Archive for June, 2008
Bryan Eisenberg Interview from Search Engine Watch
Just before his keynote presentation at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto the other week, Search Engine Watch executive editor Kevin Heisler caught up with FutureNow co-founder Bryan Eisenberg to chat about website optimization, split-testing, word-of-mouth marketing, social commerce, personas, and his forthcoming book. With Kevin’s kind permission, we’ve reprinted the interview below. Enjoy!
Kevin Heisler: Tell us about your new book, Always Be Testing.
Bryan Eisenberg: A little over a year ago Google offered everyone a free A/B and multivariate testing tool called Google Website Optimizer. Adoption has been great, but people are still experiencing challenges understanding what to test and how to get an ROI out of testing. Always Be Testing is the answer to that issue. To quote one of the early reviewers, John Jantsch, “I’m a big fan of GO, but this is the first thing I’ve read that really makes it seem practical and simple.” The book is expected to launch at Search Engine Strategies San Jose.
KH: That’s a brilliant title. It’s got that whole “David Mamet-Glengarry Glen Ross-A/B split” thing going for it. Can you do a good Alec Baldwin imitation?
BE: A is for always. B is for be. T is for testing! Who gets the steak knives? Who wants third prize?
KH: So in conversion marketing, who gets the good leads?
BE: The person who best understands the personas of their prospective customers and will spend the time to continuously improve their marketing by refining the alignment between those personas, their campaigns, and their messaging.
KH: Who comes up with your book titles? Waiting For Your Cat to Bark? — that’s genius.
BE: It’s always a team effort. I’m lucky to work with some very creative people.
KH: How many books do you think you sold because people thought they were getting the new Cesar Milan Dog Whisperer book?
BE: I hope not too many. But maybe a handful of people out there who ignore marketing might also ignore book covers.
KH: Did you ever consider any other animals for the title, or was it always a cat?
BE: Both Jeffrey and I are dog owners, but it was Lisa Davis’ cat-like ways that won out.
KH: When’s the sequel, Waiting For Your Dog to Meow, coming out?
BE: Please, one book at a time. This is hard! We’re hoping that this book answers a critical question that people are facing today: how do we get a better return of our search marketing efforts?
KH: Why doesn’t anyone have the nickname “The Word-of-Mouth Marketing Whisperer”? Seems like a natural to me.
BE: I would nominate my friend Andy Sernovitz, but I doubt anyone would feel comfortable calling him a whisperer.
KH: Another one of your bestsellers is Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results. Hundreds of thousands of people have read that book or attended one of your Call to Action seminars. So is it time to change the title? Like, maybe, Call to Action: Famous Formulas to Improve Online Results That Everyone Knows But You?
BE: Thank you for the compliment. Certainly a lot of people have read the books and used it to improve their web marketing. I wish it were more people. I still think that we have a long way to go until these concepts are universally applied.
I think Always Be Testing is going to be helpful in reinforcing those concepts presented in Call to Action and making them even more actionable.
KH: On a serious note, how would you define advanced search marketing? What makes any search engine optimization (SEO) or search engine marketing (SEM) tactic advanced?
BE: I think it is really a question of scale. Good SEO and SEM are about creating ways to grab your potential visitors’ attention, creating content that is relevant to them, and providing a great experience for every keyword campaign and for every step, from the first click to conversion. Truly advanced SEM would have a better balance between driving traffic and converting that traffic.
KH: Your FutureNow blog, GrokDotCom, lists the top 10 retail sites for conversion rates each month. Those numbers aren’t real, are they? Office Depot, for example — 20.9 percent. How’s that possible?
BE: The numbers are measuring real people visiting these sites and completing purchases. They aren’t indicative of the website’s overall conversion rate — just conversions of those on the Nielsen Online panel.
KH: How do you win the paid search game? Is it a zero-sum game?
BE: Just like for every pot there is a lid, for every search term you need an incredibly persuasive and relevant landing page. You can’t afford to be generic. Too many marketers focus on the ad’s click-through rate (CTR). That’s important. However, the marketers focused on conversion rate can always outbid the marketers with lower conversion rates. It’s simple math: the more you convert, the lower your cost.
KH: You also spoke at the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit. How would you define socialommerce?
