infographics

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:

  1. Fields that ask for qualifying information that can be found out on a phone call, such as purchase timeframe.
  2. Drop-down fields that may not contain an answer accessible to the visitor, such as title.
  3. Drop-down fields that imply something, such as number of employee ranges.
  4. “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.

Lead generation solutions that deliver. Contact us to generate more and better leads fast.

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.

Experience a lift on your contact form conversion rate. Know exactly what form of form you should have on your lead generation site. Infographic.

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 to Skyrocket Conversions

21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks

Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.

  • 43 Pages with Examples
  • Assumptive Phrasing
  • "We" vs. "You"
  • Pattern Interrupts
  • The Power of Three

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 All you ever wanted to know about performing website due diligence and how to not doo due diligence when buying sites.

I’m at the Ungagged Conference and enjoyed sitting in on a presentation by Bryan O’Neil of Flippa.com.

Are you looking for a Website, or a Web Business?

— Bryan O’neil, Flippa.com

Website Due Diligence Issues to Consider

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.

Avoid Doo Due Diligence When Buying Websites - All About Website Due Diligence: Advice from Flippa.com

Due Diligence when Buying Websites by Bryan O’Niel


21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks to Skyrocket Conversions

21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks

Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.

  • 43 Pages with Examples
  • Assumptive Phrasing
  • "We" vs. "You"
  • Pattern Interrupts
  • The Power of Three

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This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.


 

If your website has a glorious design and drives huge traffic but you’re still not getting enough leads, you need to get serious about conversion rate optimization and these 46 conversion rate optimization hacks will help you get there.
Conversion rate optimization is a systematic process of increasing the percentage of your website’s visitors that take the desired action on a certain page. This includes optimizing the landing pages and the website overall, using real-time analytics, tested design, and psychological elements, in order to turn your website visitors into customers.
Don’t make a rookie mistake! Not every one of these “hacks” will work for your website.

How to  Apply Conversion Rate Optimization Hacks

There is a very defined process for applying conversion optimization hacks. It goes something like this.

List Relevant Conversion Rate Optimization Hacks

List all of the hacks below that apply to your website. I recommend downloading the Conversion Sciences Hypothesis List Spreadsheet.
Toss out the ones that you’ve already tried or tested (delete them from your spreadsheet).

Do Your First Ranking of Conversion Optimization Hypotheses

Rate each of the remaining ones by level of effort (LOE), expected impact, and traffic affected. Our spreadsheet will calculate a weight for each idea.
Those that lie at the top of your list are ready to be researched.

Fix the Conversion Optimization Hacks that are Broken

Is it clear that some of these conversion rate optimization hacks needs immediate attention?
For example Hack 1: Increase Your Page Speed may be near the top of the list. It can have a high impact (based on other studies), and it affects all traffic.
To collect more data, you could look at your bounce rate. A high bounce rate may indicate a slow website, especially on mobile. You could also visit WebPageTest.org and get a grade on your page speed.
If the data says your site is slow, this would be a hack worth fixing. It will have a high value for “proof” in the spreadsheet.
If the data says your site is loading quickly, then you have low evidence and this idea may drop to the bottom of the ranking. Move on.
Other candidates for “just fix it” include

  • Technical problems on any page
  • Bad layouts due to responsive web design
  • #8 Remove CAPTCHA from forms. Don’t has your customers to manage your spam problem.
  • #16 Let Customers Checkout as Guests
  • #21 and #24 Reduce Form Fields

Research Your Top Conversion Rate Optimization Hacks

Find ways to research each of the hacks that are at the top of your list.
For example, if hack #16: Let Customers Checkout as Guests is high on your list, you could look at analytics to see if the “Login or Create an Account” page is a big source of abandonment. If it is, it gets more proof points.  If not, maybe it isn’t a problem.
You would also implement an exit-intent popup for this “Login or Create an Account” that asked, “What kept you from buying today?” If lots of visitors admit that they didn’t want to create an account, this idea would get more proof points.

