These are some of our thoughts on what makes for a good online marketing optimization recommendation.  But before I even start, note my use of the word “recommendation,” because it’s crucial.  The best way to optimize is to undertake a program of continuous improvement, and you can’t do that by completing an ‘optimization project.’ A project has a beginning, an end, and a finite duration.  A recommendation is relatively small, track-able, accountable, and can be tackled one-by-one in an ongoing manner (unlike a project).  Optimization isn’t a site redesign, in other words.  It’s better to get 1 recommendation per week than 300 recommendations in a project document!

Without further ado…

#1 – Good CRO recommendations are data driven: This should go without saying, but without analytics data to back up assertions, I’d question the validity of any recommendation.  And without a foundation of data, how would you possibly measure the success (ROI) of the implementation?  For example, I might not like how you’ve designed your call to action on a particular landing page, but that’s useless.  I can, however, use baseline data to demonstrate how your call to action has room for improvement, and measure the impacts of any changes you make.

#2 – Good CRO recommendations aren’t “canned”: The world is full of best practices and common web design patterns, but there are plenty of exceptions.  For years, online retailers copied whatever Amazon.com did in terms of design, but didn’t see any improvement.  Each case was proof that “best practices” don’t work for everyone.  Good recommendations are specific to the intended site, and don’t make any dangerous assumptions.

#3 – Good CRO recommendations isolate the ‘problem’ from the ’solution’: Make sure any recommendations you get document a specific problem (a challenge that your visitor is encountering) before they suggest a solution.  For example, I might tell you to test a few versions of a landing page headline.  That covers the potential solution, but doesn’t adequately educate you on the problem.  If I put that recommendation into context by telling you that the current headline likely doesn’t resonate with the buying stage of the prospect who’s landing on your page, your chances of implementing that recommendation and seeing a positive impact will be much higher.

#4 – Good CRO recommendations encourage testing, but don’t require it: A good CRO recommendation should encourage or allow formal testing (i.e. split or multivariate) but shouldn’t require it.  Some tests just aren’t technically feasible, realistic, or efficient.  Who wants to wait 3 months to get results?  Not very many of our clients, I assure you.  And, different company cultures are more ready for formal testing than others.

#5 – Good CRO recommendations estimate Return on Investment (ROI): Knowing an estimated ROI is the way to make prioritization of CRO easy.  You do the “low-hanging fruit” work first, then work from there.  We think about ROI in terms of the balancing act between the level of effort required to implement a change and the impact that change will likely have on conversion rate.  To target your highest ROI items first, you start with the highest impact items that require the least amount of effort, and work your way toward the recommendations where the potential impact only slightly exceeds the level of effort.

#6 – Good CRO recommendations are tied to goals and KPIs: It gets repetitive sometimes, but it’s still useful to re-state the goal every time we make a recommendation.  It ensures that we never get distracted from what our clients pay us for.  If you’re paying someone for CRO, and your goal is to get more paid membership sign-ups, and the recommendation drives more “free” memberships, is that really a good use of your budget?

#7 – Good CRO recommendations are explicit, yet flexible: Despite the temptation to “solve” our clients’ online problems, we have to let the site owner solve their own problem, in their own style.  I could tell you that the only way to overcome a challenge is to create an interactive flash application, but that would immediately limit everyone’s imaginations and problem-solving skills.  Instead, I tell you the challenge, give you specific options, and guide you in your implementation as needed.  You can follow our recommendations to the letter, or you can interpret and tweak as needed.  Who knows: maybe the solution is actually just some really good copywriting   And we’re not afraid to learn some things from our clients along the way.

#8 – Good CRO recommendations reference examples and tools: Just like any academic pursuit, or any job search, it’s good to have references.    A good CRO recommendation should provide reference materials such as screenshots of sites who have overcome similar challenges, free/paid tools to aid the effort, and rough mockups or visual aids.  Any reference material that helps the implementer do a better job makes the recommendation better, and increases the chances of success.

What do you think of my list?  Did I forget anything?  Have any of you worked with vendors that didn’t cover all of these points in their work?

I have worked with many clients who sell women’s apparel and accessories online.  I’ve helped them improve their online performance by understanding their customers and visitors more effectively, and making changes to speak more effectively to those visitors.

These are some of the many things you should consider improving if you’re selling women’s clothing and/or accessories online:

1)    Design – Women like simple and clean designs.  They push away clutter.  Use softer, more rounded corners and use colors that are warm and more female friendly.  Don’t box things off, use less lines separating elements in your design, and feature plenty of white space.

2)    Images - Women like to be able to visualize themselves in the images they see on your web site, so the images shouldn’t look too posed.  Images that look more real, that feature specific pieces you sell and evoke some emotion, work more effectively.

3)    Copy – Women want to find out quickly what the site offers and what’s in it for them.  Keep it friendly, and offer her some kind of community.

4)    Calls to action and links - Women are looking for straight-forward guidance on how to move forward, whether it be text links or buttons.  Make it easy for her to choose from a few options to move forward in her buying process.

Holly Buchanan, an expert on marketing to women online, reviews various women’s clothing sites in this post, showing us that many of these things apply across the board.

My favorite thing about lululemon’s new site is the imagery and messaging that they convey.  It’s obvious that lululemon clearly understands their customers.  They understand that their apparel is not only being purchased and worn by yoga enthusiasts.  For example, their customers may be doing yoga to help improve their performance in other sports, or they may be using the apparel to workout in the gym and go running, or are simply wearing it as their casual everyday clothing.  Lululemon’s imagery and messaging show us that they understand these women, their lifestyles and their motivations for shopping online.  Are your images simply stock and aren’t speaking to your visitors’ lifestyles and needs?

The active window on this site also features clear-cut (and limited) ways to move forward.  It’s very easy to move forward from the homepage and choose to either shop for women’s or men’s clothing.  There is no confusion about what will be featured when you click. The active window of the homepage also features community aspects such as an image and introduction to their latest blog post and their monthly challenge.  Are you featuring easy ways for your visitors to move forward from your top landing pages? Do you create a relationship with your customer by engaging them with a community?

Lululemon also does a great job of featuring their Unique Value Proposition right in the active window.  The copy, right below the main image effectively explains who they are and what they offer the visitor that will benefit her.  Do you have persuasive copy on your homepage that explains what you offer that is unique and that will benefit the visitor?

There are so many things you can do to improve your performance, but how about starting with some of these basics?

They surveyed people considered to be B2B “buyers,” meaning the types of folks that a B2B marketer would target.  What I saw in the data, which I’ll summarize in this post, was a great reminder that if you are executing well on “the basics,” you’re in a much safer place and can confidently experiment with all the new “bells and whistles” that you could put in your marketing emails (e.g. video, social networking, fancy graphics, etc.).

Let’s look at the top 4 features respondents ranked for what they would find useful from B2B marketing emails.  I think you’ll agree that there is nothing fancy or high-tech about them:

#1 “Provide Links to Relevant Content” – This is perhaps the most basic concept in all of email marketing, but remains the most crucial.  Relevance rules on the Web; if you’re not convinced, just think about what a small startup named Google has done with ‘relevance.’    In terms of application, it’s key to put yourself in your prospects’ shoes as much as possible.  If you tease them with a bit of content, and ask them to click to ‘learn more,’ the landing page on your site better be 110% relevant to what they just read!  Do a quick audit of your next upcoming email blast and look for places where you link to your homepage.  Are there more specific pages on your site that are more relevant?  If you’ve linked to the most relevant page, is the “scent” of that relevance reinforced with imagery, headlines, bolded phrases, etc.?  We’ve been writing about the importance of scent from the driving point to the landing page since at least 2006.

#2 “Ability to Navigate from Within the Email to More Detailed Content” – Even your most loyal customers or your most ‘Late Stage’ prospects are still going to scan your email before they commit to reading it.  Make it easy on prospects by providing a Table of Contents that anchors down into the details of the email’s articles.  MarketingSherpa does this with their newsletters, as a matter of fact [click screenshot to enlarge].  This is a relatively easy feature to include in emails, and the survey respondents are definitely asking for it.

