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 exists, most marketers will optimize in an ad hoc manner with no clear plan. Often companies will:

• Start with their newest campaign
• Start with their pet campaign
• Optimize their least favorite campaigns
• Optimize the easiest campaigns
• Optimize everything they can just a little, but never develop a method to get maximum results
• Start with the boss’ favorite campaign, least favorite campaign, and so forth

None of these are bad places to start. A little bit of optimization even in a less optimal place is better than no optimization. Still, if you’re looking for a more effective means to get rolling toward results sooner rather than later, here are a few tips.

Preface: Understand Your True Conversion Rate

While your average conversion rate is the total number of unique visitors divided by the number of unique visitors that take a conversion action, your true conversion rate is the number of people who take the action you want them to take divided by the total number of potential people who could have taken that action. Your true conversion rate takes into account how qualified the visitor is and gives you a better indication of how well your site is performing.

Look at Your Marketing Efforts

How are you bringing these people who take action to your Web site? Do they all come by directly typing your URL in their browser’s address bar? Do some search for your brand? Do some search for your category? Or your products? Do others come from organic search? Paid search? E-mails? Affiliates? Do these people come from different Web sites: Google? Bing? Yahoo? Wikipedia? Twitter? Facebook?

Define Your Prospects

You are likely targeting different audiences based on personas or demographics. You might have different efforts for each segment, maybe several efforts per segment. Each segment that was brought in by an individual marketing effort has different, sometimes intersecting, occasionally opposing scenarios (persuasion paths) based on needs, motivation, knowledge, purchase preferences, or some combination thereof.

For example, you sell Web conferencing and buy the keyword “online web conferencing.” You’ve identified three prospect segments: small office/home office, education, and marketing/sales. They all share a keyword and a landing page that gives them the content each segment needs. You might also buy more targeted keywords that send them to more segment-specific content, but they all share the same sign-up process.

Each one of these is an effort that may need to be optimized. A don’t forget your banner ads and offline media efforts, either.

Create Goals and Micro-Funnels

You cannot succeed online unless you plan for it. Specifically, you need to plan conversion goals for each effort. What actions do they want to take based on where they are in the purchase cycle? How are you going to measure them?

Again, if you sold Web conferencing, your early-buying stage goals may be to have visitors sign up for a trial or download a case study. Late-stage buyers would have paid sign up as a goal. Often, optimization means starting by adding efforts for early or middle stage. There are clearly too many businesses that expect to convert you all the way on the first visit. This may be unreasonable, depending on the audience segment and the complexity of the sale.

Each segment brought in by an individual marketing effort that navigates through their scenarios (persuasion paths) is a micro-funnel that needs to be optimized. Prioritize them!

The 80/20 Rule

The Pareto Principle is a good place to start thinking about prioritizing your optimization. It is highly likely that if you have 1,000 different efforts, about 20 percent are pulling their weight. Those 200 efforts need persistent and vigilant optimization.

Here are a few more places to start:

• Optimize your top-performing efforts, figuring out how to make them better.
• Optimize your most expensive but low-converting keywords (each one or several related terms in a group in individual marketing efforts).
• Sort out your top 200 campaigns and optimize those that are within a few percentage points of performing like a top-200 effort, then move on to your next 200.
• If you have very few efforts that perform respectably (over 10 percent true conversion rate), you may need to look at the potential market and create persuasion paths by paying attention to your market segments’ needs or your prospects’ needs at different buying stages.
• Optimize your top 20 exit pages.
• Optimize the bottom of your registration or checkout funnel and work your way up the funnel.

Your conversion rate is nothing more than the sum of the thousands of efforts and paths that prospects take through your site. Beware of averages. There is no such thing as an average person. That is why your average conversion rate is a rough indicator but virtually worthless as a way to focus your conversion optimization.

You have lots of segments that come to your Web site. They differ by demographics, psychographics, behavior, or marketing effort.

Are you optimizing by effort or by average? Tell me which and I’ll tell you what kind of success you’re having.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

I had the chance to ask Mitch a few questions about his new book, Six Pixels of Separation:

With so many Social Media books out there, how is Six Pixels of Separation different than the others?

I’m not sure that Six Pixels of Separation is a “Social Media book.” I think
it explains how some of those channels are very important to business today
and going forward, but I don’t think that’s the crux of Six Pixels of
Separation. Also, a lot of the Social Media books I have read tend to be
written by people giving their perspective of the new online channels either
through the lens of a Marketer, Consultant or Technologist. I wrote this
book as an Entrepreneur for businesspeople. Using real business language and
case stories that really illustrate how business can grow (and yes, that
includes making money). This book is the strategy, tools and tactics my
business partners and I used to grow our business (as Entrepreneurs) from no
employees in 2002 to nearly 85 full-time team members with multiple offices.
Basically, by taking part and engaging in the many online channels, my
company, Twist Image (with me as “the voice”), was able to build this
multi-million dollar business. We continue to grow by still using the same
channels. This book is much more about how to think strategically different
and engage in a much more human way in this new world. It’s also not a book
written by a pundit. It’s written from one businessperson to another. There
is also a lot of influence from the Future Now Inc. people too – especially
the work that both Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg have done. For me, and the
audience of Six Pixels of Separation, having great “scent” for your
marketing and driving to conversation is also a big part of the message in
the book.

If you think the Digital Marketing channels are so powerful and important for business, why not just publish this on your Blog? Why a book?

Yeah, I get that a lot! The reason I wrote a book in the first place – and
did not just tell people to read my Blog – is because when I go out and
speak in public (which I do about 70 events a year), it is amazing to me how
many businesses are simply not engaged online or thinking like the way
people online tend to think. So, I wrote this book using a medium they are
comfortable and used to.

That being said, I am hopeful that you (and anybody else reading this) will
pick it up. I think there is also a ton of value for those who have already
gotten a tipsy on the Kool-Aid. I have been told that there are some
different and unique perspectives even for someone who is highly engaged in
these digital channels. I’m also hopeful that you (and your community) will
see the value in passing a book like this on to clients or peers who keep
asking the questions we get asked on a daily basis.

What are some takeaways people will get from the book? What priorities do they need to focus on for the next quarter?

