As promised, here are the results from this week’s “review and draw competition.”
Continue reading Review of the reviews: Breaking the Digg Code
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Posted in (Business, Conversion Optimization)
We just launched a new affiliate program for the landing page optimization book. You can earn 40% commission ($38) for each qualified sale. The program is hosted via Click Banks. Learn more by visiting the affiliate program page. The page provides images and links that can displayed for promoting the book.
Posted in (Business, Sales & Marketing)
“Making it” gives you the “authority” and advantage over other competing companies. When your name and brand are recognized as a company, you are sought out and talked about by consumers, industry gurus, specialists, news and blog outlets, etc. Your job becomes easier in terms of reaching out, viral marketing and connecting to the public.
Continue reading The Right to be on Top
Posted in (Sales & Marketing)
WIIFM?
This should be the first and last idea in your mind when developing a marketing campaign or even the smallest tactic.
What’s In It For Me?
Answer this for everything you do and you are more likely to see results. I mean everything. Everything from your Google Adwords copy, through to your blog articles, email newsletter, white papers, or that funny video you are sure will go viral.
Heck, you need to be able to answer this next time you are handing your business card over at a networking event.
It’s Not About You!
We need to get out of the old “broadcast and consume” mindset. More than ever before our customers have distractions and they have choices. “New and improved” won’t cut it. Just being out there is doomed to failure.
- Who is your message for precisely?
- What exact needs do you address?
- How does your product or service address those needs in a beneficial way?
- Which specific benefits will the customer acquire?
- Why is this important?
Look over your work. Does it talk about who you are and why you are great? Or does it speak to a specific customer with specific needs about how your service will help them?
You have an instant where you have your prospects attention, are you going to waste it on lots of flannel about yourself or are you going to talk about issues that matter to them?
Today we can’t just interrupt our customers with our message and expect them to take notice. We need to give good reasons why they should listen, attract them and hold on to them. We need to promise value and deliver on it.
You will know this from dating, Me Me Me is not attractive. What do you have to offer? You have 10 seconds, make it good!
For the past year or so everyone has been telling us that we should stop renting an apartment and buy a house, especially since the economy is so horrible in Michigan and the prices have reached an all time low.
We started to venture out towards different real estate websites to see which ones provided the most information. We spoke to some of our friends who had recently purchased homes to see how they felt about the process and tried to learn from their mistakes. The majority of our friends referred us to these two websites: Realtor.com and RealestateOne.com. We had also heard about RealtyTrac.com and decided to invest in a membership with them.
Continue reading House Hunting Woes
Posted in (Miscellaneous)
Mother’s Day is here! So as a tribute to all those wonderful mothers (thank you very much) who put their time, sweat, tears, and passion into bringing up the next generations of entrepreneurs, CEO’s, professionals, teachers, doctors, engineers, mothers, fathers, etc. here are some cool blogs that have been dedicated to you.
Are you a last minute shopper? You have until 5 pm to enter this Sephora competition to win a free gift for your mother!
Don’t know the origin’s of mother’s day? Well our friends at How Stuff Works can clue you in with this nifty video presentation.
For design gurus out there Linda Bustos pointed out this neat gallery to mother’s day homepages for ecommerce sites.
Andy Beal gives parents tips on how to avoid getting your teenagers to hate you.
John McCain’s mom gives the details of his debut into the world 60…err…70+ years ago!
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO ALL!!!!
Posted in (Business)
Linkedin is a great networking tool that connects businesses, entrepreneurs, executives, and individuals on a daily basis. It’s a wonderful tool, but only when you can access your account.
The strangest, most bizarre occurrence happened when I received 11 simultaneous e-mails notifying me that inmails, messages, and group submissions were terminated because of a severed connection by either party.
Posted in (Conversion Optimization, Sales & Marketing)
We’ve addressed an entire section in our recently released landing page handbook to explaining the difference between exit rate and bounce rate. When each of these terms is explained, it’s very easy to assume that they are the same number, but each calculates when visitors leave a site at a different point.
A bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that leave a website within x number of seconds without visiting any other page. So if you were to search for the term “baby party favors” on Google the following would be the results:
Clicking on the first organic result would land you on the following page:
This site may look too “kid” focused and not specialized enough towards babies. So if I was not satisfied with what I initially see and close the page then I would be someone who ‘bounced’ out of the site because I didn’t navigate away from the page I landed on.
An exit rate on the other hand is the percentage of visitors that leave a website after visiting other pages on the site. So the main difference between the two is when they leave the site. So looking at our previous page, I may be intrigued enough by what I initially see to take a look at what types of baby favors they offer so I click on the top “party favors” button and am led to another page:
I like what I see so far, and am curious to see what the “Babies” section has so I click on that button and am led to:
So at this point I found what I’m looking for, but it’s a bit pricey for my budget, so I decide to exit the page and start a new search. At this point, since I’ve visited a page other than the landing page I would be calculated in the exit rate.
Both bounce rates and exit rates are very important numbers and tell you very different useful information about your site. A bounce rate is an extremely important metric to measure how well a landing page on your site does. If people are clicking on a ppc campaign or an organic search result and landing on your site but leaving before navigating to any other page then you know right away that there is a problem with your landing page and can address that.
An exit rate helps determine where there are other problems on your site. For example, if visitors click from your landing page to a category and then to the product page but before making a purchase leave, then you know that there must be something preventing them from completing the process.
Landing page optimization: The complete guide goes into detail on how to improve both your exit rate and bounce rate to improve your site performance and ultimately increase your conversion rate.
Email marketing offers a great opportunity to connect with current customer as well as potential prospects. Compare for example traditional website visitors to subscribers of an opt-in mailing list. Site visitors include those who land on the site by mistake and may not be interested in what you have to offer. An opt-in mailing list on the other hand provides a segment of visitors who are interested in a particular topic who actively chose to subscribe to your mailing list.
Continue reading 8 Best Kept Secrets To Fine-Tuning your E-mail Marketing Campaigns
Two of our friends made some changes in the last few weeks:
My friend Steven Bradley, AKA Vangogh, moved his blog and site to a new domain with a lot more focus on the great skill set he brings to the table. Yellow house hosting is now Van SEO Design. If there is one post you should not miss in April, it is Steven’s SEO monthly wrap up.
My friend Steven Snell from Vandelay Website Design started a new website, Traffikd, that focuses on marketing and social media. I read anywhere between 100 to 150 blogs every day. Every now and I then I find a blog that is packed with useful and “new” information. But that is exactly what Steven delivers in Traffikd. From Traffikd comes, Long Term Results of Social Media Success: Increased Search Engine Traffic
Continue reading From around the blogosphere
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Conversion Optimization 101
Everything you need to know about online conversion and how to increase your site conversion rates
Everything you need to know about online conversion and how to increase your site conversion rates
Personas 101: The complete guide!
5 Step tutorial to recharge your site design and copy with personas
5 Step tutorial to recharge your site design and copy with personas
Viral marketing 101: The series
Thinking about running a viral marketing campaign? Here is a good place to start
Thinking about running a viral marketing campaign? Here is a good place to start