WP Final Countdown PRO
POS:
Countdown times do increase conversionsNEG:
This one is not done very wellToday Im taking a look at a new WordPress plugin called WP Final Countdown PRO So what is Final Countdown? Its a WordPress plugin that is designed to put a countdown timer on your WordPress pages. Countdown timers are a good thing to have if you are promoting an offer or selling a product that […]
Today Im taking a look at a new WordPress plugin called WP Final Countdown PRO
So what is Final Countdown? Its a WordPress plugin that is designed to put a countdown timer on your WordPress pages. Countdown timers are a good thing to have if you are promoting an offer or selling a product that is available for a limited time. A good example of this is when you sell a product initially, you might want to offer it at a discount price for the first 24 or 48 hours. Adding scarcity to an offer will increase your conversions. However adding a live countdown to emphasis the scarcity will really increase them. I know a lot of marketers (including myself) who use scarcity, special pricing, and countdown timers with great success.
Final Countdown Pro is not a new concept. There are several countdown plugins. However I wanted to look at this one because I expected it would have some kind of new twist or feature that sets it apart. Unfortunately to my disappointment this one not only did not have anything new about it. It actually had a few things that made it worse than others that I have seen.
First of all it has a really cheap feel to it. It just does not come across as a professional product. Also I found a couple of interface issues. For example I could not select the start and end month for my countdown timer because the poorly designed interface had the date picker cut off (see video above).
A big problem is that this plugin puts a countdown timer inside of the pages blog post. This is contrary to what most countdown timer plugins do. Most of them put the countdown timer on a bar that goes across the entire screen and that stays visible in the browser at all times. However Final Countdown does not do that. It just inserts the countdown into the post.
There are a couple of problems with this. First it means that the countdown is not always visible. Second it means that this countdown timer is only good if your sales page is actually a blog post. I honestly dont see any advantage to making the timer not be a overlay, but I do see it being a big disadvantage. Still I thought that perhaps I was missing something or just not understanding why it was done this way so I asked Pat what the advantage was in making the countdown show in the post instead of being an overlay that is always visible.
His answer was: “A bit confused by the question… Neither me nor my client ever said it was better than an overlay.”.
So then I asked him why it was done this way if its not better.
His answer: “Anyway, I’m just managing this launch, it’s a previously launched plugin from a bit back that has been rebranded and freshened up by its new owner. Basically it does what it does.”
Update: Pat contacted me on Skype and explained his answers where short because he was in the middle of a personal emergency when we where speaking. To be fair I gave him the opportunity to answer the question again. Here was his answer: “Overlays can sometimes be too intrusive. This gives the user the option of just having the timer stuck to the buy button, though the shortcodes can be used multiple times — at the top of the page, in the middle, etc.”
Im not so sure that I agree with that ‘too intrusive’ explanation. Overlays are very well proven to work. I think its more likely that the developer of this plugin just chose not to put in the extra work that is required to do an overlay (as a WordPress developer myself I know that inserting into the post is more easy from a coding perspective than doing an overlay).
I have to admit that knowing that it is a previously launched product that is just being rebranded does not make me a big fan of it. Further I get the distinct impression that the creators of this product had little interest in putting in the effort to make it as good as it can be.
While I’m a big advocate of using a countdown timer with real scarcity (dont do false scarcity) I’m going to have to say that Final Countdown is not the ideal plugin to use in order to add it. Sure its low cost, but that’s because its cheaply done and being released by people who seem more interested in spitting out a quick launch then creating a high quality tool.
PS) Fortunately Final Countdown is NOT the only countdown timer I have ever reviewed. If you’re looking for a quality WordPress timer plugin then I would suggest you consider Timer Bar by Thomas Witek. Its one that I have used myself and I really liked it. Click here to check it out.
A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.
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