Do you know someone that makes twice as much money as you do?

Do you think they are twice as smart as you?

They are only a fraction of a bit better then you at critical things in your business.

Small changes can have big impact on the amount of money you are making. If you want to build a 7 figure business it’s the small changes that will help you do it.

The first thing we need to understand is that nothing moves without a sale.

There are a ton of things you can do with your business but if you are not selling products then nothing else matters.
Nothing moves without a sale.

The sales process is the profit nervous system of your business.

You do not want to drop the ball with your sales process.

You have to be able to look at and monitor the numbers in order to increase productivity.

As I get my business ready for 2010 this is one of the biggest changes I’ll be implementing.

I want to do 7 figures next year and I know that means being able to look at the data and see where and what needs to be improved to increase the productivity of my business.

It’s all about setting up a system that will allow me to;

1. Set My Sales Goals
2. Map the Sales Process
3. Set Objective Key Value Points
4. Measure Key Value Points
5. Identify Critical Vulnerabilities
6. Select My Focus Effort Points
7. Decide On & Activate My Main Focus Point

At the moment my sales system is nothing more than giving someone a prices and hanging up the phone.

Now…How Sad is that?

I’ve been playing around with Nizex.com and I’ve seen how it all needs to work. Nizex.com isn’t cheap but by signing up for their 30 day free trial it gives me an opportunity to fix my problems and have my business making the extra money before the first months bill comes.

Now, I am not an affiliate for Nizex.com and they are not paying me to push their product, it just happens to be the best product I’ve seen. And I’ve looked at a good number of them.

Building a website is the art and science of persuasion, in which a site visitor is convinced to take a form of action that benefits the website owner, by making a purchase, offering a donation, or committing to a future action.

By planning, designing, and optimizing our websites to persuade, we build an effect sales tool.

A conversion-optimized website is like a successful non-commission and salary-free digital salesperson who works for us 24/7, 365 days a year, qualifying leads, building reports, and even closing sales.

A conversion optimized website as well as a high-performing, high traffic website is essential for online success.

Knowing things like a blue “Buy Now Button” converts better then a red “Buy Now Button” can be the difference between loosing and making money online.

A good web design is one that uses proven persuasive techniques to encourage site visitors to act now. They use things like, polished site designs, compelling copy, unique selling proposition (USP), and irresistible calls to action that make a big difference at the end of the day.

With increased sales, more leads, and higher engagement, we have more money to put towards driving more traffic to our site.

I guess a better name would have been the simple website.

I’ve been building websites for the last 8 years and I have to say that the silicone wristband industry has pushed my web designing skills to a whole new level.
Thanks to people like Donny (the owner of wristbands with a message); I’ve been blessed to have the chance to work for someone that has pushed me beyond what should have been my own skill level.

I’ve had the privilege of working with someone that is as dedicated to his business as I am to mine.
The arguments and debates between us have caused me to test and retest my own theories from the length of the copy to the color of the buttons.

And my conclusion is that a clean design with very little copy converts better than long copy or a busy website design. And it’s the reason that I have redesigned my own silicone wristband website.

We are still testing but at this time it appears we are on the right track and a clean website design with very little content is the way to go.

Have you ever thought about having more than one website?

This question has come up many times on different forums, however most forum members seem to miss the value of having multiple campaign websites that represents the same company.

If you own a business that is selling a lot of different types of products, having a separate website represent each product has a lot of benefits.
A couple questions you should ask yourself is;

Does each product you sale flow into the next product, other words, would we need the first product before buying the second product?

Are all the audiences that would be purchasing the product or service the exact same?

Could your audience be approached differently or does the same tactics work with anyone that might be interested in your product?

Of course there are a lot of other circumstances like new product launches, time sensitive marketing campaigns, and limited availability offers that could affect the way you want to market a particular product.

Mini campaign websites are great for testing alternative marketing techniques as well as an effective method of enhancing your marketing efforts, allowing you to market to different audiences you would have never otherwise been able to reach, using your current traditional marketing approaches.

