If the call to action is underlined copy, visitors realize it’s a text link. If the call to action is a button, it’s obvious that this is click-able. Don’t tell the visitor to “click here” in order to engage them to click. Instead, persuade the visitor to click with the use of keywords or “trigger words” that speak directly to the visitor’s motivations and needs within the link, based on what they came searching for in the first place.

A great link uses an imperative verb that calls the visitor to take action, and it absolutely needs to clearly describe what the visitor will experience when they click.

Here is RelationshipHeadquarters.com’s homepage. Let’s look at some of their calls to action.

There is a big button in the active window of their homepage (the Primary call to action) that says “Are you a woman that men adore? Take free quiz.”  The first portion of this language engages the visitor by speaking to their interests and motivations, and the second portion is the action that you’re recommending they take which is “…take free quiz.”

The links in the active window (the Secondary calls to action) each engage the visitor to help them find solutions to their problems:

• “Understand men”
• “How to get him back”
• “Be the woman men adore”

There are many things you should consider when optimizing and testing your calls to action, but first and foremost, remove all of the “click here” language that might currently exist in your links and buttons.  A quick audit of your site to write better calls to action will provide a great return on your investment in terms of persuading more prospects to take the action you want them to take.  Don’t believe me?  Run some tests and see for yourself

Editor’s Note: No mannequins were harmed in the writing of this blog post.

The problem is that there isn’t a one size fits all answer to this question, even for a particular industry. There are so many factors that could be influencing your conversion rate.

The first step in recovery is admitting there is something wrong. In your case, maybe you’re doing well online and making sales, but there is room for improvement. Maybe there isn’t anything seriously broken with your online strategy, but it’s possible that the “something wrong” in your case is that you can just bring it up a notch and do better than you are today. In other cases, “something wrong” means that your web site is seriously broken and you can have a serious impact on your conversion rate by just fixing some basic things.

There is no average conversion rate that I can give you to help you identify whether or not there is something wrong with your online strategy. Some online retailers are experiencing double digit conversion rates, and this should inspire you to reach for the stars. I’ll also tell you that the majority of web sites FutureNow helps to optimize come to us with conversion rates that range from 0.1% – 3%. After working with us, some experience small increases in conversion rates, while others experience hundreds or even thousands % increases in conversion rate.

First, let me give you some advice on how to look at your conversion rate: Don’t look at your “average” conversion rate. This is pretty much useless. Instead, separate your traffic into the various sources that send traffic to your site so that you can look at the average conversion rates based on the type of traffic that a source is driving to your site.

Let me use search engine traffic to help you see how to do this. In order to do this effectively, identify your qualified and unqualified traffic. First, look at your organic traffic and bucket the traffic that is searching for your brand as part of the keyword into one group. Then look at the traffic that is searching specifically for the products and/or services you offer in detail (without your brand) and put those into a second group. Next, separate out the very general keywords that apply to your industry, but are so general that they really don’t show any strong motivation or intent and place those into a third group. Finally, separate out the traffic that might not apply at all to your industry and call these your unqualified visitors. Now, look at the average conversion rates for each bucket. Likely, your unqualified visitors will result in a very low conversion rate, and in many cases, it’s not even worth trying to increase that conversion rate for that group.

Now you can really assess how well you’re speaking to and persuading the three groups of qualified visitors who demonstrate different levels of intent when they come to your site. Instead of looking to increase your overall conversion rate, your goal should be to persuade each group of visitors more effectively and increase those individual conversion rates, which would obviously result in an overall increased conversion rate.

When we begin analyzing and helping to optimize a web site, we look to increase the individual conversion rates based on marketing efforts and sources of traffic because these are really the first pieces of evidence we have to help us understand what the motivation or intent is of each visitor. By looking at your traffic as real people with motivations and needs, you’ll begin looking at the experience you’re giving these people when they come to your site with these motivations, and it will help you determine what types of things you should work to change to make their buying process more seamless.

If you’ve never done any website optimization on your site and only focused on driving more traffic, then your goal should be to increase your conversion rate by 40 – 80%. If you’re more experienced and have been testing and optimizing your site for awhile, you should still expect to experience 5% – 10% lifts in conversion. We help our clients reach these goals consistently.

Remember, your visitors are volunteers in their buying process. They are coming to your site with a need or want. It’s your sale or lead to lose. If you’re not converting double digits, you need to ask yourself why that is and begin optimizing your web site today.

If you’re conversion rate is 2%, why are you letting 98% of your visitors go to your competitors?!

At FutureNow, we work with clients in a variety of industries and business models: e-commerce, lead generation and catalog. Lately, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some clients who are driving traffic from their web sites to physical store locations. These clients share some basic challenges, so I’ve decided to cover things you should be focusing on if you’re an online business trying to drive traffic to a physical location.

First, decide what action you want your visitors to take. We know that you want your visitors to come off your web site and visit your physical location, but what actions do you want them to take ON your web site that demonstrate their interest in coming to your physical location? These are what we call micro conversion points.  “Micro” because they are stepping stones on the way to some sort of purchase, which we call a macro conversion.

Here are some examples of actions a site might want the visitor to take to show their interest in moving forward. The following points should be tracked as micro conversion points, and you should optimize to increase these individual conversion rates.

• A “locations” page where you feature your address and map with directions. If visitors get to this page, they are interested in where you are located, which shows strong motivation and intent.
• Some sites feature a “Find the nearest location” tool.
• Booking an appointment for a service or holding/reserving a product.
• Contact us page, phone calls and emails are demonstrating that visitors are looking for answers to questions.

Tracking these micro conversion points is important, but it’s also important to follow through and track whether visitors who take these micro conversion actions are resulting in physical store purchases. Many companies track one or the other, but they seem to have a hard time tracking micro conversion rates on their web sites or they have a hard time connecting actions on a web site to actual sales in the physical store.

Here’s a list of questions you can ask yourself in order to get the right tracking in place to start seeing how your online efforts are resulting in ‘brick and mortar’ sales.

