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Dear Friend.

I sent an email message to my lists about an hour ago announcing that you can now sign up to beta test the Segmetex system.

Just in case there are some following the blog, but not on one of my email lists, I thought I’d post the email message here as well:

=========================================

Today is the day.  You can now sign up to be a Segmentex beta tester.

In a moment I’ll give you a link to the home page.

From there, you’ll take a quick 4 question survey.

And then you’ll arrive at a page that tells a little more about Segmentex (including a 16 minute video).

At the bottom of that page you can choose your username and password, and then make payment on the next page.

Once you make payment, I’ll give you some beta tester instructions, and then you can log into your account, start watching the quickstart videos, and begin building a Segmentex system for one of your traffic streams.

I still have to finish the 4th video, but the first three are there, and they’ll definitely get you started.

Thanks again for your participation.

Here’s the link:

http://www.segmentex.com/index.php

Jim

Dear Friend,

I keep wanting to add things before opening Segmentex, but I have to cut it off sometime and let you and other beta testers put the system to use.

So I’ve nailed down a date.  And the date is: Thursday, November 6th (2 days from now).

Here’s what to expect:

I’ll send you an email message about 9:30am Pacific Standard Time (UTC -8). It will contain a link to the main page.  You’ll take a short survey, and will land on a page that contains some more information about SEGMENTEX. 

You’ll see three things on that page:

1. what the system does (with a short demo video)
2. some of the ways it helps you make more money,
3. how to sign up as a beta tester.

I am looking for about 50 beta testers.  I just put SEGMENTEX on a dedicated server with Rackspace, and it’s running $475/month to start.  So we’re starting out with a very reliable setup, but it’s definitely a chunk of cash.  50 testers at $10/month will cover the hosting perfectly.  

So at this point it’s kind of like our own little co-op

Now I don’t want everyone tripping over themselves at 9:30 to get in, so it will not simply be first-come-first-served. 

That’s probably not the way to get the very best beta testers (just the fastest).

Registration will remain open all day (until midnight Pacific Standard Time).

If we get more than 50, that will be fine, too.

The beta price is $10/month.  The price for the rest of the world will be $97/month.

Thank you again for your interest.  And I look forward to seeing the results many of you will get with the system.

I’ve had great results with my test niche, and I’m pretty sure that many (most?) of you can do more with it than I’ve done in my quick test.

So look for an email message from me on Thursday, November 6th.  And I’ll post a link here on the blog as well.

Until then, best wishes.

Sincerely,

Jim

Dear Friend,

The new marketing system has a name.

It’s the SEGMENTEX system.

Over the last couple months it’s had several names — sales scripter, helper box, sales guppy (don’t ask), site guppy (again . . . ), site scripter, market saturator, and there might be another I’m forgetting.

I liked some things about each name, but as the focus of the product developed, it became clear that none of those names would capture the essence of the system.

The biggest benefit the system provides is that it allows you to ”segment” your traffic.  So I played with many pseudo-words that had the word “segment” in it.  “segmento”, “segmentum”, etc. 

Finally, Ray Edwards, a local friend, who also happens to be a world-class copywriter, suggested “SEGMENTEX”. 

I liked it instantly. It said all the right things.

So that’s the name.

You will soon be able to join

SEGMENTEX as a beta tester, . . .

and start applying the SEGMENTEX system to your niche.

Before discussing the schedule, I want to preview the system a bit.

That way you can think about how you can use the product to segment your own niche.  Here’s a tip:  Make a list of every quality product in your niche that you could offer to your visitors — either products you own, or products you could sell as an affiliate  — and think a little more broadly than you might ordinarily think.

What follows is one way to use SEGMENTEX. The Segmentex software is extremely flexible, so I won’t be surprised if people eventually come up with even better ways to use it, but this method is very powerful.

If you read each step slowly, and imagine the process from a visitor’s point of view, I’m sure you’ll see all kinds of possibilities:

1. You send traffic to your landing page
2. You offer your visitors a chance to take an assessment that will give them some idea about what they know about the topic at hand, or how they’re doing with the topic at hand.
3. At the beginning of the quiz, you will ask them some segmenting questions. The visitor thinks these questions are part of the quiz.
4. How the visitor answers the segmenting questions determines which quiz they get, which offer they will be presented with, and which autoresponder list they will opt in to.
5. Then they take the quiz for their segment.  (different segments get different quizes) The segmenting questions lead seamlessly into the quiz questions, so the visitor doesn’t notice a thing.  All they know is that they’re taking a quiz.
6. Then they are taken to the opt-in form for their segment (different segments opt-in to different lists). You offer to give them a question-by-question discussion of their answers to the assessment in exchange for their email address.
7. After opting in, the thankyou page tells them to confirm to receive their assessment results, and then presents them with the offer for their segment (different segments get different initial offers).
8. After confirming their subscription, they are shown the results for the quiz they took, and will again be shown the primary offer for their segment.
9. The autoresponder series is tailored for the specific segment, but, if the segments are closely related, you can eventually present all of the offers to each list, and this can increase the number of dollars per customer.

Now ask yourself this question:

What could you do

with this system?

I’m not a niche marketer by trade.  I’m a software developer.  I just started building out one niche using the Segmentex system.  I didn’t use any fancy keyword research, but just kind of took the first traffic stream I could find that gave me a few hundred visitors per day.

Initially I spent about $1.00 to make $0.15.  Terrible.  (I guess there was a reason not very many people were bidding on those terms!)  

But after using the new system, I now spend $1.00 and make $1.30 back.  Also, I’ve only broken out 5 segments. There’s lots of room to improve it further.

And it’s not the final result that should get your attention, but the improvement.  By adding the quiz/assessment, and by segmenting the traffic, (and, a little bit by tweaking my Adwords ads), I improved the visitor value by a factor of 8.  An 8-fold improvement from someone who didn’t do any keyword research, and doesn’t really know how to play the niche marketing game.

