Check out these click-worthy examples of persuasive copy for online ads. Discover why they work and how to test for persuasive ad copy.
The world of digital marketing makes it super easy for you to reach your target audience. But you have to whip up a mighty persuasive online ad if you want your prospects to click on yours. Persuasion is one of our CRO Agency secret weapons. It is layered into so much of what we do and is often the difference between beginners and conversion optimization experts.
In this post, we’ll review the definition of persuasive copy, how to make sure it works, and show you compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising.
Appeal to logic emotion and credibility all in one. Check out these click worthy examples of persuasive copy in online advertising.
What is Persuasive Copy
Persuasive copy can be defined as an argument that elicits a desired action from a relevant audience. Easier said than done, right?
Aristotle explained what constitutes persuasive copy best in his rhetorical appeals or ‘modes for persuasion’. Let’s keep in mind that his goal was to make his oratory (his presentations) more persuasive. And in doing so, he identified three types of persuasion appeals that are as valid today as they were back then.
the appeal to reason, logic or logos
the appeal to emotion or pathos
and the appeal to one’s character, credibility or ethos
Not everybody makes a decision about a specific product or service based on the same argument. Purchasing a lipstick could be more of an impulse buy and an appeal to pathos or emotion may be the right call. Adding an appeal to reason such as “Free Shipping” may seal the deal and get you the click you desperately want.
An example of emotionally persuasive copy in this Avon color trend nail polish, Fairytale collection: “Until your prince charming shows up have fun with the frogs.”
Avon color trend nail polish, Fairytale collection. The copy reads: “Until your prince charming shows up have fun with the frogs”. Why is this a prime example of persuasive copy in advertising? The famous Prince Charming in other countries, like Brazil and Italy, is called the “Blue Prince” — royal blue blood and all. So, until the blue one shows up, have fun with the rest of the colors. Clever emotional argument to leave the guilt behind and have fun now. If the shoe fits. ;)
Fortunately for most of us, developing persuasive copy is not an art but a data driven process. And as such, it can be tested.
How to Test Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising
As investment in digital advertising increases, it becomes essential to figure out what really works. Ad copy testing can be executed pre-campaign launch or while the campaign is live.
Some methods for online ad copy pre-testing may include focus groups, projective techniques, and recall tests. Performing these pre-tests ensures less spend is lost when it comes to activation.
Running an online ad campaign is costly. This is a different version of the Paypal for Business ad used to test the level of persuasiveness in the copy. What appeal has been dropped? Let us know in the comments section at the end of the post.
But the proof is in the pudding and nothing beats solid AB Testing to provide you with the metrics you need to define what’s really working. If you are looking to learn about testing persuasive copy, our blog is packed with articles that explain how to do this in detail. Check them out:
Or you can take our CRO Course and become a conversion specialist. Or if you’d rather have an experienced conversion agency power boost your online marketing spend and turn more of your ad clicks into revenue, check out our CRO for Advertising solutions.
And as we promised an article about compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising, let’s dive into them!
Why Is Persuasive Copy Crucial to Online Ads
Let’s assume you have the right ad placement, defined the perfect audience, and have properly identified what your audience responds to. After all, persuasive ad copy in and of itself is not the only factor that weighs in on a campaign’s success.
Is your ad copy missing the mark? Has your click through rate hit a new low?
We all want our online ads to influence our audience in such a way that they are inclined to click to call or click to buy from our website. But, what makes copy this convincing? Sometimes, actual examples of persuasive copy can guide us in crafting our own click-worthy online ads.
Compelling Examples of Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising
A genius way to apply emotion to a SaaS service on a Facebook ad for Litmus & dotmailer.
Examples of persuasive copy in online advertising help illustrate the concept.
Appeal to logic or logos works quite nicely for the auto insurance industry. I wonder what would happen to these click-through rates (CTRs) if they added some emotional arguments to the ad copy.
Auto insurance appeal to logic examples. They all look alike. Which one would you click on?
Finding examples of persuasive copy in advertising is simple if there is a Google Guarantee available. Not an easy addition to your online ads but worth every penny. All the credibility you want in a single line.
Building credibility through the Google Guarantee.
Ethos and logos appeal for this Facebook ad campaign.
Ethos appeal.
Lower the guilt with a logical argument. Less fat and less calories than your biggest competitor: McDonald’s french fries. How is that for an attention-getting example of persuasive copy?
Burger King fries ad copy. Stop clicking the button and keep reading!
Of course #FOMO is an emotion! This compelling example of persuasive copy in online advertising proves it! Almost depleted iPhone battery coupled with “Last Chance to Buy T&C Tickets” An example from a Digital Marketer Facebook ads campaign.
Appeal to emotion iPhone battery Facebook Ad example from Digital Marketer.
Searching for click-worthy examples of persuasive copy for your Facebook lead generation campaign? A winner. Hands-down. No big emotional commitment. Only 8 hours for $500 and you get rid of those pesky projects.
Lead generation ad example targeting homeowners looking to start projects.
IBM Watson understands that their audience responds to reason. And that some may be ready to buy. The free trial is a highly persuasive method to get them to click on their ad.
IBM Watson “free trial” a persuasive element of their offer.
This online ad for WD40 is all about persuading through pathos. You will need some WD40 to unstuck that scroll bar.
Humor, sex and curiosity are all emotional appeals.
Every once in a while, you run across an ad that you just can’t forget. Trident’s Facebook ad that appeals to emotions or pathos through some quirky logic as I am sure deodorant won’t taste like spearmint either.
Example of emotional and logical appeal in persuasive copy for Trident’s online ads.
Although they usually resort to logic and ethos – 4 out of 5 dentists recommend – to craft persuasive copy.
Trident Coupons: Save money, prevent stains.
Sandwich delivery ads leverage a mix of ethos or credibility (reviews, how many served), logical (pricing and selection) and emotional (fresh, good, smells, comfort) elements. Definitely great examples of persuasive copy in PPC ads.
Sandwich delivery ads.
Pizza delivery examples of persuasive copy for Google Ads. One relies on logical and ethos vs emotional appeal.
Logical and ethos vs emotional appeal for pizza delivery Google Ads.
Nike sneakers Google Ads: These are not Nike stores, so they lack the brand’s built in credibility. Therefore, they use pathos or emotional persuasion on the headline and ethos appeal on the body via the rating reviews and the on time delivery percentage.
Pathos or emotional persuasion on the headline and ethos appeal on the body via the rating reviews that give credibility and the ontime delivery percentage.
The Nike Official store, is all about logical persuasion of product availability with some additional credibility elements as message support.
Nike official store Google ad.
PPC ad copywriting for a mobile ad with emotional appeal. Click to call the luxury location of your choice.
PPC ad for best NYC hotels. Luxury, of course.
So many persuasive reasons for that mileage traveler in you. Capital One Venture card uses ethos on their youtube and tv ads but not on their Google Ads. Here it’s all facts.
Capital One Venture card uses logos or logical appeal to persuade to click on this PPC ad.
We explore how intelligent omni channel marketing technology can help marketers better manage their marketing strategy. Plus, the perils of walking the line between creativity and efficiency. And at the very end, the very own Brian Massey, gives a formula to start prioritizing our traffic-driving investments.
Digito Marketus:
This is a species of primate known generically as digital marketers. During the day, it’s natural habitat is tall square nests built for it, called offices. These are social animals that travel in groups called “departments.” They work alongside other species, such as Neandersales and Blockus ITeas.
This clever species forages through forests of audiences dining primarily on the fruit of the prospect tree, which they share with a symbiotic species, the Neandersales.
This species is known for working in places with scarce resources. They have evolved to flourish with very little. As such, they must be highly creative AND they must be efficient..
They are advanced enough to use tools that help them make fewer mistakes, giving them time for more creative pursuits.
If you’re listening to this podcast, you are either Digito Maketus or manage a department of them.
My guest today studies this species for a living. And — surprise — she actually is a member of the Digito Marketus.
Lindsay Tjepkema (Chep Ka MA), Director of Marketing for the Americas at Emarsys, is a marketer who markets to marketers and specializes in successful omnichannel marketing.
Podcast: Digito Marketus is a species commonly known as “Digital Marketers”
Lindsay Tjepkema | Using Marketing Technology to Create a Seamless Omnichannel Experience
On this episode of Intended Consequences, we come to understand how this fascinating species walks the line between creativity and efficiency, crayons and spreadsheets, design and databases.
We’ll talk about how she uses the Omni Channel Marketing Technology in her multi channel marketing strategy to deliver user experiences that put the customer first.
We lure Digito Marketus out of its nest– using a trail pens, thumb drives and t-shirts emblazoned with corporate logos — and ask some important questions.
What is it that drives your creativity? What are the roots of your experience that lead you into this role? And how do you balance this creative desire with the need to be efficient and customer data-driven?
On every episode of this podcast, we give you one technique to challenge you as a marketer, manager or business owner. So, accept the challenge and take your business or practice to new heights. It’s at the very end of the podcast.
Intro to Omni Channel Marketing Technology
I think marketers really just need to know what’s available to them and how to use it so that they can be more successful when handling multiple channels.
During this podcast, I want to ask that you actively participate in this conversation. What I mean by that is – while I’m asking Lindsay questions, I want you to ask yourself those questions. For example, when it comes to omni channel marketing what does success mean for your organization?
And to dig even deeper, Lindsay and I go into this question of “why is it that marketers seem to struggle to get to the next level of success? Are you struggling?
This conversation with Lindsay will start with me first asking how she measures success on her digital channels.
If you want to connect with Lindsay Tjepkema or Emarsys and Host of the Marketer + Machine podcast. You can check her out at emarsys dot com and her podcast.
We talked about knowing the value of a lead on this episode. If you sell stuff online, it’s easy to know how much a transaction is worth. But what if you generate leads or email list subscribers? Are you creating an omnichannel considering your touch point personas?
When you get back to the office (a formula to start prioritizing your traffic-driving investments)
When you get back to the office, try to put a dollar value on your leads or subscribers — even if you’re an eCommerce business, you must be using an email list.
THIS DOES NOT HAVE TO BE ACCURATE. What you want is a dollar value that you can use to prioritize what you’re investing in. It will require you to look in Analytics and possibly the customer relationship management system your sales team uses.
It’s basically, the revenue generated from your Website divided by the number of leads you generate.
It requires you to understand how many leads or subscribers you’re generating and then how much revenue you are getting from that.
Don’t let silos get in the way. When you don’t have real data, estimate.
At the end of the day, you’ll be able to say, “we generated 100 leads last month. That’s $2500 dollars in our pocket!
Discover how to identify what keeps visitors from converting on your site. Five factors you MUST look into to improve online conversions right now.
There’s one thing, one thing that’s keeping your visitors from converting on your site.
It may not be the only thing, but it is the primary thing that your online business isn’t delivering the results you expect. It’s where you start when you optimize your website.
So, traffic but not conversions? It’s one of these five things:
The Value Proposition and Messaging isn’t clear.
They perceive risk when considering taking an action.
You aren’t showing up as credible and authoritative.
They want to know if others have benefited from you.
Your design and layout aren’t helping them digest the buffet of content you’re presenting.
Find out what keeps visitors from converting on your site and start testing to increase your conversions right now.
How to identify what keeps visitors from converting on your site.
Value Proposition & Messaging
Do you think your value proposition is the one thing that keeps visitors from converting on your site? Let’s take a look at the anatomy of a value proposition. Your value proposition is composed of all of the things you do to solve a problem and is communicated by:
Brand awareness
Content and Copy
Images
Pricing
Shipping policy
Words used in your navigation
Design elements
All of these website elements are used to let your visitors know how you solve a set of problems, and why your solution is the best choice. The one that will save the most time and money, or that will deliver the most satisfaction.
But your value proposition doesn’t have to be communicated through words and images alone. Video, audio and animations are proven ways to communicate your value to a prospect.
And herein lies the rub.
Digital media gives us the amazing ability to put anything onto a landing page that our hearts desire. And if you can do anything, how do you know which is the right element to use? Here lies the conundrum.
How to know if your value proposition is what keeps visitors from converting on your site
A high bounce rate is a sign of three things:
You’re bringing the wrong traffic
Your lead isn’t hitting the mark
You’ve been attacked by bots
If your landing page suffers from a high bounce rate, look at the source of your traffic. Does the page keep the specific offer made in the paid ad, email, or organic search query that enticed the visitors to click on your site? If it’s your homepage, the answer is most certainly, “No.”
If you feel that your traffic is good, and is coming to a relevant page, then we should ask if the lead is hitting the mark. By “lead” I am referring to the headline + hero image.
Often, hero images are wasted on something non-concrete. The headline should act as the caption for the image it accompanies.
Don’t show a city skyline. Don’t show a person smiling at a computer. These things don’t scream for meaningful captions and don’t help conversions either.
You should also look at the words you use in your main navigation. These should communicate what your site is about in the words of the visitor, not just the structure of your website.
Still don’t know what’s keeping them from converting? Ask your visitors
If you still don’t know what is keeping visitors from converting on your site, consider using an exit-intent popup that asks one open-ended question: “What were you looking for when you came to our site?” or “Why didn’t you purchase?”
We are also big fans of putting an open-ended question on your thank-you page or receipt page: “What almost kept you from buying?” or “What almost kept you from signing up?”
