Posts Tagged ‘what’
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How can I improve my site?
Posted on March 21st, 2012 by admin
How can I improve my site?
(in sig)
I’m hoping to get some good feedback on ‘features’ that I can add to my site. I know the design is horrid… one day I will address that. But for now I’m really focused on building functionality that will keep people interested.
The perceived worth of the services you offer can be upgraded by chaging the perception of your company – make it appear bigger than it is. 1300 Number – Contact Us are the perfect way of taking your local company to the international stage.
Here’s an overview of what it is and what it does:
It takes the popular “Show your desktop” thread from your typical forum and builds a community around that concept.
Here are some of the current features:
- add a single desktop (hrm, room for improvement here?)
- comment & vote
- tags to browse (each desktop is tagged by the user)
- private messages
- popular desktops (shown on home page)
Actually, this brings up a question about current functionality. Right now you have one and only one desktop. When you create a new one, the old one is trashed along with the comments. Do you think this should change or the current way is fine?
Ok, I’d love to hear some input. Thanks!
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Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Small
Posted on March 13th, 2012 by admin
More
Many small businesses ask me how to increase traffic to their website. This is one of the biggest hurdles facing many small businesses who manage a website, isnt it? Because the stark reality is, no traffic means no prospects, which ultimately means no returns.
Do you have an option for your clients to contact you for FREE using 1300 number and 1800 number signup? 1800 numbers are a free call within Australia.
Its a common misconception that there is one particular technique or tactic, thats going to result in a lot of new traffic. Everyone is hoping there is a simple strategy that will be much like slipping a switch. Unfortunately, thats not the case.
Traffic generation is a trial and error process; its about finding what works for YOU, and doing more of whatever that is! What works for one business may not work for another.
This is not to say that you cant follow an outline, where you plan your traffic generating strategies and work within your plan.
Heres a list of the main points which may help contribute to an increase in traffic to your site:
Blog Posting and Commenting, Interviews, Webinars, Video and Audio, etc.: If, for example, you are currently adding new content once a week, try increasing it to twice or three times a week and see what happens.
Social Media Optimization: Try increasing the amount of time you spend utilizing social networkingincreased engagement usually means more traffic.
Guest Posting: If you are not taking advantage of guest posting, try to seek out active sites you can request to post on.
SEO: Think about optimizing some of your pages/poststypically a better correlates with more traffic. On the flip side, if you are an SEO fanatic, lighten up a bit and see if you can write content that connects to people more on the emotional level and see if this in turn promotes social sharing, thus more traffic!
Hold Contests and Encourage Social Sharing: If youve used email marketing sporadically or inconsistently, try stepping it up a notch by emailing your subscribers on a weekly basis.
The best way to approach this list is to go through it and test each traffic-generating tactic individually, measuring its effectiveness over a range of time.
Increasing your site traffic is a trial and error process. You can only assess what works and what doesnt by trying different strategies. Dont compare yourself to other websites you think are similar; not only is your business unique, but so is your website.
In a nutshell, traffic generation is like donning hats, they may look fantastic on someone else, but not so much on you. They key is finding which hat works for you.
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How can I improve sale of my website – SEO
Posted on March 12th, 2012 by admin
Time spent in forums: 1 Week 2 Days 22 h 38 m 41 sec
Reputation Power: 183
Quote:
Originally Posted by SALILtheseo
My website is getting nearly 3000 visitor from search engine in US, but not getting sale,
can u tell is there is any best way to promote product of the website.
The perceived value of the services you offer can be increased by chaging the perception of your company appear bigger. 1300 Number – Contact Us are the perfect way of taking your home business to the national stage.
First off if you are selling in the US have you had an English as a first language editor go over your site or does it read like your posts? I mean no offense but I would generally avoid sites with poor English as potential scams. Even with English speakers writing our content we have it double checked for errors.
That aside if you want help diagnosing what might be the problem you will need to get a lot more specific.
- You say you have 3,000 visitors from the a SE in the US. Is that google.com? a combination of engines? etc.
How are you measuring unique visitors and have you excluded your own internal traffic?
- What time period are we looking at? 3,000 in a week, day, month, YTD?
- You said you are not getting sales. Does that mean 0 sales or not as many as you would like?
- What market are you in, or at the very least what is your sales cycle like, what is your target demographic, what is the general price point, and how unique is your offering?
- What are those visitors doing on your site? Are they bouncing on the page they land on? Visiting a few pages and leaving? Putting an item in the cart and then abandoning it?
Of course they will (hopefully) fall into more than one group with some bouncing and some doing other things. What is the breakdown?
Diagnosing a failure to convert is a simple straightforward process… IF you approach it as a scientific inquiry. You will need to gather the evidence available to you and from there form a hypothesis about why they are not converting… then test it.
While I say this is simple and straightforward many if not most companies are totally inept at it and larger companies hire consultants and marketing firms for millions to explain how to do this.
realityhack
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Crazy Egg Web Analytics – Click Tracking, Website Heatmaps and …
Posted on February 27th, 2012 by admin
Discover How Some Of Our Clients Are Using Crazy Egg
On tourism related sites in order to test button clicks, positions and layouts
Agencies:
- during the selling phase in order to convince clients that there’s a lot of work to do
The perceived worth of your company can be upgraded by chaging the perception of your company – make it appear bigger than it is. 1300 Number – Contact Us are the perfect way of taking your local company to the international stage.
- during the analysis phase, where the tool gives valuable insights on how to solve problems for the client
Website owners use Crazy Egg to predetermine the singular call to action they want the site visitor to take and to monitor if that action is taken.
A Business faculty website is using Crazy Egg in order to see where people are “hanging out” on the main landing page.
User Experience professionals who want to “revamp” landing pages to be less bulky will use Crazy Egg stats to help them decide which links/buttons/menu items stay and which ones go.
