My inspiration for the script came from reading the documented success many direct marketers have had when using post-it type notes as part of their mailing…

Using post-it notes makes each mailing seem more personal, and grabs the attention of the reader making the mailing stand out from the other “junk mail”.

I realised there were a number of servics that offered the ability to add an attractive popin to a site, but none that I know of allowed you to upload your own images ( and many other features).

So, I created “Click Reclaimer” (CR) a while ago to use on my sites.

As with most of the software I get developed, it is for inhouse use so it tends to be “good enough”…

But I now have some solid results from CR and I wanted to get it out to you, which is why there’s been the slight delay as I wantd to “pretty it up” for PPL members.

So, what does the first version of Click Reclaimer do?

1. You can show either “graphical” or “HTML” popins.

Graphical popins are those that look like handwritten notes, but can still include “handwritten” links that work like a normal link (this is the only system that I know of that can do this).

HTML popins allow you to include any HTML you like over a colored background or a graphical background (this could be an optin form, a video or a simple call to action)

2. You can add an overlay to the page, which obscures the page content, so that the focus of the persons attention is on the popin

3. You can choose the location of the popin of the page (pretty standard) and the location of the close button on the popin.

4. You can decide if you want a standard popin or one that is activated by mouse movement.

The standard popin can appear immediately, or after a time period specified by you It can also remain displaying for a set amount of time. This is really useful for showing a time limited message or adverts.

The mouse movement activated popin is generally used to capture those visitors about to leave your site and recapture them or to propose a related offer.

5. The popins, both graphical and html, can include parameters from the page URL that the popins appear in. This is really powerful as it allows you to add dynamic text to your popins.

e.g. lets say that you have collected the persons name and you append this in a parameter to the page URL, then you can parse this and add it into the popin when it displays on the page.

Or… If you are tracking traffic sources and you would like to pass the traffic source parameters through a link in your popin, then you can do this easily as well.

This is a feature that i’ve not seen anywhere else and it’s pretty cool

6. You can upload any graphical background you like to the system (gif format), and there are already 13 graphical backgrounds you can use, including the standard postit note background.

Again, I think this is the only system available that allows you to create and upload your own graphics, giving you a huge amount of flexibility and customizability to suit your market.

7. The system is centralized, so you have control over all of the popins displayed across all of your websites from one location. All you need to do is add a small javascript snippet to the pages you want the popin to show on.

8. CR also collects statistics for you, including the number of times a popin is displayed by date, and if you add a HTML or graphical link to the popin and it is clicked on then that information is also tracked by date also.

9. You can split test popins on a page with a simple tweak to the javascript snippet you add to each page.

I’ve created a couple of videos to walk you through the installation process here:

Download Click Reclaimer Here

version 2 of the system is currently being finalized by my programer (probably 2 weeks away), this one includes other clever features like feedback forms, moving backgrounds and other techniques to bring attention to your popins…

These features along with the V1 ones give you a huge amount of flexibility for manipulating and getting the most out of the traffic that visits your site.

This approach is one I stumbled across when reading the book “Web Copy That Sells” by Maria Veloso in 2006.

The approach is designed to get people who come to your site to be more involved in the sales process, and therefore make your sales page what would have once been referred to as “sticky”.

This tactic also encourages the visitor to read all of your sales message.

The approach is quite simple, and I will put a link to the code I use in my pages so that you can make some changes and copy and paste it into your sales messages to test.

You may have already heard of this method, it is collectively referred to as adding an involvement device to your message.

What you will notice is that for this approach to work well you really need to know your visitors well, and the solutions they are looking for when they come to your site.

This is where carrying out a survey of your customers can pay off - As it will give you a huge amount of insight into their needs, the language they use and the way they do business.

Here are a couple of ways of adding involvement devices:

1. Multiple choice…

This can be used when there are simple options to choose between, e.g. Which of these gas suppliers is cheapest, which of these cars has the best economy, which of these foods has the most sugar content etc…

The approach to creating a multiple choice involvement device is:

1. Work out what problems your visitors is trying to solve (i.e. lose weight, get more traffic, increase conversion etc)
2. Identify something that will take them closer to their desired solution
3. Include a simple knowledge building quiz at the top of your page, the answer to which will be beneficial to the customer and take them closer to their goal.
4. Include in the quiz the ability to take some action to choose the answer they believe to be correct
5. Under the “quiz” tell them that they will find the answer below (don’t be specific) - The idea is to encourage them to read all your sales message.
6. Add the answer to the quiz question towards the endo of your sales message.