Tracking whether a store purchaser was originally a web site visitor:

Are you tracking all in-store purchases, asking each purchaser whether they went to your web site before they came to your physical store? This will help you find out general stats on how many visited your web site prior to purchasing.

Are you collecting email addresses and sending out surveys to in-store purchasers to find out how they came to your store?

• For those who identify that they came to your web site before coming to your physical store, are you asking them if they already knew about your store and were just coming to your site to find the address/location or to call the store?
• Are you asking them whether they were actually searching for something online, and found your web site as a solution to a problem (and didn’t yet know about your store) and they only found out that you had a physical store from your web site?

Tracking phone calls from listed phone numbers on your web site:

Is the phone number listed on your web site unique from other marketing efforts so that you can track it separately?

Is the phone number you list on various pages unique from the other pages on your site? In other words, if you feature a phone number on the about us page, is it a different number than the one on your contact us page? This would help you identify what pages visitors are making a decision to call from, and will also help you identify what types of things they are asking after visiting specific pages on your site.

Are you collecting enough information from the caller on the phone, so that you can match this up if the visitor turns into a sale in the physical store location?

Purely “clicks and mortar” E-commerce sites see the importance of optimization before the Holiday Season because it directly impacts their sales online. “Bricks and mortar” companies that use their web site to drive traffic to their physical store don’t see the direct impact as strongly, but this could be because they aren’t tracking  the impact effectively. If you’re in this situation, use some of the tips above to begin tracking and optimizing. You still have time to optimize for the holiday season and beyond!

But did you know that traffic generation and website optimization aren’t mutually exclusive? There are tactics that will help you accomplish both goals at the same time, and one FutureNow Partner recently spoke to me about a tactic that’s working well.

Our Partner is a software development firm that specializes in web-based applications and good old web development and design. They are currently gaining leads and sales by being very active with their marketing mix: radio, billboards, PPC, SEO, etc. They identified that there is a clear separation between their leads based on the lead’s motivations and, more importantly, their budgets. Some leads are looking for a small and simple web site with a custom design, with an approximate $500 budget. Other leads are looking for very complex web sites with a lot of tools and capabilities with a much higher budget in the $5000+ range.

The marketing team recognizes the difficulty in trying to effectively speak to these very different segments on a single site. Even using landing pages, there is the possibility that one type of visitor may be turned off by content they read that was written for another type.  (FutureNow has a whole methodology for writing copy and mapping out buying paths for different types of visitors on a single site, but this takes a focused expertise and experience.) On top of trying to speak to all types on their main web site, this company creates completely different buying experiences on separate micro-sites for each segment. This drives more targeted and qualified traffic to these micro-sites. The micro-sites speak more directly to the segment and therefore move them through their buying process more effectively, without possible distractions from content that doesn’t speak to their motivations and needs.

They generate the smaller budget leads via radio ads. These radio listeners are driven to a micro-site in order to follow through on the messaging from the radio ad.

They also generate leads who are primarily interested in finding a web design/development firm in Utah via PPC ads with keywords such as “cheap web sites utah.” They send these visitors to a different micro-site and speak to their interests of a local company that can meet their web design needs.

As you can see, they send these very different prospects down customized buying persuasion paths based on the buyer’s motivation and need. By doing this, they are driving more targeted traffic to sites that have been more effectively optimized for a particular segment.

You can segment your traffic by the different products or services that they are searching for.  Or, you can segment your traffic by the different problems they are experiencing, or solutions they are looking for.  Are you driving all traffic to specific landing pages, or simply a single homepage on a single web site? Are you optimizing your site based on different motivations? These are good questions to ask yourself in order to get started optimizing your primary web site.

On top of optimizing your primary website, you should consider the micro-site tactic in order to drive more targeted traffic to your company and quickly turn this traffic into leads or sales. This tactic is applicable to multiple online business models; whether you’re e-commerce, lead generation, or a brochure site.

Note: Micro-sites are entities that can become part of your overall marketing strategy and shouldn’t be created and then forgotten about. Along with your other marketing efforts, micro-sites need to be continuously optimized and improved.

Are you ready for the challenge?

U2 wasn’t just entertaining their audience with lights and music, they created an experience that the audience could be a part of. Their stage extended into the audience so that the performers could be a part of the audience, and the audience feel like part of the band.

Beyond this, their show created an experience of unity and opportunity. They demonstrated how far we’ve come today; 3 million people in Africa on life saving AIDS medications compared to the previous 50,000 in 2001. They demonstrated how far we still need to go; the 1990-elected Prime Minister of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest for the last 20 years and isn’t able to the lead the people and bring about change.

I didn’t just see a concert this past weekend–I was part of an uplifting experience. I left the concert thinking about what I can do to make a difference.

Connect with people in a way that no one else does, and you will reap the benefits. It’s as simple (yet complex) as that! If you can figure out how to give your audience the “experience” U2 gave to their audience, there is no question that you’ll win. You don’t need to save the world in order to increase conversions, you just need to offer an experience and connect with people in a way that no one else does.

What is your brand? What are you selling? What experience are you offering that sets you apart from the rest? Don’t just feature plain written copy on your web site. Have an opinion, have a personality, and make a difference.

Here’s an exercise we’d like you to try: Pick one of your highest trafficked landing pages and re-write it with some personality, as a conversation. Create an experience for your visitor. Then post the URL of that page in the comments. Excited to see what you come up with

I’ll touch on one that seems to work across the board to help boost conversion: the “click to compare.”

Have you ever come to a category page with an incredibly long list of products, and had a hard time narrowing down your options and choosing one product?  Give the visitor the option to check a box next to each product on a category page, and then have her click on a button to compare these chosen products. This not only lets the visitor take note of which products interest her from the long scrolling list, but it also gives her the ability to compare more detailed features that don’t fit in the limited space of a category page.

One of our clients, a seller of home medical supplies, gives their visitors the option to check boxes next to each product they want to compare, and then click a large call to action to “compare checked items.”

This action results in a pop up where visitors are able to compare these chosen product options on a single page in more detail.

If you don’t already offer the visitor the option to compare, help her narrow down her choices and test a version of your site where you allow her to compare her product options.