A Webmaster who launched a new front page and needed to know if it worked and if his customers understood it.
A Leading security software company having 160,000 people around the world use Crazy Egg to support downloads for everybody and improving the User Experience for their large community of users.
An International distributor of specialty technology uses Crazy Egg to identify the unique click habits of all of their various online audiences.
A website lead generation consultant uses Crazy Egg for his clients to easily convey important visitor findings.
When We Asked Our Customers What They Like About Crazy Egg,
Here Is What They Said:
On oDigger.com, we actually did a full site redesign based on the information collected from our Crazy Egg Heatmaps.”
Gal Zhovnirovsky, oDigger.com
In a nutshell, Heatmap reports allow you to:
- Optimize layout of site elements
- Find the leaks in landing pages
- Test the effectiveness of landing pages
- Monitor visits and increase conversion
- Make the most out of your marketing dollars
What elements of your pages aren’t used and what to do to change them.”
Visually identify the most popular areas of a given page.”
See How Our Customers Get The Best Out Of The Overlay Reports
Crazy Egg helped us distinguish which links our customers were clicking on.”
Nathan Decker, evo.com
See what Google Analytics is not telling you.”
Understand how users are consuming the website and enable design improvements based on this.”
Easy to understand data to inform design decisions.”
Pinpoint underperforming content.”
Here Are Some Tips From Our Customers In Order To Get The Most Out Of Scroll Map Reports
It helps you to see which parts of your pages are working and which ones are not.”
See how far your visitors are scrolling down.”
Seeing what content is the hottest right away helps you to know what future content to develop.”
Monitor site activity and add or alter content according to the findings.”
Discover The Confetti Report
Gain greater insight as to what your users are doing on your pages, both mobile and full sites.”
More accurate analytics on user activity than Google Analytics.”
See where users are clicking on your website.”
Find out what features and areas are important to your users and mapping out their journeys throughout your website.”
See what portions of your site are the most active.”
Track customers actions and improve conversions.”
See how people interact with your site in a more granular way.”
Increase your website’s conversion rate or the revenues of your website within the next 30 days… or your money back.
Show me my Heatmap
How Does Crazy Egg’s 30-Second Set-Up Work?
When you log into your account all you have to do is specify which page you want to analyze.
Then give a name to your page and specify it’s address.
The last step of the set-up consists of a copy/paste. If you don’t know how to copy and paste a JavaScript snippet to your website, you can ask your webmaster. It takes no more than 30 seconds to do (yes, it’s literally that quick and easy).
What Will You See In Your Reports?
Total number of pages that Crazy Egg is tracking
Number of visitors who visited your page
Details of each page which is tracked
Tracking status
Display Heatmap and other reports for a specific page
Crazy Egg vs Clicktale vs Google Analytics
About this comparison chart: Hopefully, you’ll forgive us for the admittedly biased comparison. We’re putting our best foot forward. This chart is probably the quickest way we can communicate Crazy Egg’s comparative benefits in a single image.
Crazy Egg
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How Do I Improve My Web Site Conversion
Posted on October 6th, 2011 by admin
How Do I Improve My Web Site Conversion Rate? Part 3
by Steve Jackson
In a recent teleconference I was asked a number of questions about conversion and how to improve a website conversion rate. In the first article of this series we covered what was meant by conversion, what you should look for and what factors have the biggest impact on conversion rates. The second article covered measurement, looking at measurement tools, the differences between log and browser based measurement, average conversion rates and why it helps to track how people use your website. In the final part of this series well be looking at where traffic arrives from and how that effects conversion, specific search engine queries, PPC issues and other general topics.
The perceived worth of the services you offer can be upgraded by chaging the perception of your company – make it appear bigger than it is. 1300 Number – Contact Us are the perfect way of taking your local business to the international stage.
Question 1
How do keywords effect your conversion rate in terms of SEO/SEM (search engine optimization/marketing)?
Keywords are important for two reasons.
Firstly by using the keywords which relate to your reader you get listed by search engines accordingly meaning that people can find you. Notice that I phrased the last sentence carefully. I said keywords which relate to your reader. Its important to understand that what you consider key words might not be the keywords your visitors are using to reach you.
Secondly and from my point of view more importantly keywords help to qualify your audience after they have arrived at your web site. If you click through from a search engine to a web site and the headline or first paragraph dont strike you as relevant to what youre looking for youre likely to bounce (in other words leave the site). The key words you use help to assure your visitor they are in the right place.
Good use of keywords embedded in your copy and content will firstly help you to attract the right kind of people and secondly help to effectively qualify them as being in the right place. If you manage to attract and qualify them, the reader is then more likely to click through to find out more about what your website is about. If they do that, there is a much higher chance that they will convert to your desired goal.
A good SEO or SEM company in my opinion is one that understands that its about answering the visitors needs, not simply packing the website with related key words and phrases.
Question 2
What Is PPC (pay per click) and is it worth the money? Does it effect conversion?
Pay per click (or PPC) is when you set-up an account with a search engine (Google or Overture for instance) and write ads which appear when a certain keyword is requested by a visitor to the search engine. If a visitor clicks your ad you pay a predefined fee to the search engine. PPC done correctly is a good way to drive people interested in your product or services to your website and clever PPC marketing should positively effect conversion.
One of our clients recently asked me about a PPC campaign (run by another company) that was converting poorly. The reason it was converting poorly is because the ad was optimized to be clicked through and not optimized to qualify the reader. To explain in more detail, the product in the ad was a mobility scooter costing $1850. The ad explained you could get great discounts on mobility scooters and therefore the click through on the ad was quite high. Therefore it was an expensive campaign for our client which didnt convert into sales.
