subster
Elite Member
- Apr 5, 2008
- 2,157
- 1,608
Hi there,
just wanted to hand out some hints how you can optimize your BSTs for more conversions
The Sales Graphic
Many sellers use fancy sales graphics for thread. They are indeed nice and I won't say that those are hurting your sales generally but very often they can decrease it instead of increasing it.
What is your customer looking for?
Eye Candies? No, not in the first place - In the first place he wants to see what he gets for his buck. As simple it is, as often it is overlooked. Fancy designs will give you many comments like "wohoo, great BST design" but will it convert? It some cases yes and it some cases no - there is nothing against a nice story about your service but it is overused hard this days. I saw BST designs talking 2/3 only about the marketing story instead of the service itself.
1. Use a headline that contains the main benefit of your service and that makes the potential customer ask himself, how the hell will they achieve this claims. This is what you want to answer first. If you use a story answer it within the story right away.
2. Use a prepayed throwaway mobile number in the top of your BST. User can call or text you to get questions asked. This is a massive trust builder, especially if you are a more unknown member.
3. Reduce the eye candy - in most cases it IS distracting. If I see a BST all about "The Dictator" - Movie it makes me think of which movie I will watch tonight to make me laugh, I wont think about buying a service.
4. Make it crystal clear what your service offers and what not. Check this 5 times before going live with it. Ask buyers you know if they'd have any questions. Don't let them ask YOU how many KWs the customers have, what kind of links you built and so on. Only a fraction of the members will ask if there is a question, the others are LOST SALES.
5. Make your USP crystal clear. The dubstep dmoz service for example is very unique and a great opportunity but read the comments, nobody checked what they get and what the hell has it to do with linkbuilding. I assume this kind of service could have 5-7 times more sales with an other BST design.
6. Clarify the option to skip out some steps. Example: If your service has a part that contains article or wiki links, I would immediately skip it. I dont want this links point to my site. Make it crystal clear, that every step of your setup can be skipped by choice.
7. We all want results. Sellers state almost always they have tested there methods. So there have to be some graphs to proof that. Post rankings graphs in your BSTs - this is a conversion booster - much more than any sexy eye candy your designer can do for you. If you have testing sites that you run your schemes on, provide an public rank tracker link (like serpfox or serpbook offer) where everybody can see the live results of your work. This will drive you sales like mad! (of course you wont use any keywords from public interest that would hurt a side business of you)
The Payment Procedure
DO NOT ask for sending money to your paypal email. This is NOT userfriendly and will cost you sales. Make the payment process as easy as possible and offer more methods then paypal.
Have a page to fill in the details, ask for the minimum of details for your work as mandatory fields (use at least woofu or something like that) and redirect the buyers after a confirmation to a success page - This is very important. Also be sure to let the site send out an automatic email confirmation with all the details the customer gave. This email should containt additional information:
1. Ask your customer to post a part of the transaction id to keep it for the records. This will help you stay organized but much more important it bumps your thread in new posts query and the BST section.
2. Tell your customer that you reward posting graphs of positive movements will gain them an extra (onpage seo, extra links, discount on another service, additional social votes to 1st tier properties. <- I love this one especially)
3. It could also upsell an ebook for a discounted price, discounts for other service that match with the one just bought or it can give the ebook for free to let your customers feel that they are valued.
The Discount Strategy
If you offer discounts make it wisely. Here are many many mistakes to be made. Many of you sellers just drop in the discounts without a strategy here and there from time to time. Of course they give a sales buzz, but what happens? If you don't offer them nobody will buy as everyone knows you just have to wait a few days for the next discount to come.
1. Review Copy Discounts: Offer a fix amount of discounts at the beginning saying clear that there will be no further discounts. Just don't give them everybody and make clear that you only give it people whom you trust that they will leave a review. State that you really want something back for your discount.
2. Fix Amount of discounts on a fixed date
Tell the customers that there will be a discount on DATE and state that will be the only date where you give this out. Also state that this discount will be available only for a X purchases. This way only the people who really can't afford your service will wait for the date, others that want your service will think "first waiting, and then I am too late, I just buy in now".
3. UPsell discounts / Customer loyality
You state clearly in the BST that you don't give out discounts, but for recurring purchases there will be a fix 20% for all future purchases.
4.The permanent discount strategy
Double the price of you actually want. Then give a permanent 50% discount, saying you don't know how long it will last. This way every buyer has the feeling of makeing
"a good deal".
