This is the last in this series of core conversion marketing strategies: The Site as a Service Pattern. Get visitors into a trial from your home page, use email notifications to keep them interested and engaged, and you will get more and more customers from your online marketing efforts.
You can do almost anything on the Internet now. You can monitor your finances, socialize, organize ideas,manage your job search, broadcast your travels, and recruit college students.
The core conversion marketing pattern that these sites should adopt is the “Site as a Service Pattern.” This is the fifth and last of the core conversion strategies in this series.
Explore other site patterns in The Five Core Patterns Of Conversion Marketing and The E-commerce Pattern.
These sites are delivering a service that is consumed online. Typically, the primary conversion is “join” or “subscribe.” However, many of these sites’ business models rely on return visits, so “login” is also an important conversion beacon even though it appeals to existing customers.
You don’t have to have a savvy Web 2.0 application to adopt the Site as a Service pattern. In fact, if more sites using “E-commerce” or “Considered Purchase” patterns would see their sites as an online service, they might find themselves being more successful.
In general, you should select the site-as-a-service pattern if:
- You are providing a service that is consumed online
- Your prospects can make a decision to buy relatively quickly
- You charge a fee to use the application, or rely on advertiser revenues
How is this different pattern from the Portal Pattern discussed in a previous column? The portal pattern is focused on content-oriented businesses while the site-as-a-service pattern assumes an application-driven service. However, if you believe you should build a portal pattern website, look closely at site-as-a-service. You might find these strategies more effective.
My goal with this post is to explore three strategies that are conversion deal-breakers for sites that deliver an online service. 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 trial for The Site as a Service
Online applications have an amazing advantage over the other sites I’ve discussed: you can try the product right there on your computer. Therefore, I consider a trial strategy the first key conversion strategy.
A trial strategy has these primary advantages:
- It requires minimal commitment from the visitor
- It let’s you start the sales conversation via email
- It lets the visitor experience the product first hand
How much should you charge for the trial?
Beware the free trial. By offering a free trial, you may be delaying the purchase for those who would buy on the spot. Good conversion copy will remove risk from the purchase decision, so a free trial is often a sign that you don’t know how to communicate the value of your service.
Free trials deliver less-qualified prospects, and your conversion from trier to buyer will probably be low. Consider a free trial only if you rely on word-of-mouth as a core marketing strategy and you have built sharing features into your sales process.
Almost any nominal fee will increase the likelihood that a visitor will use the service during the trial. Furthermore, the conversion from trier to buyer becomes much easier, since you don’t have to ask them for a credit card at this critical juncture.
Even if you offer a free trial, evidence suggests that taking the credit card at the start of the trial will result in more paying customers, even though it will significantly reduce the number of triers you have.
The extreme version of this strategy is the “freemium” model, in which a portion of the service is given away for free, and more advanced features require payment. This strategy begs the question, “If your service is free, how valuable can it really be?”
For more on the psychology of “free,” please read Dan Ariely’s book and blog, Predictably Irrational.
How long should the trial last?
This is a question for which I don’t have any research to point to. I would like to hear your findings in the comments.
From a business perspective, the shorter the trial, the sooner the business can begin charging full fare for the service. Length of trial can be made irrelevant if you see the trial period as a time for educating, engaging and cajoling trial customers to use the application.
For example, an aggressive (daily) email auto-responder series delivering “how to” instructions and “did you know” tips will on its own move triers to buyers regardless of the trial period. Get this right, and you only need your trial to last long enough to support your email auto-responder schedule.
The home page for The Site as a Service
If a trial is your first key conversion strategy, then your home page is your trial landing page.
The home page must convert visitors to buyers or triers. While it is important to communicate the primary value proposition and key benefits, it is the application itself that ultimately communicates its value.
Many sites-as-a-service provide services that we already have solutions for. The value proposition is often that you can do something better, cheaper or easier.
I recommend making the home page the first step in using the application. The most extreme example of this is the Google home page. For years, it’s basically been one blank, two buttons; type, click, instant gratification.
Ask for the first piece of information in the registration process on the home page. Before you ask them to register for a trial, they’ve begun using the application, and have already had a win or two in the process. You can be creative with this step. A dog kennel might offer a simple form on the home page asking, “What is your dog’s name,” and that starts the process of scheduling a boarding.
The home page has to deliver a well thought out (and tested) value proposition and links to pages that discuss features and benefits for those that need more information. However, for those that are looking to solve an immediate problem, let them dive in.