In my opinion this particular ad should try to qualify the reader more by having the price and location in the ad. My reasoning is that a fair percentage of visitors who are interesting in purchasing an expensive item like a mobility scooter will want to see it first. Therefore a good way to actually sell this particular product is to tell the reader the price and location so they know without going to the website whether the product is for them. If they click through and look it doesnt matter if they dont purchase but then come to the physical store and buy because they know the product is in their home town. Price in the ad pre-qualifies that they have the money. So if they have the money, are in the market and are in the same city there is a much higher chance of a purchase.
Another thing you should remember in PPC campaigns is the relevance of the ad to your landing page. Its an often overlooked problem that the PPC ad doesnt relate directly to the landing page. In the case of our client they did this correctly by linking the Google ads directly to the page about mobility scooters. A common mistake however is to link the ads to a home page which expects the visitor to work to find what it is youre selling.
Too many PPC companies work on click through as their gauge of success. They see it as their job to drive the traffic rather than convert it. The idea of successful PPC marketing is simple economics. You spend less than you earn from the visitors that arrive and make a profit. However ads that use the shotgun approach arent doing you any favors. Ads that youre paying for should bring in very interested and pre-qualified visitors that convert at a higher level than free traffic.
Question 3.
When people first arrive at your website they are a mixed crowd (coming from everywhere with different expectations) how do you cater for them all?
You cant please everyone and its fatal to try to do so. You have to figure out your best chance of business from your audience and cater to that area of business. If you have a large varied audience or are running some kind of portal then you should have a clear strategy to attract people to dedicated sections of your website.
For instance in the field of small business there are 1000s of different wants, needs and requirements to cater for. Your landing page (home or index page) is going to have a very hard time catering for all of those people effectively. So quite simply dont try. Figure out by measuring how people find you, what the biggest segment of traffic look for and cater for that group. Then take the second biggest segment of traffic and develop a different landing page for them, using content (and embedded keywords) more relevant to their wants and needs. Its possible to develop big websites which cater for a variety of different audiences but not all in the same page.
For instance, a small business owner in need of a sample contract of employment isnt immediately going to be interested in accountancy services. He might be interested in a resources section which has sample documents for download and lawyers who cater for small businesses. If therefore this visitor arrived to find a website with a plethora of choices when all he wants is a sample contract then he is likely to leave.
If however a section of your website was dedicated solely to business documents and sample downloads for small businesses and the visitor clicks through to this page from a search engine, there is a much higher chance he will browse to find what he is looking for. If then he sees that you have more resources (like an accountancy portal link) then he may even bookmark your site before leaving and thats what you want, repeat visitors.
Question 4.
I know about testing, but how much traffic (people landing on the test page) do you
need to determine if something is not working?
Again the focus is where your visitors are coming from. If you have well targeted traffic arriving at your pages (i.e. PPC or strategic links) a fair sample size is when 1000 people have visited the site (or test page). At least thats the minimum we use to make any decisions with. When traffic is less targeted and bounce rates are higher then you have to make a decision based on larger numbers. If for instance one week 500 visitors arrived at your website which werent your target audience, its fair to say that you should discount them from your testing.
It all depends on you knowing where your visitors are coming from which requires a good measurement tool.
Question 5.
Is it really necessary to be listed at the top of the search engines? What are the other alternatives that clients should consider or is this perceived ‘holy grail’ really something we should all be chasing?
Being at the top of the search engines is not entirely necessary but it certainly helps. You should try to get a listing on the first page of results for your chosen keywords. Put simply if people have to look through to link number 8074 on Google to read about your products and services then youre not likely to be found.
For example if you do a Google search for improving website conversion our site appears in the top position as weve optimized for that key phrase. We hoped that this is what our potential visitor will key in when doing a search. However while this was part of our strategy it was only a very small part as you cannot rely on search engine algorithms to pay your bills.
The alternative and safety net to relying on the all powerful search engine algorithm is to find strategic partners who like what you do and want to re-print your information. That is what people go online to do, find information and surprisingly not enough businesses realize this.
Strategic linking while harder work than submitting your site to search engines works very well. The subscription conversion rate average from our top strategic partners is 31%. By that I mean nearly a 3rd of the visits coming from the partners who re-print our articles subscribe. Because the partners were working with are well known and highly respected they are a great qualification vehicle. Upon visiting our partner website, the visitor reads what weve said (in articles, forum posts, blog entries, advertisements etc.), like what they see, click through to our site and subscribe. In this way the reader arrives warmed up to what you have to say so the conversion rate is much improved.
The added benefit of this is that the more outbound links you have pointing to you, the higher your ranking gets on many of the search engines. Another benefit is that even if you cant get listed on search engines directly for all your keywords, some of the partner sites will do so due to their own visibility, so more paths flow to you. This is a far more effective strategy than SEO/SEM alone.
Summary
This article has been about one subject, relevance. You begin with keywords which relate to and qualify your readers. This helps with search engine visibility and means your visitors feel like they are in the right place when they arrive at your website. PPC campaigns should qualify your audience initially and when clicked should land at a highly relevant and specific landing page. This means your advertisements are working for you and not simply driving traffic which isnt targeted well enough. Your web site message should not try to cater for everyone, it should be specific and relevant to a particular target market. This means that you can focus your message in relation to what your visitor wants. Finally you should find strategic partners who work in related industries with similar target audiences to your own. This means you improve your own visibility to your target audience. In simple terms being relevant means putting the right offer in front of the right people and by getting more of the right people to your website, you improve your conversion rates considerably.
Author: Steve Jackson, Editor – Conversion Chronicles
Steve Jackson is CEO of Aboavista , editor of The Conversion Chronicles and a published writer. You can get a free copy of his e-book sent to you upon subscription to the Chronicles web site.
DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware.
