Internet Business Blog by Jack Keifer

Does your website grab your visitors and keep them around wanting more?  Or does it send them running the other way vowing never to return again?

Here are the top 10 most common mistakes that I see in bad web design.

1. Audio loading automatically in your web page

In my opinion, this is one of the most irritating things that send me running the other way every time.  Never assume that your visitors are going to want to hear your music, advertisement, or your speech when they arrive.

Set any audio options so that it doesn’t start automatically.  Just give the visitor the option to turn it on if they wish to hear it.

2. Poor background & text colors
Dark background colors combined with dark text, or light backgrounds with light text are very difficult to read.  If I have to struggle to see what you have to say, I’m outta here.

3. Flash intros & graphics
Using flash in your website is just a bad idea if you’re an online marketer.  Not only can they chase away some of your slow dial-up visitors, but they do absolutely nothing for your SEO.  Flash is invisible to a search engine spider, so if your home page consists of a flash intro, Google sees no content on your page at all.

Use fast loading web optimized graphics instead.  This way you can take advantage of the “alt” tags in your HTML code and insert your important keywords for your images.  This will help your rankings in the SERPS.

4. Excessive pop-ups and flash fly-ins
If you want a guaranteed way to send your visitors packin’ & pissed off, try loading your web page with a bunch of pop-up windows.  While you’re at it, throw in one of those flash or java adverts that follow you around every where you go, as well.

Pop ups are pretty much blocked by every browser anyway.  A better alternative would be to use a javascript pop-up to capture emails in return for some type of value to your visitor, or an exit pop-up of some type.

5. Dead links
Dead links on a web page tells me that you don’t maintain your site and that your products are probably old & outdated as well.

The other thing that irritates me is clicking on links in the navigation menu and landing on “under construction” place holders.  If you haven’t created a page yet, either don’t create a link for it, or at least add a “coming soon” label to the link text.

6. Adsense
If you have a sales page or a product review page, Adsense is about the worst thing that you can do for your conversions, not to mention your search engine rankings.  According to James Brausch, Adsense actually lowers your rankings.  This is most likely because there are so many junk “made for adsense” sites out there that the googlebot will likely lump you right in with this ilk.

Unless you’re getting 100,000 visitors a month, I would avoid it.  It’s not worth the 2 bucks a month payout. In areas where adverts won’t kill your sales, try Advaliant as an alternative to Google. This can make you real money, not just pennies & nickels.

7. Huge paragraphs & run on sentences.
Web surfers generally are scanners.  They want to skim through a web page quickly to see if it’s interesting or has what they’re looking for.

Having excessively long paragraphs may work in a novel, but not online.  Keep your paragraphs limited to 1-3 sentences.  Even though your former English teacher may give you a rash about it, this is what works. This is especially important for your sales or affiliate product review pages as well.

8. Busy web pages
Don’t fill your web pages with too many graphics, columns and adverts.  Some web pages are so crowded with pictures mixed with text and poorly spaced columns.  Thus causing the paragraphs to almost collide with the adjoining paragraphs and making for an unpleasant & difficult read.

Keep your web pages clean & easy on the eyes.

9. Poor Navigation
Make your website easy to get around in.  Don’t make your visitors have to click on excessive links to get somewhere.  Having to guess where to find something is no fun either.

You should design your website as if you were expecting dear old grandma to visit your site, who’s never used a web browser before.

10.  Welcome to the 90’s
Do you have cheezy animated graphics created in 16 colors scattered all throughout your web pages?  Or the java-script snow falling in the background along with the midi-music playing as well?

Back button, take me away!!! Come on man, get into the 21st century.

So… there’s my top ten. Did any of the above look familiar to your own web site? If so, it could be costing you in lost visitors which equal lost revenue.

Sometimes it just takes a simple change to make a huge difference.

-Jack S. Keifer

4 Comments

Here’s a talking head video featuring me and my scary lighting showing you how to really crank up your conversions by creating web pages that optimize themselves.

In case you don’t like watching videos, here’s a transcript of the video:

Hello, Jack Keifer here with a tip on beefing your conversion rates on your web sites with self-optimizing webpages.

