Online Conversion

 @sitetuners offers a great way to look at conversions and landing pages through the eyes of cating. Don't propose on the first date. Suit Up! Show that you're the perfect match. Go for the second date. Read on to find out what this all means to your website.

We tracked the eyes of 22 people as they watched three kinds of video: Talking head video, webinar-style slide video and hand-drawn whiteboard-style video.

What we found out was that a human face is magnetic. Even when props were added, the viewers' gazes returned quickly to the face.

This article on how onscreen talent can hurt your product demo videos echoes our findings.

Yes, humans love human faces. We gaze at them and examine them. Unfortunately, this is a problem when we want someone to look at something else.

The Penn and Teller magic video in this article is worth the trip.

 @richpage #CRO Checklists are very helpful when making decisions about your website. They take the immediacy and emotion out of your decisions.

I love checklists and this is a good one. It's ten things to consider when designing your checkout process.

My favorites are:10. Consistently Expose Your Value Propositions7. Offer help throughout the process5. Remove header navigation during checkout (so easy!)4. Reassure the Prospect that the Price is RightI'll let you explore the rest of the ten checklist items.

Even data analysts can have a sense of humor, as is proved by the folks at eMetrics Summit. This short video will make Gilbert and Sullivan turn over in their graves, but these are the kind of people you are going to be seeing more and more in company marketing departments.

This article offers Orwell's Five Rules For Writing: Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word. You can see some of these principles in action.

"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.

@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.

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!

Here's the first line from this very helpful little post. "0 sales! What? But we got 517 unique visitors this week!" Airing your mistakes is not seen as smart marketing in many circles, but this kind of thing really is helpful. Besides the important moral of this story, there's another:

Failing the right way leads to success faster. Failing without knowing why invites unnecessary failure.

I predict good things for these folks.

@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

Earlier this week, one of our partners sent over some copy for me to review. In one of the headlines, they had used the term "end-to-end," as in, "An end-to-end solution for your problem."

I told them that terms like "end-to-end" are cliche, and have basically lost all meaning because of overuse. My friend asked, "Why is that?"

This article from Copyblogger answers that question. Our brains are designed to filter out the familiar, the predictable or what is perceived as familiar and predictable.

Read on to find out how you can save your copy from the parts of the brain that keep your messages from getting in.

While Kickstarter isn't a typical landing page, this Kickstarter project does a great job of using video in a persuasive way, and including a call to action tied into the page.

If you're using video on your landing pages, you should point to or reference the form on the page in the video.

There are a number of best practices when it comes to creating forms on your landing pages.

Fewer fields increases conversion rate. Avoid conversion killering fields like address unless you absolutely need them. Add qualifying questions only to increase the quality of leads. "Submit" is not a proper call to action. No best practice is best for everyone, though. This infograph does a great job of putting some numbers behind the development of the right form for your landing page.

This would be funny if I didn't see copy like this on site after site.

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.

While we never do tests to achieve social virality, I think we can learn something from how people interact with images on social networks.

Don't take the results of this report as meaning that you should make the images on your website animated or vertical or eliminated. You may find the exact opposite for more engaged audiences.

Instead, add this bit of information to your knowledge base when testing social campaigns. You may want to test image orientation, brightness or animation.

But always test to the bottom line.

 @trackur takes a bold position to take for a social media tool. Spoiler alert: the one metric they suggest you obsess over if Conversion.
You see, conversions is why your business is, well, in business. We couldn't agree more.

Just for fun.

@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.

@pallavkaushish offers a nice check list for things to test. However, you should use this list to develop a list of hypotheses. Rather than just testing these, use your analytics to see if these might really be the problem.

I would add one more to the top of the list: headlines and copy around calls to action. This has proven more effective than testing CTA buttons for us.