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Nine Reasons Your Site Isn't Driving Sales | Ace Solution Africa …
Posted on October 3rd, 2011 by admin
By Ann Handley
I have a problem. I’m trying to find replacement windows for my 60-year-old Cape Cod house near Boston, but I don’t want the vinyl builder-grade options in stock at the home-improvement superstores. Iconic architect Royal Barry Wills designed the cozy Cape, and he had strong opinions about what was good and bad. I’m trying to do right by the guy.
Do you have the ability for your clients to contact you for FREE using 1300 number and 1800 number signup? 1800 services are a free call inside Australia.
When I Google “residential replacement windows” or use other relevant phrases, the searches bring up manufacturer sites that show me various window types, sizes and features. They even ask me to sign up for their e-mail list–but they don’t give me a good reason to become a lead. That’s because not one is a resource for what I need: advice on the ins and outs of renovating an architecturally significant home, and on the pros and cons of wood versus vinyl versus aluminum clad. Instead, they try to sell me stuff.
In short, they aren’t talking about my needs, but they sure do have plenty to say about themselves. I see these kinds of missed opportunities all the time. Home renovation–like many things in life–is an expensive, confusing prospect. The companies that understand that serving is the new selling will be the ones customers buy from.
Your website should be an extension of your sales staff: It should help generate and nurture leads by educating prospects (a role traditionally played by salespeople). Like a good salesperson, it shouldn’t just sit around and wait for the phone to ring.
So what about your website? Is it all about you, or does it talk about your customers–and in a language they can relate to? Are you using your website as an opportunity to solve problems for would-be buyers? Are you demonstrating in an honest, empathetic way how your company and its products or services can lessen their pain?
If your website is not helping you generate and nurture leads, consider these possible causes:
You haven’t defined goals. The overarching goal of your website is to attract people and invite them to get more involved with your business, whether or not you sell directly to them online. You want visitors to stick around a while and get interested in you and what you sell, right? Have you identified the primary goal of your site? Or secondary goals? What action do you want site visitors to take when they land on your site? Being clear on that informs everything else: design, navigation, content, search engine strategy and so on.
More Content, More Leads
Your content hasn’t changed since Bush was in office (even the second term of the second Bush). If your site isn’t continually evolving and updating, it becomes a static brochure for your business. If you don’t have regularly updated content, such as a blog, you aren’t creating new pages for Google to index. Remember, the more content you create, the more traffic and leads your business will get. ( See sidebar .)
You aren’t creating momentum. You can change this by creating a path for your customers to get more involved with you. To move them along, include relevant calls to action or “triggers” on each page of your site, not just on your homepage. That means on every blog post or any other piece of content you produce. It may sound obvious, but many companies don’t embrace the opportunity to create a path to deeper involvement and (ultimately) conversion.
You don’t have customer interaction. Incorporating a blog or other social content into your online presence gives your customers a sense of who you are. Use these tools to speak to your customers directly, honestly and in your own (human) voice. This is an enormous opportunity both to educate them on how you can help and why they should rely on you–and to hear what they have to say to each other in the forum you’ve created. Regularly updated content that has a sense of personality and purpose builds trust with your would-be customers, and that’s a beautiful place to begin a relationship.
You can’t update your site without the tech guy. Can you update at least some elements without calling IT? This is where blogs and other social platforms come in handy, because you can update them yourself. Why is that important? Because you need to update at least some parts of your site frequently and easily, both to save budget and to create a more immediate flow of content–for potential customers and for search engines.
You sound like everyone else. Is your site full of Frankenspeak, i.e., corporate jargon-rich nonsense? Or, instead, does it sound like it was penned by a human? Most companies spend more time worrying about site design than about the words on the page. But the most memorable sites convey personality and perspective in their homepage content, which immediately sets thems apart. Try this test: If you mask your logo and site design, can you still tell–by the voice of the text–that it’s your site, or do you sound like any one of your competitors?
You didn’t optimize. Can search engines find your site? Does your regularly refreshed, updated, readable content contain search terms that relate to your proficiency? How well are they attracting customers to you? One easy way to boost your search rankings is to continually link descriptive keywords back to related pages on your own site. Doing so helps search engines understand what your site is about.
You aren’t measuring anything. Do you know how your website is converting browsers into buyers? Have you identified what paths they typically take? Do you know which pages perform best for you? Or what content visitors are interacting with the most? Are you using analytics tools to measure the traffic to your site, to track online conversions and to measure ROI on your marketing campaigns? Free tools like Google Analytics are a great place to start.
You put hip before happening. Every element on your homepage should support the goals you’ve identified. That means avoiding design elements that might be hip or cool but ultimately are just distracting. (My pet peeve: web pages that talk to me.)
Put clarity (useful, predictable, efficient, logical) before creative (cool, splashy, flashy, beautiful).
So how about your website? Is it generating leads by serving potential customers, or is it just sitting around and waiting?
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How Do I Improve My Web Site Conversion Rate? Part 1
Posted on September 10th, 2011 by admin
How Do I Improve My Web Site Conversion Rate? Part 1
by Steve Jackson
In a recent teleconference, I was asked a number of questions about specific problems people were having and what I would do if I were in their position. This is the first article in a three part series that we’ll publish over the next few weeks. It will answer specific queries from the teleconference, in the belief that the answers will also help you to solve some of your issues.
The perceived worth of the services you offer can be increased by chaging the perception of your company appear bigger. 1300 Number – Contact Us are the perfect way of taking your home company to the national stage.
Question 1. What do you mean by conversion? Do you mean getting someone to answer the simplest call to action such as “read more here” or actually selling a product or service?
