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Consoles
Cool Tool or Fool's Tool?

Wingnut

Pornn-Palace

Consoles, are they cool tools, or just a fool's tool? It's a mouthful to say but is easy to answer. The short answer is simply, "Yes".

Now let me say this upfront, I think that consoles are one of the most effective sales tools that our industry has available for use. I think I can speak for most webmasters in saying that a fair amount of our sales come from the use of consoles.

Let's take a look at the mainstream web for a moment. I'm sure all of us have seen the console for the "x-10 spy camera", which will appear on most major websites these days. What can we determine from the use of and increased use of that console? Several things come to mind. First, I'll bet they are selling a boatload of x-10 cameras. Second, the mainstream is helping to train the consumer that a pop up console is not a bad thing. Last, but not least, is that *closing* the console won't crash their browser.

Given all that, I would say that the mainstream web has realized and is using the console as a "cool tool". I'll also say that they are missing the point completely by offering only a single product that is quickly becoming over saturated. There are many other services and products they could be offering via the "cool tool". Which, with more acceptance of the console by the consumer, translates into more sales for our industry. With that said, I guess the real rating for the mainstream is "cool tool wannabe".

So where does our industry fall into the rating scale? Well I can almost hear the chuckles coming from the folks reading this. I can see the heads shaking and the curse words starting to flow, especially if you run a link site or tgp and review sites or pages. Our industry most certainly gets the "fool's tool" award. This past summer was a tough sales period to say the least and many webmasters desperate for additional sales kicked the console campaign into ultra high gear. Did this additional barrage of consoles bring me any additional sales? No. If you get credit for consoles sales at all, most won't carry through to that tenth console. All I think it did was hurt sales further into the fall season.

Think about this, hard and long. Is a consumer ever going to buy a membership from a site that they can't get out of? I can hear the nay sayer's now "Our sales are impulse buys!", and I agree for the most part that we sell most memberships via impulse sales.

However, the only impulse that consumer will have after the ninth console is to never return to that site again, maybe never to return to *any* of our sites again. I also see a shift in our industry where the consumer "shops" the market for the best buy. They bookmark several sites (of their desired niche) and compare what is the best value for their $39.95 a month. These are the folks who skip the 3 day trials and buy the full month upfront.

Are there a "perfect" number of consoles to pop on the consumers? The famous "it depends" answer comes to the lips first. If the consoles are a result of hotlinker traffic, well, hit them with every console you have. Thieves deserve the pain of "console hell"!

If your traffic is from free, or avs sites then the number of consoles is determined by the rules set by those sites, so FOLLOW THEM. The same goes for tgp sites, if you can find any that allow consoles. Maybe that would change if more webmasters used them as cool tools and not a fool's tool.

When your traffic is coming from 404 pages, don't make the mistake of treating them like hotlinker traffic. These are valid consumers looking for your site! Most times this traffic comes from out dated urls, deleted files, or people typing in urls trying to find more of your site. In this case, send them somewhere within your realm that you can make a sale from, a full-page ad, a hub, or an avs site. If you don't want this traffic on your bandwidth give them the ole "page not found" page. What you do with your 404 page depends on what type of site your domain is used for. If used for tgp or free site traffic, 9 times out of 10 the site reviewer is the one who will see your 404 page, so it should not be a console firing range.

If your traffic is coming from a source where no rules are in place (i.e. search engines), then use some common sales sense. I follow the "three strikes rule" myself; one entrance, one exit, and one more "are you sure" console fired from either the original entrance or exit consoles. This gives the consumer the impression of only one additional console if the first one is closed, but still provides me the ability to pitch three distinct offers.

The next time you're about to put in that JavaScript to fire off some consoles, just ask yourself the question. Is this going to be a cool tool or am I just being the tool's fool?

Wingnut