Notification email
I have a theory for why Facebook beat Friendster in the online social network market. I think it was the “Poke” feature. In Facebook’s eyes, “Poke” had one purpose: to send an email to a user’s friend, reminding them to come back to the site. This email—and the many others that Facebook sends—came from a trusted source, and reminded users to come back to the site.
What excuses can you come up with to send an email to your triers and buyers?
It starts with the confirmation email, sent when a visitor registers for a trial or purchases the service. Was yours written by a developer? If so, it probably states something like “click here to confirm.” More socially capable engineers may throw in a “welcome” at the top.
The confirmation email is a chance to remind the user why they signed up, to educate them on how the application will make their life better, and to invite them back to the site.
Almost any excuse will do. I’ve subscribed to hundreds of online services and Web 2.0 applications. I rely on them to optimize my life. I’ve tried hundreds and pay for a handful.
You would think that I get a constant barrage of these notification emails, right? Wrong. The ones that I pay for did a good job of keeping me on the hook via email. Those that I just won’t use, I opt-out of.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’re a spammer if you send email to your buyers and triers. Here are some examples of trier emails from my personal experience:
- Mint.com sends an email every 30 days telling me they miss me if I don’t login. I use their bill alerts, so I like the monthly reminder to go back and make sure nothing has changed with my banks.
- PageOnce.com did an amazing thing for me: they told me when the minutes on my phone plan were out. That email alone prompted me to renegotiate my mobile phone plan, and has made me spend time with this personal online assistant service.
- VolunteerSpot.com missed an opportunity by not sending me an email when my volunteers signed up for a job on the site. The CEO has assured me that this will be corrected, but I don’t use the application today as a result.
Slideshare.net sent me this:
We’ve noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job … you must be doing something right. ;-)
Why don’t you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.
I don’t know that any of my presentations had been particularly active, but I did tweet one of them.
My point is this: when someone has signed up to try or buy your application you are an email marketer—not a spammer. If you send them email you are going to struggle if you don’t aggressively work to get them back to your site. Always give them the option to opt-out.
If you’ve been following this series, you may be wondering why I didn’t choose the purchase process as a key conversion strategy for this pattern. I was pretty vociferous about not losing a customer with a bad shopping cart experience.
The truth is I feel strongly about the effectiveness of the strategies I’ve discussed, that I believe a prospect will get through the worst registration process if you get them right. Get visitors into a trial from your home page, use email notifications to keep them interested and engaged, and you will get more and more customers from your online marketing efforts.
Finally, I hope one day that all websites will see themselves as a service, an application. One day, the idea of a web “page” will be quaint. Each site we come to should take us by the hand and help us solve whatever problem is on our plate, even if the only thing we’re looking for is information.
Is your website a service? How would it change if you decided to put up an application instead of a bunch of pages? Please put your thoughts and examples in the comments.
We’re going to make people love your business through your Web site at Conversion Sciences. There is plenty you can do to increase online sales conversions, and we share it all. Learn what that you can do to convert more of your visitors into leads and sales.
Originally published in Search Engine Land.
Mobile Marketing, Social Media and Conversion: Show me the Money (NSFW)
Conversion-Centered DesignJen Wojcik and Brian Massey at the Austin AMA
If you follow me, you know I’m not big on “safe” marketing.
I turn things up a few notches in this open discussion at the American Marketing Association.
I apologize in advance for my language.
Tom Myer herds the cats:
Yours Truly, the Conversion Scientist
Tom Hayden of Blue Clover and Jen Wojcik of Pinqued in a panel discussion entitled “Show Me the Money: Make Marketing Work for You.”
Tim was our mobile marketing expert, Jen handled social media. I just played Devil’s Advocate.
I hope you will enjoy the audio of this slide-free discussion.
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Social Media Delivers More Than Just ROI, But I Don’t Care
Conversion OptimizationTell me your social conversion rate
“Social media is revolutionizing customer care.” Yawn.
“Social media is helping brands build awareness.” That’s sounds interesting (not).
“Social media increases the quality of the traffic coming to your site in measurable ways.” Now you have my attention.
Don’t Hate Me for My Myopia
It is my choice of career that has given me this singular focus when it comes to online marketing. There are other people to create brand image. There are smart, dedicated people trying to improve their company’s customer service.
I say “you go!”
But, I want measurable, tangible data on how social media gets qualified prospects to a web property, and how it helps me carry on a conversation with them making them more likely to buy.
