How we increased opt-in conversion from 25% to 40% by unchecking a checkbox

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online-business-conversion-1This is all about testing your opt-in pages and increasing opt-in conversion.

I have an opt-in page for my weekly Star Power Half Hour webinar series. Conversion is pretty high because most people who get to the page were referred by one of the upcoming speakers, who is someone they know.

The opt-in page has a video in which I welcome people. I had it set to start automatically. It starts with some loud music–drums–and then I start speaking. Do you hate it when a video starts automatically? Do you sometimes immediately close the tab when that happens?

A couple of months ago, I looked at the conversion rate and it was 25%. Here’s how I figured out the conversion rate:

  1. I got the number of unique visits from Google Analytics for the previous 30 days
  2. I got the number of subscriptions in my email service for that list for the previous 30 days
  3. I divided the subscriptions by the visits to get the conversion rate.

For example, if 100 people visited the page and 25 people subscribed, my conversion rate would be 25%. In fact, that’s what the conversion rate was. (I don’t remember the exact numbers that got me to that conclusion.)

I wanted to increase the conversion rate and had a thought that the Auto-Play video might be turning people off. So I asked my Marketing Assistant to change that setting. You can see the Auto-Play setting in the above image. She just unchecked the checkbox.

The following month I did the same calculation and guess what? Read More

by Ellen Finkelstein

How to plan a profitable webinar

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ellen-webinar-headsetThis year, I’ve been doing a lot of speaking online and it’s mostly been about webinars. That’s because I’m so high on webinars as a tool for getting your word out to the world and also for selling products and services.

I’m sure you’ve attended many webinars and wondered how the entrepreneur got so many people to attend and to buy. Many 6- and 7-figure marketers make most of their money using webinars.

As usual, I have my own take on webinars…

One of the more difficult aspects of giving a webinar is the planning. So I’ve come up with a document to help you plan a profitable webinar, Ultimate Webinar Planning Worksheet.

[Tweet “Profitable webinars–it’s all in the planning. Get the Ultimate Webinar Planning Worksheet!”]

This worksheet will give you a step-by-step process to follow for each and every webinar.

Did you know that…

  • A good benchmark for when to start planning a webinar is 8 weeks in advance?
  • Unless you’re doing a webinar with one affiliate partner, you need a marketing plan?
  • If the product you’re selling isn’t an immediate download, you can create it later in the process?
  • You need to have the sales page for your product done and tested well in advance?
  • Follow-up after the webinar is key to increasing sales?

Download the Ultimate Webinar Planning Worksheet here, watch the brief video, and look over the worksheet. Write down any questions you have, because I’m planning  — guess what? — yup, a webinar — to answer your questions.

by Ellen Finkelstein

Create video social media posts in 5 minutes or less

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You probably know that social media posts with images are shared more than posts with just text.

According to this article in Hubspot, tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets. Also, posts on Facebook with photos saw the most engagement, accounting for 87% of total interactions.

But what about videos?

According to Moz.com’s recent analysis of 1 million posts, videos are more likely to be shared than any other type of post except for lists.

What if you could create 1-2 second videos — and you could create them in 5 minutes or less?

These are easy to create in PowerPoint — yet I don’t see anyone doing this. So far, I’ve used them just for birthday wishes, and received lots of positive “likes.” Now, I’m going to use them for business and I’m going show you how to create them, too! In fact, I’m going to make it REALLY easy for you by giving you templates.

1. Engagement post

The video you see above is a typical “engagement” post. It contains an image and a quote or question. The only difference is that it’s animated.

Here are the steps to create this from scratch. The steps will vary slightly depending on your version of PowerPoint. I’m using PowerPoint 2013. Read More

by Ellen Finkelstein

34 essential software, tools, and plug-ins I use for my online business

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When you have an online business, you collect software, tools, and plug-ins that make your business run more smoothly. Over the years, I’ve tried out a LOT of tools. I’m always trying something new and dropping something else.

When you first start out, the options can be overwhelming. In fact, even after you’ve been in business a while, that doesn’t change. It can be a BIG help to get recommendations from others.

In fact, I recommend that you don’t jump for each new “bright, shiny object” that comes out, even under the threat (and sometimes it seems like that)  that the price will go up. I’ve certainly bought products that I didn’t use. It’s better to wait and see what other people think of the software. Let them test for you–especially if it’s expensive!

If you have a question about specific software, ask in the Comments below. If I don’t know the answer, maybe someone else will read your question and be able to answer it!

Here’s my list. Read More

by Ellen Finkelstein

3 ways to increase visitor engagement

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online-business-increase-visitor-engagement-with-video-1If you follow the instructions in this post, you’ll learn more than you expected to, including my surprise when I found out something I didn’t know that kept people reading through my blog posts. (Hint: I do it in this one.)

You want more traffic, but you also want to keep readers on your website as long as possible. The longer they stay, the more chance there is that they’ll subscribe or buy.

But engagement is worth more than that. The search engines look at how long your visitors stay and rank you accordingly in search results. That’s because they think viewers will want to go to websites that others spend more time on. So the longer your visitors stay, the more traffic you’ll get.

What can you do to keep people on your website?

Of course, you should make your content useful and interesting. But people skim through posts pretty quickly. Here are 3 things you can do to keep people longer on your website:

  1. Include internal links to other pages on your website
  2. Include videos
  3. The surprise I didn’t know about until I finished writing this post!

1. How internal links help your traffic

When you link to other blog posts or pages on your website, visitors who click through stay on your website longer. As I mentioned above, the search engines like this and reward you by ranking you higher in searches.

Secret tip: You can multiply this effect by linking to your most popular posts. This works because these pages have content that people are searching for and are interested in, so people are more likely to click on links to them.

In my post, “Increase your website traffic with this simple technique,” I explain how to discover which pages get the most traffic. (And, as you see, I’m adding an internal link.) That page is also one of my posts that have the longest view time. Why? It has a video. (Read on.)

Watch this video to learn how to increase traffic by finding posts with the longest time spent on them. Read More

by Ellen Finkelstein