William Charlwood

A clever tool is about to be launched that addresses one of the biggest problems faced by online marketers - keeping people on your site until they have taken an action that is profitable.

If you think about it, most (but not all) people on your site will either

• click a link on your site (which is presumably what you want otherwise why have a link there in the first place?)
  or
• hit the Back Button.

So what could we do about people hitting the Back button?

One technique which is frankly bordering on the unethical is to disable the back button! Bad, bad, absolutely terrible practice. Don’t even think about it any more.

But what if you could spot when someone is about to click the Back button and do something that will stop them in their tracks and make them think again?

It can be done. It has been done.

Look at this example.

TrafficRegenerator

It’s neat. It’s powerful. It’s clever. It’s also amusing!

You may hate it. You may love it. But it works.

Here’s a quick, cheap and simple way of doing some online market research.

Suppose I want to sell widgets (they seem to be quite popular after all) then should I stock red, green, blue, and yellow widgets or just red ones? Which widget is most popular?

What I can do is set up an AdWords ad promoting my widgets and then run a campaign using the keywords “red widgets”, “green widgets”, “blue widgets” and “yellow widgets”.

After a while, I’ll start to get three sorts of data back from Google.

First, I’ll see how many searches there were for each keyword and in general the number of searches done relates to the market interest. So if more people search for red widgets than blue widgets, I’ll know that there is more interest in red widgets.

Second, I’ll see which keywords generate the most traffic which will give me a better idea about the potential demand for my widgets: people who click on ads are more likely to be interested in buying widgets than people who just search for the things, especially if I include the word “free” as a negative keyword in my campaign.

Finally, I’ll start to see where my ads rank for each keyword which, if I’ve set the bid prices to the same level for all my keywords, will tell me some interesting things about what my competition is doing.

For example, if the keyword “red widget” causes my ad to rank lower than for the keyword “green widget” then assuming my competitors are smart, it is likely that red widgets are more popular and profitable.

What should I do about this? Stock red ones.

If you are thinking of opening a store selling branded goods such as motorbikes, a quick bit of market research like this can tell you which brand to run with: Honda, Harley, BMW etc. You clearly need to take into account local factors here and that is something you can also do with Google.

There’s a hidden world out there on the internet that consists of people making money online automatically by getting traffic to websites they own where they promote either their own products which are available for immediate download after payment, or by promoting other people’s products on a commission basis. I should know: I’m one of them.

The tricks of the trade for us are rarely used by “real” businesses for whom the internet is still in commercial terms a bit of a mystery. Too many businesses have built a site that no one visits, or got visitors to a site which no one buys from.

And the worst howler: a website where some wretched and inappropriate Flash animation, courtesy of an egocentric web design who does simply because he can, means that even keen, enthusiastic visitors have to struggle with their patience before getting to the content he or she is after: INFORMATION.

Think about your website from the point of view of someone who might actually want to do business with you. Don’t put unecessary barriers in their way. The test is not whether they go away and think “hey, that was a cool site”. The test is whether they stay and spend money.

That’s the one that matters.