AB Test the Most Promising Ones

The most promising ideas that don’t fall into the “fix it” category get an AB test. This will tell you which conversion rate optimization hacks will improve the site and by how much. It is the best data you can collect.
Have a look at Website Builder’s  “46 Conversion Rate Optimization Hacks” infographic below and for a list of effective hacks for increasing your conversion rates.

46 Conversion Rate Optimization Hacks

About the Author

Josh Wardini - 46 Conversion Rate Optimization Hacks

Josh Wardini, Editorial Contributor and Community Manager at websitebuilder.org. With a preliminary background in communication and expertise in community development, Josh works day-to-day to reshape the human resource management of digitally based companies.

Do online reviews really matter, and do they make a difference to your business? The answer is yes, they absolutely do.
Consumers increasingly use reviews left by other consumers as part of their pre-purchase research efforts, and a bad review can have serious effects on your sales.

Herd shopping psychology plays an ever effect on consumers’ behavior online. Groupon is a wonderful example of that, with deals kicking in only if a certain amount of people pay for them. Research shows that the more people have already opted in on a deal, the likelier it is new visitors will commit to it.

User reviews are not so far removed from this phenomenon.

Over 80% of people said that positive reviews would encourage them to purchase a product. The same number of people changed their minds about purchasing after reading as little as one or two negative reviews.

Fake & Negative Reviews

Unfortunately, fake reviews exist, and they exist in a massive abundance. Competitors have been known to leave bad reviews on products posing as disgruntled customers, That is why more needs to be done to help consumers identify a fake review.

You are bound to get a negative review at some point during your business career. That’s simply the reality and nature of the world. It can be devastating for a business, but most people recognize that everyone makes mistakes. A couple of bad reviews aren’t going to put the nail in your coffin and close your business down.

Here are just some of the facts why online reviews are not to be ignored:

  • 68% of millennials trust online reviews, with positive ones producing an 18% average uplift in sales
  • Consumer reviews are more trusted than descriptions that come from other manufacturers, nearly 12 times more.
  • 90% of consumers read less than 10 reviews before forming an opinion about a business which means these decisions being made are made quickly, without much hesitation.
  • The top five industries to be affected negatively by online reviews are restaurants, hotels, doctor’s offices, hospitals and hair salons.

Negative reviews aren’t all bad; these have been known to create a buzz around your business and increase its exposure, unlike fake reviews that have been so outlandishly obviously fake and ridiculous that they go viral.
Want to learn more about how online reviews can make or break your business? Check out our infographic.

User Reviews are the King

User Reviews are the King

About the Author

Josh Wardini, Editorial Contributor and Community Manager at websitebuilder.org. With a preliminary background in communication and expertise in community development, Josh works day-to-day to reshape the human resource management of digitally based companies.

With a limited amount of money in your marketing budget, spend it on things which are going to give you the best return on investment. These email marketing facts tell you why email remains a great way to spend your money.

Unfortunately, many people wrongly think that this type of marketing is dead. The amount of emails I get in my inbox each day says otherwise. Here are some facts about email marketing to prove my point:

  1. 205 billion emails are sent each day. This is expected to rise to 246 billion by the end of 2019.
  2. Email is still one of the most widely used methods of communication despite the wide range of platforms and apps available.
  3. Although Facebook is an important tool for marketing, email marketing is the most direct and personal way to reach and interact with your target audience. People are more likely to sign up for your email list than they are to interact with you on Facebook. In fact, companies still employ third-party email marketing services to assist them with this aspect of eCommerce.
  4. Your customers want updates. Don’t just settle for one sale per customer, you want multiple sales. Your customers want to hear from you and want email updates about your brand. Don’t let them forget about you, give them what they want!
  5. Emails have a larger ROI. For every $1 spent on email marketing, an average $38 is returned – this is very important if you have a limited budget.
Want to learn more about email marketing? Check out our infographic below.
Email Marketing Facts

Email Marketing Facts

Mobile ecommerce is transforming online shopping, especially during the holidays. Here are some eye-opening statistics in an infographic.

