So What?

Maybe you want to find out how people are using a new landing page you built for your Adwords campaign or you have built a fancy new sidebar navigation for your website. Without tracking where people are clicking around on your website you wont know if your users have the same vision as you do. I find without using heatmaps you spend your time guessing what will work. Why guess?

What do you want me to do?

Go sign-up for an account at CrazyEgg.com. Its free and allows for quite a bit of testing without having to upgrade to one of their paid models. They ask you to drop a javascript code, much like the one from Google Analytics, into your html so they can track where people are clicking. Start up a quick test for 100 clicks and you will see what I’m talking about. Plus once the test is done they will email you to let you know. Really, this is a set and forget thing. Although its pretty addicting to check it often to see how the stats play out.

Once the test is done you can review all the different types of stats. By default it shows what links people have clicked on and how many time they clicked on it. It can even tell you what kind of traffic clicked on the link. Of course there is the heatmap itself which breaks down where peoples click patterns are. This is important to see where your website has peoples eyes and mouse going. Then you can better optmize the site so people are clicking on what you think are the most important items. The newest addition to CrazyEgg is the confetti system, which is a dot break down of exact click points on the site. Very handy and fun to look at.

Go try heatmaps on something small. A landing page or a small singular page on your site. Takes 5 minutes and is worth learning how to do and understand.

oohEmbed.com is a web service which acts as an API for grabbing information from various media websites. When I say media, I’m referring to YouTube videos, Flickr images and things like Amazon products. I was on the hunt for a method to give my users from an automotive website the ability to add videos to their comments without having to make things complex. Everyone knows its easy to mess up an embed code and have this hodge podge of code in someones comment or post. oohEmbed solves this through the usage of oEmbed and the API’s from the various media giants who have made it possible for us to easily access their information.

How do you call this information? Through the oohEmbed.com url schema. Tack on your media URL to the end of oohembed.com url.:

http://oohembed.com/oohembed/?url=http%3A//www.amazon.com/Myths-Innovation-Scott-Berkun/dp/0596527055/

Here is the kind of raw information oohEmbed outputs:

{
“type”: “photo”,
“version”: “1.0″,
“provider_name”: “Amazon Product Image”,
“url”: “http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31%2BfVjL2nqL.jpg”,
“height”: “500″,
“width”: “317″,
“thumbnail_url”: “http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31%2BfVjL2nqL._SL75_.jpg”,
“thumbnail_height”: “75″,
“thumbnail_width”: “48″,
“asin”: “0596527055″,
“title”: “The Myths of Innovation”,
“author_name”: “Scott Berkun”,
“author_url”: “http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%3FASIN=0596527055%26location=/Myths-Innovation-Scott-Berkun/dp/0596527055″
}

Here is my simple and quick PHP method for accessing oohEmbed and making use of their API structure (with a few comments to explain whats going on):

//Simple function to get the contents from the oohEmbed API.
function oohembedURL($u){
return @file_get_contents(’http://oohembed.com/oohembed/?url=’.$u);
}

//$content is whatever you get your content from. Wordpress/Joomla/Drupal, however you can process the raw content before it is visually shown. For Wordpress you use $get_the_content();.

$content = $get_the_content();

//Check my $content variable for any type of url
preg_match_all(’>http://([\w+?\.\w+])+([a-zA-Z0-9\~\!\@\#\$\%\^\&\*\(\)_\-\=\+\\\/\?\.\:\;\'\,]*)?>’, $content, $matches);
//Grabs the first URL in the content. If there were more than one you do this part differently to process them all, but we’re just focusing on one.
$url = $matches[0][0];

//Run the $url through the oohembedURL function
$ooh = oohembedURL($url);

//if $ooh is empty then we leave the $content variable alone. This is caused by a 404 error from oohEmbed.com when an invalid url is run through the service.
if( !$ooh ){
$newContent = $content;
} else { //else we break up the content and find what in my case is the video embed code.
//explode the API return
$explode = explode(’,', $ooh);

foreach ($explode as $phrase){
//if the $phrase includes “html”: ” then set it to the $embed variable.
if (strstr($phrase, ‘”html”: “‘)) $embed = $phrase;
if(isset($embed)) break;
}

foreach ($explode as $phrase){
//if the $phrase includes “html”:”(there are slightly different embed returns based on what service it comes from) then set it to the $embed2 variable.
if (strstr($phrase, ‘”html”:”‘)) $embed2 = $phrase;
if(isset($embed2)) break;
}

//if no $embed2 variable input the embedding code into the $content
if( !$embed2 ){
//remove the “html”: ” from the string.
$embed = str_replace(’”html”: “‘, ”, $embed);

//trim off the quote from the right side of the string
$embed = rtrim($embed, ‘”‘);