Again:

What could you do with this system?

. . .

The doors should open for Beta Testing sometime during the first week of November (the week after next) – though the exact date is yet to be determined.

I’m looking for about 50 Beta Testers.  It looks like there might be a lot more interest than that, so I’ll work on creating a fair process for determining eligibility.

The service will probably cost $97/month (though it’s not final yet), and Beta testers will lock in for $10/month for life (that has been determined.  I’ll discuss how that figure was arrived at in the next message). 

I’m completing more of the product than I had originally planned before opening the beta testing phase.

At some point it dawned on me that it would be much easier for beta testers to get started if I already had the instructional videos ready.

That will also give you a chance to provide me with feedback about the videos, in addition to the system and the software.

So that’s what I’m working on this week. 

And . . .

 I’ll be working hard to get the

instructional videos done quickly. 

My daugter will make sure of it. 

Part of the time I’ll be making the videos, I’ll also be “watching” my kids.

The neat thing about owning an online business is that I will probably not be one of those dads who gets to the end of his life and regrets having not spent more time with his kids.  I work from home (and Starbucks), and my schedule is very flexible.

My wife also has an active professional life, and needs to be away from the house from time to time.  So  that gives me many opportunities to spend time with my children. 

Now I’ll confess that sometimes I try to sneak in some work while I’m “watching” them.  (Yes, I also play with them, nag them about their homework, and have deep philosophical conversations with them. I feed them once in a while, too )

My kids are 6 and 9 now — old enough that they can find things to do around the house to entertain themselves. 

And that gives me a chance to get a little work done in between taking time out to play foosball, or make grilled cheese sandwiches.

But while I’m making the videos, the rule is:

“Find something QUIET to do

while daddy records his videos.”

My daughter (she’s the 6 year old) was not born to do things quietly. 

So I’m working as fast as I can

Stay tuned.  In about a week, I will post another message.  In that message, I will give you the exact date to sign up for beta testing, and discuss the terms and conditions.

I’m excited.  This is a new way to work the niche marketing game.  I know I’ve only scratched the surface of what it can do.  And I’m eager to discover all the great ways you and all the other beta testers find to put it to use.

Sincerely,

Jim

(This Changes Everything, Part 2 of 4)

Dear Friend,

In my last post, I told you about a new marketing system I’ve been developing.

For most internet marketers, if you put the new system to work, you will get more dollars from each visitor than you’re currently getting, and probably more dollars per visitor than any competitor in your niche selling similar dollar value items.

And that’s just on the front end.  You’ll also naturally develop your back end as you go.

And it’s relatively easy to use — for what it does.

And the software that facilitates the system is much more platform-independent than the Split Test Accelerator.

I’m not quite ready to take beta testers yet, but I’m getting close.

In this post, I want to share a little bit about how the new system came to be.

Actually, . . .

I kind of stumbled upon it by accident.

I started out developing an interactive chat agent.  But it evolved into something else.

Have you seen Mysteria (the “Happy Medium”)?  She’s my interactive opt-in form companion? She sits in a box beside the opt-form, and interacts with visitors to help them understand the offer better.  She can branch off into different lines of conversation, and she’s kind of fun.

Having her on the page has increased opt-ins by about 20%.

However, Mysteria is NOT the new system. In fact, she’s just a toy compared to the new system. But the new system kind of grew out of her.

It also grew out of some conversations I had with some local internet marketing friends (Ray Edwards, Kirt Christensen, Frank Sousa, Mike Morgan, Darrel and Genhi Hawes, Becky Dielman, and Mari Smith when she visited our lunch group one day).

And, finally, it grew out of 7 insights I’ve had over the last few years.

In the remainder of this post, I want to share those 7 insights with you.  Some will probably be familiar to you already, and some might have immediate practical application for you.

Then, in the next post, I’ll show you how all the insights came together to produce the new system. so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Insight #1:

You can get more money, from the same traffic, if you can convert more visitors into customers.

You probably already know this.  If you’re reading this blog post, chances are you are interested in split testing, and already know that higher conversion rates lead to more money.

But it’s still an insight.

It also provides an opportunity to introduce a little diagram that we’ll build on as we go. These are the same diagrams I used to explain the system recently to some of my internet marketing friends in the Spokane area. 

(They’re not the exact same napkins, but it’s basically the same presentation.)

visitor value is the product of conversion rate and customer value

The block in the diagram represents the money you currently get from a traffic stream.  The up and down axis represents the number of customers per visitor (your conversion rate).  And the left right axis represents the dollars per customer.  The product of the two values (or the area) is the number of dollars you get per visitor.

If you increase your conversion rate, it’s like stretching the block along the up/down axis.

You can increase visitor value by increasing your conversion rate.

That creates a greater area (now extended by the dotted lines).  And that means more money.

Like I said, that should feel familiar.  So let’s move on to insight #2 . . .

Insight #2:

The offer is the most important thing to test.

I’ve been teaching the value of split testing for a few years now.  And I’ve suggested that there are many things you can try to change on your landing pages in order to improve your conversion rates.

Headlines are good things to test.  So are images, bonuses, testimonials, guarantees, P.S. statements, and so on.

But FAR AND AWAY the best thing to test is the offer.  Now most of my readers have probably heard this in the past, but I’m going to guess that most readers don’t test their offers much.  In fact, I’ll bet many readers aren’t really sure what it means to test an offer.

Mike Filsaime recently summed up Gary Halbert’s thinking on this topic.  Halbert believed that the offer was the most important thing to test, and he said that there were four components to the offer:

1. What they get
2. How they get it
3. What they pay
4. How they pay for it.

I’ve found that, even among these 4 aspects, there is one aspect of the offer that is far and away the best to test.

