Kirsty’s Easy Content Units Test – Great Tool To Integrate Products In Affiliate Sites
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Last month I finally got around to giving the Easy Content Units system a proper road test on one of my websites and wanted to share the results.
So What is Easy Content Units (or ECU)?
It does exactly what it says on the tin! It makes it easy for you to create and customise attractive content units for your site. You specify size, number of products, and you can apply all sorts of customisations to integrate it beautifully into your site.
Some examples of how ECU can be used: -
And many more!
Kirsty’s ECU Test
What I decided to do was see how much better a page with really basic images, text, and buttons did when I applied an integrated content unit into it. I’ve recently started to find old blog posts on Lingerie Brands have started to rank well for generic search terms they were never designed to target.
The page I chose was one that I had written to promote a tankini sale at Brastop. It looked a lot like this.
You can see it in it’s new post ECU makeover form here.
For reasons best known to Google the page ranks very well for terms including DD+ swimwear, panache tankinis, and tankinis for big busts. This meant it was one of the most viewed pages on my site with around 1,700 visits per month. To my distress, those 1,700 visits only equated to 7 sales during a 31 day period during April & May this year.
ECU To The Rescue
Since taking a few minutes to apply some content units I’ve seen a healthy increase in sales being generated from that page over the last 31 days. Sales generated have risen from 7 to 23 – an increase of 229%
It’s not making me a fortune considering the traffic volume the page gets, but the general nature of the search terms it ranks for means it’s way more difficult to convert.
How I Implemented My ECU
As you’ll see on the page, I created content units around the 3 general traffic themes that the page was getting to maximise my chances of converting the traffic, and have tried to make the unit look as much as possible like it belongs there.
The only thing I haven’t done (which I was told I should!) is to go through and replaces any “odd” looking ones with bendy images either with images of my own or cropped versions of the merchant images.
Will I Use ECU Again?
Definately. It’s going to be a great tool for my business to help me make the most of old and outdated pages that are generating traffic and no revenue. I loved the fact that you can alter your unit from within the ECU interface, and also that the system will mail me if any of my units happen to have old products on that are no longer in the merchant feeds.
I think in time I’ll be able to improve upon the sales levels as I go through and weed out products from merchants who aren’t converting as well. I’ve also been delighted to discover that a side effect of using ECU has been that I’ve easily been able to test traffic streams with new merchants I’ve not worked with before. So not only have I increased the profitability of my page, I’ve found a new merchant I will work with in the future (and at least one I’ll avoid like the plague!).
The units themselves are mind bendingly customisable and once you get used to the management interface they are incredibly easy to manipulate. You can do pretty much anything you can think of to make the units fit your site and content. Substitute your own images, alter descriptions, fonts, borders, and layouts. Definately powerful!
The Only Con To ECU
Is something that’s completely out of their hands. The quality of merchant feeds. When I was putting together my swimwear units I tried to find products from a merchant I regularly work with as I knew they had a great selection of cup sized swimwear. Alas, try as I might I could not get the appropriate products to come up – even if I searched for them by name!
Come on merchants – is it really that hard to put a little thought into your feeds? Product descriptions even?
I Got Back To John With My Results And Asked For A Comment For My Readers…
“Without a doubt the best performing ECUs are those that are really well integrated into the affiliate’s site as Kirsty has done above. The units are totally customisable, and by taking the time to ensure that font colours and sizes match, using the correct layout for your site and perhaps creating a custom “shop now” button, it is possible to increase performance immensely.
If your ECU looks out of place or stands out (for the wrong reasons), then you’re losing sales. Take 5 minutes to customise it to fit your site, and maybe you could see a 300% increase in sales too! If you would like any help at all customising ECUs (or indeed help with ANY aspect of Easy Content Units), then please give me a shout at john@easycontentunits.com – That’s what we’re here for!”
Find out more about ECU and sign up for a free or pro account at: -EasyContentUnits.com
June 29th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Hi Kirsty,
I have been meaning to do an ECU blog post myself as been using them for a few months now.
They have greatly increased my conversion rate and very easy to setup. I 100% agree about merchant feeds being rubbish and thats what irritates me most when I know there is a product available but struggle to find it when using ECU.
I am currently using the php version on wordpress.
ECU are great for newbies who struggle with datafeeds or you need just a simple solution for a blog post.
tip: I have found the black ‘buy now’ button coverts the best
June 29th, 2010 at 10:17 am
Thanks for the additional comment Carl, particularly the tip about the button. I don’t think affiliates think about their calls to action enough, but tools like ECU mean you can tinker around with them much more easily.