You May Be Scaring Visitors Away: Use and Misuse of Risk Reversal
In general, more people make decisions based on fear than on opportunity. So, your amazing value proposition is destined to die in the minds of many of your prospects because of fear.
What if I don’t like the product?
What if my identity gets stolen?
Will a pushy salesman call?
Will I have to deal with tons of email?
At the heart of it all is, “Will I feel stupid if I take action right now?”
Risk reversal (and most of the following) is a set of tactics that puts the visitor’s fears at rest. It consists of things like:
Guarantees
Warranties
Privacy policies
Explicit permissions
Return policies
Placing these items in clear view near a call to action can do wonders for your conversion rates.
Don’t put fears into their mind
There is a potential danger. Your risk reversal tactics can actually put fear into their mind.
For example, stating, “We will never spam you.” can actually place the concept in the mind of someone who wasn’t concerned about it. You might say instead, “We respect your privacy.” with a link to your privacy policy.
Traffic but not Conversions? Help Visitors Convert on your Site with Social Proof
Social proof demonstrates that others have had a positive experience with your brand. These take the form of:
Testimonials
On-site ratings and reviews
Third party reviews
Case studies
Social media shares, likes and comments
Comments
If social proof is your one problem that keeps visitors from converting on your site, customers don’t feel that you’re right for someone like them. Make sure you show them that they are in the group of people that benefit from you.
Negative Reviews Help
Ironically, it also serves to answer the question, “Just how bad was a bad experience with this company?” This is why negative reviews have proven to increase conversion rates on eCommerce sites. Cleaning your reviews or only posting good reviews can shoot you in the foot.
Is it Lack of Credibility & Authority What Keeps Visitors from Converting on your Site?
If you are in an industry with lots of competition, or with “bad actors” who manipulate to get sales, your one problem may be credibility and authority.
The design of your website is one of the first things that communicate credibility. But be careful. A fancy, overly-designed site may communicate the wrong idea to visitors. It may convey that you’re expensive or too big for your prospects.
Credibility can be established by emphasizing things about your company, and by borrowing credibility from other sources such as, your clients. your payment methods, you media appearances and the like.
Brand Credibility
You gain credibility by building confidence with your brand and value proposition. How long have you been in business? How many customers have you served? How many products have you sold? How many dollars have you saved?
Brand credibility generally takes the form of implied proof.
Borrowed Credibility
Your website or landing page can borrow credibility and authority from third-party sources. Placing symbols and logos on your website borrows from these credible sources. Ask yourself:
Have you been interviewed or reviewed in well-know publications?
Have you been interviewed on broadcast media outlets?
What associations are you a member of?
What awards have you been nominated for or won?
Has your business been rated by consumer organizations like Consumer Reports or the Better Business Bureau?
Have your products been reported on by analysts such as Forrester?
Place proof of your associations on your site’s landing pages to borrow authority and credibility from them.
User Interface & User Experience: Factors that Keep Visitors from Converting on your Site
Nothing works if your visitors eyes aren’t guided through your pages.
No value proposition, no risk reversal, no social proof, no credibility stands a chance if the layout and user experience don’t help the reader understand where they’ve landed or where to go from there.
Long load time equals poor experience
The first thing to look at is site performance. If your pages load slowly, you visitors may be bouncing away. If any element requires a loading icon of any sort, you are probably providing a poor user experience.
Clutter means bad visual hierarchy
When a visitor looks at a page, it should be very obvious what is most important element and what can be looked at later. This is called a visual hierarchy.
For example, we like to make call to action buttons highly visible, so that it is clear to the reader that they are being asked to do something.
Designers use their knowledge of whitespace, negative space, font, font size, color, and placement to design an experience that is easy for the visitors’ eyes to digest.
Don’t add surprises
A good user experience has little place for novelty. Arbitrarily adding animations, fades, parallax images or scroll-triggered effects are generally unnecessary, can cause technical glitches and may actually hurt conversion rates.
How to Know “what” is Hurting your Conversion Rate
We recommend this process to determine the primary problem that keeps visitors from converting on your website.
1. Gather all of your conversion optimization ideas
Begin recording all of the ideas you have for improving the site in the spreadsheet. Sources for these ideas:
Ask your team
Read your customer reviews
Read your customer surveys
Pull from your marketing reports
Read your live chat transcripts
Generate heatmap reports for your key pages
Watch recorded sessions
Don’t be surprised to have dozens of ideas for a website or landing page.
2. Categorize each of your ideas
The ROI Prioritized Hypothesis List spreadsheet has a column for classifying each idea.
Messaging
Layout/UX
Social Proof
Risk Reversal
Credibility
There will also be some things that you just want to fix.
3. Count your conversion optimization ideas
Count out how many ideas you have for each category. The category with the most ideas is probably the one problem you should address first. We use a pie chart to illustrate the different issues.
This site’s one problem is Value Proposition and Messaging followed by Layout and UX
4. Start working
Begin working on the ideas in the category with the most ideas.
This is a great time to start AB testing to see which of your ideas really are important to your visitors.
Your search traffic will demonstrate their approval through more sales, more leads and higher conversion rates overall.
This sounds like a lot of work
It is a lot of work. But you could consider hiring us to identify what keeps visitors from converting on your site and we will test our way to your success.
Experience a lift on your contact form conversion rate. Know what form of form you should have on your lead generation site. These best practices designed to increase contact form conversion will definitely help.
Contact forms are the most common way of beginning a conversation between a company and a prospect. In this article, we’ll show you how to get more prospects to fill out your form without reducing the quality of those leads.
What’s the big deal with forms? They have fields. You fill out the fields and you get something you want.
So, why do so many of your visitors fail to fill out your forms?
There is some psychology and some science to getting more form fills, whether you are trolling for leads or asking your visitors to buy something. The folks at SingleHop have done a study and it is exactly what we’ve seen in our testing of contact forms. You’ll learn a lot about increasing contact form conversion from this little infographic.
Contact Form Fields: How Many is Too Many?
As a general rule, the more fields you have, the lower your conversion rate. However, the leads you do acquire will be better qualified. The best way to find the right mix is to A/B test your contact forms.
Generally speaking and to increase contact form conversion, you should avoid:
Fields that ask for qualifying information that can be found out on a phone call, such as purchase timeframe.
Drop-down fields that may not contain an answer accessible to the visitor, such as title.
Drop-down fields that imply something, such as number of employee ranges.
“None of your business” fields, such as mobile phone, yearly revenue or social security number.
Best Practices to Increase Contact Form Conversion
While you may think your website is selling your product or service, what it’s really selling is a sales call. You must convince the visitor to complete your form.
There are four components that will help you achieve this.
Build Trust
You can build trust by including your phone number and contact information. Sometimes they will call you.
On a mobile device you should optimize for phone calls.
Provide Social Proof
Your contact page should present testimonials and endorsements to make visitors feel comfortable completing the contact form.
Add Value
Make sure you are building value. What’s in it for the visitor if they fill out the form?
Who will contact them? A salesperson? A consultant?
Will there be a hard sell?
How long will the call be?
What questions will be answered?
Sell the call to increase contact form conversions.
Use Risk Reversal
You can significantly remove barriers to completion by simply presenting your privacy policy on the form. While these are rarely read, they indicate that you care enough to have one.
On a contact form, the call to action usually lives on the contact form button. The call to action should communicate what will happen when it is clicked.
Studies indicate that using first person improves conversion rates. Test changing “your” to “my”.
For example “Download your free report” is second person. “Download my free report” is first person.
Contact forms infographic.
The Best Lead Capture Forms
The best contact forms don’t assume the visitor wants to fill out the form. Only lonely people fill out such forms.
Instead, your form should give visitors a good reason to complete the form, and build trust with them and explain the value of completing the form.
This is an important step in their journey to solve a problem.
Treat it as such.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
Heatmaps are just the first step to obtaining useful insights on your website visitors. Today we’ll find out how heatmaps helped increase prospective student inquiries by 20% for a University and have a chat with Andrew Michael of Hotjar. Find out what he has to say.
Andrew Michael | Understanding Your Users: Leveraging Tools to Grow Your Website
How Heatmaps Helped Increase Prospective Student Inquiries by 20%
We were looking at the heatmap report for the website of Northcentral University, a non-profit online university headquartered in Arizona.
Reading a heatmap report is like looking at a weather radar, but instead of blobs of green, red and yellow showing us where rain is falling around us, a heatmap report shows us where visitors are clicking on a web page.
And it was raining clicks in an unexpected spot on the NCU website.
Specifically, visitors were clicking on one of the fields in the middle of a form, and only on that field. Not the name field, not the email field. The majority of them weren’t completing the form.
So, why were visitors so interested in this one field?
It was an important question, as this form was the primary invitation to get more information on the University. It was on almost every page, ready to start a more in-depth conversation with any visitor.
The field visitors were clicking on was “program of interest”, a dropdown field that listed the degrees offered by NCU. It was meant as a way for prospective students to tell NCU which degree program they were interested in.
These prospective students were using it as an information source.
While the copy on the page was regaling visitors on the value of NCUs one-on-one learning, it’s 100% doctoral professors and it’s diversity, visitors were telling us that they had one question first.
Do you offer a degree program I’m interested in?
At least, this was the hypothesis. So we designed a test.
At the top of every page, we placed a dropdown menu that listed the university’s programs, just like that on the form. When a degree program was selected, we took them to the part of the site that described that degree program.
Half of NCUs visitors would see this dropdown. The other half would not. They’d have to use the dropdown in the form.
When we measured the results, the visitors who saw the dropdown in the page were 20% more likely to fill out the form completely, requesting information.
This indicated that the change would increase prospective student inquiries by 20%, a very significant improvement in the key metric for the site.
The current site offers a complete section designed to help visitors find a degree program they’re interested in.
This is something that we would not have been able to find any other way than through a heatmap report. It doesn’t show up in analytics. No one would have complained.
This is the power of a class of report called user intelligence reports.
Anyone who knows how to read rain chances from a weather radar can use this kind of report. More and more of us are doing this.
These reports are surprisingly easy to generate and the tools are inexpensive.
You can bring people to websites all day long but if it’s not optimized and it’s not user friendly and you’re going to lose all day and you just can end up throwing money down the drain.
Leading the way is a company called Hotjar. On today’s show we’re breaking down HotJar with Andrew Michael. A tool focused on helping you understand your users. Andrew got into marketing because he’s intrigued by psychology – understanding what drives people’s decisions.
An Insightful Chat with Andrew Michael from Hotjar
Intended Consequences podcast with Hotjar’s Andrew Michael
Time is precious for overburdened marketers. On this show, we seek to understand which tools are truly valuable, and which are just giving us “interesting” insights.
We install something like Hotjar on every one of our client sites when optimizing.
Tools like Hotjar are a part of what I call ‘the golden age of marketing’. These tools are continually evolving, getting easier to use and less expensive.
These are the tools that buy you more time to be creative, ground breaking and successful.
We start off the podcast talking about all of the things Hotjar brings to the table under a single subscription. Then we talk about the outcome of leveraging tools like this – how do they actually empower marketers serve their online prospects better?
Listen to the Podcast. It’s well worth it.
When You Get Back To The Office
I’m not a shill for Andrew. I just know these tools are a great value and easy to learn.
When you get back to the office, i recommend that you do a trial of Hotjar. Add it to your homepage, or one of your “money” pages where you ask visitors to take action. Setup a heatmap report on it.
Let it run for a few days, and then look at the scroll report. This report tells you how far visitors are scrolling on your page. This is one of the first things we look at when we start analyzing our clients’ sites.
Where is the report turning blue? This is the place on the page that visitors stop reading. Look in the blue area. What key content are they missing?
If more than half of your page is blue, you have a scroll problem. Visitors aren’t being engaged enough to get through your content.
Reasons for this include: false bottoms, where visitors think the page ends when it doesn’t. It can mean that your content isn’t engaging them enough high on the page. It can mean that you’re not handling a key objection.
Your strategies include moving key content to the top of the page, putting arrows, chevrons and “v”s on the page to tell visitors to keep going, or re-thinking the story you tell on this page.
Don’t be discouraged. This is progress! Next, share this report with your design team and see what they think.
This is how pages get better and businesses grow.
You can get all these links discussed on this week’s episode in our shownotes. One thing to remind you all of is that Hotjar is a freemium model so it’s one you can definitely
Alright scientists, that’s it for this week.
Andrew Michael | Understanding Your Users: Leveraging Tools to Grow Your Website
Every industry has them. Your company may be one of them. They are the whack-a-mole companies, sticking their virtual neck out, and striving to do things better, driving online sales with an evolving ecommerce conversion marketing strategy.
And they often get whacked.
But the companies I’m talking about hunker down in their holes and plan their next chance to pop out again, with more force. It’s in their blood. The Internet is becoming the place they stage their emergence.
These whack-a-mole companies may sell products that range from the common to the mundane. Zappos was a whack-a-mole company. They started out in online sales of shoes. In ten years, Zappos outshone their competitors and sold an almost $1 billion business to Amazon.
Wikipedia calls Whac-a-mole a “Redemption Game”
The GoodLife Team is a whack-a-mole company in the very competitive real estate market. They are small by the standards of their peers, but like Zappos, I expect them to pop out of their hole with such force that they will leave the table altogether, flying free of the hammers that seek to drive them back.
Patience and Impatience: Ecommerce Conversion Marketing Strategy for Online Sales
Whack-a-mole companies are both patient, and remarkably impatient. They are remarkably impatient to try new things. They aren’t careless. Successful whack-a-moles seek to find out what works and what doesn’t quickly.
