I’m stumped. We’ve had 500 visitors to YouAreNotYourInbox.com, from a variety of sources, and under 1% purchase from people who find the product via that page.
This is what we call a “learning opportunity.”
If you have visited and decided not to buy, would you be willing to share your reasons? (If you would like to share them privately, mention that in your comment and when I moderate, I won’t make the comment public.)
Thank you!
As an online seller, I feel your pain. It starts out exciting to see so many people looking at your product, but when the actual sales don’t jive with that, it’s very deflating.
In my own personal circumstance, I’m saving up for it. My day job is at a public library, so pocket money is hard to come by. I like to bookmark things I’m saving up for and looking at them from time to time, so I’m guilty of artificial view inflation. I’m weird, though, so don’t mind me.
This is interesting. Immediately, when you mentioned 1% are converting, I thought of participation inequality theory, which says that online, about 90% of people will lurk, 9% will participate some (comment, etc.) and 1% will contribute and be active members etc. Now, that theory looks at people participating online in places like blogs, wikis, forums, etc. But I think there are some elements that may apply. If only 1% of people online care enough to participate, then how does that apply to only 1% of your traffic converting to a sale?
Looking at questions that arise from participation inequality, you can address the sales process with some of the same questions: What’s the barrier to entry for the process? (price, deliverability, etc.) What do I get out of the process? (a great audio book, but anything else?)
I may be way off base here, but just thought I’d share! Personally, I visited the site a few days ago, but I am not the type to drop more than $10 on books (print or audio), tools, etc., like this unless there’s a big value add. Then again, I may not be your target audience.
E-mail overload is frustrating to me, but not a huge pain point.
I would say a key issue here is that a lot of the people following your work and therefore the majority of of the first viewers to that page, have heard a lot of what this seems to be about already. There are your own words of wisdom in the Getting Things Done Guy podcast, there is Merlin Man’s Zero Inbox, and then finally the various other sources of time saving advice.
And all of them we’ve got free. So why should we pay $47 for 3 CDs of what we’ve already got access to for free?
Now I could be (and am most likely) wrong and this CD could be packed full of amazing tips and ideas that we’ve never heard before and that really will save us time and money. But that isn’t what comes across on the page.
Two other things to be fare are:
1) It may be that some people have visited and not purchased, but may well intend to purchase later.
2) Be aware that for the price you’re charging, you could have purchased one months subscription the David Allen’s GTD Connect service – which grants access to a whole lot more resources regarding GTD training. So be aware of your competition here.
Thank you for asking. I love you work, and I am sure “In-Box” is a worthwhile endeavor but most of what me to buy is already being said for free. Some of it by you. I can download a “how to set up Outlook” on David Allen for $15.00 and yet your price is far higher. I think the comment before this one explains this in detail, that I will not have to repeat.
Good Luck, and keep working the problem. For sure, you have much to offer!
Stever,
I’m a huge fan of your work and your podcast.
Don’t be too disappointed with your conversion rate. 1% to 2% conversion is standard. If you’re far below that, then it’s just telling you to optimize your site.
Some quick things I noticed:
* Your sales website doesn’t look like a sales website. It looks dated.
* It doesn’t clearly show me the BENEFITS of what I’m buying. It’s just a lot of text.
* The samples are great, but confusing to have to scroll through to get to.
* I’m on your newsletter, and you buried the announcement within a ton of other stuff. Too much information = people ignore it. I don’t know how many people you have on your list, but you could convert a sizable number of them (us?) if you wrote improved copy, offered more free samples, and optimized your site
Happy to chat about any of this if it helps.
Matthew has a point: the audience that knows about the site is already familiar with you and knows how to get much of that info for free. It seems to me you need to attract people who aren’t familiar with you.
How can people find your site? Where else can they hear about you? It seems you’ve got just the one page for the product: is it optimized for different kinds of buyers? If people aren’t sure if they’re ready to buy, how do you keep the conversation going once they surf away from the page?
Hey Stever,
I can’t wait to buy your book. I’m just too damn broke right now to afford it.
Between remodeling our laundry room and replacing all of the moldy flooring and getting a central HVAC system installed, I’m toast until pretty much the end of the year.
My wife is aware that Christmas will by skimpy, but at least she’ll be warm this year!
Here’s some thoughts. First, it’s one of those long LONG pages with a sales pitch every 20 lines. I’ve seen WAY too many of those – they always feel like a high-pressure, low-credibility sales techniques.
Second, my mental process is to compare a $47 product with your excellent $0 podcast. My guess is that if I just wait long enough, I’ll get all the CD content essentially for free. And I don’t have 3 hours to listen to CDs anyway, it’s easier for me to take things in smaller bite size chunks.
