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Web designers have typically always been big-picture people, in that they like having really big screens in front of them. It’s convenient, and it makes you feel very professional. At this point in my life, I don’t think I could go back to having just one monitor, either. And yet, I find that many websites don’t live up to the potential promised by big darned screens, or even that presented by phones with HD resolutions.
This is because we live in a mobile-first world, with mobile-first people. They go to far off and exotic places like “outside”, so they have to carry their screens around with them. Outside people pretty much pay our bills—whether directly or indirectly—and we have to make websites they can actually use on those small screens.
That is all well and good, and it’s not going to change any time soon. But big screens aren’t going anywhere, either. People still work in offices, at home, and in coffee shops with laptops and desktops. People still have “the family computer” at home. PC gamers exist, and they’re buying some of the biggest screens, right alongside photographers and videographers.
These people are often left with experiences designed for mid-range to small screens. This likely doesn’t break the experience for them, but why shouldn’t they have an experience tailored to their needs? Besides, what is all that extra screen space there for, if not to play with it? Here are a few ways to take advantage of the bigger screens, along with some examples:
1. Literal Big Pictures
One of the most common ways people try to use up the empty space is to put pictures in it. We’ve all seen the ten-trillion websites (I may be exaggerating) that use some stock photo as a background, particularly in the “hero” section on the home page. This is everywhere. You’ve done it, most likely, and God knows I’ve done it.
It is not altogether the worst way to go about it, and it’s not the best. While image compression is getting better and better, those images will still hit you in the bandwidth, caching or no caching. If you want to save you and your CDN some trouble, go with SVG. I know, I keep saying this, but it really works, and it works wonders. See bebold for a picture-perfect (heh) example of how to use simple SVG imagery to fill up some space while keeping the bandwidth and rendering costs light.
2. Scaling the Layout
So we all know how responsive design works, right? Well, it’s gotten a lot easier with CSS Grid. I’ve been experimenting with it for personal projects, and goddamn but it truly changes everything. Those Magazine-type layouts that front-end developers have been trying to make work for decades? They’re easy now. Easy. Go read a tutorial already.
With all that time you have left over, why not see what you can do when you let the central wrapping div go wider than 1,200 pixels? It could be fun. For an absolutely gorgeous (if somewhat bandwidth-heavy) example, see Seedlip.
3. Responsive Type
But hey, sometimes you don’t want to bother so much with pictures. Maybe you just want big darned text. We’ve had various iterations on the responsive layout for years, though. What has been harder is scaling our typography up and down by screen resolution in a way that seems natural and fluid. Sure, you can do it with a few dozen media queries (or like two, if you’re lazy like me), but the CSS calc function has us covered if we want to do it the easy way.
Sure, Chris Coyier has been writing about this since 2012, but the browser support hasn’t always been up to par. I quite like the technique used by Mike Foskett’s Fluid-responsive font-size calculator, which allows you to specify a maximum font-size, and can calculate everything in rems and ems, if that’s the way you want to go.
For an example of the technique in action see any article on CSS-Tricks.
4. Just put More Stuff on the Screen
As an avowed minimalist, I’m not a huge fan of just bombarding the user with information in general. However, there are times when this is exactly what they want and need. The clearest use cases for this approach are in dashboard-style user interfaces, and plain old e-commerce. In either of these cases, if you’re not using the maximum potential space for functionality and/or products, you’re actually slowing the user down when they may not want to be slowed down.
Most dashboard designers are already, well…on board. However, I’m seeing more and more ecommerce site templates trying to cram products into small areas on big screens, and that makes little sense to me.
Example: I dunno… Amazon? I’m not going to link that. They’re going to get our traffic eventually in any case. Actually, the aforementioned Seedlip works very well for this section, too.
Now where I object to this approach is on news sites, and generally they seem to agree with me. Although some are still using up the full screen, they make the content big enough that there’s not too much in the viewport at any one time, encouraging you to scroll down and really pick and choose your articles. Sure, they do it to display more ads, but this might be one of the few times ads have actually helped to improve an experience. Kind of.
5. Video
And lastly, a real no-brainer. I’m not actually sure anyone’s doing this one wrong. Still… if you’re going to use video extensively on your site anyway, and you’re not too fussed about bandwidth, go big. It’s video, that’s what it’s for. If nothing else, at least give people the option to watch your videos in full-screen mode. For examples of this tip in action, see just about any filmmaker’s site. Here’s one: +Ring.
Real-world behavioral tests are an effective way to better understand your customers and optimize your conversion rates. But for this testing to be effective, you must make sure it is accurately measuring customer behavior.
One reason these A/B split tests fail to give a correct representation of customer behavior is because of validity threats. This series of checklists is designed to help you overcome Instrumentation Effect. It is based on actual processes used by MECLABS Institute’s designers, developers and analysts when conducting our research services to help companies improve marketing performance.
MECLABS defines Instrumentation Effect as “the effect on the test variable caused by a variable external to an experiment, which is associated with a change in the measurement instrument.” In other words, the results you see do not come from the change you made (say, a different headline or layout), but rather, because some of your technology has affected the results (slowed load time, miscounted analytics, etc.)
Avoiding Instrumentation Effect is even more challenging for any test that will have traffic from mobile devices (which today is almost every test). So, to help you avoid the Instrumentation Effect validity threat, we’re providing the following QA checklist. This is not meant for you to follow verbatim, but to serve as a good jumping-off point to make sure your mobile tests are technically sound. For example, other browsers than the ones listed here may be more important for your site’s mobile functionality. Maybe your landing page doesn’t have a form, or you may use different testing tools, etc.
Of course, effective mobile tests require much more than thorough QA — you also must know what to test to improve results. If you’re looking for ideas for your tests that include mobile traffic, you can register for the free Mobile Conversion micro course from MECLABS Institute based on 25 years of conversion optimization research (with increasing emphases on mobile traffic in the last half decade or so).