Note: You will see a link to a template for this approach at the end of this post.

2. Multiple Questions…

This type of involvement device can be used for every topic if you know your customers desires or situation.

When I use this approach I create a small list of 4-6 questions that all have a yes or no answer, with the aim to get the visitor to click on the “Yes” buttons and get involved with the sales process.

This approach is is especially useful for creating empathy with the customer and getting them to really “own” their problems and challenges before you show them how they can be solved.
e.g. Do you often feel really embarrassed by your cellulite if you have to wear shorts or swimwear? Yes / No

Take a look at the involvement devices here and you will soon see how they could be used in your sales message.

But I’m really pleased with the outcome.

For a long time now I’ve been thinking about how to best get instant feedback on the sales that occur in Clickbank, whether as an affiliate for other merchants, or on my own products.

Now, of course merchants do get email notifications, but they’re not exactly convenient for keeping a tally of the sales that have taken place through each campaign…

And those notification emails really don’t give the full information that I need to track campaigns fully.

So, what I wanted was a central system that would track all transactions that go through all my CB accounts, whether they where affiliate accounts or merchant accounts, and then put them into a easy to search database.

As well as storing the transactions, I wanted to be notified of all transactions (affiliate or merchant) with information I could use, through the media I wanted.

With this in mind, and the introduction of the ClickBank IPN system, I put my programer to work…

After a lot of testing and changes to the system we’ve developed Cb Central. I think you’ll like it.

Here’s what it does:

1. Monitors all transactions across all your CB accounts (affiliate and merchant)

2. All transaction data is held in an easy to search database which can be filtered whatever way you like, meaning
a. If you want to know the country your sales are coming from - It’s no problem
b. If you want to extract all the email addresses and names from your transactions and add them into your autoresponder - It’s no problem
c. If you want to filter by publisher, tracking code, or any variable - Again it’s no problem
d. And of course you can filter by date and time.

3. The search results can then be extracted into a comma delimited file for you to manipulate as you like.

4. You can turn on or off email notifications of all transactions for both affiliate and merchant accounts. This means you can get emails even for affiliate sales if you wish.
Also, the emails can include the information you want in them, holding rich transactional data rather than the minimal information you currently get from Clickbank.

5. Would you rather see your transactions through an RSS feed? - Not a problem. The system allows you to set up a secure RSS feed, and again all the transactional information can be contained in the feed. This makes it really easy to track transactions when you are on the go.

6. Transactions across any time period and any account (or all accounts) can be amalgamated to automatically reveal total revenue - Saving you lots of calculator “finger fatigue”. This also removes the need for you log into each separate account to add up your revenue for the period.

7. If you include extra parameters in the clickbank sales URL - I include campaign data and source information - then this is also included in the transaction information in CB Central, meaning you can get instant feedback on the success of campaigns from one location.

I’ve pulled together the installation files and instruction video for you in the resources section.

Just click here to grab CB Central and start saving time and managing your campaigns more effectively.

It is just a fact of marketing.  You cannot please all people with your offer, no matter how attractive it is..

So why is this a problem?

well - Each person who stays on your list and doesn’t take any action that adds value to your business is a drain on your resources, time and they skew your statistics and waste your marketing effort.

So, how do you extract “value” from those people who don’t buy from you but hang about on the end of your list?

The way I see it there are a few clear ways that a person can add value to your business.

1. Buy your product (the obvious step)
2. Give you additional content, knowledge or potential product focus
3. Increase your credibility
4. Buy someone else’s product for which you get commission

After you have tried each of these approaches with your list (and generally that’s the order I go through them in) then I suggest you get rid of the inactive prospects from your list.

Sure, there are other tactics that can try like asking for referrals, selling your leads, keeping them on your list so that your list looks impressive to JV partners, or sub dividing your list into “non responders” and selling advertising space.

But, in this post I am going to go through the 4 steps above and show you how I extract value from my lists using these approaches.

However, before I do that you need to decide at what stage you believe a person should be considered “active”.  This can be for 60 days, 3 month, 6 months…

whatever time period you think is right (one way of identifying a suitable point is segregate your list into length of subscription “groups” and see what the response is like in each “group”).  Although to be frank you will probably already know the “natural” period where people start to lose interest in what you have to say and sell.

e.g For one of our health topics where the health issue they have is painful, but only for about 3 weeks, they have a short “active” period, but for another one of our products the active period is about 4 months.

