Conversion Optimization | - Page 14 of 17

Feb 23, 2013 11:10 pm

Comments:

@neilpatel While it may sound self-serving to share with you an article on why you should spend money with a company like ours, a conversion optimization company, I think you’ll find the points made by Neil Patel are a great guide to choosing your conversion optimization strategy.
Yes, you need a conversion optimization strategy, even if you don’t hire consultants.
Given Neil’s background of creating companies in the online marketing optimization space (KISSmetrics and CrazyEgg), I hope we’ll see some more from him in the form of tools. – Brian Massey

Tags: conversion rate, optimization, neil patel

March 7, 2013/by Cathy Tilton

Infographics, Conversion Heatmaps, and Why Marketing is Broken: For Further Study

INFOGRAPHIC Crafting the Subject Line that Gets Your Email Read – Litmus

We’ve seen in email tests that subject lines can have implications far beyond the open rate. We’ve seen two identical emails with identical landing pages have the same open rates and the same click-through rates (CTR), but one generated more sales than the other.

What’s the difference? The subject line.

In short, subject lines are important. And they are difficult to write.

Build a Conversion Rate Heatmap by Hour & Day of Week in Google Docs

When we dig into a site’s analytics, we try a number of different approaches to the data. Sometimes interesting things pop out, and sometimes the data looks “as expected.

“This is an analysis we are going to start adding to our analysis: Heatmap of Conversions by Hour of Day. We will modify it for our ecommerce clients (as we track Revenue per Visit, or RPV).

You might try this and see if there is an interesting pattern in your data.

It’s Not My Job: Why Marketing is Broken

@TheGrok (Bryan Eisenberg) is one of the founders of the performance marketing movement — we’ve called it conversion marketing. He has the cred to ask the hard questions.

In this very impactful article, he asks “Really, is this so hard to do?” of the email marketers whom he sees as “broken.”These examples should leave you with a feeling of, “Oh yes. I get it now.”

That can be a very valuable feeling.

February 7, 2013/by Cathy Tilton

Conversion Techniques of the 1920s and The Most Trusted Seal on the Internet: For Further Study

Conversion Optimization

Nine conversion techniques from the 1920s to try today | Econsultancy

Jan 23, 2013 08:11 pm

Comments:

@eConsultancy brings the excellent teaching of Claude Hopkins Scientific Advertising into our online world. It’s almost conversion steampunk until you realize that we haven’t invented very much original.And we’ve left some smart ideas behind.Enjoy these nine tips and you should be able to find a free PDF of Hopkins’ book somewhere on the Web.If not, email me.

by: Brian Massey
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Which Site Seal do People Trust the Most? (2013 Survey Results) – Articles – Baymard Institute

Jan 23, 2013 07:07 am

Comments:

When you place the logos of third parties on your site, you are “borrowing” the trust they have created for yourself. Such logos include client logos, website certified logos, associations you belong to, and even the credit card company logos found on checkout pages.Here is an interesting study on which common trust symbols are perceived as most trustworthy.

by: Brian Massey
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[bookpromo]

January 30, 2013/by Cathy Tilton

Conversion Accelerators

Conversion Optimization

It’s job is to give you some ideas about where to invest to increase conversion rates and revenue per visit for your site.
Once you have been inspired, your next question should be, “What evidence do we have that would support any one of these strategies?”
Ask your team or give us a call.

Video

For complex sells or emotional purchases, video can deliver a great deal of information in a short period of time. Register for our report Business Video Through the Eyes of Your Prospects to learn more.

Ratings and Reviews

Found more and more on ecommerce sites, ratings and reviews offer proof to and build trust with visitors. Star ratings offer comfort at a glance almost anywhere on a site. Don’t rule this option out for B2B products and services as well.

Live Chat

In almost any marketplace, there is a segment of the audience who just needs a specific question answered, or prefers to interact with another human being before they can take action. Live chat offers a quick and easy solution for these prospects.

Recommendation Engines

The psychology of presenting alternative products to visitors is complex. In some cases, it can help them discover more options. In others it can give them comfort at a glance that they’ve found the best combination of value and features. The best recommendation engines learn about your visitors over time, and this is a powerful capability.

Abandonment Remarketing

Technologies allow us to gather an email address even before someone has clicked “submit” on their transaction or registration. This gives us the opportunity to reach out to visitors who were close to buying by email. There is a chance to collect an additional 5% to 30% of revenue for those almost-buyers and near-subscribers who got distracted before completing their process.

