helpers

Feb

2011

Delayed Widgets

Update: The sale is now LIVE and is currently $17.00.

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This Friday I’ll be releasing a new plugin called “Delayed Widgets”.

What it does is modify ALL of your existing widgets by inserting a timer delay in seconds to the bottom of every one. When the delay is reached, the widget reveals itself by “unfolding” itself in the sidebar.

“Why?” I hear you ask…

Well, consider this.

I’ve said this before – one of the biggest problems for a marketer is getting and retaining attention from site visitors. Anything you can do without being too “in your face” (and driving them away) is going to be a benefit to you.

By careful use of widgets that remain hidden until the right moment, you can improve your chances of a subscription, or a sale, or whatever it is you want your visitors to do on that particular page.

This is because the human eye is drawn to movement.

To perfectly illustrate this, a few moments ago before I sat down to write, I was gazing out of the back of the house when a bird I hadn’t seen took off from one of the bushes.

My attention was instantly on it. It’s as if my conscious mind had no choice than to look at it.

If the bird had remained unmoving, I simply wouldn’t have noticed it.

As marketers, we can turn this peculiarity of the human eye and brain to our advantage.

For example, if you take a look at the top of this blog, you’ll see that my main subscriber sign up box (in the sidebar top right) reveals itself a few seconds after the rest of the page has been drawn.

Me doing this now makes it impossible for any visitor not to notice it. 😉

Even if they don’t act on it, they have surely seen it and it’s in their awareness as is the offer. All done without a pop-up.

Even better is that you can do this with ANY widget you want particular attention focussed on.

So say you’re running a promotion as an affiliate and you have a time sensitive ad that you want people to see more than anything. If you just run it as a “regular” ad on your blog, it doesn’t matter how pretty it is, there’s a good chance it isn’t going to be noticed.

But if the visitors landing page draws itself, and then a few seconds later your ad appears in the sidebar, it WILL be seen.

This new plugin improves your chances of the stuff you WANT to be seen to actually BE seen by modifying all your existing widgets.

This coming Friday (18th Feb) at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST), the Delayed Widgets plugin will go on sale at a starting price of $10.00 for the first 50 sales.

-Frank Haywood

Jan

2011

Sales Helper Plugins

Update: The sale is now LIVE and is currently $15.00 for the next TWO sales.

Sales from 101 onwards will be $27.00 until the products are officially released later this week.

***

Tomorrow (Tuesday 1st February – already!) I’ll be running a PRE-ORDER sale for two really cool little plugins.

The first one allows you to add a special offer to your sidebar that counts down, expires and disappears. It’s cookie driven and won’t re-appear if the visitor refreshes the page (unless you want it to).

I’ve wanted something like this myself for a long time as more than once when visiting other sites, I’ve been tempted by seeing a little countdown timer and eventually just HAD to click it before the time runs out to find out more before it’s too late.

Curiousity is a powerful emotion to deal with, and I’ve always figured if it works so well on me then it will work really well on other people too. Including your visitors… 😉

The second plugin has been designed directly to enhance your sales copy.

Consider this.

There are two types of people that hit your sales pages. The readers and the skimmers.

What I do is I tend to read the headline, read the first sentence, scroll to the bullets, then skip to the price. I may then read some more copy if it looks interesting enough. Occasionally I’ll go back and read all the sales copy.

Sometimes I just jump right to the bottom to read the PSes. (Did you know that your second PS should contain your most important message?)

I *may* then also decide to watch a video if I think I need to know a little more before I buy, but videos are always low on my personal priority list. That’s just me.

Talking to other marketers, it looks like my behaviour is fairly typical. Some people prefer to watch a video, but of the group who prefer sales copy, I’m right in there as Mr Average. 😉

And… Someone I know is a mad tester. He reckons that his best performing sales copy consists of little more than a headline, bullet points and testimonials, but also says it depends on the product being sold.

When I stopped to have a think about this, the bullet points angle probably makes a lot of sense as bulleted info allows you to absorb all the key points very quickly. So people who get turned off by vast amounts of sales copy are okay with that method.

But I always find I want to know more detail before I commit to a purchase.

And that’s where the idea for this plugin came from.

What it allows you to do is create short, snappy bullet style sales copy which lets people do what they like best – skim – and absorb the key points very quickly.

If they need to know more about each point, then they can just click it and it unfolds to reveal more detailed copy about that particular point.

This method actually has a double benefit and puts both you and your visitor in control.

Your visitor has a chance to happily skim your sales page very quickly because you’ve nicely bulleted it all out for them.

And because each block of revealed sales copy is specific detail about the point in question, they’re the ones making the decision to view it.

This is really important because what you’re doing is engaging your visitor, and drawing them into the message you’re trying to convey to them.

And… Because the block of revealed sales copy is much smaller than a full page, they’re very likely to read all of that section, then repeat the process for other bullet points, and eventually read the whole of your sales copy.

All in small chunks.

This plugin increases your chances that a visitor to your site will give you ALL their attention.

Okay?

So this pre-order bundle gives you a plugin that drives people to your offer, and also a plugin that improves your ability to make the sale once they’re there.

The plugins are in test now, and they *may* be available tomorrow, but it’s much more likely that they’ll be ready on Friday hence this pre-order sale.

When they’re ready, then just like the Clone and Backup plugin I’ll be adding them directly to the affiliate scheme at full price and sold individually.

Tomorrow (1st Feb) at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST), you’ll be able to get both plugins for the price of one, with a starting price of $10.00 for the first 50 sales.

-Frank Haywood

P.S. Speaking of Clone and Backup, we’ll be releasing the new version tomorrow if it gets through test today, and then the sales page and affiliate scheme for it will go live. 😉

Hopefully there’s a surprise unadvertised bonus to go with the plugin, IF it all works out okay…

P.P.S. The WordPress Sales Page Template Pack is now at $15.00 for the next THIRTEEN copies as I write this.
http://www.frankhaywood.com/wordpress-sales-page-template-pack-3/