There’s a lot of information here, and different people will want to save this checklist in different ways. You can scroll through the article you’re on to see the key steps of the checklist. Or use the form on this page to download a PDF of the checklist.
The following checklists are broken out by teams serving specific roles in the overall mobile development and A/B testing process. The checklists are designed to help cross-functional teams, with the benefit being that multiple people in multiple roles bring their own viewpoint and expertise to the project and evaluate whether the mobile landing page and A/B testing are functioning properly before launch and once it is live.
For this reason, if you have people serving multiple roles (or you’re a solopreneur and do all the work yourself), these checklists may be repetitive for you.
Here is a quick look at each team’s overall function in the mobile landing page testing process, along with the unique value it brings to QA:
Dev Team– These are the people who build your software and websites, which could include both front-end development and back-end development. They use web development skills to create websites, landing pages and web applications.
For many companies, quality assurance (QA) would fall in this department as well, with the QA team completing technical and web testing. While a technical QA person is an important member of the team for ensuring you run valid mobile tests, we have included other functional areas in this QA checklist because different viewpoints from different departments will help decrease the likelihood of error. Each department has its own unique expertise and is more likely to notice specific types of errors.
Value in QA: The developers and technological people are most likely to notice any errors in the code or scripts and make sure that the code is compatible with all necessary devices.
Project Team – Depending on the size of the organization, this may be a dedicated project management team, a single IT or business project manager, or a passionate marketing manager keeping track of and pushing to get everything done.
It is the person or team in your organization that coordinates work and manages timelines across multiple teams, ensures project work is progressing as planned and that project objectives are being met.
Value in QA: In addition to making sure the QA doesn’t take the project off track and threaten the launch dates of the mobile landing page test, the project team are the people most likely to notice when business requirements are not being met.
Data Team– The data scientist(s), analyst(s) or statistician(s) helped establish the measure of success (KPI – key performance indicator) and will monitor the results for the test. They will segment and gather the data in the analytics platform and assemble the report explaining the test results after they have been analyzed and interpreted.
Value in QA: They are the people most likely to notice any tracking issues from the mobile landing page not reporting events and results correctly to the analytics platform.
Design Team– The data scientist(s), analyst(s) or statistician(s) helped establish the measure of success (KPI – key performance indicator) and will monitor the results for the test. They will segment and gather the data in the analytics platform and assemble the report explaining the test results after they have been analyzed and interpreted.
Value in QA: They are the people most likely to notice any tracking issues from the mobile landing page not reporting events and results correctly to the analytics platform.
DEV QA CHECKLIST
Pre-launch, both initial QA and on Production where applicable
Visual Inspection and Conformity to Design of Page Details
Verify latest copy in place
Preliminary checks in a “reference browser” to verify design matches latest comp for desktop/tablet/mobile layouts
Use the Pixel Perfect Overlay function in Firefox Developer Tools – The purpose of this tool is to take an image that was provided by the designer and lay it over the website that was produced by the developer. The image is a transparency which you can use to point out any differences or missing elements between the design images and the webpage.
Displaying of images – Make sure that all images are displaying, aligned and up to spec with the design.
Forms, List and Input Elements (Radio Buttons, Click Boxes) – Radio buttons (Dots and Circles) and Checkboxes (Checks and Boxes) are to be tested thoroughly as they may trigger secondary actions. For example, selecting a “Pay by Mail” radio button will sometimes automatically hide the credit card form.
Margins and Borders – Many times, you will notice that a portion of the body or perhaps a customer review or image is surrounded by a border or maybe even the whole page. It is our duty to inspect them so that there are no breaks and that they’re prominent enough for the user to decipher each bordered section.
Copy accuracy – Consistency between typography, capitalization, punctuation, quotations, hyphens, dashes, etc. The copy noted in the webpage should match any documents provided pertaining to copy and text unless otherwise noted or verified by the project manager/project sponsor.
Font styling (Font Color, Format, Style and Size) – To ensure consistency with design, make sure to apply the basic rules of hierarchy for headers across different text modules such as titles, headers, body paragraphs and legal copies.
Link(s) (Color, Underline, Clickable)
Web Page Functionality: Verify all page functionality works as expected (ensure treatment changes didn’t impact page functionality)
Top navigation functionality – Top menu, side menu, breadcrumb, anchor(s)
Links and redirects are correct
Media – Video, images, slideshow, PDF, audio
Form input elements – drop down, text fields, check and radio module, fancy/modal box
Form validation – Error notification, client-side errors, server-side errors, action upon form completion (submission confirmation), SQL injection
Full Page Functionality – Search function, load time, JavaScript errors
Verify split functional per targeting requirements
Verify key conversion scenario (e.g., complete a test order, send test email from email system, etc.) – If not already clear, QA lead should verify with project team how test orders should be placed
Where possible, visit the page as a user would to ensure targeting parameters are working properly (e.g., use URL from the PPC ad or email, search result, etc.)
Tracking Metrics
Verify tracking metrics are firing in browser, and metric names match requirements – Check de-bugger to see firing as expected
Verify reporting within the test/analytics tool where possible – Success metrics and click tracking in Adobe Target, Google Content Experiments, Google Analytics, Optimizely, Floodlight analytics, email data collection, etc.
Back End Admin Panel
Database includes accurate offer information
Tracking correct order information from customer (data collection)
Payment Validation and Errors – Ensure the character limiter is effective for all types of credit cards (Visa & Mastercard: 16, Amex: 14)
Notify Project Team and Data Team it is ready for their QA (via email preferably) – indicate what reference browser is. After Project Team initial review, complete full cross browser/ cross device checks using “reference browser” as a guide:
Browser Functionality – Windows
Internet Explorer 7 (IE7)
IE8
IE9
IE10
IE11
Modern Firefox
Modern Chrome
Browser Functionality – macOS
Modern Safari
Modern Chrome
Modern Firefox8
Mobile Functionality – Tablet
Android
Windows
iOS
Mobile Functionality – Mobile phone
Android
Windows
iOS
Post-launch, after the test is live to the public:
Notify Project Team & Data Team the test is live and ready for post-launch review (via email preferably)
Verify split is open to public Verify split functional per targeting requirements
Where possible, visit the page as a user would to ensure targeting parameters are working properly (e.g., use URL from the PPC ad or email, search result, etc.)