Happy Testing

I’ve been shopping online a little much this month. I got a new painting for my home office, I bought fabulous athletic sunglasses, and a pair of gorgeous above the knee boots. I cut myself off about a week ago, but happened to be looking on Marciano’s sale section of their site a couple of days ago. I was just browsing, people. Don’t you ever window shop?! The prices were alright. I added a few items to my cart but knew that I couldn’t make the purchase right now.

Now, I’m fully aware that Marciano sends out emails about once a quarter with promo codes that will let you take an extra 40% or 50% off all sale items. Since I cut myself off, I’m not going to spend another big chunk, but if I could find a promo code to take 40% off the total, I would definitely place the order! You know what I did next? I searched for Marciano promo codes, and I tried a few of them to see if any of them worked. None of the codes were successful.

What if Marciano’s web team tagged a couple of unsuccessful promo code entries in their shopping cart as an event, whereby they would then feature a pop up with a 20% off promo code? I, for one, would have followed through with the purchase.

First ask yourself what the possible barriers are that result in hesitation from your visitors and then ask what actions your visitors are taking on your site, which identify their hesitation? Finally, what are you willing to do to make the sale and help the visitor overcome her barrier or hesitation? Would this lead to higher conversions and overall revenue?

Worth a test, right?!

Your visitors are empowered with the ability to access information with the click of a button. You can’t pull a blind-fold over their eyes or manipulate them into anything. They’ll find out the truth with or without you being upfront about what that truth looks like. Being transparent means that you’re being vulnerable, exposing all your wrinkles, scars and bumps, but it also means you’re fully disclosing what makes you better and different.

How can you be completely transparent on your site, you ask? Compare your products and services to the visitor’s other options directly on your site. This will help you build credibility because you’re showing all characteristics and aspects of the product and service you offer, and are willing to display what might be better or worse about competing products and services. Let the visitor then make an educated decision based on this information. After all, the visitor’s main questions are; What’s in it for me? What makes you unique and different from my other options?

If you don’t make the comparison for the visitor, they’ll likely try and make a comparison on their own, and then perhaps the information they find out elsewhere will be skewed in the wrong direction.

Toyota gives us a great example, showing us how to effectively compare their product to their competitors. The screenshots show a compare tool that Toyota features on their site where you’re given the ability to compare a vehicle you’re interested in to all other brands and each model. They even show you the most common competing vehicles to the one you’ve identified. They make it easy for you to compare exactly what you’re looking to compare. They even have various in-depth comparison chart options, where you can choose to compare details on “cost,” “features,” “fuel economy,” etc.

Does anyone have any other great “comparison” examples? What other things can be done to achieve more and better transparency?  Let us know. Need help making your online presence more transparent and effective? Let us know.

Anyway, I just went to warrenmiller.com and found out that I could buy tickets for one of the Utah shows directly at Abravanel Hall’s box office web site, so I went here:

http://www.arttix.org/

to find and buy the tix for myself and 5 of my friends.

I could search by event name — which was great — and it was easy to find the three Warren Miller shows that are being shown at this location. I chose my time and date and clicked “Buy Tickets”. Let’s not even get into the horrible “view seat map” tool, but check it out if you want to see how to seriously frustrate visitors. This experience is a really good example of what not to do unless you want your visitors ripping their hair out! Anyway, I chose the option “best seats available” and put it in their hands because I had no way of determining what seats were the best. Of course, I’m having to trust that they are actually giving me the best seats. But whatever.

The real fun starts at checkout. On the shopping cart, I click to “check out” and they bring me to a “create an account” page. They either let you log on if you already have an account or they make you create a new account.

I couldn’t remember if I bought last year’s tickets through this site so I “create a new account” and fill out their many fields and click “register”. I then receive an error message that I already have an account associated with that email so now I have to go to another page and try to remember my password in order to login! I don’t remember my password. You call this business?! I now have to say that I forget my password and have it sent to my email account in order to sign in.

Oh, by the way, throughout this entire time, my order is no longer available for me because I had 10 minutes to checkout and all of the jumping through hoops that they made me do, took longer than 10 mins. Maybe my “best seats available” are now gone? Readers, if there is but one thing you change today, please let visitors checkout as a guest — don’t make them create an account or sign in just to give you money.

One of my clients from over a year ago, was successfully implementing our recommendations. He was seeing increases in his conversion rate, measuring success in “clicks”, or more orders being completed online. After speaking with one of his customer service reps one day, I was informed that her call volume had increased substantially since working with us. She was also able to convert a high percentage of these callers into sales because they were better informed. Unfortunately, because they weren’t tracking these calls as conversions, we were unable to prove to the owners that call volume and conversion rates from phone calls were a measure of the success of our project.

It’s just as important to track phone calls, not just clicks, as conversions for your web site.

For some high ticket items, or for some industries that are more cutting edge, visitors may be more likely to want to speak with a representative in order to get questions answered, gain confidence and place an order via phone. There will always be the visitors who simply don’t feel comfortable placing an order online and want to speak with a live person in order to place their order. These conversions should not be ignored. The improvements you make to your site will directly affect call volume and the conversion rate of these calls.

Now, you can track your call analytics alongside your web analytics. Not only can you view the number of phone calls but you can also set the phone call URL as a goal in Google Analytics, so that you can see the value of these calls. Now you can calculate offline conversions, which have resulted from online marketing efforts.

By using unique phone numbers for your different marketing communications channels, you can track which traffic source generated the call, allowing the company to improve their overall marketing campaigns. When a visitor is referred from one of the traffic sources, a unique phone number will appear on your web site, allowing you to track conversion rates for phone calls. This will help you determine which keywords, sites, or PPC campaigns generate the most phone calls, and in turn, which ones result in successful conversions via phone.

Check out this screencast to see how ifbyphone has integrated their solution with Google Analytics.

Screencast – http://public.ifbyphone.com/demo/google-analytics-integration-screencast

Are you tracking your calls and your clicks properly?

After reading this article about the “Fogg Behavior Model”, I began thinking about all of these different scenarios for all my different clients. For each one of my clients, I can pinpoint which of the three elements in the Fogg Behavior Model is their weakest.

