Increasingly more people are joining the optimization crowd. Savvy marketers need to do more with less budget. Others just want to beat their competitors. No matter the motivation, optimizing your conversion rate is a no-brainer.

What seems more difficult is deciding where and what to optimize. All of us have our plates full already. Adding optimization to the heap seems uncomfortable, even painful.

It doesn’t have to be.

It may not be easy, but very little that is worthwhile ever is.

When no clear starting line…

...continue to read "What Is Your True Conversion Rate?"

Today, marks the release of my great friend, Mitch Joel’s, book Six Pixels of Separation. You may have never heard of Mitch, I promise you that you will. In Canada, Mitch Joel is considered an Internet Marketing Rock Star. It is well deserved nick name, especially if you have ever seen him present on stage. Mitch has an extremely popular marketing blog, podcast and soon to be best selling book. Mitch is also President of Twist Image – an award-winning Digital…

...continue to read "Are Six Pixels of Separation All That Keeps Us Apart?"

True “interaction” happens when request and response of pages happen in sub-second speed.  So just because people have cable and dsl connections doesn’t mean you should fill your pages with bloated code and heavy images.

In fact, the natural advantage of fast loading pages is one reason Google patented the sparse design of their home page.  They know that simplicity, speed and relevance rule the web experience, and that every millisecond counts.

Think about that time you had to connect…

...continue to read "Make Your Images Load Faster"

Want to get some great information from the comfort of your desk?

Join me on September 16th, at 12pm EDT / 9am PDT for the“Recession Marketing: From Pre-click to Post-click” webinar. I’ll be joined for this free webinar by Pay Per Click marketing expert and Founder and President of ClickEquations Craig Danuloff and David Brussin, personalization guru and Co-founder and CEO of Monetate. You’ll learn:

How persona marketing works, from end-to-end, even when times are tough. Why there’s never been a better time to…

...continue to read "2 Free Webinars and Several Conferences: Will You Join Us?"

The seconds pass by in your visitor’s mind as they arrive to your website. If they don’t bounce immediately because of poorly targeted marketing efforts and sucky landing pages, you’ll still be lucky if they’ll stick around for the next 2 minutes. It’s like every visitor to your website has a timer in her head and if she can’t complete her task in the allotted time, she is out of there.

How are you wasting your visitors time?

Does it take a…

...continue to read "The 120 Second Visitor"

Social marketing is a shiny new toy and almost everyone is wising up and getting involved, as they should. In fact, a rumor is spreading that the new Mac OS, Snow Leopard, is integrating Facebook addresses directly into its own address book app. There’s no question that social applications are becoming central to our online lives, and soon social apps will be a central part of the very operating systems we use. People are tweeting, flickring, and facebooking like mad, with…

...continue to read "Social Media Is Not the Message"

Here are the top 10 converting websites for July 2009*. These are based on Nielson Panel data and are calculated by user to final conversion. Conversion-rate data is based on visitor conversion rates, not session conversion rates: i.e., No. of unique customers/No. of unique visitors.

1. Schwan’s 35.2 2. Keurig 31.3 3. ProFlowers 26.0 4. Vitacost22.5 5. Blair 22.4 6. DrsFosterSmith.com 22.4 7. Woman Within 21.3 8. Amway Global 20.5 9. Roamans.com 18.7 10. Office Depot 17.9

*Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts

Benchmarks according to the FireClick Index

Increasing your conversion rate…

...continue to read "Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: July 2009"

Anyone can sell nutritional supplements, and many do. However, what would you think would happen to a company that stripped everything away to focus on selling magnesium supplements?

Magnesium — not something you hear about everyday, huh? It’s not really the product with the most “sex appeal.” As Patrick Sullivan, co-founder of Jigsaw Health which focuses on selling these wonderful magnesium supplements, explains:

“Magnesium is involved in over 300 enzymatic reactions in the body. It works in tandem with calcium — calcium…

...continue to read "Increase Your Search Rankings by Shrinking Your Offering"

I love Nikon. My dad had a Nikon. I bought my first Nikon SLR (an F3) when I was in college and a couple of years ago my wife brought me into the digital DSLR world by buying me a Nikon D60 for Father’s day.  So it pains me to see a company I love make such critical mistakes.

Last night, I got an email from them on my Blackberry.  Like most people, I typically just delete promotional…

...continue to read "Nikon’s Email Marketing is Out of Focus"

As I was preparing for my SES Extreme Makeover session, analyzing the lucky businesses that were chosen for a free makeover, I became fascinated with a particular e-commerce site.

There was no question that the pages on this site performed exceptionally well. Bounces were under 20 percent and the exit rates were very low. I also knew this company had been testing using Google Website Optimizer.

Clearly, this company was dedicated to continual improvement and working hard to improve its conversion rate. The analytics…

...continue to read "When Landing Page Optimization Isn’t Enough"