#3 “Highlight Keywords and Points” – OK, maybe this is the most basic thing you could possibly do to improve your emails!  Use visual cues (highlighting, bolding, etc.) to give key content some extra prominence.  This is essentially “Writing for the Web 101″ stuff, but I’m surprised how many B2B marketing teams get lazy about this point.  Remember back to #2 when I said that people are going to scan before they commit to reading?  Here’s another way to persuade them to actually read.  If they actually read, they may click through, and if they click through, they may convert.

#4 “Better Organization” – This survey choice is worded a bit vaguely, but I interpret it to mean that your B2B emails should have a beginning, middle, and end; they should have clearly-delineated sections that use clear headlines and sub-headlines; all the “read more” calls to action should look the same; the formatting should be clean (even with images blocked).  The list of small details goes on, but #4 essentially is asking for the same thing as numbers 1-3.

These four “basic” requests from B2B prospects all follow a common theme: Reduce the ‘mental overhead’ required by the recipient.  We’re asking for a lot from our prospects (whitelist, open, scan, read, click, browse, convert).  In return, they simply want us to save them a bit of time, and make their lives a tiny bit easier.  It’s not so much to ask in return for conversions and sales!

Now, I’ll paraphrase all the features of emails that respondents essentially de-prioritized:

• more interactivity
• more graphics
• advanced customization
• less content
• advanced delivery timing,
• and social networking links.

It would’ve been useful to have asked respondents about “video” in emails, but I guess that’s a feature you’ll have to experiment with yourselves.  The lesson is that ONLY after you’re solid and consistent on the top 4 features should you start testing the effectiveness of the rest of the more ‘advanced’ email features.

In B2B email marketing, as in life, you have to lay a strong foundation and get the basics right before you start adding on additional features.

These days, most people are less skeptical about the internet.  We think little of viewing bank statements, paying utility bills, and entering our credit card numbers online.  More often than not, visitors won’t think twice about making an online purchase, that is, until you give them a reason to.

Imagine this scenario:  You’re on a site, and you find the perfect TV.  You’ve seen it before in stores, talked to sales people, done your research on consumer reports, AND now you’ve found it 45% off and with free shipping!  You’re already imagining who you’re going to invite over to watch the big game… until you notice that there are 3 typos on the homepage, including the brand name of the TV you’re purchasing, and there’s no way to enter a shipping address that is different from your billing address.  Notice how quickly you’ve gone from ‘cloud nine’ to ‘too good to be true’.  Chances are, you are not going to be making this purchase and you rationalize that watching the big game on a little TV isn’t so bad, even if it doesn’t have HD.

Credibility is yours to lose.  Visitors will give you the benefit of the doubt until you don’t meet their basic expectations.  I often will give our clients little pointers about misspelled words or broken links as part of our efforts to improve their marketing results via an OnTarget subscription.  I am always a little surprised when they don’t seem too concerned about it.  The truth is, every visitor who notices these little things is less likely to convert on your site, return to your site or recommend your site to someone else.

The 3 most common credibility mistakes I see online:

1. Typos and grammatical errors. Examples: loose/lose;  their/there/they’re, its/it’s, a lot (it’s two words, people) etc.  Pick up a copy of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style” if you want to set yourself straight on what is proper.  At 85 pages, it’s the most concise miracle ever written on grammar.

2. Lack of (or un-clickable) security assurances in checkout.  I even have a client whose privacy page is the most visited page by visitors who convert.  This is not un-likely if you have a very methodically minded product like insurance or software because people come to your site expecting to look for detail oriented information.

3. Un-professional design. Optimization is an ongoing task.  What may have been the norm for website design a few years ago is likely to be obsolete now.  If visitors come to your site and have to think about what they’re seeing, you’ve already lost.

So, proof-read your site, have someone else (preferably not involved in the creation of the site) go through it and make a purchase online, and remember not to give visitors an excuse to leave!

We started by looking at this client’s traffic sources and separating them into early, middle and late stage buyers.  None of this client’s traffic is truly “late stage” because very little traffic actually uses their brand or specific course names in their search to get to their site.

Their traffic is mostly in the early, middle and middle/late stage buckets.  Their middle/late stage visitors come to their site from search terms such as “starting a bookkeeping business” and “how to start a bookkeeping business.”  The homepage is the top landing page these types of visitors land on.

We start our continuous improvement process by making recommendations to convert more of their late stage traffic.  This is where the fun begins because we get to think and act like these types of visitors in order to understand what their motivations and needs are.  With this, we assess whether the site does a good job of moving the visitors through the information towards giving them the answers to their questions and persuading them to take macro-conversion action.

If you were searching “how to start a bookkeeping business,” what content would speak to this need if you landed on the homepage? Their original homepage offered no call to action in the active window to speak directly to this visitor.  They had some strong headlines and a small link, “start here,” that blended in to the headline bar.

This is the recommendation (click screenshot to enlarge) we gave them through our software.

After some interaction with this client, they came up with two variations of buttons to test against the original (click screenshots to enlarge). The conversion point of this very simple test was to move more visitors to the next page in the scent trail–in other words, to move them forward in their buying process.

It was found that both variations with buttons performed better than the original.  The version that calls out “Start your own accounting business now” had less success than the “Learn how to start your accounting business.”  This is because the majority of traffic coming to this page is not yet ready to just get started, they first want to “learn how” before they start their business.

What can you take from this example? Start by determining who your late stage traffic is. Look at their keywords: what are they searching for and what are they looking to accomplish when they arrive at your site?  Are you featuring a strong call to action (mapped to a buying stage) that will help this visitor move forward in their buying process? Treat each click independently and help your visitor move through one revolving door to the next.

Have you tested anything similar recently? We would love to hear about your experiences.

But, I believe that conversion is cumulative, and every pixel of design you employ in your shopping cart contributes to the semi-conscious feelings of comfort and confidence that prospects get when they decide that your cart is safe and credible enough to do business with.

Many Conversion Rate Optimization practitioners would start by recommending that you run out and buy what is called a “credibility indicator“–some sort of flag or badge that indicates to prospects that you’re credible.  Some of the more popular credibility indicators are the McAfee certification and the Verisign security symbol.  This is not a bad approach, and some of our testing has proven that it can have a positive effect on conversion rate, but last I checked, it costs money to get this type of badge to place on your site.

I encountered a shopping cart today that didn’t have any security/credibility badges in the active window, yet I still felt perfectly comfortable converting on their website.  I’d like to use them as example (click screenshot to enlarge).

Groupon.com has quickly become one of the “darlings” of the FutureNow team.  We like their deals, we enjoy their copywriting, and now we like the design of their cart.

Let’s look at the reasons why this cart is so well designed that it doesn’t even need a security badge:

Reason #1: “I was a Late Stage buyer…” I’d already signed up with Groupon to receive coupons.  I’d already read several of their emails, and I’d clicked through to “learn more” about a particular deal.  I’d read the details, and I’d taken the call to action.  Late Stage buyers are always more primed to convert, and need less reassurance about your security or credibility.  Invert that statement and it reads “Early and Middle Stage buyers are less primed to convert, and need more reassurance about your credibility and security.”

Reason #2: Clean form design. The page I screencaptured has some really nice elements of form design, including large, legible fonts, field labels above the fields, clean and roomy layout, and a high-contrast call to action button.

Reason #3: Capture of Security Code. The form asks for my credit card security code, also called as the “CCV” number.  Whether it actually improves security or not, I always feel more comfortable when an eCommerce site captures this piece of data.  It probably helps them avoid fraud, too!  Does your cart capture this?  Hint: it should.

Reason #4: Fantastic Point of Action Assurances. All the FAQs in the right column are a tad wordy, but they absolutely reflect the “voice” of the overall Groupon experience, and they do a great job of avoiding “legalese.”  Check out the questions they address: What happens next? What about gifting?  Change/cancel?  Is this safe? Each question is answered clearly and confidently, and that builds my confidence.

Reason #5: Custom guarantee. Readers of my posts already know that I’m not a fan of “copycat credibility,” so you know I’m loving the “Groupon Promise” custom graphic and text.

The two key points here are:

1) Good design increases the persuasiveness of your website. Bad design does the opposite.

2) You don’t necessarily have to “pay out” for credibility. And if you pay for a badge of some sort, it’s not a guarantee that your conversion rate will go up.  As long as you overcome the challenge that sits between your prospect and a conversion, it doesn’t matter what approach you take.