BE: According to my good friend, Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice, “Social commerce is a term for the strategy of connecting customers to customers online and leveraging those connections for commercial purpose.” In simplest terms, it’s people sharing with people their commercial experiences without marketers polluting the stream.
KH: What’s the future of search? A point-and-click barcode reader GPS iPhone linked to inventory management systems?
BE: I tend to think the future of search is related to the mobile device, not computers. I can see it working in several ways based on the pieces I see Google working on. First, I can imagine a widget that sits on your mobile phone; when you click, it calls 800-411-Goog. You tell it what you’re looking for, and it provides results (and probably some audio ads). Voice is a much easier interface than typing. You’ll also be able to take a picture of a product barcode or UPC symbol, and it will bring you back results of where you can purchase the item locally or online.
Whatever the future is, it will bring more complexity for the search engines and for the people who want to be found, and it will be seamless and friction free for the end customer.
KH: What’s the future of SEO as a profession?
BE: The search engines are definitely getting better and indexing all kinds of content and technologies. Every day they continue to refine their algorithms so they are less influenced by artificial methods and influenced more by the massive amounts of data they’re collecting.
I’m hoping marketers will get past the old world view that marketing is about driving traffic and begin to understand that today’s marketing is about providing customers, from initial awareness to purchase and hopefully to becoming evangelists. This requires careful planning of the customer journey and experience at a click-by-click level. I don’t see it going there yet, but I’m hopeful more people will read Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?
KH: You guys are kind of like the Weinstein Brothers (Miramax guys) of Internet marketing. So which one are you, Bob or Harvey?
BE: That’s the first time I’ve heard that comparison. Usually it’s the “Car Talk” guys that people compare Jeffrey and me with.
KH: Tell us about your sibling rivalry. Growing up, was it kind of like Cain and Abel?
BE: Growing up and being four and a half years apart meant Jeffrey and I didn’t really have much of a relationship. It was a little over 13 years ago that Jeffrey and I started working together, and we have been business partners and the best of friends since.
KH: What did you want to be when you grew up?
BE: Both Jeffrey and I share one passion: understanding why people do the things they do. It manifested in me becoming a social worker and counselor for years and Jeffrey becoming an investment banker. He figured out how to take that passion and his business skills and turn them into the business known as FutureNow.
KH: You spoke at webcom Montreal 2008 in May in a session entitled, “The Golden Rule of Interactive Marketing.” What would that be? Market unto others as you would have them market unto you?
BE: That’s the way most people would think about it, but that’s the old model of marketing. We explain this concept in detail in Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? The golden rule is a two-parter: He who has the gold rules. And, do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.
KH: The Brits and Europeans were wowed by your panels at SES London. What can Canadians [at SES Toronto] expect to learn from a guy from Brooklyn?
BE: Unfortunately, Brooklyn pizza doesn’t travel well, or I’d share some of that. We did manage to take a few Canadians, including SES Toronto chair Andrew Goodman, on a pizza tour of Brooklyn during SES New York. I promise to share something else that also has a good scent!
For a recap of Bryan’s SES Toronto keynote, follow the scent trail to Bryan’s post on “The Interactive Marketer 2.0“
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Editor’s Note: We can’t make the book come out any sooner, but we would like to invite you to join Bryan on Wednesday, July 9th for a free landing page optimization webinar; the first in our “Always Be Testing” webinar series, brought to you by FutureNow and the Google Website Optimizer team. Space is limited, so sign up today!
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Written by:Robert Gorell
9 Ecommerce Innovations Worth Testing On Your Own Site
Ever wonder how often other people return an item you want to buy online?
Honestly, it never occurred to me before, but now that I’ve seen Shoeline.com’s Return-O-Meter™, I wish other online retailers would borrow the idea (especially since I’ve learned it’s actually lowered returns and raised Shoeline’s conversion rate).
If you own or are in charge of a marketing budget for an e-commerce shop, you should take a close look at the latest webinar from the good people at Elastic Path Software.
In “9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now & What’s Next,” Elastic Path co-founder Jason Billingsley showcases the latest e-tail trends in these hot categories:
- Video
- Customer Service
- Real World Guided Selling
- Multi-store Retail
- Navigation
- Merchandising
- Social Shopping
- Loyalty
(If you need to bookmark the webinar for now, check out Linda’s recap at Get Elastic.)
