WebProNews

Tag: conversions

  • 30 Easy Ways To Increase Your Ecommerce Conversions

    30 Easy Ways To Increase Your Ecommerce Conversions

    Many eCommerce websites are struggling to make conversions. Since conversion rates directly correlate to the overall performance of businesses, this can be quite problematic. If your eCommerce business isn’t making the desired number of conversions, don’t give up hope. Here are some issues that could be to blame:

    • Bad user interface – The design and interface of your website could be off-putting to users. Whether it’s the colors and fonts you use or the location of call to action buttons, a bad user interface is one of the biggest reasons why some eCommerce businesses fail to make conversions.

    • Slow load times – It can be infuriating for online shoppers to wait for a website to load. If your page takes too long, you could easily shoo away potential customers. 40% of users abandon a site if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

    • No product reviews – Product reviews are the best way to influence the purchase decision of consumers. Without any product reviews on your website, customers might think twice about buying anything from you.

    Along with the factors mentioned above, there could be many other reasons why consumers aren’t so keen on making purchases from your eCommerce business. Maybe your product is out of stock or your competitors are offering a much lower price. Whatever the case is, the following are some effective ways to easily boost your site’s conversions:

    • Improve the quality of your landing page. Get users to instantly be interested in your products by adding customer reviews and product videos.

    • More than 50% of Internet users access websites on smartphones. It’s a good idea to implement a mobile responsive design that suits all devices.

    • Engage with your customers by offering them something like coupon codes, discounts, or free trials.

    • Use the scarcity principle to compel customers to take immediate action.

    • Recommend related products that consumers might find useful based on their shopping cart.

    • Conduct A/B tests on different page designs to determine which one works best for eCommerce conversions.

    • Provide real-time assistance to people who are inquiring about your products and gently guide them to make a purchase. Intuit was able to increase their conversion rate by 211% after implementing a proactive chat.

    These are just a few of the effective methods for eCommerce businesses to improve their conversions. Check out my below ecommerce infographic for more insightful ideas.

  • Jazz Jennings Is the Teen Caitlyn Jenner, And Her Show Is Reaching People

    Jazz Jennings is to teens what Caitlyn Jenner is to adults. The transgender teen sensation and the former Olympic decathlon are both raising awareness of how transgender folks are perceived and treated in today’s society.

    While Caitlyn Jenner has her I Am Cait show on E!, Jazz Jennings has I Am Jazz on TLC. Jazz Jennings stars in the 11-episode docuseries that shows how she deals with friends, dating and family.

    Fourteen-year-old Jazz Jennings was designated male at birth but was diagnosed with gender dysphoria at age five. Her transition has been in the public eye since 2007 and her book I Am Jazz has put her experiences growing up trans out to millions of readers.

    The new show is giving Jazz the opportunity to let even more people know the difficult time transgender folks have.

    “Being transgender has completely turned boys off from liking me,” Jennings says. “This one time this really cute boy liked me, and then once he found out I was transgender he started calling me ‘chick with a d—‘ behind my back.”

    Jazz Jennings also addresses the common objection by some who are uncomfortable with gender identity issues that being trans is a choice.

    “People think this was a choice, that one day I woke up and was like, ‘I’m a girl,’ but no – it’s just the way I was born. I’ve always been a girl.”

    “Everyone always thinks it’s about the surgery, what’s between your legs, but … this is about what’s between your ears – and being transgender is the process of learning to love yourself and accept your difference. People have to understand that it’s not just a medical journey.”

    “At age 2, I knew I was a girl, and I really just kept pushing that thought forward to my parents.”

    The parallel’s between herself and Caitlyn Jenner is not lost on Jazz Jennings. She looks up to the older woman as inspiration.

    “She’s just so brave and courageous to come out with the public eye looking upon her,” Jennings says of Jenner. “I think people are starting to open up their minds when it comes to accepting us for who we are, so I’m just so proud of her for being such a role model.”

  • Report Finds Conversion Metrics Losing Relevance in Shopping

    Demandware (one of the early partners on Pinterest’s “buyable pins”) recently released its Q1 Shopping Index finding that digital shoppers worldwide spent less time per visit, but created 22% more baskets and placed 21% more orders compared to the prior quarter.

    The company put out a new blog post discussing another finding from the report, saying that “Conversion rate metrics are losing relevance”.

    “As the Q1 Demandware Shopping Index shows, shoppers meander from device to device, adopting phones as a true shopping device alongside computers and tablets,” says Demandware Industry Principle Rick Kenney. “This cross-device shopping is up 15% year-over-year. More importantly, cross-device shopping is driving an increase in visits. This would seemingly spell trouble for metrics like conversion rate that rely on visits, right? Wrong. Conversion rate has stuck. What was tried and true is now tired and inaccurate. Even though the very basis of the metric has evolved – visits is the denominator – we still focus on conversion rate.”

    “The truth is that visit-focused metrics are simply not in-step with today’s retail reality,” he adds. “Instead, retailers should move away from visit-focused metrics and towards shopper-focused metrics. Those that do will have a much better view of their true performance, and will see there is some really good news.”

    As an example of “shopper-first metrics,” he mentions visits per shopper or baskets per shopper, both of which the report found to be up (9% and 13% respectively). He also mentions orders-per-shopper are up 6%.

    You can find the full report here and more on the findings here.

  • AdWords Gets New Call Conversion Features

    Last fall, Google launched calls as conversions for AdWords in the US, UK, and Germany. They recently expanded this functionality to Spain and Australia. The company says it will expand it to additional countries in the coming year.

    “In a constantly connected world, people rely on their mobile devices to engage with businesses on the go, at any time and from anywhere,” says product manager Anurag Agrawal. “From research to purchase, AdWords mobile click-to-call ads allow advertisers to connect with customers online in a relevant and meaningful way. In fact, over 40 million calls are made directly to businesses from Google ads each month and that number is growing.”

