How To Configure Your Empower Network Blog For Better Conversion?

Posted in Empower Network, Hacking, Hosting, Internet Marketing, My Journey, Webdesign, Coding & DTP

This is probably a question that’s answered in the training, but ever since I came aboard with Empower Network, I still find myself busy with blogging daily about the present, the future … and the past. Next week — after enjoining a short holiday — gonna sharpen my ax.

But in my enthusiasm of blogging, I also tweaked a few things on the design of it (as I did with all my blogs). Things that made my blog look prettier, but also had a huge affect on a few crucial things. About time I tweak a few things again to get better results.

Setup Your Blog For Better Conversion; optimisations!

I know a thing or two about how to get better conversion for a blog when it comes down to …

Background Image?

I chose the Empower Network’s default skin over an Empower Network custom theme, because of it’s proven track record of 4.1% conversion (readers to leads), but also to showcase that you don’t have to change anything. However, to make my blog stand out? I chose to use a background as well. This blueish binary world background:

has a resolution of 3488 × 2250, which results in a 2MB .jpg file. Not a problem for me, due to this IT infrastructure. And mine ain’t unique. Most people in Holland have a Internet connection faster then I do, however most of my content is not Dutch but 99% is still English. A statistic that’s confirmed by Google Analytics. Most traffic comes from US of A.

And people in the USA (although they like to think different ) have horribly slow internet speed. Something I can confirm first hand while servicing PCs abroad. The 2MB background is a really big problem. I’m losing visitors!

Instead of replacing the background image, by a different image, I’ve chosen to use a solid background color. Default color is a no-go (not unique; although modern), black is too … black, so I’ve used the color of the Empower Network profile image border, which has html color code: #1e2538 (in case you’re interested) ;). The result? Well you’re looking at it. It’s boring compared to the previous background, but the loading times have skyrocketed!

Widgets

By default there’s only 1 widget. When you’re an avid blogger, you will want to have a search widget and at least the category widget. I had a few others: archive, 10 recent posts, bunch of banners linking to stuff within my blog. Did it work? Currently have ~ 600 blogposts, (and a huge focus on quantity instead of quality due to the fact I use my blog as a journal), well … I think I’ve had 2 signups based of blog content. But to be frank? I did expect it to be higher. So my suspicion is, that — in my enthusiasm — I’ve made the widget sidebar noisier instead of focused. So deleted most of them; back to the basics!

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Number of blogposts

By default the “home” button displays 10 most recent blogposts. Based on the number of widgets I use, I lowered that number to 3. That way the Empower Network Footer bar actually shows up more often, so that must have some kind of affect on conversions. Only 1 way to find out Very bold move I know … cause the default is 10 for a reason. Consider it my final try to make it work with default theme, before moving to a custom theme.

The reason I haven’t yet? Fore mentioned reasons (duplication), but also cause I was running intro struggle of banner design and time constraints, but have found a work around that by plugging into the knowledge of the guru’s + non-guru’s of our mastermind.

RSS feed

By default the “RSS feed” displays 10 most recent blogposts as well. That’s a not a whole lot. Especially, cause I have days that I reach 10 within 48hours. So increased that to 50. Which is also useful for the Google Webmaster Tools auto RSS submitter.

Does it work? Cause Empower Network upgraded to WordPress 3.5 MU, and now using a dedicated sitemap.xml plugin?

Don’t know to be honest, but neither can it hurt. And I’m extremely happy anyway how I rank in the searchengines. 67% of my traffic is organic traffic from search engines. And I’m happy about that! But the traffic has to increase! And it has to increase A LOT. 100 unique visitors per day with 400 pageviews on average is depressing.

Autoplaying videos + menu bar changes

This is a region based thing it seems. Americans love their leadcapture page vids to autoplay. Most Europeans — and for a fact Dutch people — don’t like it. Infact they immediately close a page when it shows a hypy video. So I changed “home” button back to display blogposts instead of a vid. “About” has no more autoplaying video’s and is cleaner, and last but certainly not least. Cause I can’t hide ‘what’ I am; a computer nerd. :-p is bring back the Digital Toolbox for location independent entrepreneurs.