Sorry, But You’re An Idiot!
A while ago I dealt with a guy on a public message board (not the one I usually frequent) who said something along the lines of this:
I've never seen a sales letter actually implement any of this JavaScript or PHP interactive sales letter stuff.
Every time I see one of these sales pages, I check out the site for every person leaving a testimonial. The truth is that nobody is actually using this stuff... is it a case where the emperor has no clothes?
What a dumbass question!
What proceeded was, several of us replied to him but he seemed to be off in his own little world.
Guess what, if you go to the Clickbank marketplace and choose the top sellers in ANY niche... most of them use some sort of pop-up, lead capture, survey, peel away ad, walk on video, or chat agent setup.
Most of what goes on is invisible to you because they'll use all kinds of personalization, landing pages, dynamic autoresponder follow-ups, sublisting, and all that.
If you are trying to tell me that adding PHP has no affect on your sales, or hurts them? Gimmie a break!
You can still sell a product with good copy and no PHP and JavaScript tactics. But good copy plus PHP scripts? Unstoppable!
You could add an exit pop-up to turn lost sales into opt-ins. Or simply add a countdown timer or interactive sales letter... it's up to you.
Filed in: Personal
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Hi Robert,
I know for a fact that this is so not true.
I implement exit popup in my salesletter and I manage to increase my conversion.
I think properly implemented, all this techie stuff can at least increase the conversion by 2%.
The guy clearly doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Best Regards
Robert…
In honor of this post, I’m sending you a graphic I have created especially for you.
Happy (Civil) New Year!
Well, there are those that poke around to see who’s doing what and those that actually implement things fast to see if it will work on their site, with their copy, in their market, for their product. When you do something concrete and watch your numbers, all questions go aways because the numbers never lie.
“Every time I see one of these sales pages, I check out the site for every person leaving a testimonial.”
That guy obviously has too much time on his hands. Just grabbing a couple of those scripts and implementing them on his own site would take him less time than checking out all these other sites!
My thought is that ANYTHING that creates a more interactive experience for the user can only help. Idiot or not, I use scripting on my own and client’s sites to enhance the experience.
Happy New Year, everyone!
What a doofus! That guy clearly has no clue. Just because you can’t see the PHP code running on a web page…don’t assume it’s not hard at work behind the scenes making the user experience better (and more profitable for the site owner).
And as for JavaScript, almost any 1st-grader can show you where that’s located because it’s pretty near impossible to hide!
Next, when you combine PHP with a MySQL database, you can do amazing things.
So …
HE** NO, PHP DOESN’T SUCK … IT ROCKS!
if($clues == 0){
print(“You’re an idiot. Shut up and go away.”);
}
How do you cope with the fact that Google dose NOT want you to have entrance or exit pop ups and they will penalize you for having them?
Thanks
RF
Yeah, I guess that floating optin box on this blog has nothing to do with PHP. Or those sales letters that call me by name when I get to them by clicking a link in an email.
That comment is funny in so many ways- so many important scripts are written in PHP, for one thing.
Other than the PHP file extension, the visitor can’t easily tell PHP is even being used… so talk about people commenting on things blindly. Of course there are ways to make files with .html or other extensions run PHP code.
I guess it’s easier to say something doesn’t work than to learn how to do it and try it.
Yep what a nob, most of the main content management platforms run on PHP. PHP is here to stay at least for now
I think PHP is cool. I am not an expert, but have used it in on my health and nutrition blog to accomplish some neat stuff. So, if this guy thinks it sucks, that’s great! Gives us other marketers a chance to be more creative with how we interact with our visitors.
I don’t use php enough, and I know I should use it
more often.
But I still know that it is amazing..
Happy New Year 2009
These days, it would be hard to find any useful webpage without at least one piece of javascript on it.
Robert, if PHP were so worthless, why would I and so many of your subscribers snap up your script packages as fast as we do, letting you make a well-deserved high income from the value you are providing to all of us?
Other than providing a topic for your blog post, guys like that ignoramus are best left in the dark where they obviously prefer to be. Name any subject, and you’ll find at least one non-participant who insists it’s either useless or some kind of trick or scam.
(“Did we really go to the moon?” they say. But they also said, “We shouldn’t be spending money on the moon, when so many people here on Earth need help.” So they killed the Apollo program, putting a lot of tax-paying Americans out of work in Texas, California, and Florida, plus in all the states where parts were designed and manufactured for that major driver of American technology that still is spinning off into the consumer economy – digital calculators and watches first, then cell phones, and, of course, personal computers. Funny, I don’t recall that we ever had a balance of trade problem with “moon men” the way we do now with so many countries….)
