Want return visitors, got to provide fresh stuff. I’m guilty. Been busy working on content and other things and failed to see the mold growing on my site that hadn’t changed much since the relaunch in early 2010. Wow how time flies when you are having so much fun!

This week I’ve been in the learning cave. I joined Marketing Profs, bought the PRO membership, which offers a heck of deal for $300. You get tons of awesome learning from webinars to premium content. I tuned in this week to the seven deadly sins of landing pages. Presented by Tim Ash, a guru in website conversion. It was well worth the entire annual fee. I learned so much about what matters if you are looking for action on your website. In addition to the seven sins which you don’t want to commit, I learned about a very cool free tool that Tim’s company offers. It’s called Attentionwizard.com. It’s basically a heatmap of your site and it’s FREE. This is way worth checking out. Just send them a jpeg of your landing page and they show you where the eyeballs are going. And what I learned about our site was the focus was not directed to our desired call to action.

That’s going to change. I just sent a bunch of tweaks to my web designer, so you you get some fresh stuff and no stale website from Oddpodz. Infact, after the webinar, I’ve decided to freshen our homepage look monthly, like a hot fashion boutique that moves around merchandise often.

The big take-aways from the MarketingProfs webinar by Tim Ash were:

1) Make  sure your call to action is clear and pops out!

2) Don’t have too many choices for your readers, it wears them down

3) Don’t ask them for too much info, it’s not needed and you will loose em fast.

4) Watch the amount of text you dish out, too much will give you a headache.

5) Don’t make a promise you can’t keep

6) Watch the visual distractions that blur your message

7) Always include evidence of credibility, media coverage, partners other kudos

It didn’t stop there. I’ve also enrolled in the Clay Collins Pre-launch Formula mentor program, which also totally rocks. It’s a three month class that focuses on how to build and launch digital products. It covers product development, list building, video marketing, conversion, SEO and so much more. The content is great, but the bonus is how he delivers and organizes it with video modules, downloadable PDFs and a weekly call in session with other students for an incredibly low price of $1500 and change that you can pay out in three months. I can’t share everything in this blog, cause that just would not be right. But here’s two of top take-aways and I’ve not even finished the class.

  • Did you know that blogs generally only convert 5% to opt-ins.
  • And landing pages can deliver up to 50% in opt-ins. This is where your focus should be.
  • Asking for too much info in your opt-in form will loose your sign ups faster than the hotels and guest with bedbugs.
  • And while SEO is great, however, it’s not the life raft unless you are already sailing in some pretty big winds.
  • Joint venture partners are sweeter than honey. In the program you learn how to find them and attract them.
  • If you use WordPress you can set up many pings in the backend that will help spread your content while you are sleeping.

With in the next couple weeks, you’ll see some changes to our site and I will report back on how they impacted our list building, product sales and traffic.

Stay tuned.