I can already hear Qwitter messages landing in my inbox. I hate Qwitter personally, but it is a FABULOUS metric, the equivalent of email’s unsubscribe rate. So, I have to listen. It’s an measure of my social media Return On Investment, my social media ROI.
What is your social media ROI? Can you measure the increase in traffic quality coming to your site from your social media actions?
This Attitude is Good for Social Media ROI
How many times do you have a great conversation in the social space only to find the company’s website opaque, posing, and irrelevant?
Social media won’t work if we’re transparent in our social graph and obsequious everywhere else.
Let’s encourage businesses to put content out that draws people to their website. They will quickly begin to realize that certain content works (educational, entertaining content) and certain content does not (home pages with self-aggrandizing copy).
ROI is the great informer for these companies.
The Importance of Social Media ROI
There is a camp of social media digerati that believe social channels are not for promotion, that it is evil to advertise where conversations are the norm.
But, if conversations are going on around a brand or a company, why deny the social citizenry of a chance to own or use their offerings?
It’s just plain selfish to hold back.
When buying is an outcome of conversation, ROI tells a company how it’s doing in starting and continuing those conversations.
Online communities are arbiters and aggregators of ROI
Let’s face it. We want the support of companies as we complain and cheer about their products. We want them to hear us, to reply to us, and to see things our way.
And we are not above the occasional bribe.
How many times have you started a complaint with, “I spend $_____ with your company every _____, and I expect… .”
We regularly use ROI as a way to get attention.
Communities that raise their hand get more attention. They drive it, highlight it and can take it away. They should be rewarded for their financial contribution to companies with increased support, more say in product design… and the occasional bribe.
What do eBook Groupies and Designer Laptop Bags have in Common?
I’ve recently begun working with J’Tote Designer Laptop Bags, and heard a story that illustrates this concept perfectly.
It seems that the women of an eBook community have developed a love for J’Tot’e’s chic laptop bags. How do we know?
Visitors from this community stay on the J’Tote site longer than average, view more pages, and have a very low bounce rate (a measure of the number of visitors who leave immediately after visiting a site).
The folks at J’Tote now make it a priority to tune into the conversations on the forum, and are certain to give them warning when inventory clearing sales are imminent.
Companies speak ROI
It is the lingo of the bottom line; the babble of budgets; the conversation of the coin. If we want more companies to engage in social media for all the “right” reasons, we need to communicate with them in this language: more visits from interested conversationalists who buy their products.
We need to speak to them with ROI.
It’s one thing for a company to monitor our conversations attempting to gauge positive or negative sentiment. It’s quite another for them to know that their Facebook page is generating additional visits and sales.
There is a catch
Companies that don’t measure the ROI of social media won’t get the message. They’ll continue to ignore important communities, cut social budgets and generate plenty of negative social sentiment in the digital conversationsphere.
If you’re not measuring, you’re not listening.
J’Tote is listening. Are you?
On July 21, I’ll be showing you ways to measure your social ROI, and in particular, your social conversion rates.
Did you know there was such a thing as a social landing page? It’s nothing like your landing pages.
Did you know that there are six major conversions that happen when you add social media to your sales funnel?
My presentation is just one part of a spectacular Master’s Group Training being held in Austin by Webmaster World, the PubCon people.
Only, you don’t have to attend a full PubCon to go.
Not only will you learn from me how to measure your social media efforts, you’ll learn how to do the things that make social media work.
Oh, and there is also an search marketing track going on at the same time. Yawn.
We’re going to make people love your business through your website at The Conversion Scientist. Subscribe to learn the strategies and tactics that turn more of your visitors into leads and sales.
I want measurable, tangible data on social conversion rates, on how social media gets qualified prospects to an online property, and how it helps me carry on a conversation with them making them more likely to buy.
Read this article if interested in improving your social media conversion rates.
How Analytics Saved One Business’s Online Sales
Ecommerce CRORead this before changing your website.
It’s time-consuming to offer 45 minutes of my time to anyone who wants to improve their online sales conversion rates. I just can’t think of any better way to introduce businesses to conversion concepts.
And the people I meet on the phone are priceless.
One such person is Tom Jackson of Heliski.com. His is a rare and instructive look at the power of the written word and the ineffectiveness of standard design strategies when it comes to conversion.
Tom had two sites targeting the same audience, and getting about the same traffic. Both had analytics installed.
This was a rare opportunity to see how two very different approaches to website design performed out in the real world.
Which would you pick as the conversion winner?
Take a look at Tom’s two sites. Which would you pick as the hands-down winner? Which would you image would have cratered his income had he relied exclusively on it?