So how does a web page optimize itself?  
With a testing techique called Multi-Variate testing.

Multi-variate testing is done with software designed to allow you to automatically test different versions of various sections of your webpage.

Let me clarify this a little using one of my websites as an example.

Here at AmazingCloaker.com you’re looking at the headline portion of my web page.

Your headline is that critical element to get your visitors to stay beyond that 3 second event horizon.

Usually a visitor will hit their back button within 3 seconds if you don’t peak their interest somehow.

See why the headline is so important?  
Anyway,
The sales page is made of of different components like the Headline, sub heading, bullet list, main body, guarantee, call to action and buy button, to name a few.

Scrolling down, we move through the different sections of the sales letter.

With multi-variate software, we can create different versions of each of these sections and test which combinations of these versions give the best conversion rates.

Everytime one version of a section scores higher conversions, it is tested against other sections of the web page more often.

Every time you make a sale, your web page is constantly refining and improving itself.

I’m going to clear my cookies here and refresh my web page.  This will cause a slightly different version to load.

Ok, here we have a new version of the page.
The headline stayed the same.
Scrolling down the page there are various paragraphs that are slightly changed.

Not too big a difference here.

Let’s refresh this page again and see if we get more dramatic results.

First, I’ll clear my cookies, and then we’ll just hit the refresh button again.

Ok, looks like we still have the same headline.
That could mean that this particular headline is creating better conversions.

Interesting… here we are now seeing extra graphics relating to the AmazingCloaker.

Testing these graphics against nothingness is also a variable.  
Sometimes less is more in a sales page,
so always consider testing something against having nothing in its place as well.

Ok, let’s do this one more time.
Clear the cookies again…

Ok, this time the headline has changed.  
This headline was scoring pretty high in the beginning of my testing.
Scrolling down, there are additional changes that you would note in various sections of the page.
Looks like the extra graphics are gone again in this version, so its possible that the extra graphics are actually scoring lower and that “nothingness” is winning out.

Ok, so the next question you’re going to ask is
“What software did you use and how much did it cost you?”

Well, that’s a great question.
So how does FREE sound?

That’s right, I simply used a free tool compliments of Google called “Google Web Optimizer”.

Just go out to www.google.com/analytics
and log in using your Adwords credentials.

If you don’t already have a google account, you can sign up here as well.

Ok, let’s get logged in.

In Google web optimizer, you create what are called “experiments”, which are the multivariate tests that you setup for your website.

As you can see here I have a few experiments showing, but only one is active.  
The other two are abandoned first attempts while I figured out how to use it.

Here are the current stats for each section of my web page that I have set up for testing.

Each section here shows what percentage of the time they were used when a sale was made.

Pretty useful when you want a quick overview of what is working and what isn’t.

This way you can continue giving the non producing areas additional tweaking to get every thing up to peak performance.

There’s literally thousands of combinations that your website will display automatically when visitors come to your site.

Ok, Now let’s take a look at my conversion stats for the month of July.

I started this around July 5th so my conversion rates are showing for just over a month.  
To track your sales, you set up what are called “goals” and then paste some javascript into your thank you page.

I forgot to add in my Goal Values, so they are showing zero… d’oh!

Normally you would put in your net profit here and then it will calculate your visitor value if I understand it correctly.

Let’s take a closer look at the stats so far.

As you can see, I didn’t put much effort into traffic generation this month, but my converation rates are pretty decent.

My average conversion rate for the month is calculating at 4.37%

Let’s click on the more detailed chart.

Here you can see that I started july at 4.50% and the multivariate testing has cranked my current standing to 9%.

Not too shabby if I don’t say so myself.

With an impressive 9% conversion rate, I could confidently employ paid traffic strategies, if I chose to do so.

Just as an FYI, there are premium multivariate software packages packed with other great features as well for getting even greater accuracy.

For example, I’ve used for quite some time, a product called KaizenTrack.

It’s a little pricey… around $500 that last time I checked, but well worth it.

Another excellent multivariate software is “MuVar“, created by James Brausch.  
Right now, MuVar is only selling for $100!  This is because MuVar 2008 is about to be discontinued.

