Who Are You Making Lenses For?

When you create a lens on Squidoo, what audience are you writing for? Do you stop to consider who you want to find and read the lens? Do you plan your opening module to capture the attention of your next customer or does what you write confuse readers and send them to the back button before they ever get to the "meat" of the lens?

For instance, what if the opening sentence of a lens reads something like this: "I'm making this lens for a RocketMoms assignment." Or this: "There's a week left before the deadline for Giant Squid and this is my 50th lens!" Or even: "I've been on Squidoo for six months now so I decided to make a lensography."

If the sole purpose of the lens is to reach a particular audience within Squidoo, then those opening sentences might be just fine. However, if the eventual purpose of the lens is to provide information for a large audience of people from around the country and around the world and, especially, to convert those people to customers, then you might want to rethink your opening line.

Give each of your lenses an objective looking over. Make sure to address the main topic of the lens immediately so that you give your visitors a reason to read on. Don't chase them away with extraneous information or "insider talk" that adds nothing to the subject of the lens. Give them a reason to stick around, to find what they're looking for, to click through and purchase the item you were hoping they would buy. Make them feel like you wrote this lens just for them, your newest best customer and biggest fan.

If you want your lenses to succeed, to get traffic, to make sales, then write for your customers, not just for your friends on Squidoo.

Raise Your Conversion Rate With These Squidoo Tips of the Day

A couple of quick tips today that will help convert lookers to shoppers and shoppers to buyers on your Squidoo lenses.

• In shopping modules (amazon, eBay, or with your own affiliate items such as allposters.com) use wording such as, "Click on the picture to read more about or to purchase the item." Some visitors to your lenses might not be accustomed to shopping online and need a call to action or even instructions to help them learn how to shop.


• When setting up an eBay module, if you know there will be plenty of your search items with bids, choose to show items with 1 or greater bids rather than defaulting to zero. Look under the "display options" tab and check the box to display the number of bids. Seeing that someone else is already bidding on the items creates an instant demand for the products that are shown, resulting in a sense of urgency for your lookers/shoppers/buyers to click through. Here's an example.
  

Have any additional tips to increase conversion rates on Squidoo? Please share them in a comment!