“The Fogg Behavior Model shows that three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and Trigger. When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing.”

In applying his model, BJ Fogg of Stanford, recommends that you work backwards to determine whether you’re successfully meeting these three requirements.

First, what is the trigger for getting visitors to you? What is the offer you’re selling them through your CPC? What are the trigger words you’re using in your radio ads to get them to come ot your site or pick up the phone?

Next, ask yourself if the visitor has the ability to take the action you want them to take? Do they have the budget? Are they technically savvy enough to browse your site and/or use your tools? Are they located in a geographic area that you ship to? Does the visitor have the time to browse your site?

Finally, are you effectively motivating visitors? Are you answering the questions that they have to help them move forward? Are you presenting them with attractive offers?

The “Motivating” element is where I spend a lot of my time helping my clients. In order to determine whether our clients are effectively motivating their visitors on their web sites, we ask the following three questions Persuasion Architecture is based on;
1)    What action do you want the visitor to take?
2)    Who are your visitors?
3)    What do these visitors need in order to feel comfortable taking the action?

Do you need help getting your visitors out of the Fogg?

If these customers aren’t tagged somehow and you don’t have in depth analytics in place, you probably aren’t effectively separating their behavior from the behavior of new visitors to your site. This makes it difficult for you to point out stumbling blocks on your site because your existing customers and new visitors may be landing on the same pages and navigating to the same pages on your site even though their tasks may be very different. You should suspect that their behavior would be dramatically different, but you have no way of separating them.

In order to gain valuable insight from looking at your analytics and trying to help new visitors buy more effectively, you need to be able to assess their behavior without the existing customers providing additional noise to the data.

If this rings true for you,  what are you currently doing to be able to make effective assumptions from analytics?

I had to laugh at myself when I found myself in this exact situation. I had my boxing gloves on and I was ready to duke it out, expecting the worst. I purchased a pair of weight lifting gloves at Amazon at the beginning of December. With all the holiday events and some travel, I had forgotten about my purchase and realized that I had not yet received my product in over 4 weeks.

It was quickly pushed to the top of my “to do” list. I started my investigation by finding the tracking section on Amazon. Upon tracking my order, I noticed that the delivery status indicated that it had successfully been delivered. Well, I can assure you that it hadn’t! Thoughts started racing through my mind. Perhaps the package was stolen or not delivered at all. Will I be held responsible for this? I wonder if they had any clauses in their guarantees against lost or stolen items. If they do send me a replacement, I am sure they’ll charge me for shipping.

I puzzle- pieced my way through Amazon to try and find a customer service number to call. Because it was difficult to find the number, I was even more convinced that they’re trying to avoid their customers and feared the outcome of my phone call.

When the customer service rep answered the phone, I almost started the conversation by telling him that Amazon can keep their darn weight lifting gloves and should go take a hike! Let’s just say that I’ve been tainted by a lot of negative experiences with several large companies when similar situations have arisen- Bell Mobility offering the ultimate worst customer experience ever (I’ll keep that for a different story).

Instead of automatically lashing out, I remained calm and stated my case. He pleasantly responded by telling me that not only will a replacement item be shipped out that day, but it would also be sent using expedited two day shipping.

The same thing happened to Bryan Eisenberg recently when purchased a new SD card for his camera from an independent reseller on Amazon. It took him weeks to realize that he never got it, and when he reported the missing item, he was not only sent a replacement item, but then they sent him a free reader with his replacement order. Not that he needed it, but the gesture was wonderful!

You don’t have to be Amazon to have this corporate philosophy. This is something that every company can benefit from doing.

That could have been the last purchase I ever made from Amazon, had they treated me poorly. I will never hesitate to buy from Amazon and when I need something, I’m likely to purchase with them again because I know that I can trust them and will always have a good customer experience, even in the worst situations.

Amazon successfully took a negative situation and turned it into a positive, using it to their advantage. They are putting customers first. When customers are calling in with complaints, how are you dealing with them? Are you going the extra mile to please them or are you doing the bare minimum? They are your customers to lose. In this economy, it is probably cheaper to keep a converted customer that try to convert someone who never bought from you before.

Whether you have a physical retail store location, a service business that depends on leads or even if you organize live seminars and classes, you can and should be using your online presence as one of your strongest lead generators.

Here are a few simple things you can do to generate more leads using your web site:

1.    Offer a clearly labeled text link at the top of all your main landing pages that tells the visitor to click for a map and directions to your location.

2.    If you have an impressive showroom that will help the visitor gain confidence in the professional standing of your company, offer a “tour our showroom” call to action where you feature professional images or a video.

3.    Your landing pages all need to state your unique value, and need to persuade the visitor to take the action you want them to take. If you’re asking the visitor to fill out a form to become a lead, then they need to be persuaded to take this action. The visitor will need to clearly see the benefit of filling out the form. If the action you want them to take, is to come visit your retail location, don’t only persuade them that you have the best or unique products/services, but also give them a reason why they should come in person and shouldn’t just buy something online.

4.    Collect visitors’ email addresses and phone numbers by giving them something valuable in return. For instance, tell them to sign up for a special offer or a coupon that they can use in your location.

5.    Make your contact information clear on all product/service pages and all landing pages. Provide your phone number, hours of operation at the top right corner of every page. Give the visitor different options of getting in contact with you on all the main landing pages and product/service pages. For instance, you may want to have a call to action that lets visitors choose a time for you to call them. You could also provide a contact form directly on the site so that they can fill it out and you can respond by email. Or, you could provide a live chat service, where people can ask questions directly on line to a live person at your store.

These aren’t theoretical suggestions. By implementing some of these simple things on one of our client’s sites, we were able to help them increase their Internet referred sales to their retail store by 31%. 31% isn’t bad especially when their internet traffic was down 10% and their overall sales (driven by all sources) was down 10%.

Last night, I went for a last minute shopping expedition, looking for wax strips that are ready to use. I visited three drugstores and a Walmart just to come out empty handed. Wax strips are not something I would think of purchasing online because at the point that I realize I have the need, I don’t really have time to wait for shipping if you know what I mean!