OK. Now that you’re about to have a bunch of new ideas for cool features to add to your site, let’s not get carried away just yet. What works for Amazon, NetShops, Shoeline, Zappos, Martin + Osa, Borders.com, Endless.com, American Eagle, Shopatron.com, Backcountry.com, Knicker Picker, Vitamin Global, WineLibrary.com, and Shoeline . . . [deep breath] . . . may not work for you — which is exactly why strategy must come before tactics. Always.
How will you know if these innovations will add value to your visitors’ online shopping experience? Well, if the change you want isn’t too expensive to implement — and if it’s not overly disruptive to your current business model — try it out by running a split test.*
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*Split testing is the only way to know whether your site’s new features are A) worth keeping, or B) setting off the Return-O-Meter™. Don’t know where to begin? Join us on Wednesday, July 9th for the first installment of “Always Be Testing,” our free monthly webinar series, co produced by FutureNow and the Google Website Optimizer team.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Boost Conversions With Better Product Page Images
One of the most effective — and overlooked — ways to differentiate yourself from the competition and improve conversion is to optimize the images on your website.
Granted, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but online, your customers don’t quite have the luxury of taste, touch, or smell. So one thing we can learn from ProFlowers.com’s impressive conversion rate last month is that images matter. A lot.
But what works for one website may not work for yours. Oftentimes, the product (or service) itself dictates which strategy is most effective. For instance, if you’re selling jackets, you may want to give visitors multiple views and zoom features.
It all depends on what you’re selling and how much the customer needs to see in order to feel confident to buy.
At last month’s eMetrics Summit in San Francisco, Bryan had a chance to sit down with WilsonWeb.com’s Ralph Wilson to discuss the importance of product images and how they affect conversion. Here’s the video…
As Bryan mentions in the video, even a better looking pear can boost conversion 147%. But the power of images isn’t limited to e-commerce. When images on a B2B site don’t focus the visitor’s attention on the goal at hand, even a pretty face can push visitors away.
That’s why A/B split-testing is essential; it’s how you know the images are making a difference.
For more ideas on how you can test your way to a better conversion rate, we cordially invite you to join us on Wednesday, July 9th for our free “Always Be Testing” webinar, co-hosted by FutureNow and Google Website Optimizer.
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Editor’s Note: Don’t keep this all to yourself. Help spread the word on Facebook…
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Dear Airline Industry, Being “Least Awful” Won’t Save You
Each day it seems there’s a new headline about the latest “amenity” for which an airline plans on charging us, which, of course, causes a ripple effect as every other airline chooses to follow suit with a justification that comes across as, “Well, now that Airline X doesn’t have to give you free water, neither do we.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this sound like the opposite of the effects competition is supposed to create?
Like us, many of you are frequent fliers and are concerned about these trends. So when Jeff Eisenberg pointed out a site that highlights the fees associated with this growing phenomenon of sacrificing service to maintain pricing, I thought I’d share it with you.
For me, this illustrates a couple of things.
1.) We have surpassed the number of elements it takes to trigger over-choice behavior (aka “analysis paralysis”). Before, it was just price, departure/arrival times, and brand that influenced our flight-booking decision. Now, with so many other factors involved — multiple bags, bag surcharges, seating, drinking, and the (in my eyes) completely unforgivable “minimum stays” United just announced — has caused consumers to be put in the position of having to make a very complex decisions, which typically causes people not to choose*. The way I see it, the airline industry is headed right back to the time of the travel agent, paying someone to make sense of the mess.
Unless the travel sites can quickly adapt and easily incorporate these new elements to their functionality.
2.) The airline industry is devoid of real positive differentiation and unwilling to compete beyond price. As Jeffery pointed out in our conversation, airlines will become completely dependent on their ability to market being the “least awful.” One Philadelphia newspapers even launched a spoof of this concept last week with ads for a fake airline called Derrie-Air, which supposedly charges passengers by the pound. (Hat tip to the Influential Marketing Blog for spotting this.)