Most businesses are giving away their mobile visitors. Either they don’t provide a mobile-friendly experience or they have a responsive site that doesn’t give mobile visitors anything different.
This is an opportunity for you. Mobile visitors will be one of your fastest-growing segments. However, the mobile experience is unique and mobile visitors want something designed for their on-the-go, thumb-driven searching and buying. Those businesses that deliver a special mobile experience for their visitors will steal many holiday shoppers this year, and more next year.
If you are on the fence about adopting a mobile app as part of your marketing strategy, take a look at what mobile commerce will mean to businesses this holiday season.
Bizapps Holiday Infographic

1
92% of Consumers Shop with Smart Phones

With 9 out of 10 Americans owning a smartphone, it’s understandable that 92% of consumers will search for holiday gifts using their phones. Mobile ecommerce is here, and it’s here to stay.
People nowadays have to cope with busy, crazy lives and they search for ways to save time. How often do you hear people stressed about Christmas shopping? Mobile apps give consumers opportunities to simplify their lives, and the number of active mobile shoppers taking advantage of that simplicity continues to grow.

2
Time on Mobile Increases During the Holidays

November and December are the best months for retailers to increase their mobile revenue streams. These two months see more sales than other months, and 47% of customers prefer using a mobile app for shopping during this time of year. In fact, for the first time in history, smartphones and tablets have higher online penetration than desktop computers.

3
Mobile Generates Revenue

This year, Black Friday ecommerce sales hit $3.34 Billion, with mobile sales topping the billion dollar mark for the first time in history. Consumers spent an incredible $1.2 Billion via their mobile devices, a 33% increase from 2015.
Surprisingly, despite this continued growth in mobile commerce, 98% of companies still lack a mobile app designed for expedited customer shopping.

4
Mobile Apps Can Influence Every Part of the Sales Funnel

Small retailers often underestimate the importance of mobile apps—especially during the holidays. They certainly make shopping much simpler, but the benefits that they offer regarding affordable marketing and customer engagement cannot be overlooked either.
To put it simply, 71% of online shoppers prefer searching for products in retail stores using their app. Creating a pleasant shopping experience is important for businesses of all sizes. Think about your shopping habits. You are not the only consumer who searches for products online before later purchasing them. Everyone wants to save money, and mobile apps are a great way to make sure you are getting the best deal out there this holiday season.

Conclusion

If there is any time of year where businesses can’t afford to ignore mobile commerce, it’s the holiday season. As the trends continue to shift toward mobile, you cannot afford to overlook its potential.
If your mobile sales are under-performing, contact Conversion Sciences for a free consultation, or if you don’t have a mobile app, come check us out at Bizness Apps. Check this out if you need last minute holiday marketing ideas for ecommerce.

andrew-gazdeckiAndrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of Bizness Apps — making mobile apps affordable and simple for small businesses. We’re a do-it-yourself iPhone, iPad, Android & HTML5 app platform that allows any small business to simultaneously create, edit, and manage mobile apps without any programming knowledge needed. 

The law of unintended consequences states that every human endeavor will generate some result that was not, nor could have been foreseen. The law applies to hypothesis testing as well.

In fact, Brian Cugelman introduced me to an entire spectrum of outcomes that is helpful when evaluating AB testing results. Brian was talking about unleashing chemicals in the brain, and I’m applying his model to AB testing results. See my complete notes on his Conversion XL Live presentation below.

Understanding the AB Testing Results Map

In any test we conduct, we are trying everything we can to drive to a desired outcome. Unfortunately, we don’t always achieve the outcomes we want or intend. For any test, our results lie on one of two spectrums defining four general quadrants.

Map of possible outcomes from hypotheses 

Map of possible outcomes from hypotheses.

On one axis we ask, “Was the outcome as we intended, or was there unintended result?” On the other axis we ask, “Was it a negative or positive outcome?”

While most of our testing seeks to achieve the quadrant defined by positive, intended outcomes, each of these quadrants gives us an opportunity to move our conversion optimization program a step forward.