This time, I had no choice. I went to Google and searched for “ready to use wax strips“. The first result was for a product sold by Veet (a brand I know) so I clicked. I was brought to the Veet web site where they don’t actually sell their products through their web. After a thorough search on their site, I finally found a “Where to buy this product” link. The Veet site referred me to an online store: homesolutionsstore.com if I was interested in buying this product online.

Unfortunately this was not a direct link to a product page on this referred site, so I had to use the site search tool. I typed in “veet ready to use wax strips“.

This is their results page:

They clearly tell me on this page that the item is in stock. The price is very obvious and the call to action “buy now” uses appropriate language, placement and stands out well.

What is missing? A clear link to “Learn More“.

I clicked “Buy Now“.

This is their product page:

They make me go through an extra step by bringing me to a product page instead of the shopping cart.

I see the price clearly listed here on the product page but what about shipping? I don’t want to have to add this item to my cart in order to find out how much this is going to cost me for shipping.

They are doing something very right here worth pointing out–> Without knowing that I could save by buying a case, I would have initially only bought a couple of the smaller boxes. Because they offer me the ability to buy the case, they increased the overall purchase value of my order. I added a full case to my cart in order to save the 10%.

This is their shopping cart page:

The shipping calculator directly on the shopping cart page is valuable to the visitor who wants to find out how much this is going to cost to ship. A downfall is that shipping costs quite a bit and if my average order value had been lower, I would be less likely to spend the amount that they are charging for shipping.

Free shipping would make me a loyal customer because I’m going to have a continuous need for these wax strips and if I can get them at a discounted price online if I buy them in bulk, and I get free shipping on top of this, why would I buy them anywhere else?

What we’ve learned today from my shopping experience:

1. State whether a product is in-stock

2. Clearly establish the price and a clear call to action that stands out very close to the price

3. On a search result page or category page, give the visitor the ability to add an item to their cart or to learn more

4. Give visitors the ability to find out shipping costs on a product page

5. Think of ways you can increase the average order value. If you can offer the visitor a discount to buy more of a product, consider the value of this

6. Consider offering free shipping on orders over a certain dollar amount. This may not only increase your average order value, but increase your overall conversion rate because you’re removing another barrier to placing the order.

Let’s compare a few keywords to demonstrate the difference.

Traffic searching for “buy Monet print” is highly targeted. These are visitors who are looking to purchase a product from a vendor who sells Monet prints. If someone is searching for “Monet”, this does not necessarily mean that the visitor has intentions of buying anything, but perhaps is just looking to learn more about Monet.

The less targeted traffic might not be coming in with an interest to buy what it is that you are offering, and perhaps are simply looking for information or education on a topic.

In an ideal world, we would separate this traffic into different buckets. By doing that, we would be able to separately track those visitors who search for a very general keyword, who might be less targeted, from the more highly targeted traffic who are searching for more long tail keywords.

Averages are messy. We don’t just want to know what our average overall site conversion rate is based on all of the traffic we get. We want to know what our conversion rate is for those visitors who are highly targeted, separately from the conversion rate for those who are less targeted. This will really help us understand how we are truly performing with the traffic that has real motivation to buy what we offer.

Most web analytics and tracking software don’t make it simple for you to separate all your traffic into these buckets. It’s much easier to determine what needs to be fixed if you can look at the performance of the entire buying process based on keywords which tells us level of intent and motivation.

Are you segmenting your search engine traffic based on the intent of the keywords?

How much did you invest to get them there? Did you get your money’s worth out of that visitor?

Usability expert, Jakob Neilsen, recently indicated that one of the biggest findings from his latest user research was a huge increase in “deep dips”. He describes this as more traffic arriving deep within a website rather than entering through the website’s homepage. He found that for many sites, this increase in “deep-dips” has resulted in much higher bounce rates.

Average Metrics Produce Only Average Results

When working with our optimization clients, I frequently hear them report their average site-wide bounce rate is. This overall bounce rate is rarely telling us anything at all. If the number is fairly high (above 40%), they assume that they just aren’t answering people’s questions. How do they know where their problems exist? Are all of the pages bouncing people off of the site equally?

Don’t pay too much attention to this average bounce rate. Bring it a step further. Find out what your top bounce rate pages are and try to analyze why visitors are bouncing off of them.

Breaking Visitor’s Momentum

Look at all of your top traffic driving points (search, ads, emails, etc) that are sending visitors to these top bounce rate pages. Is there a disconnect between the motivation the visitor had when beginning their journey and what they found on the page they landed on? Did they not get what they expected? Are you not offering links on this landing page to move the visitor forward in his buying process to answer some of his other questions?

When we see this happen we tell clients that they have a break persuasive momentum and the principles of scent. Either a page has the content our visitor is looking for or links to the page the visitor is looking for. Usability expert Jared Spool calls this the “move forward till found” rule.

Getting Past What’s Wrong and Working on Why

Neilsen says that “Web Analytics is a dangerous game. If you measure the wrong thing, your metrics won’t just be weak — they’ll be directly misleading and might cause you to pursue an erroneous strategy that reduces your design’s business value.”

He suggests that you analyze your bounce rates for different sources of visitors. The point from which the visitor was sent to your site will indicate the level of interest they have for finding what you have to offer. Web analytics is great at reporting what happened, but you need a process to help you figure out why.

At FutureNow, we’ve been educating clients and readers that sources of traffic demonstrate a certain level of intent. If visitors are coming from a source that indicates that they have very low interest and almost “accidentally” land on your site, you should not be concerned about higher bounce rates.

But, if visitors click on a link, search for a keyword, or click on an ad that is specific to what you have to offer, this could indicate that they are middle or late stage in their buying process and are interested in your offering. If you have high bounce rates from these traffic sources, you should be more concerned and analyze why this may be happening, and do some conversion optimization to help reduce this bounce rate.

If you’d like help reducing your bounce rates, let’s talk about how we can do it together.

