Shakespeare now comes in mp3's!

[Bizmaker1]

... Almost. It's just a test site.

Check it out!

http://audioshakespeare.weebly.com/

See my other post about mp3's to read the whole story.

Enjoy



ps. for my own clarification, does Google Analytics only gather data from people who have clicked on the AdWords ad or does it gather data from people who access the site in all possible ways? Osea, does posting a link here affect the "page view" numbers?

[4hourworkweak]

Haven't had a chance to look through your site properly yet, but I can help out with the analytics question.
Analytics tracks everything that comes to your site including, but not limited to, adwords. People clicking a link from these forums will show up as a page view/visit at analytics and will have the referrer 4hourworkweek.

Good luck! (By the way you have spelled Shakespeare wrong on your first page, second paragraph).

[Vacman]

Quick opinion:

"Because these are audio files and thus are easily downloaded and traded across the net, we cannot offer refunds. We would like to assume that everyone is honest, but frankly, there are people who request refunds and get away with a free audio files...not nice. This being said, however, rest assured that each recording is of the utmost quality just like our free sample available on the home page."

I think that refund policy is going to hurt you.

Everyone selling digital goods online assumes that risk, and the customer usually will not tolerate themselves taking all the risk.

From what I've seen with data is that if you offer a return policy you'll make more sales and make more profit than you would without a return policy.

Even if you still get returns.

That is along the same idea that Tim recommends in his book with the 110% money back offer.

You as the provider must take the risk FOR the customer.

That's common business practice these days and customers just won't have it any other way.

Good luck!
-Sean

[froldt]

Noticed a couple of errors on the "How it Works" page.

"roll" should be "role", in the first paragraph.
You need a comma after "Finally" in the fifth paragraph.
You forgot the "t" in script, in the 6th paragraph.

[Bizmaker1]

Thanks. Fixed.

[blackhatontherocks]

uber isn't exactly the word I'd expect when looking for SHAKESPEARE plays ;)

[Bizmaker1]

Shakespeare was a cool enough guy. He was hip; he can handle it.

[blackhatontherocks]

He definitely may have been. But you're target audience most proably is not.

Seriously, you're idea rocks. The design is kinda ok for a weebly template, will be good enough to run sales tests on it.

A few suggestions:
a) Get your own domain if you plan on using adwords. Google loves relevant ads, and relevancy is also achieved by putting your keywords into the shown display Url. Whenever you go for something that includes more than "audio" and "shakespeare", that won't be possible. Otherwise google will force you to rewrite your ads as soon as a human reviews your side.
b) While your design is kinda ok, the layout could use a littel work. The Welcome Spiel stuff would look better centered and right above or below the picture, and text links under or above your buttons to actually emphazise that they are clickable would help.
c) Too many pages - The more info part should be below the fold on your home page as the "how it works" section, and you should reiterate the call to action and give additional links at it's end. Less clickage where people could get lost is always a plus, especially in this case where the product and the tremendous value it delivers is completly obvious to the learning actor just by reading the feature description.
d) You're copy is sweet and to the point. Testing will show whether it's enough to get people buying, but chances are you'll do pretty good with little adjustments.
e) The second "Every part where Hamlet speaks" is a little misleading - you start with "every part where hamlet speaks" and basically follow up with "but without the hamlet" ;). After one readthrough, 5 minutes later I wasn't sure anymore which part advertised the "no hamlet lines" version and also whether you also offered a "hamlet but not the rest" version of the parts.
f) I'd also suggest you add an "reiteration of difficult passages" section to the plays, where hard to get passages are specifically adressed and help is given. As you will probably hire professional actors to do this, it's an easy 15 minutes extra for them, and a tremendous bonus and troubleshoot for your struggling buyership. Sounds great as a feature, at least in the twisted head of mine;)

Finally, The uber comment wasn't inteded as pun, it just doesn't seem suitable to a site selling recorded parts of plays to practising actors. It breaks immersion and context for someone who needs to be considered somewhat of an authority in this field of work (acting, shakespeare, audio recording, choice of and being well versed in words and language), brakes your chain of credibility.

Overall, a great muse Idea though, and thumbs up for rapid implementation.

[TimW]

uber isn't exactly the word I'd expect when looking for SHAKESPEARE plays ;)

what about Verily Most Über??

[Bizmaker1]

Reworked and this time, the language is more apt to the Shakespeare crowd. Before I was just being myself and saying whatwever happened to pop into my head.

Critiques please!

http://audioshakespeare.weebly.com

[blackhatontherocks]

Looks Great so far!
Only minor remarks - how this works is a little small probably, and the "1.: Buy" part reminds me a little too much of the fact that you're selling.

Maybe "Choose your audio" -> "Download instantly" -> "Start training today" would be a little less blunt force selling trauma ;)

[Bizmaker1]

Does anyone think it would hurt me to explain on the last page that it's a test site instead of saying something else business/technically related? Would it make people more likely to "let me know if they want to be contacted when the site is up" if I said something like "We're sorry we cannot offer our services at this time, as we are re-recording our files to serve you better, thanks."