Normally I would say, “Market-capitalism to the rescue!” and insist that open competition will allow the fittest to prosper. But amid government subsidies and an apparent lack of interest by carriers to compete on something other than price, I’m skeptical this will right itself. So this is my open call to airline owners (yes, even Virgin Airlines) to reposition their fleets by differentiating themselves by meeting or exceeding customers’ wants, not just the bare minimum expectations we’ve grown accustom to by the current state of the airline industry at large.
My question to you, dear reader, is this: What ideas would you bring to bear on this problem? How would you change the company, product, or marketing to better meet the consumer’s needs, as well as the health of the industry?
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*From Barry Schwartz’s “The Paradox of Choice” presentation at TED.
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About the Author: Brian Bond is VP of Marketing and Product at FutureNow, Inc.
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Written by:Brian Bond
Information Overload: Why Less is the New More
A new report entitled Information Overload: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us was written up recently in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Commissioned by Basex, it details how information overload, particularly task interruptions, costs the Enterprise $650 billion a year in lost productivity.
That’s a very large price to pay for having everything at our fingertips, all the time, in any format.
Our decision-making processes can’t always keep up with our choices. The same challenge applies to website design and content. The Web is a fantastic place to shop, research, and be entertained, but sometimes when I’m online, I notice physical fatigue when I’m trying to figure out where to go next!
When I’m evaluating a vendor’s Services page, should I:
- Sign up for their newsletter?
- Read about the awards they’ve won?
- Look at a list of clients?
- Read the CEO’s blog?
When I’m shopping for a health supplement, should I:
- Read about related products?
- Read about their latest “green” program?
- View my empty shopping cart?
- Become an affiliate?
Even though we come to a website with the best intentions, we’re by nature drawn to the shiny distractions that marketers and designers put along our path. We go down rabbit holes in websites and sometimes by the time we find our way back to the trail, we’ve lost our momentum . . . or maybe we’ve been interrupted and have to go back to work 
So I’m wondering: How much money is lost each year because we overload our potential customers with information on our web pages? How many visitors are driven away by cluttered designs, too many messages, too many offers, and too many choices?
Here’s the problem: Marketers naturally want to use messaging, offers, promotions and more to persuade web visitors. But in their efforts, they often contribute to information overload, which is proven to hamper the decision-making process. Also, companies tend to add more content to their websites over time and rarely retire content that’s outdated or irrelevant.
The solution: Most web pages should have only one primary goal. If there are alternate options, offers, or next steps, that’s fine. But don’t interrupt the task at hand, and don’t overload your visitors with distractions.
The one exception I can think of is the homepage, which should, at a minimum, a) communicate Unique Value Proposition, and b) route visitors.
Should you remove these secondary goals and choices? Maybe, but sometimes making them less prominent is enough to move the needle. It comes down to a business decision whether your “Sizzlin’ Hot Summer Giveaway” promotion is worth distracting a certain percentage of visitors from their primary goal.
What if you don’t know the goal of all of your site’s pages? You could start with rediscovering who your customers really are, or some analysis of your website’s “data dump,” or you could hypothesize and run some tests. Sometimes the purpose of a page is simply to present options. That’s fine, but don’t distract visitors from understanding their options and making a decision.
So let’s get practical here:
- Category page primary goal = route visitors to sub-category or product page
- Product page primary goal = persuade visitors to purchase
- In the News page primary goal = build brand credibility
- Shopping cart page primary goal = get the cash!
- General content page primary goal = build persuasive momentum
Although it seems hard at first, it’s actually pretty easy to find a single, primary goal for most pages on your site. Then you have the harder task of deciding how to do away with unnecessary distractions, get rid of design clutter, and allow visitors freedom without information overload.
Sometimes having a new pair of eyes look at your site can really speed this process up.
If you’re overloading customers with info, you’re not alone. Many world-class, million-dollar sites are guilty of information overload, and even the best online marketers need to work on it constantly.
Best of luck. To avoid information overload, let’s focus on answering the three essential questions of Persuasion Architecture:
- Who are your visitors?
- What action do you want them to take?
- What will persuade them to take that action?
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About the Author: Brendan Regan is a Persuasion Analyst at FutureNow, Inc. This is his first GrokDotCom post. Welcome to the blog, Brendan!
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Written by:Brendan Regan
Do Women Respond to “Free Shipping” More Than Men?
