Why some websites succeed when other’s don’t

Over the years I’ve helped hundreds of companies with their online sales. Some websites struggle to get one sale per month, while others receive multiple orders every hour of every day. What’s the difference? Marketing. Specifically, marketing that drives traffic to your website, followed up by marketing that converts visitors into customers.

According to Neil Patel, less than 25% of ALL websites ever receive ANY traffic. I’m not sure where he got those numbers, but I recently reviewed a website for a potential client and what I discovered was true of about 75% of all the websites that I look at, so I suspect his numbers are accurate. Because I see these same issues in so many websites, I decided to post my reply to this company in this article. Here is my response:

At first glance, your website appears to be clean and professional looking. It is using a modern and robust content management system. You have Google Analytics installed, which is recommended. Technically, there is nothing wrong with your site. So why isn’t it performing? Let me explain.

It appears as if there are 38 products listed on your site. All products have good quality, high resolution photos that looks like they were professional shot. They are all consistent and all have white cutout backgrounds so the product appears to float on the page. These photos are great for the primary product photos, however you would probably get more sales conversions if you added some secondary photos and videos of the product “in-context” – that is action shots of how the product is actually used. Multiple images of your product, and even videos of your product being used should be considered the norm.

You need testimonials and reviews on your website. This is huge. Social proof is one of the main selling points for anyone buying online and you can greatly ease their mind by having testimonials and reviews on each and every page of your website.

Make it easy for someone to do business with you. Your phone number is on the contact page, but we recommend adding it to the header and/or footer of every page.

The single biggest problem you have with your website is that no one can find it (your site is not listed on alexa.com, which means it gets very little traffic). An Alexa rank by itself may not indicate sales volume, but it does show relative traffic volume over time. For example, the number one site on the internet (Alexa rank of 1) is Google. The number 2 site (Alexa rank of 2) is YouTube. Facebook is number 3. Alexa ranks approximately 28 million websites. For reference purposes, WebStoresLtd.com sits at 132,259 (21,303 in the United States). Your site does not make it into the top 28,000,000 meaning you do not get enough traffic to show up.

The BIG SECRET to SEO

I did not write this. It came in an email from TheHOTH. But the message is so strong and on target that I have to share it on this blog. a very savvy marketer asked an Inc 5000 recipient on how to grow his business:

My #1 piece of SEO advice to double your business

“If I hired you and paid you $2 million dollars to come into my business and run marketing, what would you do?”

I told him the first thing that I would do is take an inventory of all the questions, misconceptions, doubts, & fears that customers have before they buy.

All the stuff they need answers to before they buy.

All the stuff that is preventing them from buying.

All the stuff they ask you on the phone before they sign up.

Then take all those answers that you have in your head, write them down and put them…

…ON YOUR BLOG.

Now, instead of you explaining these things every single time, your potential buyers can find them when they search online.

They’ll find your articles, get answers, start trusting you as the authority and click over to your sales page.

This is inbound marketing & SEO at it’s finest…

…and that is the core of how you can become one of the fastest-growing companies in the US.

As an Inc. 500 myself (not just the 5000) I could not agree more. Its why I write a new blog post every single week. And its why Read more about The BIG SECRET to SEO

How to Create A Form with Payment Options [5 Easy Steps]

There are a number of reasons why you might want to accept payments when a site visitor fills out a form. Service businesses charging for an appointment, reservations or tickets to an event such as a conference, or donations (even recurring donations!). For example, as you may know, I run a scout related website (CyberbaseTradingPost.com) where one of the main features is the ability to create and print custom certificates. After the certificate is created, I give people the opportunity to make a donation if they found it useful. Another site that one of my customers runs provides week-long retreats, complete with accomodations. When they make their reservations to attend one of these retreats, they must make a deposit to insure they are going to show up. Collecting payments along with the reservation is required. And of course if you have any type of subscription program, collecting recurring payments is a must. All of this can be done using a plugin called WPForms.

Here then are the steps necessary to create a form with payment options using WPForms.

Step 1: Create a Simple Order Form in WordPress

The first thing you’ll need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin.

Next, go to WPForms » Add New to create a new form.

On the setup screen, name your form and select the Billing/Order form template.

Next, you’ll want to modify what items are available to order.

To do this, scroll down to the “Available Items” section in the preview screen on the right and click on it.

This will open up the “Field Options” in the left panel. Here you can rename the field, add or remove order items, and change the prices.

If you want to give people images to choose from when filling out your online order form, click on the Use image choices checkbox in the Form Editor.

When you do this, you’ll be able to upload images to go alongside your items, giving people a visual look at what they’re ordering.

Lastly, you can add additional fields to your order form by dragging them from the left hand side to the right hand side.

Click Save when you’re done.

Step 2: Configure Your Order Form Notifications

There are two settings to configure in your simple order form. The first is the Notifications setting. Notifications are a great way to send an email when your form is submitted.

You can send an email notification to yourself, which WPForms does automatically unless you disable form notifications. You can also send a notification to a member of your team by adding their email to the Send to Email Address field.