So now, once the prospect list has exceeded the “active” period here are some steps you can take to extract greater value.

1. Offer your product/ products at a discount, offer better payment terms, offer a free bonus if they purchase, offer them an extended guarantee etc… Basically, you are lowering the price, or increasing the value of your product to generate the sale.   If they then purchase they go off the prospect list onto your customer list.

2 + 3. If your prospect has still not purchased one of your products, then you should try and extract value from them in the form of getting useful information, knowledge, testimonials or to understand their product needs.

To do this just set up a simple survey and ask prospects in your autoresponder the following types of questions:

a. How useful have you found the newsletters
b. What could be done better
c. What would have made you purchase my products
d. What have you learnt recently about the niche that you wish you knew at outset.
e. are there any questions or problems relating to the niche that you would like answering
d. What products would you be interested in grabbing in the future ( I tend to create a multiple choice list, but also allow free format entry)
e. Would you refer a friend to my newsletter

You may want to ethically bribe the prospect to complete the information e.g. a free download or one of your products (after all they have not bought and are unlikely to) - and once should they respond move them to a “responsive” list.

This information is invaluable, as it will give you insight into new products you can create for your market, provide testimonials for your service and will give you ideas for potential backend promotions.

It also separates the people who are responsive from those that aren’t, which means they can be targeted with different offers later on based on the products they have told you they are interested in.

Don’t forget to add your product on the Thank you page after the survey. After somone has been asked about your services and they have been positive then they are more likely to purchase.

For more information about surveys check the resources section

4. As you are familiar with the profile of your prospect, it should be relatively easy to think of at least 5 other products that they would be interested.  And of course as more people complete your survey, you will see trends as to what products or services they would be interested in hearing more about.

I suggest you widen your product thinking here so that you cover topics that are outside your niche.

So, if your niche is “Having a baby” then you could offer products in the following areas:

1. Losing weight after pregnancy
2. Safe Exercises
3. Raising a baby
4. Sleep training
5. Baby clothes
6. Buying a cheap family car
7. Baby magazines
8. natural supplements

etc…etc…

You could even broaden the product out further by demographics and consider products like:

1. Beauty tips
2. Shopping
3. Making money from home.

Once you have a good list of offers, you can put these into your “responsive” autoresponder for these people who completed the survey.

When doing this I tend to promote the offers once, then cycle through them all again - it’s surprising how many people buy on the second run through.

One way to encourage sales of the third party products is to offer one of your products as a bonus if they buy, as long as they send you their receipt.  In this way you can ask them to sign up to your “responsive” list before they get your bonus product.

Following through with some or all of the above can increase the Long Term Value of your customer considerably and will effectively wed out the tyre kickers who you can remove from your autorespoder listings.

Also, if you are using a paid autoresponder service this will save you money (therefore add value) and reduce the posibility of the autorepsonder service having issues with poor delivery rates on your lists.

This system logs all the transactions that go through any number of clickbank accounts and stores then in a database.  The system then allows the transactions to be searched by date, account, transaction, publisher etc… And these are then displayed and can be downloaded as a comma delimited text file.

It also creates an RSS feed that contains the last transactions that have taken place through Clickbank - So this can be added to a feed reader to keep abreast of the transactions that are going through your accounts in real time.  The RSS is customisable to show only the elements that you want to see in the feed.

There is also the ability to set the system to email whenever a transaction goes through any of your account - This is especially useful for  affiliates as email notifications at Clickbank have been switched off.

The system should be uploaded by the end of this week.

The 80:20 principle has been used almost unconsciously in offline business for many years…

One of my jobs before starting out on my Internet adventure was running a boutique consultancy in the United Kingdom. Its speciality was to deliver large programs of change into Blue Chip Financial Service companies…

While planning the critical work that was required to complete the programs, I’d do my best to “drag” from the customer what the minimum results would need to be in order to consider the program a success. Essentially, this would constitute the “vital few” deliveries that were the core of the program.

Anyway, during the unearthing of the “vital few” from the customer it was always interesting to note how few of them had heard of our friend Vilfredo Pareto and the Pareto principle when asked.

Although when I mentioned the “80-20” principle to the client, almost all of them had heard of it and thought they had a good grasp of what it meant – But they could not necessarily see how they could apply it easily to their businesses.

