opinion

Window Shopping With Transparency

Used wisely, a transparent tour can unleash your site’s selling power. It’s one of the best weapons in a paysite owner’s arsenal and there’s no better way to increase sales through a massive expansion of your site’s reach.

The name “transparent tour” caught on because it’s the most accurate, least confusing way to name a tour that’s essentially a mirror view of a site’s interior.

Transparent tours began as extensions of members areas that needed a way to showcase a large archive of models.

A website with a transparent tour appears not to have a tour at all, or appears to have a tour that’s nearly identical to the members area. Typically the only difference between the inside and outside of the site is that once inside, a visitor has access to the content where on the tour the content may be limited to static photo previews or sample video trailers.

Transparent tours began as extensions of members areas that needed a way to showcase a large archive of models. Big network cash program sites went step further and designed tours with category browsing, search features and top lists. It wasn’t long before these sites totally abandoned the boiler plated multipageepisode style tours they’d been using for the better part of a decade.

The tease factor this kind of tour creates makes it highly effective. It gives surfers the opportunity to sell themselves.

The sales process it creates is a lot like window shopping. The surfer piques their own interest and delves deeper into the site until they convince themselves to sign up.

Another big advantage of this tour setup is SEO, due to the massive amount of pages you can have indexed by search engines. Every model, category and content link gets crawled and it’s not uncommon for a site with a transparent tour to span hundreds or even thousands of pages. Transparency also lets you target traffic and link directly to niche pages that are rich with content matching what the surfer is looking for.

If you’ve got a CMS system that lets you build transparent tours you’re in luck, the benefits of a transparent tour are many. As far as paysite marketing is concerned it’s an ace in the hole.

AJ Hall is a 12-year adult industry veteran, and the cofounder and CEO of Elevated X Inc., a provider of popular adult CMS software for the online adult entertainment industry.

Elevated X powers over 2,000 leading adult sites.

Related:  

Copyright © 2024 Adnet Media. All Rights Reserved. XBIZ is a trademark of Adnet Media.
Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited.

More Articles

opinion

The Search for Perfection in Your Payments Page

There has been a lot of talk about changes to cross sales and checkout pages. You have likely noticed that acquirers are now actively pushing back on allowing merchants to offer a negative option, upsell or any cross sales on payment pages.

Cathy Beardsley ·
opinion

Unpacking the Payment Card Industry's Latest Data Security Standard

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements and guidelines that apply to all businesses that accept credit card payments, and is designed to ensure the security of those transactions.

Jonathan Corona ·
opinion

Compliance With State Age Verification Laws

During the past year, website operators have faced a slew of new state age verification laws entailing a variety of inconsistent compliance obligations.

Lawrence Walters ·
opinion

Merchants in Spotlight With Visa's VIRP

By now, most merchants know about the Visa Integrity Risk Program (VIRP) rolled out in spring 2023. The program is designed to ensure that acquirers and their designated agents — payment facilitators, independent sales organizations and wallets — maintain proper controls and oversight to prevent illegal transactions from entering the Visa payment system.

Cathy Beardsley ·
opinion

How to Know When Hosting Upgrades Are Really Needed

I was reminded about an annoyingly common experience that often frustrates website owners: upgrades. Sometimes, an upgrade of physical system resources like CPU, RAM or storage really is required to solve a problem or improve performance… but how do you know you’re not just being upsold?

Brad Mitchell ·
profile

WIA Profile: Natasha Inamorata

Natasha Inamorata was just a kid when she first picked up a disposable camera. She quickly became enamored with it and continued to shoot with whatever equipment she could afford. In her teens, she saved enough money to purchase a digital Canon ELPH, began taking portraits of her friends, shot an entire wedding on a point-and-shoot camera and edited the photos with Picnik.

Women in Adult ·
trends

Collab Nation: Top Creators Share Best Practices for Fruitful Co-Shoots

One of the fastest ways for creators to gain new subscribers and buyers, not to mention monetize their existing fan base, is to collaborate with other creators. The extra star power can multiply potential earnings, broaden brand reach and boost a creator’s reputation in the community.

Alejandro Freixes ·
opinion

Bridging Generational Divides in Payment Preferences

While Baby Boomers and Gen Xers tend to be most comfortable with the traditional payment methods to which they are accustomed, like cash and credit cards, the younger cohorts — Millennials and Gen Z — have veered sharply toward digital-first payment solutions.

Jonathan Corona ·
opinion

Legal and Business Safety for Creators at Trade Shows

As I write this, I am preparing to attend XBIZ Miami, which reminds me of attending my first trade show 20 years ago. Since then, I have met thousands of people from all over the world who were doing business — or seeking to do business — in the adult industry.

Corey D. Silverstein ·
opinion

Adding AI to Your Company's Tech Toolbox

Artificial intelligence is all the rage. Not only is AI all over the headlines, it is also top of mind for many company leadership teams, who find themselves asking, “How can this new tool help our company?”

Cathy Beardsley ·
Show More