Smoking Linux » Marketing

Diminishing Conversion Rates

admin — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:06:25 +0000

I find internet marketing to be one of the most fascinating subjects and I can always discover new things I never thought of. I once had a friend of mine from Israel point out a terrific anecdote which if taken to heart can be much more than an anecdote and make you quite a lot of money. He focused his point on the ever small conversion rates most websites tend to suffer from. At the time he was working for an online diamond retailer which had a 0.1% conversion rate. This is quite small even compared to the low 2% average. But it was his way of looking at it that really got me. Basically 0.1% means you are selling to just 1 out of 1,000 people visiting your site. One purchase, 999 lost sales. Each of the 999 may have a different reason for not purchasing but if you can focus on just one reason that gets one out of 1,000 people to not buy from your site and improve it – you doubled your sales.
Another interesting point about how to deal with the grossly low conversion rates recently appeared in Danny Demichele’s internet marketing consulting blog. If you are not familiar with Danny Demichele, you are probably not a big SEM player as he is a name that has been in the biz for over a decade and has been providing Internet Marketing Consultant Services since day one. In his blog, Danny discusses the point of focusing on a lead rather than a sale (actual transaction). As it turns out, by gathering information for a lead you can tap up to four times more visitors who would otherwise abandon the sale. You can read more of Danny’s posts and learn about his services as an Internet Marketing Consultant at dannydemichele.com.

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What’s Your Score?

admin — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:05:25 +0000

Yikes! I just got my scorecard and to be honest, I discovered I’m not doing so well (to say the least). I actually only scored a two out of ten. You may be wondering just what scorecard I am referring to. Well don’t worry, I’m long out of school already. Actually, I’m referring to my score on the domain name scorecard which is meant to evaluate the brand effectiveness of one’s domain name provided by Network Solutions. Anyone can get a scorecard for their domain at no cost and getting scored involves just answering 3 short questions online.
As I mentioned smokinglinux.com didn’t score too well, especially in terms of brand protection. But I’m using this information to improve and actually believe the scorecard helps with some very important constructive criticism. One of the most important steps Network Solutions recommends is registering your domain name with alternate extensions to prevent others from doing so and hording your brand. For example I would go about and register smokinglinux.net, smokinglinux.org etc. In terms of the descriptiveness of my domain I actually scored close to average since I have one descriptive word in my domain (linux). If you are website owners I recommend you find out your domain name score at http://www.networksolutions.com/domain-scorecard/index.jsp.

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Brandable Domain Names

admin — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:37:38 +0000

As it turns out, one of the biggest problems entrepreneurs have when setting up a startup is not developing their technology or product – it’s actually coming up with a name for their company. The problem isn’t lack of creativity but rather finding a brandable name that still has and available .com domain. That’s where BrandBucket: Brandable Domain Name Experts come in. They offer a wide range of brandable domain names for sale at very reasonable prices. Typical domains sell for a few thousand dollars and can be located by category or by domain attributes.

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Gold Lasso’s Golden Solution

admin — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:37:47 +0000

With new reports indicating pay per click prices remain strong despite the current economic uncertainty, email marketing is getting a boost as the ultimate low cost\high return form of online marketing. But as any form of marketing, in order for it to succeed it needs to be handled properly and that can often mean high cost software solutions. The key is finding the right email marketing software that provides a high end solution at a reasonable cost. A good option to look into is eLoop 4, the latest system from Gold Lasso which offers features that easily rival those of the leading programs at a considerably lower price point. This is especially good for middle sized clients who send less than 3 million emails per month.

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