I. Pop the Champaign, We’ve Got a New Control

With every test, we seek to “beat” the existing control, the page or experience that is currently performing the best of all treatments we’ve tried. When our intended outcome is a positive outcome, everyone is all smiles and dancing. It’s the most fun we have in this job.

In general, we want our test outcomes to fall into this quadrant (quadrant I), but not exclusively. There is much to be learned from the other three quadrants.

II. Testing to Lose

Under what circumstances would we actually run an AB test intending to see a negative outcome? That is the question of Quadrant II. A great example of this is adding “Captcha” to a form.

CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. We believe it should be called, “Get Our Prospects to Do Our Spam Management For Us”, or “GOPDOSMFU”. Businesses don’t like to get spam. It clogs their prospect inboxes, wastes the time of sales people and clouds their analytics.

However, we don’t believe that the answer is to make our potential customers take an IQ test before submitting a form.

These tools inevitably reduce form completion rates, and not just for spam bots.

CAPTCHAS make sure you are not a spam robot

CAPTCHAs reduce spam, but at what cost?

CAPTCHAs reduce spam, but at what cost?

So, if a business wants to add Captcha to a form, we recommend understanding the hidden costs of doing so. We’ll design a test with and without the Captcha, fully expecting a negative outcome. The goal is to understand how big the negative impact is. Usually, it’s too big.

In other situations, a design feature that is brand oriented may be proposed. Often a design decision that enhances the company brand will have a negative impact on conversion and revenue. Nonetheless, we will test to see how big the negative impact is. If it’s reasonable, then the loss of revenue is seen as a marketing expense. In other words, we expect the loss of short-term revenue to offset long term revenue from a stronger brand message.

These tests are like insurance policies. We do them to understand the cost of decisions that fall outside of our narrow focus on website results. The question is not, “Is the outcome negative?” The question is, “How negative is the outcome?”

III. Losers Rule Statistically

Linus Pauling once said, “You can’t have good ideas without having lots of ideas.” What is implied in this statement is that most ideas are crap. Just because we call them test hypotheses doesn’t mean that they are any more valuable than rolls of the dice.

When we start a conversion optimization process, we generate a lot of ideas. Since we’re brilliant, experienced, and wear lab coats, we brag that only half of these ideas will be losers for any client. Fully half won’t increase the performance of the site, and many will make things worse.

Most of these fall into the quadrant of unintended negative outcomes. The control has won. Record what we learned and move on.

There is a lot to be learned from failed tests. Note that we call them “inconclusive” tests as this sounds better than “failed”.

If the losing treatment reduced conversion and revenue, then you learn something about what your visitors don’t like.

Just like a successful test, you must ask the question, “Why?”.

Why didn’t they like our new background video? Was it offensive? Did it load too slowly? Did it distract them from our message?

Take a moment and ask, “Why,” even when your control wins.

IV. That Wasn’t Expected, But We’ll Take the Credit

Automatic.com was seeking a very specific outcome when we designed a new home page for them: more sales of the adapter and app that connects a smartphone to the car’s electronic brain. The redesign did achieve that goal. However, there was another unintended result. There was an increase in the number of people buying multiple adapters rather than just one.

We weren’t testing to increase average order value in this case. It happened nonetheless. We might have missed it if we didn’t instinctively calculate average order value when looking at the data. Other unintended consequences may be harder to find.

This outcome usually spawns new hypotheses. What was it about our new home page design that made more buyers decide to get an adapter for all of their cars? Did we discover a new segment, the segment of visitors that have more than one car?

These questions all beg for more research and quite possibly more testing.

When Outcomes are Mixed

There is rarely one answer for any test we perform. Because we have to create statistically valid sample sizes, we throw together some very different groups of visitors. For example, we regularly see a difference in conversion rates between visitors using the Safari browser and those using Firefox. On mobile, we see different results when we look only at visitors coming on an Android than when we look at those using Apple’s iOS.

3.9% more Android users converted with this design, while 21% fewer iPhone users converted.