//replace the video url for the new embedded code.
$newContent = str_replace($url, $embed, $content);
}else{ //else if $embed2 exists use this process
//Remove the “html”:” from the string.
$embed2 = str_replace(’”html”:”‘, ”, $embed2);

//Removed the ending quote from the string.
$embed2 = rtrim($embed2, ‘”‘);

//Replace the link in the $content with the new embedding code.
$newContent = str_replace($url, $embed2, $content);
}
//Remove any extra slashes, if any.
$newContent = stripslashes($newContent);
}

oohEmbed caters to a healthy list of media sites. For a full list visit their website under the ‘configuration’ heading. So far the service has been flawless. I have not put it through any excessive traffic loads, but I’m sure it can handle it, as the app is hosted through Google App Engine. My only qualm so far with the service is the minor inconsistancy I have experienced in the format the API information is returned in. Otherwise this is an excellent addition to any website and adds more functionality for the users.

pic by: yoz-u

The friendly and helpful interaction with people can really go a long way in developing your personal brand online and offline. When you start a one on one dialogue with someone new or old you have the chance to directly interact and impact their lives. In the process this can benefit you in more ways than you may have initially thought.

1. More traffic

The time you spend to develop a relationship with someone new pays off in dividends, especially when you help them. Lets say for instance you helped one person through a coding issue. This new person you personally interacted with is likely to come back and see what you are doing on your website more often than the normal user. They are also more likely to recommend you/your website to a friend. Of course everything here hinges on you accomplishing the task they want to get done.

2. Meet new people

You are building a relationship. This new person now has talked to you on a personal level and knows you more than the average user. Meeting new people can lead to many things down the road, but the sheer greatness of meeting them is enough to keep you helping and being friendly for a long time.

3. Build up a reputation

Even if you did not figure out the solution to the persons problem, you are still more likely to have a good reputation with them. When most people get a one on one interaction with a friendly and genuinely helpful person they feel taken care of. This feeling is not one you get everyday. The reputation you develop can solidfy your position in your niche very quickly as THE person everyone needs to meet and interact with.

4. Lead to better opportunities/partnerships

You never know who exactly you are helping or who they may know. These random interactions with your users can lead to greater opportunities on future projects or possibly partnerships. Although the later is something you earn and generally is not given. Some other opportunities can be the users writing about your blog and helpfulness, allowing you to do a guest post, linking to your website and the list goes on.

5. Feel better about yourself

Last and certainly the greatest reason of all.  At the end of everything you feel good because you just got the chance to positively impact someone else’s life. You can have the worst day ever and in the end when you look back and you helped someone else achieve a positive result, you just had the best day ever.

Try this out and help one person a week with whatever you can. Be it through forums, comments on a blog or just through email. You will end everyday feeling good about the results you are achieving. It will show through almost everything you do.

To start, I’m sure anyone reading this from the US has seen an infomercial for P90X(the program in the image above). If you haven’t it is Beachbody’s most successful product to date. The reason is the content. Beachbody produce exceptional content and I know because I have had the chance to check it out. So its not some scammy infomercial you’re watching, its the real deal if you stick with it. How it achieved this level of success was due in part to the efforts from Beachbody’s marketing department.

I was not paying attention to their products prior to P90Xs’ launch, although I have started to see some steam building up for the launch of their newest product, Insanity. If you checked out the link, you can see Beachbody is taking the pre-launch campaign online and using a basic list building page to gather emails from people interested in Insanity. This is a two pronged approach. First you get to build a solid list of people who want to buy your product and second you now have a list of people who you can cross promote products to and further increase your revenue per email gathered. The way they gather those emails isnt using some lengthy sales letter, rather real content from their products to help sell the user and build trust in the product making them to see more from this series. Simple as that.

We have covered their pre-launch campaign. Lets talk about the campaign during the life of the product, which for P90X is still going. They have taken TV slots by storm. If you happen to be in the US and its either early morning or late at night you can catch one of their 30 minute infomercials covering every aspect of the product. Their infomercials cover the workout and how it works. It talks about how they offer a nutritian plan to help you even further, a nice bonus on the already packed dvd set, and you get workbooks, yet another bonus. So they give you plenty of reasons to buy, but they pack on even more. The show off actual testimonials of people who has used the product and had great results. So ok, we know the infomercials are dead on.

The web presence is just as good. Selling the product in the same mannor. The website has much more of a sales letter approach. Yet it still has its own special style. Not the same vertically five page long sell on the product. They show you what you get along with a variety of tesitmonials from people who have used it. They provide ample opportunities for you to buy.

