Book & Product Reviews

This blog is now 5 months old. And so is Get International Clients. Both blogs have grow tremendously since the first month. But I’m ready to take them further now. What do I need above all else?

I need to start tracking my web statistics. As a marketer I know I need to do this. But it’s all so vast. There are all sorts of software out there. I’m a one person online business. I don’t want to waste my time doing a market survey and testing products. I don’t even want to read about statistics. Would you?

My Favorite Web Marketer Next Door

So, I turned to the person I know would help me. Ed Rivis. An internet marketer out of the UK. Without any marketing fluff. Just good straight forward advice.

He has just the product for me. It just came out. So it is really up-to-date. And…the icing on the cake…it isn’t a boring book on statistics. It’s a DVD set.

I watched it yesterday and already know more about my own stats.

Web Marketing Product Review

I liked the fact that Ed’s business is in the UK. I’m in France. He gave information on what he does outside of the US where Google reigns.

The whole program has a lot to offer other online business owners like me. So here is a product review for you.

Ed Rivis’ Stats faceslap is an essential way to help you grow your business.

One thing to start with about faceslap is that it is not made for the person that is interested in tweaking one word in their HTML code to make a miracle change. This is for people, for businesses, interested in real marketing.

Early on he explains, if you are not using stats, by simply starting an email marketing campaign you will increase the number of visitors to your website. You might say this is obvious.

Obvious, yes. But statistics show that not many of you are using stats to help run your online business.

Take Control Of Your Business Through Stats

If you have not set up a way to measure your statistics, follow Ed’s process. It’s easy to follow and explains everything you need to know as a beginner.

If you are already measuring your statistics, Ed give lots of ideas to streamline your process to only spend the time you have to get what you need out of it. For example you learn to:

• know which activity is most critical for you to track and set up a system to get a snapshot of your website statistics. This tells you what is working and what is not working.
• know what you are tracking and why – more visitors, more sales, lower bounce rate and so on. Make sure you have a plan to track what you need to know.
• focus on real sales and marketing statistics that are measurable.
• understand the difference between ‘hits’ and real visitors. For example, many people don’t know that one visitor ‘hits’ each image on your site when he arrives, so a page with 15 images is ‘hit’ 15 times by each person that visits.

He does call out that if you have a major e-commerce site you will need to go further than faceslap. If you have an e-commerce site and have not started tracking your web statistics, you will still find faceslap a good starting point. But you will have to dig deeper.

Ed includes a MindMap with 9 lead sections, 26 critical stats. About 40% of his DVD’s revolves around these stats.

Here’s an example of one section. Traffic is broken down into 3 main subsections Visitors, Sources & Content. There are 14 sub-subsections with details such as bounce rates (percentage of people who leave your site after seeing one page).

Identify The Stats Tools Your Business Needs

Ed describes in detail several tools that he recommends. Each of the tools Ed uses is either a market leader or destined to be a market leader very soon. Ed gives the most up-to-date information on the tools available.

Some of these tools include:

• An analytical tool that covers many stats for each of your sites. This tool generates very detailed reports that can be mailed to you a the interval you choose.
• An email marketing tool of choice. It was well known as an auto responder product that has just come out of a major upgrade making it even more powerful email marketing tool. This tool also generates very detailed reports.
• Using and tracking RSS feeds for subscribers. Using RSS feeds to understand your readers is important, and if your site has an RSS feed you should be using a tool, possibly Ed’s tool of preference.

Practically every tool Ed mentions is free. The one particular business promotion tool that is very powerful, and known from first hand experience, costs nearly $400. But there are free options offered to each of the few paid tools.

Create Your Master Dashboard To Understand Your Business

Ed describes a very useful concept, the Master Dashboard.

The Master Dashboard is where you put all of the data collected from the tools listed above. You organize the information into a 2 or 3 page report on a regular basis. This report will give you a clear vision of your collective statistics.

It is very easy to make decisions based on this one report instead of searching for the remote pieces of information in each of the different reporting tools. The first decision for you is to make a dashboard yourself or to outsource the work. Ed tells you the best way to this for your business.

Actions To Improve Your Stats

Ed has a list of some actions you should consider starting and gives a complete review of why you should do them and their negative points. These important actions include:

• Strategic Alliances
• Starting a blog or blogging more frequently
• Being active in community forums and blog comments
• Article Marketing

Ed tells you the one most important action you need to take and which so many people do not do. Fix the entry and exit pages to your site.

