BlogDoofus

I read a story once about a guy who wanted to get a new compact flash card. He’d done some looking around and found the one that he wanted at a price he liked. Then, when he went to add it to the shopping cart the site hit him with a four page signup form asking dozens of questions that had nothing to do with his desire to buy a memory card. Somewhere into the second page he decided that this was just too much and not worth the savings. He closed that browser tab and settled for a slightly more expensive unit at another site that didn’t want his life story for a $25 memory card.

Everybody’s upset these days because of AIG handing out millions in bonuses after receiving a nice big chunk of bailout money. I have to say that I agree with the angry public one hundred percent on this one.

Having Paypal, assorted credit cards and other means for payment is all fine and dandy. They’ll get you a lot of business. Especially Paypal because of the trust and recognition it has among so many people.

However there is one payment angle that a lot of people actually tend to shy away from. Checks.

Everybody knows that video is probably one of the biggest things on the Internet today. With the wide availability of inexpensive camcorders that can produce high quality images it’s now possible for just about anyone to become a producer. More and more sales pages are including video add a little something to their presentation.

Most of them are either in the form of video testimonials or messages from the creator or seller of whatever the site is advertising. When done right, video can add to the confidence level of customers because it has a more personal feel to it than just plain text. It shows that somebody went that extra mile in making that page.

Google’s landing page quality score exists to penalize those advertisers who don not create useful landing pages. It does this by giving lowering the ranking in Google’s quality ranking. This increases the cost of their minimum Cost Per Click (CPC).

Those of us already working to produce quality web sites and landing pages, that higher quality score leads to better ad rankings and a lower CPC.