Here are the Conversion Optimization Posts I found most valuable last month.

Can You Catch 4 Ping Pong Balls? – How Too Many Messages Can Kill Your Conversion Rate

by Oli Gardner

From perhaps the best bloggers in the Conversion Optimization world, comes another great post.

Testing Woes 101: Lessons From a Messy Test

by Melissa Burdon

Nice to see others are doing conversion optimization testing in the real world too, and not some idea world where everything can be easily tested perfectly.  Good on you Melissa!

Top 10 Outrageous Web Analytics Myths..Debunked!

By Key Web Metrics

Here is a grain of salt!  Now we just need these guys to make a slide show I can show before every time before I present my findings!

How to track conversions without a “conversion page” in Google Optimizer

By Conversion Voodoo

I’m so glad these guys published this for everyone!  Obviously they had to figure it out how to track downloads and other file events that are considered conversions.  This is something I had to muddle through and wish it was as easy are reading their post.  Well, it is now.  This is going in my personal manual.  Thanks guys!

Ask the Scientist: MarketingExperiments Optimization Sequence

By Marketing Experiments

Marketing Experiments helps again with keeping any eye on the basics. This time, how to optimize a campaign effort.  Sorry its a bit geeky with the formulas, but get the gist, its critical!

How to Get More Views for Your On-Site Video

By Todd Follansbee on Wilson Web

Like a lot of folks, I’m teeing up and placing video on websites.  This article was great confirmation of the things I’m doing right and got me thinking (and will have me testing) other stuff.

Secondary Calls to Action: Unsung Heroes of Persuasion

By Brendan Regan

Here are some great examples of how to structure a Secondary Call to Action with the Primary.  I loved it when the author wrote

I hear ya Bren. (90210 ref)

Evil Conversion: When Optimization Goes Too Far

by Sandra Niehaus

Read this after the above post and see if you can pick up a contradiction between that article and this one.  I’ll give you a hint, unless you say “No Thank You”.  Great article, but shows how two experts Sandra Niehaus & Brendan Regan can have different thoughts on Conversion Optimization.  I say, it depend, and is worth testing, and not settling on the best converting offer, but also considering LONG TERM conversion rates, brand, business development, Customer Experience (leading to customer loyalty) etc.

PS(I met both authors at the Conversion Conference in San Jose earlier this month and think both are worth listening to).

Take This “Internet Sales” Test For Your Site

Take a look at your website, now pretend that each word on the homepage is being said to one of your prospective customers after they said “I might want to buy from you”. Would what was being said to them be relevant?

When was the last time you thought that spending money on Internet Marketing such as Pay-per-Click or SEO was going to increase sales?  It will if the people are sold, but getting them to a bad website that is not relevant to their needs (think of a sales guy babbling on  while you want him off the phone so you can work again, thats a bad website.)

A great sales person has an elevator pitch, knows how to summarize his solutions, he listens to peoples needs, he handles objections and helps people (even if they are not ready to buy at that moment).  A company website needs to be a great sales guy, not a great marketing guy (he did his job already by getting people to the site).

Kill the Brochure Site

I cut my “Internet Business” teeth in an “old school” manufacturing company. It was an $8 Billion company and at 1st did not look to the Internet to do anything more than have brochure materials online.   As the person in charge of the company’s Internet strategies and initiatives,  I knew I had to lead the company in the paradigm shift that was happening in driving B2B lead generation (people were going online 74% of the time to source a new supplier etc), and I knew this meant speaking the “old school language”.  A website had to be more than the digital equivalent of a brochure holder.  It had to be a digital sales person.

Emulate the Sales Group Online

My internal clients at this big old company were in “Marketing”.  I soon realized that the information I was missing the most was from Sales.   Each division of the company had a “Sales & Marketing” group, however I was only ever speaking to 1/2 of my client. Each of 300 or so sales people for the company knew how to present the company’s value to a prospect in less than 1 minute, they had the relevant materials with them to present and knew when someone was a qualified buyer.

In the end, I created a B2B website that acted like a Sales person, qualifying a person as a lead before closing it (the sales people still closed the sale, and made me feel like a hero every time I met them).

The company had a very strong brand in its industry, and the website got some decent traffic, but proportionately few leads were driven from it.  Marketing people spent lots of time with excellent interactive marketing agencies running Internet marketing campaigns that drove online leads, however the company’s website was left largely untouched by Marketing as a lead generation tool.  That was till I spoke to Sales.

Websites are Internet Sales, not Internet Marketing.

Websites perform the same job as a sales person. Think about it.  Marketing is generating traffic to sales, and sales is converting that traffic.

