Archive for the "Marketing Tips" Category
How Does Responsive Web Design Affect SEO?
The hottest new phrase in both web design and SEO is responsive design. Responsive design, in simple terms, is a way to ensure that your website is easily viewable on a variety of devices of different sizes. This is achieved through stacking of elements. When you are considering the SEO of your website, there are some important reasons to consider responsive design.
Google Considers Responsive Web Design Best Industry Practice
Image via Flickr by Robert Scoble
When talking about Search Engine Optimization, it’s important to know and follow what Google says is in. It has the largest market share of the search engines, so basically, what it says goes. Recently, Google has stated that responsive web design is the industry best practice. This means that if you have both a regular website and a mobile version, you may end up being ranked lower than someone who has a responsive design. Read the rest of this entry »
Social Integration: The Necessity of Social Media in Your Site
If you don’t have a social media presence for your website, you almost might as well not have a website at all. Ok, so it’s not quite that bad, but you really do need to have a good integration of social media. There are a lot of ways to do this, but today we are talking about why. What is the importance of using social media, and what are the consequences if you don’t?
Social Media Bumps up Your SEO
Image via Flickr by Jason A. Howie
Riddle me this – What do social media and search engines have in common? Answer – They both love fresh, new, relevant content. Because of this, they are working hand-in-hand today. Realistically, if you have a crappy social media presence, or none at all, you are likely to rank lower in the search engines. Maybe it sucks (depends on your opinion of social media), but that’s the way the world, and SEO, is going. The more social, the better. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Your PPC Campaign is Bleeding Money
When you have the perfect business, you need to make sure everyone else gets a chance to see it. With effective marketing, you get traffic to your website and you show off your products or services to the world. It’s a win-win situation. However, if you are focusing your marketing on pay-per-click (PPC), you could be hemorrhaging money. There are a variety of reasons that PPC marketing is not effective.
You Probably Aren’t Marketing in the Correct Markets
Image via Flickr by zoetnet Read the rest of this entry »
It’s Your Own Fault Your Cart Was Abandoned
Let’s be honest – as a business owner you, are doing something wrong. Now, this isn’t something to cry about, but it is important to acknowledge and understand. You can’t convert potential sales to real money unless you know why people are leaving their carts without making a purchase. So, what are some things you are doing that are causing people to abandon their carts?
Offer Long-Term Saving
Image via Flickr by the_english_guy
Whether someone wants to compare prices, they don’t have the money today, or they just wanted to get an idea of your products, many people leave their carts because they simply don’t plan to buy today. However, if you give customers a long-term cart, they are more likely to come back to you and purchase. A username and password can ensure that a customer’s cart is ready any time they are.
6 Ways To Radically Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates
High shopping cart abandonment rates is a thorn in the side of every ecommerce marketer. People load their carts, see your shipping rates, and say “adios.” Instead of being frustrated, you should see abandonment for what it really is: a big fat opportunity to slash shopping cart abandonment rates!
More than 75% of all shopping carts are abandoned, according to Listrak’s six-month shopping cart abandonment index. That means only one out of every four shoppers converts. The question is, how do you get the other three to pony up some dough?
Here are six facts you need to know to lift shopping cart and checkout conversion rates:
Fact #1. Shoppers want free shipping
Shipping costs are to blame for 44% of abandoned carts, according to Forrester. It’s the number-one cause of cart abandonment, and has been for years.
What do people want to pay for shipping? Zero dollars. Free shipping and coupon codes are everywhere. They’ve conditioned consumers to expect a deal. If you don’t have a deal, they’re going to find someone who does.
This leaves ecommerce sites with two options: Read the rest of this entry »
Improve landing page optimization by knowing customers better than their own mothers
Landing page optimization is about people, not products. You need to explain how you will change people’s lives, not what you will sell them. To do that, you need to get into their heads until you know them better than their own mothers.
Landing Page Optimization Psychology
Mothers have an uncanny ability to buy birthday presents that are almost perfect. You enjoy saltwater fishing, and she buys freshwater lures. You enjoy red wine, and she buys white. Moms are amazing, but it’s a good thing they’re not marketers.
You, savvy marketer, need to know if your customer wants red or white, marlin or trout, or software or hardware. More importantly, you need to dig into their minds to know why they want these things.
Know who you’re talking to
How well do you know your customers?