Third, I didn’t find anywhere on the page what I was supposed to get for my $47 – that doesn’t come until I go to the page to order it. Am I getting 10 minutes? 50 hours? A download? CDs? Personal phone calls from you?
My advice?
* Make the page more attractive, shorter, less overbearing – far fewer words
* Make it easier to buy it in smaller chunks
* Make it clear what I’m buying
* Get people referring/recommending this – bloggers, Amazon.com reviews, etc.
* and keep trying – online selling is not easy!
I agree with most of the other comments. I’d recommend:
1. redesigning the product page – modernizing both the sales approach, the text (less of it), and the look
2. consider breaking down the product into chunks that can be bought for lower prices. $47 is, as everyone else has said, a high price for a product where there are some free or lower cost competitors, including competing with your own free material. It may be easier to have an entry price of $10-$15, say, for some initial chunk and then upsell people from there – additional modules, brief consultations with you, written materials, etc. Often upselling can result in a higher average ticket for each buyer than selling a single-price product.
3. Research/reconsider the expectations for response rates. There are many situations where a .2% response rate is normative, so assuming that 1% or more is consistently achievable may be unrealistic, or may require hitting your target market very precisely.
4. Try all the analytics possible – even just using Google Analytics and Google Adwords can give lots of information about what works and does not work.
Best wishes!
Carl D summed up a lot of the same thoughts I had. No offense to your web designer, but the page layout (over 2 legal pages in length!) felt cheap/shady. Seven orange Buy Now messages? Why not make them also flash?
While I’m familiar with your work and think what you offer is valuable, I was a little shocked when I finally got to the price. After that type of page, I really expected “For Only $9.99 … but, wait! There’s more!” If you want to sell something for almost $50, your web page doesn’t need to scream $9.99.
I think a single page (no scrolling), more professional layout / design would be more appropriate. If there’s simply too much info you want to include, how about a “Click here for more information” link?
As others have said, $47 is way too expensive compared to the competition. I could buy the GTD book for less than $10 which comes highly recommended by top professionals and has a proven track record, or I could gamble $47 on something relatively unknown.
Plus, my inbox is fairly okay at the moment … apart from the spam. I think I need to spend the money on a piece of spam software rather than 3 CDs… sorry
I agree with the great suggestions others have said and would like to add a couple of thoughts.
First off what problem are you solving? The sales page has “Overcoming email overload” in small text which is easily missed.
Will your product save me time, money, stress, all of these things? Try creating a headline with more punch to it that entices me to read further.
There are a lot of distractions on the page and several links to navigate away from it which isn’t what you want. Tracking your users will tell you if people are hitting the sales page and going elsewhere.
You can use Google Website Optimizer to test different versions of your sales page and track conversion rates.
Good luck.
Stever,
I have found your podcasts to be witty and very useful.
I agree with the comments of the others that your pricing and packaging scheme are probably deterring buyers (it did for me). Breaking the content into three sections and fitting the must ‘news one can use’ into one CD (or even better make it available via an online content reseller like audible.com where I can use my monthly subscription to purchase), will improve sales.
Give away a free download of 2 or 3 tips (maybe 5 minutes). If they like it, they’ll come back for more.
The reason you need to do this is that these people haven’t ever experienced the feeling of inbox-zero. All they know is that they are totally overloaded all the time. They know right away that they don’t have time to listen to 3 hours of audio. Since they know they can’t invest the time, they won’t invest the money.
Be a pusher. Give them a free taste. Let them experience the benefits of 3 of your tips. Then wait for them to come back for more.
Paul
Selling CDs?
……………………
At 50$?
…………………….
How about selling a bunch of rocks so people can light-up a fire in the woods, to light up a torch so they can see what they’re typing on their computers?
Bad deal.
I like your podcast a lot. I will buy your print this fall. But CDs in 2008?
I agree with the other comments.
I for one have not bought a physical CD in years. It it was on iTunes or Amazon as a download i bet more people would buy it. And the price is way to high. If it cost $15 to $20 i bet you would have more sales. And finally it seems that you give most of the information away for free in your podcast. Why should we pay for something we can get for free?
If it was cheaper and more easily available more people would buy it just to support you.
Good Luck
Am finding 2 sets of comments intriguing:
“You’ll just give this away for free on your podcast if we listen long enough.” Er, no. I won’t. The material on the CDs only overlaps a small bit with my podcast.
“Way too expensive.” This is striking, because if you do the math, I can’t really make money on a $10-$20 product unless I sell so many of them I’d have to hire a marketing firm (which would then increase the # I need to sell by several thousand). It may be that mass-market priced products just aren’t feasible without distribution that reaches hundreds of thousands. How discouraging…
Thoughts on pricing – please, do not alter the price of the CD. I know, I myself exclaimed “50$ for a CD?”
I should have thought twice before selecting Send Message.
Quality comes at a price.