The Internet is so new that people have not realized the two functions are still there, its just the medium that has changed.  Companies today need to step back to traditional marketing and ask if something is a Sales or Marketing function, then approach it as such. Here are some typical “Internet Marketing” mainstays.  Lets look at them and classify them as they really are.

1. PPC – Marketing
2. SEO – Marketing
3. Websites – Sales
4. Social Networks- Both
5. eMail Campaign- Marketing

You can see that I’m calling Websites “Sales” and not Marketing.  I firmly believe this and there is a company with $350K/month in additional sales to prove it.  A website recieves traffic to to from Marketing which generates it online or off.  It is now the websites job to receive people looking for information and answers and convert them into buying customers.  Sounds like sales to me.

Lets Talk Resources

I love marketing people, but they are not normally sales people.  I have also seen sales people come back to “corporate” and fail in marketing.  The reason is the two functions are separate and involve separate strengths and talents.  The Internet is new, so if ou have not figured it out yet, let me be clear.  It is the same online as offline. When you have someone great at producing traffic for your website, don’t put them in charge of converting leads or online purchases.  If you have someone great at increasing conversion rates on your site/s, don’t assume that they can manage Google Adwords or Banner Ad campaigns.  Some people can do both, just don’t assume.

Another factor is specialization.  There is a lot to profiting online.  No one person can be at the top of their game in both Sales & Marketing skills and techniques.  PPC is a full time specialty now, as is SEO, as is web design etc and so forth.

Social Media in Sales & Marketing

I’m not saying that there is not some cross-over.  Social media is a place where a company can both drive r.  Social media is a place where a company can both drive traffic and build relationships that “Sell”.  I’m just pointing out there is a distinction and the sooner a company stops expecting a sales tool or person to do marketing and a marketing tool or person to so sales, the better we are.

User Testing Times, They are a Changing.

Website user testing is now cheap on a per user test basis.  Every website should undergo interface testing.  If you need user experience testing, and at a great price, read this review.

I have been recommending User Testing for years.  It used to take a lot of time, a lot of work, and be a royal pain in the butt .

That Was Then! When User Testing involved;

1. Convincing the Client of the value of User Testing.
2. Convincing the Client of the cost.
3. Convincing the Client’s boss of the value and cost.
4. Booking a User Testing Facility (Computer Lab or Training Room).
5. Recruiting other eMarketing Folks to Monitor.
6. Recruiting Target Audience
7. Developing handout materials
8. Conducting and Overseeing User Tests.
9. Keeping users focused on goals.
10. Compensating users.
11. Going home and kissing the kids goodnight.
12. Reviewing notes as interpreted by monitors.

There is a lot of pain in there. 1st, finding the right audience and getting them to actually show up is always a challenge.  The part I hated the most was the time of day user tests were held, since most users groups are held after work to allow for people’s schedules.  Well, that was then.

This is now! When all you need to do is;

1. Developer a User Testing Brief (Demographics, Goals)
2. Submit new user testing session to UserTesting.com
3. Review Videos.  See Example Here .

That’s it!

UserTesting.com

UserTesting.com is simple and effective. No, I am not being compensated in any way here, they don’t even have an affiliate program (although I would love to set up an affiliate strategy and program for them!).  They are the real thing.  A service that makes a difference.  Refreshing really.

How it works – Tell them what you want users to try and do, making sure your target demographic is clear.  Typically it takes about 3 days to get the 10 user testers I want, as opposed to about 7 business days for setting up a User Test.  It also costs $30/user test (see coupon below) as opposed to about $150/user test the old way (My client’s costs have been cut in half as a result).

Here is a screenshot of my account , the test you see are for a client of mine (sorry I had to blur out their name etc for confidentially reasons) that really needed to improve their website. In fact, it was completely insane to throw paid traffic at their site, which they were to the tune of $6K/month, with the site in its current condition. In order for me to illustrate how much their eCommerce site needed a major revision (I don’t believe in redesigns, but that is another post), I conducted a simple 10 user test session with UserTesting.com.

After watching bit of 3 tests, the company stakeholder through up his hands and said "WE SUCK".

Here is what I suggest , get user testing for your site right away.  Start with 3 Tests just to get a feel for it and identify the big issues.  I even have a coupon making it $19/user instead of $30/user (if you use it before the end of May).

Get excited, your about to make discover you site’s biggest issues.

By the way , the service I use is www.UserTesting.com , and to my knowledge they are the only such service.

Coupon

Here is the coupon , good till the end of May, 2009.  Enjoy!