Yet, they are patient in the long run. They know that they’re going to get whacked a few times, and they prepare for the blows. Theirs is a journey of learning and persistence.
I am drawn to these kind of companies. It is them that I find myself writing for.
Ecommerce Whack-a-moles
If you are a budding whack-a-mole in your industry and want to turn the Web into a powerful sales channel, find out how the highest-converting sites on the Web use ecommerce marketing strategy to maximize conversion rates and online sales. “Conversion” is the magic that makes you stronger than your competitors.
The E-commerce Pattern: Core Conversion Marketing Strategies
Here are the three strategies that are conversion deal-breakers for e-commerce web sites. Get these strategies right, and you should be able to optimize your way to higher conversion rates. Get any of these wrong, and you will find yourself struggling to improve.
The third of the five “core” conversion marketing patterns is the e-commerce pattern. The two patterns I’ve already discussed are the Brochure site and the Portal site. As a refresher, the Brochure pattern is a known as the “sales support” pattern. The purpose is to provide information during the sales process and tell prospects how to get more information. The Portal pattern, also known as the “advertising model” and “subscription model,” monetizes content.
For this discussion, I assume a site is generating reasonably qualified traffic and that the offering has a demand in the marketplace.
The E-commerce pattern
Also known as “online shopping,” “eRetail” and “eTail,” e-commerce sites are designed to handle the online purchase of a product or service. For purposes of this discussion, you are building a site with the e-commerce pattern if:
You accept payment on your website for a product or service
The buyer consumes the product offline. The “site as a service” pattern is targeted at businesses that deliver their product directly through the site.
You are selling more than one item, more than one version of an item, or more than one product line. A single item site should look at the Portal Pattern, or the up-coming “Considered Purchase” pattern.
My goal here is to explore three strategies that are conversion deal-breakers for e-commerce websites. Get these strategies right, and you should be able to optimize your way to higher conversion rates. Get any of these wrong, and you will find yourself struggling to improve.
Category pages
For sites that feature dozens or thousands of products, it is critical that visitors at all stages of the buying process find their way to specific items on your site. Category pages are the traffic cops, driving shoppers to the right product areas and eventually to the products they seek.
Are category pages more important than the home page? For visitors who are just becoming aware of your online brand, the home page serves as the top-level category page, or the “featured products” category page. A quick survey of the highest converting retail sites on the web reveal some interesting similarities in their category page and category page design.
The home pages are filled with specific offers. The page is essentially designed like a circular you would find in your newspaper.
Intuitive categories are displayed to help visitors dive deeper into the site.
Some sites use a BAH (big ass header) that cycles through offers. Flash banners can sink your conversion rate unless you are using them to provide specific offers.
Pricing is put front and center on product “ads.”
Copy is included with the products that are displayed. Even if there is only space for a few words, some value proposition is put forward with each product. A product image and the price often isn’t enough.
Search is present on every page.
Defining the right categories is critical. Most of the high-converting sites have between five and eight categories in their top-level navigation. Office Depot gets it down to four. More refined categories are listed in the left column; “specials,” “best sellers,” “brands,” etc.
For e-commerce sites that don’t have the brand strength of these large retailers, it is tempting to spend space talking about the company and its unique value proposition. Keep this brief. Avoid the temptation to add ancillary items to navigation, such as “about us.” Let your offers and categories do the talking for you.
In summary, specific offers, smart category choices and search are the hallmarks of strong category pages.
Product pages
Just as landing pages are crucial to increase the conversion rate of advertising efforts, well designed product pages are crucial for the e-commerce website. With best search engine optimization practices, product pages become the landing pages for searching shoppers.
Product pages typically ask the visitor to “add to cart” and “buy now.” These should be the most tested pages on your site.
The elements that make for a great product page differ from industry to industry, but there are some rules of thumb.
Show the product. There is a correlation between the conversion rate of a page and the number and quality of product images available.
Provide all of the information a visitor needs to say “yes.” Price, shipping, return policy, ratings and reviews; what you include on your product page depends on what you’re selling, and to whom.
Test to find the right balance of information. Providing too much information can distract buyers from clicking “buy now,” and even introduce reasons not to buy.
Product pages serve two masters: people who are already exploring your site and those who have landed there due to a search engine query. Test these pages to find your best converting product page design.
Shopping cart
E-commerce shopping carts have traditionally been a thorny issue with conversion scientists and web site optimizers. Too many businesses choose shopping cart software that is rigid and difficult to customize. Many of the most popular shopping carts on the market seem to have been designed by engineers, and they don’t consider that buyers may be on the brink of abandoning the transaction.
The purchase process is the needle point for your success. The wary shopper is always on the lookout for red flags, reasons to reconsider their purchase decision. Alarms are sounded by what is missing from your shopping cart pages.
The shopping cart is often used as an information resource. Prospects will add a product and then start the checkout process to uncover information that they didn’t find elsewhere on the site.
What are my shipping options and what will it cost me?
What will tax be?
Are there any catches?
Is the product in stock?
Provide this information on your product pages to reduce these informational probes into your shopping cart and decrease your abandonment rates.
Flexibility is the key with shopping cart systems. They should be easy to customize, provide places for “reinforcing” copy, and be able to answer questions like those above. If your shopping cart can support A/B split testing, all the better.
The shopping cart is so important, that almost any business should consider replacing their system if they can’t easily and quickly change the sequence, layout, button location, button text, page copy, promotion codes, trust badges, etc. As with product pages, small changes in these elements can result in big increases in conversion rates.
As of this writing, I can’t recommend any shopping carts systems that meet these criteria. Please offer your recommendations in the comments.
There are a variety of tactics to be explored within each of these make-or-break strategies: category pages, product pages and the purchase process. There are other strategies that may be equally important, and I welcome your input through the comments. Building an email list is one such strategy that comes immediately to mind. It can be a powerful conversion tool for businesses whose customers purchase frequently. I’ll write more about this strategy in my next installment when we talk about the “considered purchase” pattern.
It gives you the force to fly free of your industry Whac-a-mole table by slashing your online sales costs.
Let’s see why knowing your customer is key to marketing and conversion success and from this insight you can begin to find opportunities for growth.
Valentin Radu is a businessman, a successful businessman, who believes knowing your customer is fundamental. He has built the first online car insurance company in Romania and sold it to within a few years.
So, if you’re Valentin, what do you do for an encore?
You build the tools you wish you had when you were building your business and offer them to other businesses so that they can be successful.
You can lead a horse to water, but he still won’t look good in a bikini.
Valentin Radu believes we spend too much time chasing new customers, when we should be spending our time and energy on our “true lovers”. Listen and see if you agree.
The Human Biases Holding You Back. Learn more about human biases, how they work together, and why it impacts your role as a marketer.
Gain Executive Buy-In. How do you know what made your customer buy to begin with? Who is your buyer? And when you get the answers to these questions – how do you get buy-in from leaders in the organization to make the pivots needed based on the data?
Understanding What Drives. It’s important to know which calls to action tend to drive the most clicks, and which pages (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) are getting the most ad traffic.
It turns out that these exciting tools bump up against something less procedural, and more… human.
Imagine this: You are offered a magical machine that lets you read the thoughts of the people coming to your website. Not the personal stuff, just the stuff that applies to your business.
You can see how they solve problems. You can try different designs, different copy, different calls to action to see if they find it easier to buy. And you don’t have to redesign your website.
You can hear what they are trying to do and what is confusing them.
You can point them to the information they need at any time.
And the magic tools wouldn’t violate their privacy in any way.
You might be skeptical, of course. But would you be resistant to this?
The answer is, that you probably would be. This is human. There are a number of biases that all humans harbor. These biases — confirmation bias, availability bias, novelty bias, survivorship bias — work together to keep us doing what we’ve always done, even when we clearly need change.
Fortunately, humans are also social animals. Our biases can be up-ended by the behaviors of others. When we talk about using social signals to change human behavior, we are talking about Culture.
In a company, culture is a huge, powerful lever. This also makes it difficult to move, especially if you are not a leader in your company. You can feel like Sisyphus, pushing that bolder up the hill. Over and over agin.
The opportunity, however, is great. Marketing has always been about knowing your customer. We’ve never had access to more information about our customers. Will you be an agent of knowledge or will you remain mired in your biases?
Understanding Your Customers
When a visitor arrives on your site what is it that you want them to do? Well most marketers would say first, you want them to buy. And then you want them to come back.
This is the charge.
So how do we take our customers — our site visitors — and turn them into ‘true lovers’ as our guest today, Valentin Radu from Omniconvert calls them?
Getting them to buy and come back is the charge. But here’s the challenge.
How do you know what made your customer buy to begin with? Who is your buyer? How do you know the action they took when they first landed on your site? How do you get the freedom as a marketer to experiment, to look at the data, to understand the data in order to make decisions to increase conversions?
And when you get the answers to those questions, how do you get buy-in from leaders in the organization to make the pivots needed based on the data?
Knowing your customer is key to marketing and conversion success.
Experimenting with Your Marketing
These are the questions we explore in this episode. Experimenting with your marketing is the only way that you can truly know what is working. It’s the only way you can succeed. Marketing and status quo cannot go together. At least for my listeners.
You might be thinking, that all sounds great Brian, but how do I influence change to allow for more more experimentation and effect true company growth?
Omniconvert is a CRO tool that helps marketers increase conversion rates. From surveys to overlays – it’s a marketers sandbox. You can find out more by connecting with me or head on over to omniconvert dot com.
When you get back to the office.
When you get back to the office, I suggest that you start using a little data in your decision-making process. You can start with some data that is already “laying around.”
When was the last time you looked at what your PPC and Facebook ad team were doing? Many digital marketers don’t spend a lot of time with the advertising, but there are some real gems of growth here.
And most of us are doing some sort of advertising.
Call down to your ad team and ask them for a spreadsheet of all of the ads they’ve been running. Go back six months or even a year. Ask for the ad text, the number of impressions, the number of clicks, the cost per click and the link URL. This is easy for them to generate. If they can track conversions, definitely ask for conversions for each ad.
Then spend some time with this data. You’ll understand:
Which calls to action tend to drive the most clicks.
What pages are getting the most ad traffic. You’ll want to go and see how these pages are performing in analytics.
How many ads are sending traffic to the home page.
From this, you can begin to find opportunities for growth.
Are you using words like the best clicked ads? Are you sending good clicks to bad pages? And is there a better place to send traffic than the home page? The answer is yes, by the way.
Then share your findings with at least one other person.
You have just begun culture change. You radical, you.
When considering investing in a web business, consider the following.
Traffic source: Is it dependent on free search?
Proft
On-going development: Does it require additional investment?
Dependence on Third-party API’s: Facebook, Twitter and others can change access to data at any time.
There are other considerations for website due diligence as well.
Calculate Revenue per Visit
The Revenue per Visit (RPV) is the revenue generated by a site divided by the number of visitors. If this number is small, you may have trouble building traffic, because the cost of the traffic is higher than the revenue.
For a better analysis, consider measuring Profit per Visit.
Avoid Traffic Arbitrage
If the site is not something you would use, you might have a business built on traffic arbitrage. Arbitrage is acquiring traffic, and then sending it advertisers or affiliates for more than you paid.
This is not a web business.
Does the Website have a Future?
Sites with a limited future are not a good long-term investment. When performing website due diligence, be careful of sites that are at the mercy of time or other businesses.
Websites that focus on a single event have a built in expiration date.
Sites that fix something in someone else’s product can be eliminated by upgrades to that product.
Sites tat provide a product that is simply “better” than the competition can be marketed out of existence
Websites that depend on loopholes should be avoided, as loopholes can be closed.
Avoid trying to figure things out after you buy.
— Bryan O’neil, Flippa.com
Website Due Diligence: 7 Business Buying Myths
O’Neil offer seven myths about buying a business that you should avoid.
Myth #1: The site’s backlink profile is important
Dependence on organic traffic is dangerous.
Myth #2: Financial verification is most important
Businesses with good financial verification can fail if they don’t have a future.
Myth #3: Escrow can save you from a bad decision.
Escrow is where you give money to a third party during a period of inspection and verification.
Do your due diligence before you enter escrow. Don’t make yourself a target for scammers.
Entering escrow also tie up your capital, limiting your options.
Myth #4: Website due diligence is just too expensive.
Due diligence is expensive, especially if done by a third party.
But, when you compare it to the purchase price, it can be quite affordable.
Calculate your Website Due Diligence Percent:
DDP = Cost of Due Diligence / Purchase Price of Website.
Myth #5: Screen shots are viable proof of financial performance.
Business owners can forge screen shots showing success. This is a sign of a scammer.
Make the seller jump through hoops.
— Bryan O’neil, Flippa.com
Myth #6: Your broker can do due diligence.
Avoid any broker that claims they have done due diligence for you.
Brokers work for the SELLER.
Myth #7: You can rely on apps to do your website due diligence.
Nope. You need the human element in the process.
Due Diligence when Buying Websites by Bryan O’neil of Flippa.com
Here is my instagraph infographic of his presentation on due diligence mistakes when buying Websites.
Due Diligence when Buying Websites by Bryan O’Niel
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
Discover how to use Google ad extensions to improve your customer acquisition efforts. Find out which ad extensions should you be using and when.