From what I’ve read, MuVar is a kick-butt multivariate software, and it will even calculate your visitor value for you as well.

Well, now there’s no excuse for not tracking your results.

Testing and refining are vital components to getting the most out of your internet business.

If you ignore this step, you’re leaving thousands on the table in lost income.

Besides that, how would any potential JV partner take you seriously if you didn’t even know your own conversion rates for your products?

Also remember, that you don’t have to have your own product line to use this.

If you’re an affiliate marketer, you should be testing your affiliate landing pages as well.

So if you’re not testing your pages, what are you waiting for?
Jump out to google.com/analytics and get started now.

-Jack S. Keifer

No Comments.

Suppose that you could manipulate your reality by simply changing your mindset.  Suppose that your reality is created in the mind first before it manifests itself into the physical realm.

Suppose that the entire universe is one connected whole.  A singularity of a super conscious mind giving the illusion of time and space to the physical expression of the body & mind.

Suppose you could instantly travel anywhere in this vast universe because you let go the idea of propulsion and instead mastered the laws that govern the microcosm… the particle-verse.

Suppose there was no future, no past.  Only a constant state of the present that is expressed in countless quantum layers of parallel realities.

Suppose that the physical mind’s expression of the self focused along a narrow beam of this eternal state of the present in a linear movement, similar to a laser in a DVD player.  Thus giving the illusion of a past and future.

Suppose that by peering deep into space that you are really looking at a distorted view of your own inner self?

Is your brain hurting yet?  All of a sudden, internet marketing just doesn’t seem so tough any more, does it!

-Jack S. Keifer

No Comments.

In this post I’d like you to get into the meat & potatoes of why you want an internet business.  Most of us think that we know what we’re working towards, but do we really?  Why do you want to get started?  If you already have an online business, what is your goal?

Is it to make a million dollars by the end of the year?

Let’s say that your goal is to make a million dollars.  Would a million dollars really satisfy your true desire?

I’ll be willing to bet that at the very core of your true desire, what you really want is not a million dollars itself, but what a million dollars could give you.  To really get to the meat of what it is that you really want, you need to ask yourself WHY do I want a million dollars?  Just to have a million bucks?  Ask yourself this question and your answers will guide you to your TRUE desires.  Maybe you want the freedom to travel the world.  Perhaps you want to be there for your family and watch your kids grow up.  Maybe you just want to do something different than what you have trapped yourself into with a 9-5 J.O.B.

In reality, that million dollars (or any amount of money) would simply be the vehicle or tool to get you what you really want.

Once you get into the core of your true desire, you may find that you don’t need a million dollars at all.  It may only take a fraction of that to give you what you want.  It may only take a different system.  A system that will generate equal or slightly greater income that you are making in the 9-5 grind.

What most of us are really after is the lifestyle.  The freedom to do what you want, when you want.  The freedom to pick up and leave for Aruba and hang on the beach for a while.

If you’re only focusing on huge dollar goals for your business, you may be missing out on your truly desired lifestyle.  If you’re still trading your time for money, whether in a J.O.B. or your business, you are not moving into the direction of freedom, and most likely not towards your true desire.

If it’s freedom you want then start working towards freedom now.  Don’t handcuff yourself into self-employment where you will be working 18 hours a day.

If you haven’t started yet, then start that blog today.  Create that product and put it out there.  Sign up for some affiliate programs and get your feet wet.  Take action & do something.  This is the single most important thing that you can do.  Don’t waste time over-analyzing what a good market is, or setting 20 different goals to meet in order to get your internet business off the ground.  Jump into a mainstream market and go for it.

If you already have an online business, make sure that you are working towards your true desired lifestyle.  Constantly focusing your goals on nothing but more money in the bank will just trap you into a lifetime of working for the next level of income.  You’ll be a slave with a lot of cash.  Expand beyond this towards your core desire.  This is what will give your life real quality and true happiness.

Get to your desired lifestyle by outsourcing the hard stuff.  Outsourcing means that you can accomplish hundreds or even thousands of hours of work a week.  This is lightyears more that you could do yourself.  A real business doesn’t need you in there working.  It should be able to run without you.  Being your own boss means that you still have a boss - you, so you’re still not free.  Don’t be your own boss, be an entrapraneur instead!