How analytics (and a session with the Conversion Scientist) saved one business’s online sales.
I did a complete evaluation of these two pages in my Search Engine Land column, and you might be surprised at my conclusions: strong copy beat slick new design.
From a distance the two home pages couldn’t look more different. HeliskiingReview.com uses non-standard layout. Text is knockout white on blue, usually considered more difficult to read than Heliski.com’s black on grey.
The newer site uses a more “image- or brand-oriented play, establishing its value proposition as “the ultimate heliskiing destination.” Unfortunately, you can’t heliski on the site, so this is an empty promise.
The body copy couldn’t be more different in approach. HeliskiingReview.com uses plain language with specific, value- and benefit-oriented points in easy-to-scan bulleted format. Specifics are almost always important for conversion.
A designer might say that the big star with “send me info” was “too TV.” However, it certainly does draw the eye to an important call to action.
and the conversion champ is…
HeliskiingReview.com had a conversion rate of 2.27% vs. Heliski.com at 1.99%. That’s 14% better. However, HeliskiingReview.com delivered much more qualified prospects. Tom was able to book trips for 15.29% of the HeliskiingReview.com leads. Heliski.com had a close ratio of only 1.33%.
What we can Learn from Tom (or How Analytics Saved One Business’s Online Sales)
The moral of the tale is that Tom measured his sites’ performance. He had the analytics in place, and was smart enough not to make changes to his site without being able to measure their effect. By leaving both sites up, he was able to rollback the changes.
I’m offering a two hour short course on June 11 in Austin entitled Web Analytics: Tools and Best Practices. This is an Austin Entrepreneur Network short course, which means that it’s only $25. We love our entrepreneurs.
Join me and find out how you can avoid huge mistakes – mistakes that rob you of leads and steal your sales. This is the second time I’ve done this presentation.
Or you can book your own session!
Read my full report on Search Engine Land, and I hope to see you on June 11.
B2B Marketers Must Embrace Conversion Marketing
Conversion Optimization, Lead GenerationWhat are you afraid of?
The goal of my Ion Interactive presentation “What Can We Learn from the Bad Boys of Marketing?” was to shake things up a bit.
Conversion marketing is about bringing visitors to choice. B2B conversion marketers carry this same burden.
Can marketers in more conservative industries use techniques proven to increase online leads and sales in B2C markets?
In my Ion Interactive webinar, I use two B2B landing pages to illustrate how these B2C techniques can be used: Mary O’Brien Adwords Advantage landing page AdwordAdvantage.com and CoverActionPro.com.
The elements are the same for B2B conversion marketing as they are for B2C webpages.
Check out Secrets of The “Bad Boys” of Online Sales Conversion for a detailed description of these Useful B2B conversion marketing elements.
I go as far in the Webinar to state:
Ready for B2B Conversion Marketing?
Anna Talerico Hosts Conversations on B2b Conversion Marketing
Certainly you can deliver a high-converting experience without harming your online brand, like CoverActionPro.
You have to work harder. You can’t ask a committee of executives to review your pages. You have to know how your page is performing and how changes are affecting your results.
You can learn more about analytics and their proper application at my AEN Short Course “Web Analytics: Tools and Best Practices” on June 11, 2010.
Enjoy the Webinar and don’t miss Anna Talerico’s Conversations on B2B Conversion Marketing podcast. Or give your sales a boost. Check out our lead generation solutions tailored to your industry.
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Mobile Marketing and Geo-Relevance: The Power of Location Marketing
Conversion OptimizationI had the pleasure of being on a panel with Tim Hayden recently, and overheard him talking real-life targeted banner advertising: billboards that connected with your mobile phone as you passed by.
I could only imagine what a billboard would say to me.
But the more I listened to Tim, the more I became intrigued with his vision for the future and the present.
Tim was nice enough to answer some questions on his birthday, of all days, and my summary of what I learned can be found in my ClickZ column “Mobile Marketing and Your Digital Geo-relevance.”
My favorite quote didn’t make the editing process:
“We aren’t wired to sit on our asses all day and stare at Twitter,” says Hayden.
Einstein has given me some doubts about where I am. He demonstrated that time and space is really quite malleable. It leads to the conclusion that you can never really be sure that you are where you think you are; you can also never really be sure you are when you think you are.
Fortunately, we have these little computers we carry around called mobile phones to tell us both when and where we are…relatively. It turns out that these devices are fine for fixing us in time and space, unless you are standing too close to a neutron star.