It is human nature to want to get your money’s worth, but when it comes to website marking this can be counterproductive. Wanting to cram everything you offer into one website makes it imposable to aim that website at all the different types of people that might be searching for your product.

A website crammed full of every product you offer forces potential customers to have to click through your website to find the product they are looking for. And with every click of the mouse you lose one more potential client.

Forcing website visitors to shift through different products and material only creates frustration and irritation.

A website focused on one product or one campaign is easier to track your marketing efforts as well as to target the website towards the crowd you are trying to market it to. It also allows us to experiment with nontraditional campaigns and sales approaches.

It is common that once we find a campaign that works, we stick with it, however by having several different websites were able and even forced to try different approaches.

A campaign or Brand specific website is a great alternative marketing tool.

Every day millions and millions of people head to Google and do searches in hopes of filling a need or a desire. Our desire is to show up when they are doing those searchers. However, unless we have a website that will convert the traffic, it does us no good.

There are a lot of little things that can make a big difference in a website design, for example;

Placing testimonials on the right-hand side alongside of the order form has been shown to increase conversion rates.

Using Arial 12 point will increase readability and help in conversion.

Using 20 point Tahoma font for headers and adding quotation marks around the header has been shown to increase conversion.

Using negative headlines will increase conversion.

Using a blue buy now button converts better than a red buy now button.

These are all small changes that can make a big difference when it comes to designing a website.

Red is a conflicting color.

It is the color of passion and love as well as anger and hate. To make it worst it’s also a color that is hard on the eyes. If you stare at a red background for moment and look away from the red background and stare at a white wall your eyes will take a moment to refocus and readjust.

However blue is a color that builds trust. A light blue background converts better than just about any other color you can come up with other than light grey.

When trying to build the perfect site that will convert the best there are a lot of things we need to look at.

According to Grok the top ten best converting sites online are;

1. Proflowers.com – 14.1%

2. Coldwater Creek – 13.3%

3. FTD.com – 13.0%

4. QVC – 12.8%

5. Office Depot – 12.4%

6. eBay – 11.5%

7. Lands’ End – 11.5%

8. Tickets.com – 11.2%

9. 1800flowers.com – 10.0%

10. Amazon – 9.6%

We also need to keep in mind that when dealing with companies that are able to spend millions on off and online advertising, conversion will always be higher because of brand recognition.

Keeping that in mind let’s take a look at some of the things these sites have in common.

I will start with proflowers.com

We have a small header with the logo and the phone number on the left hand side. Most sites have the phone number on the right hand side so I thought that was a bit different then what I normally see.

We have the need it now banner in the header. It lets people know that we can get your order out today if this is a last minute decision. Under that is the navigation and under that is a banner for Birthdays. I’d think that when there are no special holidays that would be their biggest seller.

Too the right we have a call to action that is changing, showing different items for sale. Under the main banner we have two more call to actions and another banner showing when the next special holiday will be.

It’s hard to believe that PayPal would increase conversion but we have no credit card logos on the page yet we do have a PayPal logo.

Now onto http://www.coldwatercreek.com/

We have the logo in the middle of the header with no contact information on the page, other than a link for live help and another for customer service.

Clicking on customer service we can find the email address and contact number.

It’s interesting that they give the email address and not a contact form.

The layout is pretty much the same.

Header with logo, menu under that and banners with a call to action under that. Little to no text on the page.

http://www.ftd.com/

Logo in the top left of the header, phone number under the logo, navigation main banner on the right instead of the left like it was on proflowers and the call to action in the banner.

The colors and look of the sites may change but the layout for the top three conversion sites all have about the same layout.

And http://www.qvc.com/ and http://www.officedepot.com/ are the same way.

A small area in the top for the logo, navigation under that, large banner under that with a call to action in the banner and a couple smaller banners under those with a call to action as well. You can take what you want from this but it would appear to me that a pretty picture is better than words.