Last Friday was the first week I just totally whiffed on a Snip update, but it was 4th of July, so maybe that’s okay.

New Website, AGAIN

I’m getting serious with some shit on the Snip site. Check it out. I have a kick-ass mentor who’s been kicking my ass about certain aspects of my website/business/life, and it’s prompted me to do some things I would not otherwise have done. This is, of course, the whole point of a mentorship. So I have a good thing going there.

There are a few things different about my site:

• It doesn’t look like absolute dogshit anymore. I bought a $100 theme from StudioPress and plopped it in there. I’m not done grafting in the new theme but I’ve already gotten a number of compliments on how much better the site looks now.
• I have what I believe to be a clearer and more compelling opt-in form. My new opt-in is above the fold and the commitment is really low (view demo). The old opt-in form got no opt-ins, ever, and the new one has already gotten 2. (I hope you’re not too jealous of my opt-in success.)
• I have Olark on there. I’ve had Olark on the site before but for reasons I can’t recall I took it off. Now it’s back on, and it’s connected to my phone so I can be “available” 24/7. I’m usually not a fan of being just available for stuff all the time but Snip is a special exception.

Articles

Using Writer Access, I hired a couple article writers to write articles for Snip. They are:

• Stop Sniffling! Stock up on Fragrance-Free Shampoos to Keep Your Sensitive Customers Happy
• 7 Ways to Attract Clients at Hair Salons

I’m still a novice when it comes to SEO and content marketing and all that stuff but I’m pretty sure the second article is way closer to what I need than the first one. It’s pretty inexpensive to have these articles written, and the content seems pretty decent so far, so I’d like to continue pumping the site full of content and see what happens with search engine traffic.

Real Life Stuff

In addition to the stuff I’ve done online lately, I visited a couple beauty schools in town. I wasn’t really sure what to say to the people there, which is something that was reflected in how smoothly my sales conversations went. I’m still not sure what I might want to get out of a relationship with those places. I’m just kind of sick of people constantly asking if I’ve visited the beauty schools. Now I can say I have.

Live Chat

Since the time I wrote the preceding paragraphs, I had a salon owner start chattin’ it up with me on Olark. Our chat session escalated to a phone conversation and, by the end of the hour-long call, the salon owner was full-swing into a free trial. I thought I had one in the bag, but then later the owner said she didn’t like how Snip worked on her phone and completely bailed. Fuck!

But, you know, what the heck. The people who are going to be embracing Snip at this point are the “early adopter” type people and I guess the VERY FIRST person I caught on my live chat didn’t happen to be an early adopter. So boo hoo.

The encouraging takeaway from this is that I got my first fish on the hook just a few hours after putting Olark on the site. I don’t get a shitload of traffic (GWT shows me about 100 search clicks per month) so that’s pretty remarkable. I’m kind of afraid it was just a fluke. Time will tell.

Better-Converting Opt-In Form?

Another interesting thing: on like Tuesday I moved my opt-in form above the fold and changed the button text from “Get Started” to “View Demo”. This opt-in form that had gotten ZERO opt-ins EVER got TWO opt-ins in just a few days. So again, maybe just a fluke, but hopefully not. It stands to reason that a clearer, lower-commitment, more visible opt-in form would see an improvement over the alternative.

Rejuvenated

So that little “taste of blood” I got, combined with the couple of opt-ins, combined with the fact that my website is at all-time high levels of being totally awesome, has totally rejuvenated me. And I don’t know if I communicated this before but I was feeling kind of un-juvenated. Felt like I was in a doldrum. So that doldrum can FUCK itself because I feel like I have shit in a way better place now than they were before, although I of course still have a ton of work to do.