What if you built a site and all the right people showed up, but none of them bought anything? What if you looked at your traffic reports and analytics and you saw traffic streaming in in droves for all the keywords that perfectly describe what you do? What if you had killer content and tens of thousands of links, but sales were flat? What if you knew you had the best prices or the most unique offerings in town and STILL no one was buying?
Live blogging coverage of SES NY session: "Small Business Case Studies".
Live blogging coverage of the SES NY session: "Turning Simple Change Into Big Profit".
I set off a small firestorm the other evening when I Re-Tweeted the following tweet; "RT @KathySierra: "WONDERING HOW IT IS THAT WE CAN BE HORRIFIED BY THE FINANCIAL CRISIS YET NOT SEE MOST ADVERTISING AS A HORRIFIC WASTE OF MONEY" For those not familiar with Twitter, a RE-Tweet is just that, you re-tweet someone else's tweet. A tweet is a 140 character or less statement you type for anyone who follows you on twitter to read. So, I didn't originate the phrase, "Wondering how it is that we can be horrified by financial crisis yet not see most advertising as...
I constantly counsel people to make their Web site more than just an online brochure—they must measure their conversions online and offline so they know what it's worth to bring that extra visitor to their Web site. Only then do you know what to spend on marketing. Simple, right? Not always. What do you do when you have multiple ways of measuring conversions?...
If you think your customers aren't talking about you, better rethink your position. You can no longer bury your head in the sand without suffering the consequences. The story reported in the New York Times last week is a classic example of what Not To Do. It outraged folks and drew over eighty comments. Every company, small medium or large should be listening, and taking action. The world is different today, take heed, grasp and embrace this space we call Social Media.
When you watch the story of Pinocchio, it's easy to get caught up in the drama of the moment. Whether he's skipping school and getting captured by a man who wants to put him in a sideshow, running off to Pleasure Island or getting swallowed by a whale...everything about Pinocchio screams "get me out of this jam right now." It's easy enough to get in the same cycle with your web site; facing down each individual area of marketing without seeing the bigger picture.
The Great Debate; What is the ROI (Return on Investment) on your Social Media Marketing. Perhaps a better question is this; Is your Social Media Marketing efforts performing. I am not so convinced that businesses know as much about what piece and part of their traditional marketing approach works well, let alone what part of Social Media works. But, maybe, as with lots of things it isn't all that tough either, tell me what you think about this; ...
There are numerous issues that make their way into the visitor's conscious and sub-conscious, most of which must be overcome before they are willing to seal the deal and complete the sale. Here are just a few:
According to the New York Times article Websites Wage Holiday Price Wars (Nov. 19, 2008), small and large etailers alike are facing some tough choices this holiday season. It would seem that in the end, everything really does come down to price. And if you're not willing to fight the good fight--or if your bottom line simply can't survive the battle--your ecommerce business is doomed. Or is it?
This morning I found myself in the middle of an interesting chat with Mack Collier on Twitter. It started when I joined in a conversation Mack was having about the metrics he measures when estimating the value of blogs. We kicked around the common ones like traffic, subscribers, links and number of comments. Then Mack made mention of how high his comments jump when he Tweets one of his own posts.
There are all sorts of ways today to connect with, participate and enjoy a conversation with your customer. There have been numerous posts about starting and maintaining a company blog, which is an excellent tool. Another favorable venue is to create a Ning site. It is a very easy application and can create a pretty cool place to have conversation and engage your customers. It is sort of like having your own My Space site, and very easy to update and foster community with your brand. ...
With fears about the economy impacting everyone's bottom line, small business owners who don't already obsess about ROI are likely to find themselves digging deeper into their data in the coming months. Chances are good they'll start with metrics like conversion rate, cost per lead, time on site and pass along rates. Those are all good, but I can't help but think they're overlooking one that's absolutely essential.
Matt Bailey discusses the foundational elements of creating a user-friendly site that will encourage users to convert. If you weren't here you missed out! It was jam-packed with info on making an intelligent site that leads users down the right path.
When I ask for website submissions for this column, the very first thing I want to know is what is your goal for your website? "My daughter says I need to have one", or "everybody has one so I should too" definitely don't count. I'm talking tangible, profitable goals. And these goals ultimately come down to just one question: what do you want people to do on your website? This is the most important question you need to ask yourself when building a new site or revamping an old one....
