Small Changes = Huge Improvement, And Other "Duh" Moments...

[TimGross]

The other day I saw a car trying to make a left turn at an intersection that had pulled up all the way into the crosswalk, meaning the weight of the car wasn't triggering the pressure sensor to cause the arrow to turn green for him.

He looked pretty mad as the light kept changing while ignoring him. What he didn't understand was how easy it was to fix... Just back up a little to where he was supposed to be.

In business, there are lots of ways to have "Duh" moments that when fixed make you a lot more money. For instance:

1) I redesigned a guy's website that had a weird background image that caused his website to be unreadable by anyone using an older version of Internet Explorer (at the time, about 25% of his audience).

Just fixing the background image bumped his sales about 25% simply by making his website readable to more people.

2) Another guy was selling a small physical booklet as a lead-generator for $5 with free shipping. I had him change the description so that the booklet was free and shipping was $5 (which of course is really the same thing), and he got a huge increase in sales. Not really a "Duh" moment, but a simple change that got big results.

3) Long ago I was re-working a sales letter for a client who had an upsell on his order form that was converting at about 40%... Seeing his stats got me to try an upsell on my own offers (something I'd known I should do but hadn't gotten around to, too busy, bla bla), and it made my paid advertising so much more profitable I was able to advertise more to make thousands of more sales than I would have. Kicked myself for not having done it sooner.

3) Obvious technical blunders too numerous to mention, like not having your order form work on a site you're promoting, putting a bad link in an email broadcast, etc.

So whether it was a "duh" moment where you fixed a blunder, or an "aha" moment where you came up with something clever, what small changes gave you big results?