Marketing Studies

Eric T. Peterson continues showing the practical implications of his visitor engagement metric by analyzing his own website, questioning what he can do to increase the sales of his books to visitors referred to his site by some of the bloggers that are delivering traffic with high engagement but low sales conversion.

Now, I haven't studied his visitor engagement metric well enough yet to really comment it as it applies to this example, but let's try some basic optimization techniques to see how those could increase his book sales.

1. Establish a Call-to-Action at the Bottom of Each Blog Post

I'm not familiar with Eric's clickstream paths, but the first question is, how many of his visitors from the referring blogs are actually exposed to his "Buy My Book" Call-to-Action (CTA). How many actually click to his first page, where the CTA is more exposed, even if below the fold?

The first thing to do would be to add the CTA for the book directly below each blog post, actually building on the blog post to try to directly sell the book then and there. Basically telling them what to do, after they're done reading the post --> buy the book.

2. Provide Multiple CTA Options

However, as Eric states in his post, a good deal of the visitors entering his site from the problematic blogs actually start the purchase process, but don't finish it.

He is generating some interest, but not enough to have them to complete the purchase process. And then we still have the prevailing majority that don't even start the purchase process.

This would demand some testing, but my first instinct would be to go with a soft offer, such as a free whitepaper, and then try to make the sale through the whitepaper and the additional 7-day, 14-day or more e-mail or RSS follow-up sequence.

At least in my own tests adding a free whitepaper offer + follow-up sequence always increased total sales, CR and profits.

3. More Compelling CTAs

Eric does offer free chapters of his book on the first page.

However, to capture more leads, it might work to test offering a full free e-book VS just sample chapters. Usually, I wouldn't be interested in free chapters unless I was already in the purchase process ... but if you give me a "10 KPIs That Make or Break Your Internet Sales" free e-book, I just might budge.

4. Provide Multiple CTA Opportunities

Following the steps above, Eric would put a CTA for the book below each blog post. But to really maximize the opportunities, I would also put a CTA (perhaps a different one, but one that would still lead to the book purchase in the end) in the top right hand corner of the website.

5. Optimize the Purchase Process

• Add more information (sales letter, list of chapters, testimonials, add risk reducers etc.) to the product landing page
• Shorten the sales process to fewer steps
• Make purchase buttons much more visible