We will start by reviewing the various ad extensions available. Then, we’ll discuss the implications of ad extensions on customer acquisition. And finally, we’ll uncover how to use these Google ad extensions to improve your customer acquisition efforts.
Let’s first review this concept and then analyze the different ways of using Google ad extensions to improve your customer acquisition efforts.
What are Google Ad Extensions?
Extensions expand your ad with additional information – giving people more reasons to click on your ad.
You’ve seen these before. Those extra lines below the Google ad text that displays the store address closest to you? Or maybe a few reasons that entice you to click on their ad? Something like, Free Consultation or 24/7 or Free Shipping.
According to Google, ad extensions “typically increase an ad’s click-through-rate by several percentage points.” But Google is taking the liberty of choosing which extensions to show on your ads for you. “To maximize the performance of your text ads, Google Ads selects which extensions to show in response to each individual query on Google.”
They have enough information on a prospect’s search intent, history and geo in order to have their algorithms work in favor of advertisers.
But first, you need to set them up. Here is a current list of Google Ad Extensions. They do add more on a regular basis.
Location extensions (automated)
Affiliate location
Sitelink (automated)
Price
Callout and dynamic callout
Structured snippets
Call extensions (automated)
Message extensions (automated)
Seller Ratings (automated only – but you can do things to help make them appear)
Don’t worry trying to figure them out right now. We’ll dive into them later in the article.
Why is Google so confident that they can increase click-through rates for your ads?
They make the point that ads with extensions provide “greater visibility and prominence.” This means your ad is more likely to be seen. Makes sense, you have more lines than your competitor ads (unless they have Google ad extensions too.)
It also means that you’re pushing competing ads below yours down the page.
Google also makes the case that you can offer the visitor more clicks to choose from, or offer “interactive ways of reaching you — as with maps, SMS or calls” and this will increase the likelihood of them clicking on your ad.
Setting up ad extensions doesn’t mean they will show on your ad. Google lists two possibilities for ad extensions to appear:
When the extensions are predicted to improve the ads performance
When your Ad Rank is above a minimum level.
So, you see. It’s not all under your control. You gotta trust Google to present the best extension for your business goals at the right time, place and query.
We say, they better.
What’s the best thing about Google Ads extensions? They are FREE. So setting the right ones up is always an advantage.
Get a higher return from your ad campaigns. Start implementing CRO for advertising today.
Improve your Customer Acquisition Efforts with Ad Extensions
The goal of ad optimization efforts is to gain more customers at a lower cost. The lower this acquisition cost, the more profit you make on each new customer or on each transaction and you can afford to spend more on ads – which implies more volume or more competitive bids. Or you can just pocket the difference.
There are two ways to reduce these acquisition costs
Spend less on ads for the same number of conversions.
Get more conversions from your ad spend.
The first is accomplished by refining bids, eliminating low-converting ads, and designing offers that deliver better qualified visitors.
The second is accomplished by refining the websites and pages to which you send your ad clicks.
In both cases, the higher your conversion rate, the lower your customer acquisition costs. We may choose to spend less on low-quality visitors that convert poorly, or do a better job of converting the ad traffic we are getting.
And this is where Google ad extensions can help improve your customer acquisition efforts.
Evidently, Google Ads extensions let you add more information to a typical text ad. They allow advertisers to say more about the offer made in the ad so that searchers make better choices about whether to click or not.
Ad Extensions that add Links to More Targeted Landing Pages
Three Google ad extensions add additional links to your ads.
Sitelink Extensions
Price Extensions
Promotion Extensions
Sitelink extensions are great for broad match keywords. They allow the searcher to click on narrower topics than their search phrase might return. The example below, shows sitelink extensions with an additional description. A great feature that entices advertisers to convert their campaigns to enhanced campaigns.
Example of sitelink ad extension with description.
An eCommerce site can use a variety of pages as landing pages: product pages, category pages, search results pages, and even specific informational pages for those not ready to buy just yet.
Sitelink ad extensions used in eCommerce.
Tip: Consider targeting your primary segments with sitelink extensions.
Price Extensions allow you to feature pricing right in your ads. This is a great feature to weed out those prospects that may not go through with their purchase because of price. And an additional element to improve your customer acquisition efforts.
Example of a Price Ad Extension on a mobile device.
Google Ads Sitelink Extensions Improve Ad Quality Score
Ad extensions also allow advertisers to send searchers to more relevant pages on their websites. These are called Sitelink extensions.
First of all, Google uses the performance of your landing page to determine how high they will place your ad on the page. Higher placement is better. If you have visitors clicking on your ads but then “pogo-sticking” immediately back, Google will penalize your ads by assigning a lower quality score. You may have to increase your bids if you have lower quality scores and your sitelinks may not show until your score goes back up.
Thus, if you can send them to a more relevant page, they are less likely to click away. And this signals to Google that you deserve a higher quality score.
The following ad for “kitchen countertops” has one link.
This ad has one link, the headline link.
The following ad for “choosing kitchen countertops” has a sitelink extension that includes five more links:
This ad uses a sitelink ad extension to get five links.
Contact Us
Featured Projects
Info & Prices
News Center
Products Catalog
This approach allows advertisers to help searchers make better choices about what to click on based on their needs therefore, improving their customer acquisition efforts. In this example, we have a link to “Contact Us” for contractors working on a project, and “Products Catalog” for those who want to know their options.
These extra sitelinks must go to different pages according to Google’s rules. That means you must have two, three, four, or more different landing pages for any ad that uses a sitelink extension. You may see this as a burden. We see it as an opportunity.
Avoid Sitelinks to the Homepage
Many of the ads we see take a visitor to the website’s homepage. We have demonstrated over and over again that a landing page will convert more ad clicks than the homepage, thus improving your customer acquisition efforts.
Sitelink extensions force advertisers to think about the needs of various searchers, and develop pages for those specific needs.
The Ad Extension Halo Effect
Sydney Sheedy, Senior Account Manager at (un)Common Logic, tells us that ad extensions can have a halo effect on your online ads.
Sitelink ad extensions can increase clicks on the ad. But Sheedy’s data shows that, even when sitelinks are present, most clicks are on the headline itself. In the following table, Sheedy shows four accounts that use sitelink extensions, and how the clicks break down.
Click data for ads with sitelink extensions.
Overall, only 10% of clicks go to the sitelinks. That means 90% are on the headline.
Of course, Sitelink ad extensions can increase clicks on the ad. Let’s keep that in mind and keep on increasing your chances of improving your customer acquisition efforts.
Ad Extensions for Mobile Visitors
Call Extensions
Message Extensions
App Extensions
Structured Snippets
While these extensions will appear on desktop and tablet devices, they are well targeted to our small-screen visitors. Your ad strategy should be different for small-screen mobile and large-screen visitors.
For example, Girikon presents call extensions and a drop-down ad extension to mobile visitors:
Example of a click-to-call ad extension.
But on the desktop the click-to-call ad extension is not presented.
The desktop version of this ad has no click to call extension.
Call extensions give your ads the ability to connect searchers with your business using a special app on smartphones called Phone.
Our customers find higher close rates and larger order values when they get a prospect on the phone. It’s great for mobile lead generation and considered purchases.
Message extensions leverage another handy app found on smartphones: Text Messages.
Why not let mobile visitors text you directly? When the searcher taps the message extension, they text you first and they will receive a message that you create as an auto-reply.
Example of mobile message ad extension.
App extensions invite the visitor to download and install your app.
This ad contains a mobile app extension.
Google Ad Extensions to Improve your Customer Acquisition Efforts in the Real World
Location Extensions
Affiliate Location Extensions
For those visitors that are wandering around the city looking for a physical location, these two location ad extensions will deliver. They improve customer acquisition efforts by getting people in the door who want to shop in the real world.
Location extensions let the visitor open a map to your physical stores, offices and sites.
Example of an ad with location ad extension.
Affiliate location extensions do the same for stores that carry your products or offer your services.
Other Ad Extensions that Improve Acquisition Efforts
Callout Extensions
Structured Snippet Extensions
Callout extensions increase the real estate of your ad, giving you more lines of text. The more you can explain the fewer clicks to your landing page are required.
Reducing poorly-qualified clicks is a great way to reduce your acquisition cost while improving your customer acquisition efforts.
Structure snippet extensions provide more detailed information on your offer, but don’t provide additional links. If they see what they want in your structured snippet, their click will be more relevant, increasing conversion rate and dropping acquisition cost.
Structured snippets can use one of the following headers:
Amenities
Brands
Courses
Degree programs
Destinations
Featured hotels
Insurance coverage
Models
Neighborhoods
Service catalog
Shows
Styles
Types
Stacking Ad Extensions: Is it Even Possible?
If one ad extension is good, isn’t two better? Ad extensions are free, so why not use them all, and use them all of the time?
Not necessarily.
We want to consider the paradox of choice. Providing too many choices can cause visitors to become paralyzed.
Second, Google is the one that decides if and when to show them.
They better.
Example of an ad with multiple ad extensions.
Here are some tips for deciding if you want to stack ad extensions or not.
Don’t Repeat Yourself (too much)
If you have a good reason for extending your ad, use it. But be careful about introducing too much repetition. Ad extensions may work best when they add additional information rather than repeat it.
These ad extensions are probably too repetitive.
Don’t Ask Them to Call if No One is Home
Call extensions can be very effective, especially for mobile searchers. But make sure there is someone to answer if you’re providing a phone number. This is a great tip. Use it when stacking up or when flying solo.
Example of an ad using a call extension with 24-hour service.
Test Stacking Ad Extensions
It’s the 21st century. Adwords is a great platform for testing ad creative. Try a variety of ad extension combinations and go with the stack that delivers the best bottom-line results.
Google will take the liberty of adding ad extensions to your ads if they feel it’s a good idea. If you don’t have a team that can give thought to your ad campaigns, this may seem like a good thing.
But we have to ask, “Why spend the money on ads if you don’t have the bandwidth to be smart about the spend?”
To avoid these automated extensions, turn them off and add your own extensions. Just know that the ones Google Ads created automatically before you turn them off may still appear. (Pesky little things)
When do Ad Extensions Hurt?
As a general rule, Google ad extensions should be used on all of your ads.
They increase your visual footprint on search engine results pages (SERPs)
They push your competitors down the page
They can generate a halo effect to increase clicks on your ads
They increase qualified clicks reducing acquisition cost
When should you avoid extensions?
When you don’t have relevant pages to send visitors to
If you don’t have calls to action on your landing pages
If you don’t have the resources to apply what you learn
Google Ad Extensions to Improve your Customer Acquisition Efforts Summary
Here are the takeaways from our discussion on using Google ad extensions to improve your customer acquisition efforts.
Use ad extensions to reduce your customer acquisition cost.
Use ad extensions to increase the performance of your ads overall.
Use sitelink extensions to target specific segments of your audience.
Use mobile ad extensions to engage your growing smartphone audience.
Use ad extensions to develop effective landing pages.
Running a business website is no different from a Monopoly game. You have scarce resources to spend building the site and attracting traffic. Find out how to optimize for scarcity and win the game!
Monopoly is the quintessential game of American capitalism. For better or worse, it focuses the player on one goal: maximizing the number of dollars in your pile. Everyone has their own strategy and their preferred properties to own and build. Your little sister may only buy properties if she likes the color.
Excellent monopoly players learn their opponents’ strategy and then adapt to respond to the environment they are in.
If you look beyond the “greed is good” focus on money, you will realize that playing the game teaches the principles of scarcity and optimization.
The number dollars you start with is scarce. You must make the most of your limited resources.
You want to be ready when lady luck glances your way. When a dog, a car, or a hat finally lands your property, you better be ready.
Running a business website is no different. You inevitably have scarce resources to spend building the site and attracting traffic.
And when those visitors finally land on your site, you better be ready. This is the job of optimization.
If you viewed your web page as a Monopoly board, would it change your priorities and behavior?
Like houses and hotels, would the right elements be on your page be there?
Too often, we don’t think about our web pages as scarce resources that have to be optimized. Too often, we use our little sister’s “pretty property” strategy. Trust me. She still hates to lose.
Discover how to optimize for scarcity and grow your business.
What is Scarcity
Scarcity means having less resources than needed to achieve a goal. In Monopoly, we can’t own all the properties and have hotels on all properties. We have to deal with scarcity. Our money supply is limited, as is our opportunity to buy properties. The desire to compete brings out our analytical nature and we scheme to make the most of the resources we have as opposed to the resources we want. We do this because we know we have an opponent that is actively working to undo us. Again, do we think about our web page the same way?
Examples of Scarcity on our Web Pages
In reality, we do have opponents in our web strategy. Not just one, but many. In fact, we usually have more opponents than competitors. Some of these opponents include:
Limited attention span
Lack of common reference and knowledge base
Low-resolution computer monitors
Negative emotional association with specific words or images
Slow connection speeds
As you think about the opponents listed above, you will recognize scarcity working against your ultimate goal. Vigorously compete against these opponents on your site with the same vigor you compete in Monopoly, and you’ll be more likely to “pass GO and collect $200.”
How to Optimize for Scarcity
Something amazing happens on the Monopoly board that doesn’t naturally happen on our web page.
In Monopoly, we quit caring about how glamorous a property is and instead focus on how much money it will make for us.
In contrast, it is the very rare individual who walks into a web planning meeting without being focused on making the most beautiful page possible. If we played Monopoly the same way, we would focus on acquiring and building hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place and be done. If you try this approach, either in Monopoly or on your website, you lose.