    Google is adding some new call conversion settings for those countries that have access. For one, advertisers will be able to assign conversion values to different call conversion types, so they can get a better idea which keywords and ads are generating more valuable phone calls.

    “For example, a local bank might assign more value to a 10-minute call about opening a new savings account than a 30-second call enquiring about branch hours,” says Agrawal.

    Advertisers can also use ROAS to automatically maximize call conversion value across campaigns with auction-time bid adjustments that take into account device, location, and time of day. The bank, in this case, can drive more phone calls that result in higher conversions.

    Advertisers can also customize call conversion names, categories, and conversion windows. The bank could, for example, report on calls for Savings Accounts and Branch hours as different conversions.

    Google shares a new white paper on click-to-call here.

    Image via Google

  • Google AdWords Adds ‘Flexible Conversion Counting’

    Google announced a new AdWords feature called flexible conversion counting, which is described as an improved way for advertisers to count conversions that “really matter”.

    Google says that the feature enables businesses to better measure the value of each click that turns into actual results. This is the latest in a string of recently launched conversion-tracking features from the company.

    “We’ve been working hard on building products and features that help you better understand the value you’re getting from AdWords,” says product manager Vishal Goenka. “With estimated cross-device conversions and cross-account conversion tracking, you’re able to more accurately measure conversions in AdWords and better understand the complex path to purchase.”

    Google rolled out estimated cross-device conversions globally back in the fall, and pre-announcing features like phone calls, store visits and conversions from ads on the search and display network.

    A couple months before that, Google launched cross-account conversion tracking along with search funnels for AdWords.

    “Flexible Conversion counting replaces today’s conversions (one-per-click) and conversions (many-per-click) columns with Converted clicks and Conversion columns–helping you understand the relative value of each click that results in a conversion,” explains Goenka. “A company like Berkeley Tees can now count all instances of t-shirt purchases while only counting unique instances of catalog downloads.”

    The above video discusses the Berkley Tees example a bit more. More on counting conversions here.

    Image via Google

  • Twitter Gives Conversion Tracking To All Advertisers

    Twitter just announced the general availability of conversion tracking for its advertising platform. This gives marketers a measurement and reporting tool to help them get a better idea of just how effective their Twitter campaigns are.

    Twitter has been testing the feature in beta for a few months, and says the results have been “encouraging”. One advertiser was able to drive purchases with a 65% lower CPA thanks to conversion tracking.

    “Let’s say a shoe retailer wants to measure how a specific Promoted Tweet campaign drove purchases on their website,” explains product manager Abhishek Shrivastava. “Using conversion tracking, the retailer would create a ‘purchase’ conversion tag and place it on their purchase confirmation page. When a user reaches that page, the tag reports to Twitter that a purchase event has occurred. Twitter then matches that event against the set of users who have viewed or engaged with any valid Promoted Tweet campaign. Campaign analytics report the total number of users that converted and cost per action (CPA) without identifying who viewed or engaged with the Promoted Tweet, allowing the advertiser to focus on the campaigns that are driving the most cost-effective purchases.”

    Conversion tracking

    “A key benefit of conversion tracking is that it gives you a full view of conversion attribution, how Twitter-specific engagements and impressions lead to conversions,” Shrivastava adds. “An attribution window is the maximum time window to credit Twitter between when a Promoted Tweet interaction happens and a conversion event occurs on your website. Attribution windows can be set separately for both post-engagement and post-view conversions. Post-engagement conversion includes not only attribution to URL clicks, which many other platforms offer, but also Tweet expands, Retweets, replies, favorites, or follows that a user performs on a Promoted Tweet before converting. Post-view conversion accounts for when a user simply views an ad and later converts on your website.”

    Conversion tracking is available to all Twitter advertisers effective immediately.

    Twitter is rapidly adding features to its ad platform now that it’s a public company. Earlier this week, Twitter announced general availability of Promoted Accounts for the timeline. Last week, it added broad match to its keyword targeting feature.

    Image: Twitter

  • Google Launches ‘Estimated Total Conversions’ Feature In AdWords

    Google announced the launch of Estimated Total Conversions for search ads in AdWords. This feature is designed to show advertisers the conversions they see immediately, like online sales, in addition to an estimate of conversions that will likely take multiple devices to complete.

    “Estimated Total Conversions will provide you with a holistic view of all of the conversions driven by your Google search advertising that can be used to make important decisions like how much to bid and how to assign budget across your various marketing channels,” says Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP, Ads and Commerce at Google. “For the last few years, many sophisticated advertisers have been using their own analysis to get to these insights. Today, we are beginning to bring this level of insight and measurement to all advertisers.”

    Google is kicking off the feature by rolling out estimated cross-device conversions globally. Google says it will eventually add other conversion types (like phone calls, store visits and conversions from ads on the search and display network).

    Google says it has analyzed data across thousands of advertisers looking at cross-device conversion patterns. Here’s a look at some of the data for a few verticals:

    Measuring AdWords conversions

    This is just the latest in a series of AdWords feature releases designed to give advertisers better insights into conversions.

    In August, Google launched cross-account conversion tracking and search funnels, enabling advertisers with multiple AdWords accounts to measure across accounts with a single tag and combined reports. Last month, the company launched the AdWords “conversion import” feature, making it easier for advertisers to measure and optimize events that happen away from their sites.

    AdWords Conversion Import

    Images: Google

  • Autocomplete Type Attribute Can Increase Conversions, Says Google

    Google announced that Chrome is now supporting an experimental “autocomplete type” attribute for form fields that enable developers to unambiguously label text and select fields with common data types, like “full-name” or “street-address”.

    “With this attribute, web developers can drive conversions on their sites by marking their forms for auto-completion without changing the user interface or the backend,” says Google software engineer Ilya Sherman.