One of the main takeaways that I hope people get from this book is the
notion of “Digital Darwinism”. Companies quickly jump on to YouTube and post
videos, they add widgets and downloadable applications to their websites,
they start a Facebook Page and then sit around the boardroom slapping each
other on the backs and handing out lollipops for how well they have managed
to “evolve” their digital and online properties from where they were.

The general train of thoughts is that if you add Twitter or a Blog into the
mix you were able to evolve your Digital property by the simple act of
having these new channels as a part of your digital ecosystem.

Digital Darwinism favours the community, not the creator or enabler of the
content.

Digital Darwinism is what your users, community members and readers do with
your content. If you don’t have any of those, you don’t evolve (you become
extinct). If you have readers and users but they’re not active (taking part,
reading, adding their own comments, passing your information around), again,
you become extinct.

Charting a course to evolution is a process (not a campaign).

Can you continue to create content in hopes that people will connect with it
and help you evolve? Of course, but you have to do the heavy lifting at this
point. You have to be the one out there beating the drum and letting people
know that it’s not a self-promotional environment you have created, but
rather one to benefit the community. It’s easy to see why this can be
challenging. In one breath, we want people to connect to our content so they
become loyal customers. In another breath, we have to be sensitive to the
fact that the more self-promotional we are with our material the less likely
it will be that a community spawns and extends our evolution.

For me, the next quarter is about taken a very hard look at your website,
database, micro-sites, search engine marketing campaigns, web analytics and
social media platforms and make some tough decisions: which ones are
working? Which ones are duds? How are you going to open up and let your
community engage and help you “evolve”?

What other books should people be reading now?

I think you mean, besides Six Pixels of Separation? Seriously, I have broken
them down:

..    New business thinking:
o    The Cluetrain Manifesto – The End of Business as Usual, by Rick
Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger.
o    Here Comes Everybody – The Power of Organizing Without
Organizations, by Clay Shirky
o    Life After the 30-Second Spot – Energize Your Brand With a Bold Mix
of Alternatives to Traditional Advertising, by Joseph Jaffe
o    Made To Stick – Chip and Dan Heath.
o    Purple Cow – Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, by Seth
Godin
o    Re-Imagine! – Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age, by Tom Peters
o    Trust Agents, by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.
..    Tactics to get it done:
o    Call To Action, by Bryan Eisenberg and Jeffrey Eisenberg (no, I am
not sucking up!)
o    Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? – Persuading Customers When They
Ignore Marketing by Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg, and Lisa T. Davis.
o    Web Analytics – An Hour A Day, by Avinash Kaushik
o    Winning Results With Google AdWords, by Andrew Goodman.

Mitch has been one of my best supporters and he deserves our support as well. If you need more information about the book you can read a synopsis, see some videos and read testimonials from the Twist Image website. Take a couple of moments and order the book. I am sure you will enjoy it.

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 to a website on your cellular phone or use the wireless network at a busy conference. Slow sites suck!

Click here to view the embedded video.

How do you speed up your pages?

1. Run a speed test on your page.

There are several great tools that will tell you if your pages are loading slow. Here are the main ones we use here at FutureNow:

1. Web Page Analyzer

2. Yahoo! YSlow for Firebug

3. Page Speed by Google – They have also compiled a list of some other great resources and tools to speed up your website.

These tools will identify if your code, javascript, css and or images are overweight. This post will only focus on how to optimize your images once you realize they are too fat.

There are several simple tools online that you can use to optimize your image if you are not familiar with Photoshop or the equivalent to squeeze those image file sizes down.

1. Smush.it

2. Dynamic Drive

3. Web-Resizer

Here is an example of how to do it with Smush.it:

1. Copy and paste the image urls of the images you want to optimize into Smush.it.

2. Click Smush.it

3. See the results of how much your images were smushed.

4. Right click the name of the file you requested to be optimized and save it to your computer.

5. Upload those files to your server to replace the bloated ones.

People expect fast-loading pages and quick response times from websites; it’s part of their internal clock.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re dealing with visitor expectations for:

• expected content/scent,
• answers to buying concerns and questions,
• the look and feel of the site and photos,
• or, for response times

Matching or exceeding those expectations always leads to higher conversion rate.  That’s why the Persuasion Architecture framework is so consistently successful at Website Optimization.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

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 steal market share from your competitors.
• Practical tips for using your existing analytics data to assess what segmented marketing can do for your bottom line.

On September 17th, at 2pm EDT / 11am PDT join Shane Keats from McAfee, who will reveal surprising data about how long it takes customers to convert to a sale,  Jeff Goodell from research firm Harris Interactive will share results of a May survey about how online merchants can use trust and security to bring customers in and I’ll be sharing concrete solutions for e-tailers looking to reduce purchase delay and abandonment. You can register for this free webinar at “Securing the Sale: Turn Your Site’s Browsers Into Buyers” webinar.

On the road again

September 13-15th, I will be keynoting the Capterra Conference. I will be joined by some great friends and amazing speakers. Capterra, a website that connects buyers and sellers of business software, is presenting a two-day event that will bring marketing strategists and experts to Washington, DC to show you how to get the most out of your marketing efforts. You will have access to specialized presentations tailored to help software marketers attract more prospects to their websites and convert them to leads once they get there. The conference is at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. Check out www.capterraconference.com for more information.

September 23-24, I am headed to Oslo, Norway to keynote The SEM Conference. Any suggestions on what I must see as a first time visitor with only about 6 hours for site seeing?

September 28-30, 2009 Jeffrey Eisenberg, CEO of FutureNow will be keynoting the Excellence and Innovation conference in Orlando, Fl.

October 8th, join me in New York for free at Econsultancy’s Peer Summit. This is Econsultancy’s first major event in New York. I have spoken at their shows in London and they are just fabulous. Afterwards, they’ll have an open cocktail reception.

October 12-14, I’ll be in Scotsdale, AZ for The Bolo Conference. This 2.5 day conference covers search, social, mobile, email & advertising in real life conference for smaller, independently minded agencies.

