Drive your conversions this silly season by promoting Beckersurf’s Free Shipping on all orders over $49 offer.

This offer is valid through to Christmas and applies to affiliates in CJ & OfferForge.

To get your code or sign up as an affiliate visit http://beckersurf.forgeaffiliates.com

]]> http://www.forgebusiness.com/580/black-friday-seasonal-deals-from-beckersurf/feed/ 2 http://www.forgebusiness.com/575/new-twitter-beta-feature-released/ http://www.forgebusiness.com/575/new-twitter-beta-feature-released/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:45:27 +0000 admin http://forgebusiness.com/?p=575

Twitter’s added a new icon to spot retweets (tweets reposted by other users). This icon is currently in Beta and replaces the current RT in the messages.

Personally I think this’ll be a cool addition to the the service – it’s easier on the eye

You’ll also now only see retweets from people you follow, ensuring that you don’t get retweeted to death!

Having worked with Todd for years now we’re so pleased to see him acknowledged in this way not only for building a great business but for giving back so much to the community and charity through ongoing donations. You may not know, but AlexCoupons was initially founded in order to pay for his daughter’s Christmas presents while she underwent leukemia treatment. It’s a great affiliate success story and we’re proud to be associated with Todd & his team!

For the full press release click here

Celestial Gift experiences delivers present-day gift solutions! Extraordinary activity gifts for others, or treat yourself. From all out action packed adrenaline to tranquil spa days.

We believe that the perfect gift should touch the heart, inspire the mind and invigorate the senses. Together with our expertise and stylishly packaged range of gift experiences, we guarantee the response you get will be truly overwhelming! Treat your recipient to the most exciting, fun and inspirational gift experiences South Africa has to offer.

We endeavor to provide experiences to suit all personalities and ages ensuring there is something for everyone! We enjoy adding an experiential dimension to celebrations and thrive on making available South Africa’s top adrenaline and adventure activities. We stay in touch with your needs structuring our gift vouchers so you can easily select gift experiences for individuals, family couples or colleagues.

Our sites online functionality is designed to make selecting a gift easy! Ideal for those who dislike shopping, struggle to find a suitable gift or procrastinate until the last minute. Now you can select an appropriate gift at your leisure.

Affiliate Program Payout: R100 per sale

Search Marketing: Open

Cookie Days: 90 day return cookie

Affiliate Signup Link: http://za.offerforge.com

Hollard Life Cover has launched a lead program with an awesome new short form format.
Payout: R60 per lead.

Approved affiliates can Post Data via API, CSV upload or email.

Lead quality is important and each affiliate is evaluated based on lead to sale conversion.

It’s not all fun and games at the Summit. It’s really hard work networking with the old-timers. As you can clearly see we’re hard at work putting the final touches to our devious plans.

On the positive side, I did get to connect with Skip Graham owner of the Old Timers Association and brother to the ever-engaging Chris Graham’s. Finally had the pleasure of meeting Steve from Adrants.com (who took the picture). Hard work indeed.

He made everyone admit ‘Their Baby is Ugly!’ and then got down to business!

Tim’s rules for conversion optimization.

1. Have your visitors design your website. Ask them how they want to access information.
2. Subtle changes lead to big gains. There are thousands of on-page variables that affect your visitor’s behavior.
3. Landing Page testing is not Optional. If you’re doing head to head tests you don’t need tons of traffic. Implement AB testing on everything you do. Just because it converts well doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.

The Seven Deadly Sins for Landing Page Design.
1. Unclear call to action.
2. Too many choices.
3. Asking for too much information.
4. Too much text. mea culpa.
5. Not keeping your promises
6. Visual distractions.
7. Lack of trust.

My quote of the day was aimed at site designers: ‘Don’t take your creative urges out at work. Go pierce your nipples or get a tattoo!’

If you think you might be a sinner visit sitetuners.com and check out Tim’s blog!

Their video is slick, well produced and clearly illustrates how to place your first time order on Peapod.com. The video is not rushed, promotes the fabuloussavings.com brand, walks the viewer through the shopping experience and even offers toll free assistance!

That’s a great concept and it’s deftly wrapped in a 2:08 minute movie – just short enough to keep my attention. Definitely a winner!

Take a look at the video and judge for yourself.

Have a cool video you’ve produced? Send me the link and I’ll review it for you!
jonathan(@)forgebusiness.com

It’s election day in South Africa and the country’s 20 million registered voters are heading to the polls. Unfortunately it seems as if we’re all heading to one polling booth so we may be a while

I did try to optimize the exercise by visiting the Independent Electoral Commission’s website to find out if they showed a list of polling booths in my vicinity – but no luck. The site’s slower than a government official on a very hot day!

My questions is – how can you spend hundreds of millions on planning an election, setting up the infrastructure, ensuring that thousands of polling stations are all operational and then forget something as simple as ensuring that your website has enough bandwidth!

I think the IEC should take a page from the e-commerce playbook. If its not fast, easy to navigate and easy as pie – you’re dead in the water.

Maybe they need a touch of Forge e-Commerce magic

Many advertisers don’t yet use eyetracking but when you look at the heatmap below ad blogged by getelastic it’s clear that the smallest design change can dramatically increase brand recognition and product visibility.

Spot the design difference?