In test after test, it seems “Free Shipping” is still a great incentive for online shoppers. I know I’m a sucker for free shipping. It just feels like, well, like I’m getting real value in the transaction when the company is going to eat the shipping costs.
Call me mean, but I like that thought.
I’ve long held a theory that women are more sensitive to shipping costs than men. I have no proof of this theory. It’s mostly anecdotal. When I talk to women about shopping online, shipping costs invariably come up as a sore topic, which is why I took notice of this discussion on the High Rankings message board about how women shop online.
Randy Cullom brought up some insight he had about shipping charges, and something he noticed with women in particular:
I’ve had two of these market research session since I first noticed the anomaly, and in each of them 80% or more of the women in the group expressed a strong or very strong dissatisfaction if the shipping and/or handling was out of whack from what they considered to be normal. As an aside, I asked those dissatisfied to write down what S&H they considered reasonable, and in all cases they were pretty much spot on with the real costs, with a little bit extra. Men seemed much more inclined to let “too costly” shipping and handling charges slide right on by. This still too small of a test group (only 60 women total between the two sessions) to be statistically sound, but the reaction has been so strong that I’m inclined to think it’s valid.
Interesting. Still not absolute proof, but it’s enough to make me ask, “How are your shipping costs helping or hurting your conversion, especially when selling to women?”
Consider setting up an exit survey when someone leaves your site to ask if shipping cost was a reason for them leaving without purchasing. If your shipping costs might be considered “high” by female consumers, what can you do about? Why not take a cue from Amazon and see if there’s an easy way for her to increase her purchase to the point that “free shipping” might make sense?
Another option: Create an incentive to purchase more products so that the shipping cost doesn’t feel as high.
For example, if you’re buying one pound of gourmet coffee for, say, $10 and the shipping is $8, there’s a good chance shipping is going to be a deal breaker. What if you tried a promotion where customers who buy 3 pounds get the fourth pound for half off. Encourage her to buy “a month’s worth of coffee.” You’re giving her a reduced price, which she’ll like. Shipping costs may go up a little to cover the extra coffee, but chances are it’s no longer 80% of the purchase price.
Obviously, you have to do what makes good business sense. These are just some suggestions. But if you’re selling to women, take a close look at your shipping charges and see if there are ways to lessen the sting for these shipping-sensitive women.
For more ideas on testing shipping costs, check out “How to Increase Shopping Cart Abandonment.”
Have you ever abandoned an online sale because you perceived the shipping costs to be too high? (I’d love to read comments from the guys as well.)
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About the Author: Holly Buchanan is a Persuasion Architect at FutureNow and co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth: Today’s Female Customer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys.
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
Free Webinar: FutureNow and Google Present “Always Be Testing”
Who: Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder & EVP at FutureNow, and Tom Leung, Business Product Manager at Google.
What: A new monthly webinar series brought to you by FutureNow and Google.
FutureNow friends and fans,
We are so excited about our new free webinar series we have just kicked off called “Always Be Testing”. It’s a monthly webinar that covers specific testing ideas, how to structure tests, and how to use Google Website Optimizer. The best part is that Google has decided to participate in it first-hand, offering the lastest tips and insights straight from Tom Leung, Google’s Business Product Manager.
Our first webinar will be on July 9th, at 12:00pm EST and last 30 minutes. The subject we will be covering will be confidence and trust-building elements on landing pages.
For more details and to sign-up to attend, visit futurenowinc.com/abtwebinar.htm
We hope you’ll attend and share this with anyone you know who is looking to begin to test their marketing or to increase their testing effectiveness.
Best Regards,
-Brian Bond
VP Marketing, FutureNow, Inc.
When: Wednesday, July 9, 2008 | 12pm EST
Where: Your computer
Why: Whether your business has just started testing, is planning to test, or has been testing for years identifying the areas and elements that have impact is often challenging. Each month, Bryan Eisenberg starts off by taking attendees on a dive deep on a specific subject area to test in your marketing and give you ideas on variation you could test. Along with these ideas each month Tom Leung will bring you useful insider tips and tricks about using Google Website Optimizer to easily test your marketing campaigns and website. Lastly, the two will team up to answer a popular question spotted on the Google Website Optimizer forums or sent in by our readers and listeners.
How much: It’s free, but space is limited so sign-up today!