I also want to note that this post was inspired by a recent post by Mark Bronlow over at Email Marketing Reports.  In particular, his infographic was extremely interesting, and I thought it needed to be tweaked and applied to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).  If you’re specifically an email marketer, I’m sure you’ll enjoy his post…but read mine first!

Begin by clicking to enlarge my infographic, then I’ll explain what I’m trying to illustrate about why CRO is so crucial and why the time to begin a formal effort to increase your conversion rate(s) was yesterday.

The Y-Axis represents the persuasiveness of your online presence: website, online marketing efforts, conversion funnel, etc.

The X-Axis represents time.

The blue trend line represents the steadily increasing level of persuasiveness needed to stay competitive in the online marketing and selling world.  This means how well your whole online system works to map your selling process to your prospects’ buying processes.  It includes visual design, copy writing, usability, how you invest marketing budget, the data you use to make decisions…everything!

Why does the blue line keep rising steadily? Because our prospects are getting savvier, more experienced, and more demanding when they go online to research, make decisions, and ultimately buy something.  Plus, the number of businesses with an online presence is growing, so it gets harder and harder to grab your prospects’ attention in the first place.  Ever changing technology and standards (eg. increasing availability of ways to connect and interact; Google’s search algorithm) also up the ante.  This trend line will always be on a pretty steady climb because the Web has essentially made it a “buyer’s market,” not a seller’s.

The purple trend line represents what the average site owner or online marketing team is doing today.  Most web organizations continue to invest in their website, but the efforts aren’t always focused in the right place.  For example, maybe you “re-skin” your site every two years to give it a fresh look.  Or, maybe you upgraded your shopping cart last year to a more expensive version.  Or maybe you continue to fight for more marketing budget so you can spend more on paid search advertising.

Your online system is improving due to your efforts, but is it improving fast enough?  I’m arguing that for most of you (those who are still profitable) it is enough…for now.  I also argue that a lack of a formal CRO effort causes the purple trend line to not be steep enough.  Without a plan and process to keep up (ie. continuously improve), you’ll slowly fall behind the technology and increasing expectations of your audience.

The dotted line represents the point at which what you’re doing to improve is no longer good enough to persuade your prospects to buy.  That is obviously a bad thing.  If you aren’t staying ahead of your prospects in terms of persuasiveness, sooner or later, you will cross that dotted line and your prospects will go somewhere else.  To your competitors, in most cases.

Mark Bronlow supposes, as do I, that most marketers are currently to the left of the dotted line.  But we both agree that the dotted line is inevitable if you don’t ramp up your efforts at continuous improvement.  I believe CRO is the absolute best way to make sure your purple line NEVER crosses below your prospects’ blue line, and that’s why I’m in this business

What do you think of these theories?  Is CRO the only way to “stay ahead of the curve”?  How close to the dotted line do you think your business is today?  If you’re not sure, drop us a line and we’d be happy to give you an outside opinion.

Our recommendations aren’t pulled out of a list of best practices.  Our analysis and recommendations follow a process, linking everything back to a piece of data.  This is why data from your analytics is so important in optimization.  If you can’t draw a direct line between why you’re changing something on your site, and a piece of data, make sure you recognize this as a risky move, and track it very carefully.  Learning how to properly track information in an analytic program like Google Analytics, and crunching numbers to isolate potential problems are both blogged about often.  Searching for these types of articles (hint: His last name is Kaushik) will help more experienced DIYers find some of the more sophisticated tips that they’re looking for.  It won’t be as easy as “make your button stand out” or “make sure your security assurances are click-able,” but it’s useful information that’s out there to be consumed.

What I mean is that once you get beyond the basics, optimization is no longer a one-size-fits-all solution, just like there is no average conversion rate that you should measure yourself against.  So, when you look at examples of problems and solutions that are more complicated, the direction you get from those endeavors is much more likely to be about how to approach a particular kind of problem than it is to be a specific “change X to Y” kind of learning.  Why is that?  Well, let’s revisit my lead-in statement: I can’t give you recommendations that’ll revolutionize your conversion rate without looking at your data. The operative words in that statement are “you” and “your.”

Contrary to popular belief, optimization is not over after you’ve eliminated basic problems that every site needs to account for (e.g. load time, font size and legibility, visible calls to action, security assurances, etc).  But, beyond that point is where the real fun begins, and where the deeper opportunities lie.  That’s when conversion optimization transitions from sheer mimicry into a complex dance where the particulars of a situation drive how you apply overarching principles and practices.  We can talk to you about what those principles and practices are; show you some examples of those principles and practices being applied.  But you can’t just do what we do and expect it to work for you, because you’re already beyond the point where you’re just like everybody else.

That’s right: you ARE special. You’ve been waiting for someone to say it, and now it’s finally out there.  Now we can commence with our love affair.  In fact, it’s because your business is unique that optimization sometimes can be so difficult: what worked for Sally’s website might not work for yours, because you are not Sally. That doesn’t mean that you can’t learn something from Sally’s struggles.  You can learn the techniques that Sally used to resolve them.  You can read about how Sally struggled, and the progress she made all by herself.  And you can also investigate the experts that Sally used to help her learn how to look at her site and data to break through the barriers that held her back.

If you want to use Sally’s deeper learning to try to shed light on your own optimization efforts, you have to use your instinct.  You have to ask yourself, “Am I just like Sally?” or, “Am I similar enough to Sally?”, and, “How might I be different from Sally and what does that mean for how I attack this problem?”

Instinct can be a very powerful thing for those who have some confidence in optimization, but make sure you have a back-up plan as well.  A great security measure for instinct is testing.  Testing can save you from making a wrong move when trying to optimize your site. However, it’s also one of the easiest things to mess up if you don’t know how to do it properly.  Thankfully, there is a ton of information out there on how to run tests!  Creating a scientifically valid test is the key to creating a ’successful’ test.  (Successful in this case = results that can be trusted, not necessarily results that generate you money.)  Numerous blog posts give pointers about testing calculators that determine how long a test must to run to achieve significance, creating tests that will give you the clarity you seek, and testing when you have lower traffic.

So, to you experienced DIY optimizers: don’t lose faith when you read yet another article on best practices; just understand that the “beyond-the-basics” direction you’re looking for is hard to come by because it has to be tailored to you.  It doesn’t mean you can’t try those kinds of things on your own.  You certainly can.  But please recognize that if you find yourself wishing this blog post went into more detail about someone “just like” you, with a problem “just like” yours, then that’s probably a signal that you need some expert guidance. There is no shame in admitting that.  And believe me: you’re worth it!

I have to admit, I love to read our blog.  I love the insights my colleagues routinely bring to the table–and the fact that, like world-class athletes, they make it look so easy!  But sometimes, when I try to put all the pieces together, I find my head in a whirl of information, overwhelmed by the complexities of internet marketing and website optimization…and that’s when I have to get back to basics.  I remind myself to Keep It Simple, Silly! So, to honor that, I’ll try to keep this quick, and neat; like a peck on the cheek

First and foremost, a solid conversion optimization plan should be rooted in process, not just effected willy-nilly. The process we follow with our OnTarget services provides two main benefits: 1) generating results quickly and 2) eliminating the easier problems first so that we can have firm ground (ie. cleaner data, with fewer unknown variables) on which to stand when we go to tackle the more difficult questions.  It follows three main steps:

Step 1 -  Maximize the revenue that is already on the table. Some people refer to this as picking the low-hanging fruit.  If you’ve been reading other FutureNow books and articles, this is what we call eliminating the conversion barriers.  When your customers come to your site ready to buy your product, or ready to submit their information to be contacted, and something they encounter in the process stands in their way of doing that, you are leaving easy money on the table.  The goal here is to find the things keeping those Late Stage buyers from doing what they came to your site to do, and fix them.

Step 2 -  Find more of the same. Now that you have plugged up the holes in your checkout process, and you’re maximizing your potential revenue, why not pull more people into the system, and really make use of the situation?  This means identifying more sources of those same late stage buyers, and bringing them in the door so they can do what they were born to do: convert!