If you don’t pull your weight, you’re gone!
Without emotion, we require properties to pay their way. They have a job to do and we expect them to do it well. The properties’ job is generating revenue.
Is there an element on your web page that isn’t pulling its weight? As optimizers, our job is to identify the converting elements on a page and remove the non-converting elements.
How to Optimize for Scarcity: Testing to see which properties are performing
Such was the case for one client’s site, when we set out to improve the home page. We followed this process to find out which elements led to conversions:
We set up Google to score on bounce rate while watching conversions.
We used click-tracking software heat mapping to identify content that was not getting clicked. This website has 4 clickable icons that take the user to additional content. We found that the 2 outer icons had low activity and decided to test them against alternate icons.
The experiment executed quickly with the following results:
10% improvement in bounce rate
56% improvement in conversions
Fig 1. Small changes have a big impact on conversions.
That felt good – let’s do it again
After experiencing success, it seemed like a good idea to try again. This time we identified one icon that was under-performing, so we replaced it with another one that led to a converting page. The result here is interesting. Looking at the heat map alone indicates the replaced icon is more desirable. But looking at the numbers reveals it was not the right choice.
Fig 2. More clicks do not necessarily mean more conversions.
As shown on the heat map above, replacing the 3rd icon attracted many more clicks on the “B” version of the page. However, both the bounce rate and the conversion rate took a hit.
Bounce rate degraded 4%
Conversion rate decreased 56%
This experiment shows why it is essential to test and scrutinize the results. Two nearly identical hypotheses with two nearly identical changes led to opposite results. My initial inclination was to ignore the results and push the change through. But I put on my Monopoly head and determined the measurable results of the change should trump how I felt about the change.
No Experiment is a Failure
It would be easy to walk away from the second experiment and view it as a total loss. In the same way that losses are our teachers in Monopoly, losses should be our teachers in web optimization experiments. Just as every Monopoly opponent is unique, our clients and website visitors are unique.
To better understand the behavior we observed, we sought to learn more by asking some basic questions:
Why did higher clicks on the replaced icon also correspond to a higher bounce rate? (Hint: something else didn’t get clicked as much!)
What was appealing about the new icon?
Why did the site conversion rate drop?
What was the net gain/loss of each individual conversion metric?
Did the new copy corresponding to the new icon have a negative impact?
Would alternate copy change the site performance?
Did the new icon and copy add clarity and relevance?
Did the new icon and copy add anxiety or distraction?
It is important to learn from each experiment regardless of the results. Applying this discipline is critical in understanding the unique functionality of your website and what increases or decreases conversions.
Failing to learn from a “failed” experiment is like failing to learn the tactics of your Monopoly opponent. You will face them again, and you want to be prepared when you do.
So What Should You Do?
Like many 12-step programs, the first step is to acknowledge you have a problem. Say out loud, “I care more about how pretty my web page is than how much money it makes.” Let that sink in and prepare to change. Make a personal commitment to website profitability based on hard data. Then approach your web pages with the kind of profit-focused attention to scarcity and optimization that wins Monopoly games.
Make a list of the individual components on your web page – especially above the fold.
Write the purpose of each component next to it.
Ask yourself if each component contributes to profit – and eliminate those that don’t.
Ask yourself if there is anything that could replace the existing components that would drive more profit.
Test, test, test.
Nobody is immune to personal biases and individual favorites. If you want to maximize the functionality of your website, you need to put a structure in place that always tests and always trusts data over opinion. When you earn how to optimize for scarcity, you win. When you make a habit of doing that, you will be the same formidable opponent that you are in Monopoly.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
20 Compelling Examples of Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising
Advertising CRO, Persuasion ScienceThe world of digital marketing makes it super easy for you to reach your target audience. But you have to whip up a mighty persuasive online ad if you want your prospects to click on yours. Persuasion is one of our CRO Agency secret weapons. It is layered into so much of what we do and is often the difference between beginners and conversion optimization experts.
In this post, we’ll review the definition of persuasive copy, how to make sure it works, and show you compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising.
Appeal to logic emotion and credibility all in one. Check out these click worthy examples of persuasive copy in online advertising.
What is Persuasive Copy
Persuasive copy can be defined as an argument that elicits a desired action from a relevant audience. Easier said than done, right?
Aristotle explained what constitutes persuasive copy best in his rhetorical appeals or ‘modes for persuasion’. Let’s keep in mind that his goal was to make his oratory (his presentations) more persuasive. And in doing so, he identified three types of persuasion appeals that are as valid today as they were back then.
Not everybody makes a decision about a specific product or service based on the same argument. Purchasing a lipstick could be more of an impulse buy and an appeal to pathos or emotion may be the right call. Adding an appeal to reason such as “Free Shipping” may seal the deal and get you the click you desperately want.
An example of emotionally persuasive copy in this Avon color trend nail polish, Fairytale collection: “Until your prince charming shows up have fun with the frogs.”
Avon color trend nail polish, Fairytale collection. The copy reads: “Until your prince charming shows up have fun with the frogs”. Why is this a prime example of persuasive copy in advertising? The famous Prince Charming in other countries, like Brazil and Italy, is called the “Blue Prince” — royal blue blood and all. So, until the blue one shows up, have fun with the rest of the colors. Clever emotional argument to leave the guilt behind and have fun now. If the shoe fits. ;)
Fortunately for most of us, developing persuasive copy is not an art but a data driven process. And as such, it can be tested.
How to Test Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising
As investment in digital advertising increases, it becomes essential to figure out what really works. Ad copy testing can be executed pre-campaign launch or while the campaign is live.
Some methods for online ad copy pre-testing may include focus groups, projective techniques, and recall tests. Performing these pre-tests ensures less spend is lost when it comes to activation.
Running an online ad campaign is costly. This is a different version of the Paypal for Business ad used to test the level of persuasiveness in the copy. What appeal has been dropped? Let us know in the comments section at the end of the post.
But the proof is in the pudding and nothing beats solid AB Testing to provide you with the metrics you need to define what’s really working. If you are looking to learn about testing persuasive copy, our blog is packed with articles that explain how to do this in detail. Check them out:
The Proven AB Testing Framework Used By CRO Professionals
4 Types of Useful AB Testing Tools You May Not Realize You Have
The AB Testing Process that Empowers Marketers
4 Mobile AB Testing Ideas that Worked for Our Clients
Or you can take our CRO Course and become a conversion specialist. Or if you’d rather have an experienced conversion agency power boost your online marketing spend and turn more of your ad clicks into revenue, check out our CRO for Advertising solutions.
And as we promised an article about compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising, let’s dive into them!
Why Is Persuasive Copy Crucial to Online Ads
Let’s assume you have the right ad placement, defined the perfect audience, and have properly identified what your audience responds to. After all, persuasive ad copy in and of itself is not the only factor that weighs in on a campaign’s success.
We all want our online ads to influence our audience in such a way that they are inclined to click to call or click to buy from our website. But, what makes copy this convincing? Sometimes, actual examples of persuasive copy can guide us in crafting our own click-worthy online ads.
Compelling Examples of Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising
A genius way to apply emotion to a SaaS service on a Facebook ad for Litmus & dotmailer.
Examples of persuasive copy in online advertising help illustrate the concept.
Appeal to logic or logos works quite nicely for the auto insurance industry. I wonder what would happen to these click-through rates (CTRs) if they added some emotional arguments to the ad copy.
Auto insurance appeal to logic examples. They all look alike. Which one would you click on?
Finding examples of persuasive copy in advertising is simple if there is a Google Guarantee available. Not an easy addition to your online ads but worth every penny. All the credibility you want in a single line.
Building credibility through the Google Guarantee.
Ethos and logos appeal for this Facebook ad campaign.
Ethos appeal.
Lower the guilt with a logical argument. Less fat and less calories than your biggest competitor: McDonald’s french fries. How is that for an attention-getting example of persuasive copy?
Burger King fries ad copy. Stop clicking the button and keep reading!
Of course #FOMO is an emotion! This compelling example of persuasive copy in online advertising proves it! Almost depleted iPhone battery coupled with “Last Chance to Buy T&C Tickets” An example from a Digital Marketer Facebook ads campaign.
Appeal to emotion iPhone battery Facebook Ad example from Digital Marketer.
Searching for click-worthy examples of persuasive copy for your Facebook lead generation campaign? A winner. Hands-down. No big emotional commitment. Only 8 hours for $500 and you get rid of those pesky projects.
Lead generation ad example targeting homeowners looking to start projects.
IBM Watson understands that their audience responds to reason. And that some may be ready to buy. The free trial is a highly persuasive method to get them to click on their ad.
IBM Watson “free trial” a persuasive element of their offer.
This online ad for WD40 is all about persuading through pathos. You will need some WD40 to unstuck that scroll bar.
Humor, sex and curiosity are all emotional appeals.
Every once in a while, you run across an ad that you just can’t forget. Trident’s Facebook ad that appeals to emotions or pathos through some quirky logic as I am sure deodorant won’t taste like spearmint either.
Example of emotional and logical appeal in persuasive copy for Trident’s online ads.
Although they usually resort to logic and ethos – 4 out of 5 dentists recommend – to craft persuasive copy.
Trident Coupons: Save money, prevent stains.
Sandwich delivery ads leverage a mix of ethos or credibility (reviews, how many served), logical (pricing and selection) and emotional (fresh, good, smells, comfort) elements. Definitely great examples of persuasive copy in PPC ads.
Sandwich delivery ads.
Pizza delivery examples of persuasive copy for Google Ads. One relies on logical and ethos vs emotional appeal.
Logical and ethos vs emotional appeal for pizza delivery Google Ads.
Nike sneakers Google Ads: These are not Nike stores, so they lack the brand’s built in credibility. Therefore, they use pathos or emotional persuasion on the headline and ethos appeal on the body via the rating reviews and the on time delivery percentage.
Pathos or emotional persuasion on the headline and ethos appeal on the body via the rating reviews that give credibility and the ontime delivery percentage.
The Nike Official store, is all about logical persuasion of product availability with some additional credibility elements as message support.
Nike official store Google ad.
PPC ad copywriting for a mobile ad with emotional appeal. Click to call the luxury location of your choice.
PPC ad for best NYC hotels. Luxury, of course.
So many persuasive reasons for that mileage traveler in you. Capital One Venture card uses ethos on their youtube and tv ads but not on their Google Ads. Here it’s all facts.
Capital One Venture card uses logos or logical appeal to persuade to click on this PPC ad.
I hope you found inspiration and ideas on these compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising. Now, discover how to Make Testimonials More Persuasive or sign-up to receive our weekly newsletter. Packed with great conversion optimization tips.
Omni Channel Marketing Technology: How to Walk the Line between Creativity and Efficiency (Podcast)
Conversion Marketing StrategyDigito Marketus:
This is a species of primate known generically as digital marketers. During the day, it’s natural habitat is tall square nests built for it, called offices. These are social animals that travel in groups called “departments.” They work alongside other species, such as Neandersales and Blockus ITeas.
This clever species forages through forests of audiences dining primarily on the fruit of the prospect tree, which they share with a symbiotic species, the Neandersales.
This species is known for working in places with scarce resources. They have evolved to flourish with very little. As such, they must be highly creative AND they must be efficient..
They are advanced enough to use tools that help them make fewer mistakes, giving them time for more creative pursuits.
If you’re listening to this podcast, you are either Digito Maketus or manage a department of them.
My guest today studies this species for a living. And — surprise — she actually is a member of the Digito Marketus.
Lindsay Tjepkema (Chep Ka MA), Director of Marketing for the Americas at Emarsys, is a marketer who markets to marketers and specializes in successful omnichannel marketing.
Podcast: Digito Marketus is a species commonly known as “Digital Marketers”
Lindsay Tjepkema | Using Marketing Technology to Create a Seamless Omnichannel Experience
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Resources and links discussed regarding marketing automation for omnichannel strategies:
On this episode of Intended Consequences, we come to understand how this fascinating species walks the line between creativity and efficiency, crayons and spreadsheets, design and databases.
We’ll talk about how she uses the Omni Channel Marketing Technology in her multi channel marketing strategy to deliver user experiences that put the customer first.
We lure Digito Marketus out of its nest– using a trail pens, thumb drives and t-shirts emblazoned with corporate logos — and ask some important questions.
On every episode of this podcast, we give you one technique to challenge you as a marketer, manager or business owner. So, accept the challenge and take your business or practice to new heights. It’s at the very end of the podcast.
Intro to Omni Channel Marketing Technology
During this podcast, I want to ask that you actively participate in this conversation. What I mean by that is – while I’m asking Lindsay questions, I want you to ask yourself those questions. For example, when it comes to omni channel marketing what does success mean for your organization?
And to dig even deeper, Lindsay and I go into this question of “why is it that marketers seem to struggle to get to the next level of success? Are you struggling?
This conversation with Lindsay will start with me first asking how she measures success on her digital channels.
If you want to connect with Lindsay Tjepkema or Emarsys and Host of the Marketer + Machine podcast. You can check her out at emarsys dot com and her podcast.
We talked about knowing the value of a lead on this episode. If you sell stuff online, it’s easy to know how much a transaction is worth. But what if you generate leads or email list subscribers? Are you creating an omnichannel considering your touch point personas?
When you get back to the office (a formula to start prioritizing your traffic-driving investments)
When you get back to the office, try to put a dollar value on your leads or subscribers — even if you’re an eCommerce business, you must be using an email list.