These devices are also good at telling advertisers where we are, where we want to be, and where we’ll be in between.
Is “Mobile” Necessary?
The term “mobile” already seems a bit quaint. It’s like calling an automobile “out-of-home transportation.” It’s not necessary. It’s a car, and we “drive.”
Likewise, a device that is with us always really doesn’t need to be called “mobile.” All we have to do is “be” somewhere. The rest is implied. When I turn on a device that has GPS capability, I begin to “be” somewhere in the digital sense of the word.
Famed VC John Doerr admitted that we don’t have a word for the next mobile/social/new commerce “wave.”
“Geo-relevance” is written more frequently these days. And I like the double entendre: we can know what businesses are relevant to us geographically, but mobile device users are also making themselves more relevant wherever they are “being.”
Tim Hayden prefers the term “mobile lifestyle” to describe what he calls “passionate and influential” smartphone users. He also likes the term “digital out of home advertising” My personal mobile strategy has been limited to adding a mobile theme plug-in to my CRO blog, so I’ve asked Tim to give me his view of the mobile space.
Location, location, location.
Location Marketing Helps with Geo-Relevance
All we need is some way to figure out when we are “being” in the same place as a business is “being,” and magic starts to happen. Because of the Internet, that business can send a message through this intermediary suggesting that I start “being” in their store instead of nearby. Coupons, menus, and hot new products may entice me to shift my location, and my digital beingness along with it.
Location marketing finds interesting ways to connect where a business is being to where a prospect is being.
Though subtle, the distinction is important.
You “are” where you physically stand. You are “being” where the Internet thinks you are. Where you “be” is different from where you live or where your computer is. As a business you can “be” in many places.
Tim imagines a day not too far in the future when a smart roadside billboard can be a place where your business is “being,” reaching out to passing mobile devices.
Communicating Location via Social Media
We tell our friends where we are “being” by communicating a business’s location. An e-mail with a link to a map is sufficient to establish a bar, coffee shop, or restaurant’s geo-relevance to others. There are some other, more interesting ways of borrowing a customer’s geo-relevance to enhance your businesses digital location.
Foursquare is a popular “being broker,” encouraging visitors to build a business’s being by associating it with their being, sharing it with all of their social connections.
As a business, you should start by encouraging customers to check in through Foursquare or Gowalla. Install Wi-Fi. “Being” somewhere does not an ad make, so check out Foursquare for Business for opportunities to advertise to visitors and their social network. Brightkite is another, more venerable mobile marketing or being broker.
Search and Place: The Power of Location Marketing
Search engines with geographic features such as maps and routing act as the intermediary for your future being. If you want a hamburger; if you need a new dry cleaner; if you want to know where to buy a lab coat in a strange city, search combines prospect intent via keywords with their location. Search is your place intermediary.
Search engines know the business’s geo-location, but you should help them legitimize and optimize your locations. Leverage Google My Business listings to indicate your geo-relevance. David Mihm of GetListed.org packed a great amount of local search strategy into his presentation at InnoTech Portland this month.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
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Mobile Devices “Wire” Our Touchpoints
Tim offers the example of a nightclub that issues cards with RFID chips in them. When a card-carrying patron comes to the door, the host can see on her terminal who has come and their preferences for seating, drinks, and appetizers. Tim believes that these “smart touchpoints” are well suited to leverage the digital location defined by our phones.
Tim asks businesses the question, “How can we have compelling touchpoints, beyond the device that will bring people back to the device to engage us?”
Mobile Applications
“I applaud anyone who is reaching out to mobile users who are passionate and influential,” says Tim when I ask about the value of mobile apps.
He prefers promotional microsites designed for the small screen. They can have more impact and are often easier to implement.
Some businesses are a natural fit for apps. There are services, such as MobBase, Kyte, and Mobile Roadie that can make it easy for any business to develop a third-screen presence.
Mobile Advertising via Ad Networks
As I write this, I’m receiving the news that the Google AdMob merger has been approved. The Mobile Marketer article, “Google becomes world’s largest mobile ad network: 9 implications,” spells out the implications.
Because of Google’s self-service search advertising model, this merger bodes well for small and medium-sized businesses that want to begin leveraging mobile advertising.
Mobile Marketing and Privacy
Influential smartphone users leverage the wholesale transparency implied by this utter lack of privacy. These users produce “earnest to visceral” user-generated content. They are building a public personal brand for themselves, and are exactly the people that businesses of all sizes should reach out to.