Test invalid credit cards on a production environment
PROJECT TEAM QA CHECKLIST:
Pre-Launch and Post-Launch QA:
Check that copy and design are correct for control and treatments in the “reference browser”:
Ensure all added copy/design elements are there and correct
Ensure all removed copy/design elements are gone
Ensure all changed copy/design elements are correct
Ensure control experience is as intended for the test
Check page functionality:
Ensure all added/changed functionality is working as expected
Ensure all standard/business as usual – BAU_ functionality is working as expected:
Go through the typical visitor path (even beyond the testing page/ location) and ensure everything functions as expected
Make sure links go where supposed to, fields work as expected, data passes as expected from page to page.
Check across multiple browser sizes (desktop, tablet, mobile)
If site is responsive, scale the browser from full screen down to mobile and check to ensure all the page breaks look correct
Where possible, visit the page the way a typical visitor would hit the page (e.g., through PPC Ad, organic search result, specific link/button on site, through email)
DATA QA CHECKLIST:
Pre-Launch QA Checklist (complete on Staging and Production as applicable):
Verify all metrics listed in the experiment design are present in analytics portal
Verify all new tracking metrics’ names match metrics’ names from tracking document
Verify all metrics are present in control and treatment(s) (where applicable)
Verify conversion(s) are present in control and treatment(s) (where possible)
Verify any metrics tracked in a secondary analytics portal (where applicable)
Immediately communicate any issues that arise to the dev lead and project team
Notify dev lead and project team when Data QA is complete (e-mail preferably)
Post-Launch QA / First Data Pull:
Ensure all metrics for control and treatment(s) are receiving traffic
Ensure traffic levels are in line with the pre-test levels used for test duration estimation
Update Test Duration Estimation if necessary
Immediately communicate any issues that arise to the project team
Notify dev lead and project team when first data pull is complete (e-mail preferably)
Increase Your Mobile Conversion Rates: New micro course
Hopefully, this Mobile QA Checklist helps your team successfully launch tests that have mobile traffic. But you still may be left with the question — what should I test to increase conversion?
MECLABS Institute has created five micro classes (each under 12 minutes) based on 25 years of research to help you maximize the impact of your messages in a mobile environment.
In the complimentary Mobile Conversion Micro Course, you will learn:
The 4 most important elements to consider when optimizing mobile messaging
How a large telecom company increased subscriptions in a mobile cart by 16%
How the same change in desktop and mobile environments had opposing effects on conversion
It’s going to happen at some point this year; you will face designer burnout.
One of the reasons that burnout is so common for creatives is that it’s a never-ending process. (You can’t just stop having ideas because you are off the clock.) But there are things you can do to help make the burnout less bad and stay energized and focused more of the time.
Here’s your checklist for the new year. (Seems like a great resolution, right?)
1. Get Away from Your Desk
Schedule time to step away from your work every single day. There’s a reason that “lunch hour” is a thing. It gives you time to take a break from what you are working on, refresh and come back to it with new energy.
You don’t have to take this break during the traditional lunch hour – or even get lunch for that matter – but you do need to take that time to recharge during the day.
Get in the habit of blocking off that time each day and do something that will make the second part of the work day less of a drag:
Take a walk;
Go to the gym;
Meet a friend for lunch;
Read or listen to a book.
2. Work in Spurts
Social media is filled with “hacks” to keep you from wasting time online. But what if you should work for a bit, browse the Insta and then get back to it?
Working in spurts can help you be more productive. Looking at images and videos can be particularly invigorating if you need to jumpstart that little creative part of your brain.
But here’s the trick to working in starts and stops. You can’t let the stops kill your productivity. This isn’t a tip that works for everyone, but some designers get a lot of value out of tiny, “planned” distractions.
3. Participate in Design Challenges
Get ready to design outside of your comfort zone. Tackle a design challenge.
These little events often consist of a theme, where you are prompted to design a certain thing each day or week for a certain time period. Others are often doing the same thing (and same challenges) at the same time with a place to showcase the work.
What’s great about a design challenge is that it can be a fun diversion from the everyday. There’s really nothing at stake and you get to be creative on your own terms.
If you aren’t quite ready to jump into a challenge, take a look at Project 365, one designer’s showcase of a new design project every day in 2018.
4. Schedule “Slow Downs”
Are you really looking forward to a vacation? Put it in your calendar.
Then schedule some time to just take a minute or day or week to yourself. Just because you have time off from work, doesn’t mean you are slowing down. Sometimes vacations and times away from work can be just as hectic, making it even more important to plan some serious down time.
Everybody needs this break in a different way. Some people can take a day and feel totally recharged. Others need a week to let the brain rest.
Just don’t cram your slow down time with projects. You must step away from the computer. Plan to ditch technology during your slowdown (or only allow check-ins at certain times) to get the most benefit from the break.
5. Mix Up Tasks
Don’t get caught in a monotonous work routine. Even though design projects can solve different problems, there are parts of the process that can get mundane.
Mix up tasks, invite other members of the team for a brainstorming session and mix up the way you’ve always done things.
Just like exercising a different muscle group, replanning your day stretches brain (and creative) muscles.
6. Find a Network or Peer Group
If you don’t have a solid group of design peers, now is the time to find that group. Whether you join a professional networking organization, go to a conference, engage in social media conversations or just ask your mentor to lunch, one of the key ingredients to avoiding burnout is to stay fresh. (Sometimes you just need to vent. Other times you need a new perspective to get on track.)