THIS DOES NOT HAVE TO BE ACCURATE. What you want is a dollar value that you can use to prioritize what you’re investing in. It will require you to look in Analytics and possibly the customer relationship management system your sales team uses.
It requires you to understand how many leads or subscribers you’re generating and then how much revenue you are getting from that.
Don’t let silos get in the way. When you don’t have real data, estimate.
At the end of the day, you’ll be able to say, “we generated 100 leads last month. That’s $2500 dollars in our pocket!
Alright scientists, that’s it for this week.
What Keeps Visitors from Converting on your Site?
Conversion-Centered Design, Landing Page OptimizationThere’s one thing, one thing that’s keeping your visitors from converting on your site.
It may not be the only thing, but it is the primary thing that your online business isn’t delivering the results you expect. It’s where you start when you optimize your website.
So, traffic but not conversions? It’s one of these five things:
Find out what keeps visitors from converting on your site and start testing to increase your conversions right now.
How to identify what keeps visitors from converting on your site.
Value Proposition & Messaging
Do you think your value proposition is the one thing that keeps visitors from converting on your site? Let’s take a look at the anatomy of a value proposition. Your value proposition is composed of all of the things you do to solve a problem and is communicated by:
All of these website elements are used to let your visitors know how you solve a set of problems, and why your solution is the best choice. The one that will save the most time and money, or that will deliver the most satisfaction.
But your value proposition doesn’t have to be communicated through words and images alone. Video, audio and animations are proven ways to communicate your value to a prospect.
And herein lies the rub.
Digital media gives us the amazing ability to put anything onto a landing page that our hearts desire. And if you can do anything, how do you know which is the right element to use? Here lies the conundrum.
How to know if your value proposition is what keeps visitors from converting on your site
A high bounce rate is a sign of three things:
If your landing page suffers from a high bounce rate, look at the source of your traffic. Does the page keep the specific offer made in the paid ad, email, or organic search query that enticed the visitors to click on your site? If it’s your homepage, the answer is most certainly, “No.”
If you feel that your traffic is good, and is coming to a relevant page, then we should ask if the lead is hitting the mark. By “lead” I am referring to the headline + hero image.
Don’t show a city skyline. Don’t show a person smiling at a computer. These things don’t scream for meaningful captions and don’t help conversions either.
You should also look at the words you use in your main navigation. These should communicate what your site is about in the words of the visitor, not just the structure of your website.
Still don’t know what’s keeping them from converting? Ask your visitors
If you still don’t know what is keeping visitors from converting on your site, consider using an exit-intent popup that asks one open-ended question: “What were you looking for when you came to our site?” or “Why didn’t you purchase?”
We are also big fans of putting an open-ended question on your thank-you page or receipt page: “What almost kept you from buying?” or “What almost kept you from signing up?”
You May Be Scaring Visitors Away: Use and Misuse of Risk Reversal
In general, more people make decisions based on fear than on opportunity. So, your amazing value proposition is destined to die in the minds of many of your prospects because of fear.
Risk reversal (and most of the following) is a set of tactics that puts the visitor’s fears at rest. It consists of things like:
Placing these items in clear view near a call to action can do wonders for your conversion rates.
Don’t put fears into their mind
There is a potential danger. Your risk reversal tactics can actually put fear into their mind.
For example, stating, “We will never spam you.” can actually place the concept in the mind of someone who wasn’t concerned about it. You might say instead, “We respect your privacy.” with a link to your privacy policy.
Traffic but not Conversions? Help Visitors Convert on your Site with Social Proof
Social proof demonstrates that others have had a positive experience with your brand. These take the form of:
If social proof is your one problem that keeps visitors from converting on your site, customers don’t feel that you’re right for someone like them. Make sure you show them that they are in the group of people that benefit from you.
Negative Reviews Help
Ironically, it also serves to answer the question, “Just how bad was a bad experience with this company?” This is why negative reviews have proven to increase conversion rates on eCommerce sites. Cleaning your reviews or only posting good reviews can shoot you in the foot.
Is it Lack of Credibility & Authority What Keeps Visitors from Converting on your Site?
If you are in an industry with lots of competition, or with “bad actors” who manipulate to get sales, your one problem may be credibility and authority.
The design of your website is one of the first things that communicate credibility. But be careful. A fancy, overly-designed site may communicate the wrong idea to visitors. It may convey that you’re expensive or too big for your prospects.
Credibility can be established by emphasizing things about your company, and by borrowing credibility from other sources such as, your clients. your payment methods, you media appearances and the like.
Brand Credibility
You gain credibility by building confidence with your brand and value proposition. How long have you been in business? How many customers have you served? How many products have you sold? How many dollars have you saved?
Brand credibility generally takes the form of implied proof.
Borrowed Credibility
Your website or landing page can borrow credibility and authority from third-party sources. Placing symbols and logos on your website borrows from these credible sources. Ask yourself:
Place proof of your associations on your site’s landing pages to borrow authority and credibility from them.
User Interface & User Experience: Factors that Keep Visitors from Converting on your Site
Nothing works if your visitors eyes aren’t guided through your pages.
No value proposition, no risk reversal, no social proof, no credibility stands a chance if the layout and user experience don’t help the reader understand where they’ve landed or where to go from there.
Long load time equals poor experience
The first thing to look at is site performance. If your pages load slowly, you visitors may be bouncing away. If any element requires a loading icon of any sort, you are probably providing a poor user experience.
Clutter means bad visual hierarchy
When a visitor looks at a page, it should be very obvious what is most important element and what can be looked at later. This is called a visual hierarchy.
For example, we like to make call to action buttons highly visible, so that it is clear to the reader that they are being asked to do something.
Designers use their knowledge of whitespace, negative space, font, font size, color, and placement to design an experience that is easy for the visitors’ eyes to digest.
Don’t add surprises
A good user experience has little place for novelty. Arbitrarily adding animations, fades, parallax images or scroll-triggered effects are generally unnecessary, can cause technical glitches and may actually hurt conversion rates.
How to Know “what” is Hurting your Conversion Rate
We recommend this process to determine the primary problem that keeps visitors from converting on your website.
1. Gather all of your conversion optimization ideas
Begin recording all of the ideas you have for improving the site in the spreadsheet. Sources for these ideas:
Don’t be surprised to have dozens of ideas for a website or landing page.
2. Categorize each of your ideas
The ROI Prioritized Hypothesis List spreadsheet has a column for classifying each idea.
There will also be some things that you just want to fix.
3. Count your conversion optimization ideas
Count out how many ideas you have for each category. The category with the most ideas is probably the one problem you should address first. We use a pie chart to illustrate the different issues.
This site’s one problem is Value Proposition and Messaging followed by Layout and UX
4. Start working
Begin working on the ideas in the category with the most ideas.
This is a great time to start AB testing to see which of your ideas really are important to your visitors.
Your search traffic will demonstrate their approval through more sales, more leads and higher conversion rates overall.
This sounds like a lot of work
It is a lot of work. But you could consider hiring us to identify what keeps visitors from converting on your site and we will test our way to your success.
You can request a free consultation with us.
This article is an updated and revised version of our original article published on Search Engine Land.
What Form of Form Will Get You More Conversions?
Lead GenerationContact forms are the most common way of beginning a conversation between a company and a prospect. In this article, we’ll show you how to get more prospects to fill out your form without reducing the quality of those leads.
What’s the big deal with forms? They have fields. You fill out the fields and you get something you want.
So, why do so many of your visitors fail to fill out your forms?
There is some psychology and some science to getting more form fills, whether you are trolling for leads or asking your visitors to buy something. The folks at SingleHop have done a study and it is exactly what we’ve seen in our testing of contact forms. You’ll learn a lot about increasing contact form conversion from this little infographic.
Contact Form Fields: How Many is Too Many?
As a general rule, the more fields you have, the lower your conversion rate. However, the leads you do acquire will be better qualified. The best way to find the right mix is to A/B test your contact forms.
Generally speaking and to increase contact form conversion, you should avoid:
Best Practices to Increase Contact Form Conversion
While you may think your website is selling your product or service, what it’s really selling is a sales call. You must convince the visitor to complete your form.
There are four components that will help you achieve this.
Build Trust
You can build trust by including your phone number and contact information. Sometimes they will call you.
Provide Social Proof
Your contact page should present testimonials and endorsements to make visitors feel comfortable completing the contact form.
Add Value
Make sure you are building value. What’s in it for the visitor if they fill out the form?
Sell the call to increase contact form conversions.
Use Risk Reversal
You can significantly remove barriers to completion by simply presenting your privacy policy on the form. While these are rarely read, they indicate that you care enough to have one.
Get the Call to Action Right
On a contact form, the call to action usually lives on the contact form button. The call to action should communicate what will happen when it is clicked.
Studies indicate that using first person improves conversion rates. Test changing “your” to “my”.
For example “Download your free report” is second person. “Download my free report” is first person.
Contact forms infographic.
The Best Lead Capture Forms
The best contact forms don’t assume the visitor wants to fill out the form. Only lonely people fill out such forms.
Instead, your form should give visitors a good reason to complete the form, and build trust with them and explain the value of completing the form.
This is an important step in their journey to solve a problem.
Treat it as such.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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How Heatmaps Helped Increase Prospective Student Inquiries with Hotjar
Lead Generation, Web AnalyticsHeatmaps are just the first step to obtaining useful insights on your website visitors. Today we’ll find out how heatmaps helped increase prospective student inquiries by 20% for a University and have a chat with Andrew Michael of Hotjar. Find out what he has to say.
Andrew Michael | Understanding Your Users: Leveraging Tools to Grow Your Website
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Resources and links discussed
How Heatmaps Helped Increase Prospective Student Inquiries by 20%
We were looking at the heatmap report for the website of Northcentral University, a non-profit online university headquartered in Arizona.
Reading a heatmap report is like looking at a weather radar, but instead of blobs of green, red and yellow showing us where rain is falling around us, a heatmap report shows us where visitors are clicking on a web page.
And it was raining clicks in an unexpected spot on the NCU website.
Specifically, visitors were clicking on one of the fields in the middle of a form, and only on that field. Not the name field, not the email field. The majority of them weren’t completing the form.
So, why were visitors so interested in this one field?
It was an important question, as this form was the primary invitation to get more information on the University. It was on almost every page, ready to start a more in-depth conversation with any visitor.
The field visitors were clicking on was “program of interest”, a dropdown field that listed the degrees offered by NCU. It was meant as a way for prospective students to tell NCU which degree program they were interested in.
These prospective students were using it as an information source.
While the copy on the page was regaling visitors on the value of NCUs one-on-one learning, it’s 100% doctoral professors and it’s diversity, visitors were telling us that they had one question first.
Do you offer a degree program I’m interested in?
At least, this was the hypothesis. So we designed a test.
At the top of every page, we placed a dropdown menu that listed the university’s programs, just like that on the form. When a degree program was selected, we took them to the part of the site that described that degree program.
Half of NCUs visitors would see this dropdown. The other half would not. They’d have to use the dropdown in the form.
When we measured the results, the visitors who saw the dropdown in the page were 20% more likely to fill out the form completely, requesting information.
The current site offers a complete section designed to help visitors find a degree program they’re interested in.
This is something that we would not have been able to find any other way than through a heatmap report. It doesn’t show up in analytics. No one would have complained.
This is the power of a class of report called user intelligence reports.
Anyone who knows how to read rain chances from a weather radar can use this kind of report. More and more of us are doing this.
These reports are surprisingly easy to generate and the tools are inexpensive.
Leading the way is a company called Hotjar. On today’s show we’re breaking down HotJar with Andrew Michael. A tool focused on helping you understand your users. Andrew got into marketing because he’s intrigued by psychology – understanding what drives people’s decisions.
An Insightful Chat with Andrew Michael from Hotjar
Intended Consequences podcast with Hotjar’s Andrew Michael
Time is precious for overburdened marketers. On this show, we seek to understand which tools are truly valuable, and which are just giving us “interesting” insights.
We install something like Hotjar on every one of our client sites when optimizing.
Tools like Hotjar are a part of what I call ‘the golden age of marketing’. These tools are continually evolving, getting easier to use and less expensive.
These are the tools that buy you more time to be creative, ground breaking and successful.
We start off the podcast talking about all of the things Hotjar brings to the table under a single subscription. Then we talk about the outcome of leveraging tools like this – how do they actually empower marketers serve their online prospects better?
Listen to the Podcast. It’s well worth it.
When You Get Back To The Office
I’m not a shill for Andrew. I just know these tools are a great value and easy to learn.
When you get back to the office, i recommend that you do a trial of Hotjar. Add it to your homepage, or one of your “money” pages where you ask visitors to take action. Setup a heatmap report on it.
Let it run for a few days, and then look at the scroll report. This report tells you how far visitors are scrolling on your page. This is one of the first things we look at when we start analyzing our clients’ sites.
Where is the report turning blue? This is the place on the page that visitors stop reading. Look in the blue area. What key content are they missing?
Reasons for this include: false bottoms, where visitors think the page ends when it doesn’t. It can mean that your content isn’t engaging them enough high on the page. It can mean that you’re not handling a key objection.
Your strategies include moving key content to the top of the page, putting arrows, chevrons and “v”s on the page to tell visitors to keep going, or re-thinking the story you tell on this page.
Don’t be discouraged. This is progress! Next, share this report with your design team and see what they think.