October 14-15, our Chief Thinking Officer, John Quarto-vonTivadar and others from FutureNow will be headed to the Googleplex  in Mountain View, California for the Google GAAC/WOAC annual meetings.

October 19-23, I’ll be headed back to Washington, DC for the not to miss eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit.

We hope you can join us at any of these events.

How are you wasting your visitors time?

• Does it take a while for your pages to load?
• Do your database lookups take so long your visitors can go and get a snack before the results are returned?
• Do you have important content that is hidden away?
• Does it take your visitors too long to find the product they are looking for?
• Do you force visitors to pogo-stick between a category page and product pages because your category page fails to provide enough information to confidently select among the choices.
• Is it difficult to sort among choices by the factors or qualities that your visitor feels important?  Or do you  only allow sorting by price?
• Does your registration or check out process have too many steps and take to long to complete?
• Does it take several steps for your visitor to figure out their total cost including shipping?

Here is another classic way of wasting your visitors time that could easily be avoided.

Do a search on Diapers.com for “exersaucers“. You’ll notice 4 listings. 3 of them are out of stock.  But the initial search listings don’t tell you that.  The visitor has to click through to each product page, only to find out she can’t buy the item – a triple loss, as the site has simultaneously wasted the visitor’s time, frustrated the visitor, and come off as an unreliable/unprofessional business.

Placing your out of stock messaging on the category pages will prevent your visitors from repeatedly finding that the product they clicked on and started to desire is – upon their arrival on the product page – suddenly unavailable for purchase.

So while I’ve given you a valuable list and a good examples to get you started, every site has its own unique challenges, and it’s worth asking your team: how many different ways can you find to shave valuable seconds during your visitors journey to become a lead or sale?  How can you help your vistors beat their own internal clocks in order to win more business?

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

Still, at the heart of it all for marketers is the message. Never forget that these new social technologies are just new ways to communicate. And technology by itself is not persuasive. Beware not to get the media mixed up with the message.

Every status update, tweet, and inbox message is nothing more than a communication between a sender and a reader. What you say and how you say it matters. Be relevant.

E-Mail: The Original Social Media App

Plain old vanilla e-mail still rules. By the numbers, people still interact and communicate using e-mail more than any other social media app, and most companies still earn more from their e-mail campaigns than from their social media efforts.

Yet I wonder how many have put their e-mail programs on autopilot and have starting chasing shiny new objects. I recently received a disappointing e-mail from Nikon. Like most people, I typically just delete promotional e-mails, but I decided to hold on to this one, considering the headline said “My Picturetown — 20GB for just a few cents a day!”

I clicked on the call to action: “Store my photos and videos” and landed on a page offering, “Sign Up For Free” in the headline, with a form and a graphic proclaiming, “2GB FREE!” (Pictured below.) Notice how the landing page scent, or messaging connection, to the e-mail is missing.

As you can see, there’s no mention of the 20 GB at all (I wonder if it was a typo), let alone information about the e-mail’s offer of 20 GB of storage for just a few cents a day. I was wondering how few cents it actually was: 2 cents, 10 cents, or 99 cents?

Nikon clearly did not maintain scent from the e-mail to the landing page. It got my attention but didn’t maintain it on the landing page (among other things). Message matters. Nikon started with the right message but lost consistency. Someone is asleep at the wheel.

Here’s an example of an e-mail campaign from Wyndham Rewards that offers 1,000 free reward points for booking a trip:

On the landing page, I see the message about 1,000 reward points, but there’s no clear call to action. The landing page features mostly a map and some links. I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do. The call to action is weak. A simple statement of “Click Your Destination to Get Started” would have done just fine to move me through to the next step.

Bottom Line

Don’t get caught up in the flash of Web 2.0 technologies; work to understand how each works so you can use it to deliver a relevant message to your prospect. When you tear away the technology, you’re left with words and the actions they inspire — or fail to inspire. Don’t mistake the medium for the message.

A good message in any medium can be effective, and a bad message isn’t cured by Web 2.0 technologies. Remember, just because e-mail isn’t social media doesn’t mean it isn’t important and worth optimizing. Watch your message and make sure you maintain scent and clear calls to action, or even an effective message will twist in the wind.

If you have something to say, say it well and give readers clear calls to action. Give them a persuasion scenario to follow and you’ll get better results from your efforts.

Otherwise, you’ll just blend in with the noise and no one will hear you at all.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

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 requires you to follow a continuous improvement program? If you need help improving your results let us know.

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 flexes muscles, and magnesium relaxes them.  Thus, muscle relaxation is one of the many benefits of magnesium.  But you just don’t hear about magnesium as much as you hear about calcium.  And no surprise, up to 80% of Americans are deficient in magnesium.  We recognized a large void in the marketplace to make an uncool mineral, cool.”

Roy Williams consistently shares this piece of advice with business owners: those companies that try to appeal to everyone tend not to appeal to anyone. It pays to have a “sword in the stone.” Says Roy:

Advertisers rarely abandon campaigns that revolve around their Swords in the Stone. And sword campaigns tend to perform much better than those built merely upon clever ideas. A company’s Sword in the Stone embodies its core values and defines its essence, and from these flow their non-negotiable standards and their customers’ positive experiences.

Patrick Sullivan explains on his blog the 5 step process he went through to increase his search rankings for the main index page on Jigsaw Health for the term magnesium supplements. He shares his results too:

In about 4 days, Lord Google bumped us from outer-space to 27th for “magnesium supplements”.  About 10 days later, we were the second listing on page 2 (position 12)!!

Today he is #11. Obviously, something is working.

Being this focused is not only good for Google but for your visitors as well. Sites that work to clarify their sword in the stone wind up with much lower bounce rates and, more importantly, increased sales and conversions. Just ask Patrick at Jigsaw, who finally put the magnesium pieces together.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

Last night, I got an email from them on my Blackberry.  Like most people, I typically just delete promotional emails, but I decided to hold on to this one, considering the headline said “My Picturetown – 20GB for just a few cents a day!”

You can see the full email by clicking the picture below.

Broken Scent Renders Landing Page All But Useless

I clicked on their call to action “Store my photos and videos” and after the jump was offered “Sign Up For Free,” by the headline, followed by a form and a graphic proclaiming: “2GB FREE!”  Notice how all “scent” or messaging connection to the email is lost on this landing page (pictured below)?