It’s hard to think about mobile marketing when we’re just getting our heads around search and display advertising. Still, businesses must do what they can to establish their digital “being” now and keep an eye on the intermediaries that can connect them with passionate, influential mobile device junkies.
NOTE: Portions of this article originally appeared on ClickZ.
The Site as a Service: Core Conversion Marketing Strategies
Conversion OptimizationYou can do almost anything on the Internet now. You can monitor your finances, socialize, organize ideas,manage your job search, broadcast your travels, and recruit college students.
The core conversion marketing pattern that these sites should adopt is the “Site as a Service Pattern.” This is the fifth and last of the core conversion strategies in this series.
Explore other site patterns in The Five Core Patterns Of Conversion Marketing and The E-commerce Pattern.
These sites are delivering a service that is consumed online. Typically, the primary conversion is “join” or “subscribe.” However, many of these sites’ business models rely on return visits, so “login” is also an important conversion beacon even though it appeals to existing customers.
You don’t have to have a savvy Web 2.0 application to adopt the Site as a Service pattern. In fact, if more sites using “E-commerce” or “Considered Purchase” patterns would see their sites as an online service, they might find themselves being more successful.
In general, you should select the site-as-a-service pattern if:
How is this different pattern from the Portal Pattern discussed in a previous column? The portal pattern is focused on content-oriented businesses while the site-as-a-service pattern assumes an application-driven service. However, if you believe you should build a portal pattern website, look closely at site-as-a-service. You might find these strategies more effective.
My goal with this post is to explore three strategies that are conversion deal-breakers for sites that deliver an online service. 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 trial for The Site as a Service
Online applications have an amazing advantage over the other sites I’ve discussed: you can try the product right there on your computer. Therefore, I consider a trial strategy the first key conversion strategy.
A trial strategy has these primary advantages:
How much should you charge for the trial?
Beware the free trial. By offering a free trial, you may be delaying the purchase for those who would buy on the spot. Good conversion copy will remove risk from the purchase decision, so a free trial is often a sign that you don’t know how to communicate the value of your service.
Free trials deliver less-qualified prospects, and your conversion from trier to buyer will probably be low. Consider a free trial only if you rely on word-of-mouth as a core marketing strategy and you have built sharing features into your sales process.
Almost any nominal fee will increase the likelihood that a visitor will use the service during the trial. Furthermore, the conversion from trier to buyer becomes much easier, since you don’t have to ask them for a credit card at this critical juncture.
Even if you offer a free trial, evidence suggests that taking the credit card at the start of the trial will result in more paying customers, even though it will significantly reduce the number of triers you have.
The extreme version of this strategy is the “freemium” model, in which a portion of the service is given away for free, and more advanced features require payment. This strategy begs the question, “If your service is free, how valuable can it really be?”
For more on the psychology of “free,” please read Dan Ariely’s book and blog, Predictably Irrational.
How long should the trial last?
This is a question for which I don’t have any research to point to. I would like to hear your findings in the comments.
From a business perspective, the shorter the trial, the sooner the business can begin charging full fare for the service. Length of trial can be made irrelevant if you see the trial period as a time for educating, engaging and cajoling trial customers to use the application.
For example, an aggressive (daily) email auto-responder series delivering “how to” instructions and “did you know” tips will on its own move triers to buyers regardless of the trial period. Get this right, and you only need your trial to last long enough to support your email auto-responder schedule.
The home page for The Site as a Service
If a trial is your first key conversion strategy, then your home page is your trial landing page.
The home page must convert visitors to buyers or triers. While it is important to communicate the primary value proposition and key benefits, it is the application itself that ultimately communicates its value.
Many sites-as-a-service provide services that we already have solutions for. The value proposition is often that you can do something better, cheaper or easier.
I recommend making the home page the first step in using the application. The most extreme example of this is the Google home page. For years, it’s basically been one blank, two buttons; type, click, instant gratification.
Ask for the first piece of information in the registration process on the home page. Before you ask them to register for a trial, they’ve begun using the application, and have already had a win or two in the process. You can be creative with this step. A dog kennel might offer a simple form on the home page asking, “What is your dog’s name,” and that starts the process of scheduling a boarding.
The home page has to deliver a well thought out (and tested) value proposition and links to pages that discuss features and benefits for those that need more information. However, for those that are looking to solve an immediate problem, let them dive in.
Notification email
I have a theory for why Facebook beat Friendster in the online social network market. I think it was the “Poke” feature. In Facebook’s eyes, “Poke” had one purpose: to send an email to a user’s friend, reminding them to come back to the site. This email—and the many others that Facebook sends—came from a trusted source, and reminded users to come back to the site.