    In a proposal for the attribute, it says:

    Autofill agents save users’ time, and help site authors convert users in purchase and registration flows. Autofill works best when site authors are able to directly provide hints to autofill agents as to what data belongs in each field.
    …

    We believe that website authors have strong incentive to facilitate autofill on their forms to help convert users in purchase and registration flows. Additionally, this assists users by streamlining their experience.

    Autocomplete type

    As an example, Google shows this:

    <input type=”text” name=”field1” x-autocompletetype=”email” />

    “We’ve been working on this design in collaboration with several other autofill vendors,” says Sherman. “Like any early stage proposal we expect this will change and evolve as the web standards community provides feedback, but we believe this will serve as a good starting point for the discussion on how to best support autofillable forms in the HTML5 spec. For now, this new attribute is implemented in Chrome as x-autocompletetype to indicate that this is still experimental and not yet a standard, similar to the webkitspeech attribute we released last summer.”

    The proposal for the attribute can be read in its entirety here.

  • Google Adds Multi-Channel Funnels to Google Analytics

    Google announced a new set of five reports in Google Analytics today called Multi-Channel Funnels.

    In Analytics, conversions and ecommerce transactions are credited to the last campaign, search, or ad that referred the visitor when he or she converted,” Google says in the help center. “But what role did prior website referrals, searches and ads play in that conversion? How much time passed between the visitor’s initial interest and his or her purchase?”

    “The Multi-Channel Funnels reports answer these questions and others by showing how your marketing channels (i.e. sources of traffic to your website) work together to create sales and conversions,” it says.

    The reports are generated from conversion paths and sequences of interactions (clicks/referrals) from the 30 days that led up to each conversion/transaction. Conversion path data looks at paid/organic search, referral sites, affiliates, social networks, email newsletters, display ads, custom campaigns, etc.

    Here are a couple videos about Multi-channel funnels, including a walk-through:

    Google Analytics users can use the reports by clicking on the My Conversions tab. AdWords customers are encouraged to link their accounts with their Analytics accounts.

    Starting today, Google says, uses will see complete data in the reports for the past two months, but they’ll be expanding it to include data dating back to January over the coming days.

  • Opportunity Clicks: Social Media and Converting Clicks Into Action

    Social Media is celebrated for its power to cultivate influential relationships and foster viral conversations. As consumer attention shifts away from traditional mediums and migrates to the golden triangle of mobile, PC, and next generation Web appliances, businesses are racing to engage in the hopes of capturing fleeting awareness and igniting affinity.

    Social media, as practiced today however, largely represents a means, not a means to an end, or said another way, social media is missing actions where the purpose is to achieve something significant. Social media marketers must learn to introduce clicks to action and also study from the book of conversion science in order convert engagement into measurable and meaningful activity now and over time.


    Actions Speak Louder Than Words

    The socialization of online media is forcing brands and publishers to migrate from a state of business as usual to new paradigms of business unusual. As social networks are rooted in valuable conversations and connections, it’s inviting companies to participate as long as thy do so authentically and transparently. Talk is cheap however, and actions speak louder than words. As such, the opportunity to convert attention into impact is largely untapped. Many of the celebrated examples in commercial social media have yet to define what it is that they hope to cause and measure beyond conversations, share of voice, and the population of their tribe.

    Engagement through conversation is trivial. But, to reach people where their attention is focused and compel them to take an action that goes beyond response and sharing is artful and powerful. And, it’s attainable. Goals, clearly defined objectives and milestones, combined with conversion science emerge as imperative sources for engaging and driving desired outcomes in these uncharted networks.

    Conversion Science

    If we do not compete for attention, we are then absent from hearts, minds and decisions of our customers and the individuals who influence their decisions and actions.

    Once attention is captivated, the real question is, what are you going to do with it?

    The answer is to introduce a "call to action" in new media to intentionally define experiences and outcomes so that we can measure the corresponding results and activities to learn and improve. And, conversion science is at the heart of the best digital campaigns today.

    Conversion science is essentially the study of converting impressions into actions and how to then improve engagement and conversion rates over time.

    While conversations are helpful, they are not in of themselves, catalysts to action. It’s the conversion of conversations to transactions that leads to organizational relevance and transformation. This idea is something that is readily absent from many social media programs today, but it is through the introduction of conversion events that we can measure reactions and thus improve experiences. As such, metrics and the ever-elusive ROI in social media is not only measurable, it is perfectible, and this is why conversion science is critical to success.

    In order to convert attention into desirable outcomes however, we must:

    – Create programs with an "end" in mind (What do you want to cause, change, inspire, sell, build, organize, etc.)

    – Introduce conversion opportunities through existing and emerging touchpoints

    – Measure performance

    – Increase conversions

    Conversion science isn’t new. It is exactly how many of the best web professionals in search, e-commerce, design, analytics, advertising, and direct marketing achieve astounding results. Brian Massey, "The Conversion Scientist," believes that most marketing departments use conversion is a metric and he’s right, if they’re even capturing conversion rates at all. Conversion science is just that, it’s a science and, as he says, "It is about understanding your visitors, knowing their stories, and creating content and experiences to deliver what they are in need of."

    And it is through the study of conversions and corresponding behavior that we learn to perfect the:

    – Definition of the actions we wish to trigger

    – Mechanisms to capture activity

    – Systems and channels we use to attract attention

    – Focus and caliber of the individuals who help us carry our intent and value across relevant social graphs

    – The relevance of the social objects we create and distribute online

    Data is a Fountain of Inspiration for Social Marketers

    Conversion science is the fusion of left and right brain activity to foster creativity, and innovation through analysis. When combined with initial listening and research, conversion science ensures that digital programs rise above the noise from beginning to end. Social media programs that are data driven are inspired by insight, not guesswork, and as such, will outperform any program driven only by great ideas.