Develop your network. Spend a few hours each month listening to others as well as talking about your design challenges. Don’t let all of these meetings turn into gripe sessions, but do talk about work challenges and solutions.
Sometimes the best way to work through issues is sharing with someone who comes at it from another perspective.
7. Work Remotely If You Can
The grind of traffic and getting to work and dealing with all the other personalities in the workplace can be a challenge for some designers. You might need a quiet space to work. You might need plenty of white noise to do your best. Or maybe your highest productivity hours don’t fall into a 9 to 5 routine.
Ask your employer if you can work remotely. Even if only for a day a week or a few days a month, working in a space that fits your natural patterns and without distractions can help you feel more organized and put together. And that will keep you from feeling so burned out.
8. Create Something That Isn’t Work
Try something design-related that isn’t part of your job.
Interested in virtual reality? Find someone who can show off their VR equipment. Wish you could draw? Take an art class.
The goal is to engage your creative spirit in a way that doesn’t have pressure or strings (or income) attached. Not only will this make you better at your job – and less likely to burn out – but it will also help you explore options that might expand your career one day. (You never know where opportunities live.)
9. Pay Attention to Your Health
This might be the little anti-burnout lesson that we should all know … but somehow ignore.
Designers are stereotypically (and sometimes not so stereotypically) fueled by coffee and sleepless nights. There might also be a nightcap or two.
And eventually your body just says, “No”. Pay attention to your health (and sanity).
Eat vegetables. Get some exercise. Don’t stay glued to a computer screen in a dark corner. Laugh, Smile. Be social offline.
It can do wonders. (Plus, getting sick just contributes to that overwhelming feeling of not being able to get everything done.)
10. Just Say, “No”
It’s 100 percent OK to not do something. Don’t make that t-shirt for your family reunion this year. Don’t create a website for your cousin’s wedding. Say no. Turn down projects when you don’t have time.
And then use that time to do something just for you. Even if it is to take a nap.
You were excited to launch your brand-new site until you realized no one is coming to it.
So, you head to all of the marketing blogs to learn how to fix this, but for the life of you, your traffic won’t go up no matter which tactic you leverage.
What you’re feeling right now is very common. Not only have I experienced it, but when I was starting out, I even took the small life savings that I made from cleaning restrooms and sweeping up trash to pay a marketing firm to help me out.
And can you guess what happened?
They took my money and provided no results.
See, what most marketers aren’t telling you is that there are two main reasons why you aren’t getting traffic to your brand-new site (other than the fact that you don’t have much money to spend on ads):
Marketing is a long-term game – almost all of the tactics marketers, including me, talk about are long-term tactics. They take 6 months or even longer to see any results.
Your execution needs to be flawless – if you don’t implement the tactics correctly, you won’t see results.
Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t see short-term results or sales. More so you have to change up your strategy.
So, I thought I would do something a bit different today. I am going to break down what you should be doing during the first 12 weeks after launching your site.
I’ll be sharing a tactic for you to follow each week and, if you follow it, you’ll notice that your traffic will start going up right away. From there, you’ll start to see sales coming in.
Before I dive into the 12 tactics, note that you won’t have to spend much money, if any at all. I am also not going to give you advice that is extremely time-consuming, like writing blog posts, as you’ll also be running your business at the same time.
And of course, the tactics work for both B2B and B2C sites. It doesn’t matter if you are an ecommerce site or a SaaS company. Follow the steps below exactly.
Week #1: Respond to comments on other people’s blog without spamming
When he launched his competing site to TechCrunch, no one knew about him and no one cared to listen to him as he was based in Scotland instead of Silicon Valley.
But do you think that stopped him? Of course not!
So, what did he do? He went out there and commented on every competing tech blog. And not only did he comment, but he always tried to be the first commenter.
See, when you leave a comment on a blog, most ask you to put in your name, URL, and comment.
Assuming you are leaving valuable comments and nothing spammy, you’ll notice that you’ll get referral traffic in your Google Analytics.
This will be because a very small percentage of people are clicking on your name when you leave a comment.
And considering some of the most popular blogs on the web receive millions of visitors each week, it’s not that hard to drive a fraction of a percent of their traffic back to your site.
The key with this strategy is to be one of the first commenters as that ensures your comment is at the top. The other key, of course, is that your comment must add value.
For example, if you own a marketing related product or service, marketing blogs would be a great place to comment. But what do you think will happen if you leave this kind of standard comment:
Nice post! Keep up the good work!
Nothing. On the flip side, if you put in some effort to write something that benefited the reader, you’ll have a chance at getting some traffic.
An example could be something like this…
Neil, I love the actionable tips on generating traffic for a brand-new site within the first 3 months of launching it. But I know you didn’t discuss much if any about SEO.
I know SEO is a long-term strategy, but people should get a head start right away or else it will take that much longer to get loved by Google.
One thing that I recommend every site to start off with is simple keyword research. You can use any free keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner and type in your competitor URL. Google Keyword Planner will then suggest keywords and even show you the cost per click.
By going after keywords that aren’t competitive and have a higher cost per click, you’ll find that you can generate search traffic at a much faster pace and these keywords will drive sales. As keywords with a high cost per click tend to mean that they convert.
Do you see what I mean by writing thoughtful comments that help people?
This tactic works!
Jared, who runs Skincare by Alana, still leverages this tactic today. When he and his wife launched their ecommerce store they commented on other popular blogs and social sites when it came to all things skin related.
This helped them generate 931 visitors during their first week and 12 sales.
I know it’s not a lot, but you have to start somewhere and grow from there.
I also have leveraged this tactic for years. Instead of focusing just on blogs, I commented on relevant social sites too.
As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve generated over 1.9 million views on my Quora responses.
You’ll notice that in my response I also link out to my own site which drives traffic back to me.
Yes, the response looks very long, and you may think I put in tons of work, but I literally copied and pasted a blog post I had already written and added it to Quora.
Google doesn’t penalize for duplicate content.
