The guy with a 40.9% Click Thru Rate‏

What Perry Marshal Says.....

When most of us write Google ads, we quickly get stuck in
one or two ruts. We think we're testing 20 different ads but
really we're testing 2 different ads 10 times, only with slightly
different words.

Every time you bust yourself out of one of those ruts, your
checks get FATTER.

Best way to escape the rut: Get a swipe file.

Raiding your swipe file to test new Google ads is the
easiest $1,000-per-hour work I know of.

I've been keeping my own AdWords "Jet Stream" swipe file
for 3 years now. It's so precious, I only give it to
Roundtable Members and folks who come to 4 Man Intensives.

Markus Roman has been building an AdWords swipe file that's
10X bigger than mine, and he's been using more powerful
tools to do it. As a result he's got CTR's of 27.2%, 36.7%,
40.9%.

Killer AdWords ads work because they operate at the
*subconscious* level. They activate hard-wiring in your
brain and they're almost PRIMAL. Markus has primal
Google ads at AdWordsSwipeFile.com.

You should check out his sales page... even if you just do
it to steal some of the ads he's got in his exhibits. He's
got 10 ads on his sales page. His product has 1,000.

Remember: The #1 factor in raising your Quality Score is
still CTR. But you don't have to figure this out all by
yourself. Let Markus' examples culled from billions of
Google searches do the work for you:

http://www.AdWordsSwipeFile.com

I was going to mention.... when I was a young marketing pup,
the first thing my mentors taught me to do was build a
"Swipe File."

Wow, what a geeky concept. Collecting good specimens of
"junk mail."

Being an obedient estudiante, I did. My wife and friends
even started collecting stuff for me. "Perry I saw this an
immediately thought of you."

NICE. Soon I had an entire filing cabinet of letters and
ads!

Now I've got huge folders on my hard drive full of emails
and ads and web pages and all kinds o' cool stuff.

I've now added Markus's ingenious collection to my library.
I suggest you do the same:

http://www.AdWordsSwipeFile.com

Website Design for Customers

Yes, believe it or not, your website design should not concentrate on what you want or what you would like to see in your website, but it is about what your customers want from your website and its design. You can get website designers to make great looking website for yourself, however you cannot get customers to visit and re-visit your website just because you have got a great looking website or you cannot convert visitors in customers just because you have a great looking website design. Neither do you need a website that offers a lot of functionality if your customers don’t need that functionality. If you are selling flowers, the functionality your customers desire from your website will be different to the functionality available on a tyre manufacturer’s website. So in simple terms you need to develop a website design and functionality that your customers expect from your type of business.

What should I be aiming at?

Even before you go to a see a website designer to undertake website design for your business, I would recommend that you do your fieldwork.

It would be useful to understand:

• Who your audience is: This probably is the most important step before you go and see a website designer to develop a website for your company. You have to understand who your audience is. Try and estimate who are the people who would regularly come to my website?
• What does my audience expect: once you identify your audience, the next step is to understand what your audience expects from your website design? Understanding this will not only help you understand the path you should take with your website design, but will also help you explain your requirement to your website designer.
• What will bring my audience back: An important aspect of a good website design and a successful website is the ability to bring the visitors back. In marketing terms, it is like customer retention. For any business it is important to retain customer loyalty, similarly for any successful website, the ability to bring back your customers is paramount. Customer loyalty leads to increase in traffic. Look at some of the successful websites around you: amazon.com, Youtube, myspace. The success of these websites is an example of the power of customer retention and referrals. If you analyse the website design of these sites, it is fairly simple but it offers its visitors what they need: products and services that matter to their audience.

If you think through the above points, you will realise that a lot of information is already available to you (especially if you are an established business). Your website in many terms is an extension of your physical business. The above mentioned information should be available to you in terms of corporate knowledge. Talk to your sale people, look at your customer files and your sales pattern, try and source information from your suppliers. For a new business, it could include analysing your competitors.

In conclusion, I would remind you that try and understand your market before you undertake any part of website design or website development process. Without knowing your market you won’t be able to communicate your requirement to your website designer. It is important to go through this process before you start website development instead of re-inventing the loop after your have developed your website and realised after one year that you are not getting enough leverage from your web design. At the end of the day you will only achieve from your website design what you tell your website designer.

Article resource: http://www.sigmainfotech.com.au/articles/designforcustomers.html

Error 404 – Conceal It With Humor!

The message: “Sorry – The requested URL was not found on this server” is the most annoying statement that users encounter while surfing your site. This may be due to the web server’s inability to locate a specific link either because it’s a broken link or because the link address no longer exists.

You can convert the irritability of this error into smile. How? Simply by humoring it up a little. Below I’ve listed some of the funniest 404 errors, tactfully made by webmasters to retain their users smile and not let it turn into a frown. Check em’ out and try spicing up your 404 page with the same trick.