Step 3 – Turn your attention to the reasons why the rest of your traffic is not quite ready to buy yet, and address those. This final step is what we would call refining the persuasive scenarios.  It’s where those three ever-important questions (1. Who is my customer?  2. What is the action I want them to take?  3. What is the information they need to feel comfortable taking that action?) start to fall out into different groups (ie. personas) whose unique communication styles will impact the scenarios you have to deliver in your efforts to persuade.

After all, what sense would it make to start with Step 3 first?  You’d only be driving more people into a funnel that is full of holes, and wasting perfectly good opportunities!

It should also be data-driven…but that is a no-brainer.  What kind of scientist comes to a conclusion based only on conjecture, without having observed events and analyzing the data surrounding them?  It just means make it rooted in reality.  With the power of the internet to measure the actions your visitors take, and the accessibility of tools to help you do that, there should be no excuses for not having data to back up your changes and tests. And if you do that, your process will be customer centric by default.  Tools like Google Website Optimizer and OnTarget track what your customers do do, in real time.

Last, but certainly not least, your process should be continuous. That’s not just because getting your website in shape is just like getting yourself in shape: a lifestyle commitment (there isn’t botox for website optimization yet).  It’s also a simple matter of math.  When questioned about the most powerful force in the universe, Einstein quipped, “Compound interest.”  That is the same math behind continuous optimization.  When you make little increases each month, they build upon one another, and add up to big improvements over time.

I am disappointed to report that our online shopping experience at Target.com was, for the most part, a very frustrating experience. We already had in mind some of the things that we would like to purchase for our new apartment, but even being able to find these items from the home page proved to be a difficult task.  Essentially, we were late stage buyers ready to hand over our free dollars to Target provided that they could meet the product requirements that we were looking for.

For example, we knew we would like a bookshelf.  However, after going to the ‘Furniture’ tab at the top of the screen we didn’t find any options specifically for bookshelves. So, after scanning the page, we selected the ‘Storage and Organization’ option from the left navigation hoping to get some results.  What we found was an array of options totally unrelated to what we were looking for.

So…we tried again.  We went back to ‘Furniture’ and decided to search under ‘Home Office.’  Maybe this would give us what we were looking for. Finally, under a heading titled ‘Home Office Essentials’ on the left navigation we were able to find ‘Bookcases’ in small print.  After going to this link, we were given some more options to narrow down our search.  At this point, we had a pretty good idea of what sort of bookshelf we wanted according to size and probable color, so we went for the ‘Shop By Color’ option.

Another difficulty we experienced was navigating through the product pages.  There were limited pictures for each product, making our decision a difficult one.  At this point, it was only because of our abundance of gift cards that we trudged on through this process, as finding and selecting our particular product in mind felt more like a battle then being guided toward what we had in mind.

Possibly the most frustrating part of this online shopping experience was our experience during checkout. Target only allows four gift cards to be used at checkout.  If not all of the cost is covered by the gift cards, they obviously require an additional form of payment.  The most concerning aspect in this process for us was that at no time during the checkout process were we told what was covered by our gift cards and what was being charged to our card. This lead us to complete check out and void the same transaction three times before we felt satisfied that Target was not charging our credit card the full amount of the purchase!  Their web analysts must be confused by that data!

This is just another example of a website failing to speak adequately to the late stage buyer ready to buy.  Rather than being able to easily navigate through the site in order to find a product we already had in mind, we had to actually dig for the product.  Target also failed to give us confidence in the product we were buying with more product images to ensure us of the actual quality of the product, not to mention our troubling experience during the checkout process.  If our Target bookshelf wasn’t essentially free for us newlyweds, we would have been tempted to avoid online shopping with Target altogether in exchange for a less time-consuming and more enjoyable experience with another company.

Now, the point of all this isn’t to beat up on Target or their Web Team; their struggle is our struggle: how to provide intuitive navigation and browsing pathways through a large catalog site and make converting easy and fun!

Editor’s Note: Whitney isn’t new to the FutureNow team, but she’s new to the blog with her inaugural (inblogural?) post.  Welcome, Whitney!

Recently, I moved to Boston and began the search for the perfect gym.  I got recommendations from friends, did some research online, and even visited a few in the area to discuss membership options.  But, my instincts told me that if I could just wait one more week, some amazing deal would come along.

Last week that deal appeared in my inbox from Groupon; $24 for 24 day passes, a $480 value, saving me 95%! I couldn’t have been happier.

Sites such as Woot.com, Amazon’s Gold Box, Groupon.com, BeyondTheRack.com,  Ruelala.com and BillionDollarBabes.com have been appearing in recent years in the online retail space and I have to say, my friends and I are in love! We often share sites, tell each other about deals, and spread the good word-of-mouth (and email) to just about anyone who will listen.

Sites such as these offer promotional sales for clothing brands, restaurants, gyms, hotels,  spas, wine, vacations, and just about anything else you can imagine. The key is that they are timed so that the deal expires after a set duration.  And, after some thought and discussion, I’ve decided that the expiration factor (The X Factor) is key.  It’s a new twist on the “sense of urgency” sales and marketing tactic that’s been around for a very long time.

Example: I have this “friend” who considers herself a fairly frugal shopper, and never would purchase a pair of $100 boots in a store, or even online from a site like Zappos, but when she found a pair of $475 boots on sale for $108 on beyondtherack.com, she couldn’t help herself! She easily forked over her credit card information in fear of “losing the deal.”

“Persuasive fear” has emerged in this space and visitors are rewarded for their quick-to-convert action.  Never before have I heard of so many Early Stage visitors going straight to Late Stage in a matter of moments! I’m excited see how these sites continue to change the online retail space and morph the buying stages into a single-stage process. What I wouldn’t give to have a look at their analytics!

The question is, do these types of “buy now or lose out” sites pose a legitimate threat to mainstream retail big-brand eCommerce sites? Or, will they always be niche business that only appeals to spontaneous deal hunters? Sound off, please

During recent “routine investigations,” I’ve run into some really big customer review issues my clients are facing. Not sure just how important reviews are to your sales/leads?  Almost 70% of customers looked at more than 4 reviews before making a purchase.  If that’s not enough, take a look at the data from some other research:

• 77% of visitors shopping online use reviews and ratings when purchasing. (Jupiter Research, August 2006)
• 63% of consumers suggest that they are more likely to purchase from a website if it has product ratings and reviews. (CompUSA & iPerceptions study)
• 92.5% of adults surveyed, said they regularly or occasionally research products online before buying them in a store. (BIGresearch)

In order to put together reviews that work, you need to get into the minds of your visitors. If you were shopping for your product/service, what would be important for you to find out in a review? Now it’s your turn to go undercover as your various different visitor types and map out a customer review process that works.

I’m always shopping for sports gear, it seems.  I’ve been looking around for some goggles, but I am not set on a brand or type of goggle.  I would actually consider myself pretty uneducated about goggles. These are the things that I’m looking to find out:

1. I want a pair of goggles that will fit my helmet properly
2. I don’t care about a feminine style or color; I just want to make sure that the goggles fit my face well, so they need to be made for a woman.
3. I ski in a large variety of weather conditions, so I want a pair of goggles that either work well enough in all conditions or ones that have swap-able lenses for different conditions.
4. I use the goggles mostly for skiing but on the odd occasion, I go snowmobiling, and want them to be suitable for other sports as well.
5. I definitely want to avoid goggles that fog up, but I also don’t want the goggles to be too ventilated that my face may freeze.
6. I don’t have a specific budget in mind.  I’ll compare price once I’ve found a few great options.

These were some things worth noting about review sections of web sites, as I started my search for the perfect goggles.  Click the screenshots to enlarge.

REI.com lists out pros and cons as part of their product reviews, which is generally a great idea. The only problem is that this is a ‘pre- set’ list of pros and cons. The visitor simply checks the boxes in each list when reviewing a product. A list is good to start with, but the visitor should be encouraged to write their own pros and cons as well. Sometimes there are pros and cons worth mentioning that won’t be in the list. If the cons field is always empty (as it is in this example), some visitors will become skeptical. The visitor wants to know the bad and the good in order to weigh out their options effectively. If some visitors feel this is too good to be true, they won’t move forward in their buying process.