I'll be willing to bet that when you hear internet marketing related terms like SEO, SEM, PPC, etc, you don't think of conversion optimization. And vice versa, when you hear talk of e-commerce conversion improvements, you may not think of internet marketing. If you do, then bravo!...you're ahead of the pack. If not, that's ok, but you may want to read on for some reasons why you should be integrating them.
It's easy to get so wrapped up in our websites that we don't always realize how they are perceived by our visitors. We know them so intimately that the gap between whether or not our sites live up to visitor expectations isn't obvious at all. That's where fresh eyes can come in really handy. This is certainly the case with this week's site clinic subject Tony Winyard, a disc jockey in London, and his website Streetlife....
As the kids splashed around and I sat on a park bench in the shade with my husband and in-laws, I found myself thinking. We'd come for the free fountains, but had already dropped $75 on lunch at the mall. As I took in the environment and noticed the little "extras" the team at Easton had added to make the fountains more appealing for families, I couldn't help but draw an analogy between what Easton Towne Center was doing and what Web 2.0 allows online businesses to do.
Google is planning on offering a free webinar on July 8th covering 3 of its most useful products: Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer and Google Webmaster Tools. This trio of tools is key to the success of any business. Analytics, Landing Page & A/B testing and website configuration for organic insight are an absolute must even if you don't use Google products....
Good search engine optimization has always been about delivering great content to both readers and search engine spiders. Really good search engine optimization is about learning to balance who to keep happy at any point in time and understanding how one change to your site can impact multiple things. Excellent search engine optimization is when you find the "sweet spot." That's when you make a change to your site that results in increased rankings AND increased sales.
An independent distributor sent me a plea for help: her site, Pets Love Flint River, is only generating a sale every few months. There are a few principles of web design and usability that are universally used on effective e-commerce sites that if implemented could make her site more user friendly and her sales go through the roof....
Quality content is one of the key ingredients for improving search engine placement, gaining links, and driving conversions. If your content isn't written well, doesn't answer visitor needs, isn't asking for the conversion, and is hard to read, you're losing a whole lot of sales and leads from your website....
Let's get one thing straight: much as we like to play God, Internet marketers are not the omnipotent beings some people think we are. The Earthly truth is that we're just some really driven people with a lot of knowledge about working the web to your advantage. And most would agree that this knowledge, when put into action, is worth a few bucks. Of course, it's easier to continue believing in the omnipotent marketer. As in, if you pay someone enough money to market your business for you, then that person is accountable for your business' failure to turn a...
At Search Engine Strategies in March, Tim Ash walked up to me after my speech and handed me his book. I (ashamed to say) did not know Tim and had not heard of his book before then. I leafed through it quickly and told myself, "This looks good," and promptly dumped it in my pile of books that take forever to get read. I told myself I'd eventually read it, but it took me quite a while to do so. That was a big mistake....
This week we're looking at an e-commerce website for educational toys, Brainwaves Toys. The current Brainwaves site has done many things well, especially usability of the shopping cart and checkout process. However, it needs a little help with design and navigation to get visitors to that point....
Today we begin the first installment of a weekly site clinic column, where small businesses are invited to submit their websites for review. Can't beat a little free advice, right? I'll be looking at the design, copy, usability, SEO, marketing, and any technical issues that may prevent websites from drawing loyal, active visitors and meeting goals. Each week, I'll give the top five issues the website owner/manager can address to significantly improve performance. ...
SEO, Usability, and Analytics are the best investment that you can make for your online business. In fact, dollar for dollar, these recession proof tactics should result in some of the best ROI you'll see from your web site. If you're still on the fence when it comes to investing in any of these three areas, you could be missing out on a wide-open opportunity to get the most out of your website.
Do you simply want more website traffic, or would you rather have better traffic? Did you know you can make more profit with the same (or even less) traffic? You can -- as long as you know how to get the right visitors and make the best use of the traffic you get....
Since the "purchase" is the ultimate conversion, it is imperative that you remove as many obstacles from the customer's research-to-buy cycle as possible. Providing your visitors the key ingredients in their shopping experience creates a smooth and worry-free transaction process. The easier it is to shop and buy the more customers will overcome the natural hesitations that many feel before they commit by hitting the final "complete order" button.
How engaged a customer is with your website will determine whether they can be persuaded to buy, comment, download or submit their information for you to follow up on. Customer engagement goes beyond just getting the customer's attention, you must keep their attention. This can be done by providing your visitors near immediate gratification.