[dvdwlsh]

Does anyone think it would hurt me to explain on the last page that it's a test site instead of saying something else business/technically related? Would it make people more likely to "let me know if they want to be contacted when the site is up" if I said something like "We're sorry we cannot offer our services at this time, as we are re-recording our files to serve you better, thanks."

The only people in the world that should know that you are testing a muse are those of us on the forum here. As a side-note, I would like to see this forum become private/password protected as I'm not keen on these threads showing up on Google search results. Though nothing we are doing is unethical, out of respect for our customers I'd prefer they not feel like we are using them as lab rats in our experiments.

Create your entire experience as if the product is in full existence and ready to be purchased. Only at the final stage should you inject your 'sorry, not available' segment. This ensures that, once you've validated your market and are ready to actually sell, the only thing you have to worry about is bringing your check-out process to life.

Act as if.

[blackhatontherocks]

What he said!

Even though I'm normally not up for "me too" posts, you can't stress the need to resemble a final site utmost perfectly to get decent testing results too much.

Rather go for a too low number of conversions and adjust your pricing and adwords ads to fit the risen costs (because people drop out that would normally buy due to missing ssl certificates, limited payment options, sub-par design of the checkout-page compared to your main site etc. pp.).

The key to minimising your startup costs is definitely .

[Bizmaker1]

Cool, thanks.

Also, Since testing, more and more of my keywords are becoming inactive all of a sudden, the minimum price now is $1/click when it used to be $.30

Answers?

[dvdwlsh]

...more and more of my keywords are becoming inactive all of a sudden, the minimum price now is $1/click when it used to be $.30

Decide which of your keyboards are too general and eliminate them. Otherwise, be willing to up your budget to get the keywords you need. Always put yourself in the mind of the prospect, even before they reach your site. For instance...

If someone searches for "Shakespeare" (and that term is far too general to be an effective keyword for you), they may be looking for any number of things. Plays, related films, study notes, information about Shakespeare himself, etc. So, even if they did see your ad, it's HIGHLY unlikely they will click it. If they do, that single click will be both costly to you (since the keyword's CPC is likely very expensive) and unlikely to result in a conversion.

On the other hand, for the keyphrase "Shakespeare script rehearsal", you clearly have a more relevant position. The phrase will cost less and likelihood of conversion will be higher.

[Bizmaker1]

i tightened up the search criteria and upped the cost on the few more expensive ones.

Out of curiosity, what is your click though rate for the AudioMixologist? What should I consider a solid number? I realize this could vary...

[blackhatontherocks]

everyything that makes you money, really. You should always have the occasional 1-3 % ctr kw's in your campaign, even if they don't get enough traffic to sustain a reasonable income.

Also, here's the link (http://fourhourworkweek.com/vBulletin/showpost.php?p=13875&postcount=13) to me rambling about the some factors regarding how google determines your click prices and the top3 things to avoid them jumping through the roof. If you don't have the time right now, this is the short version:

1) Get as close to one-kw-per-adgroup as you can reasonably can (and even going there *is* reasonable if you have found a few better kw's).

2) Overspent at first if you can afford it.

3) Always look at the whole package - Ads, keywords, landing pages. They all need to match, or google will slap you. If they do, however, your cpc tends to go down and your positions tend to go up over time.

4 - this wasn't covered in my other post in that much depth, so I fill that in here:

Always design ads with the following principle in mind:
Headline - Attention Getter, whatever works best, but not that good that you actually find people clicking just out of curiosity without a need to buy your product
First line - Product Benefits and features, can be mixed up with line 2
Second line - Bonus feature, but most importantly, a CLEAR call to action (and don't use the word free on anything which you recieve something of value in return for, even if it's just an email adress - so no "free reports" and stuff). You can start the call to action anywhere within the first 2 lines, but it usually only makes sense in certain cases to do so.

Within first and second line, it's vital to Include your keyword at least once.
Then repeat your keyword in the display url, and once you've moved to your own domain or separate landing pages per kw's or at least kw-groups, include kw in destination page as well.

IT's NOT that important to have your keyword in the Headline, though - it can help, but I've had 3 % ctr ads converting reasonbly well without having the keyword in the headline.

[Bizmaker1]

Alrighty, time for a little recap since I reworked the keywords...

I have two kw's (kw stands for keywords for those who didn't catch on, it took me a second haha) which are actually performing. One has a CTR of 5.55% the other is at 14.28%. The rest haven't done squat. So by your method, i need to create Ad groups for all of my ad variations but with only one keyword each, correct?

In other words (=osea in spanish), I should create (ideally) as many Ad groups as I have kw's and then simply use all the ad variations for each Ad group.

Because my overall CTR is about .03% and I assume Google will charge me more because overall with my one ad group the quality is terrible, yes?

If I split it up, it will ultimately lower costs on the best performing ads.

Part two:
On the final page where it says "oh can't sell out stuff right now," I have decent "sales" conversions according to Google Analytics but I also have an email box at the bottom of the page for people to say that they want to be contacted when the service is available, but no one has emailed me anything. I don't know what to make of this discrepancy.