    Imagination supported by data leads to educated experimentation where the results are intentional and examinable. Analyzing, ideating, researching, and learning create a virtuous digital cycle with value, relevance, resonance and business performance as beneficiaries.

    Perhaps one of the most profound results of introducing science and data into the mix is that they inherently speak the language of executive management and the decision makers that green light our programs. When captured and organized accordingly, they can be presented to merit support and justify budgets and resources. Demonstrated consistently over time, data and interpretation also makes the case to expand programs and budgets.

    Studying what fuels or inhibits social media conversions is a rich source of insight that is necessary to demonstrate market attentiveness while also sharpening our marketing prowess. Through the gathering and interpretation of data, we can unlock imagination to inspire artistry and innovation. It is this marriage of data and creativity that saves time, resources, and energy in the design of social objects that are relevant with outcomes that are simplified and literally, scientifically engineered to work. As attention is scarce, conversion science helps us tell our story in a way that is consumable, shareable and actionable. As Elvis Presley once famously sang, "a little less conversation, a little more action."

    Originally published on BrianSolis.com

  • Facebook Registration Plugin for WordPress Launched

    Last week, Facebook launched a new registration tool for site owners. With this, users can quickly sign up for new sites with their Facebook profiles. The tool goes beyond the simple log-in feature of Facebook Connect, and lets users more easily fill out forms based on the information that they’ve already shared with Facebook (such as email address, name, birthday, phone number, etc.)

    WebProNews and the iEntry Network have launched a new WordPress plugin utilizing this tool. With WordPress being the most popular blogging platform, and Facebook being the most popular social network, we think a lot of people will be interested. 

    Facebook Registration Plugin for WordPress

    "Registration is an integral part of any web presence," says Mike Marr, who developed the plugin. "It puts a name to our virtual guests – an otherwise very difficult task." 

    "Facebook’s Registration Tool gives developers a familiar face from which users are encouraged to register, all the while streamlining the process for the vast number of existing Facebook users," he adds. "It makes sense that you would want this tool as a part of any website, including those powered by WordPress. Thus, we simply put the pieces of the puzzle together, and want to share with the community what we’ve come up with."

    As Facebook’s Paul Tarjan explained when the company launched its tool, it can minimize the friction associated with signing up for a new account. That means a possible increase in conversions.  

    Install the plugin from your WordPress back-end, or download it from WordPress here. To activate it, use the "plugins" menu option in your admin control panel. You’ll see a "Facebook Registration" options page under settings. Just enter your Facebook App ID and App Secret here. 

    Screenshot of Facebook Registration Plugin for WordPress Settings Page

     The WordPress plugin requires WordPress version 3.0 or higher. Of course we would love feedback on the plugin, so if you have any comments or questions, or have issues with it, email developer Mike Marr at marr@beyondwp.com.

    More info about the plugin can be found at BeyondWP.com.

     

  • Making The Most Of The Holidays

    Making The Most Of The Holidays

    The holidays are fast approaching and with them the short window of vast opportunity for many online retailers. As an SEO we get inundated with panicked requests for rankings before the holidays. Of course that’s not going to happen at this point (at least – I wouldn’t start organic SEO campaigns now for the holiday season) so what can you do to make the most of what you’ve got this holiday season? Improve your conversions.

    There are of course ways you can increase your traffic flow using PPC and other, more instant traffic strategies (eBay, shopping engine inclusion and placement, etc.) but in this article I’m going to touch on a few very simple resources and tools to help you make the most of your current traffic. Some will cost you – some are free but all these strategies, tools and resources are ones I’ve used myself or on client sites with great success. So let’s begin with the conversion-enhancing tools first and then we’ll get into resources:

    Trust Symbols & Testimonials

    Everyone from conversion expert Tim Ash to your aunt will tell you one of the things they base a buying decision on is trust. Would you buy your new iPhone from the guy standing on the corner? Why not? Trust – that’s why. The web is the same – only more-so as the assumption is generally that you are the guy on the corner and it’s up to you to prove otherwise. Trust symbols and testimonials can go a long way to helping people feel comfortable with giving you their credit card number, sight unseen.

    A common mistake is to place the trust symbols and testimonials below the fold. Let’s face facts – you have about 5 seconds to grab somebody’s attention when they first visit your site. You have 5 seconds to gain enough trust that they’re willing to spend time looking through your site. We’re all busy – if you don’t have my trust quickly – I’m gone. Place your trust symbols and testimonials where they can be quickly seen. Trust symbols can range from the logos of major brands who’ve used your services or shopped at your store to the symbols of your security certificate provider, organizations or security seals. Here are some of my favorite trust symbols:

    McAfee Secure

    I started using the seal back when it was HackerSafe (who was purchased by McAfee) and I, along with a number of clients, have seen double digit percentage increases in conversions after adding it to our sites. The interesting part is that it’s even useful with non-ecommerce sites. Our site for example is not an ecommerce site but our forms filled goes up when the seal is there and the phone rings more often. It’s just a matter of trust. Our ecommerce clients have more dramatic results obviously.

    Organizational Seals

    If you’re a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Better Business Bureau or other well-known organization why not show the world? These seals imply an ethics and commitment to certain standards and also give the visitor a feeling that there is a recourse if you treat them incorrectly.

    Payment-related Seals

    We all recognize the major credit cards, we all recognize Verisign and the other major security certificate providers and we all recognize PayPal. People may not know why these things matter – but they know they do. People may not know what encryption is but they know they don’t want to enter their credit card without it. Make sure that at the very least you have these seals clearly on the purchase pages.

    Testimonials

    Hearing about experiences from past clients can go a long way towards bridging the gap between you as a website and you as a client-conscious human-run business that happens to have a website. So much of the online world is faceless and cold – let your visitors read about the experience of people “just like them” and how you helped those people.