To do that you have to first know who your audience is, know what they seek and then also know their purpose for being on your site. Knowing all this then lets you work toward meeting the needs of your target audience. But it also means taking things a step further and building a relationship with them. The ability to build a relationship with your visitors can be crucial to driving them through the persuasion process. Relationship building starts the moment the visitor hits the website.
Sage spotlights an article by Marketing Sherpa that reveals the results of multivariate landing page testing on SEM conversion rates. With little initial investment, companies have the potential to double their conversion rates. The artice also points out four major lessons to learn from multivariate testing, such as remembering that site redesign is crucial and to expect organizational barriers.
If you're an online retailer and you're looking to maximize this year's Christmas season then I suggest you check out Jessica Hupp's post at VirtualHosting.com because she has come up with over 50 ways that you can optimize your website for Christmas. From Landing Page Optimization to Usability to Analytics, she covers it all....
Forms are one of your primary points of contacts with your visitors. While many visitors still use email or even the telephone to contact you or to place an order, the vast majority will contact you first via your web forms. Forms that are broken or improperly implemented cause frustration and can greatly reduce your conversion rate for leads and sales.
Customers who, by all means, appear to be ready to make a purchase are often found abandoning their shopping carts before they complete their online transaction. In many cases this is part of the normal online shopping experience as the shopping cart is just used as a place to collect items of interest but which the user has no real intent to purchase. But all too often it is a failure of the shopping cart page itself that leads visitors to abandon their items which they do, in fact, wish to have.
To be effective, your website must implement product pages that are able to satisfy each of your visitor's needs. But information isn't enough either. While providing necessary information, these pages must be convincing enough to entice your visitors to move through the purchase process -- on your site rather than on a competitor's website.
Is this the end of the target audience? Well, okay, to be honest... no. The target audience is alive and well. But what can you do to improve website performance further? Check out the concept of personas....
Along with the About Us page, your Contact Us page is one of the most important and crucial pages on your site to get right. In fact, the Contact Us page could be considered the absolutely most important page. Even if the rest of your site succeeds in the goals, if visitors fail to find the information they need to contact you then you will bring their shopping experience to a screeching halt.
According to new data released by the e-tailing group and PowerReviews, nearly two-thirds of online shoppers now spend a significant amount of time reading consumer reviews before making a purchase. Dubbed "social researchers," these shoppers rely on advice and feedback from others to help them decide which products or services to buy. 86% claim these reviews are "extremely important" to their buying decisions.
On the web it is impossible to have a conversation without content. That is why content will never truly be dead. Every word written, every blog post, article, instant message, forum post, etc/ (the list goes on and on) is done via content. But content, outside of community, is not a conversation, it's merely a one-way communication. To paraphrase an old philosophical riddle, if someone communicates and no one is around to hear (or read) it, is he really saying anything at all?
During the design phase of building a website all too often we find that the end result is really nothing more than what somebody decided "looked good". In some cases it's a combination (or compromise) of what a handful of individuals have determined to be "good enough". What many fail to realize is that web design and visitor usability go hand in hand.
Being based in Ohio, you know a seminar taking place in Cleveland is going to get Sage excited and the 14 Days to a Better Website Seminar does just that. Matt Bailey from Site Logic Marketing and our very own Editor in Chief, Jennifer Laycock, will be hosting the seminar and Sage gives you the run down on why you should attend....
Earlier this week in my article about aiming for less competitive phrases in the early days of your SEO attempts, I mentioned the fact that most searchers conduct several queries and visit several sites before making a purchase. This action mimics offline sales patterns as well. Research has shown over and over again that it takes multiple exposures to a product before a consumer is ready to buy. Yesterday, Patrick Schaber over at The Lonely Marketer drew a simple, but pointed analogy on this concept.
Matt Bailey from SiteLogic has compared the process of making sales to SEO in a post entitled "10 Ways That SEO (Website Marketing) is Like Sales." He explains that his sales experience has shaped his philosophy of SEO and website marketing. It is definitely worth a read. read on for a few excerpts as well as link to entire post....
To add to Jennifer's post yesterday on Google's AdWords Quality Score, I found another bit of information provided by Google, Google AdWords Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines. Google lays out some information that is good nut just for PPCers but for SEOers as well....
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