Online Conversion

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.

Good sense advice if you want your pages to reel in more leads and sales. I especially appreciate being reminded that "clarity trumps persuasion" a wisdom of Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of MEC Labs.

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?

When considering how much to invest in social networks, the important question is not "Are my customers using social media?" They are.

A better question to ask is "Are my customers using social media to make decisions about my product?" Odds are, they aren't.

This paradox is most evident in the "fastest growing" segment of social media: those over 55 years of age. This segment is large, but it does not generally make buying decisions using social media. That's an important distinction.

It's great to optimize  high-traffic websites, but the traffic brings it own set of analysis problems. In particular, the number of things you can test goes up, the amount of data goes up and finding insights becomes more and more difficult. Excel is a great tool, but I'm looking for some tools to help cut the analysis time. Here is a nice list of free tools that I will be exploring over the coming weeks.

Testing is part science, part art, part perseverence. Here is a comprehensive list of resources for the new and experienced alike.

 @peeplaja - This is about as complete a summary of home page best practices that I've ever seen. Peep could have made this an eBook. There are some great examples, specific recommendations and tons of links to other resources. This ambitious post covers:Map out buyer personasCraft a value propositionBuild a connectionUse proper visualsDefine most wanted actionCreate call to actionWrite user oriented copyAdd trust elementsTest lengthCheck load speed

We focus on conversion marketing because it lets us spend our limited resources on the things that will move our business forward. However, when you first start your conversion optimization process, you are going to have to do MORE work until you get the data on what programs to kill. So, I thought I would pass along some very effective tips that have worked for me to find more time in my already crowded day. Enjoy. 

 @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.

Taking a conversion approach to your website comes with some new thinking. There are challenges, unknowns, things that can't be predicted. There are plenty of disappointments among the wins. I wish I could tell you differently.

This little video makes you ask the question, "Am I open to possibilities or am I one of the roadblocks that will kill a performance-oriented marketing effort before its grown wings?

I find myself falling into some of these traps myself. Thanks to Roy H. Williams and the Monday Morning Memo for this.

This is a short little ditty from @ioninteractive that makes an important point about Landing Pages that is very easy to forget. Landing pages have a single-minded purpose or they are something else.

Your conversion rate is affected by a series of "micro-conversions", and this is especially true of email. To get your emails to convert, you must get the recipient to open it, and three components affect open rates: Who it is fromThe Subject LineThe first lines of text, which are shown by many email clientsThis article focuses on subject lines that work for those of us offering training and education. These may have more limited success with other audiences. It is interesting nonetheless.

I hope you know your abandonment rate. Take the number of purchases you get on your site divided by the number of people who put a product in your cart. This is your cart conversion rate. Subtract this number from 1 and you get your abandonment rate, or the percentage of people who abandon their shopping cart.

If your abandonment rate is high (expect it to be over 70%) there are some things you can do about it. Here is a great infographic from Monetate that will show you some reasons people leave full carts.

@fusionmex via @TheGrok I"ve been working with a number of e-commerce clients over the past few months. Conversion optimization has the potential to increase their conversion rates, increase their average order value and put more money in their pockets. However, Conversion Strategy is the tide that floats all pages. If you are selling online, consider some of these features requested by consumers.

Site as a Service Home pages have one purpose: To get visitors to become "tryers" of your application. In general, we want to be as efficient as possible, asking for only the required information to join a trial. Then we let email carry the mail. Lander offers an interesting experience on their home page. This treatment requires several clicks when one would suffice. This does two very important things: It conveys a sense of the company's personality and brandIt discourages poorly qualified visitors making their list convert to buyers betterThis is a good trade-off a lower conversion rate (to tryer) and improving the quality of a list.

@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.

 @flabastida lists ten "steps" for a "Total Content Approach." Taking these all together, it becomes clear that a business or a brand is fully realized only through its content. We can no longer rely on slogans and manipulation. A brand now has hopes, fears and dreams. Businesses must express opportunity as well as possibility. Don't worry. Our customers are there to help us understand ourselves.

As I'm putting the final touches on my up-coming book, it is very clear that content is the most important conversion strategy: It influences and enables almost every other strategy.

If you need to get started on content marketing here is a pretty complete list of resources to get you started.

The question to ask on a landing page is, "Will WOW increase my conversions?" Some of these "WOW" features have proven to reduce conversion rates.  Rotating banners of any sort attract the eye away, and can pull readers out of the "meat" of the page where they are more likely to convert. Accordian menus and tabbed content may prevent scanners from quickly consuming the page. It's a bit of a Catch 22: they may not have the patience to click on each item until they've scanned the content... which is hidden. Social widgets can deliver social proof and increase conversion rates. However, social media chicklets that let the visitor go off to Facebook or Twitter work against the purpose of a landing page: to keep visitors on the page until they make a decision. Why send traffic that you've paid for off to Mark Zuckerberg? Lightbox popovers are universally derided if you ask people. However, they almost always increase conversion rates. 

Every audience is different, so test these WOW features with your own crowd.

It feels good to get Liked on Facebook. Brands are working hard to get more and more likes for their pages. However, does this translate into loyalty and sales? eMarketer tries to answer that question.