-Jack S. Keifer

2 Comments

I was perusing Terry Dean’s online business blog today and happened across a hilarious post called “Do You Have HyperCopyitis? “  It’s not only funny, but it really drives home a point that is so prevalent in copywriting all over the net.

In a very witty way, Terry points out how such an overwhelming number of sales letters are so hyped up that it’s pathetic.  For example, the typical Paypal or Clickbank statements showing thousands of dollars a minute being cranked out because of their super secret system.  Yeah right… I always suspect, whether right or wrong, that those kinds of images are Photoshopped.

Other typical things like the yellow highlighter in every other paragraph, the eighty kazillion exclamation points scattered throughout the copy, and the endless run-on sentences which exhaust your breath, much like the one you’re reading now.

The main point, I believe, that Terry is making in his post is that many copywriters, or those of us who write our own copy, fail to connect with our target audience.

These hyped up sales letters have all the “cool” emotional trigger words, the neat little graphics, the fancy buy button with the cool check box (Yes Jack! Count me in!!!) next to it.  You can hype your product to sound like the biggest thing since sliced bread, but are you really relating to your prospect, or just shouting at him… Buy! Buy! Buy it nowwww!!!

Suppose instead of talking at your visitors, we connected with them instead?  Hmmm.  Imagine  empathizing with your visitors instead.  Gently and indirectly persuading them that your product is just the perfect fit to solve the problem they have.  Not because you jammed your offer down their throat, but because they drew their own conclusions based on how you connected with them.   Because you kept them hanging on to your every word, as one paragraph leads to the next, guiding them down a pathway straight to the buy button.

Terry Dean has interviewed Shaune Clarke, a copywriter who emotionally connects with his audience without gimmicks, exaggeration, or swipe files, as Terry puts it.

What’s even more amazing to me is that Terry Dean has done a 70 minute interview with Shaune Clarke revealing some of his most valued secrets.  This is an amazing interview which is in mp3 format AND transcribed into a .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) file as well, so that you can refer to either format!

How much you ask?  Only $10… You know I jumped on this one!  Terry Dean is known as one of the good guys & when you buy from Terry, you’ll always get amazing value.  This is easily the best $10 I’ve ever spent and you can bet I’ll be modifying my own web copy to test the results.

Edit Update - Terry Dean informed me (in this post’s comments) that the Interview with Shaune Clarke is now at $15.  As I elaborated in my follow-up comment,  this is $15 well spent many times over.  Even if you have to skip that pizza & coke with your buddies, or pawn that guitar, get this valuable information now.  The price may go up again soon.

Don’t let the affiliate link at the end of the post fool you.  I was really inspired by & believe in this product.  In fact, if you don’t wish to use my affiliate link, then simply go out to http://www.terrydean.org and buy it direct.

If you want to find out more about this, just click on my semi-blatant affiliate link now.

-Jack S. Keifer

9 Comments

Kenton Newby has some great suggestions on automating your blog submissions in 4 easy steps.  He covers the value of submitting your blog posts to blog carnivals and has done a review of Xingla Pro as well.

Thanks Kenton, I really appreciate the feedback!

I regularly visit Kenton’s blog because it’s one of those sites where you can click into any random blog post and you’ll find great information.  Kenton has a unique gift for offering true value in whatever subject he’s covering.

Don’t just take my word for it, check out his online business blog and see for yourself.  The “Internet Basics” category is a great start.  Don’t let the category name fool you, there’s some great tips in there, even for the seasoned entrepreneur.

This guy is one sharp cookie, and I would recommend getting on his subscriber list right away.  Trust me on this one, you won’t be disappointed.

-Jack S. Keifer

3 Comments

In my previous post, I was ranting about the steep price increase and asking if you feel the new features are worth the difference in price.  I received a very detailed response from Justin Premick from AWeber.  As promised to Justin I am writing a follow up to his comment.  His points were very well stated and I would like to share them with you here, along with my response.