What you’re talking about here are two different ways to measure your website. “Read More Here” is what I would call a variable affecting your conversion rate. I call these kinds of variables “Micro Conversions” because they are all small (microscopic even) steps toward a full conversion. A micro conversion is something that you should test and measure. “Read More Here” might get a worse click-through rate than “Click here to find out how to win a month’s supply of vintage wine.” So by improving this click through, you get the person browsing to take another small step toward your final website goal. By doing this, you improve your overall conversion rate, which in this case is to get someone to register or subscribe to win a month’s supply of vintage wine. Micro conversions can be tracked by measuring the click through of links, or the read time for content, or the bounce rate for headlines and copy. Full conversion is persuading your visitors to do what you want them to do. In my example, it would be registering to win wine, but it could be subscribe to a newsletter, download an audio file, buy a product, sell a service or whatever, but it should reflect what your website’s business objective is.
Question 2. What strategies would you suggest when there is no “online” conversion possible? I need them to call me for more info, to learn more and to eventually give them a proposal.
There is no such thing as “no online conversion”. You’re looking for leads who will eventually phone you but the visitor is the one with the power. If you don’t give your visitors a reason to let you continue to have a dialog with them, then they won’t. Using opt-in is one answer. If, for instance, you ask for a name, email address and telephone number from your visitor so that he can then get useful information from you in the form of a free report or audio file, you do two things. First, you qualify the visitor as someone who is interested in your services, and second, you get permission to contact him/her again. You need to build into your website a powerful reason for your visitors to give you permission to email or talk to them rather than expect someone to pick up the phone. In your case, you say they need to ring you to learn more. Put what they need to learn into some form that they can opt in to get, such as a white paper, report or audio file. Then you have a conversion rate that is the percentage of people who give you permission to continue the dialog with them by giving you their email address or phone number so that they can learn more about your offering. People visit a website to get information, so give them the means to get it.
Question 3. What if the product you sell is also sold by several others on other websites? How do you get someone who is browsing the Internet to notice your site and want to order from you?
In offline marketing, a successful tactic is differentiation. It’s no different online. If you stand out from your competition, then you get noticed. What makes you different (not necessarily better, just different) from your competition? A USP makes an enormous difference to conversion rates. We improved subscriptions by 11% per month for six months by differentiating ourselves. The second point is that your site should be of use to your visitor. The one thing that all people online have in common is that when they browse they are looking for information. So give your visitors what they want in the form of education. If your potential customers become educated about your offer and take away something useful from your website, they will remember you over your competition.
Question 4. How do you get the address, telephone number and name of the owner of any company that you’re trying to get in touch with to see if they would be interested in what you sell?
You need to get permission from the visitor to get that information. It can’t be done with any tracking tools available. There is a very good reason for this and it’s called privacy. If you or I went online and could have our names, addresses and phone numbers tracked by software, it could be potentially dangerous. Imagine if you were online and were talking in a chat room about going on holiday in a faraway land for the next few weeks and your personal information could be gathered. The person who sees that information then knows when to go to your address and rob you while you’re away. It’s OK to track browser behavior because no personal details are ever tracked. I for one hope it stays that way.
Question 5. What should one look for in the web logs to determine conversion rates?
Web log files are a problem because they record everything. Web logs record every request to your site’s pages from search engine indexes, to email harvester software, link harvesters and visitors. So first you need to filter out from log files the information that isn’t relevant to visitors. Then you’re looking for unique visitors (not visits) or unique sites. Once you have that filtered figure, you have the approximate number of visitors coming to your site, still not close to 100% because of proxy servers recording multiple visitors as one browser, but it’s as close as you can get with log files. Then you divide the number of people who complete the conversion action by the total visitors. That is your conversion rate. If you can get software that doesn’t use logs like IRIS METRICS or log software that works out the filtering like Web Trends, it makes your job much easier.
Question 6. What factors have the biggest impact on conversions on my web site?
The short answer is differentiation, target marketing, your site’s relevance to your desired audience, measurement, experimentation, and most importantly trust.
Differentiation is the first step in the process. You must find a way to stand out from the competition. It should start with the domain name, and continue throughout your entire website’s strategy.
Then in your content, your copy and your design, you must smack your target audience between the eyes. You have to find out exactly what it is they want and answer the wants and needs of that audience.
Relevance is hugely important, too. If you’re running a campaign on Overture or Google with certain keywords, your audience should land at exactly the right place after typing those keywords and finding your website. So if the audience types “Red Vintage Wine” into Overture and your link appears, on clicking through they should be taken to the page on your site talking all about and selling red vintage wine. They shouldn’t land at the home page of your website which has a small link to the red vintage wine section and 5 or 6 other types of wine for sale. Measuring and experimenting is then the key to improving conversion rates. You can’t improve conversion without measurement unless you’re making educated guesses or you’re just plain lucky. So get a good measurement system, learn what it’s all about, and test your changes. Finally and most importantly trust. You can’t sell anything if your audience doesn’t trust you. You can help them to trust you by prominently displaying your privacy policy, your shipping procedure, the fact that you use SSL encrypted protection for the forms on your site, that hundreds of satisfied customers have already bought from your store, that you make it very easy to find contact information such as a name and address as well as support via email. You could educate via your website with articles and ‘how to sections’ or newsletters and instill trust over time. In short, your prospect must trust you to part with his or her money.
What’s next?
In part two of this series , we’ll be looking at measurement software tools, the pros and cons of logs versus ASP vendors, average conversion rates, why it helps to track visitor activity using the software which is available, and what you should test and tweak to improve conversion rates.
Steve Jackson is CEO of Aboavista, editor of The Conversion Chronicles and a published writer. Visit his web site at http://www.conversionchronicles.com for more information.
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How Do I Improve My Web Site Conversion Rate? Part 1
Posted on September 1st, 2011 by admin
How Do I Improve My Web Site Conversion Rate? Part 1
by Steve Jackson
In a recent teleconference, I was asked a number of questions about specific problems people were having and what I would do if I were in their position. This is the first article in a three part series that we’ll publish over the next few weeks. It will answer specific queries from the teleconference, in the belief that the answers will also help you to solve some of your issues.
The perceived value of the services you offer can be increased by making your company appear bigger. 1300 Number – Contact Us are the perfect way of taking your home company to the international stage.
