About the author
Charles, is a serial founder and owner of profitable “Brick” and “Click” businesses.
Currently, he owns and runs ventures that range from a hotel services business to a software and digital products, design and marketing, online business.
A frequently published author, he has an extensive portfolio of business articles, many of which are online, dating back several years.
Charles was educated at Warwick University, rated as one of the top 10 universities in the UK, where he read Economics graduating in 1985.
A varied and colourful professional working life followed. He started as a door to door insurance salesperson, before becoming a senior IT project manager within Investment Banking, where he spent over fifteen years.
On leaving banking, he taught economics at a college in Suffolk, before taking a position with an employment organisation helping ex-offenders find employment after completing their prison sentences.
He now lives in Bournemouth UK with his partner Sue and works full time on his business interests, coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs and writing.
Charles Kangethe - ©2012 www.wealthcreatingprogram.com Introduction
The Internet and e-Commerce have many advantages over “brick” bound businesses.
However, they suffer from one glaring problem which until fairly recently has been very difficult to overcome.
Websites, e-Commerce and mail order are unique in that, as selling platforms there is no contact between the seller and the buyer!
This is a big problem because building credibility and trusting relationships with your customers, which is the absolute bedrock of all transactions, is very difficult if your business is wholly Internet based.
Imagine the scenario.
Our hero ontrepreneur, lets call him Splitter, has secured or manufactured a product that is going to make him a millionaire.
Splitter has gone to a web designer and together they have come up with the best web site since a certain B. Gates was a little boy.
Splitter gets his web site hosted on a super fast server so that his customers do not have to wait more than a nano second before the pages load and offer up his product.
He has his back office team, (his wife and dog,) ready to fulfil all the orders that will come flooding through.
He has not forgotten to set up an easy payment gateway at Paypal and he checks and double checks everything.
Let the good times roll!
He initiates a marketing strategy to promote the new e-Commerce site. He writes and submits articles with his URL to directories. He gets stuck into social media networking and gradually he starts to build up a steady, if small, stream of traffic to the site. Great!
The days turn into week, the weeks into months and then before you know it his anniversary is up. He checks his Paypal account and there is the grand sum of zip. Zero. Nada. Ouch!
What happened?
I guess Splitter didn’t convert too many of the prospects who visited his site into paying customers!
Eliminate Guesswork From Your Marketing Strategy And Convert More Sales With FREE And Simple Split Testing.
7
Charles Kangethe - ©2012 www.wealthcreatingprogram.com They came to him from the links he built into his articles, from the social media networks, from classifieds, and from search engines. They came to him all right, but he did not build credibility nor did he build trust.
That is the high level reason they left without buying from him.
Understand this deeply. Understand it until it hurts.
If you cannot build a credible, trusting relationship with your customer, you will NEVER become one of the Internet’s big dogs of successful marketing!
Let me ask you a question.
The high level reason Splitter failed to convert prospects into customers was the lack of credibility and trust. But, did you spot the root cause of the problem our ontrepreneur failed to confront and beat? Yes? Good. No? OK, let me spell it out.
In Internet marketing there are three key elements.
1. The Product
2. The Offer – The price and associated bonuses.
3. The Creative – The website copy, fonts, formatting, images and positioning of these items on the page.
Our ontrepreneur has a product. Now let us assume that the product is a good one. I know we should never assume, but if we do not make a few assumptions, this e-Book will go on for ever.
Being a good student of what the Internet gurus have told him in their never ending e-mails, Splitter secured the sole rights to a compatible bonus product as his “freebie” giveaway. His own product plus the bonus puts him ahead of others selling similar products. He has his USP.
The web designer he retained did an excellent
job and gave the site a professional look and feel.
There are navigation menus around the site as
well as “relevant” images that load quickly. And,
although he is not a copywriter, he did a decent
job with the web copy.
This is where the problems started. During the
year of trading, Splitter did everything to drive traffic to his site and with some success it must be said.
But, he did not test his site to ensure that prospects were being engaged by what they found when they got there. Why did he fall into this very common trap?
Eliminate Guesswork From Your Marketing Strategy And Convert More Sales With FREE And Simple Split Testing.
8
Charles Kangethe - ©2012 www.wealthcreatingprogram.com Splitter is a wannabe marketer. He has good ideas, but the thought of doing a lot of work does not really excite him. That is why he chose to start an online shop instead of renting premises in town to sell his product from a “brick” outlet. He figured it would be easy. Get the site up, put the offer on and bingo, millionaire!
He made the same assumption made by 99% of ontrepreneurs. They ASSUME that they have the offer and the creative just right to convert prospects into customers.
How do they know this? Well have you heard these kinds of answers?
“I did English at school, I can write good copy.”
“I have studied great copy from a library book, I know what works.”
“This product is so good it moves itself.”
The simple answer is this. On the Internet, you do not get to meet your prospects and customers. You have very little chance to ask them what they like or do not like about your website. You do not always know if your offer is over or under priced.
Any AND all conclusions you arrive at about your offer and your creative, without any testing is PURE GUESSWORK. Guesswork, like throwing dice, is more often than not a recipe for failure.
Please read that many, many times. And then read it once more.
If there is one thing that guarantees you will look at your Paypal account and find little in there it is a failure to test, test and then test some more.
This is the secret that differentiates the big guys from the minnows of the Internet marketing world. The big guys are ALWAYS testing.
This is why Splitter, a wannabe marketer, had a bad year.
OK – so what is this split testing and how will it help Splitter in his hour of need?
Before we look at this question and answer it at length, we need to define and describe a few concepts.