    Just Some Other Tips From The Water Cooler

    Before we move into some helpful tools and resources you can use to help increase your conversions here are a few other very simple steps I’ve found can instantly improve conversion rates:

    • Put your phone number in your header. Call volumes will increase your sales significantly but your non-call in sales will increase too. Your phone number is a sign of trust. It is a sign that people CAN call you – even if they don’t. Even when I’m building affiliate sites I’ll often put in the product manufacturers phone number. Yes I’m losing sales from direct call-in orders but I gain more in online sales than I lose. At the end of the day I’m ahead – imagine what happens with sites where you’re answering the phone.
    • Make it a toll-free number. At Beanstalk we used to have a standard telephone number and had it up on the site. The week we switched to a toll free number the call volumes increased significantly. It’s funny as people were about to spend hundreds and thousands on our services and a long distance call these days would have cost them a whopping 50 cents or some such thing but the switch made a sizable impact on inquiries.
    • Put links in your copy and draw the eye to them. If you’re talking about blue widgets on your site, link to your blue widgets page where they can enter the buying cycle. Sure it’s an SEO strategy as well (2 birds, 1 stone … excellent) but more to the point here is to help your visitors get into the buying cycle before they realize they can look elsewhere. “Oh heck, I’m already here and how much could I save looking around really?”
    • Don’t put up barriers. I’ve been on a number of sites (and even had a client with one) that have a warning on their shopping pages to the affect, “If you don’t trust online shopping give us a call!” Well, they probably trusted online shopping until you told them not to.
    • Build information into your site. One of the worst things that can happen is that you have an excellent site, you’ve displayed your products wonderfully and got the person ready to buy. Unfortunately they just don’t know what some term or another means or what they might need to go with it and since you don’t have the info on your site – well they’re just going to quickly Google it. Oh, there’s the info – oh, and that site offers free shipping !!! Ouch.

    I don’t want to give you too much to work with. Do that and of course one runs the risk of becoming paralyzed with information. If you get through this set and are looking for more little tweaks I recommend reading Tim Ash’s “Landing Page Optimization”. To reinforce my earlier point – notice the McAfee logo to the top right of their site. 🙂

    Widgets & Tools

    As with virtually every area of Internet Marketing – developers have built tons of widgets and tools – many free – to help you. Generally they’re to show you what they can do (sort of a “if we’ll give you this free imagine what you can pay for” kind of angle. And sometimes it’s just for links (which, since I’ll link to them from this article – is working well for them). 🙂

    Here are some of my favorites that can help you over a very short period of time:

    Attention Wizard

    Most of us can’t afford to have full eyetracking studies done for our sites. To help us out the SiteTuners folks have created a heatmap system that will scan an image of your page and show you a heatmap version of it tracing what they believe the eye will do (based on an algorithm – not human interaction so it’s not 100% accurate but it can give you a good idea of where some failing points may well be. They offer a free account so hey – can’t beat the price.

    As a note – the first time I used it I wasn’t thinking and fed in an image of my whole page. The eye was drawn to the footer according to the heatmap. Make sure you only input an image of the portion visible on the most common resolutions of your visitors. If you don’t know how make an image of your site – the easiest way is with the Firefox extension Screen Capture Elite.

    ClickHeat

    ClickHeat is a very cool heatmap generator that uses Javascript to track visitor clicks and then will allow you to view your page with a heatmap overlay of the clicks to see what people are REALLY doing on your site and how they’re navigating from one place to another. We’ve found this invaluable in maximizing our real estate but it required high traffic levels to be effective quickly.

    Website Optimizer

    A lot of people like to make changes to their website in hopes of increasing conversions but do they test the new pages? Google created Website Optimizer to allow webmasters to test 2 landing pages and get statistics on which page converts better. We tested a new services page and the one I liked most …. lost. Know what I like better than the losing services page? Conversions. If you’re planning on applying any of the changes noted above (or others you find elsewhere or just dream up yourself) be sure to do some A/B testing. Website Optimizer is a simple way to do this.

    Conclusion:

    There are tons more tools and resources out there but there isn’t much time left before the holidays. Start now and get to work. And of course – once the holidays are over keep going, no matter how optimized your site is for conversions there’s always a weakest point. Keep watching your stats and keep thinking about conversions.

    Oh – and happy holidays. 🙂

  • Clicks But No Conversions? It’s the Landing Page Every Time.

    Are you putting enough thought into your landing pages? If not, it’s probably the main reason your conversions, or more importantly your revenue, aren’t higher. At PubCon in Las Vegas, WebProNews spoke with Brad Geddes, Founder of PPC training firm bgTheory about advanced PPC and landing page optimization. 

    Why Landing Page Optimization is Critical

    "Landing page optimization – it is critical," he says. "If you have an account that has several thousand clicks and no conversions, it’s the landing page. That’s always the issue."

    "A lot of people don’t really get some of the high-level landing page testing," he continues. "Step one is where do you send the traffic, whether it’s…rarely the home page, but it’s a category page, a product page, an about page, so forth. And then it really comes to laying out the page itself."

    Think about it from the user perspective. How much of a page do you take in before you leave or convert? The whole thing? I doubt it. 

    "The most missed element is that whole concept of ‘above the fold’ – what’s displayed in the browser when the page first loads," says Geddes. "80% of [the] time, 76% of clicks occur in that above the fold section, so if that call to action isn’t there, it doesn’t matter how good your page is."

    "Every page really has a goal to it – what you want someone to do," he continues. "So certain pages you’ll have actually won’t be conversion-based pages. They’ll be more segmentation-based pages or so forth. But every page you send traffic to, you should have a primary goal, which you want someone to do."