What excuses can you come up with to send an email to your triers and buyers?
It starts with the confirmation email, sent when a visitor registers for a trial or purchases the service. Was yours written by a developer? If so, it probably states something like “click here to confirm.” More socially capable engineers may throw in a “welcome” at the top.
The confirmation email is a chance to remind the user why they signed up, to educate them on how the application will make their life better, and to invite them back to the site.
Almost any excuse will do. I’ve subscribed to hundreds of online services and Web 2.0 applications. I rely on them to optimize my life. I’ve tried hundreds and pay for a handful.
You would think that I get a constant barrage of these notification emails, right? Wrong. The ones that I pay for did a good job of keeping me on the hook via email. Those that I just won’t use, I opt-out of.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’re a spammer if you send email to your buyers and triers. Here are some examples of trier emails from my personal experience:
Slideshare.net sent me this:
I don’t know that any of my presentations had been particularly active, but I did tweet one of them.
My point is this: when someone has signed up to try or buy your application you are an email marketer—not a spammer. If you send them email you are going to struggle if you don’t aggressively work to get them back to your site. Always give them the option to opt-out.
If you’ve been following this series, you may be wondering why I didn’t choose the purchase process as a key conversion strategy for this pattern. I was pretty vociferous about not losing a customer with a bad shopping cart experience.
The truth is I feel strongly about the effectiveness of the strategies I’ve discussed, that I believe a prospect will get through the worst registration process if you get them right. Get visitors into a trial from your home page, use email notifications to keep them interested and engaged, and you will get more and more customers from your online marketing efforts.
Finally, I hope one day that all websites will see themselves as a service, an application. One day, the idea of a web “page” will be quaint. Each site we come to should take us by the hand and help us solve whatever problem is on our plate, even if the only thing we’re looking for is information.
Is your website a service? How would it change if you decided to put up an application instead of a bunch of pages? Please put your thoughts and examples in the comments.
Originally published in Search Engine Land.
Social Media and Search – Visual Live Blog: Innotech Portland-Giovanni Gallucci
Conversion Marketing StrategyI love to watch Social Media Ninja Giovanni Gallucci present. He imparted a great deal of info on the intersection of social media and search to the audience at the Innotech PDX 2010 eMarketing Summit last week.
If you weren’t there, you can enjoy it through the lense of my pen.
Here is the visual live blog from that presentation.
For more of Gio, visit LearnSocialMedia.tv for hours of good stuff from the Social Media Ninja.
Notes from Giovanni Gallucci Presentation on Social Media Part 1 of 2
Click to Enlarge Part 1
Notes from Giovanni Gallucci presentation on Social Media Part 2 of 2
Click to Enlarge Part 2
We’re going to make people love your business through your Web site at The Conversion Scientist. There is plenty you can do to increase online sales conversions, and we share it all. Learn what that you can do to convert more of your visitors into leads and sales.
Visual Live Blog: Scott Stratten Breaks up with Social Media at PubCon
Conversion Marketing StrategyAt PubCon 2010 in Dallas, UnMarketer (@unmarketing) Scott Stratten’s keynote “Social Media, We Have to Talk” was, well, Scott. That means funny, frank, and contrarian. The audience loved him.
His keynote rant ranged from “Breaking up with Social Media” to the fallacy of getting rich quickly from social media, to Twitter etiquette. However, it was his constant assertion that great content is the source and sustenance of social success that endeared me to Scott.
Coincidentally, the best conversion strategy is to produce great content.
Click to enlarge.
Scott Stratten Keynote PubCon 2010 Dallas
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Additional Coverage
PubCon South 2010 Day 2, Elmer Boutin
Live from PubCon South: Keynote by Scott Stratten, Janet Driscoll Miller
Is This the Year of Conversion Rate Optimization?
Conversion OptimizationStill we have to remember that website optimization is at the top of the conversion stack. First you have truly know your visitor. You have to create a content platform to answer questions. You have to identify the best media strategies and channels to reach your target audience. And most importantly, you have to have the content your customers want. And then you’re ready for optimization.
This is indeed the year for website optimization. Exciting things are happening. First we have the first ever conversion conference happening in May. Now there are more resources for marketers than ever, including Google analytics and similar programs. The library of books that are now available emphasizing the importance of conversion is steadily growing. These include Avinash Kaushik, Tim Ash, and Brad Geddes are some of the best.