Retargeted Ads

One of the first qualifiers of a prospect is that they visited your website. Remarketing is the process of targeting ads across the internet at those who’ve been to your site. Click through rates and conversions rates are more favorable that demographically targeted display ads.

Email Marketing

There is power in the list. We call an email list a marketing battery because it stores the potential generated by your advertising, potential that can be released through email. The right email strategy can fundamentally change the effectiveness of almost any website in any industry.

Content Marketing

Great content is proving to simultaneously education, entertain and build trust with prospects. It shortens sales cycles and creates tribes of people with similar interests across social media. It causes your message to spread for less than the price of purchasing media. Successful marketing departments are going to look more and more like publishers today.

Landing Pages

Every ad is a promise, and when you send ad clicks to generic pages, you break a promise. Landing pages are promise keepers. That is why they work so well. They are single-minded pages that keep your promises and ask a visitor to take action. They are easy to test and can be used for any kind of offer in any industry.

Let’s Talk About Accelerators

Conversion Sciences sees your online marketing effort as a reaction between your visitors and your value proposition. Accelerators are catalysts that make these reactions progress faster, burn hotter and deliver more energy.
Let’s have a discussion about how the online portion of your business could benefit, and how we can help you choose the right strategies based on data.
You’ll find us in the lab.
Email us there at: [hide_email TheLab@ConversionSciences.com]
Or call +1 888-961-6604

January 13, 2013/by Brian Massey

Pendulum: How to Market in a “We” Society [REVIEW]

Conversion Optimization

I remember the first time I heard about the strange “ad man” living in the hills outside of Austin where I live. I was told he was some kind of hermit genius, rumored to command a fee of $25,000 a day to tell companies how to communicate persuasively. This was perhaps 2004 or 2005.

Then someone shared with me a copy of The Monday Morning Memo, a weekly email that talked about the reasons our ads work. I subscribed and was soon drawn into a collision of two worlds; of the science of the mind and the art of literature and painting.

It was the same genius hermit, whom I would come to know as Roy H. Williams III.

Williams had begun to build an unusual business school in on ranch land outside of Austin. It’s a school that would fundamentally change my life and influence the way I communicate with the world.

The school seeks to teach its students how to do what great communicators and artists do naturally. The subjects are not typical business school fare.

The Magical Worlds Workshop
Da Vinci and the 40 Answers
Advanced Thought Particles
Third Gravitating Bodies
The Languages of the Mind

The name of the school was even more stopping: The Wizard Academy. Don’t worry. The school predated the Harry Potter series of books and movies.

It was here that I first encountered Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, who’s writing and teaching would form the foundation of Conversion Sciences.

And it was here that I first heard Williams flagship presentation: The Pendulum. Williams’ used music, literature and historical events to paint Western society as the swinging of a pendulum, from individually-centered “Me” society to the communal “We” society and back.

Each swing of the pendulum was on an 80-year circuit, from the self-centered society of the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts at the turn of the century, to the GI society of World War II, banding together to save the world, and back to the plastic, individualistic society that spawned the likes of Disco.

It was a fascinating way to look at society because it seemed to give us the ability to predict the future. In fact, in 2004, Williams said “Let’s hope the American economy doesn’t repeat in 2009 what it did in 1929.”

It did.

I’m not sure even he thought it would look so much like 1929 as we found ourselves in a “Great Recession” in 2009.

PENDULUM: 3000 Years of Swings

While Williams’ Pendulum presentation focused on the current cycle from 1923 to 2003, his new book with Michael Drew looks back 3000 years for evidence of this 80 year juggernaut.

The evidence is compelling.

According to Williams and Drew, the Pendulum works like this:

We oscillate between a civic-minded “We” society and an individualist “Me” society. In a “We” it is important to be part of something bigger than yourself. Society will come together to achieve some great task or fix some great ill.

Then we get a little nuts, insisting on conformity and ostracizing those who don’t adhere to group norms. We see witch hunts and McCarthyism during these extremes.

Then the “Me” society begins to emerge.

The “Me” society rewards individual accomplishment. Freedom and self-expression hold sway until things get out of hand (again) and our culture begins to honor fake, plastic and posing behavior. This is when we’ve seen Robber Barons rule (1903) and we’ve hired an actor for President (1983).