    "So, if you’re a lead gen site, you obviously want a form on the landing page," Geddes adds. "If it’s an e-commerce site, you want a buy button. It sort of depends on what kind of site you are. If it’s a local business, you want a phone number and driving directions, but your conversion action has to be on that landing page. It should be above the fold, clearly visible, easy to understand contents. Minimize distractions."

    Why Less Conversions Can Mean Greater Revenue

    "We have a blog that has a huge amount of traffic on it, but had horrible conversion rates, so we essentially moved more conversion elements to the blog, and what happened is, the site’s overall conversion rates dropped significantly, but our revenue went up a lot, because all of a sudden we’re bringing more people into the funnel," Geddes explains.

    "So that’s where conversion rates are interesting, because you kind of measure it from the point of the user – where they entered your funnel, so…it dropped our conversion rates…a thirty or forty percent drop in conversion rates," he says. "Probably a 20% increase in revenue. We just essentially brought more people into the funnel to buy."

    Everyone wants traffic, and there’s no question. If the traffic’s not there, you can’t convert it. That said, it doesn’t end with getting a lot of traffic. You can’t just get people to your landing page. That page has to make them want to perform the action you are trying to get them to perform. 

    "It’s not about the traffic. Traffic gets someone to your site," says Geddes. "The page then has to pick up the traffic to actually convert it."

    You might want to worry about that before you start worrying about how to get people to your site.

  • Your Social Strategy May Lack Key Elements for Increasing Conversions

    As a business, it’s great to get out there and engage with customers. It’s great to use a variety of social media channels to open up communication and spread your marketing message, but what a lot of business decision makers might not realize is that it can be the combination of tactics that work much better than any one strategy.

    Social media marketing can be broken down into three categories: earned media, paid media, and owned media. This is how Maggie Fox, CEO of Social Media Group presents it. Social Media Group, by the way, counts brands like SAP, Ford, Yamaha, ING Direct, CNN, and Thomson Reuters (to name a few) among its clients. 

    Do you you use a combination of earned, paid, and owned media? Let us know. 

    "In the simplest possible words, earned media is when someone says something about you rather than you saying it yourself," Fox tells WebProNews. "Paid media is when you then pay to place your content on a third-party channel, and then owned media would be your own channel, so when we’re talking about social, there are social components to all of these things, that would be something like Twitter or Facebook, or you know, your own social website."

    "You can take earned media, for example, it’s very expensive to generate, particularly when we’re talking social, it doesn’t have a huge reach," she says. "If you do, say, a blogger outreach program, you know, perhaps you might reach a couple hundred thousand people. They might consume your content, and realistically for a big brand, that’s not enough to move the needle. You need hundreds of millions of impressions, but you’re just not going to get it through earned social, so then what you can do is take it and amplify it through paid, so there are paid opportunities on places like Digg, Outbrain, StumbleUpon…things like that, where you can actually amplify that content to a much larger audience and get the benefit of it."

    "And then you can also syndicate it through your own channels, so there are…most companies have multiple channels, so you might have something on Facebook, you might have Twitter, you might have YouTube, you might have Flickr," she continues. "You have all these different places you can publish content and work them together in a very concerted, sort of orchestrated fashion to get a lot of people consuming content that’s very favorable to you. So it’s really about orchestration. How do they all work together?"

    Orchestration That Increases Clickthroughs and Conversions

    Finding the right mix of these three types of media may just net you a significant increase in conversions. The way Fox describes it, it almost seems like it should be automatic.

    "We certainly see with paid social that we typically will see a clickthrough or conversion rate of about half a percent against…a program we recently did for a large publishing company…we saw a conversion rate of .55%, so when you compare that to typical display, which is (being very generous) often around .09%, the results are obvious," she says. "There’s an obvious reason why you would choose to leverage some of these platforms, so what we often see people doing is rather than using marketing materials and these paid places again…you take that earned media and take people saying good things about you, as opposed to you saying good things about yourself, and get it to a broader audience."

    Still, a lot of businesses don’t seem to be latching onto the three-prong approach Fox describes. Many are just after the earned media, which can be great, but it’s not necessarily going to maximize a campaign’s effectiveness. 

    "I think there are a couple of reasons. I think the primary reason is that they’re unaware of it," says Fox. "That’s changing though, because we certainly see large advertising networks establishing groups to kind of crack the nuts of emerging paid platforms. They recognize that the effectiveness of existing platforms largely is starting to diminish…that advertisers are demanding more results, and so there are emerging places and ways to get the .55% instead of the .09%, so they’ve gotta figure it out."

    "In terms of the ways people aren’t using it, it’s largely that knowledge," she adds. "It’s the knowledge of ‘how do I do this? What do I do?’ and then the other part of it is, interestingly, services. We see the ratio of media to services to do this properly – to get those results – actually being quite high compared to what you would see from traditional creative, but the results are so much better, so for example, just to…give some data points, we recently did a project for a client where we saw four and a half times the clickthrough rates of what you would see from a display campaign using the same amount of media in the same time frame."

    On using social media in general, Fox says, "At the end of the day, it all comes back to a simple thing, and that’s fishing where the fish are. The primary business reason is 70% of people who are online spend time on social platforms, so go where they are."

    There’s an interesting study making the rounds, looking at when Facebook users are most active. It may also help to go where they are, when they are there.

  • Google: Click-to-Call Ads Can Reduce Costs by 30%, Boost Conversions

    Google is talking about how the click-to-call ads it introduced earlier this year are reducing acquisition costs for advertisers.  The company points to a case study from Esurance.

    Jesse Haines with Google’s Mobile Ads Marketing Team writes, "Esurance developed an iPhone app that provides users with quotes, insurance information and claim resources. They also launched mobile optimized landing pages for the campaign so that potential customers could easily get information via the mobile web.  Additionally, Esurance ran click-to-call ads on both feature and high-end mobile phones.  With click-to-call, an interested person could get in touch with an agent to obtain a personal quote in just a few steps.  To track the results of the campaign, Esurance used unique 800 numbers in their ads and optimized performance as soon as the campaigns went live."