I understand very well the kind of work that needs to be done for a CD. I am doing audio production for 15 years now, to understand a lot at least about the audio part. How about the writing, the creativity?
You are right to ask 50$ for your work.
I’m wondering if you should relook at all the components of your pricing model. I produce a line of specialty DVD’s and find that the breakeven point is selling in the hundreds, not thousands – and therefore I’m wondering is any part of your production costs beyond industry norms? If so, can you reduce those costs, or conversely sell how the high production costs translates into value for the buyer?
Otherwise, I think that the basic math that potential buyers are doing is either to compare the cost to the comparable content delivered in book form (i.e., about $20-$25), or look at what it costs to duplicate a CD (a couple of dollars) plus the add-on value of the content – which values your content at $40+, which is a pretty tough sell vs. competing products – but might be doable if you market it to your loyal users given that your fan base seems solid.
In the final analysis it comes down to value delivered. High value delivered is quickly known to the marketplace and speads by word of mouth. If, and that’s a big if, you really have something that stands head and shoulders above the fray ( given the amount of over general mediocrity passing as business wisdom that isn’t such a great leap) your customers will be your champions. That’s what I have to remind people over and over. Ultimately there is no subertufuge. Its’ a “wisdom of crowds” game. Gold is gold, silver is silver, and aluminum is aluminum. And people quickly sense the difference. When the market resists on price, it is really resisting on quality, expressed as what you get at that price point. When a seminar leader is on fire and has a new perspective that can appeal to intuitives as well as rationalists, he’s soon turning away business. Or he’s booked solid. When a leader is talking to a half filled room, or finds his company begging for business, or offering too many discounts, he’s not telling his audience anything that will change their lives and they know it.
Perform this thought experiment. Assume that I had a piece of knowledge that could be presented in a seminar or on a CD. Assume that if you had access to that knowledge, there would be a 90% probability that you could make $1,000,000. within the space of two years with that knowledge. Would you be willing to pay $1,000 for that product ? Right now.
Alright, now perform the thought experiment of reversing that logic. IF a market evaluates a product as being worth $50, what do you estimate *their* belief about the 2 year payout to be ?
Hey Stever,
I’m not in marketing, but my understanding is that <1% isn’t unusual for the medium. As I recall, my fiance (with the Marketing background) said the response rate (on average) for direct advertising was about 1% will buy immediately, 1% later, 1% will enquire but never buy, and that with the net, rates are lower. It sounds like you’re on track.
Me personally? Hadn’t heard of it before running across your twitter post (and that is CLEVER, btw, nice use of the medium!), but when I look at it I think “hmm, neat. But I still haven’t found the time to go back to Stever’s 5 minute podcast, take notes, and TRULY implement it. I probably wouldn’t get around to doing this either.” (I do have a whole bunch of learning courses uncompleted. Darn this world and all it’s shiny knowledge! But I’m slowly shifting that and actually completing things here and there.)
I have implemented what I think are a few of your suggestions from the podcast. Definitely helpful. And yes, you clever minx, this will probably rattle around the back of my head of a while like a good advertisement should.
Mental note: calling a strange man “you clever minx” is probably not a wise thing to do before hitting submit.
Steve, I love your podcasts and I love your sense of humor! But your package doesn’t tell me how much time is on each CD, and even if it was filled to the brim with extremely great tips concerning emails would I even have time to listen to all three cd’s? Plus I have to agree with the other people and say that my budget couldn’t really justify paying $47 for tips on dealing just with emails. I know what you are trying to get across with your time saved on emails ($3000)vs $47 for the CDs but its too much compared to other business products. Usually books are more, CD’s less, and downloads even cheaper. If I were you I would drop the price, and have people download the audio files and pdf. the written stuff. If the CD package was smaller and cheaper, I bet I would buy them before the holiday season and give them as Holiday gifts to associates and clients! That would be great for me, my business and your businesss. I would especially love one with alot of the tips that have already been on your podcasts….
Steve, I didn’t buy your CDs because I don’t like CDs. The shipping tooks too long and is too expensive here to Switzerland. If I could download the CDs I would have buy more likely.
Hi Stever,
I took a look at this page because of your concern why people didn’t buy. I didn’t look with a view to buying, actually, but I thought my views might still help.
I have several ideas but will stick to just two…
(1) I think that people who are so busy that their inbox is a problem to them would feel that they could never find the time to read an audio book that spans 3 CDs – too much investment in time would be required.
(2) I think Steven Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is one of the most valuable books I’ve read. On iTunes it costs £5.95. $38 is simply too expensive. I guess it’s one of those sad facts of life that Steven Covey’s book is world famous and so the price can be much less than another potentially really useful book that is not world famous due simply to volume of sales.
Good luck with your books Stever. I listen to every one of your podcasts and recommend them almost every week to someone new.
Kind Regards
Steve