I love that REI.com identifies the reviewer based on their level of experience with this industry.  This reviewer establishes herself as “advanced.”  We can assume that she means advanced skier, but the reviewer was probably given very few options to describe herself.  Don’t limit the visitor’s ability to describe herself. You can give her a few options to give her some direction, but you should encourage her to describe herself in a way that allows the visitor to see who she is, why she is reviewing and how this product is used in her lifestyle. In other words, it’s good to know that she is advanced, but I want to know the type of weather she skis in with the goggles and how often she uses them, and whether or not she uses a helmet. The same goes for “best uses” category here.  Don’t make the visitor only choose from a ‘pre-set’ list.  Encourage her to go into more detail.

Backcountry.com not only features regular reviews from customers, they also encourage professionals in the industry to review products and upload their pictures using the product. They also list commonly asked questions and corresponding answers about the product.  The organization of the reviews, pictures, and questions on Backcountry is a little scattered and could be improved, but they definitely feature information that will help the visitor decide.

This is a quick list of tips to help you create effective customer reviews:

1. Feature overall star ratings of the product/service and review specific features/characteristics of the product/service that the customer will be interested in. For instance, many forget to feature reviews that tell the visitor about the delivery and customer service following the purchase.

2. Don’t just try to get reviews from the average customer, but also look to get reviews from respected professionals or leaders in the industry.

3. Feature pros and cons of each product/service, but don’t limit the reviewer to only a ‘pre-set’ list of pros and cons.

4. Have the reviewer describe themselves (location, gender, their experience in the industry) so that the reader can find reviews from those who are similar to themselves. Also, have the reviewer describe how they use the product; in what environments and how often, etc.

5. Encourage the visitor to upload pictures of themselves using the product/service. This adds emotional value.

6. Encourage the visitor to write further comments about the product, how they use it and what the real benefits are of the product, etc.

7. Feature a section with “commonly asked questions” about a product or service.

Is it time to do some work on your reviews? Well, what are you waiting for?!?

Despite an obvious bias, I still think I can offer some objective talking points, questions to ask, and things to think about if you’re going to pursue hiring help to optimize your conversion rate.  But before we go there…

Full Disclosure: FutureNow, Inc., the publishers of this blog, are in the business of optimizing conversion rates.  There, I said it.  And now you know

When you start thinking about optimizing your website’s conversion rate, the first thing you should think about is: Can I do it myself? Do I want to do it myself?  This is a pretty rare DIY attitude where someone has the time and inclination to take on all the extra work CRO entails, as well as having to learn quite a broad new skillset (psychology, design, testing methodology, etc.).

Next, you should think about whether this type of CRO effort should be handled in-house or with outside help.  So ask yourself if you have the right skill sets in your company already.  If so, do they have the bandwidth to add “optimization” to their job responsibilities?  Do they want to work on optimization?  If you decide to bring optimization into a larger, corporate culture, where in the organization will it live?  Who will be stakeholders?

If you decide to handle things in-house, there are more and more resources out there to improve a human resource’s optimization skillset: training courses, seminars, books, blogs (like the one you’re reading), etc.  Similar to how SEO started as a mostly “outside consultant” skill set, but has been moving more and more “in-house” over the past 5 years, I think CRO will follow a similar path.  It’s still pretty early to have this specialized skillset in-house, but as more people become practitioners, more and more of them will go in-house at the larger companies that can offer big paychecks and stability.

Assuming you decide to hire outside help, here’s a list of 20 questions to ask about, or directly to, the companies you evaluate.  Note that the actual answers may not be as important to how the questions are handled:

1. How fast can we be up and running, making optimizations?

2. What are your competitive advantages?

3. How long have you been in the Conversion Rate Optimization business?  Do you also work in other areas?

4. What are your qualifications, training, and experience?

5. How can you add value to my existing team?

6. How customer-centric is your service?  Do you really get to know my target prospects?  How?

7. How do I know which offering is best for my business goals?

8. What’s it like working with you?  Do you do 1-time major projects, or smaller incremental optimizations?

9. Who are some of your other clients?

10. Who will I be working with on a regular basis?

11. Do your clients have business models comparable to mine?

12. How do you work with other service providers like design agencies, SEOs, ad agencies, etc.?

13. What are your core business values?

14. How does technology play into your approach?  Are you a “platform” I need to be on?

15. Can I see a sample contract?

16. What are your cancellation policies?

17. What process or methodology do you use?  Is it documented?

18. What would the process look like after I signed with you?

19. How data-driven is your approach?  What about so-called “best practices”?

20. Why should I go with you over your competitors, i.e. what’s your Unique Value Proposition?

Like this list? We’d love it if you’d share it with anyone who’d find it relevant!

Good question!  Many people assume that optimizing for higher conversion rates in the Business to Business (B2B) environment always ends up decreasing lead quality.  We at FutureNow don’t believe that for one minute, though.  If you’re responsible for a B2B lead generation site, lead quality should be of equal importance to lead quantity.

Let’s face it; if your efforts at conversion rate optimizing decrease the quality of leads, your sales force will let you know about it!  They’ll be in your office/cubicle/face very quickly pointing out how they’ve got less qualified leads to work with, and increasing quotas to hit.  In B2B marketing, the main goal is to feed good leads that are far along in their buying process.

Let’s look at some reasons why conversion rate optimization tactics (when applied haphazardly) might decrease lead quality:

1) Shortening lead forms. It’s common sense that removing fields from your lead forms will likely increase conversion rate, but could easily decrease lead quality by not “qualifying” prospects.  For example, many lead forms ask a question about whether the prospect has a “budget” in place.  Those that don’t have an approved budget are considered low-quality, and are disqualified or de-prioritized.  Removing fields like that from your lead forms should always be tested, and the test data should always be compared against any changes in lead quality.

2) Pushing traffic into the funnel too soon. Sometimes improving your calls to action, headlines, copy, and navigation can combine to funnel more traffic into your lead form, raising your conversion rate.  But if the prospects who convert didn’t do as much up-front research, they may end up as lower quality leads.  For example, if I’m looking for CRM software for my team of 5 salespeople, and you only work with teams of 20 or more, I’m a low-quality lead.  If your efforts to increase conversion rate leave out that very important constraint, I’ll end up a lead that you don’t want!

3) Not being transparent about your pricing. Some B2B marketers don’t disclose pricing on the website (occasionally at the request of Sales).  This tactic could affect conversion rate, but you’ll find that many leads are simply filling out a form so they can find out pricing.  Many of them don’t have the budget and aren’t high-quality leads.

4) Over-promoting with gifts and incentives. I once worked in B2B marketing for a not-very-smart software company that offered the incentive of a free flash drive in addition to a white paper if they filled out a lengthy lead form.  Can you guess what that did to the quality of leads?  The worst part was all the low-quality, early stage leads calling to complain when they didn’t get their free flash drive within 6-8 weeks

So, yes, Conversion Rate Optimization could potentially decrease lead quality if not done carefully.  Now, let’s look at some reasons why CRO, properly executed by a data-driven marketing team, can actually increase lead quality at the same time as increasing conversion rate:

1) Marrying conversion data with lead scoring. Since the ultimate goal is more high-quality leads, you have to carefully test and tweak every pixel and every letter of your lead form, THEN go back and analyze lead quality data to make sure you haven’t altered the quality.  There aren’t any elegant, automated ways I know about of doing this, so you have to be willing to sit down with different data sources and compare, or sit down with Sales and hear their feedback on a regular basis.

2) Letting prospects nurture and qualify themselves throughout your site. Instead of putting a lead form on a landing page, try educating the prospect first, giving them more information that’s relevant, nurturing them, THEN asking for some contact info.  It’s hard work making sure every prospect can get the content/answers they need to graduate to the next stage of their buying process, but it’s one way to move the needle on both conversion rate and lead quality.

3) “Opening the kimono” in regards to pricing. While this is somewhat controversial among old-school B2B marketers and salespeople, being transparent about your pricing can increase your lead quality.  This doesn’t mean you have to have your pricing in 57-point font on your homepage.  But, if your prospects are looking for pricing and don’t find it, you may end up with no leads at all.  Figure out what kind of website behavior indicates lead qualification, and use that data to decide where to reveal pricing.

A few additional posts that are relevant to this topic are Melissa Burdon’s recent post about asking for the lead too early and my two-part review of Steven Woods’s book on B2B marketing and lead quality, Digital Body Language.  UPDATE: Also relevant to the “quality vs. quantity” concept is MarketingSherpa’s recent article “Comparing the Quantity and Quality of B2B Search-generated Leads.”

