A bare-bones website won’t make much money. It’s like a single billboard. People might notice it as they drive by, but they have forgotten you 30 seconds later.
Your website is essential, but just like a billboard, it needs extra hitting power.
A unique design helps, but you need to purchase extra applications to make an impact and to grow your bottom line.
Banner Design Templates
Nobody sees the standard ads for affiliate products because they have become blind to ads they see on thousands of websites in their daily Internet browsing. You need ads that are unique to get through to prospects.
Banner design templates let you create animated GIFs in just a few minutes. Animations catch the user’s eye because they are new. You can use GIF banners to link to your own products and services, too, as well as in the occasional email and in your social media accounts.
If you do use banners that you have designed yourself, always ask the affiliate program administrators to approve them, so they don’t refuse to credit your commissions.
Content Delivery Network
You have lashed out hundreds of dollars on hosting, why would you need a content delivery network (CDN)?
Every second, every hundredth of a second counts. Faster websites make more sales, so you need every speed enhancement you can find.
A CDN loads a website faster because it saves your web pages on many servers around the globe, meaning the end-user is always closer to a server, so pages load more quickly, so fewer users abandon your site without buying.
Split Testing Tools
You need to be running split tests from Day 1. Every day you delay starting comparison A/B testing is profit you don’t earn.
Split testing apps mean you can set up a new test in five minutes, and you are much more likely to conduct more tests if you are using a low-stress environment.
Why bother if you are making a profit anyway? Would a 5% profit increase with each test interest you? If you run each test for two weeks, you could set up 26 comparisons a year. You might think that would give you 130% profit (26 x 5) which is okay by anyone’s standards.
In reality, each test builds on the success of the previous experiment, so the calculation isn’t 26 x 5, but rather 1.0526 = 3.555 (1.05 = a 5% increase). That’s 3.55 x your initial profit expectations. The 5% improvement on each test is a notional figure used to make the comparison meaningful; you could find higher or lower improvements from your tests.
Split testing drives profits, and the ROI on a premium app makes its purchase a no-brainer decision. There are scores of apps to choose from, ranging from free WP plugins to $300 per month.
Email Signup Link
A Google study in 2011 called The Zero Moment of Truth found you need eleven touches to make a sale online. How are you going to touch your buyer’s mind eleven times except by email? You can’t.
Capturing a prospect’s email address must be the first priority on your website. You aren’t going to make a sale the first time, so you need to hit users, again and again, to show them how you can solve their problems and convince them you are worthy of their trust.
With email marketing software, you get what you pay for. You have dozens of possibilities to choose from ranging from free to $100 a month or more. Take a few free trials and work out which application does everything you need it to do and has the shortest learning curve.
Analytics Tools
You need to know what your visitors do on your website, how long they stay and what interests them. Analytics tools give you this essential business information, and most are free. You can render down the raw data to extract invaluable information about your site visitors. However, learning to use Google Analytics to the full does take time. Luckily there are alternatives, some of which are simpler.
Executive Summary
It’s the EXTRAS on your website that generate the profit. All these apps have free versions or free trials. They are also available on a monthly subscription basis, which allows you to check the ROI of each tool for the cost of a low monthly subscription.