As you can see, there’s no mention of the 20GB at all (I wonder if it was a typo), let alone information about the e-mail’s offer of 20GB storage for just a few cents a day.  I was wondering how few cents it actually is: 2 cents, 10 cents or 99 cents?

Also I couldn’t help wondering what was up with the big empty box before the sign-up form’s confirm button.  What is that for?  I tried it in multiple browsers on my Mac and even tried it on a PC, but it remained empty.  Keep in mind that I only put in that extra effort because I planned on critiquing the form.  Most potential customers won’t bother checking to see if the form renders correctly in alternate browsers/platforms – that’s why it’s the marketing team’s job!

What Nikon Should Have Done

1. I hope Nikon are testing their email marketing offers before send them to their whole list. Otherwise that’s like being there for that perfect picture moment, the once in a life-time shot, snapping the photo, and realizing you left your lens cover on.  Send out your email to a small portion of your list 5-10% and watch the metrics and website analytics to see how people behave. Then tweak accordingly.

2. Nikon’s e-mail could have directed visitors to sign-up for the free service AND THEN upgrade to the paid 20GB account (they event offer a 200GB plan). It would also have been a good idea to repeat this information both on the landing page and in a follow-up e-mail after customers signed up for their free account.

Or Nikon could have offered their e-mail subscribers the choice of services directly from within their e-mail, with two separate calls to action, maybe with the second CTA looking like: “…or upgrade to a Gold 20GB account for only $2.99 a month.”  By the way, if you’re wondering where I got that price from, I had to Google “MyPicturetown,” and then really dig into Nikon’s website to – finally! – find the pricing info in their tour pages.

3. They should make sure their form works on all platforms and browsers. I can only imagine that that box has to be the terms and conditions. Sorry but my Mac with Firefox and Safari didn’t see a thing. Everything should be tested to make sure it works.

4. Their landing page design should have better visual impact. Currently, it has all of the design sensibilities of a 3 year old taking their first picture: no focus, no impact, no clear subject and leaves you wanting.  Nikon has a great brand, known for their great visuals, but what happened to this product team?

Nikon needs to work much harder than this if they want to acquire customers.  I already have a Flickr Pro account and a Picasa account. Others like me (very much in their target market) need plenty of reasons to change what we are currently doing. Maybe next time they’ll capture me at the right moment.

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 shouted proof that someone was minding the store.

So why was its overall conversion rate painfully low?

I dug deeper into the analytics, going back and forth between the numbers and the site. Then I knew exactly what was wrong. I was curious if my staff would be able to see exactly what I saw.

As much as I’d like to brag about my staff for being brilliant (they indeed are), I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, they’re trained to look where others don’t. Without hesitation, they saw exactly what I saw.

All Is Well…on the Surface

The marketing was good and relevant, the site was well designed, the landing pages and product pages were sticky, and traffic seemed to move through the site with ease. Even the checkout process was good. Instead, the site suffered from a severe persuasion scenario problem.

The site attracted interested prospects and gave them enough big call-to-action buttons and shiny products to browse, but made it difficult, even impossible, for prospects to gain any resolve to buy the right product for them. This is a site with a slow drip. Prospects are falling off one by one in hundreds of different places. It’s proof that landing page optimization isn’t enough.

Moving Beyond Best Practices, Usability, and Testing

Joel Spolsky best summed up this site’s dilemma in “User Interface Design for Programmers“:

Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a night club it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with plenty of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.

The site is nice, well lit, well run, but not selling. So how do you begin fixing the problem? First, you have to understand it a bit.

We created a simple, one-dimensional persona who was early in her buying process. She knew she needed a certain product but didn’t know where to start. The site sells sporting recreational goods with the average price point in the hundreds of dollars. This isn’t an impulse-buy type of site.

We clicked through the site as this persona and, no matter where we started, we ended up hitting a virtual brick wall, confused and frustrated. The site seems to have good prices but little guidance on what products are best for the beginner. The site even offers packages to make it easier for the customer.

Yet it didn’t help the persona answer the question: which is the right package for me? Even when we were a persona further along in the buying process, we still had a heck of time sorting and finding the right products for our need.

Simple persuasion issues not addressed on product pages and category landing pages are the Lilliputians sucking the lifeblood out of the site’s conversion rate. Proof again that too many sites spend way too much time and money on best practices and page performance to the detriment of site performance.

The Good News

This site will get a makeover that will undoubtedly stop many of the drips. Some solutions are as simple as adding a little copy to category pages, creating several pages specifically addressing the needs of different buyers, and leveraging some great content already on the site.

The site can serve as a lesson to those of you who have come up short on your optimization expectations. It can remind you to optimize not just for better page performance but also for the actual visitor using those pages.

Here are a few steps you can take if you’re suffering from a slow-drip persuasion scenario problem:

1. Start with a simple persona, putting her in a typical buying process for your product or service.
2. Click through the site as that persona, doing your best to pretend that you don’t know where the content she needs is. Is it easy for her to find? Did she get distracted by something else? Does the content do what you intended it to do: does it move users forward through the site and give them greater resolve that they have found or will find the right product for them?
3. Run a usability test. Sometimes it’s hard to see your site with fresh eyes; you may need to bring in some help.
4. Remember that site engagement metrics, like bounce and exit rates, click-throughs, and time spent on site, are important key performance indicators. If your site’s engagement metrics look healthy and your conversion rate remains low or unchanged, you must now focus on selling and persuading the customer, not designing the right button or searching for a better hero image on a landing page or even finding better qualified traffic. You will likely need to create some content that will help visitors find the product they need and want. That’s a persuasion issue, not a usability or best practices issue.

Are you spinning your wheels, looking at your site analytics and running out of things to optimize or test? If you’re willing to share your situation with my ClickZ readers, tell me your story. My staff and I will select one or two sites to look under the hood of and share findings in a future column.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

Your objective

Your challenge: You launch a great concept of a campaign, or on your website and weeks or months later you see something similar your competitor is now doing.