When I recently walked through my client’s analytics with them, she pointed out that the highest exit pages are probably a good place to start fixing conversion stumbling blocks. In theory, this sounds like the right thing to do. If we know that these pages are turning people away more than any other page, then it makes sense to work on these pages. But as soon as I took a deeper look at their analytics and asked the next question, I knew this would not be the most effective way to enhance their online performance.

Once we looked at how much traffic was going to these pages, the answer was plain as day.

Unless the high exit page is a shopping cart, a lead generation form, or a landing page, if it is getting minimal traffic, you probably have bigger fish to fry. Try comparing your top 20 exit pages with your top 20 most trafficked pages. Then, find the highest trafficked pages with the highest exit rates — that’s where you will often find biggest opportunities for quick-fix ROI.

. .

About the Author: Melissa Burdon is a Persuasion Analyst at FutureNow. The Persuasion Scenario Analysis is her specialty.

A week ago, my friend called me to ask, “What’s the industry average time spent on a site?” Her boss asked her to find out because she was doing a presentation to the marketing team and would be attempting to describe what was happening on their website.

My friend was looking at her analytics reports, assuming they should be reporting metrics like “time spent”, but she couldn’t give me any explanation as to why they were measuring certain things or how it all fit together. This marketing team had no idea what their analytics were trying to tell them.

Sound familiar? Whether or not we care to admit it, this problem is all too common. By themselves, the facts can be deceiving. If the facts don’t fit into a larger story line, they’re meaningless. Just because something happened, that doesn’t make it newsworthy. That’s why…

Marketers should think like news editors.

Your web analytics program works for you, not the other way around. It’s the news wire that serves your staff of reporters and, as editor-in-chief, it’s your job to decide which stories are most important.

There are two types of approaches to web analytics reporting:

• The beat reporter reliably follows the same story from day-to-day. If you tell the beat reporter to follow “time spent”, she will diligently explain where visitors spent the most time, how much time they spent overall, and how much time they spent today versus yesterday, last month, last year, and so on.

• The investigative reporter tries to find the meat of the story; to get the bottom of what truly matters. If you tell the investigative reporter to follow the “time spent” story, she’ll start to ask big picture questions. She’ll want to know why time spent matters, how it relates to your other metrics, whether “time spent” means one thing on one page and something very different on another, and whether it even matters if visitors are spending more — or less — time on your site verses the competition’s. She even wonders if this whole “time spent” thing is really a distraction. She doesn’t want to spend her time chasing false leads.

Like other default metrics, average time spent tells us nothing on its own. The company that my friend works for has over a thousand employees. Most of the staff in their home office and brick-and-mortar stores use computers every day, and many of them likely have their browser set up to go directly to the company’s homepage automatically. Each day, a large amount of their traffic probably comes from employees, not potential customers. If this is the case, the average time spent on their site tells them very little about the customer experience on their website, because employees’ time spent would skew this number. Likewise, the traffic sources would be skewed and the average page views and bounce rates from the landing page would also be skewed.

Don’t use your analytics tool just to report the facts. Become an investigative reporter. For each piece of information you find, ask yourself why it matters. Ask how the metrics tie together. Most importantly, ask yourself how the web metrics you report on tie into your overall business goals.

That’s how reporters break news.

. .

About the Author: Melissa Burdon is an investigative reporter (or Persuasion Analyst) at FutureNow. She’s also a recovering Canadian. Oh, and it’s her birthday.

But with the right process and frame of mind, it is possible to use web analytics to get insight into “why” your traffic isn’t converting — especially if you do pay per click advertising.

Here are some ideas for attracting more targeted traffic in order to get higher conversion rates and a much better return on pay-per-click (PPC) spend.

One

• Look at your top traffic-driving keywords (PPC and organic).

Are they highly relevant to the industry you’re in and the products you sell? Do these keywords clearly indicate that the searcher has a motivation to find your solution to their problem? Some keywords may have double meanings and could suggest that the visitor had a completely different search intent than expected. Someone searching “training videos” might actually be looking for “workout training videos,” “management training videos,” or a variety of other things. If the traffic from these fuzzy keywords is converting poorly, don’t be surprised. Stop buying and doing search engine optimization (SEO) for ambiguous keywords. The ultimate goal should be to figure out which key phrases specifically relate to your industry, product or service, and do some PPC and/or SEO to get listed for more relevant keywords.

Two

• Don’t play the generic keyword game.

It both difficult and expensive to get traffic from the most generic keywords in one’s industry. Such keywords are much more competitive in the search engines. You pay more for text ads and it takes a lot of SEO effort in order to get listed organically for these keywords. A lot of these single-word keywords are really only attracting early-stage visitors who are not necessarily ready to buy, anyway! If I’m searching for “purses,” I probably haven’t yet decided on a brand or a style of purse and it could take me a lot longer to convert. When I search for “white Chanel purse,” though, you can be fairly certain I’m ready to buy. Focusing on phrases that are tailored to your product or service is what people really mean when they talk about “long tail keywords” [define] — and often it’s the difference between having visitors who are ready to learn and ones who are ready to buy.

Three

• Speak the customer’s language, not your own.

Sometimes, marketers get so focused on their own sales process that they convince themselves that would-be customers actually care about the words they use to describe their own products and services. When someone is searching for a solution to their problem, they enter search terms that sometimes don’t match up with what the company thinks people should be searching for.

Are you buying traffic for keywords that mean something to you but mean precious little to your customers? We’ve all done it before. Even brilliant marketers can assume that customers will think and behave as they do. This is what we like to call “Inside-the-Bottle Syndrome.” Although contagious, it is curable, but your web analytics reports alone can’t diagnose you.

Let us know if you’d like to optimize paid search from the customer’s perspective.

I don’t know makeup brands or colors, and I don’t care enough to research what makeup would be right for me. Usually, my need for makeup only results in a purchase if a friend recommends something specific, or when I run out of an essential piece, like mascara. Then I’m found sprinting to the local pharmacy to pick one that looks decent.

How do you look for people who aren’t looking for your product? Anticipate their need.

Search engine marketing is a great platform for gaining the attention of those who already have some kind of motivation, need or want for a particular solution. It’s much more difficult to get the attention of people who don’t currently need or want whatever it is you sell.

