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In my book Your Customer Creation Equation I talk about the two conversions that online services have:Conversion from visitor to trialConversion from tryer to buyerI recommend that online services find ways to get the visitor started as soon as possible. Online services have the advantage that we can try the product right there online.

This article is further proof that getting the visitor engaged with questions is a more effective way to find more tryers and buyers than the typical home page.

 @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.

 @PeepLaja Pricing is hard for online services. Part of the reason is that the kind of thinking that makes for great online services don't work well when applied to the psychology of buying. However, there are some things that are true for both apps and pricing schemes: keeping it simple, helping people choose the next step, limiting choices, and adding playfulness. Peep covers these and more with some great examples. These principles apply to other kinds of businesses as well, especially online publications and ecommerce sites. 

Some websites offer services to make money online. These websites offer services through their online identity that took years to built up and people find comfortable with themselves to do business with such trusted websites.

I geeked out a bit on this. It's a fascinating discussion of how online experimentation fits into the broader picture of business experimentation. Great references and links.

 @chiefmartec "out of 12,000 experiments that Google ran in 2009, only about 10% of them resulted in adopted changes." You are not Google. But you must realize that in every industry, an online leader is going to emerge, and it will be the company that adopts a testing culture.

Intuition is no longer your friend. Your intuition cannot comprehend the variety of ways our visitors are coming at us. Data and testing are your friends, or your online audience will continue to abandon you.

Get excited about testing and taking that leadership role in your marketplace.

Is your business or offering as difficult to explain as a financial investment? A website is often not enough. So it's interesting to see that stodgy financial firms are using humor and even hand-drawn cartoons to help their customers make some serious decisions. We're bullish on video as an online tool at Conversion Sciences. Ask us about our Video Science service.

Imagine if you were given six months of identity protection by Target or Zappos or Neiman Marcus before they had an online security breach. Imagine if the identity protection was valid for any purchase you made. This is the promise of AllClearID. They are a client of ours and are at the forefront of revising the way we look at online security.

If you run an ecommerce site, this is a value proposition that will increase your conversion rates. We've done the tests.

The folks at CrazyEgg have a wonderful summary of the five website formulas found in my book. Read this and you can skip chapters 3 and 4.

The folks at CrazyEgg have a wonderful summary of the five website formulas found in my book. Brochure Site Consultative Site Publication Site Online Store Online Service Read this and you can skip chapters 3 and 4.

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.

 @TheGrok  says "Test your product headline to be benefit oriented as opposed to just product name." I hadn't considered that. Good lists always tell you something you hadn't thought of and Bryan has such a list for Online Stores and Publication sites who feature their offerings on Product Pages. Product pages are the money pages on your site, and are one of the first places to look for optimization opportunities.

"Enclose" the checkout process.

This means to create a distraction-free bubble when your visitor has decided to take that bold step and buy your product.

The psychological thing you're working against here is that, when asked to let go of something of value -- like our money -- we are more than happy to delay that decision.

Maybe we'll just shop a bit more. Maybe we'll check one other place for the right price.

That is why any distraction in your checkout process can be an out for a buyer, an out that they may never return from. I've seen checkout processes that have social media icons in them.

Really? Is this the right time to remind someone that they need to check Facebook?

Go buy something on your site and just look for all of the distractions you find. You might feel a bit embarrassed.

 @unbounce has provide a post with a double payoff. First, this is a great list of conversion-related stats and, second, a great example of how to design content to be sharable.

The content is sharable for the following reasons: The title contains the call to action "48 Tweetable Stats..." There's something here for everyone The quotes are Twitter-sized for easy sharing in 140 characters Each quote has a call to action in the form of a "Tweet this" link. Every quote So, if you've got something you really want people to share, follow this recipe. For article-style content, use pull quotes and put a "Tweet this" link with each.

These guys are real smarty-pants.

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.

 @conversion_team It's easy to cut prices.It's hard to build up the value of what you offer in words and images. If you can occupy the high-price category in your niche, life gets much easier.

So, I was pleased to find this article which makes a bold statement: "Avoid Best Practice Conversion Rate Optimization"

What?

While your competitors are testing button color, you can be comparing yourself to the competition, being open about your profits, and doing the math for your visitors.

Best practices only get you so far. Here are some alternatives for online success.

My partner is fond of saying that the best judge of your marketing is your accountant. This is relatively easy to do online, to measure your marketing results all the way to revenue. Plus the learnings can be tried in other parts of the marketing portfolio.

Marketing is always trying to get a seat at the executive table. This report shows why CMOs continue to struggle.

"For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them."

This statistic plus 51 more are presented to you by our friends at @unbounce.

 @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.

 @neilpatel While it may sound self-serving to share with you an article on why you should spend money with a company like ours, a conversion optimization company, I think you'll find the points made by Neil Patel are a great guide to choosing your conversion optimization strategy.

Yes, you need a conversion optimization strategy, even if you don't hire consultants.

Given Neil's background of creating companies in the online marketing optimization space (KISSmetrics and CrazyEgg), I hope we'll see some more from him in the form of tools.

We've been having great success with video in a e-commerce setting here at Conversion Sciences. You may not need to commission "ten fully functional video studios" and full-time staff of 45 people as Zappos has. But clearly Zappos believes that video is increasing their sales enough to make such an investment.

What could online video do for your business?