This is how pages get better and businesses grow.
You can get all these links discussed on this week’s episode in our shownotes. One thing to remind you all of is that Hotjar is a freemium model so it’s one you can definitely
Alright scientists, that’s it for this week.
Andrew Michael | Understanding Your Users: Leveraging Tools to Grow Your Website
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Ecommerce Conversion Marketing Strategy for Online Sales
Ecommerce CROEvery industry has them. Your company may be one of them. They are the whack-a-mole companies, sticking their virtual neck out, and striving to do things better, driving online sales with an evolving ecommerce conversion marketing strategy.
And they often get whacked.
But the companies I’m talking about hunker down in their holes and plan their next chance to pop out again, with more force. It’s in their blood. The Internet is becoming the place they stage their emergence.
These whack-a-mole companies may sell products that range from the common to the mundane. Zappos was a whack-a-mole company. They started out in online sales of shoes. In ten years, Zappos outshone their competitors and sold an almost $1 billion business to Amazon.
Wikipedia calls Whac-a-mole a “Redemption Game”
The GoodLife Team is a whack-a-mole company in the very competitive real estate market. They are small by the standards of their peers, but like Zappos, I expect them to pop out of their hole with such force that they will leave the table altogether, flying free of the hammers that seek to drive them back.
Patience and Impatience: Ecommerce Conversion Marketing Strategy for Online Sales
Whack-a-mole companies are both patient, and remarkably impatient. They are remarkably impatient to try new things. They aren’t careless. Successful whack-a-moles seek to find out what works and what doesn’t quickly.
Yet, they are patient in the long run. They know that they’re going to get whacked a few times, and they prepare for the blows. Theirs is a journey of learning and persistence.
I am drawn to these kind of companies. It is them that I find myself writing for.
Ecommerce Whack-a-moles
If you are a budding whack-a-mole in your industry and want to turn the Web into a powerful sales channel, find out how the highest-converting sites on the Web use ecommerce marketing strategy to maximize conversion rates and online sales. “Conversion” is the magic that makes you stronger than your competitors.
The E-commerce Pattern: Core Conversion Marketing Strategies
The third of the five “core” conversion marketing patterns is the e-commerce pattern. The two patterns I’ve already discussed are the Brochure site and the Portal site. As a refresher, the Brochure pattern is a known as the “sales support” pattern. The purpose is to provide information during the sales process and tell prospects how to get more information. The Portal pattern, also known as the “advertising model” and “subscription model,” monetizes content.
For this discussion, I assume a site is generating reasonably qualified traffic and that the offering has a demand in the marketplace.
The E-commerce pattern
Also known as “online shopping,” “eRetail” and “eTail,” e-commerce sites are designed to handle the online purchase of a product or service. For purposes of this discussion, you are building a site with the e-commerce pattern if:
My goal here is to explore three strategies that are conversion deal-breakers for e-commerce websites. Get these strategies right, and you should be able to optimize your way to higher conversion rates. Get any of these wrong, and you will find yourself struggling to improve.
Category pages
For sites that feature dozens or thousands of products, it is critical that visitors at all stages of the buying process find their way to specific items on your site. Category pages are the traffic cops, driving shoppers to the right product areas and eventually to the products they seek.
Are category pages more important than the home page? For visitors who are just becoming aware of your online brand, the home page serves as the top-level category page, or the “featured products” category page. A quick survey of the highest converting retail sites on the web reveal some interesting similarities in their category page and category page design.
Defining the right categories is critical. Most of the high-converting sites have between five and eight categories in their top-level navigation. Office Depot gets it down to four. More refined categories are listed in the left column; “specials,” “best sellers,” “brands,” etc.
For e-commerce sites that don’t have the brand strength of these large retailers, it is tempting to spend space talking about the company and its unique value proposition. Keep this brief. Avoid the temptation to add ancillary items to navigation, such as “about us.” Let your offers and categories do the talking for you.
In summary, specific offers, smart category choices and search are the hallmarks of strong category pages.
Product pages
Just as landing pages are crucial to increase the conversion rate of advertising efforts, well designed product pages are crucial for the e-commerce website. With best search engine optimization practices, product pages become the landing pages for searching shoppers.
Product pages typically ask the visitor to “add to cart” and “buy now.” These should be the most tested pages on your site.
The elements that make for a great product page differ from industry to industry, but there are some rules of thumb.
Show the product. There is a correlation between the conversion rate of a page and the number and quality of product images available.
Provide all of the information a visitor needs to say “yes.” Price, shipping, return policy, ratings and reviews; what you include on your product page depends on what you’re selling, and to whom.
Test to find the right balance of information. Providing too much information can distract buyers from clicking “buy now,” and even introduce reasons not to buy.
Product pages serve two masters: people who are already exploring your site and those who have landed there due to a search engine query. Test these pages to find your best converting product page design.
Shopping cart
E-commerce shopping carts have traditionally been a thorny issue with conversion scientists and web site optimizers. Too many businesses choose shopping cart software that is rigid and difficult to customize. Many of the most popular shopping carts on the market seem to have been designed by engineers, and they don’t consider that buyers may be on the brink of abandoning the transaction.
The purchase process is the needle point for your success. The wary shopper is always on the lookout for red flags, reasons to reconsider their purchase decision. Alarms are sounded by what is missing from your shopping cart pages.
The shopping cart is often used as an information resource. Prospects will add a product and then start the checkout process to uncover information that they didn’t find elsewhere on the site.
Flexibility is the key with shopping cart systems. They should be easy to customize, provide places for “reinforcing” copy, and be able to answer questions like those above. If your shopping cart can support A/B split testing, all the better.
The shopping cart is so important, that almost any business should consider replacing their system if they can’t easily and quickly change the sequence, layout, button location, button text, page copy, promotion codes, trust badges, etc. As with product pages, small changes in these elements can result in big increases in conversion rates.
As of this writing, I can’t recommend any shopping carts systems that meet these criteria. Please offer your recommendations in the comments.
There are a variety of tactics to be explored within each of these make-or-break strategies: category pages, product pages and the purchase process. There are other strategies that may be equally important, and I welcome your input through the comments. Building an email list is one such strategy that comes immediately to mind. It can be a powerful conversion tool for businesses whose customers purchase frequently. I’ll write more about this strategy in my next installment when we talk about the “considered purchase” pattern.
It gives you the force to fly free of your industry Whac-a-mole table by slashing your online sales costs.
Be free, my plastic mole friends!
Photo courtesy O Mighty Crisis Blog.
This article by Brian Massey was first published on Search Engine Land
Knowing Your Customer (Podcast)
Conversion Marketing Strategy, CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingValentin Radu is a businessman, a successful businessman, who believes knowing your customer is fundamental. He has built the first online car insurance company in Romania and sold it to within a few years.
So, if you’re Valentin, what do you do for an encore?
You build the tools you wish you had when you were building your business and offer them to other businesses so that they can be successful.
You can lead a horse to water, but he still won’t look good in a bikini.
Knowing Your Customer with Valentin Radu
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Resources and Links Discussed
Key Takeaways
It turns out that these exciting tools bump up against something less procedural, and more… human.
Imagine this: You are offered a magical machine that lets you read the thoughts of the people coming to your website. Not the personal stuff, just the stuff that applies to your business.
You can see how they solve problems. You can try different designs, different copy, different calls to action to see if they find it easier to buy. And you don’t have to redesign your website.
You can hear what they are trying to do and what is confusing them.
You can point them to the information they need at any time.
And the magic tools wouldn’t violate their privacy in any way.
You might be skeptical, of course. But would you be resistant to this?
The answer is, that you probably would be. This is human. There are a number of biases that all humans harbor. These biases — confirmation bias, availability bias, novelty bias, survivorship bias — work together to keep us doing what we’ve always done, even when we clearly need change.
Fortunately, humans are also social animals. Our biases can be up-ended by the behaviors of others. When we talk about using social signals to change human behavior, we are talking about Culture.
In a company, culture is a huge, powerful lever. This also makes it difficult to move, especially if you are not a leader in your company. You can feel like Sisyphus, pushing that bolder up the hill. Over and over agin.
The opportunity, however, is great. Marketing has always been about knowing your customer. We’ve never had access to more information about our customers. Will you be an agent of knowledge or will you remain mired in your biases?
Understanding Your Customers
When a visitor arrives on your site what is it that you want them to do? Well most marketers would say first, you want them to buy. And then you want them to come back.
This is the charge.
Getting them to buy and come back is the charge. But here’s the challenge.
How do you know what made your customer buy to begin with? Who is your buyer? How do you know the action they took when they first landed on your site? How do you get the freedom as a marketer to experiment, to look at the data, to understand the data in order to make decisions to increase conversions?
And when you get the answers to those questions, how do you get buy-in from leaders in the organization to make the pivots needed based on the data?
Knowing your customer is key to marketing and conversion success.
Experimenting with Your Marketing
These are the questions we explore in this episode. Experimenting with your marketing is the only way that you can truly know what is working. It’s the only way you can succeed. Marketing and status quo cannot go together. At least for my listeners.
You might be thinking, that all sounds great Brian, but how do I influence change to allow for more more experimentation and effect true company growth?
Omniconvert is a CRO tool that helps marketers increase conversion rates. From surveys to overlays – it’s a marketers sandbox. You can find out more by connecting with me or head on over to omniconvert dot com.
When you get back to the office.
When you get back to the office, I suggest that you start using a little data in your decision-making process. You can start with some data that is already “laying around.”
When was the last time you looked at what your PPC and Facebook ad team were doing? Many digital marketers don’t spend a lot of time with the advertising, but there are some real gems of growth here.
And most of us are doing some sort of advertising.
Call down to your ad team and ask them for a spreadsheet of all of the ads they’ve been running. Go back six months or even a year. Ask for the ad text, the number of impressions, the number of clicks, the cost per click and the link URL. This is easy for them to generate. If they can track conversions, definitely ask for conversions for each ad.
Then spend some time with this data. You’ll understand:
From this, you can begin to find opportunities for growth.
Are you using words like the best clicked ads? Are you sending good clicks to bad pages? And is there a better place to send traffic than the home page? The answer is yes, by the way.
Then share your findings with at least one other person.
You have just begun culture change. You radical, you.
Alright scientists, that’s it for this week.
Knowing Your Customer with Valentin Radu
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Website Due Diligence: Avoid Doo Due Diligence When Buying Websites [INFOGRAPHIC]
Conversion Marketing StrategyI’m at the Ungagged Conference and enjoyed sitting in on a presentation by Bryan O’Neil of Flippa.com.
Website Due Diligence Issues to Consider
When considering investing in a web business, consider the following.
There are other considerations for website due diligence as well.
Calculate Revenue per Visit
The Revenue per Visit (RPV) is the revenue generated by a site divided by the number of visitors. If this number is small, you may have trouble building traffic, because the cost of the traffic is higher than the revenue.
For a better analysis, consider measuring Profit per Visit.
Avoid Traffic Arbitrage
If the site is not something you would use, you might have a business built on traffic arbitrage. Arbitrage is acquiring traffic, and then sending it advertisers or affiliates for more than you paid.
This is not a web business.
Does the Website have a Future?
Sites with a limited future are not a good long-term investment. When performing website due diligence, be careful of sites that are at the mercy of time or other businesses.
Websites that focus on a single event have a built in expiration date.
Sites that fix something in someone else’s product can be eliminated by upgrades to that product.
Sites tat provide a product that is simply “better” than the competition can be marketed out of existence
Websites that depend on loopholes should be avoided, as loopholes can be closed.
Website Due Diligence: 7 Business Buying Myths
O’Neil offer seven myths about buying a business that you should avoid.
Myth #1: The site’s backlink profile is important
Dependence on organic traffic is dangerous.
Myth #2: Financial verification is most important
Businesses with good financial verification can fail if they don’t have a future.
Myth #3: Escrow can save you from a bad decision.
Escrow is where you give money to a third party during a period of inspection and verification.
Do your due diligence before you enter escrow. Don’t make yourself a target for scammers.
Entering escrow also tie up your capital, limiting your options.
Myth #4: Website due diligence is just too expensive.
Due diligence is expensive, especially if done by a third party.
But, when you compare it to the purchase price, it can be quite affordable.
Calculate your Website Due Diligence Percent:
Myth #5: Screen shots are viable proof of financial performance.
Business owners can forge screen shots showing success. This is a sign of a scammer.
Myth #6: Your broker can do due diligence.
Avoid any broker that claims they have done due diligence for you.
Myth #7: You can rely on apps to do your website due diligence.
Nope. You need the human element in the process.
Due Diligence when Buying Websites by Bryan O’neil of Flippa.com
Here is my instagraph infographic of his presentation on due diligence mistakes when buying Websites.
Due Diligence when Buying Websites by Bryan O’Niel
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
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Google Ad Extensions to Improve your Customer Acquisition Efforts
Advertising CROWe will start by reviewing the various ad extensions available. Then, we’ll discuss the implications of ad extensions on customer acquisition. And finally, we’ll uncover how to use these Google ad extensions to improve your customer acquisition efforts.
Let’s first review this concept and then analyze the different ways of using Google ad extensions to improve your customer acquisition efforts.
What are Google Ad Extensions?
You’ve seen these before. Those extra lines below the Google ad text that displays the store address closest to you? Or maybe a few reasons that entice you to click on their ad? Something like, Free Consultation or 24/7 or Free Shipping.