Most marketers spend some time testing “how they get it”, “what they pay (price)”, and “how they pay for it”.  And that’s great.

But the most important thing to test is “what they get”.

Here’s an example:

If you’re getting traffic from dog lovers, and you’re selling a “poodle grooming” guide, you might make a few sales, but you’ll probably struggle.

Now you can probably increase your visitor value by testing the price, delivery method, and payment methods.  And you should test these things (along with headlines, and other things).

But you know what would probably make much more difference?  Testing an entirely different product.  For instance, maybe a general dog training guide would yield many more dollars per visitor from your traffic stream.

Now, mind you, if you’re paying for traffic by keyword, you should probably look for more targeted keywords, but suppose you get more general traffic for free.  You’re not going to turn that traffic off.  Instead, you should test your offer.

But even with narrowly targeted keywords it can be extremely profitable to test your offer.

Now, here’s a question  . . .

why don’t we test

“what they get”

more often?

The number one reason is because we have only one product.  And we are reticent to try offering something new.

Perhaps we’re emotionally attached to our product — even to the point that we wouldn’t think of offering an affiliate product in its place — even if the affiliate product yields a higher visitor value.

Perhaps we think that an alternative offer should also be something we created, and that it takes too long to create something new just for a “test”.  Or we have “sunk cost” thinking.  We already went to the trouble of writing the sales page, and creating the product.  So, by golly, we’re going to make THIS offer work.

But the bottom line is, if we want the best chance for increasing our visitor value, we’re going to have to test our offers. And if we’re going to test our offers, we’re going to have to spend some time bringing new offers into our stable.

Now there’s good news.

You can offer new things

without developing new products.

Here are some things that would count as a new offer:

• Your old product presented in a new way, to appeal to a new market segment.
• An affiliate product for which you receive a commission.
• A new product you create after surveying your traffic to have some confidence that it really will increase your visitor value.

According to this insight, then, the question we should ask ourselves is: “Is there something else I could offer my visitors that they would respond to better?”

In the next post I’ll discuss how the new system helps you get the right offer in front of the right visitors.

Insight #3:

A Taguchi question leads to a TRIZ contradiction.

Alright, so the label for this insight sounds a little esoteric.  So let me break it down.  It’s actually pretty simple (yet profound).

The Taguchi question is something I shared in the “10 Steps” course.  The TRIZ contradiction should be new.

(NOTE: The new system does NOT require the use of the Taguchi method, or of TRIZ — though they can complement the system, of course. So just plow through if you’re not familiar with Taguchi or TRIZ.)

Genichi Taguchi wasn’t the first to use orthogonal arrays to speed up experiments.  But he was the first to use the signal/noise ratio the way he did.  And it turns out that there are three different ways to calculate the signal/noise ratio, depending on the nature of your goal.

There are three types of goals.  “Smaller is better” ( perhaps you’re aiming to eliminate an effect completely), “Bigger is better” (perhaps the upper bound is unlimited, and you want to maximize some value), and “Target is best”  (you want a specific value, and don’t want to miss it on the upside or downside).

So the question arises:  What kind of goal do we have when we try to improve visitor value on our landing pages?

One thing is clear, it’s not “Target is best”. We don’t say “I’m aiming at a 2% conversion rate, no more, no less”.

So it’s either a maximizing or minimizing problem. But which one?

Actually it can be either one.  It depends on how you look at it.  And both ways of looking at the problem can be very useful.

You can frame it as a problem of maximizing the number who take the offer.

Or you can frame it as a problem of minimizing the number who leave without buying.

And it’s funny. It’s really the same question — logically. But the way you frame it affects your focus, and causes you to come up with different ideas.

When you see it as a maximizing problem, you come up with things you can add to your page to make your visitors want to buy.

And when you see it as a minimizing problem, you try to figure out what’s driving them away, you’re just trying to keep them from going away empty handed.

Now I think the maximizing mindset is the more natural one.  We naturally see this as a maximizing problem.  but I’ve found the minimizing mindset to be perhaps even more fruitful.  It gives me a lot of my best ideas.

The mindset determines the question you ask yourself when you look at your page and figure out how to improve it.  And here’s the question you wind up with when using the minimizing mindset:

How can I change something on the page to keep people from leaving without ordering?

And if we take a clue from the last insight, an even more focused question is this:

How can I change the offer to keep people from leaving without ordering?

But this question leads to a TRIZ contradiction.

Because the thing is, some people are ordering.  And if I change my offer, I might actually cause some of those people to go away without ordering.  And I don’t want that.

So I want to change the offer (for those who are leaving the current offer on the table).

But I don’t want to change the offer (for those who are currently inclined to take the offer).

In TRIZ, a theory of problem solving and innovation, this is known as a “contradiction”. I prefer to call it an “apparent contradiction” because the point is to find a creative way to solve the problem. And I’m kind of old school about contradictions.  Contradictions (true, logical contradictions) can’t be “resolved”. Apparent contradictions can be resolved.

Anyway, . . .

The point of framing the problem as an apparent contradiction is that we often get our most creative when stating the tension very starkly. So when we get it to the point where we have an apparent contradiction, we know we’re closer than ever to a solution.

So I thought about this apparent contradiction:

I want to change the offer

But I don’t want to change the offer.

And it turns out there is a very powerful resolution.  I’ll reveal more when I get the next post written.

Insight #4:

Autoresponders Allow You To Increase Your Visitor Value, Because They Allow You To Present More Offers To Your Visitors.

If you use an autoresponder, and you collect people’s email addresses, you can offer them the same thing more times, and you can offer them more things.

Both of these things increase your average visitor value. Offering the same thing more times increases the conversion rate (more customers per visitor), and offering more stuff can bring more dollars per customer.