Your exercise: Go through all your current campaigns, website and landing pages that use stock images, and make sure your competitors aren’t using anything similar.

Some of you may remember the graph with the curved arrow on our FutureNow homepage. For those of you who don’t here is a screenshot:

When we first launched the new design of our website in June of last year no one was using anything exactly like it and then several websites and campaigns used something similar like this banner on the MarketingExperiments homepage:

I have seen several other similar ones as well. You should expect that a relevant and appropriate will resonate with other businesses as well. So we knew when we updated all the content on the FutureNowInc website this past week that was one of the images that was yanked. There are a couple of other stock photos courtesy of ShutterStock on the website, and hopefully they’ll remain unique to us for a while.

The main takeaway: unlike rotisserie chicken, you can’t “set it and forget it” when it comes to online marketing.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

1. ProFlowers 24.0
2. Vitacost 23.3
3. 1800Flowers 19.5
4. Roamans19.2
5. Office Depot 18.5
6. Blair 17.3
7. QVC 17.0
8. Victoria’s Secret 16.8
9. DrsFosterSmith.com 16.4
10. Amazon 16.4

*Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts

Benchmarks according to the FireClick Index

Increasing your conversion rate requires you to follow a continuous improvement program? If you need help improving your results let us know.

We began to dig deeper. We learned that the client, an online software service, was pushing current customers through a key selling page we were optimizing. Because these customers had already converted and were simply on their way to sign in, it was causing noise in the data, canceling out any movement we might have seen otherwise.

I instructed one analyst, a competitive type who takes great pride in delivering results for our clients, to segment his way out of sadness. The analyst was able to shortly report some very positive results underneath the noise.

He segmented out current customers and was able to analyze optimization results using cleaner data. Simple. And overlooked, more often than you’d think.

Of course, segments can be used to filter out visitor noise, but they can also be used to keep a close eye on specific campaigns and events and to hunt for opportunities. Let’s look at a few ways you can use segments to get a better idea of why visitors do what they do on your site.

First, for the sake of simplification, I’ll refer to segmenting in the free Google Analytics tool, but know that segmentation is available in almost any major analytics offerings. While viewing visitors by segments isn’t new or novel, it’s becoming easier to do.

What Are Segments?

Google Analytics calls them advanced segments. Here is its official definition:

Advanced Segmentation is a tool you can use to slice and dice your Analytics data with great precision. Advanced segments allow you to choose what types of visits you want to be considered when generating the data for a report.

If you find that you have a large amount of data but you’re having a hard time filtering the information into a report, you can easily create your own segments or use our default segments and apply them to any report instead of creating different filters for each profile. Use advanced segments to further understand, anticipate and react to your customers by identifying key trends and common behaviors.

Ideas for Happy Segmenting

Let’s start with a few ideas courtesy of ROI Revolution. Here’s one specifically for e-commerce sites:

If you have any sort of membership programs, tracking returning transactions and customer retention is a great way to increase revenue. Using the New vs. Returning report is a very basic way of examining these trends, but it’s based on the Google Analytics cookie. People surf from multiple browsers and multiple computers, but if you have a membership program or the ability to track customer accounts, chances are you will know whether someone is a return customer…

You can create an advanced segment to zoom in on only those with the “return” tag.

Now monitor your retention efforts. You’re testing out a new coupon program? Did it boost your return customer transactions? Did it boost overall revenue? Now you can find out.

And another:

The Top Landing Pages report is great if you’re only interested in bounce metrics, but what if you want to see how much money a landing page generated? One way of getting at this data is by creating an advanced segment for each landing page.

Once you apply these segments to your reports, you can see all traffic that originated at a specific landing page. In addition to revenue, try analyzing time on site, internal site searches, and clickpath data. You can use the information that you collect here to supplement your Google Website Optimizer reports with additional metrics. If one landing page generates more orders but the other generates more revenue, which is the true victor?

In our practice, we look at several segments by default. The new vs. returning visitor segmentation is always helpful. This segmentation allows us to see how well a site is doing with first-time unique visitors compared to returning visitors. It gives us insight into the length of the buying cycle and can help us determine if a site has credibility problems.

We also do a lot of persona-based segmenting and segmenting by buying stage. But that is another, much longer column.

You can also set up segments to track how visitors might be behaving based on traffic source, such as why one traffic source, such as affiliate traffic, is outperforming your own PPC (define) campaigns. The possibilities are endless and fun, and can be very profitable.

For lead-gen sites, segments can be set up to cross-analyze conversion rate among content pieces that people visit. You can then drill-down and learn why Whitepaper B converts at a higher rate than Case Study A.

Maybe you just produced a few new product demos and videos to sell your goods and you’d like to know if they’re working. In Google Analytics, you can easily set up event segments and isolate the traffic that has actually watched your new video events. Are those visitors indeed converting higher than those who don’t see a video?

Get some more ideas directly from Google and Omniture.

Last Words and Caution

One caution: Segments can be used to torture data into saying whatever you want. Resist the urge to segment and segment and then segment again until you see the positive result you’re looking for. Simply use it as a way to either zoom in on a specific visitor behavior compared to a control of some kind or as a way to filter out unqualified, or noisy, traffic.

If you’re a little bit of an analytics junkie but have hesitated to jump into segments, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Jump into segments, the water is warm. You don’t need to be an analytics ninja to set up a few helpful segments. Remember, metrics based on averages produce average results.

Have any interesting lessons from your segments? Tell us all about it.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

To do web analytics correctly you have to make a to-do list regularly.

That list should be done monthly or weekly depending on your organizational needs and should include:

• What marketing efforts or parts of your site have challenges.
• What you think needs to be improved.
• What things you want to test.

It should also include (based on your results and your resources):

• What efforts you should do less of.
• What efforts you should do more of.

Are you currently generating a to-do list to keep your goals on target?

I’ve got many other secrets to share on how to turn your web analytics into a money making machine, but I’ll wait to share those at Search Engine Strategies. Will you be there?

Do you have any tips you want to share?

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

Many companies don’t fully understand what to do with social media. They don’t see the path to benefit from it. Others have tried using it and walked away not seeing the value of social media. Others still don’t get it at all, and have left themselves completely to the mercy of the online mobs.