In fact, it was only when time was invested analysing the current business model and the areas proving to be critical for the bottom line and customer experience that true benefits could be extracted by applying lessons from the 80-20 principle.

But What Exactly Is It?

Essentially the 80-20 principle is very easy to explain, but it is often harder to see how it can be applied to improving a business. At its simplest it means that 80% of your results come from 20% of your actions. Or 80% of the “effects” in your business come from 20% of the causes. Or 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your clients.

Of course the ratio is not always 80:20, it can often be 90:10 or even 99:1.

Anyway, that’s enough theory, let’s go through how application of the 80:20 Principle can lead to concrete and tangible results.

80:20 Analysis

The Key to leveraging the 20% that gives you 80% is to really understand those 20 percenters that are driving business profits, and then increase focus in these areas, including time, money, or other relevant resources. This will then leverage even more benefit from these areas.

So, here’s what I do… and even if you cannot be as “scientific” as this there is still scope for leveraging the vital 20% with more of your time and money to get greater returns.

There are three areas of online business that play key role in increasing profits. They are Traffic, Conversion and Customer Experience. And it is important to analyse each of these areas and to identify the top 20% of elements that are leading to the majority of your success.

Lets Start With Traffic.

1. Pull off your analytics/ Site statistics for the last 3 months and identify.

a. What are the main sources of traffic to your site
b. Which traffic source is converting to sales
c. Now categorize the traffic into the following categories (yours will be different according to your business model): Paid advertising, Joint ventures, Affiliates, Search Engine Traffic, Article Marketing. Press Releases etc.

I would also recommend that for PPC traffic that you granulate even further and identify the exact words that are contributing the most traffic and sales.

2. Now establish the cost associated with each of the traffic sources – For PPC this should be easy, and for others the cost may be time. If the cost is time then allocate a cost per hour rate for each traffic source.
So, what you end up with should be a list of categorized traffic, the amount of income made through each of those traffic sources during the last 3 months, and the cost associated with that traffic source.

3. Highlight which of the traffic sources are bringing in the majority of your income.

Once this analysis has been completed you will most likely have a few traffic sources that contribute the most to your profits. These are the ones that you should leverage further and invest additional time and effort to get even greater returns from them/

As for the ones that are creating less value. They should have less time and money investment in them and where possible the activities should be outsourced or automated to free up time for the most profitable sources.

As the “best performing” traffic sources are further leveraged, there may come a point when more traffic from that source is not available. If this is the case then examine how you can get similar traffic rather then diversifying too much from the source of your success.

e.g. if you are finding that Google Adwords PPC traffic is performing well, then try using MSN, Yahoo, and other larger PPC networks.

If article marketing is going well, then try Press Releases or writing guest posts for other people’s blogs or ezines.

If you are getting a lot of traffic from one particular affiliate then try these tactics:

a. Check how they are promoting your site and identify similar affiliates and approach them (remember to show them the income you are generating for the top producing affiliate)
b. Ensure that new affiliates who sign up for your affiliate program are aware of the tactics that your best affiliate is using. You may also want to give this affiliate a bonus payment to encourage them to send more traffic your way, or increase their commissions.
c. Contact current affiliates and share with them the knowledge you have learnt from the best performing affiliate so they can promote your business better.

Moving On To Conversion

There are certain parts of the sales funnel that are key to your sales and the better your conversion is on these pages the better overall conversion will be.

The way we identify the key pages is to review our sales funnel and examine the pages that are mostly responsible for sales.

Here is an example.

Let’s say that we have a typical sales funnel which “flows” something like this:

PPC Traffic
Signup page >> Pre Sales Autoresponder >> Sales Page >> Order page with upsell >> Thankyou page.

Affilate, Articles, Non PPC traffic
Sales Page >> Order Page with Upsell >> Thankyou Page

Now, go back to the analysis you did earlier and mark by each of the traffic sources the main “in” points to your site. This will then give you the location that you should start your conversion efforts.

Why start with these pages? Well, if you can make these pages more effective then more people are funnelled to the next stage of your sales funnel. As the entry page is the top of the sales funnel, if you can get more people to carry out your designated action and convert on this page you have more moving on to the next stage of your sales process. You can see that this is essentially “widening the sales funnel”.

If you can widen the sales funnel from the top down then it means that more people come into the sales process and so are exposed to your sales message.

Here are a couple of examples of this in use on a couple of my products.