If you don’t currently collect email addresses and send out a series of messages to your leads, you are probably leaving a lot of money on the table.

There are some niches where it’s better to just go for the immediate impulse purchase and move on.  But most of the time it’s worthwhile to collect an email address and use it.

With a list you can build a case for your product slowly — a must if it’s complicated.  Also, you can offer it multiple times, with different framings. This alone could double your conversion rate. Perhaps you catch your visitors in different moods, or different circumstances.  Or you just wear them down with repetition. 

Finally, you can offer multiple products.

And offering multiple products can increase the average number of dollars you get from each customer.

The back of napkin diagram goes like this:

You can increase visitor value by increasing the amount the average customer spends.

Again, the size of the solid block represents your current average visitor value.  And this time, we can make the block larger by stretching it along the horizontal axis.  This happens when we can sell multiple items to our visitors, so the average value we get from each customer grows.

Now, look what happens if we increase our conversion rate, AND our average customer value at the same time.

If you increase conversion rate AND $/customer, you get a multiplier effect.

We get a multiplier effect, and really start to make our profits grow.

So, that’s insight number 4.  Let’s look at insight #5 . . .

Insight #5:

People Love Quizzes That Come With Assessments

The best way (I’ve found) to get someone to opt in to a list is to offer them an assessment related to the offer, and give them a question by question walkthrough of their answers after they opt in.

Eban Pagan first got me started with this. In fact, he offered a free program called Psychic Sales Letter. I didn’t use PSL, because I had already created a custom survey script, and I modified that and used it instead. But the method works wonders if you do it right!

Eban claims that with targeted traffic (from a warm partner list with presell, I’m guessing), he achieves a 70% opt in rate using the quiz/assessment method.

And, in case you’re wondering, . . .

70% opt-in rates are not the industry norm.

Optin rates are usually much lower — especially if they come from adwords traffic instead of from JV partner lists.  Recently I used a keyword on the Google content network that was a little broad (but not too bad), and my first attempt with a normal opt-in form (no quiz/assessment) got only 5% opt in with a squeeze page.

Perhaps you can relate to numbers like that.

By the way, my free adwords spreadsheet opt-in form averages about 55% opt-in rate when it comes recommended from someone else’s list.  So it’s not that my opt-in page was particularly bad.  I’m capable of building a good squeeze page.  It’s just that the traffic stream wasn’t warmed up much, and they weren’t all that eager to sign up for what I was offering in return.

But then . . .

I put a quiz in front of the squeeze page (requiring the user to take an extra step no less) and the opt-in rate jumped to 15% immediately. Adding the assessment tripled the opt in rate.

And the way I integrated the quiz script with the assessment report, it provided one of the easiest bonuses I could have ever created.  In addition to the free bonus I offered originally, I just offered them a question-by-question walk through of their quiz results.

And I have reason to believe that offering the question-by-question walkthrough alone — without the original free report — would convert even better.  I haven’t tested that yet on this landing page, but I’ve seen a similar effect on another page.

Talk about an easy opt-in bonuse to create!

And here’s the thing . . .

The assessment tripled the optin rate — AND made them more receptive to my offer at the same time!

There is an art to writing the questions. But it comes pretty easily — with just a little effort.

If you haven’t used a quiz/assessment opt-in strategy, I highly recommend it.

And I’ll tell you the key:  VALUE-BASED CURIOSITY, RELATED TO THE OFFER.

If you design questions that create curiosity, . . . and it’s “value-based” curiosity (in other words, the visitor thinks, “Gee, if I knew the answer to that question it would really help me out”), . .  . and the questions ultimately relate to the first offer you want to present them . . . then you’ve got something very powerful.

You’ll get a higher opt-in rate, and they’ll also be more ready to buy.

Onward . . .

Insight #6:

Most Of Your Visitors Will Spend Some Money With Someone This Month — On Impulse.

Consider one stream of traffic to one of your landing pages.

For every 1000 visitors, how many buy? 10? 5? That’s pretty much par for the course for someone offering a niche info product and using Adwords to drive traffic.

If you’re lucky, extremely good, sell a different kind of product, or get your traffic from warm lists, you might do considerably better.

Either way, . . .

let me get you thinking about

how much room there is to improve.

Of those 1000 people, how many do you think will buy *something* on impulse on the internet this month?

500?

I don’t know, but 500 sounds like a good guess to me.

And how many of those will actually make more than one impulse purchase?

Many, I’m sure.

So out of 500 who will spend money on impulse this month, you’re getting 5 or 10 to buy your product.

You’ve already done the hard part. You’ve got their attention. Yet 490+ people who will buy something from someone else this month are getting away. And only 10 are buying from you.

In this “back of napkin” sketch, I’ve placed our expanding visitor value block in the context of our visitors’ impulse purchase budget for this month.

You can secure more of your visitors' monthly impulse purchase budget with the right system.

Your current share is represented by the solid block in the lower left corner (it’s probably actually smaller than what’s represented here).  And you expand your share, as before, by improving your conversion rate and customer value simultaneously.

The big box represents the total amount your visitors will spend on impulse somewhere online this month.

Look how much room there is to expand! 

Your visitors have deeper pockets than you think.  And they’re ready to spend it on the right offer.

The new system will help you keep some of those people from getting away.  And you can get bigger and bigger chunks of your visitors’ impulse purchase budget the more you build out your system.

Insight #7:

Even Very Targeted Traffic Streams Can Be Profitably Segmented

OK, this has been a long post, so let me make this brief.

I was bidding on terms like “how to flirt with women,” and was running ads in the Google content network.  The ads I ran had titles like “How To Flirt With Women”.  And the site is clearly a site for guys.  And the offer is a book that teaches men how to flirt with women.

Not bad targeting right?  I should be getting a good market to message match, right?