Android users liked this test but iPhone users really did not.

In short, you need to spend some time looking at your test results to ensure that you don’t have offsetting outcomes.

The Motivational Chemistry and the Science of Persuasion

Here are my notes from Brian Cugelman’s presentation that inspired this approach to AB testing results. He deals a lot with the science of persuasion.

My favorite conclusions are:

“You will get more mileage from ANTICIPATION than from actual rewards.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

I hope this infographic generates some dopamine for you, and your new found intelligence will produce seratonin during your next social engagement.

Motivational Chemistry infodoodle by Brian Cugelman at ConversionXL Live

Motivational Chemistry infodoodle by Brian Cugelman at ConversionXL Live

 

Here are six tips for getting your A/B testing right. These were captured at Affiliate Summit West 2016 and presented by Digital Marketer’s Justin Rondeau.

Focus on Process Not Hacks

Don’t just try what others  say works. Have a process that allows you to know your MARKET.

Your A/B Testing effort should focus on process.

Your A/B Testing effort should focus on process.

Measure Multiple Metrics that Matter

Measure the right metrics for the part of the funnel you’re testing

You'll track different kinds of A/B testing metrics depending on where your visitors are in the sales funnel.

You’ll track different kinds of metrics depending on where your visitors are in the sales funnel.

Use Analytics to Identify Problems

Don’t just test anything. Use analytics to identify problem pages.

Take the Guesswork out of A/B Testing

Take the Guesswork out of Testing

Fix What’s Broken. Only Test What’s Ambiguous

If it’s broke, don’t bother testing it. Just fix it.

Test Persuasive and intuitive issues. Sometimes test Usability. Otherwise just fix the problem.

Test Persuasive and intuitive issues. Sometimes test Usability. Otherwise just fix the problem.

Schedule a Finite Time to Stop

Don’t expect your tests to just run until they’re successful or lose. Testing has an opportunity cost.

Conversion Optimization is about meeting user expectations.

Conversion Optimization is about meeting user expectations.


This instagraphic was captured live by Brian Massey of Conversion Sciences.
 
Applying Optimization Fundamentals Infodoodle-Justin Rondeau-Affiliate Summit West 2016 600x2288

Applying Optimization Fundamentals Infodoodle from Justin Rondeau’s Affiliate Summit West 2016 presentation.



It can often seem that conversion optimization conflicts with brand and image marketing. In some cases, this is true. A recent infographic from the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Online Master in Business Administration program (NJIT) got us to thinking about the importance of branding to any conversion optimization effort.

How a Conversion Scientist Thinks of Brand-Building

For the purposes of conversion optimization, brand is critically important. If we’re talking about a landing page, a website, an email or an ad, brand can communicate some important information in the blink of an eye.

For us, brand is a container for trust, credibility and authority.
For us, brand is a container for trust, credibility and authority. Brand marketers will tell you to put the company logo and tag line on every communication. A Conversion Scientist uses brand symbols primarily to communicate authority and credibility.
A brand symbol is a hook on which brand experiences are hung. Conversion Sciences has benefited from its brand symbol — the lab coat — and we work diligently to hang positive brand experiences on this symbol when we write, teach, and speak. We give lab coats to our clients so they can associate our business-changing results with this important brand symbol.
Companies who have invested in brand recognition over decades and have protected their brand symbols have a significant advantage over less-known brands. These brand symbols communicate a complex set of impressions quickly.
From a budgeting standpoint, building brand is very expensive. It requires paying for millions of impressions with little expectation of short-term increases of revenue. It also takes time.
We believe that conversion optimization is a brand-building activity. Conversion-based brand building works on the assumption that there is no better brand experience than finding what you are looking for. As you improve the conversion rate and revenue per visit of your website, you are, by definition, giving your visitors better experiences. These experiences are associated with your brand symbols and build brand quickly and powerfully.

Brand Building in Digital Environments

Because conversion optimization relies on data, and since digital environments are data-rich, these digital environments are ideal for conversion-based brand building. Your investment in optimizing online properties is an investment in brand.
The infographic acknowledges that there are three moments in the buying process when companies come into contact with new and existing clients.