Lets step back from the site objectives and underlying need for business profit for a minute.  Lets talk about website architecture design and how to structure information in a way that it will get found and consumed by its intended audience.

Internal Perspective vs. Customer Perspective

For a lot of years (and still today), web professionals and website owners have organized websites as they saw their business , that is from their Internal Perspective .  For those same # of years, months, days and hours, visitors to those sites have had trouble finding what they were looking for.  This is because customers were looking for information from their external Customer Perspective .

So, website information architecture is often ignored or undervalued. Why does it matter?  Well, lets step ahead again. When it comes to the way information is organized, which perspective, Internal or Customer, do you think ultimately leads to achieving more site objectives and more profit?  I’ll give you a wild guess.

The problem with organizing information from an Internal perspective, or what a business feels is the  "logical" organization of the business they know so well , is that customers don’t know the business that way. Customers only know their needs, and at the end of the day, they won’t put much effort into learning more than that, they’ll just leave the site.

9 /10 People Search Out Of Frustration, Not Interest.

Nine out of Ten people will not search until they have failed trying to navigate a site and have failed to find what they’re looking for.  Therefore, search can be viewed as an indicator of customer frustration, more so than customer interest.

The top search results for a site are far more likely terms of things that can’t be found, not popular terms. I had to be responsible for leads worth a million dollars each month before I drove to the bottom of that fact!  In the end, after reorganizing the site with the theory I advocate in this post, the search results really were for the most popular items, as the 1 in 10 people who searched as a preference rose to the top.  But this only happened after the majority of users found what they wanted, they way they wanted (site navigation).

The result :  The company expanded the sales force.

Streaming Visitors, The Best Architecture For Websites

A website needs to present content from the user’s perspective, then offer complete clarity how to get to the information they seek. The problem is, most sites have more than one type of audience and each audience likely has more than one perspective. This is a lot to handle on a site, in particular  while designing a website homepage .

So how to you organize a site to handle multiple audiences with multiple perspectives.  Enter Streaming.

Most sites have these 3 Streams.

1. Audience
2. Products & Services
3. Markets

Audience Streaming

If you know that your site has 3 types of visitors, you can "call out" each type of audience and lead them to what they are interested in. It is important to determine your Primary audience.  They may not represent the most visits, but should represent either your greatest revenue stream or opportunity.

Products & Service Streaming

Lead people by the product categories and product types they are interested in . This approach works great for product everyone knows, but if your customers are not REALLY familiar with your product and service offerings, then they are not going to know how to get to what they want, or even what they want.  Product & Service categories are most often a useful way to present information on a site for some customers, so by all means offer it, but don’t organize your entire site around it.

In some cases, when the product is unfamiliar to customers, but the products are key to organizing content, it makes sense to lead the product stream through a wizard to help users figure out what they need.

Markets Streaming

If your company’s audience or products and services span across markets, you need to lead people by the market they consider themselves to be in.  Lets say you were a cleaning contract company.  You could span the corporations, schools, hospitals, small business etc etc.  Each market you service could have specific preferences (i.e. Government wants cleaners with security clearance).  By streaming by market, you get to present your "pitch" to each market individually, so they know everything you have to offer them.

Navigation & Destination Pages

There are only two types of web pages when it is all said and done.  They are;

1. Navigation Pages
2. Destination Pages

Navigation Pages

Navigation pages are used to get people to where they want to go.  Their purpose is offer information needed to make the decision on where to go next, then offer them a clear path in the direction they need to go.  If you have good navigation pages, your search statistics will go down, the need to search will go down.

The thing most people don’t realize is that people on a mission don’t pay attention to anything except what they are after. Therefore, trying to promote something on these pages is useless, in fact it is a waste of time for you and your customers. Promote and offer "Next Steps" with relevance on the Destination pages AFTER people have found what they are looking for.

Destination Pages

Destination Pages are the final page on the user’s "quest" for information.  These pages are focused on providing the information on the product, service, topic or solution that customer has come to your site in search of.  This is where you deliver what the site visitor needs and organize it from their perspective. This way, they understand it and take the action both you and they want to take.

Destination pages need to "hit the spot" everytime. There is a good chance you will have to have more than one destination page for one product or solution.  This could be due to different audiences wanting the same product or different markets wanting the same solution.  What ever the case, Destination Pages need to speak directly to the people reading it.

Once your site visitors are satisfied , you can lead them to a "next step", "promotion" or some other "call to action" you want them to take, and more importantly, an action you think they will want to take at that point as well. Keep the offers relevant!