According to Google, ad extensions “typically increase an ad’s click-through-rate by several percentage points.” But Google is taking the liberty of choosing which extensions to show on your ads for you. “To maximize the performance of your text ads, Google Ads selects which extensions to show in response to each individual query on Google.”
They have enough information on a prospect’s search intent, history and geo in order to have their algorithms work in favor of advertisers.
But first, you need to set them up. Here is a current list of Google Ad Extensions. They do add more on a regular basis.
Don’t worry trying to figure them out right now. We’ll dive into them later in the article.
Why is Google so confident that they can increase click-through rates for your ads?
They make the point that ads with extensions provide “greater visibility and prominence.” This means your ad is more likely to be seen. Makes sense, you have more lines than your competitor ads (unless they have Google ad extensions too.)
It also means that you’re pushing competing ads below yours down the page.
Google also makes the case that you can offer the visitor more clicks to choose from, or offer “interactive ways of reaching you — as with maps, SMS or calls” and this will increase the likelihood of them clicking on your ad.
Setting up ad extensions doesn’t mean they will show on your ad. Google lists two possibilities for ad extensions to appear:
So, you see. It’s not all under your control. You gotta trust Google to present the best extension for your business goals at the right time, place and query.
We say, they better.
What’s the best thing about Google Ads extensions? They are FREE. So setting the right ones up is always an advantage.
Get a higher return from your ad campaigns. Start implementing CRO for advertising today.
Improve your Customer Acquisition Efforts with Ad Extensions
The goal of ad optimization efforts is to gain more customers at a lower cost. The lower this acquisition cost, the more profit you make on each new customer or on each transaction and you can afford to spend more on ads – which implies more volume or more competitive bids. Or you can just pocket the difference.
There are two ways to reduce these acquisition costs
The first is accomplished by refining bids, eliminating low-converting ads, and designing offers that deliver better qualified visitors.
The second is accomplished by refining the websites and pages to which you send your ad clicks.
In both cases, the higher your conversion rate, the lower your customer acquisition costs. We may choose to spend less on low-quality visitors that convert poorly, or do a better job of converting the ad traffic we are getting.
Ad extensions clearly offer the hope for more clicks and conversions without increasing spend. Their impact on websites and landing pages is less plain.
Evidently, Google Ads extensions let you add more information to a typical text ad. They allow advertisers to say more about the offer made in the ad so that searchers make better choices about whether to click or not.
Ad Extensions that add Links to More Targeted Landing Pages
Three Google ad extensions add additional links to your ads.
Sitelink extensions are great for broad match keywords. They allow the searcher to click on narrower topics than their search phrase might return. The example below, shows sitelink extensions with an additional description. A great feature that entices advertisers to convert their campaigns to enhanced campaigns.
Example of sitelink ad extension with description.
An eCommerce site can use a variety of pages as landing pages: product pages, category pages, search results pages, and even specific informational pages for those not ready to buy just yet.
Sitelink ad extensions used in eCommerce.
Tip: Consider targeting your primary segments with sitelink extensions.
Price Extensions allow you to feature pricing right in your ads. This is a great feature to weed out those prospects that may not go through with their purchase because of price. And an additional element to improve your customer acquisition efforts.
Example of a Price Ad Extension on a mobile device.
Google Ads Sitelink Extensions Improve Ad Quality Score
Ad extensions also allow advertisers to send searchers to more relevant pages on their websites. These are called Sitelink extensions.
First of all, Google uses the performance of your landing page to determine how high they will place your ad on the page. Higher placement is better. If you have visitors clicking on your ads but then “pogo-sticking” immediately back, Google will penalize your ads by assigning a lower quality score. You may have to increase your bids if you have lower quality scores and your sitelinks may not show until your score goes back up.
Thus, if you can send them to a more relevant page, they are less likely to click away. And this signals to Google that you deserve a higher quality score.
The following ad for “kitchen countertops” has one link.
This ad has one link, the headline link.
The following ad for “choosing kitchen countertops” has a sitelink extension that includes five more links:
This ad uses a sitelink ad extension to get five links.
This approach allows advertisers to help searchers make better choices about what to click on based on their needs therefore, improving their customer acquisition efforts. In this example, we have a link to “Contact Us” for contractors working on a project, and “Products Catalog” for those who want to know their options.
These extra sitelinks must go to different pages according to Google’s rules. That means you must have two, three, four, or more different landing pages for any ad that uses a sitelink extension. You may see this as a burden. We see it as an opportunity.
Avoid Sitelinks to the Homepage
Many of the ads we see take a visitor to the website’s homepage. We have demonstrated over and over again that a landing page will convert more ad clicks than the homepage, thus improving your customer acquisition efforts.
Sitelink extensions force advertisers to think about the needs of various searchers, and develop pages for those specific needs.
The Ad Extension Halo Effect
Sydney Sheedy, Senior Account Manager at (un)Common Logic, tells us that ad extensions can have a halo effect on your online ads.
Sitelink ad extensions can increase clicks on the ad. But Sheedy’s data shows that, even when sitelinks are present, most clicks are on the headline itself. In the following table, Sheedy shows four accounts that use sitelink extensions, and how the clicks break down.
Click data for ads with sitelink extensions.
Overall, only 10% of clicks go to the sitelinks. That means 90% are on the headline.
Of course, Sitelink ad extensions can increase clicks on the ad. Let’s keep that in mind and keep on increasing your chances of improving your customer acquisition efforts.
Ad Extensions for Mobile Visitors
While these extensions will appear on desktop and tablet devices, they are well targeted to our small-screen visitors. Your ad strategy should be different for small-screen mobile and large-screen visitors.
For example, Girikon presents call extensions and a drop-down ad extension to mobile visitors:
Example of a click-to-call ad extension.
But on the desktop the click-to-call ad extension is not presented.
The desktop version of this ad has no click to call extension.
Call extensions give your ads the ability to connect searchers with your business using a special app on smartphones called Phone.
Message extensions leverage another handy app found on smartphones: Text Messages.
Why not let mobile visitors text you directly? When the searcher taps the message extension, they text you first and they will receive a message that you create as an auto-reply.
Example of mobile message ad extension.
App extensions invite the visitor to download and install your app.
This ad contains a mobile app extension.
Google Ad Extensions to Improve your Customer Acquisition Efforts in the Real World
For those visitors that are wandering around the city looking for a physical location, these two location ad extensions will deliver. They improve customer acquisition efforts by getting people in the door who want to shop in the real world.
Location extensions let the visitor open a map to your physical stores, offices and sites.
Example of an ad with location ad extension.
Affiliate location extensions do the same for stores that carry your products or offer your services.
Other Ad Extensions that Improve Acquisition Efforts
Callout extensions increase the real estate of your ad, giving you more lines of text. The more you can explain the fewer clicks to your landing page are required.
Structure snippet extensions provide more detailed information on your offer, but don’t provide additional links. If they see what they want in your structured snippet, their click will be more relevant, increasing conversion rate and dropping acquisition cost.
Structured snippets can use one of the following headers:
Stacking Ad Extensions: Is it Even Possible?
If one ad extension is good, isn’t two better? Ad extensions are free, so why not use them all, and use them all of the time?
Not necessarily.
We want to consider the paradox of choice. Providing too many choices can cause visitors to become paralyzed.
Second, Google is the one that decides if and when to show them.
They better.
Example of an ad with multiple ad extensions.
Here are some tips for deciding if you want to stack ad extensions or not.
Don’t Repeat Yourself (too much)
If you have a good reason for extending your ad, use it. But be careful about introducing too much repetition. Ad extensions may work best when they add additional information rather than repeat it.
These ad extensions are probably too repetitive.
Don’t Ask Them to Call if No One is Home
Call extensions can be very effective, especially for mobile searchers. But make sure there is someone to answer if you’re providing a phone number. This is a great tip. Use it when stacking up or when flying solo.
Example of an ad using a call extension with 24-hour service.
Test Stacking Ad Extensions
It’s the 21st century. Adwords is a great platform for testing ad creative. Try a variety of ad extension combinations and go with the stack that delivers the best bottom-line results.
Automated Extensions: Yes or No?
Google will take the liberty of adding ad extensions to your ads if they feel it’s a good idea. If you don’t have a team that can give thought to your ad campaigns, this may seem like a good thing.
But we have to ask, “Why spend the money on ads if you don’t have the bandwidth to be smart about the spend?”
To avoid these automated extensions, turn them off and add your own extensions. Just know that the ones Google Ads created automatically before you turn them off may still appear. (Pesky little things)
When do Ad Extensions Hurt?
As a general rule, Google ad extensions should be used on all of your ads.
When should you avoid extensions?
Google Ad Extensions to Improve your Customer Acquisition Efforts Summary
Here are the takeaways from our discussion on using Google ad extensions to improve your customer acquisition efforts.
How to Optimize for Scarcity: The Monopoly Web Page Strategy
Conversion-Centered DesignMonopoly is the quintessential game of American capitalism. For better or worse, it focuses the player on one goal: maximizing the number of dollars in your pile. Everyone has their own strategy and their preferred properties to own and build. Your little sister may only buy properties if she likes the color.
Excellent monopoly players learn their opponents’ strategy and then adapt to respond to the environment they are in.
If you look beyond the “greed is good” focus on money, you will realize that playing the game teaches the principles of scarcity and optimization.
The number dollars you start with is scarce. You must make the most of your limited resources.
You want to be ready when lady luck glances your way. When a dog, a car, or a hat finally lands your property, you better be ready.
Running a business website is no different. You inevitably have scarce resources to spend building the site and attracting traffic.
And when those visitors finally land on your site, you better be ready. This is the job of optimization.
If you viewed your web page as a Monopoly board, would it change your priorities and behavior?
Like houses and hotels, would the right elements be on your page be there?
Too often, we don’t think about our web pages as scarce resources that have to be optimized. Too often, we use our little sister’s “pretty property” strategy. Trust me. She still hates to lose.
Discover how to optimize for scarcity and grow your business.
What is Scarcity
Scarcity means having less resources than needed to achieve a goal. In Monopoly, we can’t own all the properties and have hotels on all properties. We have to deal with scarcity. Our money supply is limited, as is our opportunity to buy properties. The desire to compete brings out our analytical nature and we scheme to make the most of the resources we have as opposed to the resources we want. We do this because we know we have an opponent that is actively working to undo us. Again, do we think about our web page the same way?
Examples of Scarcity on our Web Pages
In reality, we do have opponents in our web strategy. Not just one, but many. In fact, we usually have more opponents than competitors. Some of these opponents include:
As you think about the opponents listed above, you will recognize scarcity working against your ultimate goal. Vigorously compete against these opponents on your site with the same vigor you compete in Monopoly, and you’ll be more likely to “pass GO and collect $200.”
How to Optimize for Scarcity
Something amazing happens on the Monopoly board that doesn’t naturally happen on our web page.
In contrast, it is the very rare individual who walks into a web planning meeting without being focused on making the most beautiful page possible. If we played Monopoly the same way, we would focus on acquiring and building hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place and be done. If you try this approach, either in Monopoly or on your website, you lose.
If you don’t pull your weight, you’re gone!
Without emotion, we require properties to pay their way. They have a job to do and we expect them to do it well. The properties’ job is generating revenue.
Is there an element on your web page that isn’t pulling its weight? As optimizers, our job is to identify the converting elements on a page and remove the non-converting elements.
How to Optimize for Scarcity: Testing to see which properties are performing
Such was the case for one client’s site, when we set out to improve the home page. We followed this process to find out which elements led to conversions:
Fig 1. Small changes have a big impact on conversions.
That felt good – let’s do it again
After experiencing success, it seemed like a good idea to try again. This time we identified one icon that was under-performing, so we replaced it with another one that led to a converting page. The result here is interesting. Looking at the heat map alone indicates the replaced icon is more desirable. But looking at the numbers reveals it was not the right choice.
Fig 2. More clicks do not necessarily mean more conversions.
As shown on the heat map above, replacing the 3rd icon attracted many more clicks on the “B” version of the page. However, both the bounce rate and the conversion rate took a hit.
This experiment shows why it is essential to test and scrutinize the results. Two nearly identical hypotheses with two nearly identical changes led to opposite results. My initial inclination was to ignore the results and push the change through. But I put on my Monopoly head and determined the measurable results of the change should trump how I felt about the change.
No Experiment is a Failure
It would be easy to walk away from the second experiment and view it as a total loss. In the same way that losses are our teachers in Monopoly, losses should be our teachers in web optimization experiments. Just as every Monopoly opponent is unique, our clients and website visitors are unique.
To better understand the behavior we observed, we sought to learn more by asking some basic questions:
It is important to learn from each experiment regardless of the results. Applying this discipline is critical in understanding the unique functionality of your website and what increases or decreases conversions.
So What Should You Do?
Like many 12-step programs, the first step is to acknowledge you have a problem. Say out loud, “I care more about how pretty my web page is than how much money it makes.” Let that sink in and prepare to change. Make a personal commitment to website profitability based on hard data. Then approach your web pages with the kind of profit-focused attention to scarcity and optimization that wins Monopoly games.
Nobody is immune to personal biases and individual favorites. If you want to maximize the functionality of your website, you need to put a structure in place that always tests and always trusts data over opinion. When you earn how to optimize for scarcity, you win. When you make a habit of doing that, you will be the same formidable opponent that you are in Monopoly.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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