About 80% of the traffic for one product comes from affiliates. They refer traffic straight to the product sales page. Therefore, the most important page initially to optimize would be the “sales page” to ensure more of the traffic that lands on this page carry out the required action. After that I would concentrate on the “Order Page With Upsell” page.

For another product we have, most of the traffic comes from PPC engines, and so the “optin page” where we send the traffic to would be the most important page to initially optimize. After that, for this product we would optmize the autoresponder sequence (as we know that the relationship building nature of the autoresponder is responsible for driving most of our sales for this product)

I am not advocating, nor does the 80:20 principle advocate ignoring the other elements of the sales funnel, just that they are less critical and need less investment of time, money and energy. That being said, you may chose to “postpone” effort on these aspects to concentrate on the critical elements to enhancing profitability.

On To Customer Experience

Customer experience is one area that is often neglected in most 80-20. And for an Internet business understanding the critical elements of the customer experience is often far more important (and harder to establish) than for an offline business because the interaction is so much less intimate.

So, how can you find out the key elements of your business that the customer sees as important to their buying decision and overall experience?

Here are some ways:

1. The most obvious way is to survey customers that have purchased your product. It doesn’t need to be a long, convoluted survey, all that needs to be done is to add a message into your autoresponder sequence and ask them how they found the buying experience and was there anything that could have been done better.

You may want to give them something for their trouble like a free report.

2. Although tied in with conversion, look through your site analytics to see where you get the most customer “fall-out”, and how quickly they are leaving. From this you should be able to work what is causing the customer to leave your site.

There are a number of tools that might be able to help you with this sort of analysis, including sites like:

http://www.feng-gui.com/Default.aspx - Will carry out an artificial heat map analysis.
http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html – Installable program to track where people click on your page.
http://www.clickdensity.co.uk/ - Similar to the above
http://crazyegg.com/ - and again…

3. Create a simple exit survey that asks the customer why they are leaving the site, or what is stopping them doing the action you want them to. I would suggest making this survey initially free-format as the reasons that the visitor is leaving may be quite different to what you expect.

Also, if possible add an exit survey to your Autoresponder so that you can get feedback on why people are unsubscribing.

4. Ask the target customers in your market to review your pages and give honest feedback – You may need to give them an ethical bride for them to do this for you. You can find them by searching in related forums, blogs or other social network sites that cover your topic.

5. Install yourself in your customer’s brain…By now you should have a really good idea of who your “average” customer is. This customer profile should contain enough information for you to be able to suspend your own thoughts and think like them while reviewing your sales funnel. This “thinking as your customer” should be carried out regularly and will lead to insights about your current sales proposition and process.

6. One great way to analyse your sales funnel in conjunction with point 5 above is to print off the “critical few” elements of your sales funnel (this could be your sales page, optin page, first 9 autoresponder messages etc) – Then walk through them and look for any “friction”, where the sales process does not seamlessly lead into the next step.

Keep an eye out for the following “friction” elements:

a. Changes in background color between pages
b. Changes in header
c. Changes in layout of the page which can be confusing
d. Changes in font
e. Changes in voice i.e first person/ third person
f. No call to action or explanation of what the customer should do next or reason why the customer should do it.
g. Little reassurance of security or customer not feeling safe to carry out the action required
h. Your relationship with the customer is not being cemented more and more with each step they go through
i. Asking the customer to fill out the same information more than once

Although this list is not meant to be exhaustive, with only a few of the tactics mentioned you should be able to get an understanding of the customer experience and also identify the critical few elements that you can improve, or enhance to improve their experience even further.

The 80:20 principle can be applied to other areas of business, like analysing the best performing products, the best performing staff, improvements in time management etc…

All-in-all it’s a practical tool for reviewing all the inputs and outputs of a business, and once there is a solid grasp of the “vital few” elements that greatly impact the bottom line, then resources (time, money, energy etc) can be allocated more effectively.

It works even when a large number of keywords that all pointing to the same landing page… As the page dynamically changes to match the keyword (once the correct information is included in the script below)

Basically, one of the criteria used by Google Adwords to assess quality score is the relevancy of the landing page relative to the keyword and advert that is used to refer the visitor.

What this means is that to have a higher quality score the landing page should contain the keyword (or very similar) that you are bidding on. However, this is not always easy if there are lots of keywords in an adgroup, or you have multiple adgroups sending traffic to one landing page.

The obvious answer is to have a different landing page for each keyword and adgroup, but this can be very time intensive (not to mention a boring task). So, why not just include relevant keyword rich phrases in your landing page according to the keyword that is referring the traffic instead?