Question 1. What do you mean by conversion? Do you mean getting someone to answer the simplest call to action such as “read more here” or actually selling a product or service?
What you’re talking about here are two different ways to measure your website. “Read More Here” is what I would call a variable affecting your conversion rate. I call these kinds of variables “Micro Conversions” because they are all small (microscopic even) steps toward a full conversion. A micro conversion is something that you should test and measure. “Read More Here” might get a worse click-through rate than “Click here to find out how to win a month’s supply of vintage wine.” So by improving this click through, you get the person browsing to take another small step toward your final website goal. By doing this, you improve your overall conversion rate, which in this case is to get someone to register or subscribe to win a month’s supply of vintage wine. Micro conversions can be tracked by measuring the click through of links, or the read time for content, or the bounce rate for headlines and copy. Full conversion is persuading your visitors to do what you want them to do. In my example, it would be registering to win wine, but it could be subscribe to a newsletter, download an audio file, buy a product, sell a service or whatever, but it should reflect what your website’s business objective is.
Question 2. What strategies would you suggest when there is no “online” conversion possible? I need them to call me for more info, to learn more and to eventually give them a proposal.
There is no such thing as “no online conversion”. You’re looking for leads who will eventually phone you but the visitor is the one with the power. If you don’t give your visitors a reason to let you continue to have a dialog with them, then they won’t. Using opt-in is one answer. If, for instance, you ask for a name, email address and telephone number from your visitor so that he can then get useful information from you in the form of a free report or audio file, you do two things. First, you qualify the visitor as someone who is interested in your services, and second, you get permission to contact him/her again. You need to build into your website a powerful reason for your visitors to give you permission to email or talk to them rather than expect someone to pick up the phone. In your case, you say they need to ring you to learn more. Put what they need to learn into some form that they can opt in to get, such as a white paper, report or audio file. Then you have a conversion rate that is the percentage of people who give you permission to continue the dialog with them by giving you their email address or phone number so that they can learn more about your offering. People visit a website to get information, so give them the means to get it.
Question 3. What if the product you sell is also sold by several others on other websites? How do you get someone who is browsing the Internet to notice your site and want to order from you?
In offline marketing, a successful tactic is differentiation. It’s no different online. If you stand out from your competition, then you get noticed. What makes you different (not necessarily better, just different) from your competition? A USP makes an enormous difference to conversion rates. We improved subscriptions by 11% per month for six months by differentiating ourselves. The second point is that your site should be of use to your visitor. The one thing that all people online have in common is that when they browse they are looking for information. So give your visitors what they want in the form of education. If your potential customers become educated about your offer and take away something useful from your website, they will remember you over your competition.
Question 4. How do you get the address, telephone number and name of the owner of any company that you’re trying to get in touch with to see if they would be interested in what you sell?
You need to get permission from the visitor to get that information. It can’t be done with any tracking tools available. There is a very good reason for this and it’s called privacy. If you or I went online and could have our names, addresses and phone numbers tracked by software, it could be potentially dangerous. Imagine if you were online and were talking in a chat room about going on holiday in a faraway land for the next few weeks and your personal information could be gathered. The person who sees that information then knows when to go to your address and rob you while you’re away. It’s OK to track browser behavior because no personal details are ever tracked. I for one hope it stays that way.
Question 5. What should one look for in the web logs to determine conversion rates?
Web log files are a problem because they record everything. Web logs record every request to your site’s pages from search engine indexes, to email harvester software, link harvesters and visitors. So first you need to filter out from log files the information that isn’t relevant to visitors. Then you’re looking for unique visitors (not visits) or unique sites. Once you have that filtered figure, you have the approximate number of visitors coming to your site, still not close to 100% because of proxy servers recording multiple visitors as one browser, but it’s as close as you can get with log files. Then you divide the number of people who complete the conversion action by the total visitors. That is your conversion rate. If you can get software that doesn’t use logs like IRIS METRICS or log software that works out the filtering like Web Trends, it makes your job much easier.
Question 6. What factors have the biggest impact on conversions on my web site?
The short answer is differentiation, target marketing, your site’s relevance to your desired audience, measurement, experimentation, and most importantly trust.
Differentiation is the first step in the process. You must find a way to stand out from the competition. It should start with the domain name, and continue throughout your entire website’s strategy.
Then in your content, your copy and your design, you must smack your target audience between the eyes. You have to find out exactly what it is they want and answer the wants and needs of that audience.
Relevance is hugely important, too. If you’re running a campaign on Overture or Google with certain keywords, your audience should land at exactly the right place after typing those keywords and finding your website. So if the audience types “Red Vintage Wine” into Overture and your link appears, on clicking through they should be taken to the page on your site talking all about and selling red vintage wine. They shouldn’t land at the home page of your website which has a small link to the red vintage wine section and 5 or 6 other types of wine for sale. Measuring and experimenting is then the key to improving conversion rates. You can’t improve conversion without measurement unless you’re making educated guesses or you’re just plain lucky. So get a good measurement system, learn what it’s all about, and test your changes. Finally and most importantly trust. You can’t sell anything if your audience doesn’t trust you. You can help them to trust you by prominently displaying your privacy policy, your shipping procedure, the fact that you use SSL encrypted protection for the forms on your site, that hundreds of satisfied customers have already bought from your store, that you make it very easy to find contact information such as a name and address as well as support via email. You could educate via your website with articles and ‘how to sections’ or newsletters and instill trust over time. In short, your prospect must trust you to part with his or her money.
What’s next?
In part two of this series , we’ll be looking at measurement software tools, the pros and cons of logs versus ASP vendors, average conversion rates, why it helps to track visitor activity using the software which is available, and what you should test and tweak to improve conversion rates.