Thread itself
Treat your thread like a baby and make it a best practice case for customer support. Also use this tricks
1. If a customer posts in your thread with a sig banner to another service, ask him friendly via PM to remove it for some extra link juice.
2. Be the 46th, 91th and so on... Why? Because BHW has 45 posts / page. So it is wise to repost your sales graphic always after that. Why again? Because you want your sales graphic on top on every page. This way you can show what you offer to users that find your thread by a search or so and landing on page 4 in your thread.
3. Show expertise. Take your time for your reply. Also wait for it for high traffic daytimes, because each of your replies bump your thread to the top of the new posts and bst sub forum. Before you answer a question, ask yourself "does this post proof my expertise?"
4. Thank every user that posts in your thread. This way you engage them to post in your thread regulary and keep it on top of new posts query and the bst sub forum.
How to handle negative reviews
1. Thank the customers that make a negative review with constructive critique inside. No need for ranting or beeing a blatant arrogant seller. Thank him for pointing out the downside and tell the people how you improve the service to come over it.
2. If haters or competitors post: Ask them friendly for details of their concern and what they would like to see. If they are just ranting for the ranting, everyone sees it. This way you can tell him that there are two sides of the medal and you can go from each other accepting you have two different standpoints.
3. Reviews with neg graphs: Ask him for allowance to analyze his site to uncover the downsides. If you find other links from other services state that in the thread, as it is known as the most common reason for penalties here. Tell him that you are willing to help, but he has to publically post that he will stop his BST shopping spree as it worsens the situation and makes it impossible to help for you.
Bonus Tip:
If the nature of your service can really provide it, specialize on kind of sites. For example: I never saw a niche specific BST here on BHW, a thread for e-commerce SEO, special SEO for quick rankings for seasonal sites, MNS sites. You have to know this clients and your BST should confirm the usual wishes of them, so they feel right with your service. This will take the broad reaches, but will gain you loyal long time customers and grab almost every buy-ready customer of this niche.
So this are my thoughts on BST optimizing - drop your thoughts and additions. And better invest in banner ads here on BHW for your thread then in stickys - I totally overlook them in BST area and I am sure you do too, arent you?
just wanted to hand out some hints how you can optimize your BSTs for more conversions
The Sales Graphic
Many sellers use fancy sales graphics for thread. They are indeed nice and I won't say that those are hurting your sales generally but very often they can decrease it instead of increasing it.
What is your customer looking for?
Eye Candies? No, not in the first place - In the first place he wants to see what he gets for his buck. As simple it is, as often it is overlooked. Fancy designs will give you many comments like "wohoo, great BST design" but will it convert? It some cases yes and it some cases no - there is nothing against a nice story about your service but it is overused hard this days. I saw BST designs talking 2/3 only about the marketing story instead of the service itself.
1. Use a headline that contains the main benefit of your service and that makes the potential customer ask himself, how the hell will they achieve this claims. This is what you want to answer first. If you use a story answer it within the story right away.
2. Use a prepayed throwaway mobile number in the top of your BST. User can call or text you to get questions asked. This is a massive trust builder, especially if you are a more unknown member.
3. Reduce the eye candy - in most cases it IS distracting. If I see a BST all about "The Dictator" - Movie it makes me think of which movie I will watch tonight to make me laugh, I wont think about buying a service.
4. Make it crystal clear what your service offers and what not. Check this 5 times before going live with it. Ask buyers you know if they'd have any questions. Don't let them ask YOU how many KWs the customers have, what kind of links you built and so on. Only a fraction of the members will ask if there is a question, the others are LOST SALES.
5. Make your USP crystal clear. The dubstep dmoz service for example is very unique and a great opportunity but read the comments, nobody checked what they get and what the hell has it to do with linkbuilding. I assume this kind of service could have 5-7 times more sales with an other BST design.
6. Clarify the option to skip out some steps. Example: If your service has a part that contains article or wiki links, I would immediately skip it. I dont want this links point to my site. Make it crystal clear, that every step of your setup can be skipped by choice.