If you are going to use this strategy during week one, try to leave at least 10 solid comments per day. I would try to leave 20 as it shouldn’t take you more than two hours per day… assuming you haven’t done this before.
I can typically leave 15 comments in less than 50 minutes. So, throughout the first week try to speed things up and spend no more than an hour on this tactic per day.
Week #2: Be helpful on Twitter and you’ll get tweets
Before I go into week 2, keep in mind you’ll still want to maintain the tactics I share in the previous week.
By week 12, you’ll want to be following all 12 tactics each week.
Of course, you won’t be able to put in the same number of hours into each tactic and that’s fine, but you can still do them a bit. For example, you can still leave 5 comments a day instead of leaving 20.
So, let’s dive into week 2, which is all about Twitter.
This tactic I learned from my brother-in-law Hiten Shah. He used to leverage this tactic for every one of our startups… Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and he now leverages it for his newest company FYI.
If you look at Hiten, he built up his personal brand and influence in the tech space because of Twitter. Sure, people like me may have a bigger brand or more Twitter followers, but he has much, much, much more authority on Twitter than I do.
As you can see influential people on Twitter are tweeting about Hiten’s latest company.
He even tweets and connects with well-known entrepreneurs like the founder of HubSpot and Drift because of Twitter.
So how is Hiten getting all of these people to show him some Twitter love? Well, he has a 3-step formula…
Help people
Help people
Help people
And no, I am not joking, that is his formula. He doesn’t care to promote his business, he just helps people.
Let’s look at his Twitter profile to dive deeper into his strategy.
If you look at the tweets above, you’ll notice that Hiten continually pushes out advice on his Twitter profile. He rarely mentions his own company, but instead just tries to help people.
And when people ask questions or need help, he constantly responds to people’s tweets.
Not everyone takes his advice, but his mentality is to just be helpful no matter what. Just look at how he responds to people’s tweets.
Lastly, he retweets stuff that he likes. Whether you are an influencer or an average joe, he doesn’t care. He just wants to share the best information out there.
This is why so many people tweet about his product FYI. It’s because he is super helpful, so people naturally want to help him out without him even asking them to.
Now I know this strategy that Hiten uses seems like it is going to take forever to get results, and it does. But there is a hack that he uses to get immediate results.
Every day you should search Twitter for people talking about your competitor. When people have questions about your competitors’ products or services (or they have complaints), try and help them.
Don’t pitch them on your company, just try and help them.
What you’ll find is people will be shocked that you are helping a competitor. And if you are this kind and helpful, then what kind of service would they get if they took their business to you…
In other words, being helpful wins you goodwill and it will cause people to switch from your competitor over to you.
And if you go above and beyond like Hiten, people who haven’t even used your product or service will help promote you. Just like how one of his followers tweeted about FYI and he hasn’t even used it yet.
His strategy to help, help, and help some more has made Twitter one of FYI’s biggest traffic source. It accounts for roughly 25% of their weekly traffic.
When you are starting out you probably haven’t created an affiliate program yet in which pay other marketers every time they drive you a sale or a lead.
You can always use software like Hasoffers to set one up or go through a network. There are literally hundreds of options and with a few quick Google searches, you can find one which is the right fit for you.
Now, what most people will tell you is that no one is going to promote your affiliate offer because it is unproven and new.
Although it’s true that your offer is unproven, it doesn’t mean all hope is lost.
During your third week, I want you to copy the strategy ConvertKit used when they first launched.
The strategy I am about to break down helped them grow from a few thousand dollars a month in revenue to over a million a month.
What ConvertKit did was they went to all of their competitors’ sites and looked to see which ones had an affiliate program. One of those competitors happens to be Aweber.
Then once they had a list of competitors with affiliate programs, they performed a Google search for “competitor name vs.” An example would be “Aweber vs”…
From there they would email each of those site owners asking them to include ConvertKit in the article or even write a unique article about ConvertKit. Just like this one.
Just think of it this way, if someone is willing to be an affiliate for one company, they won’t mind throwing in a few extra competitors. All it does is give them the potential to make more money.
When leveraging this tactic, consider sending out 10 emails a day. It shouldn’t take long and people typically don’t mind adjusting their web pages to add in another link that could potentially earn them extra money.
Now compared to most tactics, this one will drive the least amount of visitors.
But the traffic will be very qualified and more likely to convert as you are going after “versus” articles. When someone types in “Company X VS Company Y” into Google, they are researching which solution is ideal for them. These posts rank well and they tend to drive sales.
Week #4: Hire guest writers
Now the strategy I am about to break down for you in week 4 is my favorite strategy.
This is what I used in my last startup KISSmetrics to grow our blog traffic to over a million visitors a month.
If you head to the KISSmetrics site you’ll notice that it now redirects to NeilPatel.com as I bought the site.
So how much traffic did the KISSmetrics blog get from this strategy?
As you can see from the image above, we peaked at 1,260,681 unique visitors a month.
Our strategy was simple… hire writers who had a social following.
Are you a marketing expert? Do you know marketing like the back of your hand?
That’s great because I have an opportunity for you.
KISSmetrics is a leader in the web analytics space and we are looking to work with expert writers who know marketing and analytics.
We’re currently looking to expand our team of writers with passionate enthusiasts for digital marketing and with expertise and passion for writing. We are hiring individuals for each of the following categories:
SEO
Content marketing
Social media
Web analytics
Conversion optimization
Paid advertising
Web design
Branding
Email marketing
Please go to our blog for examples of content we’re looking to create. [insert URL of your blog]
We would like to build a long-term relationship with you that is on a project basis. Initially, we will have you submit a list of topic ideas you would love to blog on, then we will pick one, have you outline it… and of course, you’ll then be off to the races.
The articles will be anywhere from 1,000 words to 3,000. Our goal isn’t to enforce a word count, we are more interested in high-quality content.