Ok they have the customer at the pre-sale and now the actual sale. Most infomercial based products quit after this. After actually watching an entire P90X video you can see how they bring it to another level. Throughout all the video routines they suggest buying and using their upsell products, like supplement vitamins and energy drinks. Which I have no problems with and I’m sure works great. Immediately after each video they show their nutritional specialist talking about how good the drinks and vitamins are for the user, further gaining their trust.

The customer now buys the product and probably has bought at least one upsell. What else is left? Why not joining their free/monthly recurring(depending on what choice you make) program where the customer can interact with the people who make the programs the customer buy and use. For the month recurring revenue they give the customer plenty of personalized options. While the customer is now most likely made it through the DVD’s and is ready for more, they can join the ‘Coach’ program. Coaching, which gives the customer an opportunity to make their own coaching website and sell the Beachbody products to make a profit for themselves. The coaching program completes the circle of making the customer a business partner. I see no faults in the entire marketing process. It is solid from start to finish. I’m sure as new DVD’s come out they will promote the Teambeachbody.com area more.

From the moment you even hear about a product from Beachbody to the time you buy a product and use it, they are constantly in touch with you in every way they can be. They dont do it in a horribly pushy or in a rude way. Their products are geniune and work. Take some time and study how this company keeps building on their already big 300 million dollar a year business. You will find new ways to market your own products, whether they are digital or physical. This company is the best example of selling I have seen yet.

Getting Real runs down all aspects of starting the business of running a web app in the minds of the folks behind the creation of 37 Signals web apps. You get the chance to see the break down of the thought process. From the development of the idea of the site and how to effectively build out an idea and refine it into something worth working on. Then you get other aspect like team building and how to choose the right people for the job. There are various tips on how to build up the brand of your web app and what kinds of realities to expect when actually building one up.

The format of the book is new to me, because they use very simple paragraphs to explain the idea and then feedback from respected people in the industry to backup those ideas. The nice thing is this book presents you with real life examples of important things in a way you can easily digest.

I read this book a month or two ago and the information has stuck with me. I will most likely re-read this book again soon, as it is free to read online, since I will be developing a new web app soon. Take a day or even a week and sit down to read this book. You will be glad you did.

Social networks

Building up a brand on social networks is the first thing everyone thinks about when they get started online these days and for good reason. Social networks bring us together directly with the people in our niche. There is no better way to feel out your marketplace, than to talk directly to someone in it. Which social networks do you use? All of them. If you haven’t done so already, register your business/your name with every social network out there. Its free and only takes a few minutes. This will save you heartache later when someone else is squatting on your name.

Video

Video became an invaluable branding tool when YouTube was created. Video used to be costly to implement and most people couldn’t watch your movies without having to find some obscure codec. Now there are countless video networks. Webcams are built into most laptops and it costs maybe $30 to go out and grab one at the store. Which means anyone can start building their brand through videos. When I talk about building your brand, I do not mean go and try to make some fancy commercial, I mean turn on the webcam and virtually interact with your audience. It means giving them something of value or teaching them a new technique/method for the niche. Video also means they can see your facial expressions and understand your words on a whole new level.

Personal Blog

Like the one you’re visiting right now! Now building your own personal brand through a blog has been made the easiest thing to do. You can start through any of the hosted blogging solutions like wordpress, blogger or tumblr. You don’t even need a hosting account anymore. I do suggest if you have the money to spend, to at least buy your own domain name and use it to direct to your hosted blog.

Blogging on other sites

Contribute articles and blog posts to other sites inside AND outside of your niche. This is a great way to expand your brand and notariety. Users will start to recognize your name in places you hadnt expected before.

Forums

Contribute your knowledge to forums and usergroups. This also can apply to IRC, if you’re brave enough. Forums are a much more longer term way to establish your brand online, but if you choose the right forums to contribute to, it can really pay off.

To Round it Out

The idea overall for building a brand online is to stay involved and interactive with yours/your businesses user base. This ties in with all your market efforts directly. It is vital you spend almost more time building your brand and presence online than you do building up your product or whatever it is you are trying to sell.

A white label is basically a company which provides a service you can ’skin’ to make look like your own. The benefit is they take the bandwidth, upkeep and development side of things. You are left to make it look like your own service and hit the ground rolling.

I was looking for something to easily integrate into my shopping cart. HasOffers.com does not do this, although it offers easy integration solution through 1px images and link variables. The nice thing is they simplified the templating process. With a few minutes you can have your own logo and coloring branded throughout your personal affiliate site. The ease of use is very web2.0 in nature. Everything can be navigated through without any problems and the process of managing your affiliates is done without any hassell.