It is very important to make sure that people spend as much time as necessary on your site to complete the action you want. This action can be a sale, sign up, read articles or more.

You have to make sure that the landing page seen the most often is the most usable.

The page from which people exit your site the most often should be modified to make a final push for the visitor to take the action that you want or to keep them on the site for one more page.

Give Your Business A Complete Makeover With Stats

Ed has worked the statistic issue through all aspects. For a complete beginner it will at least give you the urge to look at your stats and understand some of them. For a more seasoned marketer, you will start to look at these numbers in a new light. You will probably want to start working with your statistics at least weekly as he suggests.

The process is the same for everyone. The first week you gather information. After the first week it does get more interesting. You will start to make small changes to see if you can make your site work better. Then you will be interested in finding out why one word, phrase of font size works better than another.

Ed does deliver an enormous load of information. Fortunately the DVD format allows you to work through it at your own pace.

If you are a complete beginner, one sitting through both DVDs may not be enough to master every detail. But you will be able to start in the right direction immediately.

Once you realize the information you have is so useful you will be shocked that you are only using the parts that are most important for you and not not using everything that can actually help you.

When you have the time, many more ideas can be found at Ed’s site which is updated several times a week.

Use Ed’s DVD’s to set up your Master Dashboard and use your stats to improve your business. It’s easy to understand in faceslap The £103 is a worthwhile investment.

And, in case you are wondering, these are not affiliate links. I didn’t get paid to write this in any way or form. I just like and use Ed’s products. They are always very easy for me to understand and they always teach me more than I already know.

Here are some more Product Reviews:

• Ed Rivis’ Stats Faceslap
• Success Chef’s Marketing E.S.P.
• The Management Tools I Use For Content Created To Be Re-Packaged
• The Ultimate Desktop Copy Coach By Tony Flores
  
• Web Video University And International Marketing
  

Read the Book Reviews:

Communication For International Sales

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with communication for international sales:

• A Writer’s Guide To Powerful Paragraphs By Victor C. Pellegrino
• Content Rich By Jon Wuebben
• Get Content Get Customers by Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett
• Letting Go Of The Words – Writing Web Content That Works By Janice Redish
• Stories That Sell By Casey Hibbard
• The Culturally Customized Web Site By Nitish Singh And Arun Pereira
• The Magic Of Pre-Writing By Steven Osborne
• The Secret To Writing A Successful And Outstanding Blog By Liz Strauss

International Sales

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with international sales:

• All of the Little Sales Books by Jeffrey Gitomer
• Asinine Advertising By Herschell Gordon Lewis
• Influencer: The Power To Change Anything by Kerry Patterson – Joseph Grenny – David Maxfield – Ron McMillian & Al Switzler
• Sales Strategy From The Inside Out By Duane Sparks

International Web Marketing

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with international web marketing:

• Bit Literacy Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload By Mark Hurst
• Dotcomology The Science Of Making Money Online By Stone Evans
• How The Internet Works By Preston Gralla
• How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders By Catherine Seda
• Landing Page Optimization By Tim Ash
• Mastering Online Marketing By Mitch Meyerson
• Multichannel Marketing By Akin Arikan
• Online Competitive Intelligence By Helen P. Burwell
• ProBlogger by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett
• Stats Faceslap By Ed Rivis
• The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy By Ed Rivis
• Website Optimization by Andrew B. King

All of the book and product reviews here are totally unsolicited… spontaneous …and without affiliate links. These are books I have read recently and only the ones that I share with friends. So all of the reviews you find here are on books and products that I highly recommend.

Also, as these are books and products that I have recently read since, this is not a list of my all-time favorite books. Hopefully I will get around to reviewing my favorite culture and international business books sometime soon.

Use these skills in your international tactics on the…
Get International Clients International Sales Road Map:

Guide To Multichannel Marketing • Do you know how to communicate with different countries? This guide shows you how

Guide To International Web Marketing • Do you know how to pull all of your different international marketing pieces together? This guide shows you how

Step 5 – Connect With Your International Markets Connect… • With culture customized content • With trust and empathy • With strong cross-cultural communication

International Business Success Basics • Do you feel at a loss with regards to dealing with international business? This guide gives you the background information you need right from the start.

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Ed Rivis’ Stats Faceslap