Summary

So by now I hope your understand the need of stream and how they affect your site Architecture.  Handling multiple streams throughout a site, and perhaps resolving each into Destination pages that drive leads and builds your business, requires a lot of thought and planning.  Don’t just spend 20 minutes on a white board with a catalogue and your product manager (pssss, get sales and customer service in there).

I hope this help you think about how others are viewing and using your website, and helps you organize you site better.

…and remember, you can do this!

A business today has a lot of options in building a website site, and they all cost less, and do more than they did just a few years ago.  If you have not figured out how to put together and host your own site in the last 3 months, then this article is for you.

I should mention that we are about to cover the best way to make a non-eCommerce website for a typical small business today.  If you plan to sell online, or have "special" needs like advanced catalogues, than this is not the best solution for you.  This is the solution for a company that need to create a good website that they can administer themselves and they don’t want another SBA loan to get it.

The solution is simple, complete and cheap compared to building a custom site.

First I want to make sure everyone understands.  A small business today does not need a custom site built for them.  Having web design done is a great idea, and we’ll cover that, but having a web developer do more than "connect the dots" for you today is likely unnecessary.

Introducing WordPress 2.7

You might have heard of WordPress .  It traditionally has been Blogging software, and still does a fantastic job at it.  But recently, and especially since the January release of version 2.7, it is highly regarded as a tool for small business website content management.  Basically, this changes everything .  You can now have a site set up quickly that allows you to manage it yourself, and oh yeah, its free.

If you are not a tech savvy person, you will still need one to create your site, but it will take a 1/2 hour to set up and another 1 or 2 to configure, so not a big deal.

Getting Started

Let’s get started with the Step-By-Step run down of how to create an awesome Small Business website for 10% of what it would have cost to get the same thing 4 years ago.

1. Register a Domain. There are lots of domain registrars.  For the sake of keeping it simple, I suggest registering the domain with your hosting company.  The two hosts I recommend below include a domain in your hosting costs anyways so you can relax there.
2. Find a Web Host – This site will need to be hosted somewhere, and since we are talking about having a WordPress CMS, you will have to select a web host that can host WordPress installations.   I can recommend the two web hosts I use, Start Logic (for beginners) and Dream Host (for the techies).  Just sign up for the basic hosting packs and keep your log-in handy, if your not technical, you’ll need to share it with the resource who assembles your site.
3. Get the Site Designed – The best way to do this is covered in Crowdsourcing Web Design .  Just make sure you specify the site will be a WordPress Blog.  It will save you additional money if you can find a free theme that you like.  It takes some searching, but if you find a free theme, than you really just need a header image to be designed.  The place to start is 413 best free WordPress themes of 2008 from Elite Freelancing.
4. Get the Site Configured - Notice I did not say developed?  Basically you will need WordPress installed at your host.  That takes 15 min.  You’ll need to find a developer that is familiar with WordPress as well. If you have a developer who does not work with WordPress (yet), find a new one.  After WordPress is installed, instruct the developer to install the theme you have selected and to configure the site according to how you want it (you will have to have decided the layout of your site first).  The theme will take 5 minutes to install.  Configuration of the site (so the pages you need to work with are there) will take about an hour if routine.
5. Create Content – This is adding copy and images to your page.  The theme you use should keep the site nice and clean for you.  If you don’t like something about the look of the site after you start adding content, enlist a developer to "tweek" the site to your liking.

That’s the nutshell.

I believe this would suit about 90% of "brick & Mortor" small business website needs .  If you need more for your website solution, the next "step up" is Joomla .  If you need to get really serious content management, you will want to look at Drupal .  Anything more serious than that will involve custom development (if you go that route, stay with development within a couple of time zones of where you are, trust me, Newfoundland is about as offshore as you want to get for web development).

I hope that helps.  This is not "Secret Stuff", in fact, once you start digging, you will see there is a complete WordPress world out there ready to make your web world an easier one.

Crowdsourcing Web Design Changes Everything

It used to be that designing for a site meant selecting a web designer and being limited to the talents, ideas and inspiration of that web designer. Then came crowdsourcing . According to Wikipedia.com , crowdsourcing is taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an “open call”.

This works great for web design! You can also use it for Logos, Stationary, and even T-Shirt designs!