Well, with this script you can just that.

Let’s take an example…

So, lets say that you have three keywords referring to a landing page… and also people coming to the page without any related keywords (like from search engines, or referrals from other sites).

Also, lets say in this example that the landing page is specific to teaching strategies about “raising short haired hamsters”…

Finally, lets say the keywords are:

1. No keyword used or recognised
2. Short haired hamster diet
3. Short haired hamster baby
4. Exercising short haired hamsters

Once this script is installed you might show the following title, heading and bullet point in the following circumstance:

1. No keyword recognised (show default values)
Title = Raising Short Haired Hamsters
Heading = Who Else Wants To Learn Breakthrough Methods Which Make Raising Short Haired Hamsters A Breeze?
Bullet = 3 ways to make sure your short haired hamster is happy and healthy

2. Keyword = Short haired hamster diet
Title = Discover the best diet for short haired hamsters today
Heading = Give me three minutes & you’ll discover the optimum short haired hamster diet for health and vitality.
Bullet = Discover 3 short haired hamster diet mistakes that most people make

3. Keyword = Short haired hamster baby
Title = Practical Advice To Raising A Short Haired Hamster Baby
Heading = Is Your Short Haired Hamster Baby Healthy? You May Be Surprised At The Answer…
Bullet = 7 Short Haired Hamster Baby Feeding Strategies

4. Keyword = Exercising short haired hamsters
Title = Exercising Short Haired Hamsters The Easy Way
Heading = Is Your Short Haired Hamster Getting Enough Exercise?
Bullet = 3 Exercises That Your Short Haired Hamster Can Do Every Day – That They Will Love.

So, this script allows you to show content in the landing page that is tightly targeted to your various visitors needs.

The script will allow you to add any number of elements (title, heading, bullet, footer, etc) for any number of keywords.

The instructions of how to add this script to your landing page and changes required to your referring URL are included with the download.

You can grab it here:

Dynamic Landing Script

And so it follows that one of the most compelling words you can use when creating a sales page is someone’s name.

And thankfully, adding a name to a sales letter is relatively easy to implement and test with the right code, and it should increase your conversions… Although I will be honest with you… For some niches it does actually reduce conversions (this is why testing is so important).

Overall however, on average this tactic raises conversion for me between 10 – 15%.

I will set out the approach here and include a link to the snippet of code that you need to add into your sales page.

Here’s how it works…

1. Someone comes to your optin page and submits their name and email address.
2. Their name is gathered in the Autoresponder system and retained, and it also can be passed as a variable to the redirected page (the page you want the user redirected to which is usually set in the form code)
3. As the name parameter is carried as a variable in the redirect URL to the thank you page (or often a sales page) the name can be parsed and used in the page wherever the relevant code is added.

The script below will clean up the name to ensure that if someone puts their first and second name just the first one shows.

How do I use this code?

Well, whenever I want to personalize a page, usually a sales page, I add the script snippet so that the persons name appears. This is particularly effective in the initial greeting on the page, and in any call to action.

e.g. instead of having as the greeting:

Dear Friend or Fellow Chicken Breeder

You might have,

Dear Richard or Hello Richard, good to meet you…

The name will be added to the page as long as the correct name parameter is used in the URL. For many autoresponders the name parameter is called “name”, so the URL will be something like:

http://www.mysalespage.com/Sales-page.html?name=Richard

The code to add is simple and you can download it here:

Simple Personalization Script

Try it out and see what results you get. I hope you will be pleased with the outcome.

You’ve probably heard of Favicons, but if they’re something you’re not aware of then I will let Wikipedia give the explanation.

Wikipedia state “A favicon (short for ‘favorites icon’), also known as a website icon, page icon or urlicon, is an icon associated with a particular website or webpage.”

In many browsers these icons are shown next to the URL or at the top of the browser tabs when someone opens up your site.

So what does this mean?

Well - if you have a favicon that instils the correct emotion, trust and professionalism then it can encourage more actions from the client.

There are a number of places you can go to create your favicon - Here are just a few:

http://www.favicon.cc/

http://www.htmlkit.com/services/favicon/

http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/

Once you have created your favicon there are various and contradictory conventions as to where the favicon should be placed on your website.  To avoid confusion I simply do the following:

1. Call the graphic I create “favicon.ico”
2. Add it into my public_html folder
3. Add the following lines between the <head> tags of my HTML pages:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”http://your_web_site.com/favicon.ico” type=”image/x-icon”>
<link rel=”icon” href=”http://your_web_site.com/favicon.ico” type=”image/x-icon”>

Why does this work?