June 29th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Hi Kirsty
You probably know I use ECU a lot often I put a 3 line unit in the middle of an article and end it with 10 random products using the rss option both of which use my own badly made wordpress plugins. Here is an example http://www.fashionstyleyou.co.uk/question-air-clothing/
Both plugins are on my blog give me a shout if you want any help with them.
K
Hi Carl do you use a plugin to integrate the php version into WP?
K
June 29th, 2010 at 10:33 am
Hi Keith,
I use this plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exec-php/
Need to follow the instructions as you need to switch off WYSIWYG editor off etc from what I can remember.
I have been meaning to do a massive blog post about ECU as I have a few more tips and ideas but I hate blogging.
Does your content writer have any free capacity? I need some new writers.
Cheers
Carl
June 29th, 2010 at 10:49 am
cheers Carl, I have used that one before, never liked it, will have to develop something when i get a free week to mess about
June 29th, 2010 at 10:50 am
oh just read the last bit, cant get anything off my content writer at the moment looking for new ones myself
June 29th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Any reason why you did not like it?
June 29th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Great post kirst, I have been using ECU from launch. It is very adaptable and it is great for newbies and more experienced affiliate marketeers.
I have seen a marked increase in sales since I have used it. I am a bit of a techie noob so ECU has made it really easy to use feeds with out getting my fingers dirty !
June 29th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
they work really well, the only real issue is using a large number of them, and the manual management of stock issues – there’s always something to moan about
June 30th, 2010 at 12:04 am
Glad to hear such positive feedback on the ECU’s – I’m clearly behind the times only having given them a proper crack last month.
Typical of me really
I’ll take a proper look at your site page this week Keith – it seemed to be generating some kind of runtime error when I checked it??
If anyone has quick hints and tips for the ECU’s do please post them below!
June 30th, 2010 at 6:57 am
I have a domain which may lend itself to this quite well, just checked its ranking and im up to 5th for the main keyword (I only chucked an article on the domain and left it there). Might give it a go. The only problem I can see is its VERY slow to load. The rest of the page had loaded and it took another 5 seconds+ for the ECU to load…seems the same on a few sites.
Also, Im sure you would have done it anyway Kirsty, but you might want to look at rewriting the URLS: http://www.easycontentunits.com/more/726/rewriting-your-ecu-urls-with-php/
June 30th, 2010 at 9:08 am
Thanks for the tip on URLs Shane, I’ve not been able to get familiar with everything you can do with ECU yet. I’ve not noticed any real slowness on my connection – maybe someone else can elaborate if it’s an issue for them also??
June 30th, 2010 at 10:30 am
I also found the slow load times a problem but here’s a nice idea that displays a loading image for a much better visitor experience. http://www.pauldixonwebdesign.co.uk/blog/2009/09/05/ecu-loading-idea/
June 30th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Just tried it again and its alot quicker now…possibly my internet connection, although its normally better in the morning.
Have you got the Pro version? If not the conversion rate could be 20% higher due to 80/20 split.
July 1st, 2010 at 2:21 am
Thanks for that resource Chris, it’s much appreciated. Will come in handy when I get around to adding ECU’s to more of my outdated site pages!
Shane – yes I do have the Pro version. I think the conversion rates would have been higher but for the World Cup, things really dropped off then. I was on track for well over 30 sales earlier in the test… but then the football started.
July 2nd, 2010 at 9:56 am
Thanks for this Kirsty. I have used Easy content units for a few sites and they are great for a few products at a time but I just wanted to make you aware of our WordPress plugin. It adds a full SEO price comparison service to your WordPress based blog or site. Currently you can choose the UK mobile phones module but we plan to have a UK Video Games module within 4 weeks and welcome suggestions for other markets and niches you guys would like to see?!
July 4th, 2010 at 12:59 am
The speed issue is only for the free version as far as I know, the paid for version is a lot quicker. Also the paid version you can get the units in XML format and then you can lay them out any way you want.
Only problem I have with ECU is when you have loads of units, keeping them upto date can be a pain.
Dave
July 8th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Kirsty – do you keep those pages updated much? For example, your “Sexy Tankini Styles for Tall Women by Long Tall Sally” post has products that are now sold out.
By having the ECU unit at the top of the page and the featured products and descriptions after, are you thinking that most visitors will click on a product in the ECU before they reach your handcrafted product layout and descriptions? Therefore meaning it doesn’t really matter too much if those products are no longer in stock?
Scott.
July 10th, 2010 at 2:24 am
Hey Scott, with over 1200 pages and rising it is hard to make sure everything is updated – especially old blog type posts.
I’ve decided that my strategy for this will be to wait and see which ones get decent traffic down the line and then go through and update using the ECU. If it works well I’ll then spend further time updating the products.