And the pendulum swings back.

During each swing there are transitionary periods, heralded by “alpha voices” in technology, literature, art and music. They predict the coming shifts from “Me” to “We” and then back again.

In Pendulum, Williams and Drew use data on book sales, the Billboard music charts and trends in art to map the most recent swings. Each swing is sliced into ten-year periods, in each of which we behave in similar ways as a society.

They then use the writings of historical figures and accounts of past events to map this 80-year cycle back over 2000 years.

It’s the most interesting history lesson I’ve read in some time.

The last portion of the book is a transcript of a conversation about the coming years

Predicting the Future: What does this mean for our craft?

Currently, we are swinging from a “Me” society to a “We”. In 2003 the pendulum swung past bottom and is now headed upward to a society that will celebrate working together, but will inevitably require conformity and punish those that don’t play along.

An right on cue, we have found the tools to collaborate and to solve the world’s problems in the Internet and mobile devices. Fewer and fewer decisions are made individually. Our youngsters have made saving the planet a rallying cry. “Be Green” is the new “New Deal” of the last swing to a “We” climax.

For those of us that communicate, it means that we can no longer control the message. We can no longer manipulate the masses by appealing to their self-centered desires. The community is deciding more and more what is valuable.

Transparency and authenticity are necessary to work together. And soon conformity.

Conflict is already developing as we join our tribes and fall in line. We are taking sides. Republican or Democrat? Are you the 99%? Do you go to church? Do you go to my kind of church?

Just as Communism and Democracy began taking sides in 1922, so too did we start taking sides in 2002.

Williams predicts that we will be more and more willing to give up our privacy for the common good. In the end, it will be the revelations from this openness that allows us to begin excluding others.

Create Your Tribe

If you are to believe Williams and Drew, then you will begin to create what Seth Godin (whom I believe to be an Alpha Voice in marketing) calls a tribe. As marketers, we must give our customers something to join, and a cause around which to rally.

We can no longer define ourselves by what we sell. We must stand for something.

Beginning in 2013, things start to turn nasty. As we swing higher to the Zenith of our “We” cycle, we will be tempted to exclude those that don’t conform to the rules of our tribe. it will become easiest to stand against something to keep your tribe in line.

Summary

Pendulum is a fun, fascinating romp through our recent history with a long glance back far back in time. You cannot read it without becoming aware of the way things are changing. You’ll begin to read the news with new eyes.

If you’re like me, it’ll scare you and excite you all at the same time.

Get ready to see your future.

November 29, 2012/by Brian Massey

Does Higher Engagement mean Higher Conversion Rates?

Conversion Marketing Strategy, Conversion Optimization

How does engagement affect conversion rates? Could it impact them positively or negatively? Is it possible to increase conversions by decreasing engagement?

We’ve just finished some very interesting research here at Conversion Sciences labs, and we love it when our deeply held beliefs get blown out of the water.

It’s happened again.

Most of us assume that if our pages are “engaging” to visitors, that they are more likely to convert to leads or sales. If they are engaged, they have more time to take action. If they are engaged, they will truly understand our value and become a lead or a customer.

Look at the following graph of three videos. These three different videos appeared on three otherwise identical landing pages. The graph is “Viewer Attention” as is recorded by YouTube. Basically, these graphs tell us how many visitors were still watching at any point in the video. It tells us how engaging a video is.

YouTube’s Viewer Attention metric would predict that “talking head” video would deliver the lowest conversion rate. In fact, it is the highest converting style of video. In this case, engagement doesn’t predict conversion.

Clearly, we would expect whiteboard style video to be the highest converting video, since viewers are more engaged for the entire length of the video. We expect slides to be almost as successful. However, we expect plain old talking head videos to perform poorly.

Now take a look at the following graph. This is a graph of the conversion rates of the same videos.

YouTube conversion rates graph.

This graph tells us that plain old talking head video is getting more visitors to click on our call-to-action button. This style of video is almost twice as likely to convert a visitor than the slide-style video found in most webinars.

How Does Engagement Affect Conversion Rates?

Clearly, engagement doesn’t predict conversion in this case. Here, engagement is actually distraction.

Learn more about the relationship between engagement, distraction and conversion in my article Can You Really Increase Conversions By Decreasing Engagement?