Historically, the most common forms of online marketing tactics used to gain the attention of potential customers have been pay-per-click advertising, banner ads and email marketing. But today’s customers are ignoring unwanted marketing efforts, so our tactics can easily fall flat. In order to get a higher return on investment, marketers need to find new ways to speak to customers and help them figure out what they want.

How do you speak to potential customers when they aren’t listening? Find out when and where they’re listening and provide an experience that fuels demand for your solution.

Social networking sites are growing by the second and people are looking for more interactivity and experiences online. TAAZ.com captured my attention by first offering me an interactive experience.

First, I uploaded a picture of myself without makeup:

Then I proceeded to add different eye shadows, lip liners, mascaras, etc. Each shade or style that I chose was a real product color and brand. The quality of the widget impressed me, so I spent a good deal of time uploading the image of myself and messing around with different styles and colors.

Apparently, I was going for the Cindy Lauper look!

Not a bad look, I know, but I digress.

Eventually, I played around with some shades I would have never even thought of purchasing and realised that some of them actually didn’t look too bad on me. Not only could I interact with different colors and brands of makeup, I could actually see what they looked like on me without ever trying it on.

There are some things TAAZ still needs to work on. The hair portion of the widget doesn’t look as real as the makeup portion. They don’t yet offer hair dyes relating to the color of hair you choose to place on your image.

I could go on, but suffice it to say, the look I ended up with…

…didn’t exactly measure up to their best makeovers. Still, this is a smart way to attract ad dollars from cosmetics brands like Revlon (pictured) and Sephora (which currently has banners on the site).

There’s also a great opportunity here to push the business model further. For instance, TAAZ could create a Facebook widget so users could share their makeovers amongst friends. They could get one of their advertisers to sponsor a “best makeover” competition. You get the idea.

In case you haven’t heard us talk about “The ROI of Free,” here’s what we mean: If you want to gain the attention of potential customers who aren’t actively searching for the solutions you offer, don’t just tell them about your solution, give them a way to interact without having to commit to anything. Bring the visitor into the experience and let the experience sell itself.

What are some interactive marketing examples you’ve seen have turned you into a sale or lead?

We Canadians already have a bit of a complex due to the fact that the rest of the world seems to lump us together with the U.S., calling them our big brother. Canadians are sick of being treated like leftovers. So, when certain North American companies leave us (and other international visitors) out of the loop by making it difficult to buy from their websites, they’re losing sales and annoying would-be customers like me.

It’s time for U.S. companies to consistently treat international customers the same way that they treat their compatriots online.

An experience that one of the attendees of our recent Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar shared with us demonstrates the frustrations Canadians face when shopping online: Bill was attempting to purchase a Northwest Airlines flight at NWA.com, so his son could attend a communications workshop in Austin. After going through the process of choosing his flight, seat, and entering his name and credit card information, he realized Northwest’s website had something against foreigners.

In what normally would have been a confirmation email (see thumbnail image), Bill was rejected. He was informed that if he does not have a U.S. billing address, his order wouldn’t be processed. Instead, he would need to go through a long list of bizarre, counterintuitive instructions on how to give them money.

Instead of booking on the homepage…

…he would have to click the “Reservation Center” drop-down menu on the top navigation, then click “Shop for Flights.”

Is there any way he would have figured this out on his own? And if international booking is such an issue, why don’t they just say so right away, or at least offer the same toggle button say that you’re not a U.S. resident on the homepage?

This is just one example of many. I’ve personally encountered countless situations just like this.

Do any of you Canadian or international readers out there prefer not doing business with U.S. companies because of experiences like these?

[Editor's Note: For the sake of transparency, and because we don't want to seem too cool for school, let it be known that we at Future Now have been, at times, just as guilty of cultural bias as other U.S. businesses. Although many of our Canadian friends, clients, readers, and (in Melissa's case) colleagues know we love our neighbo(u)rs to the north, we have occasionally and regrettably missed out on international business. You can read the comments on Melissa's last post for details. As always, the first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem. ]

1. Indicate which fields are required by using asterisks next to these required fields. Ask yourself if the non-required fields offer enough value. If they don’t, remove them from the form. This could potentially make all fields a requirement — and if that’s the case, the asterisks would be overkill — which brings us to our next point.

2. Only have them fill in required fields. Asking for too much information on a web form is like proposing marriage on the first date. We would all like to know our customer’s age, work title, phone number and address, but if you don’t absolutely need it, then remove it from the form. This will make the form shorter and less likely to frustrate the impatient, fast-paced visitor who may not feel comfortable exposing their personal info. Don’t let this be the reason why visitors are dropping off.

3. Clarify what you expect them to do. Doostang gives the visitor a dialog bubble explaining each field when the visitor clicks to fill out a field. This removes any potential confusion as to what information is being requested and could lead to a reduction in errors taking place if a field is filled out incorrectly.

4. Offer reassurances when asking for personal information. Your visitors are concerned about privacy and security issues. You can offer a link to a privacy and security page so that the visitor can click to read and gain confidence.

5. Clearly state what the visitor will get by filling out the form, and do it at the very beginning of the page. Tell them what the benefits are. There should be no question as to what they’ll expect once they fill the form out.

6. Don’t ask people to submit. Call to action buttons should clearly state the action they’re about to take. Use colors and shading that make the button stand out effectively and, please, try to not use the word “submit” — it’s generic and misleading geek-speak.

7. Offer contact information somewhere on this page and/or in the top-right corner of the site (on every page). Give the visitor a phone number and a “Contact Us” link. If they don’t feel comfortable filling out the form, persuade them to call and speak with you directly.

Do you have any other suggestions to add to this list?

Time and again, I read and heard reviews about the Snowbird resort having some of the most challenging terrain, coated by the area’s best powder. So when I finally got a chance to ski Snowbird’s Cottonwood Canyons trails for myself, I quickly turned into a raving Snowbird fan.

