when they buy this product? Is this product going to solve their problem?”

I literally have over 200 questions that I can any product through and go, “Is this too small to do the job? Is it overkill? Compared to the manufacturer, are their equal alternatives? Is this for professional use or amateur use? Why should I buy this one? Why should I get this one from you? Are there any third party reviews?”

Blog to build content and links.

Community Ads

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This is an awesome way to do SEO, to support your community, to make your customer’s really happy, because you go to the websites that they go to and you buy ads.

You can buy links. You can buy banners, but you want to support the organizations that your customers do.

Long Tail

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But 25% of the sales came from 39 different long tail keywords.

I think now 50% of my sales are coming from long tail because of this optimization that I did in the short term.

Well these are modifiers; buy, discount, free, online, and shipping.

 

Get Feedback

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One of the best things we ever did was install 4Q [Refuge Design Note: It's four questions you choose to ask a sample of your visitors]

Shipping Ideas

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Man1? (Not Rob): get a shipping calculator on your shopping cart. Literally type in your zip code and you get a price right there.

Man2? (Not Rob): Shipping is the number one criteria on an e-commerce website that people look at when they are going to buy something.

Man 1? (Not Rob): And to kind of echo that, sometimes when you put in an address and hit submit, it takes a minute for UPS to verify your address.

Man 3? (Not Rob): If it is taking minutes I would say 99.9% of your customers are leaving. You have got about three to six seconds maximum for a customer to lose interest.

Rob: In our industry we have to offer free shipping because most of our competitors do on a certain device.

Rob: From time to time we have done free shipping promotions and it has doubled conversion rates.

Hacker Safe

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We saw $300,000 in sales on one of our projects last year that we would not have gotten had we not had that specific hacker safe logo on there.

In Conclusion: One or two modifications can mean hundreds to thousands of dollars in profit for your business today. Small things matter, everything matters, test and try new things, make things more obvious. Have fun making your conversion funnel better. :)