This is excerpted from Do the Web Write (which I wrote), and shows the awesome power of website conversion. Truthfully, raising your website conversion rate even one to two percentage points can be huge for your business.

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A client once came to me and wanted me to help him write a few Google Adword ads – he wanted to bring more traffic to his site and increase business (he sold financial products). A quick chat about his site revealed that he already had exceptional traffic – he was getting close to 1,000 visits a day from interested prospects (he advertised heavily on Google.)

He was getting perhaps 10 inquiries a day, meaning he was converting at 1%. His goal was to get 20 inquiries a day, so he figured that if he increased his advertising enough to bring in 2,000 interested prospects, he’d reach that goal.

I looked over his site and recognized right away that I could help him by not increasing advertising, but by increasing conversion – his site was not very well-written, nor was it user friendly. So I told him “why not try and get more out of the traffic you already have?” We talked, and he agreed with my assessment and hired me.

I wrote up a quick plan for what to do: the first step was to change the page order a little, and get the most important information clicked on first. The second was to change the copy. Under my direction, he had his web designer do the first part, and then I rewrote perhaps 4 pages of copy. Then he put up the new site and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long – from the very first day, with the same amount of traffic he always had, he started getting 30+ inquiries. This kept up consistently for weeks, and then months. All told, his new conversion rate jumped to 3.5% – I more than tripled his business.

But here’s the really neat part – had he upped his advertising to raise business, he’d be paying increased advertising fees month after month after month.  But because I instead used the traffic he currently had, he instead had a ZERO increase in advertising.

Now, some of you may be saying “That’s great, Dan, but he had to pay YOU”. And yes, this is true. But my total fee was less than one month of increased advertising. So after the first month, that part becomes irrelevant. But it gets better – based on how much he makes from a sale, I actually paid for myself in one week. After that, it was pure gravy.

And here’s ONE MORE “even neater” part: This new conversion rate (3.5%) will almost certainly hold true even if he DOES decide to eventually increase advertising (as he obviously was willing to do before I changed things.) So he could feasibly be getting 3.5% on 2,000 visits if he so chose. ANOTHER doubling of business.

Nice little story, huh? And trust me, things like this happen all the time. Conversion is that powerful.

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To buy a copy of Do the Web Write, visit it’s page here on my website.

Tell me you’re not grinning… (I can’t get this stupid blogger to embed the video… just click it – you won’t be sorry. Very safe for work.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yon2YuXssvo

Contractor vs. employee… which is which?

This is something that I’ve been thinking about, because I’ve been on both sides of the contractor equation. Years ago, every now and again I was hired as a contractor copywriter by companies, and I’ve hired contract copywriters from time to time to help with overflow (sadly, there hasn’t been much overflow the last year.)

Anyway, there’s always a lot of confusion with this. I admit, earlier, I didn’t know the rules either. It wasn’t until an audit by New York State that I knew the rules. So to help out, here’s the criteria, in general terms, of what separates a contractor from an employee:

1) Contractors set the pay rate.
2) Contractors set the timeframe.
3) Contractors do the job the way they wish to do it.
4) Contractors set the days and hours they work.

This is interesting in the copywriting business (and other “creative” type online/computer businesses), because, in general terms, companies that troll Craigslist (etc) looking for freelancers usually have a (low) rate of pay and fairly strict deadlines. Now I do understand that sometimes deadlines must be set – I’ve told people “I really need this in a week – is that do-able?” But in the end, it has to be the contractor’s call. And I’ve learned to let people who do work for me set the rate, too.

The above is usually an unwelcome surprise to many entrepreneurs / small companies, because they want the best of both worlds – the control of an employee, and the ease of working with a contractor (no taxes/workman’s comp/etc). I admit – that seems attractive to someone just starting out. Hire a person as an “independent contractor”, yet treat them like an employee. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t hire a contractor, and then insist they come in 5 days a week, 9-5. If you want to do that, then what you have is an employee. Here’s the IRS page on the subject

The easiest way to think about this is hiring a contractor for your home – you hire them, but they set the pay, and they come when they wish. And if it rains, oh well, they may not show.

Or, look at it this way – you hire a contractor to do a specific (often one-time) job, and you hire an employee to fill a position.

Hope this helps someone, and keeps them from making a mistake. You can get burned really bad if you do this wrong.