Merchants Gizmos Work!
For the past couple of years now, one particular merchant has lead the way when it comes to Christmas creative, ingenious new ways of promotion and providing tool-sets for affiliates to easily and quickly integrate into their websites. Those in the UK will most probably guess that I’m talking about Prezzybox (available on Paid On Results and Affiliate Window).
Earlier this year, after noticing my Christmas website was appearing naturally in 1st place on Google and other search engines for popular phrases and terms, I actually shifted my butt and implemented a very simple website and made use of the Prezzybox gift finder. I must admit, I wasn’t expecting anything to happen but have been pleasantly surprised as to how well these widgets, gadgets and plug-ins perform.
All I did was copy and paste a piece of code from POR onto my homepage and left it alone to see what, if anything, happened. Below is a comparison of the effect it has had on sales for Prezzybox. We are not talking millions of pounds worth of business, but look at the increase that has been obtained just by adding a simple tool provided by the merchant. Remember in 2006 my Christmas site was attracting the same level of visitors, but I wasn’t making use of any Gift Finder tool;
October / November 2006 – Prezzybox sales = £379.95
October / November 2007 – Prezzybox sales = £2726.93
The lessons I have learned is simply this: My visitors do not work in the same way I do.
I personally never use these gift finders as I usually know what to buy for people, and being a bloke in his early (yes early!) 30’s I am pretty much up to date on the latest, useless, must have gadgets. However learning this the hard way is a valuable lesson when considering what to include on your website. No longer will I think “Nahhh it won’t work on my website”, in future I will put aside my own personal opinion as it counts for nothing, and give new marketing opportunities a chance and let the results talk for themselves.
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Hi Chris
Nice work, just seen your site as first result for a christmas search.
Site doesn’t render so well in firefox BTW but maybe you know that already.
Cheers
John C
Chris, would it be rude to ask how many visits the site had in order to generate that level of business? In broad terms, anyway – dozens, hundreds or thousands a day/month?
I, too, see the borked front page for the Christmas site in Firefox, with the PrezzyBox widget on top of the main body content. Had a look at your code and nothing jumps out – thought at first it might have been the nested divs, which could be simplified a bit, but that all seems to work and I don’t see any obvious bits of rogue CSS slopping around either. Maybe it’s the PrezzyBox include itself causing it – I spent forever and a day trying in vain to stop a lastminute one destroying the layout on MyBrilliantWeekend.com before eventually giving up and picking a different one that worked.
Chris, it’s great to hear that I’m not the only one who has suffered from that belief that everyone must shop exactly the same as me. I’ve found implementing some strategies that would make no difference to how I would shop actually have a huge impact on others. Lesson learned!
Nice post Frostie. I’ve not been one to look at these widgets in the past but I think it’s time to change that.
Which gadget did you use Chris?
Mally
I’ve used two, and due to the lack of tracking I implement, I can’t really say which one is generating the sales.
Take a look at http://www.xmaselves.co.uk and you will see on the left side, a dynamic product banner, but also on the homepage is a GIFT FINDER. I suspect it is the latter that is generating the sales.
By the way, the site looks pants unless viewed in IE7 – something to get sorted for Christmas 2008