7. We all want results. Sellers state almost always they have tested there methods. So there have to be some graphs to proof that. Post rankings graphs in your BSTs - this is a conversion booster - much more than any sexy eye candy your designer can do for you. If you have testing sites that you run your schemes on, provide an public rank tracker link (like serpfox or serpbook offer) where everybody can see the live results of your work. This will drive you sales like mad! (of course you wont use any keywords from public interest that would hurt a side business of you)
The Payment Procedure
DO NOT ask for sending money to your paypal email. This is NOT userfriendly and will cost you sales. Make the payment process as easy as possible and offer more methods then paypal.
Have a page to fill in the details, ask for the minimum of details for your work as mandatory fields (use at least woofu or something like that) and redirect the buyers after a confirmation to a success page - This is very important. Also be sure to let the site send out an automatic email confirmation with all the details the customer gave. This email should containt additional information:
1. Ask your customer to post a part of the transaction id to keep it for the records. This will help you stay organized but much more important it bumps your thread in new posts query and the BST section.
2. Tell your customer that you reward posting graphs of positive movements will gain them an extra (onpage seo, extra links, discount on another service, additional social votes to 1st tier properties. <- I love this one especially)
3. It could also upsell an ebook for a discounted price, discounts for other service that match with the one just bought or it can give the ebook for free to let your customers feel that they are valued.
The Discount Strategy
If you offer discounts make it wisely. Here are many many mistakes to be made. Many of you sellers just drop in the discounts without a strategy here and there from time to time. Of course they give a sales buzz, but what happens? If you don't offer them nobody will buy as everyone knows you just have to wait a few days for the next discount to come.
1. Review Copy Discounts: Offer a fix amount of discounts at the beginning saying clear that there will be no further discounts. Just don't give them everybody and make clear that you only give it people whom you trust that they will leave a review. State that you really want something back for your discount.
2. Fix Amount of discounts on a fixed date
Tell the customers that there will be a discount on DATE and state that will be the only date where you give this out. Also state that this discount will be available only for a X purchases. This way only the people who really can't afford your service will wait for the date, others that want your service will think "first waiting, and then I am too late, I just buy in now".
3. UPsell discounts / Customer loyality
You state clearly in the BST that you don't give out discounts, but for recurring purchases there will be a fix 20% for all future purchases.
4.The permanent discount strategy
Double the price of you actually want. Then give a permanent 50% discount, saying you don't know how long it will last. This way every buyer has the feeling of makeing
"a good deal".
Thread itself
Treat your thread like a baby and make it a best practice case for customer support. Also use this tricks
1. If a customer posts in your thread with a sig banner to another service, ask him friendly via PM to remove it for some extra link juice.
2. Be the 46th, 91th and so on... Why? Because BHW has 45 posts / page. So it is wise to repost your sales graphic always after that. Why again? Because you want your sales graphic on top on every page. This way you can show what you offer to users that find your thread by a search or so and landing on page 4 in your thread.
3. Show expertise. Take your time for your reply. Also wait for it for high traffic daytimes, because each of your replies bump your thread to the top of the new posts and bst sub forum. Before you answer a question, ask yourself "does this post proof my expertise?"
4. Thank every user that posts in your thread. This way you engage them to post in your thread regulary and keep it on top of new posts query and the bst sub forum.
How to handle negative reviews
1. Thank the customers that make a negative review with constructive critique inside. No need for ranting or beeing a blatant arrogant seller. Thank him for pointing out the downside and tell the people how you improve the service to come over it.
2. If haters or competitors post: Ask them friendly for details of their concern and what they would like to see. If they are just ranting for the ranting, everyone sees it. This way you can tell him that there are two sides of the medal and you can go from each other accepting you have two different standpoints.
3. Reviews with neg graphs: Ask him for allowance to analyze his site to uncover the downsides. If you find other links from other services state that in the thread, as it is known as the most common reason for penalties here. Tell him that you are willing to help, but he has to publically post that he will stop his BST shopping spree as it worsens the situation and makes it impossible to help for you.
Bonus Tip:
If the nature of your service can really provide it, specialize on kind of sites. For example: I never saw a niche specific BST here on BHW, a thread for e-commerce SEO, special SEO for quick rankings for seasonal sites, MNS sites. You have to know this clients and your BST should confirm the usual wishes of them, so they feel right with your service. This will take the broad reaches, but will gain you loyal long time customers and grab almost every buy-ready customer of this niche.
So this are my thoughts on BST optimizing - drop your thoughts and additions. And better invest in banner ads here on BHW for your thread then in stickys - I totally overlook them in BST area and I am sure you do too, arent you?
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