I was set on getting a season’s pass for the this year. And after reading reviews like this one from CitySearch, my excitement about the upcoming ski season reached fever pitch:

Depending on the characteristics of — or our level of attachment to — the must-have thing du jour, we all buy in different buying modes to match our feelings about it. I typically purchase commodities in a more Spontaneous mode, but I take my ski season very seriously, and my search for a good deal on a Snowbird pass turned into a Methodical review of various resources to find the ultimate deal. I took my time and I read everything I could before I pounced.

Although I knew I wanted a season’s pass, I had a hard time justifying the steep price Snowbird was asking ($1,149). If the season let me down with only a few big snow days, I could be kicking myself for risking that much money.

As the summer came to a close, I got a little anxious about my upcoming purchase. Around this time, I heard a radio ad about “Sniagrab,” an annual sale run by the Sports Authority a local sporting goods chain called Canyon Sports. They were offering discount season’s passes to Snowbird. I don’t recall them specifying a sale closing date, but when I called Canyon Sports (shortly after hearing the ad), I was let down when I heard I’d missed the sale by one day. Maybe it’s my fault that I missed their sale, but the ad was vague and I had still acted quickly. It made me feel stupid — as dumb as that sounds.

Chances are you won’t catch me in a Canyon Sports any day soon.*

Unwilling to give up my quest for a deal, I searched for “snowbird seasons pass” at Craigslist. Believe it or not, there was a woman who posted a 10-day pass because she’d recently broken a bone and wouldn’t be skiing this season. She was selling it at a discount because she obviously needed to give the buyer an incentive to purchase from her, rather than go directly to the source. But since I was planning on skiing more than 10 days, I continued my search.

I sent an email to my local friends, asking if any of them had a connection to help me out. To my delight, I received a reply from a snowboarding friend. He encouraged me to join the Velocity Sports club in order to get a discount at Snowbird. Velocity’s an exclusive club, so in order for me to join, my friend had to sponsor me. He was only allowed to sponsor one person annually. There was also a $40 membership fee that I had to pay upfront. I signed up and paid my dues but this still didn’t guarantee me a discounted season’s pass. Before I had a shot at one, they made a limited promotion available to existing members who have been members for over a year. So I waited and waited for a reply.

After two weeks without a reply, I sent them a follow-up email. They told me I would hear back from them in a couple of weeks. When three more weeks passed without a reply, I decided to email again. That same day, I received a phone call from Velocity Sports, telling me that the promotion was now open to me but I had only two days to take action.It’s a good thing I didn’t miss the promotion (like I had with the Canyon Sports promo). It would’ve been nice to have gotten periodic updates from Velocity about the promotion. Then again, maybe I would have never even heard from them had I not been really good at nagging! Regardless, they came through for me in a big way, and I got my season’s pass for $799; a $310 savings (after membership fee) over buying directly from Snowbird.

No matter where they decide to buy a product, 64% of customers regularly do their research online before they go for it. In this case, there were a few multi-channel influencers (i.e., the radio ad, craigslist, Snowbird.com) in my buying decision process, but only the consumer-generated media (i.e, the customer reviews and word-of-mouth) had a positive influence on where I actually bought the thing.

The bottom line: It seems the local skiing/snowboarding community is more involved in finding and offering good deals for Snowbird customers than Snowbird is itself.

What do you think? Am I just griping, or should Snowbird consider being more involved in the community in order to better harness their marketing potential?

[Editor's Note: See comments below. Our sincere apologies go out to everyone at Canyon Sports. Although it seems the Sports Authority chain -- not Canyon Sports -- has the Sniagrab Sale, there's too much confusion about who Melissa called. Did she call Canyon Sports, and they answered her about a different sale that just ended? Who knows? Still, it seems there's a whole lot of ski marketing fog to break through in Utah. Either that, or Melissa needs to stop multi-taking when she drives. ]

If you’re an avid skier who lives in North America, like me, you’ve probably seen a Warren Miller film. He was one of the first to harness ski culture enthusiasm for commercial purposes — way before the Internet.

For years, I’ve been a big fan. I hadn’t seen any advertising for this year’s Warren Miller film, but — knowing that it just wouldn’t be a ski season without one — I was proactive about not missing a second year in a row. I don’t watch much television and I rarely listen to the radio, so unless I’m lucky enough to see an ad for the film, it’s easy to forget. Luckily, I went online to see when and where his film would be featured and was able to buy my tickets directly from his site.

Warren Miller’s loyal fans are passionate about skiing and snowboarding. His crowd acts differently than most moviegoers. It’s a bonding experience between strangers who are all there for the same purpose; they’re looking for an adrenaline hit from powdery, snow-covered mountains. Everyone is very vocal and outwardly excited, sharing the experience that gets them stoked for the upcoming season.

Still, I’m left scratching my head. Why didn’t they collect my email address when I purchased my ticket online? Had they specifically told me that they’re collecting my information in order to inform me when next year’s film will be released, I would’ve been perfectly happy to cough up my email address. After all, I would rather not have to think about when the Warren Miller flick is playing next year. They would be doing me a favor by telling me when and where it’s playing in my area, and just letting me click to purchase directly from an email.

Something I found interesting at this year’s film was that the majority of attendees had pre-purchased their tickets. In fact, there was hardly anyone purchasing tickets at the box office. Each year, and at every screening, the audience receives a free (or discount) ski pass to the local resort. But this year, the tickets weren’t handed out at the event. Instead, the audience was given a piece of paper with a ticket number where they were asked to go online to redeem their free pass.

Wouldn’t this be the ideal opportunity for the Warren Miller team to collect email addresses with the sole purpose of nurturing their loyal customers?

By the way, the film rocked! It wasn’t the best year ever, but it definitely pumped me up for what’s ahead this winter. After seeing the flick last week, I purchased my season pass at my local ski resort. I may even want to purchase the DVD when it comes out. Too bad they didn’t collect my information. I’ll probably forget about the DVD and I probably won’t be proactive enough to buy it later on when I’m skiing (read: not just daydreaming about skiing). If I received an email about it when it comes out, chances are they would make another sale. This is why it’s often a good idea to ask for an email address after you’ve made the sale.

Oh well. Maybe they’ll catch on next year.