Well, it’s pretty good.  But after surveying the traffic I found out that, actually, 15% of the traffic was made up of women who wanted to learn how to flirt with men.

Had I not surveyed them, I would have never known.

And you should know . . .

these weren’t

“fake” women either.

After directing these women to a list geared toward women, these women opted in to the “girl” list even more readily than the guys opted into the “guy” list.  And they bought products geared toward women just as readily as the guys bought products geared toward men.

And these were women who clicked on an ad designed for men.

Maybe it doesn’t surprise you that people who aren’t in the market for your offer wind up clicking on your ad.

But you’ve probably thought there isn’t really much you can do about it, right?  Those people will weigh down your conversion rate, and cost you money, just because they didn’t read carefully before they clicked.  But that’s just the cost of business, right?

I mean, it would be nice if there were a way to intercept them after the click, and before they get presented with the wrong offer.

And it would be nice if we could figure out a better offer for them on the fly and get them to it without their even being aware of the process.

That would be nice. Catching just one mismatched segment, like the one mentioned above, would probably add 15-20% to our visitor value right away.

And who knows how many other kinds of people lurk in that traffic stream that won’t buy our primary offer, but would buy a different offer.  Could we add 15% here, 8% there, 12% over here, and 5% over there — just by taking visitors who aren’t in the market for our primary offer, and getting them to an offer they are in the market for?

If we had enough offers, and could segment in a fine enough manner, we might only wind up offering the primary offer to 10% of the original traffic stream — the 10% who are most eager to buy our primary offer.  We would get just as many sales from that 10% as we got from the whole original traffic stream, and we would redirect all the other traffic to other offers that are better matches for them.

If we could match it up right, we could possibly even get 10x the conversion rate this way. It probably wouldn’t work out quite that good in reality, but the principle seems sound.

It would be nice if we could intercept and redirect visitors on the fly like that.

It would be nice, but there’s really nothing we can do about it.  Some mismatching is just the cost of doing business, right?

Wrong.

In about a week or so, I’ll explain how all these insights fit together into a system that will allow you to get value out of as many visitors as is possible with current technologies.

Best wishes, and stay tuned.

Sincerely,

Jim

P.S., There should be more to comment on in this post. Feel free to leave replies below.

Dear Friend,

There’s a reason you haven’t heard much from me over the last 4 months or so.

Over the last 4 months I’ve been developing and testing a new marketing system, and some software to faciliate it.

The system is new. As far as I know there is nothing in the world like it.

I think it will prove to be revolutionary — maybe the most powerful niche marketing tool since pay per click advertising.

The system will help you better monetize any stream of traffic.

Simply put, it’s . . .

Same traffic. More money.

It helps you increase your conversion rates; but it’s not another form of split testing.

It’s something completely different.

And the way it looks right now, it might just change the way the online niche marketing game is played.

It will work for you if you sell your own product. And it will work for you if you are an affiliate marketer.

It works with organic traffic. And it works with PPC traffic.

In a couple days I plan to explain more. In fact, I hope to explain the gist of the system in three posts over the next two weeks or so. I’ll publish each part as I get it finished.

After that, I will open the system for beta testing for my list members only. I’ll explain the terms and conditions for beta testers as we get closer.

Stay tuned.

And I hope everything is going well for you.

Sincerely,

Jim

P.S. I haven’t given you much to comment on in this post, but feel free to float some guesses if you want, or share what you think the ideal niche marketing tool would be. Or just let me know if you’re interested in hearing more.

Dear Friend,

Have you ever heard that the “offer” is the #1 thing you should test on your page?

I think it’s true.  But what does it mean?

Mike Filsaime, quoting Gary Halbert, recently said that the offer is a matter of:

• What they get
• How they get it
• What they pay
• How they pay for it

And I think that’s an incredibly catchy way to think about all the ways you can try to change your offer.

So how do you come up with ideas for changing the parts of your offer?

Well, here’s a question that should help: “Do you know why people are currently not buying your product or service?”

List your answers to THAT question, and then ask yourself if any of the objections can be met by changing your offer in some way.

Let me use my own software as an example.

The Split Test Accelerator is a powerful piece of software that helps people increase their profits from any landing page they own.

So why wouldn’t someone purchase the Split Test Accelerator?  Why would someone go to all the trouble of reading the sales page, and close the browser without making a purchase?

I’m going to explain what I think is the #1 reason in a minute, but here are some other reasons:

1. They got there by accident. 
2. They are just getting started marketing online, and it sounds expensive considering they’re not making any money yet.
3. They are busy with other projects, and don’t think they can fit in split testing on top of everything else (though it does sound like a good idea).
4. They are happy with another solution they’re using right now, and they don’t see a need to change.
5. They don’t believe you can really test 20 factors with the same amount of traffic it takes to test one factor — or they don’t believe some other claim on the sales page.
6. Their website is on a platform that’s incompatible with STA.

Those are all good reasons to close the browser (or hit the back button) without buying. 

I can probably remove some of these reasons for some people  (perhaps with better explanations, more case studies, etc).   And I probably can’t do much to remove other reasons.

But here’s the number one reason I think people leave my sales page without buying — at least the #1 reason I can do something about — and I think it’s something I can do something about by changing the offer.

They’re worried about HASSLE.

For some people — a lot of people – software means hassle.

And if there’s too much hassle involved with a piece of software, we won’t use it, no matter how excited we are about the potential benefits.

Here’s an example:

Just the other day I downloaded a marketing video from some well-known marketers and tried to watch it.

It was in mp4 format.  I’m running Vista on my laptop, and my version of Windows Media Player didn’t have an appropriate codec for that format.

So I googled “mp4 codecs” and a few other search terms, and found a nice package of codecs I wanted to install.

Well, during installation, it told me I couldn’t complete the process, because I didn’t have administrator priveleges on my computer.