I think you’ll be surprised by what you will learn.
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October 17, 2012/by Brian Massey

How to Make Your Blog ERUPT [VIDEO]

Conversion Optimization

My blog looks awesome on iPads with Flipboard. Watch the video and see how yours can, too.

It was a Saturday. I was painting the walls of one of our bathrooms. The new color really brought out the tile we’d had installed the week before. Otherwise, things were pretty quiet around the house on this day.
But things were different on my blog.
As I painted, a series of machinations were in motion. A post I’d launched that morning which was being broadcast out to my mailing list.
My social networks — Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook – were being lit up with links to the content and people were clicking through.
Those spending Saturday morning with their iPads were seeing my post as a story in their electronic magazines using Flipboard and Zite.
All of this was happening without my participation. I was painting the bathroom.

Eruptions Happen Naturally

My content literally ERUPTS onto the web. I don’t have to push it. I don’t have to post and share.
How is this?
Content is a force on the Web. It wants to be shared. It needs to be set free.
All you have to do is give it a channel through which it can relieve the natural pressure.
Blogs are equipped with RSS feeds that make natural vents and fissures for your content.
It’s time you started letting your content free (while you do other things).

Free Video Preview Explains the Basics

Watch a short video (8 minutes) that I’ve put together for you. It’ll tell you why content creates pressure and detail many of the channels you can let your content escape through.
If you want to get more details, you can watch the full 40-minute video for just $29 at the Online Marketing Institute’s eLearning Center.
For that same $29, you will also get access to over 150 other videos on topics including:

Social Media Marketing
Mobile Marketing
Email Marketing
Web Analytics and Testing
Content Marketing
Digital Advertising and Affiliate

All in one place.
All for $29 per month.
I can’t think of a better value on the Web. Get started with my free video.
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September 29, 2012/by Brian Massey

"My favorite part of the design is the money."

Conversion Optimization

Website design is only great if it’s making you money. It’s not about the colors, the shapes, the sliders and flashy bits, though that’s the fun part many businesses sadly get hung up on. People don’t come to your site for entertainment or art—unless you sell art.

They come to you for a solution.
The purpose of your website is to help them find you, connect with you and pay you money to solve their problems. That’s conversion. That’s why you built the site in the first place. Your site’s main job is to make this very easy for them to do. So the best design isn’t the one that makes your company look cool and edgy and sophisticated. It’s the design that supports conversion, has room for good copy and powerful calls to action that make people click the big orange button. Want to know more?
Read more in my column on Search Engine Lan
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March 23, 2012/by Brian Massey

If You Don’t Tell Your Kids About Conversion, Who Will?

Conversion Optimization

No parent relishes having “the talk” about conversion rates. No one wants to tell their kids: “Kids, conversion rates are still only around 2 percent” or tell them the naked truth about all the sites out there that were never optimized. Or point out that they’re hanging with the wrong crowd when it comes to web development and creation.

But if we don’t tell the kids about the benefits of hanging with fake people—called personas—who will?

We have to just pick the right time and be ready to be vulnerable.

When confronted with a difficult question like “Daddy, should I put up a squeeze page?” we can just say: “I just don’t know. Let’s explore that together.”

As hard as this is, it’s better they learn about value propositions from you than off the street. Check out my article on Search Engine Land: 7 Things to Teach Your Children About Conversion to learn how to do this the right way.

February 1, 2012/by Brian Massey

7 Marketing Lessons Learned When Naming My New Book

Conversion Optimization

After nine months of writing, fifteen chapters complete and dozens of columns supporting the effort, you’d think that the easiest thing to do would be to pick a name for my conversion marketing book.

As it turns out, this is difficult.

So why read a post about selecting a book title? Because, it’s all about conversion – not just the book, but the title is about converting book prospects into book readers.

The title of your book is key to maximizing conversions. It is like the subject line of your email, like the headline of your landing page, and like the value proposition of your home page. Get these wrong and your conversion rates will plummet. However the book title can’t be changed. Once chosen you are stuck with it until you write another.

It’s expensive to test titles, and this makes a Conversion Scientist very nervous.

I’ve considered a number of approaches. These approaches will also inform your online marketing.

Leverage something familiar

My first thought was to leverage something familiar, something that is already popular. This spawned several mockups including The Bourne Conversion, Eat, Pray, Convert, How to Win Friends and Convert People, and Conversions with God.

Unfortunately, copyright issues will prevent me from using any of these.

