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Andy @Crestodina of @orbiteers is one of the smartest content marketers and educators in the space today. I'll be sitting down with my Content Scientist to talk through these ideas. So. Many. ideas.

 @gaspland The customer equation for an Online Store seems to be the least content intensive, with online proprietors being satisfied with manufacturer stock photos of products. High converting online stores, however, take pains to help the visitor "touch and taste" their wares. Here are some great ideas on how to generate content for your online store.

Retargeting Emails - Do E-commerce customers like or loathe them? March 10th, 2011Leave a commentGo to comments By Charles Nicolls, SeeWhy At SeeWhy, when we first launched our remarketing service in 2009, Randy Stross wrote a piece about email remarketing in The New York Times suggesting that while remarketing might be a great idea for ecommerce websites, it's not a great idea for consumers. He likened emails following up on abandoned shopping carts to a salesman chasing you down the street if you didn't buy from his store. There are major differences, of course. We've long argued that remarketing emails, when done well, not only drive conversions but also build brand trust. They can deliver great service and provide customers with the confidence to return to buy-either online, by phone or in store. If Randy was right and customers universally resented the intrusion, then these emails wouldn't work. In aiming to answer the question more substantively, I turned to data, and specifically email marketing benchmarks. The key metrics to look at to determine whether customers like or loathe remarketing emails are: the recovery rate the open rate the clickthrough rate the unsubscribe rate Frankly, the evidence is overwhelming: Remarketing, when done well, is appreciated by customers. Here's the evidence: (1) The recovery rate The recovery rate is the percentage of visitors that abandon shopping carts, and remarketed visitors thatthen return and purchase following remarketing. At SeeWhy, we measure recovery rates across all our customers, and currently the average is 20 percent. So, one in five shopping cart abandoners come back and buy, having being remarketed. In some cases, the recovery rate is as high as 50 percent. Moreover, when remarketed customers buy, they spend on average 55 percent more than customers who didn't abandon their shopping carts. (2) The open rate The average email open rate for remarketing emails is currently 46 percent, m

 @smexaminer While images are important for social media to help break through the noise, they are also very important on our landing pages, home pages and other web pages.

Unfortunately, we often resort to what I call "business porn" in my book. Business porn includes stock photos of multi-racial smiling people, of graphs going up and to the right, and of cheerful women with headsets.

So if you are struggling with what to use for visuals on your site or in your emails, here are 26 excellent ideas. 

 @eConsultancy brings the excellent teaching of Claude Hopkins Scientific Advertising into our online world. It's almost conversion steampunk until you realize that we haven't invented very much original.

And we've left some smart ideas behind.

Enjoy these nine tips and you should be able to find a free PDF of Hopkins' book somewhere on the Web.

If not, email me.

We can detect pages with low scroll rates using click-tracking software like CrazyEgg. When we see a page with poor scroll performance, we have two options: Move key content higher on the pageAdd cues to increase scrollingHere are some ideas for how to increase scrolling.

WORD OF WARNING

Use of animations and parallax should be used with extreme caution. Test into these treatments as they may detract from your content, and introduce technical problems on certain devices and browsers.

This is a good overview of design trends from 2016. Not all of these trends are good ideas from a conversion optimization standpoint.

Scroll Animations, Large Thematic Images, Animated Micrinteractions, and Brutalism are probably hurting conversion rates.

The author makes a very important point: "this sort of experiment requires thorough research and in many cases the final result comes via several iterations tested and analyzed in terms of usability and visual perception."

In their own words:8. Conversion Sciences Blog Conversion Sciences is another A/B testing conversion optimization agency that has stood the test of time (it was founded in 2007). In this blog you can find some remarkable and noteworthy ideas about A/B testing and conversion optimization. What to read: AB Testing JavaScript: Great Power, Great ProblemsHow to Avoid Mobile-Friendly Redesign DisastersAB Testing Inspiration: Using Emotional TriggersHow Google Reviews Drive Conversions for Local Businesses

I frequently say that there are thousands of ways to increase your conversion rate, lead generation and revenue. With that thought in mind, you should be less intimidated by this little list of 40 ideas from @KISSMetrics.

I've put forth in my new book that adding social media icons to a landing page is a bad idea. I get a lot of pushback on this. Here's some support for my position. Simplicity sells. "Engagement" doesn't. This article highlights three components that consumers need to make it easier to buy. They need to trust the information they receive.They need to learn effectively without distraction.They need to be able to weigh options confidently. Help your visitors choose and choose confidently. Worry about your social media strategy after the sale.

Peep Laja @peeplaja has put together a great list of ways to increase conversion rate. The remarkable thing about this list is that he provides a case study for each of his recommendations, proof that these ideas have works somewhere. This lets you understand the circumstances that drove the improvements in conversion and help you choose the tactics you will use on your site. Thanks, Peep.

I recently went to a website to buy a new keyboard for a laptop. I found the site with the right price and delivery and put the keyboard in my cart.

When I went to checkout, the first question on the billing form was Gender.

Gender?

Why does an electronics part manufacturer need to know if I'm a man or woman?

It introduced enough doubt in my process that I left -- I abandoned my order.

The unfortunate statistic is that 86% of visitors abandon forms of all kinds. It's doubly heartbreaking when they do so in thei cart, because that costs you ready buyers.

The eleven recommendations made here will set you on a path to reduce your abandonment rates. My favorites are: 5. Use a title that explains why the user needs to sign up 6. Show them their password (who said invisible passwords was a good idea?) 12. Put errors in an obvious place and make them visible. Happy Converting!

Ideas for implementing content marketing strategies.

Google Analytics can intimidate business managers, but it really is a tool to help business managers answer important questions. This overview from @lisabarone gives you  an idea of some of the good questions you can be asking your Web team to help you guide your online investments.

If you run a blog, you'll really enjoy this critique of Jay Baer's Convince and Convert blog by Derek Halpern of SocialTriggers.com. Great ideas include: Simplify your landing pages, make your most imporant conversions most prominent, add a call to action after the comments (I call this a "dripping pan"), and more.

@SeeWhy provided one of the most mind-changing ideas to come out of last week's Conversion Conference in New York:

Shopping Cart Abandonment Isn't Necessarily Bad

Some shoppers must abandon once or twice before they can buy.

But when it's time to close the deal, you don't want your shopping cart to choke. This infographic is a fantastic summary of the best practices to keep someone in the buying process, and getting them back if they need to abandon. 

 @copyblogger: Content is king. In my upcoming book The Customer Creation Equation, I teach you how to charge your marketing batteries and then tap the stored marketing potential... all with content. If you don't yet know what content you're going to create, or find yourself stuck, this infographic may be just the ticket for you.

Here's a nice story about how data can be used to drive design and content decisions. Click tracking (heatmaps), session recording and user polling are all tools we put to good use here in the lab for our clients.

And if you want a fantastic example of using storytelling to educate and entertain, this post is just such a thing.