I’m the only one who uses this computer, and Vista says I have admin priveleges.  But, apparently that’s not “real” admin privileges.  To get those, you have to find and activate the “real” admin account.

There were conflicting suggestions about how to do this. I tried one method that came with nice screen shots.  But what was happening on my computer didn’t match the screenshots they provided.

I gave up.

I JUST WANTED TO WATCH A VIDEO!

Now, I’m a reasonably bright guy.  I’m fairly computer savvy. I have no doubt I COULD HAVE figured out how to play that video on my computer — if I really, really, really wanted to.

But, you know what?  I decided it just wasn’t worth the hassle.

Now, I’m not sure who’s to blame here. The marketers who used mp4 format? Microsoft for not including mp4 codecs with Windows Media Player? Microsoft for having a funky privilege scheme in vista? The creators of the codec package for not finding a way to allow installation without “real” admin privileges?  Or me for not just “knowing” from the moment I came out of the womb how to do all this in the first place?

Probably no one is to blame.  Mp4 is a valid format.  Incompatibilities like this just happen. 

My point isn’t really to say who was to blame here. But the end result was that, because the process contained so much hassle, I didn’t wind up watching the video.  And I wasted a lot of time “not watching the video”.

If a simple video can cause this much hassle, why wouldn’t someone guess that a complex Taguchi testing software program you install on your web server might be a source of hassle?

It’s a fair concern.

If it wasn’t my software, I’d be concerned.

I’d be worried that I might try to install the software, and it wouldn’t go right.  And I’d have to contact customer support.  Or, worse, I’d get busy and just set it aside, and wind up never using it.  Or I’d have to ask for a refund.  It’s nice that refunds are available, but, seriously, who ENJOYS asking for a refund?

Well here’s the good news.

I’m adding some new elements to my offer.

These are designed to put you at ease — to take away your fear of hassle.

For the first time, in June of 2008, I’m offering installation AND setup as part of a Split Test Accelerator purchase. (Now please note: you must always check the sales page for the current terms.  I reserve the right to reverse this decision at some point in the future.  I have to say this because this blog post will be here for a while, and I don’t want to have to edit it further in case I change the offer again).

I feel confident making this offer.  Here’s why.

Kirt Christensen recently asked me how many refunds I give.  And something dawned on me.  I honestly can’t think of a single customer who asked for a refund after actually USING the Split Test Accelerator.

The few refunds I’ve given have been because of incompatibilities.

So that tells me that if I can get YOU set up and actually using the Split Test Accelerator, you’ll love it.  You’ll almost certainly make back your money very quickly, and you’ll find out how much fun Accelerated Split Testing can be.

This way, if there is any hassle, I’ll be the one hassling it.

All you’ll do is order, give me some information I’ll need to do the installation, and wait for an email message from me telling you how to log in to your copy of the Split Test Accelerator and view the results that are already accruing on a test I’ve set up for you.

Of course if you still want to install the software and/or set up your first test yourself, you can.  And it will probably go as smoothly for you as it has for most of my past customers.

But if you want to eliminate almost all possibility of hassle, and get started with accelerated split testing this month, KNOWING that you’ll get at least one test set up right away, please, take me up on my new offer.

Here’s the link to the sales page

http://www.splittestaccelerator.com

And yes, I’ve been working on it.  There are many more screenshots, and some new explanations.  It’s also a 2-page letter instead of 4.  I’ll be reworking it more next month as well, but there’s some new information on there for those who have read it before.

– Jim

P.S., As always, feel free to leave comments below. 

NEW: Improve Your Sales — Not Just 10X faster, but 50X faster!

Dear Friend,

In my last post on this topic, I wen’t a little fast. This time I’ll slow down a little and work an example or two. There’s also a video of the new STA feature that allows you to “speed up Taguchi”.

You can read this post right off the screen, but it discusses a VERY IMPORTANT concept for testing, so you might do well to print it out and read it when you have some time, and can be comfortable and relaxed.

Let’s start with this fact:

When you want to improve your conversion rate (and thereby get more sales, optins, or whatever), you have to make some changes to your page.

So you test new ideas hoping to find something that will improve conversions.

Let’s say you test a new headline against your old one, and the new one is 20% better than the old one. You don’t know this at first, so you run some traffic to each version to see how each performs.

Now the question is: “How much traffic do you need in order to have a good chance of detecting a 20% improvement?”

And the answer is: “It depends on the conversion rate you start with.”

Here are some sample numbers.

Starting conversion rate: 0.5%
Ending conversion rate: 0.6%
Improvement: 20%
Visitors needed to confirm: About 60,000.

Starting conversion rate: 1.0%
Ending conversion rate: 1.2%
Improvement: 20%
Visitors needed to confirm: About 30,000.

Starting conversion rate: 10%
Ending conversion rate: 12%
Improvement: 20%
Visitors needed to confirm: About 2,700.

Starting conversion rate: 20%
Ending conversion rate: 24%
Improvement: 20%
Visitors needed to confirm: About 1,200.

Starting conversion rate: 50%
Ending conversion rate: 60%
Improvement: 20%
Visitors needed to confirm: About 250.

Starting conversion rate: 80%
Ending conversion rate: 96%
Improvement: 20%
Visitors needed to confirm: About 50.

So there’s a very important relationship between the starting conversion rate of your page, and the number of visitors it takes to reliably detect a 20% improvement.
Here’s the relationship boiled out in one spot:

0.5% — 60,000 visitors

1.0% — 30,000 visitors

10% — 2,700 visitors

20% — 1,200 visitors

50% — 250 visitors

80% — 50 visitors

We’ll call this “Principle #1“:

“The lower your starting conversion rate, the more traffic you need to detect improvements”

Have you ever noticed that you see split testing results for optin forms more often you see results for sales pages? Principle #1 explains why.