Before you start Crowdsourcing Web Design

1. Decide which design crowdsourcing site to use. The choices right now are 99Designs.com or CrowdSpring.com . Browse through each site, checkout the categories you will be listing in and see where you think you can get the best value for what you are looking to get.
2. Be ready to go public. This is a public process. 99Designs.com allows you to set up a private contest, but it costs more. Ask yourself if your competitors really have nothing better to do than find your contest, and if they don’t, will they actually do anything about it after they see it?
3. Have a clear vision of what you want your design to convey. You should also be clear the objective of what online presence. The key here is for you to be clear on what you what to convey through the design.
4. Make sure you have the time to write a good design brief. The design crowdsourcing site you use will walk you through this, you just need to make sure you take the time to fill it out thoroughly. Remember, designers will only give you what they think you want, so that is what you need to communicate to them. If you have a Marketing Summary already, use it!
5. Research how much you should spend. Take a look at contests similar to the one you will be creating. How much are they offering to the designer. You will notice that the greater the reward, the better the contest entries. This is already the “cheap” way to go, don’t be cheaper!
6. Know there will be additional “middle man” charges of around 20% on top of what your set the contest for. You need to factor this cost in when you set the amount the design contest winner receives.

Create a Design Contest

Now let’s walk through the design crowdsourcing process I used to get the eMarketing Matador web logo and header image you see in the header area of this site. For just over $200, I got 7 very talented designers to submit 27 designs, and compete to win the design contest.

In this case, for the logo/header contest, I used 99Designs.com . At the time, I was more impressed with the logo/header designs I saw on 99Designs.com , and they appeared to be going for about $50 cheaper.

In submitting my contest, I did not select a lot of the options available, which all cost extra. Some of these make sense, such as promoting the contest in the forum area of the site, especially if you are in a hurry and want the attention of the best talent. For me, I give the design period about 5 days, ensuring me time to work with the designers through feedback etc. You can also highlight the contest etc and make it stand out. All these things might work, but how much more than just throwing the additional costs into the contest reward is debatable. I personally would rather see the extra money go to the Designer.

Here is my Design Brief for the eMarketing Matador Web Logo/Header

In the Design Brief , there was 4 key points I wanted to make;

#1 – I gave the address of the site so they could see where the logo/header image would live.

#2 – I “sweetened” the pot by offering to recognize the designer and link to their site. You can see this in the footer of this site.

#3 – I wanted the design or part of it, to have good icon appeal. If you look at the address bar, you will see the icon for this site.

#4 – I pre-paid the prize money. This showed I was serious and that someone was going to win.

Once published, a Design Brief looks like this to prospective designers

You can see that the summary is just that. I used it to give the basic and vital information, as well as provide the incentive related information of what I was going to do above and beyond just the contest.

Below are the different entries I received.

You can see I got a lot of variety to select from. It is amazing what 7 different designers will come up. Each has their own style and interpretation of your design brief. This is where crowdsourcing design excels. With a single designer, you get one set of “vision” and “talent”. A single designer also does not have brainstorming access with other designers trying to achieve the same task. Let one talented designer see anothers work, and the clients feedback to that work, the quality and direction of their own work will end up being more targeted and what you want. This is where you win!

Tips to Getting the Best out of Design Crowdsourcing

1. Give Timely Feedback – I try to check my contests at least twice a day and provide feedback for each design. I rate the ones I don’t like and the ones I do like, I let them know. If I see something with potential, or going in a direction I like, I let the designers in the contest know so they can all go down the right path together. Design feedback is crucial.
2. Get a good start – If you don’t see at least 5 designs submitted after a couple of days, review other contests and see what the bids are there. You might need increase your bid a bit. For this contest, I raised the bid by $20 once and saw better results after.
3. Build a relationships – If you see someone with talent, keep in touch. You may want to go direct to them in the future, cutting out the competition and middle man. Going direct to the designer will easily cut costs by 2/3′s. Worse case, you can let the designers know of your next competition and have them “raise the bar” a bit.

The Winner

In the end, the winner of the contest was UaLz, a university senior taking time out of studying for finals to made some much needed money to pay rent etc. If you’d like to use him, his email address is duffu_duff@yahoo.com.

Here is a close up of my Logo. It is not what I thought I wanted. Its a lot better.

Visit the Contest

To visit the contest I hosted for the eMarketing Matador logo/header image, simply visit 99designs.com here.

Related Article on Landing Pages

I recently wrote a post on Landing Pages, which are perfect for Crowdsourcing. One page, simple goal. Its a good place to start!

Listen to Seth

I’m a big Seth Godin fan. He’s a great Marketing author, blogger and Entrepreneur. He wrote an article “How to live happily with a great designer” that captures the essence of working with a designer, web or not, crowdsourcing or not. I recommend reading it before working on any Web Design Brief to any Web Designer.

Remember: You can do this!