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Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: May 2008
Here are the top 10 converting websites for May 2008*. These are based on Nielson Panel data and are calculators by toolbar user to final conversion.
1. ProFlowers 35.70%
2. Office Depot 31.40%
3. Blair.com 23.80%
4. FTD.com 21.30%
5. QVC 18.70%
6. CDW 17.90%
7. Lands End 17.50%
8. 1800flowers.com 16.80%
9. Drugstore.com 16.20%
10. HSN.com 15.80%
*Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts
Looks like Mother’s day certainly helped the florists, all 3 major brands are present here. This is a first appearance of Drugstore.com since we started reporting these numbers.
Additonal May Retail Benchmarks:
Page Views Per Session 13.06
Product Page Views Per Session 3.48
Average Time on Site (in seconds) 488.12
Average Items/Order 6.18
Average Order Value $122.82
Shopping Cart Conversion Rate 33.21%
Shopping Cart Abandonment 66.79%
New Visitor Conversion Rate 2.21%
On-site Search Session 14.68%
On-site Search Conversion Rate 6.56%
On-site Search Average Order Value $135.70
Marketing Summary Benchmarks:
Direct Load:
Traffic % 47.71%
Sales % 64.45%
Conversion Rate 3.64%
Natural Search:
Traffic % 13.02%
Sales % 8.27%
Conversion Rate 2.02%
Referrals:
Traffic % 6.67%
Sales % 2.27%
Referral Conversion Rate 1.46%
* Source: Coremetrics LIVEmark Benchmarks US (PDF) - UK benchmarks PDF available.
Coremetrics LIVEmark leverages aggregate performance data across more than 300 participating brands to deliver over 35 benchmark metrics addressing performance indicators such as campaign and channel effectiveness, site stickiness and conversion rates.
If you need help increasing your numbers, I know who can help you. Just ask me.
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Editor’s Note: Ambitions of seeing your e-commerce site on this list? Join Bryan and his guest, Google’s Tom Leung, on Wednesday, July 9th for our free Google Website Optimizer webinar. Space is limited, so sign-up today!
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
The Interactive Marketer 2.0
Last week, a friend was sharing war stories with me about an upcoming site launch. His highly recognizable site, which will remain anonymous in this column, rakes in billions. I congratulated him and asked how they’re going to optimize post-launch. He told me they’re pausing optimization for six months to collect enough “control” data.
Today’s interactive marketers face and make these types of decisions several times a day. At a glance, my bud’s decision seems sound. But does it hold up if the company’s goal is to maximize sales, increase conversion, increase return on marketing spend? Or even realize a speedy return on the new Web site’s cost? Probably not.
I’m sure the new site will perform better, but a significant amount of customer insight can be gained in six months, especially when comparing to the control of the old site. Are elements and pages on the site doing what they’re supposed to do? Can changes be made to move the needle even higher? How do they document that design changes were increasing revenue?
How many opportunities to improve business will be missed for six months? How much money will be left in wallets?
This story demonstrates the challenges today’s marketers face. What follows are some tips I shared during my keynote presentation at Search Engine Strategies Toronto.
You can view a sneak preview by watching the video below, and then continue with the post right below it.
Traffic and Campaigns are the Means, not the End
For decades, marketing has existed in silo-centric tubes called campaigns. Today’s interactive marketer is managing and creating more campaigns than ever, and has to keep on top of delivery and analytics technologies while juggling third parties and internal staff just to move a campaign out into the real world. Many have become quite good at this, mining for keywords, launching landing pages, and adjusting for SEO (define). The better ones are neck deep in analytics, constantly adjusting, tweaking, and chasing mostly small traffic increases.
But the marketing game isn’t playing nice and refuses to remain static. It’s morphing fast. Campaign costs are rising, and the needles are moving less for even the most effective marketers. Profitable customer behavioral insights are few. And interactive marketers are running out of ideas. So they move on to the next campaign and repeat.
Some marketers’ budgets are being choked. And optimization is the first line item to get slammed up on the butcher block.
To top it off, visitors are expecting more and paying attention less.
Pay Per Conversation, not Pay Per Click.
