I’ve been tinkering with this idea for a few days now or, rather, it’s been tinkering with me, nagging away at the back of my mind as I drum out more products to my affiliate site in a zombie-like fashion. It occurs to me that I’ve never actually taken a step back and actually looked at my site from a user’s experience point of view. I’ve stepped back and assessed it in terms of site structure for seo, ease of use, how good it looks like it will convert, correct url structures and all that essential stuff…but I’ve never actually put my head in the position of the user and asked myself, “Do these products or prices look good?”
I seem to have simply assumed that if I built it, they would come – and they are, but they aren’t converting. I asked myself this question a couple of weeks ago in this post and I’m still asking it now. I guess I’ll keep asking it until I find an answer and until I find an answer, I’ll keep looking for reasons why and the latest one is that, quite simply, my offers aren’t good enough.
This has resulted in me over the last few days re-assessing my merchants and trying to find ones with better prices and better deals. One of the main changes coming out of this is that I’ve started to promote some offers via Amazon Associates on the new site. Amazon has a particularly good conversion rate but what I seem to have found is that there are a lot of 3rd party vendors on there using Amazon’s Marketplace to tout their wares at crazy knock down prices! Now amazon pay 4% on referred sales so the commission is less than my other merchants however it seems like in terms of offering value to my users that there is a real edge here.
I am now changing my ‘featured’ products on the new site from an expensive model to a best buy model. By that I mean I used to display all the high end items on the home page in order to generate a higher commission value but I’ve now shifted this strategy and will be going for an 80/20 mix on good deals/expensive ones.
Now that my mindset has shifted to a more customer-focused outlook that attempts to offer real value to customers rather than real cash in my pocket, I am hoping that this will have a positive effect on the conversions from the new site.
Is this the right approach?
March 4th, 2010 at 9:28 am
A very true article, and something so simple that us web people (designers/developers/affiliates) get so wrong so often. It’s about users and core actions of your users. It doesn’t make a shade of difference if your boss, friend, dad or dog like it if it’s not targetted at them.
It’s something clients are guilty of to in a traditional client relationship all to often. They believe all to often their users like what they like and act like they do. It’s seldom true.
Focusing on your users will certainly help you. SEO and site optimising will only get people to your products, it won’t make them buy them.
March 4th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
amazon pay 4% for 3rd party, really, might want to check your figures there
March 4th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Hi Bob,
I actually got that information only yesterday from the A4u forums. I have a classic amazon associates account and I was asking the guys over at the A4U forums how much they pay. If you know different, I’d be glad to hear it so I don’t get way too excited about my potential amazon earnings!
March 4th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Thanks, Pete! I’m pretty confident that taking the user’s perspective on things will make a difference. I have to really make sure that my site adds value for the user and currently, I don’t think I do that very well. I’m basically hurding people through to merchants (or trying to) without making sure that my merchants’ deals are the best out there. I have a feeling my users aren’t stupid….
March 9th, 2010 at 10:54 am
Wy ask at A4U – why not go straight to the horse’s mouth?!
“Your referral rate will be from 5% to 9% on items dispatched by Amazon and by third-party sellers.”
Straight from Amazon Associates!
March 10th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
@George – Those commission rates do not apply to me because I have a classic associates account which is 4% across the board.