Understanding your visitor is the underlying answer to creating a successful website. However, gathering the required information can prove to be quite a task. There are a variety of ways to gather key information about site visitors and of course the more methods you utilize and implement the greater the results.

As we’ve noted in previous blogs, persona development is crucial to your site’s success. Creating hypothetical individuals that represent your market is key to increasing calls to action. But many people struggle with ways to gather and sometimes decipher through all the data because not all data is useful data. You want information that will achieve specific business goals you have set for your company.

Continue reading Research: Getting to the Roots of Your Site Visitor

Tags: analytics, market research, market segmentation, Personas, usability
Posted in Sales & Marketing

In discussions with marketers there are often heated exchanges about “what works”. The problem I have is when it becomes clear that one side is arguing on the basis of “everyone knows”, “this is how it has always been” or even worse “I read somewhere”.

OK, clearly we can’t be an expert in everything, and doing your research is a good idea. The thing is, especially in marketing, you don’t know until you have tried.

Most tactics are not expensive to test and give pretty immediate results. Everything from a headline through to pricing can often be tested quite efficiently giving you answers rather than ideas.

A great way to test is to use small PPC campaigns. In fact Google supplies tools to compare options even down to the page level with split testing. With just a hundred or so dollars you could test a landing page, call to action and price level.

I have to say, I am a real testing geek. Everything I learned about copywriting came from reading the masters and trying out the concepts they taught. Admittedly I had the luxury of using client budgets to test with!

In the vast majority of cases even a small amount of testing can provide huge results, in terms of click throughs, conversion rates and overall profit. It’s not a one-off process either, once you have a winning formula, try to beat it. Continuously.

If you are not testing now, get started right away. You might be shocked just how much better even your favorite campaigns could be!

Tags: analytics, conversions, site-conversion-rate-testing
Posted in Conversion Optimization

Do you want to know what the worst invention technology companies came up with since the invention of the internet? These tracking tools and mechanisms that tell you everything about your site visitors from the moment they land on your page until they leave. Yes, yes I know everyone uses these tools. Bu t what a headache!

Prior to the internet, ROI for advertising was extremely difficult to measure. Companies spent millions of dollars on ad campaigns without having a real and accurate way of measuring the results of these campaigns. It made selling these campaigns a lot easier! No one knew that the conversion rate for a print ad or a TV spot. Ah, the good old days. Marketing had such mystique to it.

Years later, here comes the internet and a bunch of people who love match and statistics and accuracy and all the other things geeks love. We want to sell ads to companies and we want to show them that they are getting results from displaying these ads on our site. Or do we? It all started with good intentions I guess. But when advertisers recognized that CTR rates and nowadays PPC rates are so low, the conversations changed a lot. Online advertising rates dropped. Okay, so maybe we need to rephrase my title. Site tracking tools are great for site owners but sometimes they are bad for your marketing revenue.

Tags: analytics
Posted in Conversion Optimization, Sales & Marketing