    "The results were impressive. Esurance significantly reduced acquisition costs, acquiring customers at 30% less than through other marketing channels," continues Haines. "They also boosted conversion rates.  Click-to-call mobile ads drove a 30%-35% higher response and a 5-10% lower cost per click on mobile than on online."

    Google Esurance Ad

    The full case study is here. In it, Esurance’s director of online marketing Tolithia Kornweibel says, "Google mobile ads with click-to-call allow us to put an interested person in touch with a licensed insurance agent or dedicated claims representative, or obtain a personal quote on a mobile phone in just a few simple steps. Google’s mobile advertising solution is not only more convenient and faster for customers, but also is a less expensive lead acquisition vehicle for us."

    Have you used Google’s Click-to-Call ad? Have they been successful for you? Let us know.

  • New Data From Google Can Help You Optimize Your Site for Conversions

    Google has just started sharing more detailed data for each individual search query in the Top search queries feature in Webmaster Tools.  Google used to just report the average position at which your site’s pages appeared in the search results for a particular query. Now users can click on a given search query to see a breakdown of the number of impressions (number of times your site’s pages appeared in the results for the query), as well as the amount of clickthrough (number of times searchers clicked on that query’s search results to visit a page from your site) for each position your site’s pages appeared at in the results associated with that query. Google also shows a list of your site’s pages that were linked to from the search results for that search query.

    Is the new data being provided by Google of use to you? Tell us what you think.

    How This New Data Can Help Site Owners

    WebProNews spoke with industry veteran Jill Whalen of HighRankings about how this new data can help site owners. "In the past, I haven’t found the data in Webmaster Tools all that helpful other than the occasional finding of a crawl error," she says. "Some of the information they provide isn’t quite accurate, such as when they say that certain Meta descriptions are duplicates when they actually aren’t. These inaccuracies cause people to wonder what they’re doing wrong and in some cases they even panic or waste time ‘fixing’ things that were not broken in the first place, just because they believe everything that comes out of Google."

    "This new data–assuming it’s accurate–provides a new layer of information beyond that which we can typically get elsewhere," Whalen continues. "As far as I know, there’s no other way to know the actual number of times an organic listing in Google is shown to people for a given keyword phrase. That’s pretty interesting and important information!"

    Google Offers New Query Data for Impressions and Conversions

    "Where I see some real value, however, would be in conversion optimization–trying to increase the clickthroughs for your existing organic listings. Just knowing what your clickthrough conversion rate actually is, is a whole new set of data that we never had before."

    Another industry veteran, Aaron Wall of SEOBook, tells me, "For years Google has provided some mystery meat data of marginal value and so I typically have not recommended registering with their webmaster tools. But this is the first tool they have offered which flips that recommendation on its head, as these stats give you new insights into how you are doing in search – data that is not easy to get anywhere else." He’s got an interesting post up about it himself.

    How Accurate is the Data?

    Google’s addition of the new data has been met with a great deal of enthusiasm. Comments on Google’s announcement are overwhelmingly positive. That’s not to say, however, that there isn’t some amount of skepticism.

    "As I said, this data will be very useful if it is indeed accurate. There’s been some Twitter buzz from other SEOs whose data doesn’t match up with their Google Analytics," says Whalen. "For our High Rankings website, the clickthroughs for any given keyword phrase didn’t exactly match what my Google Analytics showed for the same keyword phrases, but it was fairly close. For instance, my top two Google organic keyword phrases showed 3,020 and 1,193 visits when using Google Analytics. Via Webmaster Tools, the same keyword phrases show 2900 and 1300, respectively. That’s pretty close. Perhaps they’re sort of just rounding off (in a strange kind of way!).  Other phrases had similar differences in the numbers."

    Regardless of how precise the information is, webmasters have some new numbers to sink their teeth into, and assuming that many more share similar views to Whalen’s this might make Webmaster Tools a great deal more useful to a lot of site owners. In fact, a lot more site owners may soon be using Webmaster Tools for the first time. Google also just announced a new deal that will insert Google Services for Websites into the latest version of the Plesk Panel, which is said to be used by millions of site owners. Webmaster Tools is part of that Services for Websites package.

    Will you find this new data from Google useful? Let us know.

  • Google Conversion Optimizer Gets Target CPA Bidding

    Google has launched a new feature for its Conversion Optimizer tool for AdWords. It’s called Target CPA Bidding, and lets advertisers set a bid that reflects the average amount they’d like to pay for a conversion, as opposed to the maximum they’re willing to pay for it.

    "We launched Conversion Optimizer in 2007 as a tool to improve your campaign ROI," says Emily Williams of Google’s InsideAdWords crew. "Conversion Optimizer analyzes your conversion tracking data and automatically adjusts your bids for each auction. Over the past few years, we’ve been pleased to hear from a number of you that you’ve seen significant ROI improvements after implementing Conversion Optimizer. In fact, analysis indicates that, on average, those of you who use the tool experience a 21% increase in conversions along with a 14% decrease in CPA."

    That analysis is based on Conversion Optimizer campaign performance over a year’s time, with a control set of campaigns.

    Google Conversion Optimizer - Target CPA bidding

    "This latest update to Conversion Optimizer was made in response to your feedback," says Williams. "We’ve heard from many of you that you’re more accustomed to thinking in terms of a target or average CPA when it comes to managing your online advertising (as opposed to the Max CPA bids which the tool has historically required). We hope that having the additional Target CPA bidding option will make it even easier for you to boost your AdWords ROI."