• Setting the wrong daily budget, only to have it spent within a few short hours
• Having all your clicks come from the “content network“ with few or no conversions
• Suspected click fraud
• Lower than expected conversion rates
• Struggling to bid the correct amounts for the various “match types”
• Lots of competitors bidding for the same ad space
• Suspecting that your PPC ads are bringing in unqualified (disqualified) traffic
• Building out your keyword list through keyword research, then not having time to optimize it
• And the list could go on!

Please don’t throw up your hands and pause your campaigns–there’s hope!  Believe it or not, the PPC game can be optimized and won.  You can get good ROI and good Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) with the right skills and tools.

Since giving advice on all the above challenges would be better suited to a book or an eBook, not a blog post, I’ll instead focus on an aspect of the PPC optimization game I don’t think gets enough attention: the various skill sets needed to optimize PPC campaigns and spending.  The skills needed to correct ALL of the above list of problems fall into two distinct buckets:  I’ll call one “Campaign Optimization” and the other “Conversion Rate Optimization.” They are two very important sides of the same coin, but it’s arguable that no agency/consultant soliciting you today can be successful at both, because the skill sets are so different and there is so much work that often needs to be done on both sides.

PPC Campaign Optimization

A lot of the “low hanging fruit” in PPC cost control can be quickly accomplished via Campaign Optimization.  When I talk about this particular skill set, I’m basically talking about the practitioners who do keyword research, bidding, account administration, budgeting, geo-targeting, ad types, reporting, match types, and more.  All the things that live in the administration side of AdWords or Yahoo’s or Bing’s advertising systems.

While online marketers used to be able to handle PPC in their “spare time,” it’s gotten so much more robust (and complicated) in recent years.  I would never, as an online marketer, try to run PPC campaigns while also juggling the management of a website, other marketing channels, SEO, etc.  Most online marketers outsource this skill set to a PPC agency or consultant, and I agree with the practice.  PPC administration is very specialized now, and it’s best left to the professionals. The downside, though, is that online marketers have to know enough about PPC campaign administration to keep their vendors honest.  For example, is your PPC agency actively doing match type keyword traps?  Or, does that sound like a foreign language?

While Campaign Optimization is a good way to get some quick improvements and cost savings, it takes dedicated effort, especially the constant testing, tweaking, and keyword list building that a successful PPC program needs.  Also, every campaign optimization done will only be successful if the traffic you pay for converts, so let’s talk about the other half of the story…

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

While it’s the job of your campaign optimizer to bring in the most qualified traffic for the lowest price, your website has to convert in order to realize the return on your ad spend.  The better you convert, the more money you have to bid on keywords, the more qualified traffic you can get, the more traffic you’ll convert, the more marketing budget you’ll have, etc.  It’s a glorious marketing cycle when it’s working!

The Conversion Rate Optimization skill set should be able to segment and analyze your PPC traffic and conversion rate, recommend effective landing page tests, suggest better ad copy, and help you optimize your conversion funnel specifically for PPC traffic.  An understanding of the paid search segment, and the user intent of different keyword queries, is essential.  Another key skill is understanding your Unique Value Proposition, and how that UVP can span from PPC ads, to landing pages, to conversion.  Finally, a CRO practitioner should have a firm grasp on persuasive copywriting, and how to apply it to both PPC ads and websites.

Is There Overlap Between the Skill Sets?

You may be asking this question soon after you start thinking about separating the skill sets into two distinct categories: Is there overlap?  Should there be?  We believe there can and should be a bit of overlap in the areas of analytics, ad copy, and keywords.  And there would need to be cooperation for executing landing page tests that are valid.

Let’s say you’ve hired a PPC agency to handle that aspect of your online marketing.  And, you’ve also engaged a Conversion Rate Optimization firm [hint: FutureNow ] to optimize your online marketing for conversion rate.  I would expect to work with your PPC agency if I need data, if I want to test different ad copy, if I want to test landing pages, and if I feel there are keywords that are ineffective or under-exploited. 

A good working relationship between the two specialties could add up to lower advertising costs via increased conversion rates.  And both of those “wins” will compound over time just like a good interest rate on a savings account.

Numbers don’t report the in-between stages of the sales process, they’re only black and white, yes or no, conversion or no conversion.  Numbers do an excellent job of showing trends and forecasting, but numbers are numbers and don’t necessarily give us the whole story. The whole story is about people. He went on to say “if I could somehow find a way to track and follow the buying process from start to finish on an individual basis, that would be unbelievably powerful!”

The power of being able to track and analyze individual buying behavior is relevant to your web site as well. There is always more story behind every web site’s analytics data. Wouldn’t it be great to set a parameter after the fact, to filter out/focus in on, specific visitors by some specific behavior they took on your site so that you could dig into those individual visits one by one? You might want to set a filter to view all visitors who successfully arrived at XYZ page, what their individual visit/click process looked like in order to get some real insights into why the visitor behaved in a specific way.

OnTarget- list of keywords and successes

OnTarget is the tool that allows me (and our other consultants) to easily analyze our client’s web sites in a way that no analytics program can. OnTarget is so vital in order for me to do my job effectively because it allows me to get individual insights into what my client’s visitors are doing on their individual visits.

I can look at a search term that sent visitors to my client’s site and actually see a list of all the individual visits that took place from that term. So instead of only being able to look at aggregate behavior that a search term brought to a web site, I can actually look at each individual visit separately. Sometimes averages lie, so I generally come up with a theory about behavior based on some of the averages, and then I always dig into individual trends to prove or disprove my theories. This helps me determine if changes need to be made based upon personal patterns, not an entire aggregate.

One click path for one visitor in OnTarget

Having access to this information is as good as following a shopper throughout their buying process step by step, except that we don’t have to worry about the shopper’s behavior changing based on the fact that I’m following them. They have no idea that I’ve been spying on their every move!

If you’re familiar with FutureNow’s process or are a frequent grok reader, you’ll already know that our process involves not only designing effective marketing efforts for each stage of the buying process, but also involves identifying what the conversion points are for each stage of the buying process. However, for those who are not familiar, let’s review:

Early stage visitors are qualified as someone who has only begun their shopping process and may not know exactly what they want, nor are they convinced that they want to purchase from you. At this stage it’s important to answer visitors’ questions and not push them towards anything that says “Buy Now!” Offering these visitors comparison among your own products is also helpful so they can narrow down what they’re shopping for.  An example of a search term an early stage visitor may use is: “car insurance.”

Middle stage visitors are qualified as someone who has decided upon the product they’re searching for, but are not convinced yet that you can provide them with what they need. They may be shopping to find the best price or the best company to fill their needs. An example of a search term a middle stage visitor may use is: “comprehensive and collision auto insurance.”

Late stage visitors are qualified as someone who have decided upon the product they’re searching for and know who they want to purchase this product from. These visitors are yours to lose. Even though they’ve already decided upon purchasing from you, there are still barriers that may make these visitors lose confidence, such as a confusing checkout process, expired product assurances, and slow loading speeds. An example of a search term a late stage visitor may use is: “Progressive comprehensive and collision auto insurance”

Okay, now that we’re all on the same page, let’s get into the meat of this subject. At each of these stages, you have the opportunity to convert these visitors to move to the next stage of their buying process. This doesn’t mean that they necessarily became a sale or a lead. This simply means that you’ve identified the point of interaction at which a visitor has demonstrated to you that they have been persuaded to go from the early stage in their buying process to the middle stage. This micro-conversion point may be the action of “landing on a page” or “signing up for a newsletter.” Identifying micro-conversion points for each of these stages of the buying process is key because they tell us the paths we’re trying to guide visitors through. The two most important parts of graduating prospects from one stage of the buying process to the next are:

1. Getting qualified traffic

2. Getting visitors to complete the lead generation or customer information form

So, how do you improve these two key parts? Let’s start with getting qualified traffic. This may require an over-haul of your keywords. First, write down every one of your marking efforts (PPC, radio ads, print ads etc.) Now it’s time to start digging. Eliminate any efforts that cost you more than you’re making in return. Look at who else you’re competing with for the same traffic and evaluate if/why, they’re getting a larger portion of the market that you are. Are your keywords too specific? Too general? Does your scent trail leave visitors at a dead end? Look through your analytics data, are you using content targeting that is bringing in the wrong type of visitor? If you’re getting 30,000 visitors a month, but none of them are qualified, you might as well be getting zero.