We’re looking for someone who is:
Looking for a long-term working relationship
Has 1 year of working experience as a writer
Has a good level of knowledge of digital marketing
Is willing to research and learn more about marketing
Has great grammar and spelling skills as well as proficiency in English
Likes working with deadlines and structure
Has a social following and doesn’t mind promoting the content you are writing as it will be published under your name
How to apply
Send an email to [insert your email] with – Applying For Writer Position in the subject line. Your email should include:
A bit about you as well as links to your social profiles
Why you’re a good fit for this position
Links to 2 -3 articles you have written
Your rate per 500 words.
The way we scaled up to over a million visitors a month was by publishing 5 blog posts a week. And every time a writer wrote a blog post for us, they didn’t mind promoting it to their social following as their name was on the article.
Once we got over 50,000 visitors a month, we noticed that we started to get inbound inquires of people willing to write for us for free. So eventually we slowly transitioned to a model where people wrote for us for free and we didn’t need to hire or pay writers.
You’ll notice that this will happen with your blog as it gets more popular.
What’s great about this strategy is the more writers you get, the more people that will find out about your company as each writer has different people following them on the social web.
Week #5: Create a podcast and interview guests
Have you listened to my podcast Marketing School? If you haven’t listened to it yet, check it out.
My co-host Eric Siu and I give marketing advice each day in under 5 minutes.
But don’t worry, the strategy I want you to implement isn’t to copy Marketing School or even listen to it (although I would be honored if you did listen to it).
Instead, it’s to copy my co-host, Eric Siu. He has another popular podcast called Growth Everywhere where he interviews someone new each and every single week.
You don’t have to do a weekly podcast, but I want you to interview someone in your space at least once a month.
And instead of making a separate site for your podcast, just pop it onto your main site.
Now when you publish each of these interviews, ask the guest to share it with their audience. From their social profiles to posting it on their own blog to even emailing their own list.
Although Eric has built a brand in the marketing space, he wasn’t well known when he started Growth Everywhere.
Just look at his stats from leveraging this tactic:
Eric’s generating over 15,300 unique visitors a month. That’s a lot of traffic considering Eric hasn’t even tried to grow the traffic to Growth Everywhere.
Best of all, you can generate similar results to Eric. But the key to doing this is interviewing people within your space so that way the traffic that comes to your site is relevant and over time those visitors will convert into customers.
If you don’t know how to start a podcast, watch this:
You could buy fancy equipment, but I would just use whatever’s built into your computer until you start seeing results from this tactic.
And if you really want to make your podcast popular, check this out.
Week #6: Become a rising star
Do you want to be a rising star? Well of course you do… who doesn’t?
Now you probably wondering, what the heck is a “rising star?”
Well, let me first start off with, Facebook groups.
Whatever industry you are in, whoever your ideal customers are… you can find them in a Facebook group.
Look for niche groups on Facebook related to the product or service you are selling. You want to join these groups as long as they have over 1,000 members.
You may also find groups that have over a million members. You’ll want to avoid these groups.
Focus on groups that are between 1,000 members and 17,000 members. Those groups are big enough to where you can generate traffic and small enough where you’ll be noticed.
What you’ll want to do is join a handful of groups and post 4 to 5 times in the group during your first month.
Assuming you are creating posts that are engaging in which people are responding and interacting with you, then you’ll get a rising star badge.
That means people are interacting with your posts. So then when you mention your product or service, you’ll find that not only will people see it, but they are going to head on over to your site.
The key with posting to Facebook groups is to create a high amount of comments and replies. If you just link out to your site you’ll get very few clicks and you will look like a spammer. Posting links and nothing more will get you banned from the group.
But if you link out within context or answer someone’s question with a link to your site or share something from your site that will help group members, you are much more likely to get clicks.
But if the content isn’t engaging and people don’t care to leave comments, you won’t see much traffic from your Facebook group.
I have a private Facebook group with 2,616 members.
When you post something that is engaging, you’ll get featured as a “top recent post” and I’ve found with my 2,616 members I can generate 119 to 184 visitors when I post something that is super engaging that links to my site.
But instead of creating a group as I did, just join other popular groups. You’ll save a ton of time.
Week #7: Co-publish content
Have you ever thought about co-publishing content with other site owners? Even if you don’t have a huge audience, people will still love co-publishing content with you.
Why you may ask?
Well, they may have the audience, but they may be too busy to continually create new content.
Just look at me… I co-published so many guides with other writers.
And…
And…
These writers got tons of exposure and did the majority of the work.
Over time, these guides have generated well over a million visitors. But I know they are time-consuming to create, and I’m not asking you to create guides.
Instead, you can co-publish blog posts together, record a webinar together, create a white paper, or anything else that you feel could be a good fit.
A good example of this is how my team co-published content together with a company called Hotmart in Brazil.
They wrote about Ubersuggest. They even co-published a video about SEO and, of course, my team mentioned Ubersuggest.
That helped make Brazil the most popular country when it comes to usage for Ubersuggest.
If you are going to try and co-publish content with others, make sure you are willing to do the majority of the work.
Hit up other sites within your space and make your offer. Let them know how they won’t have to do much work and, of course, mention what they’ll get out of it.
When you co-publish content, you can’t just talk about your company, you also have to talk about theirs.
It’s a chatbot tool that a lot of people in sales and marketing use.
What I love about Drift is their Product Hunt strategy. Every time they release a new feature, they push it hard on Product Hunt.
You probably don’t have a ton of new feature releases as you have a brand new site but every time you have one you should consider pushing it out on Product Hunt or even a Sub-Reddit.
But for now, why can’t you launch your site on Product Hunt or on a Sub-Reddit?
Sure you site maybe live for a few weeks, but you haven’t announced it to the world yet.
Product Hunt is super effective when it comes to traffic generation. When FYI launched via Product Hunt they got over 1,000 votes. It was so successful, the HubSpot co-founder even offered them funding.