Most of us are somewhere in between.

Social media is at its best when used as a tool to listen and interact with buyers in the early-to-middle stages of their buying cycle. This is the time to focus on providing consumers with content that matters to their buying process. While it’s possible to direct sell and find customers “in the market” today, it’s also difficult. Most of today’s companies are overly obsessed with late-stage buyers; thus, this kind of thinking seems to them less valuable.

What It Can Do

Relationship building, goodwill, and improved customer service are what social media can do for you. Also, social media can:

• Help your company communicate with early- and middle-stage buyers more effectively and push them closer to a sale.
• Help your customers communicate the bad and the good, with you and everyone else they know.
• Help you listen to what potential buyers in your sector are talking about.
• Help you find opportunities to delight customers.
• Push you to become more focused on the customer.

What It Can’t Do

If you think putting up a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page will build huge gobs of closable traffic overnight, you’re kidding yourself. Relationships need nurturing. Social media can’t:

• Drive hundreds of thousands of new qualified visitors (yet) to your site or store.
• Let you take control of the customer dialogue about your company. Those days are long gone.
• Be your primary channel for marketing your mid- to large-sized company.

More on Buying Stages

A short example: early-stage buyers have only identified a need (e.g., “I need a winter vacation this year”). Middle-stage buyers know approximately what they want (e.g., “I want to go to Florida this summer”). Late-stage buyers know exactly what they want (e.g., “I’m going to Florida and I’m making reservations and buying plane and park tickets now”).

Do you think someone in early or middle stage might be influenced to by social media? If you aren’t convinced, look at what happened to United Airlines.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Anybody who is thinking about going on a winter vacation and happens to cross the “United Breaks Guitars” video (now watched over 3,000,000 times) will think twice about United. That is a negative influence on early-to-middle stage buyers.

Now, say it’s 10:30 a.m., you’re starting to think about lunch, and you come across this video?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Still, Not Everyone’s Convinced of Social Media’s Value

Patricio Robles, tech reporter at Econsultancy, recently wrote specifically about monetizing Twitter and real-time search. I agree, because Robles was talking about social media as an ad platform.

Where we part in our agreement is in thinking that real-time search and social media have no monetary value. Remember, social media can build relationships, though not paid traffic generation.

Some Practical Steps for Getting More From Social Media

• Reward customers who talk about your company in social media, both good and bad.
• Remember, bad word of mouth can be good for your brand too.
• Quit talking about yourself all the time. It gets old, really. Talk about your customers. Heck, just share a joke to break things up so you aren’t “wewe-ing” all over yourself.
• Unconvinced that social media has legs or is a match for your company? Test it. Offer a social media specific promo code and see if it gets traction.
• Use social media to take an interest in your customers needs. For instance, are you selling items in a vertical sector? Search for “follow” and “friend” people in that space. Add value to the conversation about their needs. (Early-stage buyer prospecting.)
• Use it to meet people. Meeting people is good.

Where’s the Value for You?

Social media isn’t everything people are hoping it will be, yet. Still, there’s value in participating and investing resources to be a part of the online 2.0 conversation. Just temper your expectation, and use it for what it’s good for.

Have you had to prove that social media has value to someone?

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

There are dozens of these exercises that you need to do to achieve the proper fitness level for maximum persuasionability.

Today, I’d like you to focus on identifying the value that your visitor needs, while differentiating yourself from your competitors. This exercise works equally well for retail as it does for business to business products or services.

First, how this works for retail:

Pick a few of your products and find the same model (or something similar if you are selling non-branded items) on at least 2 of your competitors’ websites.

Print off the product descriptions for each and as you go through your product description find the copy on your competitors’ descriptions that say approximately the same thing (even if it is in slightly different words).

A Retail Example:

As a working example, I’ll choose the digital camera Sony DSC-W80 (it’s a bit older now and fewer retailers have it in stock today). Take a look at the description for the Sony DSC-W80 from these retailers below:

They all are pretty much identical in what they say. They may say it in different formats, some in sparse bullet points, others with the details a bit more fleshed out, but essentially they aren’t providing the visitor with any unique, new information from which to make a purchase decision.

This is what Amazon figured out early is one of the advantages of having review information. If all you are going to provide is the manufacture information, you can not communicate anything of value differently to your visitors other than price (and competing on price alone is not the best strategy).

Unless of course you’re in a commodity business, in which case the only thing to communicate that has any value is your differentiator. What would you bet that all the retailers above would strongly object to being described as being the commodity business — despite that by their action and inaction they are treating their product precisely like a undifferentiated commodity.

So once you realize there is nothing very different in your description from your competitors,  how can you find out what is of value to your visitors? In Amazon’s case it is reviews. Let’s look at the summary of reviews for this product on Amazon using the Pluribo plugin for Firefox:

Almost all the reviews talk about the speed of the camera as a key benefit. Now go back to all those retailers and notice how not one listed speed anywhere in the description. This is where all the customers are seeing “value” in this camera –  don’t you think your visitors who haven’t yet made that decision to buy might find “speed” as important? What you should be doing is incorporating copy that plays on speed as an important aspect of the product. If you don’t have the benefit of all these reviews, it is your responsibility if you want increased sales to find out these key benefits and communicate them. Someone is going to sell that camera to that customer — and if it’s isn’t you, then that’s your fault.

B2B Product or Services Example

On the B2B side, let’s look at online meeting or conferencing software as an example, since so many people are familiar with it.

If most of what you are saying is that you can easily give presentations on both Mac and PCs, that people can meet online all across the globe, that you can use the product for training, sales or collaboration, is that seriously enough to differentiate you from all your other competitors? As Bruno might say, “Ich don’t think so.”

Take a look at competitors who offer similar solutions and focus on the benefits that differentiate you. You still need to include some of these basics so that people know that you work on both the Mac and PC — because if all your competitors offer the same benefit it almost “converts” the benefit into a plain ol’ feature –  but you need to find out why your potential customers would choose you over your competitors.