Lead generation forms are my personal nemesis, mostly because I feel I’ve been betrayed by them before. We all have had the experience where, as visitors, we fill out a customer information form, only to begin receiving random emails from a source you’ve never heard of, or asked a legitimate question about the service only to have it go unanswered. To put it simply: lead generation forms have a bad reputation. However, they’re a major win in terms of a micro-conversion so they need to be optimized to their utmost potential. Here are a few tips I regularly use when optimizing customer information forms:

1. Assurances: Let your visitor know that you wont sell their information to email/phone solicitation lists. For extra points, you can give them the option on how they’d prefer to be contacted.

2.  Let them know how long until they’ll be hearing from you. Having a 24-48 hr window for response is typical. (And, not just some automated response that says “Thanks, we got your inquiry, we’ll be in contact with you soon!”)

3. List your phone number near or within your customer information form. Many people (myself included) have been so put off by the use of lead generation forms that they no longer want to involve themselves with them. Having a note nearby that says “Want to talk to someone now? Call us as 123-456-7890″ this way you won’t lose a visitor simply because they fear the form.

4. Let them know what they’re getting. Is this a form for more information? To answer questions? Or, by filling out this form have they begun the purchasing process? Have a title to your customer information form that tell the visitor why they should fill it out, and what they’ll achieve by doing so.

Still want more information? Check out these great posts from Kevin Lee, and Dave Young.

Note: before you read further, understand that this post is NOT about how to use blog comments as a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactic.  This post is about how to use blog comments to begin an online selling process.

For many, blog comments are an effective online marketing effort because, while they generally bring traffic to your site in small numbers, that traffic is often highly qualified and motivated.

Pete Kistler wrote an interesting post recently for the Personal Branding Blog about using blog comments to build one’s personal “brand,” and I’ll be borrowing some bits and pieces that are also relevant to online persuasion.  The part I’m most interested in paraphrasing is that blog comments demonstrate to readers that you’re active in your space/niche, you’re passionate about the subject matter, and that you add value to the topic that’s being discussed.  All are good points whether you’re talking about personal branding or online persuasion.

Another main point to keep in mind is that blog comments are only useful in starting an online persuasion scenario; they will never be effective at “closing the deal.” Think in terms of Early Stage vs. Late Stage buyers: blog comments are great for piquing interest and driving small amounts of useful traffic to your site, but don’t try and use them to actually do your converting (your website is better equipped to handle conversion experiences).  Another angle is to think about the AIDAS (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, Satisfaction) model that FutureNow has written about before.  Blog comments are useful for Attention and Interest, but your online presence (after the click) needs to handle the Desire, Action, and Satisfaction parts in this method.

So let me propose some Dos and Donts for how you can try to optimize your blog comments to get more out of them in terms of marketing and persuasion.  We’ll start by getting the Donts out of the way

Don’t

• Embed links in the body of your comment. WordPress, for example, automatically adds a “rel=nofollow” attribute to the link, so you won’t get any real SEO value.  It will also add to the impression that you’re spammy or not credible.
• Add a comment if you have nothing of value to add to the conversation. Saying “Good post, thanks!” is a waste of everyone’s time and while the sentiment is appreciated, it discredits you in terms of being “active,” “passionate,” and “valuable” to the community.
• Leave a comment without knowing your grammar and checking your spelling!  You rarely get the chance to edit comments, so having poor grammar or typos hurts your credibility.
• Leave disrespectful, inflammatory, or overly-emotional (i.e. not rational) comments.  While you may get points for being passionate, you won’t convey that you’re valuable, and you may get deleted and never get the exposure you’re looking for.
• Leave comments on every single post, or on a consistent string of posts.  You may be viewed as “active,” but after a while, readers will tune you out, or moderators will start to delete you.
• Leave comments just to build up your inbound links for SEO.  If you don’t add value, no one will ever click to your site, and you’ll never convert, and never make any money.  That’s the equivalent of pouring more water in a leaky bucket!

Once you’ve saved yourself the time and trouble of NOT doing the things listed above, you can refocus your marketing efforts and time on doing some or all of the following…

Do

• Read all the comments before leaving yours.  If you’ve got nothing original to say, it’s best to say nothing at all.
• Leave comments that are relevant and valuable to others beyond mere opinion. Look at the topic from a slightly different angle or provide an anecdote.
• Do answer questions left by other commenters.  We at GrokDotCom try to answer all our readers’ questions, but they are often answered by other readers very quickly, which is great.
• Use your comments to hint at your expertise. Here’s where subtle, skillful copywriting can start to persuade readers and entice them to click to your site.
• Do leave a link to your site. You may even consider tagging your URL with an identifying parameter to see in your analytics what comments on what posts drove the most/best traffic to your site, e.g. mysite.com/landingpage.htm?ref=blogcomment.
• Use target keywords in your “name” in your comments. While the main goal is persuasion, doing a little SEO on the side won’t hurt.

When thinking about blog comments as the driving points for a persuasive conversion experience (remember…they are only the beginning), it’s helpful to use the 3 Questions of Persuasion Architecture®:

1. Who is here?  Who am I targeting?

2. What action do I want them to take?

3. What do they need to feel comfortable and confident taking that action?

Answering question #1 one is pretty easy in the context of a blog post and corresponding comments.  Those you’re targeting are the readers who were interested in the original topic and interested enough to read comments.  These are highly engaged, often passionate, prospects who want to continue learning about the topic, or who are involved in the discussion themselves.

Answering question #2 is also pretty easy.  You want them to click the hyperlinked phrase attached to your comment and visit your site.  But does the content of your comment subtly convey that they’ll get something of value?  Have you proved your relevance to the topic?

Answering question #3 is easy provided you’ve purged your marketing approaches of all of our Donts, and provided at least a couple of the Dos from the list above.

Is anyone out there practicing blog commenting as a persuasive marketing tactic?  Did I miss any of the main Dos and Donts?  Let us know, and you can get a little practice

Let me use an example. There is a climbing gym in Salt Lake City called “Momentum.”  [Note: This company is not a FutureNow client].  Let’s pretend that we know their traffic source mix:

• 15% of their traffic is Direct
• 68% of their traffic is Search
  • 38% of Search is Paid Search
  • 30% of Search is Non-Paid Search
• 17% of their traffic is Email

At this point, we should break down each of these traffic sources into segments based on different channels or campaigns.  Let’s come up with a scenario for their Paid Search traffic (CPC).  Let’s say that we’re able to break down their campaigns into three different buckets:

1) Some of the paid terms sending traffic to their site are brand specific; for example “Momentum” and “Momentum climbing gym.”
2) Some CPC terms are non-branded, but are specific to the qualities that Momentum has to offer, or location; e.g. “Salt Lake City climbing gym.”
3) Finally, some of the CPC terms are very general; e.g. “climbing gym.”

From this list, we can tell what group is more likely in the “late stage” of their buying process.  By visitors searching for brand-specific terms, they are showing us that they have a specific interest in the company, their products, and their services, and therefore this traffic should be the easiest to convert.  This is where we should first focus our attention when trying to improve our web site’s performance.  Where is the first place we should look to increase results for the late stage traffic?  The shopping cart and checkout, of course!  Start optimizing your shopping cart today by tackling these 5 questions visitors have while they are in your shopping cart.  Or, use these 10 tips to improve your shopping cart performance for your late stage visitors.

The analysis you do before starting your conversion rate optimization efforts needs to be nearly equal parts Art and Science.  Don’t rely on industry benchmarks or the metrics from other case studies; your analytics data should drive the planning, prioritization, and implementation of changes to your site.

4. Buy a domain name. I suggest to do this even if you don’t want to start a website for a few years. I’d even suggest this if you don’t know what you want your website to be centered around. Buy a domain name that is related to your name, your family, your hobby, your dog, anything! Because once a domain name is off the market, it’s rare that it’ll become available again. Go to GoDaddy.com and buy a domain name NOW!  If you know the keywords used when people search for your target product or service, try to get a domain name containing target keywords (e.g. “MensUnderwearStore.com”).