There are potential touchpoints with new and existing clients before, during, and after a purchase.

There are potential touchpoints with new and existing clients before, during, and after a purchase.


Each of these can be optimized to increase conversions and sales.

        

  1. Before purchase, using proper navigation, search and “affordances” to guide the visitor to their desired outcome.
  2.     

  3. During purchase ensuring that completing the transaction is intuitive and surprise-free.
  4.     

  5. After purchase optimization influences up-sells, repeat purchases, and enables sharing.

Be Careful with Consistency

The infographic tells us that “Consumers Expect Consistency” across channels and devices. This is a lie.

90 percent of customers expect their experience with a brand to be the same across every marketing channel

90% of customers expect their experience with a brand to be the same across every marketing channel


Consumers expect consistent quality of experiences and consistent use of brand symbols. However, our testing shows that they want very different experiences when they are in different contexts. Desktop visitors want a more intense experience with more choice and deeper information. Smartphone visitors want immediate access to solutions.
Quality experiences across devices become a consistent builder of brand value.

Optimizing Touchpoints

There are different kinds of people coming to each of your touchpoints. They are often the same person coming in different modes.
Search Engine Watch tells us that certain types of searches are more common on Bing than on Google – finance and automotive for instance. You probably already know that mobile iOS users behave differently than Android ones, but have you made the connection about how their searches differ?
Ninety-seven percent of Millennials touch at least two devices every 24 hours, and many of them interact with even more devices.

Millenials are multi-device creatures.

Millenials are multi-device creatures.


That’s a lot of opportunity for touchpoints just from search.

Social media platforms prime visitors in different ways meaning online experiences must be tailored to each. For example, Instagram is poised to be a better organic marketing option than Facebook for many companies.
Screen Shot 2015-11-25 at 9.58.22 PM
Customers expect to find you on all of the major social media platforms, but how much effort should you use in maintaining your presence? Our answer is to be only on those platforms for which you have the resources to optimize the experience. The default social experience may negatively impact your brand.
Each platform has a distinct purpose that should dictate how much time and money you must invest in it. Your most important task when you invest in new digital marketing is to go back to the original concept of branding, no matter how complicated contemporary marketing may seem. Your new and existing customers will know what to expect from you based on past experience, and today’s experience is tomorrow’s past experience.
Thanks to NJIT’s MBA program for sharing.
NJIT-MBA-Branding-Across-the-New-Digital-Environments-Infographic

Feature image by Hanna_Elise via Compfight cc and adapted for this post.

You can find the most inane demographic information about Facebook users, the amount of time they waste on the site, how many of them are grandmothers, where to find a browser extension that will make all of those pictures of your friends’ kids turn into pictures of cats, and lots of other quasi-useful information that make for great click-bait.
Millions of people visit Facebook every single day without fail, and many of them are money-spending Millennials. Conventional wisdom says that, if you run a business, you probably should be on Facebook because that’s where the customers are.
Facebook has become an object beyond criticism. Or has it?
There’s also a lot of other data out there about how Facebook isn’t doing all that much for businesses. If you consider all of the time needed to build a following and curating content, it becomes too expensive to reach your Facebook members. There are alternatives, apparently.
An infographic from selfstartr makes the argument that Instagram is where you should be placing your bets on organic marketing instead of expending all your effort with Facebook. When a business posts on social media and doesn’t pay for it, that’s what we mean by organic marketing.

Facebook Organic Marketing is Dead or Dying

According to an article on Clickz, even people who defend marketing on Facebook aren’t saying organic marketing on social media helps increase conversion rates because “Most organic social media posts aren’t directly selling, because selling is rarely interesting enough to drive engagements.” This article lumps all social media sites together, including both Facebook and Instagram, but treating them the same way ignores a lot of data.

People actually really like interacting with brands on Instagram

People actually really like interacting with brands on Instagram.