(This is me partially talking out loud to understand everything). Help me if I'm wrong. I really appreciate having mentors here. Thanks guys.

[4hourworkweak]

Hi,

It's really coming along, and I think that the concept is excellent!

I would just like to say that you should be a bit careful about "Part two" of your post... I think that the "Sales" conversions might be off in Google analytics, because people will be clicking on the links to the plays without thinking that they are making an order.
I know I did this, just to see what was behind the "Hamlet" button.

I suggest following the method shown on the Audiomixology site, as it made the person input data and think they were going off to pay somewhere else. This would be a much more convincing sign that a sale would be completed.

Keep it up!

[Carlos]

Get a guarantee in there. Forget about the customer and think about YOU. How much would a guarantee cost you if you had a physical product that required shipping?

Now, how much would a guarantee cost you when your product is an mp3? NOTHING.

Also, this was an idea of mine. Did you get this from our bartending friend's muse like I did? Way to go on beating me to the punch. : P

[blackhatontherocks]

Alrighty, time for a little recap since I reworked the keywords...

I have two kw's (kw stands for keywords for those who didn't catch on, it took me a second haha) which are actually performing. One has a CTR of 5.55% the other is at 14.28%. The rest haven't done squat. So by your method, i need to create Ad groups for all of my ad variations but with only one keyword each, correct?

In other words (=osea in spanish), I should create (ideally) as many Ad groups as I have kw's and then simply use all the ad variations for each Ad group.

Because my overall CTR is about .03% and I assume Google will charge me more because overall with my one ad group the quality is terrible, yes?

If I split it up, it will ultimately lower costs on the best performing ads.

Part two:
On the final page where it says "oh can't sell out stuff right now," I have decent "sales" conversions according to Google Analytics but I also have an email box at the bottom of the page for people to say that they want to be contacted when the service is available, but no one has emailed me anything. I don't know what to make of this discrepancy.

(This is me partially talking out loud to understand everything). Help me if I'm wrong. I really appreciate having mentors here. Thanks guys.

1) Your CTR is extremly excellent, almost to good to be true. No offence, 5.5% is doable, I get it occasionaly (for a few days) on one or two of my main keywords, but then I'm pretty damn *good* with adwords either ;)

How much clicks in total do you get per day on this one, if I may ask, and is the keyword long-tail (as in, more than two words long)?

2) 1 kw per adgroup can be easily done with an excel spreadsheet and the adwords editor (spare yourself from the turmoil of trying this in the adwords website).

3) Phrase, exact and broad match of the same kw can normally be used together if ctrs on more than 20 clicks don't vary with more like 2 percent.

4) You NEED to get REAL ORDER TESTS. Make them add there data and payment info and then track the people hitting submit on that page. EVERYTHING ELSE is GUESSING.


Cheers,
Bhotr

[Bizmaker1]

4) You NEED to get REAL ORDER TESTS. Make them add there data and payment info and then track the people hitting submit on that page. EVERYTHING ELSE is GUESSING.


I've tried this before, but it's really hard to create a page where people feel like they are actually doing it for real when in fact it is only a test page. Securing the page, asking for credit card info, etc. is a huge challenge when it's all made up for testing purposes.

Do you have suggestions? Should I model the AudioMixologist page?

Also, how do you upload the Excel doc. into Adwords? I thought I read something somewhere at sometime about using Google's bulk ad campaign management tool or something...

Yes, I picked this up from our Bar-tending friend =)

[Carlos]

If it's hard to do, hire a professional. 150 bucks is a small price to pay to a) look more professional and get more sales and b) take the guesswork out of it so you can actually justify spending the money to make the product.

[blackhatontherocks]

You don't actually have to.

Secure order forms help, but most people go forward and put their stuff in anyway, even if it's not secure. You will get lower numbers, but you *will* get numbers, and those are low minimum estimates.

Googel "javascript forms" "or php forms" and "php actions". php order form scripts should also do the trick.

You'll find scripts for basic code for this.

dvdwlsh's approach will do for starters! His numbers won't be fully accurate but *mostly* accurate as people know the price already.

Hope you find something and start the real testing soon.

[dvdwlsh]

My sales numbers are not fully trustworthy for a few reasons...


Non-secure order page likely accounts for large number of drop-offs that would otherwise have converted. I have numerous visitors entering via Google ad, proceeding to Order page, then abandoning before ordering. These people are either curious to see the order page or skeptical of the subsequent lack of SSL.
I removed the payment info form from my test page to alleviate this. Now, more people convert from Order Page to Secure Checkout, but the fact that they haven't yet entered payment details makes the "sale" equally questionable.


All that to say, the more your test page can emulate perfectly the actual payment process, the more you can trust your numbers. I'll be working to make that the case for all future muse tests.

[Bizmaker1]

Well, I'm glad we're all running into this problem haha. It's comforting to know we're in the same boat.

With Weebly.com, you can enter in custom html code and it will sort it out for you and add it automatically to your site. I did this with the Google Analytics stuff.

I've learn a TON from doing this... next time will be 150% better and more efficiently done.