We recently searched for “pink roses.” The results page looked promising, with several relevant ads above the organic listings, several ads that looked enticing, and several organic links of interest. Sadly, we had to click through three ads and the top organic listing before we landed on a page that included a prominent image of pink roses.
Again, this is the result of the silo mentality. Marketers are experts at directing traffic to the front door, but lack the insight to get visitors to the products and then to the register. This results from failing to plan a persuasive scenario. I’m not saying this is easy with the long tail (define) of terms we’ve become responsible for. This is the minimum required if you expect to convert visitors.
I wonder how many of these marketers would slow down or turn off the traffic on this term and assume that the term “pink rose” doesn’t convert.
They’re thinking about campaigns, not people. And conversion rates remain flatlined. They think of the volume of click and the ad CTR (define), but forget that an ad’s objective is to initiate a conversation with a visitor. That conversation begins on the Web site.
Process, People, then Tools
This is tragic considering how many tracking, implementation, testing, and measuring tools are now available (even for free).
The interactive marketer 2.0 will understand how to optimize and plan for visitor intent, not just traffic. This marketer will spend less and get better conversions. This marketer will know what spikes the needles and how to duplicate it. A few of these marketers already exist.
Amazon is the benchmark example of embracing an optimization culture. They have good people, and testing is ingrained into the organization.
Look at the evolution of its “add to cart” strategy. This evolution reflects better attention to the customer (improved, visible and usable buttons in prominent positions) and reflects a tie-in with Amazon’s overall strategy. Rest assured, there was a cycle of optimization, testing, and customer insight that contributed to each improved element.
Pay attention to this space on Amazon. Chances are it will get even better. Look at how many times Amazon paid attention to this one area over the course of years, while many companies have never reexamined it. In fact, an Internet Retailer 500 study showed that nearly 76 percent don’t test.
The key is to have a process. One such process, persuasion architecture, is based on asking three questions:
- Who are we trying to persuade?
- What action(s) do we want them to take?
- What action do they want to take (not always identical to No. 2)
Can you see how these questions are answered in Amazon’s strategy?
Interactive Marketing Optimization: Eliminate Risks, Reap Rewards
There’s almost no downside to optimization and testing. It’s easy to make a case for keeping optimization in the budget. Throwing up things to test (a.k.a., the infinite monkey theorem) isn’t effective. You must optimize your conversations.
In conclusion, follow these steps when thinking outside the campaign.
- Get good at free tools, then pay for them. Tools aren’t the indicator of success, but having a process and the people in place to take action are.
- Set up a system for content planning and optimization. If this isn’t a top cultural priority, expect tomorrow’s customer to keep finding ways to ignore you.
- Take more time planning experiences for how people gather information and make decisions. Don’t take your content lightly or your customer will click the back button.
- Take less time idling on execution. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing wrong.
- Invest in continuous optimization. If it isn’t right, you can fix it quickly, easily, and cheaply with tools like Google Website Optimizer.
- Have better conversations, make more sales, leads, subscriptions, etc.
*Cross-posted on ClickZ.
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Editor’s Note: If you’re buried in data and looking for a better process to keep your campaigns customer-focused, accountable and metrics-driven, contact us today for a confidential and free consultation.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
See Like An Outsider In 3 Not-So-Easy (But Worth It) Steps
If you’re already an insider, this won’t be easy. Once you’re “inside the bottle,” reading the label on the outside requires serious mental contortions.
Or an outsider to come and open the bottle for you. In fact, their outsider perspective is a huge part of any consultant’s or outside copywriter’s value – so long as they’re willing to call you to the carpet over your unseen assumptions and un-named elephants.
But if you can’t bring in an actual outsider, any attempt you make to understand your reader’s or customer’s perspective will give you an edge over the head-stuck-up-their-own-bottle competition. Now for those painful (but worth it) steps…
1. Change your context
Through repeated association, things that typically go together often become fused in the mind, as if they’re supposed to go together — even if their relationship would strike an outsider as coincidental or weird. Transplanting these relationships from one context to another can allow you to see the strangeness of these connections that familiarity has made invisible to you.
This training video does an admirable job of giving insiders an outsider’s perspective. By directly comparing the medical care of a man and his dog, events and procedures that would seem normal to hospital workers (the video’s target audience) suddenly appear ridiculous because the context for evaluating them has been changed from hospital to vet’s office. The incongruity that a man is receiving worse care than a dog forces viewers to re-evaluate the “supposed to” nature of hospital procedures, as they no longer seem quite so “normal.”
