End of Week Roundup (11-30-07)
Here are a few items from around the web this week that definitely shouldn’t be missed. If you didn’t catch these already, be sure to go take a look.
James Brausch
James posted an excellent article on Joint Ventures this week. He makes the point that it’s pretty useless to try to get him (or anyone else for that matter) to pitch your "thing" by harassing them with FedEx’s, preview copies and the other typical stuff…while dangling the "carrot" of an affiliate commission. Instead, he advocates simply focusing on YOUR customers and mentioning good products you come across that will help your folks…without worrying about any affiliate commission/JV nonsense (i.e., use a direct link). In the end, it’s better for everyone.
James lists 10 very important reasons why this is a more powerful strategy.
You’ll have to check out his post to find out those reasons.
Aaron Brandon
Aaron posted some interesting preliminary data on a test he’s been doing on split testing an optin form. This is actually something I’m planning on doing myself once I get my copy of MuVar (don’t know why I just got around to getting this…hard headed I guess…review forthcoming after I play with it). Anyway, Aaron’s post is more evidence that we should all be AGGRESSIVELY testing any aspects of our site that lead to a customer "action". It also sounds like using something like MuVar and the HTML version of AWeber code is much more powerful than using AWeber’s built-in split testing feature.
Richard Lee
Since we’re on the topic of testing and tracking, one of the most overlooked aspects of online business is conversion. A lot of people seem to be narrowly focused on getting more traffic rather than converting more of the traffic they already have. Richard lays out a killer explanation of why conversion is so vital for giving you a competitive advantage. In fact, here’s link to the first in a series of posts where he covers "Traffic vs. Conversion". Definitely worth checking out. Be sure to read the entire series. (Also note the use of a "series" of blog posts as a way to get around the "what do I write about today" problem. Nice!)
His posts also make a good case for knowing where your traffic is coming from and segmenting that traffic to see how visitors from each traffic source behave once they hit your site. All traffic isn’t equal. But there’s a really simple way to capture this sort of data using a free tool.
More on that next week…
One Response to “End of Week Roundup (11-30-07)”
[...] of tracking your test results. This sort of ties in with one of the things I mentioned in last week's "Weekly Roundup" post. There I mentioned the fact that you really have to know where your traffic is coming from [...]