Admin Panel – Preview

Overall the navigation of the affiliate panel is easy to do and the setup from registration to launch can probably be done within one hour. I will be testing the usefulness of HasOffers.com against another affiliate program over the coming weeks and have a better idea of what will be successful in affiliate marketing. Right now, I will say, if you want a free affiliate software solution, get HasOffers.com. If you want more of everything and the ability to fully integrate it with your own site, then get a paid solution. For a product which is currently free, I can safely say it is excellent.

I will confess, I was extremely late to the whole PHP framework game. This was my very first attempt at developing an extremely small site using a framework. I needed something to test it out on, so I used it on a clients site. Coming from a self taught PHP/mySQL background, I am used to having to figure things out for myself. Apparently of all the PHP framworks, CodeIgniter has one of the higher learning curves. CodeIgniter comes paired with an amazing user guide, which saved me many many hours of searching Google for solutions.

My first client site using CodeIgniter was a simple four page site with an admin panel to manage photos. Overall building the site, from start to finish, it took me roughly 16 hours to make it. Of those 16 hours, I probably spent 10 reading documentation and getting a feel for the framework. One of the joys of a framework is almost all your everyday functions are already coded into it. The only thing holding you back from making anything you want is knowing exactly what each module can do. This is where the excellent documentation comes in to play.

Another factor for my choice of learning CodeIgniter is how it was crafted with security and speed in mind. Ellislab took the time to make sure CodeIgniter’s built in functions were as absolutely secure as possible. They also took the time to optimize the code and reduce the load on a server. Not like my first four page site was going to need heaps of security or was going to be getting millions of hits a day. In fact I think it recieves roughly 15 hits a day, so its not a big client by any means.

Now after having made the first site, I can see easily cranking out web apps in the fastest possible time with CodeIgniter. I am very impressed with the framework overall. I instantly saw the benefits when working on client projects and building custom web apps. I have since used CodeIgniter on a few more projects and it has been invalueble. The biggest benefit of CodeIgniter is the speed in which you develop and launch a web app. I highly recommend it as a first framework for anyone brave enough to jump right into the mix and get their hands dirty.

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Take the oldest post and make it the newest post if there has not been a new post in 24 hours, thereby changing the order on home page and other lists. The number of hours may be adjusted with a simple edit. This should only be activated after you have multiple posts on the website. Updated for wordpress 2.7.

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1. Write Your Copy Fast

Chances are if you spend a bunch of time writing the first draft of your copy it will be bloated and messy. Sit down in a place where you can concentrate and focus, then write the whole thing out in one shot. Every time I have done this I find my copy is filled with good content right from the start and I get to the point of what I’m saying right away.

2. Drop Adjectives to Get Good Content

In a chronological order of sorts, I will take this time to ditch all the adjectives in my copy. Chances there is a better way to describe what it is you need to say. I am always surprised at how many adjectives I will fill my first draft with.

3. Use Action Verbs

This tip coincides with the previous one in a sense. While going through content and ditching adjectives find relative action-verbs to help spice up your copy. For example: BAD: ‘Johnny vigorously chopped the cherry tree’, GOOD: ‘Johnny demolished the cherry tree’. If you’re stuck on what words to use, grab a thesaurus. Your thesaurus is your best friend when writing copy.

4. Sell Benefits Not Features

All too often I see people selling features of a product, instead when they need to be selling benefits. If you have trouble discerning whats a benefit or a feature, then ask yourself ‘What does this product do for the customer?’. Is it good for the customer because its big and fast and heavy OR is it going to save the customer time and money and allow them to live forever.

5. Create the Atmosphere of Problem and Solution

When you find yourself going through your copy again, check to see if you have accurately setup a situation of a problem and how you are offering a solution. Do effectively do this step you will need to already have an active pulse on your market and know what they need. You can also take this time to actively credentialize yourself as the ‘Go To’ guy for this particular problem.

6. Bad Words

No I am not talking about curse words. The problem here is to look out for word which can interpreted in more than one way. If it can be interpreted in more than one way, do not use it. Again, break out the thesaurus.

7. Every Word Matters

Every single word in your copy matters. This is something you are using to sell a product. Make it every single word is going to help sell and make you more money.

8. Trouble Words

I personally try to steer clear of this list of words when ever possible. In most cases it will help create a fuller and richer piece of copy.

• that
• could
• would
• should
• so
• but
• finally
• automatically
• reveals

9. Rewrite

Never stick with the very first rough draft of your copy. Send it out to friends or co-workers to have them review it. Plus this allots you personal time away from your work. You can come back to the copy with some fresh eyes and some new ideas.

End

My tips here are not the end all, by any means. Its meerly a stepping stone to having better copy. I highly suggest going out and finding a few books/video/audio on copywriting or taking a formal class in it.

What are your thoughts? Did I miss anything? or Do you have any extra tips for anyone else?