Well it depends upon the sort of favicon you use, but there are a number of reasons.

1. It can help with bookmarking of your site as your site will now stand out more in the bookmark list
2. You will stand out more as your site has a destinctive Icon next to the URL and appearing at the top of the browser
3. Not many people use them yet will stand out even further
4. You can add weight to your brand by creating a miniture version of your brand image
5. You can create a favicon that generates trust like a padlock, stars etc.

There are loads of websites that have thousands of icons you can download for free and then upload to one of the favicon creator websites above.

Here is an example of one:

http://www.iconarchive.com/

If you need others just search on “icon” in your favourite search engine.

The beauty about adding favicons is the more browsers that allow favicons to show, the greater the likely increase you will have to your conversion rate.

Time to get creative.

I took the idea from Eban Pagan (credit where credit is due) and from a survey approach we already use daily.

There are a few marketers using a similar approach to what I am going to discuss, but I have added a spin that I believe will make a significant difference.

Essentially the system is an optin page form based on a survey/ questionnaire.

A visitor comes to the survey page where they are asked various multiple-choice questions based on their interest and their needs and then these questions are answered automatically.  The principle being that you have engaged the individual and they are therefore more likely to sign up for your offer.

I have seen this type of system used by a number of marketers, but I think they are missing a huge opportunity by giving the responses immediately and not adding value to those responses.

What a system like this really needs to do is make the visitor feel they are getting something of high value rather than just a ‘boiler plate’ automated report based on the choices they chose in a survey.  What would be more valuable is a report that is tailored to for them individually, which looks like it took time and effort to produce.

Making the prospect feel they are getting excellent value means they should be more inclined to reciprocate.

So, how do you increase the value of the survey you give to the visitor, but still make sure there is no added workload for you and the results can be delivered automatically?  Well, to my mind there are three things you can do, and these are what I have had built into this new system.

1. Make it clear that the report will take time to compile and be sent to them – and don’t mention the report is automated.  As people associate time as an important and valuable “asset”, if you are seen to invest time in the prospect then this will add value to any results you give them.

2. Make the report more valuable, by making it a downloadable report rather then just an email or a web page.  There is usually a perceived value in being sent a well-formatted downloadable report, which looks like it took some time and effort to create.

3. Personalize the report by using the persons name in the report (and of course the specific answers they chose)

The system that my programer has just finished, and I will be testing over the coming weeks (then posting the script on PPL) allows you to add the above three elements to this marketing approach, in conjunction with your favourite autoresponder service.

Here is how it works.

a. The visitor comes to your site and completes the survey/ questionnaire – Remember to only send traffic to this type of page if they are likely to be interested in taking a survey, so think about what someone searching on a keyword is likely to want to find.

b. They are then told they need to signup to receive the completed report and that it will take around 24 hours to complete the analysis and deliver it to them.

c. When they signup to your autoresponder the answers they chose in the survey are encoded into the optin form and automatically added to the prospects personal information in the autoresponder records (this means they can be retrieved using the custom tokens in the autoresponder system)

d. As soon as they join your list they will receive a confirmation email thanking them for joining the list and telling them that the analysis of the survey/ questionnaire should be completed within the next 24 hours or so.

e. In the next email, to be sent out the next day, you simply include a link back to the survey system, which will include the encoded answers the customer gave when they completed the survey.  The link will also be appended with the prospects name.

f. This link will go to a specific page which generate the PDF report and includes the answers the customer gave and your analysis of these multiple choice questions (which of course are pre-loaded in the system at outset).  The report will also include the prospects name wherever you put the appropriate token in the PDF report template.

g. The visitor can then download the report, which will include the results and also links to relevant products or services that you recommend.  This approach will of course allow you to add multiple different links to different products based on the answers the prospect gives you in the multiple-choice question.

The beauty of this system is that the visitor will feel they are getting a personal and valuable report and also that you have taken the time to construct that report for them.  Which will of course instil a stronger urge to reciprocate and buy your product.  For you the beauty is you can target products specific answers they give you in the survey.  This gives you the best chance of getting the sale as you are satisfying the prospects exact needs.

I start testing this system tomorrow and I will post with how the system progresses shortly.