David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

I don't know about you but when I go shopping, I look around for the cheapest option. I hate paying pull price and will use discount vouchers or take advantage of sales if it means what I am looking for can be sourced cheaper.

The majority of my visitors are looking for the same thing.

They are looking to find a satellite navigation system for the least amount of cash. They land on my site, find a system and look for the cheapest price. They then go to the cheapest retailer and place an order.

Nice theory but it is not like this is practise.
 
Yes, people come to my site looking for a price comparison or specifications comparison (which I've yet to complete incidentally). They do their search but there is something that is holding them back.

At the moment, an average basket is around £200 which says to me that my visitors are looking for cheap satellite navigation systems. This also suggests I may be wasting my time listing the expensive range of satellite navigation systems. However, one sale of the one of the most expensive system today would potentially net me around £50 - equivalent to selling around 20 of the cheaper models.

My conversion today is 0.29% and my stats package estimates my current annual traffic to be around 20,000 visitors. This means that statistically, only 58 people will make a purchase. To make the site 'liveable' (i.e. to make a living from this site alone), I need to generate a minimum of £20,000 per annum. Based on current earnings, this is 40 times more than current levels.

Therefore, I need to make 2320 sales per annum which is a conversion on current traffic of 11.6%

---OR----

I need to increase traffic to 800,000 and keep the current conversion rate.

---OR----

I need to increase traffic to 232,000 and the conversion rate to 1% (the original target percentage)

One reassuring factor is that one of my other sites has been running for 2 years and has only recently hit the 20,000 visitors per annum level. Compare Sat Nav has been running for one month.

So how do we increase traffic and the conversion rate?

In terms of the conversion rate, an email newsletter would be perfect. Perhaps my visitors do not have a lot of time to search today. Perhaps they have found the cheapest price but fail to click. Then in a week, they go direct to the merchant. Technically, I have made a conversion but it is not tracked and hence no money.

A newsletter can also direct visitors to an area of the site they may not have come across. For example, they may have not considered a DVD player that integrates a sat nav system, MP3 player and car stereo. They may just do one search and walk away.

The newsletter I have in mind is an autoresponder. The visitor signs up for the newsletter then the auto responder takes care of sending out pre-written emails. Mine can be configured for up to a year of emails, though when you write newsletters, you quickly run out of good ideas!

One idea I have used in the past is hosting the newsletter in a hidden area of my site. This means that the search engines and my visitors do not know it is there but my newsletter readers do. It is not password protected so it is publicly viewable, just not linked to.

Why do this? Well the newsletter can have Google AdSense included in them. Infact, in the content management system I use, I have to option to apply a new template to any page I want, so I can set the newsletter pages up with no links except to Compare Sat Nav.

Here's a very important Google AdSense tip you should consider if you use the ads:

Visitors tend to skim over articles. Some may read every word, some look for keywords and phrases. Take this "How to be creative" article for example. Do you read every word or skim it? I skimmed it and focussed on the images.

This means that your message may not be heard if your page is surrounded by distractions such as hyperlinks to other areas of your site.

HOWEVER - if the only hyperlinks are relevant, well placed Google AdSense ads, the chances are your reader will click on them. Place them correctly - you need one at the top (in case your visitors does not want to read your newsletter), one in the middle (in case they get bored half way through) and one at the bottom. The bottom ad is essential. Readers need an action link - they have read the article but what do they do now? If they are presented with Google AdSense ads, they may well click on those.

To summarise, the newsletter can bring back visitors (thus maximising the potential revenue aspect) and can generate it's own stream of revenue.

There are some other aspects I would like to add to the newsletter as well as the site as a whole.

Firstly, I have seen a "Take a Break" box on a couple of sites whereby the visitor can enter their email address and be emailed a link to the current page. So, for example, there is a knock on the door so the visitor can be emailed a link to the page they were last on.

Yes, there are social bookmarking links on every page but I doubt they are being used. I have an RSS feed and that seems to have a steady, but very low, subscriber count. On the other hand, the visitor could just add the page they are on to their bookmarks.

The benefit of adding a box to email them a hyperlink is that people are more likely to respond to an URL in their email than one in their bookmarks. A bookmarked URL can be forgotten about. An email that has just arrived is more likely to be looked at.

Another feature I would like to add is the common "Tell a Friend" box. This would help with viral marketing. Imagine the ease of typing in your friends email address into a box and clicking send as opposed to starting your email client, creating an email, typing the message, copying and pasting a link and sending it. The latter is is much easier and more simplistic.