I was looking through a few gift guides when doing site audits for some mommy blogger friends and noticed the same mistake when they were trying to monetize them. They forgot to show store logos and provide the rest of the positive user experience to drive a sale. The same applies for many people who do reviews, talk about specific products, etc… Here are a few things that you can do with your own sites to help generate more sales from reviews, gift guides and also add to your user experience without having to plaster your site with ads.
Add in the price, where to shop and the date you found them.
By doing this, you’ll be able to save your users and readers time from having to go find the product, find a great price for it and also give them a call to action which sets your Affiliate cookie and helps you get the sale.
- Price – This is good because you save them time by showing them which stores have the product and for which price. They just have to pick based on which one they trust and which price is best for them.
- Where to shop – By adding in store logos and making them clickable to the actual product with your Affiliate link, you have now made it easier for them to get to the product they want to buy and shown them where it is available at. You can save them time and make their lives easier.
- Date you found it – This is important to have as well. If someone goes and finds that a sale is over, they could lose trust in your reviews or complain to you. By clearly saying the date you found it, you can help to alleviate these issues. You may also want to say the prices may no longer match because of a sale or increase.
Provide a coupon with each store name.
This is something that can benefit the end user and help to protect your sales. People see coupon code boxes when they check out at stores. This can easily cause them to go to Google and type in store name or url + coupons. The sites that show up are usually coupon sites and Affiliates of these stores. If the person goes to that site and a link is clicked or a cookie is set, you just lost the sale. Give a coupon code with your post and the dates it is live so that when the person leaves your site, they already have a coupon and know where to go to get it if they forget what it was. This helps protect your sales and because they can save by going through your site, and they are happier as well.
Sharing on social sites.
A lot of the guides I’ve seen have some sort of sharing buttons on them for Twitter and Facebook, but they are lacking Pinterest. Others don’t pull images or copy well and some don’t use sales copy and keywords when sharing that are relevant to the gift guide.
- Twitter – Make sure you fill out what should be said when someone shares your gift guide on Twitter. You can do this in the settings in the plug in.
- Facebook – Check images, titles, etc… and make sure they can pull in easily. You want to make sure the best images for the products show up and can be used. If your plug in allows you to write the message that will be shared, then do it for the person to save them time and make sure your copy that can drive traffic and sales is used. The person who is sharing can always edit if they want to.
- Pinterest – Pinterest is where people are ready to shop. Make sure your tags are properly set for each pin, images are clear and you include a link back to your gift guide or post so that people can click from the description to your post and then shop through your links.
These are three of the larger and more common mistakes I’ve seen with people who have gift guides and wonder why they aren’t making money off of them. By doing these things you can help to generate more sales, track them and monetize your site. If you have any other tips about using gift guides to make money online, feel free to share them below.
