They say hiding in plain sight is often the best way to be almost invisible.

Often it’s the obvious things that pass us by.

They’re just too obvious, so we ignore them. Even though they’re making other people money, often in the same industry or niche that we’re in.

Is there any way to stop this happening to you?

It’s all too easy to have a “D’oh!” moment when we finally hit ourselves on the head because we’ve missed something that’s been staring at us for days, weeks, months or even years.

It’s a bit like looking for lost keys when they’re in the first place we looked for them but we didn’t spot them at the time.

Sometimes it’s because things are too close for us – the saying that you can’t see the wood for the trees is often truer than we’d like to think.

So what can you do to stop this happening to you – or at least reduce the chance of it happening?

 Keep your eyes peeled

As well as all the regular stuff in your business plus things like just browsing the web or answering emails or checking Facebook or creating new material or whatever else you do, day in, day out, take time out to step back.

You don’t actually have to step back very far.

Just long enough to allow your brain to kick in and do something. Rather than working on autopilot.

Pick on one site a day.

Ideally one that you use regularly.

So regularly, it’s almost become part of the furniture.

Then actually examine it as though it was the first time you’d used it.

Or as if you were explaining it to someone who’d never used the site before.

Let’s use Google as an example.

One of my favourite methods of keyword research is to use the suggestions that come up as you type.

Yet almost everyone I’ve mentioned that to reacts as though it’s something they’ve never seen before – even though they use the selections all the time.

I then get questions about whether the results are relevant and up to date.

To which the answer is “very much so”.

Because Google care most about user experience.

They know that advertisers will pay them providing they deliver visitors.

And the best way of delivering visitors is to give searchers a good experience.

Or, if you’re being cynical, at least a better experience than if they used Bing.

Either way, the suggestions are part of the wallpaper. We just accept them and don’t look beyond their use as helping us search.

Even though the options are up to date and relevant and in priority order. The most likely option for our search query is the first one in the list.

The next obvious thing on Google are the “related searches” at the end of the page.

They know that results go rapidly downhill once you’ve left the first page.

For popular terms, they drift after maybe 10 pages. For less popular terms the results are getting pretty bad by the end of the first page, let alone page 2 of the results.

So before you click to get to page 2, Google offer related terms that might better serve what you were looking for.

It’s actually the Wonder Wheel they had years ago, retooled to make it useful to regular searchers.

You can do the same on other sites you visit regularly.

Pick on sites with big budgets!

Amazon is another of my favourite ways to find the things that should be patently obvious.

Almost every item has a section that shows what people either bought when they purchased that item (memory cards for cameras, batteries, related books) or also looked at when they were browsing.

They also often have multi-buy options that may or may not offer a saving over buying the two or three items separately. But whether there’s a saving or not, it looks as though there is. Which is enough to trigger our buying mode.

If you have a shopping cart on your site, this can be a powerful way to increase sales.

A hypnosis site that I promote does this by putting a “buy these together” option next to the button for the single track.

That works.

Depending on the track, maybe one in every three sales gets upgraded.

There’s also a not very subtle embedded command in that phrase.

You’re being told to buy the two tracks together.

Amazon’s is more subtle – it’s essentially just social proof that you’re not alone buying the item or thinking about the other items they show.

If you want a quick and easy way to increase sales, follow those sites.

Use the shops and supermarkets

Retail stores, especially chains, put a lot of money into researching what people buy and how they can increase that.

Even down to where the eyes are pointing on cereals aimed at children!

Colours on products are a signal about them – here in the UK, milk is colour coded blue for whole milk, green for semi skimmed, red for skimmed. That colour system gets used on other dairy products as well.

Green is often used to emphasise natural credentials.

Pictures of idyllic farms take precedence over the reality that the food we’re buying is often produced in conditions that are very close to a hermetically sealed factory.

Some of the things that food manufacturers do are so effective that they’re legislated for,

Things like the “extra free” flashes that you see on products can only be a certain amount bigger than the actual percentage extra they’re shouting about.

Think about how you can use this kind of psychology on your website.

Is there a bundle deal that you can use to increase size of purchase? That’s what all the multi-buys in supermarkets are designed to do.

Is there a way to bring forward a sale – again, multi-buys and buy-one-get-one-free deals do that?

Stock photo sites do that kind of thing with the credits they offer – these get cheaper as you buy more.

The same works with web hosting where it’s cheaper if you buy a longer period. And the price that’s listed is usually the cheapest possible option.

If you’re offering a service that doesn’t really cost you much to deliver, adding extra credits as people buy more can work really well.

That’s not as good an option if you’re selling time based services so you’ll need to put your thinking cap on to figure out a bonus that your customer will want but that doesn’t cost you much.

So if you’re offering web design maybe that’s an upsell to a premium theme or premium-looking items such as image sliders. Or it could be an upsell to an autoresponder service so that clients can keep in touch with their customers. That one is nice as it leads on to the upsell of producing their newsletter for them as well – because you know it will never happen otherwise!

It often only takes a very small shift to apply something from one industry to your niche.

But you need to be looking out for the obvious things in the first place.

Is there a way you can put the equivalent of a shelf edge offer “barker” on your website to draw people’s attention to an area?

Probably not with flashing images – they’re very 1990’s – but maybe with video.

Facebook does that in its newsfeed.

A lot better than the newspaper sites I visit which turn the volume up full blast as soon as you arrive on the page.

Facebook is subtler – and better in my opinion.

The videos are there.

They don’t start showing or playing until you scroll down and they appear on screen.

They’re much more in your control.

Or at least give that impression.

My guess is that Facebook have tested this and found it to be the best way to get the necessary interaction without bugging their users.

Figure out how you can apply that kind of thing to your site.

It’s so obvious that you’ve probably missed it entirely.

Use television for ideas

I know a lot of business books suggest cutting down on television or even eliminating it entirely.

But it can be a good way to get ideas and inspiration.

Any industry that is close to being legislated off television altogther is definitely worth watching – cigarette advertising got more creative the closer it got to being banned completely.

I’ve never smoked but I still remember seeing this advert at the cinema when I was younger.

Likewise alcohol ads are often worth watching and although they’re not quite as in-your-face as the South Park parody they’re close.

That kind of disconnect between the imagery and what’s being said is regularly used in car commercials: wide open roads with no traffic aren’t what the average motorist experiences.

So maybe you can use people’s imaginations to help increase sales or email opt-ins on your website.

Sales letters do that all the time – they’re obviously commercials but in a slightly different context.

Product placement

Television shows and movies do this regularly.

But you can do the same on your websites.

We’re used to clicking links off to other sites whether they’re discreet like that link or less discreet like the “buy now” buttons we’re so used to seeing.

They can also be links off to elsewhere on your site – that helps with lots of different things including how long people stay on your site.

Keep an open mind on this.

It’s easy to go over the top and have the opposite effect to the one you were intending.

But it’s also easy to keep things looking natural and working nicely for both you and your visitors.

Links are so obvious – we’re used to following them everywhere on the web – that they could be the biggest thing you’re overlooking!

Sometimes we need help to see the obvious

A second pair of eyes often helps.

So here’s my not so subtle suggestion:

Check this page to see whether I can help you spot the obvious and get more results from your site.