Keep in mind as you (and your competitors) evolve your online efforts, you need to evolve this approach as well.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

August 10th-14th, I will be at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. On top of my advisory board responsibilities, I will be doing a few sessions including an Extreme Makeover Session with my buddy Ethan Giffin from GrooveCommerce. You should enter to win a free makeover if you are planning on attending.

September 14th, I will be keynoting the Capterra Conference. I will be joined by some great friends and amazing speakers. Capterra, a website that connects buyers and sellers of business software, is presenting a two-day event that will bring marketing strategists and experts to Washington, DC to show you how to get the most out of your marketing efforts. You will have access to specialized presentations tailored to help software marketers attract more prospects to their websites and convert them to leads once they get there. The conference is September 13-15, 2009 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. Check out www.capterraconference.com for more information.

October 8th, join me in New York for free at Econsultancy’s Peer Summit. This is Econsultancy’s first major event in New York. I have spoken at their shows in London and they are just fabulous.

We are also planning on hosting several webinars in the late summer and fall. Stay tuned and I hope to see you soon.

Have a wonderful and safe 4th of July for those of you in the United States.

On June 18th, I posted a conversion rate exercise on this blog. Two simple exercises to help others understand why they should do business with you. Several people emailed me examples of what they did. However, I did want to point out two companies that took this “free” advice seriously and implemented it.

The first are my buddies from the segmentation, targeting and personalization platform extraordinaire, Monetate. They were at the Internet Retailer Trade show when they saw this exercise and realized how powerful the TwitterVP is in explaining to attendees what they do.

Empowers segmenting of traffic, targeting offers and messages to personalize the site experience, increasing conversion and AOV with zero I.T.

This is pretty solid! But more impressive was the second exercise about the “25 interesting things about you” which they turned into “25 Online Marketing Challenges You Can Meet and Beat with Monetate.” What do you think of this?

It makes me proud to be an advisor to Monetate because they took an idea and just executed it. I did not help them with this exercise at all.

A second example comes from renown photographer and educator Jim Miotke from BetterPhoto.com. He came up with several TwitterVPs and instead of just settling on one, he decided to ask his customers and followers to vote on it. Think that could generate some good word of mouth for his business of teaching photography?

Here are his choices: (if you care to vote, visit his BetterPhoto Jim Twitter profile).

Even if what they tried isn’t perfect, they now have a basis for continued experimenting and refining. But they got it done… have you?

If they are your competitors I’d watch out.

1. ProFlowers 38.6
2. Office Depot 28.0
3. Online Retail Total 25.6
4. Vitacost.com 25.0
5. Quixtar 23.4
6. ;Blair 23.4
7. Roamans22.6
8. 1800Flowers 20.5
9. Woman Within19.6
10. Spiegel 18.20

*Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts

Benchmarks according to the FireClick Index

Why were shoppers abandoning their carts?

46% of online shoppers said high shipping charges were a “very important reason” for emptying carts. Is free shipping a must in this economy? Have you tested personalized shipping offers based on location?

Other reasons for abandonment included:

• Wanted to comparison shop: 37% – Are you saving their cart for at least 30 days, so they can return to it?
• Lack of money: 36% - Can you make them an offer they can’t refuse?
• Wanted to look for a coupon: 27% – Are you prompting them to look for coupons? It could be costing you a huge percentage of sales.
• Wanted to shop offline: 26% - Are you offering them options to pick up items in store?
• Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24% - Find a way to GTC. Get The Cash!!!
• Item unavailable at checkout: 23% – Ooooops! This has to be dealt with on the product page or it will erode your brand trust.
• Couldn’t find customer support: 22% – This could be dealt with by using POA – point of action assurances (see the video below).
• Security concerns: 21% – This is also handled with point of action assurances and establishing more trust in your website.

Do you think you may need a cart whisperer? How many of these have you tried to deal with recently? Are you testing and optimizing you shopping cart? If not, why?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

This one is from Harry and David:

Here is one that shows an ordinary product like paper, that is hard to distinguish, in an extraordinary way:

Do you have a product image that tells a story? One that invites visitors to imagine owning your product? Please share it with us by adding a link below. The best ones I’ll add to this post and link to as well.

Some pet peeves around bad product images include:

• Not showing enough detail
• Not being able to enlarge or zoom
• Only showing one side of a product (especially in clothes)
• Showing color swatches of variations but not showing the actual products with those choices
• Linda Bustos from the GetElastic blog said it yesterday, show off your clothing on the right size model.

Better product images can boost sales. However, fixing your product images is not something you can do overnight, so plan now.

For added fun, which is the worst product image you have seen?

This is not the Emergency Christmas described by John Stewart from the Daily Show. However, with the pressure of the economy people will probably be spending more time planning, considering, saving and looking for amazing deals sooner rather than later in the year. What are you going to DO NOW to make sure you get their limited attention and dollars? Will your business and website be optimized for this interesting holiday season?

The Words ‘Marketing Automation’ are Like Music To Our Ears

According to one definition:

Marketing automation is the use of software to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation, customer data integration (CDI), and campaign management. The use of marketing automation makes processes that would otherwise have been performed manually much more efficient, and makes some new processes possible.

In plain English, marketing automation uses data (like your web analytics) to do some of your marketing tasks for you. Herein lies the problem I keep running into: Your decisions and those of your marketing automation platform are only as sound as your data.

I’ve seen marketing automation software that helps your email marketing, your ppc bid management, segmentation and personalization, and others. As Jeff Sexton recently pointed out, if you have the wrong analytics it could cost you 30% of your sales. Can you afford that today?

A few weeks ago we were helping a client optimize her website and we wanted access to her historical data. All she had was the analytics from her marketing automation vendor. Now the fact that you could only access these analytics using Internet Explorer (we are mostly on Macs) was one failure, but the main failure was that it looks like the analytics was an after-thought by the vendor. Anyone can throw up some reports on a screen — but the issue is, do they tell you anything meaningful? There was virtually nothing to make you smarter as a marketer. Today’s smart marketers understand the value of data-driven decisions. Unfortunately, this vendor’s reports provided in an abstract way what happened but did not provide the vital statistics to diagnosis and prescribe any sort of optimization to the company’s efforts.