Joel Greenblatt also does a nice job of this in The Little Book That Beats the Market. By moving from the stock market to of the context buying a small business such as an pizza parlor, Greenblatt liberates us from the illusion of “normalcy” that we have about wild swings in share prices. If GE’s share price moves from $25 to $50 and then back down to $25 within the span of 8 months, we think nothing of it. But that’s like saying a pizza parlor could go from being worth $10K to $20K without any major changes in the business. Changing the context allows you to see how weird stock price fluctuations really are.
So use this same technique by pretending you have to explain the Unique Value Proposition of your product or service to your grandmother or a 6th grader. Describe things through metaphor or parable, then pay attention to what doesn’t “map” well from one idea to another – especially things that strike you as odd or comical when placed into this new context. The “that’s funny” moments will become your portal to an outsider’s perspective.
2. Frame ideas like Martin Scorsese
Movie directors frame their shots in order to force viewers to focus on the intended point of action, while live stage theaters literally spotlight performers. They both make it easy for the casual observer to know exactly what to focus on, to know what’s important at that moment.
Experts and insiders benefit from a “big picture” awareness that provides similar focusing cues and mental spotlights. But outsiders, lacking the big picture, tend to see the most prominent, high-contrast stuff. In order to replicate their experience, you’ll need to mentally block your normal area of focus, to turn off your mental spotlight - so you can notice everything else.
Picture yourself as a man from Mars, with no background information whatsoever, who just landed at your website for the first time.
- What’s most visually prominent? What’s high contrast?
- What’s the most kinetic or fast-moving element?
- What parts of the experience would confuse you if you didn’t already know the back story?
- What would seem jumbled or overwhelming?
Describe the scene, website, etc. in the voice of your man from mars – and do this out loud to another person or a voice recorder.
- Where are you led astray?
- What false assumptions do you make?
- Where does confusion or uncertainty cause you to abandon the task at hand or to seek help?
And before you write this post off as hokey, keep in mind that a HUGE portion of FutureNow’s success at improving client’s conversion rates stems from this exact mental exercise (except we do it with personas instead of Martians).
OK, now that you know where the outsider will miss the important stuff and become flummoxed, go back and provide your visitors with a mental spotlight to guide their attention. Be explicit, and purposefully frame your shots – create mental images from a can’t-miss-it perspective. Be sure to tell your readers how to engage their x-ray vision to look past the merely attention grabbing to see what’s really going on.
A great offline example of this is What to Expect When You’re Expecting. The second pregnancy feels so way different because 2nd time moms know what to expect – they’ve got their mental cues in place. The book, What to Expect When You’re Expecting has become a perennial best seller and must-have for first time mothers, precisely because it does such an admirable job of providing that 2nd time experience to first time mothers.
3. Do the “which means ” exercise, then ask “Why?”
Copywriters frequently do the “which means” exercise to draw out the benefits from features and to understand the customer’s real motivations.
This compact car is a hybrid, which means it uses 25% of the gas as your current SUV . . . which means you’ll feel like gas prices are back at $1 per gallon . . . which means you can go back to eating steaks instead of ramen noodles.
What they sometimes fail to do is realize that an outsider might not know WHY a hybrid uses 25% of the gas of an SUV and will therefore ask “Why is that?” at the first “which means” statement.
Copywriters for skin care products make this mistake all the time. For example, I’ve seen plenty of skin product websites which will tell me that increased cellular turnover will lead to younger looking skin (so they’ve done one level of “which means”), but they frequently forget to add copy explaining WHY cellular turnover has this effect, leaving skin care outsiders scratching their heads, unconvinced.
So there you have it, three not-so-easy (but worth it) exercises for gaining an outsider’s perspective. Perhaps you’ll only get one or two insights per exercise, or you might get an avalanche of “a-ha” moments, but the point is that even one or two insights from an outsider’s perspective can dramatically improve the persuasive power of your website.
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About the Author: Jeff Sexton is a professional outsider (aka, Persuasion Architect) at FutureNow.
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Written by:Jeff Sexton
