If you’ve been in the “Internet Marketing” circles for any length of time, you’ve no doubt been exposed to sales pages which include some verbage similar to this:

This discount price only good until Midnight, October 8, 2007!

Or maybe they say something like this:

Because you’re ordering today, October 8, 2007, you also get these bonuses!

If you leave the page and come back the next day, you will see the deadline has magically moved. It’s a simple Javascript trick that’s been used for years to create a “sense of urgency” in the reader. The problem is, it’s an old trick, and most IM-savvy people know the “deadline” is a moving target.

I don’t know about you, but when I see something like that, my first reaction is “Yeah, right!” — and the credibility of the author is immediately put in the “questionable” category in my mind.

However, as I’ve worked behind the scenes for other marketers, I’ve seen the power of a REAL deadline — it’s quite fascinating to watch a slew of orders squeak in just prior to an advertised deadline!

Deadlines have power. In fact, many old-school direct marketers don’t consider an advertisement to be complete unless it includes a deadline, and they include an expiration date on all their “offline” advertising.

The problem with a fixed expiration date on your website, though, is that it’s so easy for your visitor to say, “Oh, I’ve got until Friday — I’ll think about it and come back . . .” — and once they’re gone, there’s a good chance they won’t be back.

So we try to get them to opt in to a list, so we can keep nudging them and reminding them about the deadline that’s looming . . . but we usually only get a minority of our visitors on the list.

So what to do?

How about a much shorter (but still REAL) deadline to force them to make a decision NOW rather than “thinking about it for awhile”? And we will reinforce that deadline with a running countdown.

I’ve actually seen these before, but in some cases all you have to do to restart the countdown is refresh the page. That’s no good. Sometimes the countdown timer will run to 0:00 and the offer remains the same — not good either. The page/offer MUST change when the timer runs out, or we lose all credibility with the reader.

You can see a simple example of this here (opens in new window):

Sample Countdown Timer

If you load that page and wait two minutes, the page will redirect to another site. In your case, you’d set the redirect URL to another page on your site with a modified offer (higher price, fewer bonuses, etc.)

If someone reloads the page, the countdown timer doesn’t start over — it maintains its “state” and continues to count down. The countdown “cookie” is maintained for a year, so if the visitor comes back anytime after the 2-minute deadline, they will be immediately redirected to the 2nd offer.

Now sure, if someone wants to reset their cookies, the timer will start back at the beginning. But let’s face it, anyone who’s really determined to cheat the system can open up a different browser or go to a friend’s computer and visit your site from there — so it’s not worth our time to try and create a cheat-proof system.

(If you really want to make it cheat-proof, you’ll have to go back to using a specific date as your deadline and change the offer when that deadline is reached.)

To use this script on your own page, just open up the source code on the example page (do it before the 2 minutes timer expires!) and follow these three steps:

1. Copy the Javascript from the HEAD section of the page into the head section of your page.

2. Just before the closing body (“</body>”) tag, add this Javascript:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
<!–
WindowLoad();
//–>
</script>

(Make sure the “WindowLoad();” command is on a line by itself . . .)

3. Where you want the countdown timer to appear, insert this line:

<span id=”CountDownPanel” style=”color:red; font-size:20.0pt; font-weight:bold”></span>

(You can of course change the style attributes . . .)

Obviously the 2 minute timer used in this example is too short — you’ll want to change the “seconds” variable to some higher value (right now it’s set to 120 seconds — 1800 seconds would be 30 minutes . . .)

And you’ll also need to change the “redirect_url” to your “2nd offer” URL

If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty (or hiring someone else to), you can do all kinds of fun things when the timer runs out. For instance, instead of having the whole page redirect to a different page, you could dynamically change the content on your page (see my previous article, “Dynamically Personalized HTML“). The change(s) could include the prices, bonus section, order links, etc.

Or you could get really fancy and have a pop-over window that says something like “Sorry, you missed the deadline; the price is now $X.XX and bonus #1 is no longer available. The price will go up to $Y.YY in 20 minutes. ” and start the timer again . . . that would REALLY add credibility to your deadline, in my opinion.

Questions? Comments? Let me know what you think!

Paul

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Business Tools, Free Business Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.