Here are some excerpts from his comment that I would like to address:

I’d like to state here that we’re not trying to “stuff” you or sneak anything “in through the back door.” AWeber users who joined before May 20th will not be upgraded to the new features and pricing unless they ask us to do so. That’s the reason there was no email about a price increase… because for existing customers, there isn’t an increase. You don’t have to pay any more today for the same AWeber service and features than you did last month. We saw this as a non-issue, and felt that sending an email out about pricing “changes,” when in fact no customer’s pricing has changed, would just serve to confuse and cause undue panic.

I can see the logic in this, but I think the end result was the opposite effect.  It caused an undue panic with many customers because of the surprise.

After receiving Justin’s response, I donned my hip-boots and went trudging into the forum cesspool to see what others had to say about it.  Most of the “panic” that I saw from other subscribers was a result of this not knowing until after the fact.  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one that missed the email.

With that said, I was shocked to find out how many people dumped AWeber because of it.  Why?!  AWeber didn’t force this on anyone with an existing account.  I, as a current AWeber customer am free to keep my account just the way it is.  This is a good example of that “forum junkie” mentality, which is the very reason I don’t let myself get caught up in these pointless debates.  It must have been a great month for GetResponse though.

“The price increase is pretty steep. When you average out the cost per lead verses the benefits that you get with the analytics package, is it justifiable? These factors may depend on the size & quality of your list, plus the range of products that you have to offer.”

Well said, though I think it has more to do with quality than size, and with how you use the tools available to you - in other words, how much more effective and profitable can you make your email marketing using these tools?

We feel the answer to that is “a lot” (which is why we developed these tools). One example: you’ll know who did and did not respond which emails, and you can segment and deliver appropriate emails to subscribers based on that knowledge. This alone has great potential to increase your sales and profits far beyond the additional cost for these tools.

I have to say that the power of these tools would have to be impressive.  You can compensate for having a small list with the ability to target and test your list with surgical precision.  You can also segment by time zones!

Until now, analytic tools like these were only available to high dollar businesses with the budgets to pay the big fees to their ESPs.  AWeber has now made these available to everyone.  It seems that the segmentation ability alone would more than pay for itself.  After all, quality will outshine quantity.  In terms of traffic conversions, 5,000 untargeted visitors isn’t nearly as good as having 500 highly targeted visitors.  The same applies to your list - quality vs. quantity.

You can now even get rid of those ugly AWeber tracking links from within your emails.  By using a simple javascript on your website, you can put a clean natural link into your emails which look much less threatening to the paranoid.

Justin also pointed out that for those with lists under 500 leads, the monthly price is actually lower.  $19 per month as opposed to $19.95 per month.

Justin also included a link to AWeber’s analytics info page which gives a great explanation of the benefits you can receive after upgrading.   https://www.aweber.com/users/billing/analytics_upgrade/1

The only flaw that I see at this point is that the tracking features seem to rely on javascript.  This could skew the analytics leaving out the subscribers who have javascript disabled in their browser.  The tracking links in your email messages are also accompanied by an invisible graphic that “talks” to the javascript on your target website.  Many of my own webmail accounts disable the “unsafe” images by default when I view them.  That probably disables this invisible graphic popup as well, thus not allowing the tracking info to get passed along to your stats.

Taking this into consideration, the overall results are still going to give you a pretty accurate assessment of your subscribers, especially as your list gets larger.  If we estimated a very high figure of 10% of your list having javascript disabled or email images blocked, You’d still have about 90% accuracy to work with.

In summary, I think that AWeber’s intention is to offer the very best marketing features possible to their subscribers.  Testing and targeting your campaigns are a must if you want to be successful with your email marketing.  It not only benefits you, but your list members as well.

AWeber has practically dropped this essential element of success right into our laps with this analytics package.  Now there’s simply no excuse not to test and target.  I believe that those who see the value and apply these tools, will be riding the new wave of success using email marketing 2.0.  I plan to catch this wave… how about you? Land lubber, or surfer?

-Jack S. Keifer

1 Comment

While jumping out to AWeber to check my stats, I happen to stumble across their pricing page and about freaked when I noticed that their pricing structure has totally changed!

I originally signed up with AWeber for 19 bucks a month which gives you unlimited autoresponders and 10,000 subscribers before having to increase to the next tier.

