A recent study found that 65% of online shop­pers are “win­dow shop­pers,” and take on aver­age up to 33 hours to make a pur­chase — often over secu­rity concerns.

Some inter­est­ing find­ings show that most peo­ple who aban­don their shop­ping carts don’t do so permanently.

They tend to return within the first day to com­plete their pur­chase, likely after they had a chance to shop around, review their secu­rity, or prac­tice some due diligence.

Accord­ing to WebProNews who reported on the study, “65% of all shop­pers will wait a day or more to com­plete a pur­chase.” The most notable find­ing was the idea that just increas­ing secu­rity and buyer con­fi­dence can increase con­ver­sion by 11%.

Inter­est­ing, yes. But far from surprising.

In fact, I often tell my clients and stu­dents that, in order to boost sales, you should be a “con­ver­sion con­trar­ian.” In other words, don’t focus on increas­ing con­ver­sions. Not at first, any­way. Instead, you should focus on decreas­ing some­thing else…

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Part of my job as a copy­writer is com­ing up with names. A while ago, I wrote a blog post on the power of names. I won’t repeat it here, except to reit­er­ate that brand­ing, albeit not a pri­or­ity for most, is still incred­i­bly important.

And it’s some­thing you mustn’t ignore.

Why? Because choos­ing a name for your busi­ness or prod­uct, even your domain name, is often the sin­gle, most impor­tant busi­ness deci­sion you’ll ever make.

To that end, let me share with you some nam­ing tips. In my expe­ri­ence, I have five char­ac­ter­is­tics of great brand names, which I call the five “S’s.” I encour­age you to fol­low when try­ing to come up with a solid, long-​​lasting, and highly prof­itable name.

For starters, let me point out that the best names are rel­a­tively short, easy to pro­nounce, and easy to remem­ber. They have con­sid­er­able mnemonic value.

And mnemonic value often trans­lates into finan­cial value.

A mnemonic is a device — such as a word, sym­bol, or sound — intended to assist in recall. If a name car­ries some mnemonic value, it will increase traf­fic, sales, and value to your busi­ness on its own. The more mnemonic a name is, the more valu­able it is.

There are var­i­ous rea­sons for this.

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In prac­ti­cally every major mar­ket­ing teach­ing, course, or sem­i­nar I’ve come across, I have found that almost all suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing on the Inter­net really boils down to two essen­tial fac­tors: traf­fic and con­ver­sion.

Sim­ply put, vis­i­tors and sales.

In fact, I’ve been to two-​​day Inter­net mar­ket­ing sem­i­nars and work­shops, where the first day focused on gen­er­at­ing traf­fic and the sec­ond day on build­ing sales.

That’s all well and good. How­ever, I believe there’s one more key com­po­nent. It’s one that’s grow­ing not only in pop­u­lar­ity, but also in need and impor­tance. It’s the one fac­tor on which the other two hinge. And it’s one that seems to be the least talked about.

In my career, I’ve seen the proof again and again. If you incor­po­rate this third ele­ment into your busi­ness model, chances are you’re going to see sub­stan­tial, con­tin­u­ous growth in your busi­ness — with a lot less effort than you’ve orig­i­nally thought possible.

What is it? What is this third, miss­ing element?

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I recently merged my library with my blog. I had mul­ti­ple resources, books and tele­sem­i­nar record­ings on var­i­ous sites, but decided to con­sol­i­date them all and add them to my blog.

Rea­son? The fact that these resources are no longer as scat­tered makes them eas­ier to find and fol­low. If you want to book­mark these pages or even tell oth­ers about them, please do!

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Pre­am­ble: In response to some excel­lent rebut­tals as well as count­less com­ments I’ve received on my pre­vi­ous post, “The Real Sin­is­ter Side of Forced Con­ti­nu­ity,” I believe some peo­ple are miss­ing the point of my argu­ment, and I want to clar­ify a few things.

I’m not a lawyer by any stretch. But as a copy­writer and busi­ness owner, I do know the rules enough to know that there’s a dif­fer­ence between “optional con­ti­nu­ity,” “forced con­ti­nu­ity,” and “hid­den continuity.”

Optional con­ti­nu­ity is self-​​explanatory. Forced con­ti­nu­ity is a very com­mon mar­ket­ing prac­tice (I’m not a fan of it, but I don’t mind it). In fact, there’s noth­ing wrong with forced con­ti­nu­ity in and of itself.

What’s wrong is when it’s used in a wrong way.

The real prob­lem, I believe, is that good mar­keters, includ­ing mar­keters using “forced con­ti­nu­ity” in an eth­i­cal and legit­i­mate way, are get­ting a bad rep­u­ta­tion because some mar­keters unscrupu­lously mis­use forced continuity.

The lack of trans­parency is the real cul­prit — such as hid­ing it or dis­guis­ing it. Espe­cially when it’s done on pur­pose. That annoys me. Because it’s no longer an issue of mis­use. It’s out-​​and-​​out abuse.

But what both­ers me more is how it affects us all. And it affects us all, both cus­tomers and mar­keters alike, in more ways than you think.

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When a sales page is not per­form­ing or if it’s not per­form­ing up to your expec­ta­tions, the worst thing you can do is… nothing.

By tak­ing action and mak­ing changes, you can strengthen your copy quickly and improve your sales con­ver­sions. In most cases, there are rel­a­tively sim­ple steps you can take to alter the copy to improve your results immediately.

The key to this process is test­ing to boost your outcome.

The sad truth is, the vast major­ity of mar­keters don’t test. But if you are test­ing or about to, then con­grat­u­la­tions. Because you’re miles ahead of most peo­ple in this industry.

How­ever, when most peo­ple start test­ing, they imme­di­ately think of some­thing they can add or change. Or they’re con­fused as to what to test, par­tic­u­larly what to test first.

In my expe­ri­ence, I’ve found that the best and most effi­cient ele­ment to test is to actu­ally first remove the things that are stop­ping peo­ple from order­ing. In other words…

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The other day I was asked a ques­tion I hear all too often: “How do I dis­tin­guish myself from other copywriters?”

To find the answer, look to one of the most effec­tive and fre­quently used copy­writ­ing and mar­ket­ing tools. It’s your “Unique Sell­ing Propo­si­tion,” or USP.

(I pre­fer to call it a “Unique Sell­ing Posi­tion.” If you’ve read my book, “Power Posi­tion­ing,” then you’d know that I’m a big fan of posi­tion­ing rather than prospecting.)

Your USP is also your “hook.”

Time and time again, I’ve told many aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and mar­keters that a USP is what dis­tin­guishes you from the pack. It increases per­ceived value, exper­tise, and cred­i­bil­ity — with­out need­ing to state it outright.

But since I hear this ques­tion often, par­tic­u­larly from copy­writ­ers just enter­ing the field, I sense that it’s because peo­ple need a lit­tle help in defin­ing their USP.

So to help you, here’s a tip.

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