Well sports fans, here we go.  Black Friday.  Soon, Cyber Monday.  (Forgive me for the brief digression, but did you know neither Black Friday nor Cyber Monday typically deliver results, in the form of conversions, er, sales, mainly just delivering traffic   Unsurprisingly, retail numbers thus far have been bleak, to say the least.

Retailers are hopeful however, and doing everything they can to jumpstart the economy and try to turn a profit this holiday season.  …

...continue to read "Black Friday or Bleak Friday?"

Craig Danuloff, President of ClickEquations did a fabulous job exposing how to leverage Google Quality Score to improve pay per click success during our webinar yesterday. In case you missed the webinar you can see the replay. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to get to all the questions so Craig and I will take turns answering them on our respective blogs. Enjoy part 1 of Craig’s responses on the ClickEquations blog. Then enjoy some additional questions and answers are below:

Q: How…

...continue to read "Follow-up: Google Quality Score Webinar"

“Do I really need that?”

Those are probably the 5 scariest words in website optimization today.  More and more visitors are asking themselves that question and then not buying.

They’re applying a considered purchase mindset to much lower price-points than ever before.  And most websites’ copywriting is coming up short in the face of this new challenge, since most of it was written to describe rather than to intensify desire or persuade.

So with that in mind, here’s a quick and dirty…

...continue to read "7 Ways to Win Over Reluctant Buyers"

There’s a really interesting discussion going on in the comment section of Bryan’s post – The More You Post, The Better You Rank.  Technorati released a report that found the top blogs post multiple times a day.   Bryan asked if readers prefer blogs with multiple posts or a single daily posts   The reaction has been mixed.   Some prefer multiple posts, some prefer one meaty post.

There’s an important parallel here…

...continue to read "How to Write Newsletters That People Actually Read"

Holidays or no holidays, there’s simply less money to go around.

As obvious as that statement is, many still seem to deny the equally obvious implication: you won’t keep profit margins healthy unless you actively take business away from someone else – either from direct competitors, or from businesses outside your market/category.  If the pumpkin pie gets smaller, you’ll have to cut a fatter slice in order to get the same amount of holiday pie.

But how can you do that on…

...continue to read "Optimization Tips to Bolster Holiday Sales"

In our time of economic chaos, I hope you find a slice of comfort in the wit and wisdom of Homer Simpson:

Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.

And this sage Homerism is hard to beat:

Oh, so they have Internet on computers now!

The lovable Homer Simpson can be held up as an example to the kids for many things, but probably not Homer on a diet. He isn’t the diet-and-exercise type. His…

...continue to read "Are You Optimizing the Way Homer Simpson Diets?"

It’s November and soon the pie, cookies and egg-nog will be flowing freely for a six-week gut-busting calorie fest. After that comes the resolutions. And then comes the first of February.

What does February 1st have to do with testing, you might ask?

Well, people are great with signing up for a gym membership the day after New Year’s. But the only statistic that really counts is, “how many people are still at the gym when February starts?”

Recently one of our many…

...continue to read "“My Assistant Does My Workouts For Me”"

We have worked with many demand or lead generation companies over the past 10 years. Most of the time when they come to us, they ask us to help them increase the number of people they convert into a free trial, a free download, or to create an account.

Conversion Isn’t an Event, it’s a Process

We always like to focus first on increasing the number of leads towards the top of the sales funnel. However, without the next step, consumption,…

...continue to read "Optimizing for Conversion, Ignoring Consumption"

As part of my Texas Tech series, I’ve been corresponding with West Texas entrepreneur and football fanatic (sorry for the redundancy), Tom Grimes, who has consistently offered outstanding commentary and feedback on the Texas Tech and Coach Leach phenomenon.

In fact, his last e-mail was so good and applied so well to most lead generation websites that I thought I’d share it with you directly:

“…Leach recruited the BIGGEST OFFENSIVE LINE in college football (bet it’s bigger than most pro teams as…

...continue to read "Texas Tech Tuesday – It Ain’t Just About the Website"

We’ve hated the name, but loved the medium, all along. It’s social but it’s not media!

Bryan wrote in Understanding and Aligning Social Media:

“The biggest problem I have with the term “social media” is that it isn’t media in the traditional sense. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all the others I don’t have the word count to mention aren’t media; they are platforms for interaction and networking. All the traditional media — print, broadcast, search, and so on — provide platforms for…

...continue to read "Social Media Is NOT Media"