Instagrammers engage at a much higher rate than Facebookers. Not only that, there’s a very strong chance that your followers aren’t even seeing what you post on Facebook since only 6% of your followers see each one.
Facebook's algorithm for what shows up in newsfeeds means that no matter how far someone scrolls, they may never see what you posted.

Facebook’s algorithm for the newsfeed means that no matter how far someone scrolls, they may never see what you posted.


Companies using Instagram have the potential to reach 100% of their followers. If your customers scroll far enough down on their feed, they’ll see what you shared. Keep in mind that when we say that engagement with brands is lower on Facebook, it’s not necessarily because people don’t see posts from brands. Millions of companies are creating content on both social media sites, but a much smaller group of people bother interacting with brands on Facebook.
Interactions on Instagram are more passive than on Facebook. Instagram has more barriers to content going viral, and you can’t see whether seven of your friends have double-tapped the same image (on Facebook, your newsfeed tells you what your friends Like). In other words, interacting with brands on Instagram isn’t as visibly social as it is on Facebook. Turns out, this model isn’t bad for business.
Engaged users are worth more on Instagram.

Engaged users are worth more on Instagram.


To sum up: Instagram users engage at higher rates and spend more money than their Facebook counterparts. How much time are you putting into creating content for your Facebook followers when only a handful of them see it and even fewer care?

There’s Still Time to Be An Early Adopter

How many of your competitors are on Instagram? The market on Facebook is pretty saturated, so your eCommerce company is probably one of many. That might not be the case on Instagram.

What's keeping you from using Instagram?

What’s keeping you from using Instagram?


Don’t dismiss Instagram because whatever you’re selling doesn’t photograph well. Kissmetrics makes a pretty persuasive argument that it doesn’t matter: you can find a creative way to get around that problem. It also addresses some other misunderstandings that might be keeping you from creating a business account.

Is Instagram the Way to Millennials’ Hearts?

Facebook began with exclusivity. Only students at certain colleges could join, and no one else was welcome. No parents, certainly no grandparents, and absolutely no businesses. People caught marketing their business ventures weren’t welcome and would be immediately reported.
If that’s Facebook’s origin story, maybe it’s not surprising that people react with derision when it feels like their newsfeed is bloated with paid and unpaid ads. It’s inauthentic when someone tries to sell you something in a setting that’s supposed to be just your friends. Facebook’s original model didn’t have a place for that kind of interaction.
Instagram, however, was born into a world where businesses were already an integral part of social media. By the time Instagram launched in 2010, Facebook was already trying to be an everything-to-everyone social media site. Instagram’s focus was more narrow. Just photos.
Facebook is so broad that you can post your Instagram photos to Facebook. People use Facebook as a catch-all, so when they need something more focused, they go elsewhere.
People tend to use Instagram to follow interests instead of friends. They can see what their friends are doing on Facebook. Remember that you can potentially reach 100% of your followers on Instagram since it’s just chronological instead of using an algorithm. That doesn’t work well when you’re trying to keep up with other people’s lives, especially if they don’t post often.
Keeping up with an interest is easier because someone can follow lots of similar users. That’s a real advantage for businesses because data exists on the best times to post. It’s more acceptable to re-post similar images because followers may not see both and get annoyed.
Instagram is fertile ground for attracting Millennial consumers. This generation loves transparency, engaging with people and organizations with similar interests, and creative marketing. This group is huge. More than half of US adults age 18-29 are already on Instagram.
My takeaway from this study is that people think Facebook is kind of a drag. It’s necessary, but not all that fun. Two thirds of users engage with brands on Instagram compared to less than a third of the users on Facebook. Stats like that make me think about the quality of engagement on Facebook versus Instagram.
There are countless articles about customer service and customer complaints on social media, but it’s tough to find any information about using Instagram as a platform for complaints. Maybe Instagram will bring you higher-valued conversions and make social media enjoyable again.
Why-Brands-Should-Embrace-Instagram-Instead-of-Facebook-INFOGRAPHIC-by-selfstartr
Thanks to selfstartr for sharing.
 

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