TotalGym.com was established by Dave Dewey in 1996
(practically prehistoric in web time). Total Gym is very
well known for their infomercial, starring a buff Chuck
Norris and a sexy Christie Brinkley. Just last year, the
Total Gym became the most successful infomercial product
in history. Meanwhile, the U.S. Olympic Team has adopted
the Total Gym as part of their regular training, and more
sophisticated models of the Total Gym have become the
standard in many hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and
training facilities worldwide.
While Total Gym proudly offers “results you can’t
get anywhere else”, they also offer great values,
package deals, and support. TotalGym.com’s products
range in price from $200 to $3275. Also, they average
roughly 100,000 unique visitors per month. In terms of
selling online, that price range is important to notice.
Their products offer tremendous value, but they are not
“cheap.” Likewise, they have “real” traffic.
It’s interesting to be aware that all of their
traffic has been achieved thus far without spending any
marketing dollars at all to drive it directly. The url is
not even mentioned on the infomercial. (Sheesh! What were
they thinking?) People have to remember the company name
and either do a search or guess and type the url into
their browser. Motivated traffic, wouldn’t you say?
Presenting Challenge
So, now you might be thinking, “With all of these
great accomplishments, what could be wrong with their
site?” Yet their
By capturing more people at
the top of the buying funnel (i.e., the home page), they
would automatically retain more at the bottom, which
would lead to a higher CCR and more sales.
The Key Short-Term Problem: Low SPR
Once we realized such a large chunk of people was
being lost on the original home page, it became pretty
clear this was the area that needed attention first.
Picture the sales funnel and visualize how much of their
traffic was “bouncing out” right at the top. They
needed to draw more visitors into and through the funnel.
Their original home page <http://www.grokdotcom.com/totalgymoldhomepage.jpg>
was designed almost as a splash page. It attempted to
qualify visitors into 1 of 5 categories: Home Fitness,
Patients, Athletics, Rehab and Corporate. As we researched
further, we discovered that approximately 80% of all
visitors went to the Home Fitness page, leaving the other
20% divided among the other 4 categories. Sounds like
there’s a clue here, right?
Clearly, most people by far were interested in Home
Fitness. That should be no surprise when you stop and
think about it: it’s the focus of the infomercial. Well, if 80% of the traffic is interested in
Home Fitness, why make them take an extra step, figure out
where they need to go next, and then finally get to the
place where they can actually start the buying process?
Of course, to really maximize sales, Matt and I agree
the whole site needs to be redesigned. There are many,
many, things TotalGym.com needs to do better. For the
purpose of the case study, though, we simply focused on
one thing that should have increased their SPR leading, in
turn, to increased CCR and increased sales.
One Simple Tweak
What we advised them to do was simply this: forget
about the current home page and drive all traffic to
the Home Fitness page.
The new process brings visitors directly to what
80% of them want. They get exactly what they came for, and
they can start shopping and buying right away. The page
also does include all the navigation necessary for the
other 20% to go elsewhere if they want to. By no means a
fancy solution, and not remotely a complete one. But this
was a zero-cost tweak they could do immediately,
and if our analysis was correct, it would have an
immediate impact on sales.
Results
This one small change increased their CCR 39%!
Of course, in a normal case of tweaking a page to
increase SPR, we would be able to show you before and
after pages as well as compare before and after results.
In this case, though, we eliminated a page, so to
compare the old SPR with the new one would be like
comparing us Martians with Venutians (don’t get me
started!).
Again, TotalGym agrees with us the site needs a lot
of work. This is by no means a complete sales
solution. Technically, in fact, it’s not even a real
beginning. But isn’t it great to see how such a simple
and inexpensive tweak to the process can have such a
positive impact on your sales?
In closing, always keep in mind that an essential
ingredient in any effort to improve your sales is knowing
what your baselines are so you can identify where to start
as well as track your progress. For that, I truly don’t
know of any better tools than Future Now’s
