Tuning your Website

Test, Measure, Tune

Now you have your brand new website, you can't just sit back and wait for the dollars to come rolling in - there is some ongoing work to be done.

The huge advantage of Internet marketing is that you can try something different at no cost and see how it works.

Try a lower price for a week and see if sales improve.
Try a higher price for a week and see whether you were too cheap before and the customer thought you were selling junk.
Try a ‘two for one’offer.
Test whether free delivery pulls in the punters.

It is simply a matter of a quick change to your compelling sales offer and then checking to see if it worked. When you get a successful result, you can focus on that price or offer and reap the benefits. It is now possible with software from companies like zeald.com to have an A/B offer split. Half your visitors will be directed to a page that offers your product for, say, $19.95 and the other half will be directed to a page that offers the product at $29.95. After a week or so, you can easily see which pricing worked best and make that your permanent offer. ‘Test and tune’ is the gospel according to gurus like Corey Rudle.

You can also use the statistics provided by your hosting company to improve your website. One important piece of information is on what page visitors left your site. There is some weakness with that page. Maybe you have a external link to another website that is proving so attractive to your visitors that they are leaving your website in droves. Or the page is so slow loading that your surfers have given up and clicked somewhere else. Remember most people are surfing at 56 kps. Only 10% of surfers are on broadband. If your website takes more than 10 seconds to load, you are in danger of losing your visitor. I using the Internet at a motel recently and used a dial up connection. I noted that I was connected at 36.4 kps. Some of the top websites on my Google search took more than three minutes to load. If I did not particularly need to see those websites to prepare for a presentation, I was long gone.

Other information available from your hosting company will include:

• what country they live in
• what browser they are using
• what version of Microsoft software they are using
• what page they arrived at your site
• what Search Engine sent them there
• how long they spent on each page
• what pages they visited
• where they left the website
• the number of hits you got this week/month/year
• more importantly - the number of page visits you had this week/month/year
• the number of page downloads your visitors made

There is more information available than you can handle. You can spend days analysing your website stats and even more days modifying your website. It is necessary to be disciplined and allocate a certain number of hours to the task of reviewing your stats and improving.

If you would like me to check your website to see how it is performing, just contact me here. No cost, no obligation and I guarantee you will be impressed with the report I present to you.