The typical optin form starts with a conversion rate of perhaps 10% to 20%. And the typical sale page starts with a conversion rate of perhaps 0.5% to 2%

It typically takes about 30,000 visitors to detect one 20% improvement on a sales page with a 1% conversion rate.

It typically takes about 2,700 visitors to detect one 20% improvement on an opt-in form with a 10% conversion rate.

Simply put . . .

All else equal . . . you can improve opt-in forms

ten times faster than sales pages.

However, . . .

There’s another principle at play here.

Ask a copywriter how easy it is to find a 20% improvement in each case, and you’ll get a trend diametrically opposed to the one noted above.

Going from 0.5% to 0.6% — Super Easy

Going from 1.0% to 1.2% — Easy

Going from 10% to 12% — A Little Difficult

Going from 20% to 24% — Moderately Difficult

Going from 50% to 60% — Very Difficult

Going from 80% to 96% — Practically Impossible

We’ll call this “Principle #2“:

The higher your starting conversion rate, the more difficult it is to find improvements of a given size (e.g., 20%)”

So here’s the deal. It’s super easy to go from 0.5% to 0.6%, but it will take you a very long time (60,000 visitors) to confirm the result.

On the other hand, it only takes 50 visitors to confirm an improvement from 80% to 96% — the only catch is that it’s pretty much impossible to do.

So the real action is somewhere in the middle.

There’s a “sweet spot” for testing where it’s moderatly easy to come up with improvements, and you don’t need a ton of traffic to detect them.

In my experience . . .

The real “sweet spot” is when a page has

an initial conversion rate between 10% and 50%.

And 20% to 30% is like a sweet spot within the sweet spot.

OK, so what does this mean?

Does it mean you shouldn’t run tests on your low converting sales pages?

No.

What it might mean, though, is that you shouldn’t optimize for “sales” on a sales page.

Instead, you should optimize for an outcome that’s correlated with sales, but which starts out in the “sweet spot”.

I’ve found two ways to move a low converting site into the “sweet spot”.

First,

you can break your sales page into multiple pages. Instead of having just a single page sales letter that goes to the payment gateway, you have, say, a 3 page sales letter that leads to the payment gateway. Then, on page one, instead of optimizing for sales, you optimize for the percentage of visitors clicking from page one to page two.

This “click-through” metric can be highly correlated with sales. And it often starts out in the “sweet spot”. It depends on where you make the break in the page, but “clicks from page one to page two” will probably start somewhere between 10% and 80%.

I think many marketers have already unwittingly take this approach by having a sales page and a separate intermediate order page. In other words, their sales page doesn’t lead directly to the payment gateway, but to an intermediate page that summarizes the offer before taking them to the payment gateway.

It’s not uncommon for someone using a sales page and an intermediate order page, with a 1% overall conversion rate, to see approximately 10% of people visiting the sales page click through to the order page, and about 10% of those viewing the order page ordering.

If your conversions break down like this, and you run a split test on both pages, you can essentially replace one super-slow test with two “sweet spot” tests.

And . . .

In 1/10 the time, you can improve

the “page” more than twice as much.

I used to see people debating the merits of having an intermediate order page. And for people who aren’t running tests on their pages, it’s probably a live question.

However, if you’re split testing, and your overall conversion rate isn’t intially in the “sweet spot”, having an intermediate order page is a “no brainer” when compared with having the sales page alone.

Here’s how it breaks down:

One Page Sales Process:

Measure percentage of visitors reaching the thankyou page.

Starting conversion rate: 1%

Traffic needed to detect a 20% improvement: 30,000 visitors

Two Page Sales Process:

Measure percentage of visitors reaching intermediate order page.

Starting conversion rate: 10%.

Traffic needed to detect a 20% improvement: 2,700 visitors.

Now, if “clicks to the intermediate sales page” correlates with “sales”, and it usually will to some degree (though you have to be careful to design your test for sales and not just clicks to the intermediate page), you could detect a 20% increase in sales with 1/10 the traffic.

You can also run a separate test from the intermediate sales page to the order page, though this will take longer since the intermediate page only sees 1/10 the traffic as the original landing page.

So, one way to move a low converting site into the “sweet spot” for testing, is to increase the number of steps taken by the visitor, and optimize for each step.

But there’s another way . . .

Second,

you can measure “time on page”.

It turns out that time on page is highly correlated with sales, and it’s usually in the “sweet spot”.

The percentage of visitors who stay 60 seconds or longer on the page (or take a desired action sooner), is often somewhere between 20% and 40%. It can be outside that range, but these are fairly common numbers in my experience.

And that’s definitely in the “sweet spot”.

So what you do is . . . instead of trying to take your sales from 0.5% to 0.6%, you can try to take the percentage who stay on your page at least 60 seconds (or take action before that) from 20% to 24%.

And what’s the benfit of doing this?

Here’s the big benefit in a nutshell:

Depending on how well time on page and sales are correlated, you could improve your sales the same amount with just 1,200 visitors instead of 60,000 visitors by optimizing for time on page instead of for sales.

Read that last sentence again. Please.

That’s why I’m taking time to explain this. Measuring time on page is not just a minor little feature. Depending on your starting conversion rate, how your page is set up, and the amount of traffic you get, it might be the ONLY sensible way to optimize your page.

And the time savings of “sweet spot” optimizing get compounded with the already incredible time savings you get with Taguchi testing.

Compared with ordinary split testing Taguchi testing can accelerate your testing 10X, and “sweet spot” testing can accelerate things 4-5 times (You might wonder why I don’t claim a 10X improvement for sweet spot testing . . . remember that, even though you can use less traffic, it can be a little harder to achieve 20% improvement when starting with a higher conversion rate. I’m giving a conservative estimate to take this into account).