In addition, if you use smart tags, you can even send a form notification to a customer to let them know their order has been received.

Let’s take a look at how to set up one form notification that will be sent out to a customer after they submit an order form on your website.

Start by clicking on Read more about How to Create A Form with Payment Options [5 Easy Steps]

Choosing Keywords Wisely

For the past few weeks I’ve been talking about ranking on Google using YouTube videos. This is critical for your business because, according to Neil Patel, less than 25% of ALL websites are ever visited by ANYONE! Getting found for your chosen keywords is vital to your ability to do business online.  One of the things I’ve talked about is to use your keywords in the title, description, tags, and even in your audio script. But how exactly do you select the keywords that you wish to rank for? That is the topic of today’s post.

Keywords are simply those words that are entered into a search engine. One of the best descriptions about how to use keywords that I’ve seen is by the Yoast SEO plugin, which you can read here.

For example, if you are looking for light bulbs, you would enter “light bulbs” into the search engine. Of course, that isn’t very descriptive, and you are going to get millions of results for something that generic. Ranking for a generic term like light bulbs is not only difficult, but expensive. and worse, the probability of someone buying a light bulb from you after searching on those words is highly unlikely. If we get a little more specific, like “LED light bulbs”, we are still going to get thousands of web sites returned to us, and again, it would be both difficult and expensive to rank for these words. The more descriptive you can be with your keywords, the more likely it is that someone will find your site and actually do business with you.

This is what is termed as long tail keywords. The good news is that long tail keywords comprise 70% of all searches performed online. So, if someone is searching for “Where can I buy long-lasting dimmable LED light bulbs for my kitchen in Parker, Colorado?” and you have a page on your website that specifically is optimized for long-lasting dimmable LED light bulbs for your kitchen, and you are located in Parker, CO, well, you will probably get found when that search is created, and that person will probably buy from you. When you create a YouTube video addressing those same keywords, and link that video back to that page on your website, you simply become the best answer on the internet for that person’s needs.

Of course, there are far fewer people asking that specific question, but for the ones that are, you are the solution. Long tail keywords contain a keyphrase (generally three or four words) highly specific to what you are selling. This helps you to find highly targeted customers looking to buy exactly what you’re selling. This makes long tail keywords immensely useful for PPC and SEO and they always outperform generic keywords in terms of conversion rates. In fact, long tail keywords convert 2.5 times more frequently than short tail keywords. Back to the question, how do you determine the best keywords to use? It used to be fairly simple to do this, as Read more about Choosing Keywords Wisely

How To Write a Thrilling Script for a 90 Second Product Video

Last week’s blog post talked about how to rank on Google in 30 seconds using YouTube videos and utilizing the title, description, and tag fields to include your keywords. but what about actually making the video to upload in the first place? What are some of the best practices, especially if you are selling a product online? This week I’m going to layout for you exactly how to craft your script for maximum views and better yet, conversions (sales).

It used to be that the video itself didn’t really matter for SEO purposes, the only thing that mattered was the title, description, and tags being used. That is no longer the case. YouTube uses voice to text recognition software and cannot only determine if you are using copyrighted music illegally, but can also determine what you are saying. In fact, it uses this technology to close captioning, so your script is highly important. Yes, you will want to use your keywords correctly in your script too. YouTube can also determine what images/video clips are in your video, much like Google’s image search can determine similar images to what you are searching for (remember, YouTube is owned by Google), so again, don’t use copyrighted images or your video could be banned (or worse).

When creating a product video, you do not just want to hold up a product and talk about what it does. Rather, you want to tell a story that engages your viewer. You may want to show the product in action – by demonstrating how it is actually used. But remember, this is essentially a commercial that we are talking about, not a training video or tech support tutorial (that’s a different, but equally valuable type of video for a different purpose). What we want to create for this blog is a 1 to 2 minute product video for the primary purpose of search engine placement and driving traffic to your site so the viewer can buy the product. That means that you will want to also embed the finished video on the product page.

Okay, so here is Read more about How To Write a Thrilling Script for a 90 Second Product Video

How to Rank on Page 1 of Google in less than 30 Seconds

The number one question that any web designer gets asked is “How can I get listed on page 1 of Google?” While there are no 100% guarantees, the method I’m going to describe in this post will likely land you in that coveted spot, especially for geographically based searches. We have proven this method over and over again and it works, without paying huge sums of money or waiting months to get ranked. Doing this involves the use of YouTube (a Google owned property). Here’s why this works:

80% of all internet content consumed today is Video. People spend 88% more time on a website with video, and 72% of visitors prefer video. Companies that create video content earn 41% more traffic from search engines results than those who don’t. Adding a video to a landing page can increase conversion rates by 80%.

Yet, only 9% of all businesses actually are using YouTube. Did you hear what I just said? Only 9% of businesses are actually using YouTube! YouTube is the number 2 search engine and the 3rd most popular website in the world. If you utilize YouTube properly, you can get to the top of Google. These are the steps to follow… Read more about How to Rank on Page 1 of Google in less than 30 Seconds