    To use the new Target CPA bidding feature, advertisers can go to the settings tab in their account, and go to "Focus on Conversions". From there, just click Advanced Options. Conversion Optimizer itself is only available for campaigns using conversion tracking, and have received at least 15 conversions over the last 30 days.

  • Are You Wrong About What it Takes to Get Conversions?

    Are You Wrong About What it Takes to Get Conversions?

    SeeWhy has released an eBook with an interesting premise for online retailers. It looks at how the top 10 converting e-commerce sites drive their website conversions. The main takeaway, a representative for SeeWhy tells WebProNews is that "the top 10 converting e-commerce sites, on average, convert roughly 10 times as many visitors into customers as the typical site — 23 percent vs. 2-3 percent."

    The strategies employed by these top-converting sites don’t necessarily reflect conventional wisdom of how to increase conversions according to the eBook’s author SeeWhy Founder Charles Nicholls. "When we set out to study the top ten converting websites, we expected to find short shopping cart processes, guest checkouts, and highly tuned websites focused around getting the sale. But we didn’t," he says. "Instead, we found companies focused on lifetime customer value, seeking to thrill shoppers with a superior experience and to make it incredibly easy to purchase again. Moreover, we found companies willing to sacrifice a small proportion of initial sales lost as a result of their desire to capture user data. Because once captured, they use details very effectively to remarket to website visitors, driving highly qualified buyers with intent to their sites."

    "Conventional wisdom emphasizes SEO and streamlined conversion and shopping cart processes — reduce the number of steps, offer guest checkout, and the like — to optimize conversion rate," he says. "But the top 10 conversion leaders don’t care about one night stands; they want long term relationships. Still, they convert about 10 times as many visitors as the average ecommerce site. Their secret, quite simply, is their focus on long-term relationships with their customers, and that cardinal rule drives all of their activities."

    What are the Top 10?

       1. Schwan’s (food) 41.7 percent
       2. ProFlowers (flowers) 26.5 percent
       3. Vitacost.com (health and nutrition) 24.0 percent
       4. Woman Within (catalog/clothing) 22.4 percent
       5. Blair.com (catalog/clothing) 20.5 percent
       6. Lands’ End (catalog/clothing) 19.5 percent
       7. DrsFosterSmith.com (pet supplies) 18.6 percent
       8. Office Depot (office) 18.4 percent
       9. Roaman’s (catalog/clothing) 18.4 percent
      10. QVC (jewelry) 18.3 percent

    For comparison, Amazon has a conversion rate of 16.5 percent, almost two percentage points below the lowest-ranking member of the top 10, SeeWhy says. Here are a couple tables from the eBook that present some interesting stats about the top 10:

    SeeWhy Table - Min/Max ranges

    Check Out Processes of Top Converting Sites

    So is the lesson here to throw out conventional wisdom? I’d say a better strategy would be to build upon that conventional wisdom with strategies that are successful for these other sites. In e-commerce it’s ok to have long-term commitment and one-night stands. The top 10 sites, according to the eBook are optimized for repeat purchases, not for the first purchase, and make it easy for returning visitors to purchase. They make their sites easy to browse and "pleasurable to shop — especially for unplanned purchases."

    They each use remarketing vs. 25 percent of companies in the e-commerce sector, Nicholls says, and as a result, recommendations, suggestions and relevant content delivered through email, get very high open – and very low unsubscribe — rates.

    The top ten converting sites were determined using Nielsen data for six months, ending in November. Sites achieved a minimum of 5 million unique visitors per month, and conversions were measured based on the ratio of site visitors to purchasers in a given session. SeeWhy is taking requests for a free copy of the eBook in case you’re interested at a more in depth look.

    For those looking to optimize their conversions from search, Google recently started making data available to help with this. Search professionals are calling it a reason to use Google’s Webmaster Tools.

  • Increasing Conversions Doesn’t Come From Slowing Things Down

    I probably don’t have to tell you that time is valuable, but is this something you are considering when it comes to your customers’ time?

    If you run an e-commerce business, you have to consider that consumers want to spend as little time on your site as possible. That’s not to say that they don’t want to buy from you. They just want to be able to do so quickly, and the more time you make them spend on the buying process, the less likely they are to actually buy from you (remember – the competition may only be a click away).

    WebPronews spoke with Brandon Eley, Interactive Director for Kelsey Advertising & Design at SXSW last month, who talked about how forms can slow users down on a site. He says a lot of people think they need all of this information about a user, but you really only need a couple things.

    Note: The above clip is from our raw live coverage of the event, and includes 3 interviews. Eley’s is the final one, and it begins at about 18 minutes in.

    He says, "For instance, if you have an email form and you’re collecting email addresses to put them on your email newsletter, you may ask their name, their interests, their email address, have some checkboxes – where did you hear about us…thinking that that’s just a normal field, but when someone looks at it, they say, ‘I don’t really want to spend the time to fill that out.’"

    "Reducing the number of form fields that you put on a form dramatically increases the number of people who will actually fill it out," he adds. "So only ask for the information that you really need. The same goes for a check-out process or a registration process. Make it as simple and concise as you can, and you’ll really increase those conversions."

    Eley, who wrote the book Online Marketing Inside Out, also says that in an e-commerce business he runs, they ran a promotion offering users free shipping: putting a coupon code on the site, and getting conversions. Years later, they did some user testing, and found that most users had problems even finding the coupon code and entering it. As a result, they made a change to their shopping cart system to automatically calculate free shipping/flat-rate shipping based on the order amount. Over night, he says, they saw a 50% increase in conversions.

    "It was an amazing change that ended up being a huge impact on the bottom line," he says.

    That is something to consider yourself. It also speeds the buying process up when consumers don’t have to hunt for coupon codes. While consumers love free shipping, you may want to do some testing of your own to see if you are getting it to them in the most effective way possible.