Still we have to remember that website optimization is at the top of the conversion stack. First you have truly know your visitor. You have to create a content platform to answer questions. You have to identify the best media strategies and channels to reach your target audience. And most importantly, you have to have the content your customers want. And then you’re ready for optimization.
The year of CRO.
“What advice do you give marketers who are just getting started with conversion optimization?”
First, consider a content conversion strategy. Educate your customer about different aspect of your product and see what that can do for conversion.
Then look at what I call the “Bad boys of Conversion.” These are the experts that know how to phrase, emphasize, and structure their copy to really draw in visitors. They realize the value of imaginative copy. Study the tricks and tools that they use and apply them yourself.
Take a look at your confirmation pages and notification emails. Each of these are opportunities to get customers back to the site to finalize the purchase or to make another purchase.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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“What are the biggest opportunities for conversion optimization that marketers aren’t taking enough advantage of yet?”
Marketers need to remember to test all their communication efforts to see if they are actually effective. Whether its serial testing or split testing.
Celebrate if your favorite page fails a test. Be like the The Cheerios Guy who runs around telling everyone he lowered his cholesteral. Let people know you increased your conversion rate. Be competitive and always try to improve your results.
And finally, don’t depend on IT. Set up a lab on the side utilizing the wealth of free or inexpensive tools available where you can do some basic tests.
Once you’ve proven the usefulness of these preliminary tests, it’ll be amazing how IT’s schedule for bigger testing projects seems to magically open up.
“What are the top 3 reasons optimization programs fail?”
Will this be the Year of Conversion Rate Optimization for your Company?
Tired of redesigning your site only to get zero results? Our conversion-centered website redesign method guarantees results in weeks, not months.
$4 Million for 35 Subscribers: Does Newsday’s Online Newspaper Have a Sales Conversion Problem?
Conversion OptimizationThe New York Observer paints a pretty stunning picture of one attempt to launch an online newspaper website. Was it to be expected, or is this an online sales conversion problem?
The article states that, after a $4 million overhaul and redesign, newsday.com, the online arm of the Long Island daily Newsday had attracted only 35 subscribers in three months.
Author John Koblin also writes that, since moving the site content behind a “pay wall,” traffic has dropped from 2.2 million monthly unique visits to 1.5 million in just three months. This may not be surprising, since there is little free content available from the online newspaper.
Is Newsday.com the Titanic of Online Newspapers?
We can learn a lot from big disasters.
We can’t help but watch — self-conscious but riveted – when great endeavors come to a disastrous end. Myriad books and movies have been produced round the sinking of the Titanic, and after almost a century it still resonates in our collective memories.
Long Island daily New York Newsday launched a grand ship in their online newspaper at newsday.com. At a reported cost of $4 million they launched a designer’s site and placed their content behind a pay wall. After the passing of three months, they had garnered only 35 paying subscribers. The acquisition cost is staggering.
But it wasn’t a single iceberg that struck the hull of newsday.com. Instead, they got mired in the ice flows off the coast of bad choices.
No disaster is the result of one mistake. It is the culmination of a series of poor decisions with a dose of misfortune.
You’re making the same mistakes on your Web site.
I completed an in-depth review of the newsday.com site in my fast-paced presentation from PubCon South.
Does Content Want to be Free or Behind a Pay Wall?
I don’t think so. The price people will pay for content is determined in part by:
Newsday’s content should pass the test with flying colors.
As you will see in my website review of Newsday.com they didn’t make the case. To some extent the content – stories, videos and applications – should make the case by itself. However, the site has the same categories, layout and value proposition of many news sites.
How to Charge for Online Content
What Newsday’s designers and developers failed to tell management is that newsday.com runs on computers, and computers can monitor the activities of those reading the online edition. This means you can test just about anything in the court of public opinion.
Instead of changing everything, newsday.com should have tested their way into the new business model.
Of course, a testing strategy doesn’t deliver a $4 million pay day to an agency and development team. There are few incentives for patience. If management didn’t think they had the time for a measured rollout before, they certainly don’t now.
Key Page Review-Free consultation
Newsday.com Reacts
Blog BobBlitz.com posted a chart showing four possible layouts for the Newsday.com site. It appears that newsday.com is “enhancing its website” by “updating its color scheme.”
I don’t believe this is going to help.
It’s great that they are asking their readers what they think, but Newsday’s problems are elsewhere when you look at it through the eyes of a Conversion Scientist.
I believe Newsday has worked to prevent subscribers from completing a transaction on their site.