Landing Page Copywriting: Why benefits earn more conversions than features
Remember the last time you bought something at a gift shop? Maybe you were at a museum and bought a commemorative spoon or something? You probably didn’t realize it, but that experience taught you about landing page copywriting.
Landing Page Copywriting at the Museum
Whatever you bought, it was insanely overpriced. But you were feeling good. You were on vacation with the kids. You had extra money. Why not?
About a week later you probably saw the spoon and wondered, “What was I thinking?” The truth is that you weren’t thinking. You were “feeling.”
“Feeling” is stronger than thinking
Everyone wants to be logical. We want to weigh facts, consider options and make good decisions. But many times we don’t.
A/B Tests: Why a higher conversion rate is only the beginning
Become a Marketing Genius
A/B testing gives you more than a lift in conversions. If you test one page each month, you’ll notice a shift. Your marketing team will write different copy. Your design team will create different layouts. Executives will make your coffee (ok, maybe not that last one, but still).
In many ways, A/B tests are only the beginning — and that point is completely overlooked in a recent article from Wired magazine: The A/B Test: Inside the Technology That’s Changing the Rules of Business.
This article is really, really good, so check it out (the print version even has a case study). Brian Christian lays out how A/B testing has taught many companies that the opinion of the highest paid person (HiPPO) isn’t worth a hill of beans compared to data.
The article is loaded with awesome quotes:
- “Most websites suck because HiPPOs create them.” – Avinash Kaushik, Google
- “Assumptions tend to be wrong.” – Dan Siroker, Optimizely
- “In God we trust. All others, bring data.” – Bill Clerico, WePay
The article doesn’t fly off the tracks, but the crazy train starts rolling a little fast when it starts talking about results. Why should editors waste time debating headlines, it implies, when they can test them and let the results decide? And here’s another quote:
“[On a page], why do people like the ottoman better if it appears to the left of the throw rug than if it appears to the right? There’s no time to ask the question, and no reason to answer it. After all, what does it matter if you can get the right result? Keep testing, keep reacting, and save your philosophizing for the off-hours.”
A/B Testing Will Make You a Marketing Genius
Lowering your head and plowing through tests might seem efficient, but it’s really wasteful. Sure, maybe the landing page is earning more conversions, but what else have you got? The answer is nothing unless you take the time to “philosophize” about what happened.
What is the average conversion rate for ecommerce sites?
This is the question I get asked almost by everyone: “What is the average conversion rate for sites like mine?”
2-3% average conversion rate
Usually I give the text book reference answer, “According to Industry Retailer, the average conversion rate for ecommerce sites is about 2-3%.” And there is usually a sigh of relief, a pause, and then, “Whew… Cool, we’re at about 1.5%, so we’re almost average.”
Seriously?!?! You are going to be eaten alive if you’re goal is to be average. I don’t like to tell people the answer, because I feel like, “why in the world do you want to be average or even be compared to average? Stay away from average!“
The question I usually ask is: “So why do you think 98.5% of everyone that comes to your site leaves?” Usually there is a long pause, then a reflective “I’ve never thought of it that way.”
I totally understand. We’re all just struggling to keep our head above water with 1,837 more tasks to do by the end of the day. We’re running around mach 10 with our hair on fire, and barely keeping up with the infinite loop of the email stream. All the while totally ignoring the few priorities that REALLY matter to the bottom line.
So, as a savvy marketer (being one of the 10-15 people who actually read our blog), your goal is to figure out “why the heck is 98.5% not takin’ the bait?”
The 5 Reasons Why People Don’t Buy
It really comes down to 5 reasons why people end up leaving your site with their wallet in the pocket (of course for lead gen sites, it’s their valuable private information they leave with).
Boost your Christmas conversions by 10.2% with a simple JavaScript trick (code included)
Hot off the conversion press and just-in-time for Christmas.
Last year we posted about our Merry Christmas v. Happy Holidays test we ran for one of our clients. This year we decided to some landing page optimization tests with variations of the Christmas theme.
If you’ve followed our blog before, you know that creating a sense of urgency for your users to act usually increases conversions. Since we practice what we preach, we decided to run a headline on one of our client’s websites doing just that. We tested a headline that reminds them how near Christmas is. We came up with 2 variations of this headline: one that just states the days, and another that states the days, hours, minutes, and seconds and counts down in real time.
The test:
Here’s the day countdown:
10 days til Christmas.
Here’s the realtime seconds countdown, +10.2% in conversion rate:
9 days, 13:22:03 til Christmas.