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Conversion, unnelig and websites
Mar. 16th, 2018 10:31 am I went down the rabbit hole and dug into the world of selling online workshops and books. Learned a lot, and I thought these observations might be handy.
When you have an online product, everything on your website is aimed at having people buy it. the book, the course, the online workshop, the online class. Doesn't really matter what it is, everything is focussed on getting as many people on your website (traffic), to have as many people as you can sign up for your newsletter (Opt-in) in order to draw them to your special sales page (Landing page), filled with ten elements that will convince them to buy (funnel).
I understand why they build sites this way. But when I tried to adjust my website it just made me sad. Because:
1. This focus on selling makes ugly websites. Like the ugly MOFO kind. I like pretty things. And my focus audience (women between 16-106) can appreciate some prettiness as well. It feels like this whole selling technique is invented by men and aimed at a mainly male target audience.
2. As a dancer, I have to sell my image in order to atract gigs and students. But online selling aims at selling a product. Those two don't work well together. A website can do one of those things, but not both at the same time with the same intensity.
3. This whole landing page thing.... I have multiple products that I want to display on my website. But according to the internet sales guru's I also have to make landing pages for each. Plus opt-in forms, and floating loghtboxes, and add testimonials and a 100% money back guarantee.That's an awful lot of work for a relative target market. There are 18 million Dutch people, and I suspect 0.01% is interested in belly dance, That's roughly 2000 people.
Now that I do the math, I am amazed that I sold 200 copies of my costuming book. Or sold it at all!
After working on the site for a couple of hours yesterday I gave up. usually creating new stuff on my website makes me happy, but this just made me very, very sad. The straw that broke the camel's back was when someone wrote 'sliders and carrousels suck because they don't lead to conversions'. I like sliders and carrousels (the images on the front page of a website that can change, like a small slideshow). I love sliders. I think they are awesome. And I believe other dancers or students looking for classes appreciate them as well.
Go away, evil internet sales gurus!
When you have an online product, everything on your website is aimed at having people buy it. the book, the course, the online workshop, the online class. Doesn't really matter what it is, everything is focussed on getting as many people on your website (traffic), to have as many people as you can sign up for your newsletter (Opt-in) in order to draw them to your special sales page (Landing page), filled with ten elements that will convince them to buy (funnel).
I understand why they build sites this way. But when I tried to adjust my website it just made me sad. Because:
1. This focus on selling makes ugly websites. Like the ugly MOFO kind. I like pretty things. And my focus audience (women between 16-106) can appreciate some prettiness as well. It feels like this whole selling technique is invented by men and aimed at a mainly male target audience.
2. As a dancer, I have to sell my image in order to atract gigs and students. But online selling aims at selling a product. Those two don't work well together. A website can do one of those things, but not both at the same time with the same intensity.
3. This whole landing page thing.... I have multiple products that I want to display on my website. But according to the internet sales guru's I also have to make landing pages for each. Plus opt-in forms, and floating loghtboxes, and add testimonials and a 100% money back guarantee.That's an awful lot of work for a relative target market. There are 18 million Dutch people, and I suspect 0.01% is interested in belly dance, That's roughly 2000 people.
Now that I do the math, I am amazed that I sold 200 copies of my costuming book. Or sold it at all!
After working on the site for a couple of hours yesterday I gave up. usually creating new stuff on my website makes me happy, but this just made me very, very sad. The straw that broke the camel's back was when someone wrote 'sliders and carrousels suck because they don't lead to conversions'. I like sliders and carrousels (the images on the front page of a website that can change, like a small slideshow). I love sliders. I think they are awesome. And I believe other dancers or students looking for classes appreciate them as well.
Go away, evil internet sales gurus!