So in combination . . .

we’re talking about perhaps 40-50X

faster testing on low converting sales pages.

Now, . . . is “time on page” perfectly correlated with sales?

No.

It’s pretty good, but it can deviate some.

And you have to be careful when you design your tests not to design FOR time on page. You still design your tests to improve sales. But you MEASURE time on page as a proxy for sales.

Also, keep in mind, that, on a long sales letter, only the stuff the visitor sees in the first 60 seconds will affect the time on page metric, so best results will be achieved by testing the “above the fold” and “near the fold” factors.

Anyway, I’m sure I’m missing some pros and cons (feel free to chime in ), but that’s the theory behind the new time on page feature in STA.

Now . . .

Let me show you how it works:

Click play to play the video.

http://www.splittestaccelerator.com/videos/timeonpage/timeonpage.html

. . . quick reminder . . .

STA will be up for sale again June 2nd and 3rd, 2008 (and in general the first Monday and Tuesday of each month).

Look for a new offer. I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but let’s just say that I’m going to be working hard to make sure my customers actually get a test set up as soon as possible after purchase.

It is my firm conviction (and a highly justified one) that no qualified customer who actually uses STA will fail to get their money’s worth.

So, once you make your purchase, I want to help you make sure you use it right away.

Stay tuned.

And, as always, please, feel free to comment on this post below.

Sincerely,

Jim

P.S. Quick clarification: Typically when you test a sales page with a low conversion rate, you’re not looking for any particular size of improvement, but you hope to find improvements of all kinds. I used 20% to simplify the discussion. With a low converting page, you’re not hoping to find 20% improvements, precisely because they take too long to find. You’re hoping to find 50% improvements for instance. And you don’t really run 60,000 visitors to your page. Instead, if you don’t find some 50% improvements by the time you’ve sent 10,000 visitors, you stop the test and start a new one. And it should be eaiser to find a 50% improvement on a site starting at 0.5% than one starting at 20%.

True enough.

However, due to the nature of the functions involved, there will still be a sweet spot between 10% and 50%. “Traffic needed” goes up REALLY FAST as the conversion rate goes below 10%. And the difficulty of improving things goes up REALLY FAST as the conversion rate goes over 50%. [feel free to clarify further, if you have questions about this, in the comments section at the end of the post]

Dear Friend,

I’m going to tell you how to install an upgradable version of STA for free.  It’s a limited version, but still powerful.  So read this post carefully if you’re interested.

It’s the first month of my new sales system, and I’m getting a lot done. 

(Just to remind you, I decided to sell STA only two days a month — the first Monday and Tuesday of each month.  The next opportunity will be May 5th and 6th.)

At the time I write this, there were 22 replies to the post I made explaining my reasons for the new schedule.

Some people liked the new system.  Others were a little more doubtfult about it working in the long run.  Pretty much everyone had something helpful to say.  Many gave good advice about outsourcing.  Thanks again to everyone who commented.

There was one concern raised that I want to address . . .

What about someone who wants to

get started with STA mid-month?

Well, I think I have a solution that will be a win-win.

I’m going to give people a chance to install a version of STA any time they like.  It will have all the features of STA, except it will only be a single-variable version, and it will lack the conversion summary and interaction reports.  Other than that, it still has all the other features:

• The same battle-tested STA tracking engine
• Multiple outcomes per test
• Drill down to the visitor level
• Visitor path tracking
• Exclude bad traffic by ip, agent, or referring domain
• Filter results by ad codes, keyword, domain, date.
• Integrate with Clickbank, CJ, and other affiliate networks that allow tracking IDs.
• Upgrades seamlessly to STA — your projects will be imported, and you won’t have to install STA once the free version is installed.
• Etc, . . .

Here’s How this benefits you . . .

If you think you might want to use STA, you can install it any time you want. 

If you’re wondering if STA will work with your current setup, you can just try it.  Install it, and see if you can integrate it.  I don’t always know if STA will work in a set of special circumstances.  This way, you can just see for yourself without paying anything up front.

When you purhcase STA, you won’t have to do another installation.  It will already be installed.  You’ll just load a single page into your browser, and you’ll be upgraded — with all your old projects imported automatically.

If you just want to try STA out before buying it, you can run an unlimited number of simple (single variable) split tests, and get a feel for most of what STA does before you upgrade to the ACCELERATED version.

I’m not asking for any payment information. All I ask is that you read the download page carefully, download the software, and use it.

This will benefit you,

but it will also benefit me.

It will cut down on many of the kinds of support requests I get.  Many people want to know ahead of time whether STA will work on some server configuration that I’m unfamiliar with.  Or they’ll want to know if they can integrate it with XYZ 3rd party software.  This way, I can just say, “I’m not sure . . . but you can feel free to install STA at no charge and see if it works.”

Also, sometimes a customer will get hung up on a step during installation.  STA is pretty easy to install, and it usually goes smoothly, but sometimes a host will mess things up by requiring a strange host name for database access or something.  When money is involved, the stress levels go up.  This way a user can take her or his time installing, and not feel the same anxiety.  And I will have more customers who already have STA installed at time of purchase.

Anyway, I am giving the download link to everyone in my “free course” autoresponder series.  If you’re already subscribed, you’ll get a broadcast message (that’s probably how you got here today). And new subscribers will get a message about this in the follow up sequence.

If you stumbled across this message in some other way, you can get my free course here:

http://www.splittestaccelerator.com/free_mvt_course.php

Please, if you’re thinking about purchasing STA — either this month (May 5th or 6th, 2008), or sometime in the future — take advantage of this. 

And if you hear anyone asking about good free split testing software, let them know that there’s a premium simple split tester available for free — almost certainly better than any other free split testing software, and probably better than the paid versions as well.  Just give out the link I mentioned a couple lines up.

Thanks.  And feel free to leave comments below.

Jim