Ask your SEO person

The next thing I had to consider was how people might find the book on search engines. Phrases like “online sales conversion,” “analytics,” “conversion rates,” and “social media” are some of the most commonly searched phrases in the conversion marketing space. With this focus in mind, several titles were considered:

Online Sales Conversion: The Science of B2B, B2C, Online Services and Social Media Websites

The Well Managed Web Site: Conversion Strategy and Analytics in Simple Terms

Managing Websites to High Conversion Rates

Online Conversion Strategy

In my opinion, words like “conversion” and “analytics” are too clinical. Furthermore, these conversion terms don’t really get that much search traffic, so this strategy became less important to me.

Leverage your existing brand

I’ve been marketing Conversion Sciences and The Conversion Scientist pretty consistently for six years now through writing, speaking and training. The business is familiar to many online marketers and business owners, the two primary targets for my tome.

Playing on the science angle associated with the brand yielded several interesting titles, including the original working title, Get a Reaction.

Marketing + Science = Customers: Online Conversion Strategies to Transform Prospects into Buyers

Conversion Science: The Proven Formulas for Transforming Online Prospects into Customers

The Science of Reaction: Proven Conversion Formulas of Internet Based Companies

Own a word

I’ve always like one-word book titles that are provocative, like Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” and “Outliers.” I thought “REACTION” might be the word that sticks with people in my space.

REACTION: Getting visitors to take action on your website

Get a REACTION: Proven Strategies of the Conversion Scientist

The Science of REACTIONS: Websites that Convert Visitors to Leads and Sales

My feeling is that you have to have a large marketing budget to get a word to stick in the minds of potential readers. I didn’t get a multi-million dollar advance, unfortunately.

Surprise them

Seth Godin is great at naming books with unexpected titles, such as Purple Cow, All Marketers are Liars and Meatball Sundae. I thought the unexpected or absurd might work for my book as well.

It’s Raining Soup. Get a Bowl. How to turn Internet traffic into a delicious business.

Glad I Stopped By: Websites We Love to Do Business With

They Did What?! Unexpected Strategies of The Conversion Scientist

Marketing Backwards: Unexpected Strategies of The Conversion Scientist

The Website Genome Project: Proven Research of The Conversion Scientist

The truth is, I’m not Seth Godin. Darn it.

State your topic plainly

We often get too clever for our own good when we’re writing headlines, subject lines, and book titles. It’s a business book, after all.

Managing Your Website: Conversion Strategy and Analytics for the Managers and Business Owners

Online Conversion Strategies for Websites that Dominate Their Marketplace

The problem with these is that the reader is more likely to fall asleep before finishing the title.

Ask your personas

If you follow The Conversion Scientist, you know that I believe creating visitor personas is the best way to get high conversion rates on your website. The same applies to books, and I have developed several personas for this book.

With this guidance, I was able to choose a book title that combines the right ingredients… I hope. Here’s what I know about my personas.

Most of my personas have heard of The Conversion Scientist through my columns, blog posts and speaking. This tells me to leverage the familiar science angle.

One persona studies marketing, and they are reluctant to read a book that will give them same advice they’ve already heard. Therefore, the title should indicate that it is presenting a fresh way to look at online marketing. Use terms like “unexpected” or surprise titles like “marketing backwards.”

Finally, all of my personas are human, which means they respond to things like metaphors, rhyming and alliteration (the repeated use of a sound in a sentence or phrase). This tells me I should use these tools.

After reviewing these persona requirements, we settled on the following title:

The Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Formulas of The Conversion Scientist™

The alliteration and rhyming nature of the main title will help people remember the name. It has the important search terms “conversion,” and “customer” in it. The terms “equation” and “formulas” evoke the science theme of my brand.

Finally, the strategies are “unexpected,” and indeed the book contains advice contrary to what you have been told. This was a tough decision for me. One of our personas is trying to solve a specific marketing problem. Calling my recommendations “unexpected” may not appeal to her. She will want to know about “proven” strategies, and I did consider the subtitle “Proven Strategies of The Conversion Scientist.” Yet, I knew she would find value in being “cutting edge,” and “unexpected strategies” should appeal to her.

Did we pick the right title? Which would you prefer to read? Let us know in the comments.

You won’t be converting much of anything if you start with the wrong kind of website. Find out which of five conversion signatures your website should be following with a free video that introduces some key concepts from The Customer Creation Equation.

January 24, 2012/by Brian Massey