Marketing Automation Must Make You Smarter Not Lazier

I was talking to friend who is a superstar B2B marketer. He was telling me about this new enterprise PPC bid management software he was evaluating. He deals with thousands and thousands of terms so automating the bidding would be a huge help. He told me about the slick interface and the bidding rules, etc. Then I asked him the question that made him stop like a deer in the headlights.

“Have you checked out the data reporting behind the algorithm? What actionable insights does your ppc automation vendor provide you?”

Of course, vendors will shout “proprietary formula” and we marketers fall for this marketing B.S. We don’t need the complex details behind it but we do need to get a sense of what and how they look at data, keyword attribution, etc. What metrics do they value most? If you fall for the “black box” how do you and the system continue to learn? How do remove it if you are unhappy with the vendor? How do you create your internal best practices unless you have a clear picture into what is happening?

Without good data at the core, you may just end up with a mechanical turk. You need data to share in your organization and data that tells you details of what you’re doing and how to improve it. Also, beware of bad software that takes what you need done and tries to completely automate it. Just because it is automated won’t guarantee it is optimal for the way a good marketer works.

Don’t Forget Your Job Is to Make More Money, Not to Make Your Job Easier

The point of marketing automation is to free you up to do more of what you are really good at by letting the glorified calculator do what it is really good at. Good marketing automation lets you use your insights about your customers in ways you couldn’t before; bad software takes those decisions away and prays that the computer will do it for you. Keep in mind we have created a computer that has barely beaten a great human chess player, despite its intricate and complex algorithm –  and we’re still far off from a computer to beat the best human poker players. Do you really believe that some algorithm is going to be better than you at creative marketing insights?

Without solid data, scientific method and reporting, how does your marketing automation software show you it is making money? Whether or not you are using marketing automation, you still need access to great metrics. In the case of marketing personalization, how do you know if the efforts are working if there aren’t control groups to measure against? How do you control for other external factors?

The Marketing Automation Future, Now

Don’t get me wrong — I am an advocate for marketing automation. But only if there is a core focus on the insight derived from data, not the automation, first. Analytics must be at the foundation and not an afterthought. You can identify first generation automation tools by their focus in on automation first and reports second. Today’s next-generation state-of-the-art tools have to have great metrics and analysis at their core and are focused on helping you optimize your business; that is, making you more money and proving their value to you.

Please feel free to tell me more about your marketing automation love fest or worries.

P.S. Full disclosure: like my good friend and analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik, I work for and sit on several advisory boards of companies that use data as their foundation for marketing optimization and automation.

First, the pleasantries:

• “Companies are focusing on analytics which help them improve their customer acquisition and customer retention. The recession has helped to bring into sharper focus the importance of understanding return on investment and how individual elements of digital marketing impact the bigger picture.”
• “There is a prioritization of information requirements which relate directly to business efficiency. The biggest focus is information relating to the cost of acquiring a customer or lead which is regarded as a ‘high priority’ by 59% of responding organizations.”

Overall, the interest in Web analytics and using it to improve continues to creep upward. The report also clearly shows that as the interest grows, so does confusion:

• “There has been a slight improvement since last year but only one in five companies (22%) have an internal strategy that ties data collection and analysis to business objectives. More than half (60%) of responding organizations said they are ‘working on this’, while 18% say that they don’t have such a strategy.”
• “There are still only a quarter of company respondents (27%) who say that their Web analytics ‘definitely’ provide actionable insights, with a further 55% saying that this is only sometimes the case.”

Another trend is that more companies are using Google Analytics: 23 percent use it exclusively, compared to 14 percent last year. For Internet marketing consultant Andy Beal, this is why the following is also a key finding in the report:

There has been a marked shift from spending on technology to spending on internal staff, with companies now spending more on human resources than on software and licenses. The proportion of spending on internal staff has increased from 36% to 42% of total Web analytics spend while spending on technology has decreased from 45% to 38%.

Obviously some companies are hiring analysts rather than paying for analytics or some other technology. A welcome bit for those trying to make a career as Web analysts.

Still, I wonder how these analysts are faring. We all know the challenge in finding qualified candidates. When asked if companies were getting a return on investment from their analytics, a whopping 65 percent of respondents didn’t know or said they weren’t getting a return.

Andrew Hood, managing director at Web analytics consultancy Lynchpin (which cosponsored the report), said: “While the technology gets more and more sophisticated (and arguably more accessible from a cost perspective), the challenges in interpreting and actioning the data only get bigger…Resources [are] still a massive issue, and while companies are looking to increase spend on people, there looks to be an underlying skills shortage operating against this.”

It seems like good Web analysts are like yellow lobsters: they’re very rare.

What’s a Company to Do?

Before you do anything else, define your business goals. What do you need visitors to do to make your company more profitable? How will you measure success? You must tie your business goals with online efforts, or this is all for nothing. When you invest in improvement, you must at least know where the goal posts are.

Next, don’t let budget be a barrier to improving your Web site. What you don’t have in the budget you can pay for with a little more time and effort. Take the time to learn.

I’ve said it before and I say it enough: commit to a culture of continuous improvement, not a culture of set it and forget it. If you only focus on improving a few landing pages here and there, testing a few variations here and there, tweaking creative here and there, you’ll never reach your highest potential number of conversions.

Don’t worry, your customers won’t go unsatisfied. Sooner or later your competitors will figure out how to satisfy your visitors’ needs. Hopefully that will motivate you to get your goals on target by investing in continuous improvement.

What is your company doing with your analytics these days? How do you turn your analytics into actions that improve on your goals? Let me know below.

1. TweetVP – In 140 characters or less, tell me the value of doing business with you. What makes you different than your competitor? This is like writing your Unique Value Proposition or Unique Campaign Proposition, but you are limited to the number of characters, as if you were going to post it on Twitter. If you do a good job of this you could lower your bounce rates by putting this on every landing page.

2. 25 Interesting things about you – You may have seen this pass along on Facebook as people started to list the 25 interesting things about themselves. Do the same thing for your business and have several people involved in your business do the same. Then find the most interesting ones and use them on your About Us page. This will enhance your credibility by adding transparency into your company.

Good Luck! Feel free to share your results with us.