Group items tagged

For online services like Shopify, "Onboarding" is a fancy word for conversion. This slideshow takes you through Shopify's successful onboarding process.

One thing to note: they have Optimizely split-testing software installed. This could be how they came to this successful "onboarding" implementation.

The analytics at one of our clients indicated that some 40% of the visitors did not have Javascript enabled. This was a shock, and something we hadn't seen before. We needed a way to verify that the analytics was reporting accurately.

Our development team found this interesting approach to setting up a test of how Javascript is used by your audience.

Here is an excellent summary of the kinds of user testing you can employee, and how to choose.

 @KISSMetrics - You don't have to be a psychologist to create good messages and strategies for your business, but it really helps to know the subtle things that make people more comfortable taking action. This article summarizes some of my favorite research on buyer psychology.

If you offer a trial of your product, use email to deliver "mints" of helpful information. This will increase the likelihood that they will buy. See #4.

Design your pricing in clusters around your most profitable offering. See #5.

Be specific in your calls to action. See #3.

Community involvement and social proof are also covered. See #1 and #2.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

 @peeplaja has given us another great post, full of examples and destined to change your fortune if you put it to work on your site.

The primary barrier to speaking clearly about our business is that we must choose to communicate with someone other than everyone. In other words, we must risk being uninteresting to some portion of our audience in exchange for really knocking our value prop out of the park for others.

Read carefully. Then choose.

How you phrase a discount is a powerful way to increase conversions. Some visitors do not like to do math, or will do it wrong. Therefore, offering 20% off is less effective than save $18. However, high discounts (50%, 90%) may draw buyers more powerfully than the dollar value.

You have to find out for yourself.

Karon offers a nice list of alternatives and some links to research for your enjoyment.

My advice to my clients is to put as much (or more) effort into your images as you put into your copy on a web page. Here are some great tips on how to craft images that work with your copy to advance your value proposition.

@peeplaja offers a great post on shopping cart abandonment

In my book I say that abandonment is like cholesterol: There is a good kind and a bad kind. For each there is a strategy for reducing the impact of abandonment on your business.

Good abandoners leave because they aren't done with their shopping process. The challenge is to get them to come back and buy when they are done. There are several strategies here for retargeting the visitor who abandons using email and ads.

Bad abandoners leave because you surprised them or didn't provide the information they were looking for. This kind of abandonment can be treated by improving the checkout process and by using pricing and shipping strategies.

Abandonment is the most heartbreaking of conversion killers. it is also a fertile place to increase the performance of your website.

The greatest threat to the accuracy of your analytics data is inconsistent implementation. Too often, Javascript "Tags" are left off of some pages, put on some pages twice or simply implemented wrong. And, as your site changes, more inconsistencies are created.

This affects more than just analytics tools. Advertising networks, ratings and review systems, user feedback systems and more rely on properly implemented javascript tags.

The promise of "Tag Managers" is that you can put one set of code on all of your pages, and then control, monitor and edit the javascript for all of these tags in one place, using rules to determine which tags get placed on which pages. It's another way for marketing to monitor the implementation of online systems without being beholden to IT.

Yay!

So, how are the biggest ecommerce companies using Tag Managers? Here's your answer.

@tim_ash doesn't mince words, and his post on the pitfalls of stock photogrphy is no exception. "Marketers have turned to stock imagery as a crutch - hastily grabbing an image off the web rather than taking the time to develop an effective page design that will move visitors into the conversion funnel," he says.

Read on to learn how to NOT be one of these hasty marketers.

 @unbounce Chris Pearson of DIYThemes recently stated that email is the foundation of online marketing. Period. B2B or B2C, email continues to outperform social media by a wide margin according to MarketingSherpa (and others). Here are some interesting tips on how to get your readers opening and clicking more of your email.

Juxtaposition, or "where" something is placed on a Web page has lots to do with "what" you say on that page. I find that I can only develop copy and headings so far before I have to see how they will interact on the page. I have to do a mockup. Well, there is another place that our titles and copy show up, and it is a very competitive context: Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). So, I was glad to find this handy little tool that let me see what my title, description and URL look like on a Google SERP. Now if only @SEOmofo could add the the page preview feature as well for a complete picture

A blog is critical for SEO. It can also be a great lead generator and email list builder.

The Conversion Scientist™ is crucial to our marketing efforts.

Rich Page has a great list of do's and don'ts here with examples. You should take a look. Annoying Ads Unclear value proposition Articles with no call to action Not mobile optimized Short articles, no sub-headlines Cluttered sidebar columns No social proof Bland articles Poor incentive to subscribe No exit-intent popups Start Here page

The last one on the list can really make a big difference.

7. Conduct user research or share findings with developers

It isn't hard to get user input thanks to inexpensive and easy-to-use services like UsabilityHub.com and Verifyapp.com.

Learn more about how and when to use tools like this in our free Everyday Behavioral Science training.

In my new book Your Customer Creation Equation I discuss the importance of getting new users of Online Services to return and login. This process is called "on boarding" and it is the process of making your new users experts at using your service. Wunderlist is how me and my wife share grocery lists. and their on-boarding process is very tight. Here's how they do it.

How a visitor interacts with your site is important to conversion. Here is an analysis of the identities used to login to news, business, entertainment, and other sites

Key to the many strategies included in The Customer Creation Equation (due out this Spring) is the use of content to charge and discharge marketing "batteries." These strategies involve writing what author Kathryn Aragon calls "Bait Pieces." While I don't see my customers as dumb fish, her process is right on.

Remember: to market on the Web you have to create a Markishing Department, part marketing, part publishing.

@LoriMeyer541 offers a nice summary of why conversion is important and important relationship between your traffic and your site's ability to convert. "You certainly need traffic because without it, your business is dead.  But, traffic is not everything - unless you can convert it."Her prescriptions for making a blog convert require some heavy content development, but the larger point is this: You must offer something relevant to your readers to start them down the path of becoming customers.

 @peeplaja "People have an infinite attention span if you are entertaining them."

I get a lot of questions about sales letter styled landing pages. Do they work? Do I need to write that much?

My stock answer is that they do work, but that your copywriter needs to know what they are doing. These kind of landing pages typically work with visitors that already know and follow your business.

Peep says it best: "Buyers are readers." There is more wisdom in this entertaining post.

The blog volcano wants to ERUPT. But it won't unless you are doing some basic things in your posts and articles. Here are eight important and relatively easy to follow tips to give your posts and articles legs.