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Better Website Conversion Tips – Part 5

Better Conversion Tip #5 – Create Redirect Links

If you’re promoting a product on your site, and your site is a database-driven shopping cart e-commerce system, then you probably have links like the following for each product page:

http://www.mysite.com/store/products.php?id=28475&desc=product%20description%20here&cat=980&refer=477840

Often times when sending a link out like that in an email, it gets chopped up. Then when the reader clicks on the link, they get a page not found error. Not a good thing to happen!

Or, if you have the link in an article or ezine, you could face similar problems.

Plus the link is just not intuitive enough.

It would be much, much better to have a link like this:

http://www.mysite.com/productname

Well, you can have this when you use server-side redirects.

Here’s how it works (if your site uses PHP):

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Better Website Conversion Tips – Part 4

Better Conversion Tip #4 – Add Captions to All Your Photos

When people read editorials and articles, they tend to read the captions under the photos.

The same will happen in your sales letter. So each and every photo should have a caption under it.

If it’s a picture of your product, the caption can be an additional call to action (e.g. “Get Yours Today!”).

If it’s a photo of a person, add a relevant caption, but every caption should provide some call to action.

Remember, if it doesn’t advance the sale, get rid of it or replace it with something that does.

Caption Example:

Steak: Food For Kings

Better Caption Example:

Cook Juicy Steaks Like This Every Month...Have Them Delivered Right To Your Doorstep

One further refinement is to make the caption a clickable link that takes the visitor right to your order page.

Oops! How NOT To Use Celebs Like Naomi Campbell In Your Marketing

There are a couple of ways you can use celebrities and other recognised figures in your marketing without having to pay them.

Firstly, if you’ve learned something from them, or they’ve inspired you in some way, or there is some lesson that you can draw from their actions (could be positive or negative…think Charlie Sheen of late)…

…then it’s OK to mention that. And the benefit to you is that when you mention their name, you’re more likely to attract attention.

Example, something like…

“What I Learned About Marketing From Barack Obama.”

Secondly, if a celebrity or authority figure is on record as saying something related to your product or service that can be interpreted as being supportive of that product or service in general, then again you can use that.  You need to be careful with this…you can’t say they endorse your specific product or service (unless they actually do, of course).

Now, I see that chocolate maker Cadbury has landed themselves in hot water over an ad where they make reference to celebrity and fashion model Naomi Campbell…

“Cadbury Apologises Over Naomi Campbell Advert”.

The offending line was…

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Better Website Conversion Tips – Part 2 and Part 3

Here are the next 2 tips in my “Better Website Conversion Tips” series…

Better Conversion Tip #2 – Periodically Test Your Site

This might sound obvious, but stuff happens with websites.  Hosting companies can have problems, your site can get hacked (happened to me with this site)…there are many reasons why your site might be down.

And if the site is down, then you won’t be taking too many orders.

So take a look at your site on a regular basis to check everything is OK or have a test service in place to do it for you.

Next…

Better Conversion Tip #3 – Watch Your Outbound Links

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