I did something similar with Ubersuggest. Every time I release a new feature, I announce it on Product Hunt. So far it has driven me 12,319 visitors.
The key with doing well on Product Hunt is:
Get as many votes right when you release it… ideally within the first hour (so ask your friends and co-workers to vote)
Participate in the community before you submit your own site. Ideally, you want someone else to submit, but if you don’t know any active Product Hunt users, participate for a bit before you submit your own site.
Make sure you respond to every single comment as this helps with engagement.
Submit your site very early in the morning Pacific Standard Time. Product Hunt resets every night, so consider submitting it around 4 am Pacific Standard Time.
I know self-promotion might be a bit difficult for you when you are starting off but you need to embrace it. There is nothing wrong with pushing your own company… if you don’t, no one else will.
Week #9: The gram
Honestly, what do you think of Instagram?
Well, whether you like it or hate it, it is one of the most popular social networks out there. And influencer marketing is becoming one of the most effective promotion channels.
Anytime a Kardashian talks about a product, it flies right off the shelves.
That’s how companies like FitTea came out of nowhere and grew to 7 figures in revenue overnight.
I know what you are thinking: It’s going to be too expensive to pay Kim Kardashian to talk about your business. And you are right, it will be too expensive.
Heck, anyone who has over a million followers will try and charge you too much. Anyone with over 100,000 will also probably charge you too much.
Instead, I want you to look for micro-influencers who have at least 10,000 followers. Find people within your vertical who aren’t too popular but whose followers would be your ideal customer.
Now I want you to reach out to these influencers and offer them a bit of money to promote your product or service.
When it comes to making your offer, don’t pay them money for a post because it will be too expensive, pay them to create an Instagram story.
See, the moment someone hits 10,000 followers, Instagram enables the “swipe up” feature. This means they can tell their followers to swipe up to head over to any website. And in this case, they will be telling their followers to swipe up and head over to your website.
You’ll find that influencers will create a story for pennies on the dollar as it expires within 24 hours.
Typically, if someone has 10,000 to 20,000 followers, I am able to pay them a few hundred bucks for 3 stories over a 2 week period.
I prefer this over a post because this drives traffic to your site and you can track the number of sales you are generating from each campaign.
You can also leverage sites like Influence to find influencers.
A friend of mine, Timothy Sykes, does this often. He goes crazy and pays influencers with over a million followers to do this because he has been able to make each campaign profitable.
Typically, you find that 1% to 2% of the person’s followers will swipe up and head to your site, assuming the story is good. With this strategy, you won’t get a ton of visitors, but the visitors you do get are more likely to convert into customers as they’ve already been pitched during the story.
Week #10: Wikipedia
Have you ever thought about Wikipedia as a traffic source? I know I didn’t until I attended a marketing conference years ago and heard someone from Comedy Central speak.
This marketer was breaking down how Comedy Central gets millions of visitors a month, which isn’t shocking because it’s a popular television channel.
But what was shocking is how they broke down how they generate over 100,000 visitors a month from Wikipedia.
You heard me right, they get well over 100,000 visitors a month just from Wikipedia.
How’s that possible?
Well, they go in and modify Wikipedia articles and mention Comedy Central whenever it is relevant.
But before you go off and modify hundreds of Wikipedia articles, know that you won’t get the same result as Comedy Central.
It’s more realistic for you to generate a few hundred visitors a month… and maybe even work your way up to a few thousand visitors a month over time.
The key with editing Wikipedia articles is to first adjust tons of pages that aren’t about your website. It’s not just about linking to your site, it’s more so about providing value to the community.
So, during this week, I want you to adjust 12 to 15 articles. Once you do that you can then adjust any relevant ones to your business and include your own company when it makes sense.
Again you won’t get a ton of traffic from this, but you can easily get a few hundred visitors.
By now you should have some traffic coming to your site. It may not be a lot, but if you followed all of the steps above, your visitors should be highly qualified.
And now I want you to leverage those visitors to get you a speaking spot at a virtual summit.
Search Google for a virtual summit in your industry. You should be able to easily find one.
It doesn’t matter if they are charging people to attend the virtual summit or if they are giving tickets away for free. Offer yourself to speak and promote the event.
You’ll be shocked at how many people will say yes if you are willing to promote their event.
Remember, unlike a physical conference it doesn’t cost them much to add hundreds of speakers and keep the summit going for an extra day or two.
When speaking, be sure you can promote your company during your speech and you’ll notice that you’ll be able to generate some visitors and sales. But that’s not why I want you to speak at the virtual summit.
Instead, I want you to ask the host of the summit to share the attendee list with you. Assuming they have the right terms of service and privacy policies this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
You’ll also have to make sure they aren’t breaking any GDPR rules.
What you’ll find is this is a common practice with most virtual events in which the speakers will promote the event and the virtual summit will share the attendee list with the speakers.
This will give you a list of super qualified people that you can promote your blog posts to or even your product and services.
Week #12: Scripts and tools
You know I love SEO and it’s an amazing long-term strategy. But to do well with SEO you need backlinks.
The more relevant sites linking to you, the better off you are going to be.
And as you get more backlinks, in the short run it will provide referral traffic. In the long run, it will cause your search traffic to skyrocket.
Just to show you how powerful referral traffic is, just look at my referral traffic:
Over time, all of those sites linking to you will start driving thousands of visitors.
So, what’s the best way to get more backlinks?
Well, you don’t want to buy them. And manual link building takes a long time and isn’t as effective as it used to be.
Instead, what you should do is release free tools, like how I released the SEO Analyzer years ago. And over time, it’s naturally produced 2,369 backlinks from 450 referring domains.
Now, I know what you are thinking: building a free tool is expensive and time-consuming. But it doesn’t have to be. You can buy existing tools and put them on your website for pennies on the dollar. And over time, they will naturally get backlinks without you needing to do anything more.
For example, if you have a real estate website, you can always add a mortgage calculator to your website. And can you guess how much it would cost for you to add one to your site?
