Group items tagged

I'm giving away free copies of my book Your Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Website Formulas of The Conversion Scientist. There are no strings attached.

Starting December 15 and running through December 19th, my book will be completely free in the Amazon Kindle Store. Just click on "One Click Buy" during the promo dates, and it'll be delivered right to your Kindle free of charge.

Don't have a Kindle? Never fear. You can read it on the Amazon Cloud Reader on your computer, or through the free Kindle App available for your Smartphone or iPad.  

  So what is this book I am offering for free? It's called The Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Website Formulas of The Conversion Scientist™. It gives readers the foolproof formulas to creating a website that not only gets the right traffic, but converts that traffic to customers, returning customers and advocates.  

Some of the great things you'll learn in this book:

- Identify the unique customer creation formula for your site. - Set up your own digital conversion lab to measure your progress. - Develop landing pages for your site that actually deliver. - Charge your marketing "batteries" to reduce your advertising expenditures. - Communicate authoritatively with designers, developers, and executives.

So please, do not buy this book.  

Go over to the Kindle Store and get your copy absolutely free. Your website will thank you for it.

What makes people trust your Website more? As you know building trust with your visitors is critical to maximizing conversion. Here is some research that helps us to understand what makes visitors trust our site. Here are some highlights. 1:43-People trust more attractive websites. 2:21-Attractive websites are those that follow conventions. 3:05-Biggest source of frustration? Ability to find relevant information. 3:31-Website owners must increase the relevance of their information. 5:00-The best way to retain customers is to provide relevant information. Relevancy is dropping across the Internet. 6:10-How an Internet store is different from a physical store. 8:02-People who are on Facebook are more likely to recommend companies that they see on Facebook. 9:30-Satisfaction is what it is all about, affecting conversion and referral behavior. 10:00-Clam chowder

 @KISSMetrics makes the point that plain is the new sexy; conventional websites sizzle. This article offers scientific proof that we consider a website "sexy" if it presents information as we expect it. You don't need to pay a creative team to come up with a unique site. In fact you will probably have to reel them in a bit once you've completed this article.

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.

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.

Quality Backlinks are one of the MOST IMPORTANT factors to be considered to rank any website HIGH in popular search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. We all know that Directory Submission, Article Submission, Social bookmaking or Blog posting is one of the most important ways to build incoming links to a website from a related page.

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

I only touch on the issue of Mobile Apps in my new book Your Customer Creation Equation. So I'm happy to share this very helpful infographic on Mobile websites vs. Mobile apps.

Is it just me, or is it clear that mobile websites are the way to go (except in extreme situations)?

Wordpress plugin handles the details of using Google Website Optimizer on your blog.

 @CrazyEgg If you asked 14 conversion experts what they consider important for increasing the performance of a website, you would learn a great deal in a short time. This article delivers, with some very smart people (including me) weighing... for you.

While this article discusses the bottom navigation bar for andriod apps, we often test "sticky" headers and footers on mobile websites. We call these kinds of tests "lead tophats" and "sticky shoes".

Our tests often don't favor the hamburger menu, so we are always looking for alternatives. This sticky shoe approach has the footer navigation change with context. Given the results, such an approach may increase mobile conversion and call rates for your mobile website.

We test the content of header and footer bars on mobile websites--we call them stickies--and this includes the use of the hamburger menu icon. It doesn't always work well.

For apps and mobile websites alike, "an app's popularity is determined more so by user engagement and retention rather that its App Store ranking."

 @KISSMetricsYou want to have a high-converting website. You really do. I'm not kidding.

It makes all of your marketing much cheaper by turning more of your paid and organic traffic into sales. It grows your business more efficiently because your visitors are finding what they want. It gets you off of the "more traffic" treadmill so you can focus on providing great products or great services.

Here is another awesome summary of the things you could be doing to make your site convert better.

I only touch on the issue of Mobile Apps in my new book Your Customer Creation Equation. So I'm happy to share this very helpful infographic on Mobile websites vs. Mobile apps.

Is it just me, or is it clear that mobile websites are the way to go (except in extreme situations)?

@sethgodin says awareness isn't a scalable problem to solve. As website optimizers, we couldn't agree more. He continues. "The solution lies in re-organizing your systems, in re-creating your product or service so that it becomes worth talking about." ...or in making your website so intuitive that it isn't worth complaining about. --Brian

@thisissethsblog I shared this for just one line:

"But where's the person in charge of Magic?" Even though we use science to get more revenue from a website, there is always a sense of magic. Things never work out the way we think. Surprises are the rule, not the exception.

Ultimately, we are using science to find the delightful, the remarkable and the relevant in your website.

That's what your visitors are looking for, too.

 "57% of customers will abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load." This is just one of the interesting factoids found in this heartbreaking infographic.

You'll learn the eight primary factors that cause potential customer to abandon your site.

What is the impact of reviews on the purchase decision? It's in there.

Finally, discover what website factors make buyers buy more.

Then, have a conversation with us to find out how to harvest more revenue from your site. Your first call is free.

 "57% of customers will abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load." This is just one of the interesting factoids found in this heartbreaking infographic.

You'll learn the eight primary factors that cause potential customer to abandon your site.

What is the impact of reviews on the purchase decision? It's in there.

Finally, discover what website factors make buyers buy more.

Then, have a conversation with us to find out how to harvest more revenue from your site. Your first call is free.

We've had the privilege of working with several colleges to optimize their websites. The lessons laid out in this article cannot be overstated. According to SpyFu.com, of 5,050 websites in the "University" and "College" industries who spend more than $5000 per month on search ads, only 275 have split testing software installed. However, 4,208 have some form of web analytics software installed.

The bottom line is that those universities who are involved in testing their sites are going to win more top students to graduate and undergraduate programs.

"Many private universities spend upward of $2,000 to recruit each student who enrolls." A little optimization will go a long way.

In the case of paid search, the biggest barrier cited by 41% of company respondents was a lack of internal resources, followed by poorly converting websites (30%). Agency respondents had a different view on the issue though, with 49% blaming lack of budget, and 44% poorly converting websites.

 @getelastic Linda Bustos sees what I see: that the state of mobile websites is like the state of desktop websites circa 1995. What will we look back at and laugh at in five years?

I think we'll laugh at the "hamburger" menu, what Linda calls the Adidas menu.

I also think we'll laugh at responsive designs for small screens, like phones. Small screens need a custom design.

The good news is that we have better tools for testing, and I expect Mobile 1.0 to have a short life relative to Web 1.0.

Linda's article is full of examples for you to not emulate. It will be seen as a harbinger of change in mobile.