Use a clock: Increase response x3 for low priced products

A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to corner Clayton Makepeace.

He had spoken earlier about putting a clock on the landing page to get three times the response rate.

Here was my dilemma: Most of my clients have years in direct mail, and the switch-over to online sales is still fairly new in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes they'll give customers 7 or 10 days to reply to a special offer. That's a hold-over from the mail days. I've wondered if I could convince them to cut reply time down to 3 or 7 minutes.

Clayton told me that for low-priced offers, a countdown of less than 10 minutes should boost response considerably. He said on some pricey backend products, say $500 products, it's still a good idea to give the buyer a few days.

This opens a can of worms...how do we prevent a buyer from closing their browser and coming back later to get another 7-minute opportunity? Seems like we should have some technology in place to let the customer know this isn't a gimmick -- our 7-minute threat is real.

My guess is the answer lies in cookies or another .asp file, or somehow blocking the IP address from seeing the same special offer. Here we move more into the domain of the web publisher, but these are things a web copywriter should know about -- more tools to make the sale.

Anyone have any ideas?