$13. That’s right, it only costs 13 bucks! How crazy is that!?
There’s a site called Code Canyon where you can buy tools for almost any industry.
You can use these tools as your own and put them on your site with a few clicks of a button.
Just head over to Code Canyon and perform some searches. You’ll quickly find some tools that can work for you.
Keep in mind that these tools won’t be 100% perfect compared to building your own tool. But that’s ok, you have to start somewhere. Plus, people will still link to your tool even if it isn’t perfect.
Conclusion
I know some of the tactics I mentioned above won’t drive you thousands of visitors right away but they can drive you hundreds. And hundreds of visitors is a great place to start!
And when you combine them over time, it will help you get thousands of visitors. You just have to be willing to perform all of the steps in each week… no matter how silly the tactic may appear.
More importantly, the tactics I broke down above will drive you visitors that convert into customers and leads. All you have to do is take the next 12 weeks and follow them.
It may seem like a lot of work at first, but you’ll get faster at them as time goes on.
So, what do you think about the tactics above? Are you already using them?
No, no. I didn’t go researching modern-day witchcraft or anything like I did with Taoism. No, I’m taking web design lessons from a set of entirely fictional witches who live on a flat, circular world which rests on the back of four elephants, who in turn stand on the back of the Great A’Tuin, a turtle that swims through space.
It’s called the Discworld, and it is the subject of forty-one of the best darned books I’ve ever read in my life. The witches of the kingdom of Lancre are the protagonists of several of these books. They’re a cross between village doctors, local magistrates, and (on relatively rare occasions) magical troubleshooters.
If they were designers, they’d be the scariest and probably the best designers in the business. Here’s what I’ve learned from them:
If you want to change the world around you, you first have to know who you are. And then, you have to have absolute confidence in who you are, knowing both your capabilities and your limits. Esmeralda Weatherwax defines this trait. It is her nearly unshakable confidence and her will, which make her the most powerful witch known. Officially, the witches don’t have leaders, and Granny Weatherwax is the leader that they definitely don’t have.
Designers, of course, have to learn how to be wrong, and then deal with it. Granny does, too. The problem is, if you get too used to thinking you’re wrong all the time, it can become a hard habit to break. You can’t do your best work by second-guessing yourself at every turn. You have to see if you’re actually right or wrong first, and go from there.
Granny trusts her knowledge and experience, and when she is proven wrong, she trusts the new knowledge and experience. Eventually.
Granny Weatherwax
Enjoy Yourself
What’s the point of any of this if you can’t enjoy yourself? Looking after a whole community isn’t easy, but Gytha “Nanny” Ogg finds the time to eat and drink rather heavily, dance whenever she feels like it, and sing loudly enough to send her entire village literally running for cover. She’s been married three times, has fifteen children, and still she checks under her bed for strange men at night because “you never know your luck”. She takes full advantage of everything she can get from being the village witch, and matriarch to half the people in the village besides.
In learning about (and selling) the importance of our work as designers, it’s easy to get lost in all of the grand ideas. We’re trying to make sites that are accessible, usable, beautiful, and hopefully profitable, and each of these is almost a discipline unto itself. It’s worth taking the time to just sit there and marvel at all the cool stuff the web can do, and enjoy being a part of it.
Nanny Ogg
People Want Magic…
The witches of the Discworld very rarely use “actual” magic, beyond their flying brooms. They can. Granny Weatherwax in particular is terrifyingly powerful. Mostly, though, they practice a generalist sort of medicine, and a whole lot of what they call “Headology”. People are always coming and asking for magical solutions to things that can be fixed by far more practical means. Headology is mostly a means of making people think something magical is going on, leaving the witches free to do what’s necessary in peace.
For most users, everything we do seems magical. The very act of making a static web page seems mystical to them, especially if you do it with [gasp] a text editor. And the simple truth is that like the villagers in Lancre, they don’t want that illusion broken most of the time. They want something to magically fix their problem. If you can help them to solve their problems, but make it feel like them was magic, you’ve got a winning formula.
… But People Have to Work Things Out For Themselves
The younger witches often ask questions like, “But why can’t we just use magic to solve all of these problems?” The answer, of course, is that magic can cause as many problems as it solves. Magic is a blunt instrument, and most situations with people need something more like a scalpel, a screwdriver, or even a small paintbrush.
Ask any therapist. Lasting change comes when you guide people to the solutions, and let them do the rest. Trying to force your solutions on them basically always backfires. For example, I could point at the many ways algorithms are going horribly wrong in the world of social media. You can do your best as a designer to make things easier for your users, but you can’t do everything for them, and you shouldn’t try.
Know When to Go For Help
Over the course of the books, there are a few witches in training, including Magrat Garlick, Agnes Knitt, and Tiffany Aching. While they all have amazing story arcs that I just don’t have space for in this article, there was one thing they all had to learn: when to ask for help. The witches of Lancre are fiercely independent, and they are mostly expected to handle problems—even the big ones—for themselves, but occasionally they run into problems too big for any one witch.
Designers are going to run into those sorts of problems a lot more often, frankly. There’s so much to learn out there, and it’s rare that any one designer will come up with perfect solutions all on their own. Everything we do is built on the work of thousands who came before, and keeping all of that in one head just isn’t going to happen. You have to stand on your own as a designer, and take responsibility for what you build, but you can’t do everything alone.
When in doubt, try to get at least two outside opinions. Remember: you need three witches for a coven; two witches is just an argument.
Web designers have typically always been big-picture people, in that they like having really big screens in front of them. It’s convenient, and it makes you feel very professional. At this point in my life, I don’t think I could go back to having just one monitor, either. And yet, I find that many websites don’t live up to the potential promised by big darned screens, or even that presented by phones with HD resolutions.
It’s going to happen at some point this year; you will face designer burnout.
No, no. I didn’t go researching modern-day witchcraft or anything 