Steve Jackson is CEO of Aboavista, editor of The Conversion Chronicles and a published writer. Visit his web site at http://www.conversionchronicles.com for more information.
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Nine Reasons Your Site Isn't Driving Sales
Posted on August 20th, 2011 by admin
Home > Online Business > Building a Website > Nine Reasons Your Site Isn’t Driving Sales
Nine Reasons Your Site Isn’t Driving Sales
To make your website an extenstion of your sales staff, create content that educates visitors and helps convert them into leads. Serving is the new selling.
Do you have an option for your customers to contact you for FREE using 1300 number and 1800 number signup? 1800 services are a free call within Australia.
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I have a problem. I’m trying to find replacement windows for my 60-year-old Cape Cod house near Boston, but I don’t want the vinyl builder-grade options in stock at the home-improvement superstores. Iconic architect Royal Barry Wills designed the cozy Cape, and he had strong opinions about what was good and bad. I’m trying to do right by the guy.
When I Google “residential replacement windows” or use other relevant phrases, the searches bring up manufacturer sites that show me various window types, sizes and features. They even ask me to sign up for their e-mail list–but they don’t give me a good reason to become a lead. That’s because not one is a resource for what I need: advice on the ins and outs of renovating an architecturally significant home, and on the pros and cons of wood versus vinyl versus aluminum clad. Instead, they try to sell me stuff.
In short, they aren’t talking about my needs, but they sure do have plenty to say about themselves. I see these kinds of missed opportunities all the time. Home renovation–like many things in life–is an expensive, confusing prospect. The companies that understand that serving is the new selling will be the ones customers buy from.
Your website should be an extension of your sales staff: It should help generate and nurture leads by educating prospects (a role traditionally played by salespeople). Like a good salesperson, it shouldn’t just sit around and wait for the phone to ring.
So what about your website? Is it all about you, or does it talk about your customers–and in a language they can relate to? Are you using your website as an opportunity to solve problems for would-be buyers? Are you demonstrating in an honest, empathetic way how your company and its products or services can lessen their pain?
If your website is not helping you generate and nurture leads, consider these possible causes:
You haven’t defined goals. The overarching goal of your website is to attract people and invite them to get more involved with your business, whether or not you sell directly to them online. You want visitors to stick around a while and get interested in you and what you sell, right? Have you identified the primary goal of your site? Or secondary goals? What action do you want site visitors to take when they land on your site? Being clear on that informs everything else: design, navigation, content, search engine strategy and so on.
More Content, More Leads
Your content hasn’t changed since Bush was in office (even the second term of the second Bush). If your site isn’t continually evolving and updating, it becomes a static brochure for your business. If you don’t have regularly updated content, such as a blog, you aren’t creating new pages for Google to index. Remember, the more content you create, the more traffic and leads your business will get. ( See sidebar .)
You aren’t creating momentum. You can change this by creating a path for your customers to get more involved with you. To move them along, include relevant calls to action or “triggers” on each page of your site, not just on your homepage. That means on every blog post or any other piece of content you produce. It may sound obvious, but many companies don’t embrace the opportunity to create a path to deeper involvement and (ultimately) conversion.
You don’t have customer interaction. Incorporating a blog or other social content into your online presence gives your customers a sense of who you are. Use these tools to speak to your customers directly, honestly and in your own (human) voice. This is an enormous opportunity both to educate them on how you can help and why they should rely on you–and to hear what they have to say to each other in the forum you’ve created. Regularly updated content that has a sense of personality and purpose builds trust with your would-be customers, and that’s a beautiful place to begin a relationship.
You can’t update your site without the tech guy. Can you update at least some elements without calling IT? This is where blogs and other social platforms come in handy, because you can update them yourself. Why is that important? Because you need to update at least some parts of your site frequently and easily, both to save budget and to create a more immediate flow of content–for potential customers and for search engines.
You sound like everyone else. Is your site full of Frankenspeak, i.e., corporate jargon-rich nonsense? Or, instead, does it sound like it was penned by a human? Most companies spend more time worrying about site design than about the words on the page. But the most memorable sites convey personality and perspective in their homepage content, which immediately sets thems apart. Try this test: If you mask your logo and site design, can you still tell–by the voice of the text–that it’s your site, or do you sound like any one of your competitors?
You didn’t optimize. Can search engines find your site? Does your regularly refreshed, updated, readable content contain search terms that relate to your proficiency? How well are they attracting customers to you? One easy way to boost your search rankings is to continually link descriptive keywords back to related pages on your own site. Doing so helps search engines understand what your site is about.
You aren’t measuring anything. Do you know how your website is converting browsers into buyers? Have you identified what paths they typically take? Do you know which pages perform best for you? Or what content visitors are interacting with the most? Are you using analytics tools to measure the traffic to your site, to track online conversions and to measure ROI on your marketing campaigns? Free tools like Google Analytics are a great place to start.
You put hip before happening. Every element on your homepage should support the goals you’ve identified. That means avoiding design elements that might be hip or cool but ultimately are just distracting. (My pet peeve: web pages that talk to me.)
Put clarity (useful, predictable, efficient, logical) before creative (cool, splashy, flashy, beautiful).
So how about your website? Is it generating leads by serving potential customers, or is it just sitting around and waiting?
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How Do I Improve My Web Site Conversion Rate? Part 1
Posted on August 17th, 2011 by admin
How Do I Improve My Web Site Conversion Rate? Part 1
by Steve Jackson
In a recent teleconference, I was asked a number of questions about specific problems people were having and what I would do if I were in their position. This is the first article in a three part series that we’ll publish over the next few weeks. It will answer specific queries from the teleconference, in the belief that the answers will also help you to solve some of your issues.
The perceived worth of your company can be upgraded by making your company – make it appear bigger than it is. 1300 Number – Contact Us are the perfect way of taking your home business to the international stage.