Meanwhile, thank you for your informative emails, both on scripts and internet marketing topics in general. I open emails only once or twice a day, and out of the hundreds I get daily, yours are the first that I read.
Hey, Justin (post #5) – nice code snippet! 🙂
Modern tools like php are the foundation of many of the best web sites, including all those sites that use wordpress and other modern content management systems.
I would recommend that anyone considering putting up anything other than the most trivial web site use a content management scrip, and then you can integrate Robert’s scripts for added functionality. PHP rocks!
Having produced working website for the past 10 years, I think this person truly has his head up his nether region. PHP and Javascript are what make the web sing. What’s more, AJAX is making things even MORE attractive, and interactive!
Well,
Not withstanding all the cool features like peels, popup, and Virtual Sales agents…. what about Content Management systems? Without PHP, we’re pretty much no where.
I have to say that I have seen many sites that implement the tools poorly – and I have been guilty of that – however, the tools can make the experience a pleasant one for your site visitors and definitely give you a better use of the real estate available on the page.
Thanks Robert – you’re tools are just brilliant.
Poor guy, lol.
That guys public message doesn’t even deserve this type of attention, lol.
Happy New Year Robert!
And thank you for all of your insights
Robert I have been a long time customer of yours and I know with 100% certainty that by adding php to some of my pages has dramatically increased sales.
J.R.
Robert
First, My background. Started out in the dawn of PC’s in the early 70’s. Engineering background. 1st class RadioTelephone License from FCC (It was something in those days). Chief Engineer of AM/FM radio station. One of my first computers was hand built and the logic was hand wired on a logic board. Used as a 24 hour controller for an automated FM station. Advanced to Asembley Language, FORTH, BASIC, a little COBAL, smattering of FORTRAN, CPM (pre-Windows operating system in those days), and others I don’t remember. Stumbled upon FoxBase when it first appeared. It was a language (precursor to present day FoxPro) for working with databases; but it was able to do many kinds of other programing. Moved on to FoxPro then got into HTML and web design about ’98. Went to Perl for a lot of coding then.
Read on a talk session some guy talking about how he had converted from Perl to this new fangled PHP. I wrote him and he convinced me to give it a try. WOW! What a difference. PHP would do everything Perl would do (and more) and do it easier. Since then I have been a dyed-in-the-wool PHP freak. PHP has just gotten better and better. And, need I mentioned the absolutely unique on-line manual which is the most comprehensive and continually up-dated of any manual and is freely given due to the work of many great and talented individuals.
Is PHP perfect. Well, no but then no language is. But PHP is very versatile. It can be used for interactive HTML pages, with Flash, and just about anything you might need it.
Aloha Robert,
Don’t get dragged into threads. I was cruising the Warrior Forum on a break and ALMOST did the exact same thing.
The forums are full of idiots. Pretend experts and trolls.
Write, show, prove what you have to say here at your blog. Disseminate via YouTube, Twitter and other social media.
Aloha,
Jason Cain
PS: I love ActionPopup. I wish I would have had that tasty piece of code when I was editing at Goldblogger.com. It will be up and running on my new blog in a couple days.
Will actionpopup work on trafficexchanges?
I can’t stop thinking about that scene in Billy Madison and laughing…
“Donkey Kong sucks”
“You know what? YOU suck!”
Like Old Dog, I’ve been around since the beginning of time – web time that is. I’ve coded in so many languages I don’t even remember their names! PHP is my favourite. It’s so easy write or better, to take existing code and extend it, that you can’t help but love it. Just finished taking the $7 script and tweaking it so that I only ever have to fill in the config file and write my sales and oto letters and I have a new site up and running.
It’s always easy to deny the value of something you don’t understand. Why do those kids text each other all the time? *8>)
Jim
Hi Robert
Total respect for you (you know from my testimonials!), but is it only my computer that makes your blog header look like this?
http://kevinsbrown.com/images/robertheader.png
Just trying to help.
All the best,
Kevin
Any recommendations for an exit survey pop up? I only want to use it on a single page.
Kevin,
You’re not alone. I see the same effect here in Firefox v3 and in IE v6.
I tried a few different screen resolutions but that only made it worse.
I often copy the website address of the testimonial into alexa to see if the testimonial person has any horsepower.
Just one of my ways of being skeptical.
Rick