Their new pricing structure shows that $19 per month only gets you up to 500 subscribers.  That’s a huge drop! Here’s how their new pricing structure works:

Naturally, the first thing that went through my mind was WHAT THE HEY!  Is this their way of stuffing me because they know how painful it would be to migrate out my subscribers and probably lose half of them in the process?  The alarm bells were a ringin’!

Fortunately, being a current member, I am still able to keep the same package.  I do find it strange that there was nothing in my user area telling me about the change.  I never received any email notifications either.  Maybe I’ve just been so caught up in my recent projects that I’m just out of touch… hmmpf.

So what do you get in return for all this extra bank?

AWeber has added a powerful email analytics package that allows you to do things such as track sales generated from your list and then to be able to seperate the profitable list members so that you could, for example, target them for special rewards or offers in appreciation for their business.

You can also send broadcasts to the unresponsive members with special incentives as well, or just remove them from your list in order to have a smaller, but much more valuable list.

You can send out broadcasts specifically to people who didn’t click through on your previous one as well, to help crank those response rates up.

You can also track your responders after they click through to your site and see where they went and what they clicked on.  This can be very useful to get more in touch with what your leads really want and what interests them.   Personally, I always thought that simply asking them wasn’t such a bad idea either, but understanding why the majority seem to click on your leaky text link to an unrelated site as opposed to your payment button could be quite valuable too I suppose.

You can see the full details of the AWeber E-Mail Analytics package here.

My 2½ Cents…

Overall, I think this looks like a great addition to the AWeber service.  The problem that I have is that this seemed to have been slid in through the back door.  Why wasn’t AWeber more forthcoming with this new package?   Why did I have to trip into their pricing page to find all this out?  An email announcement would have been nice.  A note inside my members home area doesn’t seem like too much to ask either.  I’ve looked everywhere inside my AWeber account and there is no upgrade option, nor any mention of the new deal… so what’s the deal?  It appears that this started around the last week in May.

The price increase is pretty steep.  When you average out the cost per lead verses the benefits that you get with the analytics package, is it justifiable?  These factors may depend on the size & quality of your list, plus the range of products that you have to offer.  I haven’t upgraded my account yet, so I can’t comment first hand on whether the switch is worth it or not.

I doubt that you can go back to your previous plan once you make the switch, so I’m not in a hurry just yet to find out whether this system can really justify dumping my current tracking methods for it.  Given the circumstances in which I received the news, at this juncture, I’m underwhelmed.

How about you?  Have you taken advantage of their new plan?  Know somebody that has?  I’d like to hear from you and get your take on this.  Leave a comment.

-Jack S. Keifer

5 Comments

Like a true nomadic free spirit, James Brausch has picked up and moved his blog once again. He is now located at http://www.diegonorte.com. So what’s up with all this moving around? Perhaps he’s so fed up with our current fascist regime that he’s decided to disassociate himself from us gringos here in the U.S. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go read some of his recent posts. He’s hit upon some very good points.

Or perhaps there’s another reason behind it. Diegonorte can be branded without necessarily having to be associated with James Brausch. This makes the business very sellable without the personal name in the domain. I’ve been lurking around diegonorte.com for the past few days and I’ve noticed that the picture in the upper right corner of the blog has changed a few times. Hmmmm, another possible clue that this could be the case?

Maybe for a nominal fee, the Brausch team will be selling ready made internet businesses based on his own proven model to his clients. An online version of a franchise. Instead of seeing the big McDonalds “M” in every city, you’ll be seeing the big “B” everywhere. Maybe an internet franchise called Blogger King, heh-heh.

Ok, maybe I’m stretching my imagination a bit, and obviously I’m referring to the business model itself that would be “franchised”, but James has always been an innovator. I wouldn’t rule out anything, whether it seems too far fetched, or too obvious. I smell some big changes ahead in the Brausch empire. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

-Jack S. Keifer

3 Comments

I got a flash of inspiration this weekend and made such profound changes to Xingla Pro, that we now have a major upgrade to version 2.0! Current users get the upgrade for free of course.

-Jack S. Keifer

5 Comments