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).

I’ve been optimizing sites for years, and last month made a “Magic Bullet” change . It was a 1 word change and more than doubled the conversion rate.  This is worth sharing.

I’ve seen this on landing pages and emails,  but never on a complex Internet Retail site with just a 1 word, not spending a cent on (paid) traffic, priceless!  Literally!

Continue reading the Full Post Here.

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.

80% of websites have adequate traffic to achieve their goals, they just don’t handle it well.

My last post was about the Internet Strategy Checklist my firm uses to “cover all the bases” with clients when brainstorming their Internet Strategies (albeit a useless list if I don’t already know the client’s audience, objectives and opportunities).  The list is arranged with the most important Internet marketing strategy components first, from the perspective of priority and hierarchy of what needs to be done 1st.  The 1st category on the list is Website Optimization.

Don’t Throw Money at a Bad Site

Without a website that can handle traffic, there is no sense of giving it any.  So often companies get caught in the idea that sending more traffic to a site will result in more sales, and they are normally right, but not normally making profiting off of it the way they could be. The 1st thing we do for clients is audit their incoming traffic.  If they are paying for clicks, we figure out the return on investment and estimate how they can better convert these “paid for” visitors once on the site.  This is a minor step in the big scheme of things, but it does “stop the bleeding” so we can get to the point of getting sites on a path towards optimal health.

You Know Where to Find the Yogurt.

A good website is like a grocery store. People coming in have a sense of where items they want might be located and easily follow directions and conventions to getting what they want.  This is no accident.  Retail Strategists lay out stores be easy to navigate and promote.  Sound familiar?

Website Optimization is getting the most out of people visiting an online property.  This might be apply to a landing page, micro-site, website, online catalogue, online slide deck, Interactive tool etc.  If your web presence is not handling visitors well, then paying to sending qualified traffic to it in large part a waste of money.

Good website optimization often starts with the website homepage strategy and how site visitors handle people once they arrive at it.  I wrote a post on this a while back, click here to read it.  The best place to start is to look at your website analytics and see were the top “landing pages” are (what pages people are entering your site) and then optimizing your landing pages (another previous post).

Keep Your Promises

When I look at a site for the 1st time, I look at its “Promises”.  What is the site promising the site visitor?  Then, is the site delivering on its promises.  This starts from the ad or search result that got the user to the site.  Do they arrive on a page that fulfills the promise of the search engine (This shows why SEO without strategy is worthless, as it can just create “broken promises”.  If you have a decent landing page and are getting more than a 20% bounce rate on it, it is likely caused by “broken promises”.  I don’t want this to be an SEO post, but having an integrated SEO strategy is part of Website Optimizing (sending qualified traffic in any way is part of it).

Focus on Website Optimization

Focus on website optimization as your primary web focus.  This starts off by making sure the site is simple and well organized from the user’s perspective.  Then it goes further into “giving people what they want”, when they want it and how they want it.  It also means spending time on statistics and testing out different things (check out

Achieve your Customer’s Goals, Forget Your Own

Your customers have their own goals when they are your site (forget about your site’s goals for a minute).  Once your site is organized from your site audience’s perspective, you need to set up analytic goals and track the “Goal Funnel” to see where visitors are falling off in trying to achieve THEIR goals.  Once see where they are dropping off, you can critically look and very likely see why.  Then you can fix it.

Now lets talk about your company’s and its site’s goals.  These are really just the goals of the site visitor.  If you achieve their goals, you will achieve yours.  (This needs to become your mantra.  Design it from your visitor’s perspective, give them what they want and help them achieve their objectives, you’ll profit from it, have faith).

Try User Testing

It is so easy these days to get user testing (See Get Tested) there is no excuse not to watch people trying to achieve their goals on your site on a regular basis.  This is the catalyst to website optimization because after watching your target audience trying and failing at core basic stuff, you will be compelled to do something about it.

Measure Progress

Your site needs “Core Metrics”. These are what you need to measure.  These metrics need to be from analytics, sales (or leads) figures, feedback data, and anything else that you could measure that would show that website optimization is working.

A Website Core Metrics Example

Website Optimization Summary

Give people what they want, do it from their perspective, make it easy and test test test. You likely have an SEO program.  Now you need a Website Optimization program.  They two have a lot in common.  Neither give immediate results, seem simple but are not, and require a strategy and lots of work.  There are there are website optimizing companies that provide such services, and even pair them with an SEO company.  I suggest getting  website optimization services before sending paid clicks at your site.  So many companies build something and leave it.  In reality, you can often get 100% better performance out of a page or navigational path through optimization.

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!

People Don’t Read Your Website… They Scan it.

Make it Easy to Scan your Information, and They’ll consume it.

Anyone writing copy for web needs to understand how to write web copy. The reason is that copy writing for the web determines how and what of what your write actually gets read.  If you write to have your copy scanned, then you are writing good web copy!

Headlines

A page’s headline needs to interrupt and be relevant. It does not need to be descriptive, explain or introduce anything.  It just needs to stop people and get them to the Sub-Header.

Sub-Headers

A Sub-Header needs to engage a website visitor while expanding on the headline and its relevance to what the subject of the web content.

Image Captions

Following reading the headline and Sub-Header of a page, people will turn briefly to images and then read the image caption. This is why it is so important to write the best image captions possible, as this is what people are reading to determine if going further is going to be a waste of time or not.

Bullets

Write in bullet form;

• As much as possible.
• When appropriate.
• When a paragraph is going to be too large.
• When you want it read.

Paragraphs – short and start bold

Keep your paragraphs short.  I suggest 6 lines or less. It really helps to bold the first part of your paragraph (no more than 1/2 of it), and place the most "to the point" copy there.

Use your Colours

Use your website colours as the colours for your headline and Sub-Headers. You don’t have to use the exact colours, but doing this will help your copy stand out a little.

Calls to Action

Calls to Action (what you want people to click on to fill out a form, become a sale or go further in the sales or lead process) should not be copy unless it is also accompanied with button that repeats or expands on the text link.

Perfect Example

Just look at those image captions! This comes from www.eightbyeight.com , the website of an excellent eCommerce optimization company.  I have met Amy Africa who is a partner at Eight by Eight and knew I would fine the best practices she and I both advocate.

I hope this helps!