Testing, Testing, Testing…

There are days when you get this “brilliant” idea. It glows in your head, it keeps you up all night (because you know those flashes of brilliance always come just as you’re laying down to go to sleep, right?!), it seems like the perfect solution to some or all of the problems you’ve been having.

You get up the next day (after having fallen asleep finally an hour or two before the little one comes screaming in that it’s morning), and you put it into action. You put the pieces together. You work your ass off. Your idea is now IMPLEMENTED! WOOT!

You sit at your computer watching the numbers… whatever numbers it is you’re expecting from the new plan, whether it’s sales, or signups, or pageviews ~ the numbers you’re looking for don’t really matter. You’re looking!

Then a day passes, and you don’t get the results you expected. Then 2 days pass, and those numbers still haven’t moved. Well.. the internet takes time… but you see all the things are there that should be moving your number and it still ain’t budged!

What do you do now?

1. Throw your hands up in disgust.

2. Give yourself a good ass kicking about how another of your brilliant plans has flopped miserably.

3. Walk away from your computer discouraged and positive that internet marketing just doesn’t work for you.

4. Test and tweak your brilliant idea.

You know the answer is #4 right?! Of course it’s number 4, all the others are silly and unproductive, so don’t even let yourself go there.

Where is this coming from?

You know my brilliant idea to put the popup domination plugin on my easy chicken recipe site. My faith that I would begin to see sign ups and then sell to them via my list instead of on the site.

well… not so much.

Over the last week that site has had around 250 visits, and not one sign up through the pop up box. I did get some sign ups when I offered the cookbook via twitter, but that’s it.

Time to go back to the thinking board.

Here’s where my thoughts went, the problem solving I did, and the solution I’ve come up with.

1. Most people are coming from the search engine looking for a very specific recipe. They aren’t looking for a bunch of recipes at that moment, but do want the recipe they are looking for.

2. This niche is irritated by/doesn’t understand pop ups

3. This niche is overwhelmed/un nerved by the pop up.

4. the pop up takes them away from what they’re looking for, and they get thrown back to the front page once they’ve signed up. (they don’t know this, but I do and it bugs me)

5. maybe they would be more receptive to a free cookbook after they’ve gotten the recipe they came looking for.

Possible tweaks:

1. put the opt in box (noticeable, pretty opt in box) in the sidebar.

2. put the opt in box (noticeable, pretty box) at the bottom of each recipe post.

3. don’t use the name form in the opt in box and see if that makes a difference (I hear it does)

4. get an ebook cover for the book done so I can feature the ebook more than them giving their names.

That’s all I’ve got now… my brain will continue to mull this over as time goes on.

For today…

I’m going to pull the pop up. I’m going to add the opt in box to the sidebar, and the bottom of each post, and let it go for a week and see what the numbers are.

Lesson…

Even the most brilliant ideas may sometimes flop, but that doesn’t mean they won’t work. It just means they don’t work as they are right now.

Do you have a brilliant idea that didn’t work? How could you rethink it, brainstorm around it and tweak it to see if it might work in another incarnation? I’d love to hear, tell me all about it below.