Question 1. What do you mean by conversion? Do you mean getting someone to answer the simplest call to action such as “read more here” or actually selling a product or service?
What you’re talking about here are two different ways to measure your website. “Read More Here” is what I would call a variable affecting your conversion rate. I call these kinds of variables “Micro Conversions” because they are all small (microscopic even) steps toward a full conversion. A micro conversion is something that you should test and measure. “Read More Here” might get a worse click-through rate than “Click here to find out how to win a month’s supply of vintage wine.” So by improving this click through, you get the person browsing to take another small step toward your final website goal. By doing this, you improve your overall conversion rate, which in this case is to get someone to register or subscribe to win a month’s supply of vintage wine. Micro conversions can be tracked by measuring the click through of links, or the read time for content, or the bounce rate for headlines and copy. Full conversion is persuading your visitors to do what you want them to do. In my example, it would be registering to win wine, but it could be subscribe to a newsletter, download an audio file, buy a product, sell a service or whatever, but it should reflect what your website’s business objective is.
Question 2. What strategies would you suggest when there is no “online” conversion possible? I need them to call me for more info, to learn more and to eventually give them a proposal.
There is no such thing as “no online conversion”. You’re looking for leads who will eventually phone you but the visitor is the one with the power. If you don’t give your visitors a reason to let you continue to have a dialog with them, then they won’t. Using opt-in is one answer. If, for instance, you ask for a name, email address and telephone number from your visitor so that he can then get useful information from you in the form of a free report or audio file, you do two things. First, you qualify the visitor as someone who is interested in your services, and second, you get permission to contact him/her again. You need to build into your website a powerful reason for your visitors to give you permission to email or talk to them rather than expect someone to pick up the phone. In your case, you say they need to ring you to learn more. Put what they need to learn into some form that they can opt in to get, such as a white paper, report or audio file. Then you have a conversion rate that is the percentage of people who give you permission to continue the dialog with them by giving you their email address or phone number so that they can learn more about your offering. People visit a website to get information, so give them the means to get it.
Question 3. What if the product you sell is also sold by several others on other websites? How do you get someone who is browsing the Internet to notice your site and want to order from you?
In offline marketing, a successful tactic is differentiation. It’s no different online. If you stand out from your competition, then you get noticed. What makes you different (not necessarily better, just different) from your competition? A USP makes an enormous difference to conversion rates. We improved subscriptions by 11% per month for six months by differentiating ourselves. The second point is that your site should be of use to your visitor. The one thing that all people online have in common is that when they browse they are looking for information. So give your visitors what they want in the form of education. If your potential customers become educated about your offer and take away something useful from your website, they will remember you over your competition.
Question 4. How do you get the address, telephone number and name of the owner of any company that you’re trying to get in touch with to see if they would be interested in what you sell?
You need to get permission from the visitor to get that information. It can’t be done with any tracking tools available. There is a very good reason for this and it’s called privacy. If you or I went online and could have our names, addresses and phone numbers tracked by software, it could be potentially dangerous. Imagine if you were online and were talking in a chat room about going on holiday in a faraway land for the next few weeks and your personal information could be gathered. The person who sees that information then knows when to go to your address and rob you while you’re away. It’s OK to track browser behavior because no personal details are ever tracked. I for one hope it stays that way.
Question 5. What should one look for in the web logs to determine conversion rates?
Web log files are a problem because they record everything. Web logs record every request to your site’s pages from search engine indexes, to email harvester software, link harvesters and visitors. So first you need to filter out from log files the information that isn’t relevant to visitors. Then you’re looking for unique visitors (not visits) or unique sites. Once you have that filtered figure, you have the approximate number of visitors coming to your site, still not close to 100% because of proxy servers recording multiple visitors as one browser, but it’s as close as you can get with log files. Then you divide the number of people who complete the conversion action by the total visitors. That is your conversion rate. If you can get software that doesn’t use logs like IRIS METRICS or log software that works out the filtering like Web Trends, it makes your job much easier.
Question 6. What factors have the biggest impact on conversions on my web site?
The short answer is differentiation, target marketing, your site’s relevance to your desired audience, measurement, experimentation, and most importantly trust.
Differentiation is the first step in the process. You must find a way to stand out from the competition. It should start with the domain name, and continue throughout your entire website’s strategy.
Then in your content, your copy and your design, you must smack your target audience between the eyes. You have to find out exactly what it is they want and answer the wants and needs of that audience.
Relevance is hugely important, too. If you’re running a campaign on Overture or Google with certain keywords, your audience should land at exactly the right place after typing those keywords and finding your website. So if the audience types “Red Vintage Wine” into Overture and your link appears, on clicking through they should be taken to the page on your site talking all about and selling red vintage wine. They shouldn’t land at the home page of your website which has a small link to the red vintage wine section and 5 or 6 other types of wine for sale. Measuring and experimenting is then the key to improving conversion rates. You can’t improve conversion without measurement unless you’re making educated guesses or you’re just plain lucky. So get a good measurement system, learn what it’s all about, and test your changes. Finally and most importantly trust. You can’t sell anything if your audience doesn’t trust you. You can help them to trust you by prominently displaying your privacy policy, your shipping procedure, the fact that you use SSL encrypted protection for the forms on your site, that hundreds of satisfied customers have already bought from your store, that you make it very easy to find contact information such as a name and address as well as support via email. You could educate via your website with articles and ‘how to sections’ or newsletters and instill trust over time. In short, your prospect must trust you to part with his or her money.
What’s next?
In part two of this series , we’ll be looking at measurement software tools, the pros and cons of logs versus ASP vendors, average conversion rates, why it helps to track visitor activity using the software which is available, and what you should test and tweak to improve conversion rates.
Steve Jackson is CEO of Aboavista, editor of The Conversion Chronicles and a published writer. Visit his web site at http://www.conversionchronicles.com for more information.