5. Set up persuasive momentum before a line of code gets written. This tip came straight from Melissa Burdon herself!  And, she knows a thing or two about creating persuasive momentum.  I think of this step as outlining your ideas before writing a term paper. Planning the path your visitors are going to take on your site before building it a) makes your site is easier to navigate for visitors,  b) allows visitors to become customers more quickly and c) saves money over the long run because you’ll spend less money on optimization and marketing.

6. Micro-test before you invest. That catchy little phrase came courtesy of Brendan Regan.  Consider setting up an eBay or Yahoo! store to see what demand there is for your product and help you gauge interest. This will allow you to also realistically project how much money you can invest upfront and if it’s going to be a profitable venture for you.  There’s a chapter dedicated to this concept in Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-hour work Week.

After you’ve completed these first 6 steps, you’ll be ready to begin planning your site. You’ll be prepared for who else you’re up against in the industry, and maybe even have a little money to get you started.

Do you look at the average bounce rate of your web site and come to any conclusions about your performance based on this single number?

The sources of traffic that are not targeted and are sending visitors to your site who are not interested in your content are obviously going to experience higher bounce rates than other more relevant sources of traffic. That’s why looking at averages isn’t going to lead to any breakthrough discoveries that tell us anything really valuable about web site performance.

Similarly, the average conversion rate really doesn’t tell us the whole story about our web site’s performance. It can actually be quite misleading. Some traffic sources are sending more targeted and qualified traffic than others. These are what we call “marketing efforts”. Whether or not you’re actually investing in these marketing efforts (radio ads, banner ads, CPC, or organic), they are driving traffic to your web site and therefore should be treated as marketing efforts. Obviously the more qualified your marketing effort is, driving highly targeted and qualified traffic to your site, the more likely the conversion rate will be higher for these specific marketing efforts.

If you are making changes to your site, you may be increasing the conversion rates of your highly qualified marketing efforts, but you will have no impact on the conversion rates for those unqualified sources of traffic. You could do cartwheels in front of the unqualified marketing effort’s traffic and it would do nothing because this traffic wasn’t interested in what you had to offer in the first place. The conversion rates that haven’t increased at all (for the unqualified efforts) will pull down the AVERAGE conversion rate of better performing traffic sources. Therefore, you may think that the changes you made to your site had little to no impact to your web site’s conversion rate, when really they could have had a tremendous impact to the relevant marketing effort’s conversion rates, you just weren’t looking at the right numbers in the first place.

Stop trying to increase your overall conversion rate. Instead, look at each traffic source as a single marketing effort that is sending traffic to your site, and therefore look at each marketing effort’s conversion rate. Each marketing effort brings in a different type of visitor with different motivations and needs. Get a baseline conversion rate for each marketing effort and then work to make changes to your site to increase each individual marketing effort’s conversion rate. This is what we are doing in 2010 with our clients to improve their online performance.

Some of my predictions will be “wishful thinking,” but if I can sway the direction of an entire industry I’d be surprised, honored, and ask for a raise

One of my favorite magazine formats for this sort of thing is the “What’s In and What’s Out” or “What’s Hot and What’s Not” approach, so I’ll hijack it.

In 2010, 5 Predictions for the Optimization Space…

Click to enlarge

Now, let’s step through all five for a bit of explanation and commentary:

Prediction #1: “Scent” optimization is in

Over the past several years, all the buzz has been about “landing page optimization.”  Books have been written, keynote addresses have been given, money has been made, etc.  But, optimizing landing pages ‘in a vacuum’ free of any real-world persuasion context will only get you so far.  So I predict 2010 will give us a shift in focus from only looking at and optimizing a landing page as a stand-alone entity, to optimizing for the scent of information.  People don’t just magically land on landing pages.  They are driven there by marketing efforts that you pay for, and they arrive with intent, questions, objections, fears, motivations, and needs.  Optimizing for scent means understanding the context of online marketing efforts, prospect intent, and how to design conversion experiences (scent trails) that can carry a strong scent of information persuasively from online marketing touchpoint, to landing page, and all the way through to conversion.

Prediction #2: Optimization as a value-add is in

Over the past several years, the Optimization industry has grown rapidly in the form of a “specialty.” Niche Optimization agencies have started to sell their optimization software and consulting services, traditional digital agencies are starting to add groups of resources dedicated to analytics and optimization, and corporations are starting to hire optimization practitioners in to help lead their B2C and B2B online marketing tactics.  That is a natural growth process for a new niche, but it won’t last because there aren’t enough specialists to service all the clients who need optimization.  I predict 2010 will be the year where Optimization becomes a very popular value-add with various vendors of SEO, SEM, analytics, ad platforms, content production, web design, and eCommerce technology. The reasoning is that more and more clients are going to be clamoring for professional Optimization because, ultimately, all ROI on online marketing investments revolves around conversion, and Optimization is clearly the best approach to raising conversion rates and getting better ROI on your marketing spend.  Frankly, all of the above list of investments (traffic generation, content generation, technology) are money-losers if your business isn’t converting enough prospects into customers.  This hopefully will cause the “ecosystem” of Optimizers, SEOers, SEMers, analytics folks, designers, etc. to get together and come up with better ways to service a growing need in a growing industry.

Prediction #3: Marketing system optimization is in

Those who in recent years have moved beyond pure “Landing Page Optimization” have naturally evolved towards optimizing the “conversion funnel,” which could include a landing page, content pages, and multiple steps along a conversion funnel like a shopping cart.  While this has been a positive movement with demonstrable results, it’s time to take the next step in the evolution of Optimization.  I predict 2010 will bring a more holistic approach I’ll call “Marketing System Optimization.” This means that practitioners looking to gain and retain clients will have to help optimize a company’s whole marketing system.  A few things that this could include are: ad spend, keyword recommendations, ad copy, formal testing, messaging, marketing personas, and more.  Optimizers who can succeed at this will have an economy of scale that would make their services very attractive to potential customers.  And ultimately those Optimizers who have the holistic view will be better positioned to find low hanging fruit, prioritize optimization efforts, and add value to a marketer’s overall efforts.

Prediction #4: Social media under intense scrutiny is in

Ok, maybe this one isn’t so much about Optimization, but social media is a popular marketing investment, so it must be a candidate for continuous improvement. While 2009 was the year where every marketer simply had to dive into social media, and every website simply had to have “follow me, friend me, digg me” icons on the homepage, it hasn’t proven to be the cure-all that it’s cracked up to be.  Nothing ever is: Take The Internet, example   A wise man recently said that you can’t fake social media, and he’s right.  So, I predict that 2010 will be the year where social media (as a marketing investment) will undergo intense scrutiny. Some companies will bet more on it, some will throttle back their investments, and some will simply walk away.  But they will all be taking an extremely close look at not only the ROI of their social media investments, but whether social media is even relevant to their prospects, or to their high-level marketing strategies.  The same rule that applies to websites applies to social media:  prospects are always asking What’s In It For Me? before (and while) they engage with you on Twitter or Facebook.

Prediction #5: Email marketing originality & experimentation is in

Last but not least, we saw in the past two years especially that when financial woes put the pinch on online marketers, email marketing has emerged as the “workhorse” channel that can bring in dollars on a reasonable and predictable budget.  It continues to have a decent, steady conversion rate, and is less susceptible to the fluctuating (and often mysteriously increasing) investments needed for Search Engine Marketing and other channels.  That’s OK with me, but the challenge I’ve seen as we’ve gone through a “rough patch” in the online marketing space is that the email workhorse has gotten very repetitive.  I’ve not seen very many original, thoughtful email marketing campaigns that bring value to customers in unique ways.  So, I predict 2010 will be a year in which marketers continue to rely on this channel, but must get more experimental and original in order to stay relevant, compete against social media and mobile, and bring value to prospects. Emails always have been relatively easy to test, track, and optimize, so there’s no reason not to be brainstorming and testing (to small test segments) off-the-wall ideas.  You never know when you’ll strike it rich with some sort of ultra-persuasive, epidemically viral home run!

These five predictions are just one analyst’s hunches, not even sanctioned by FutureNow, so feel free to disagree in a constructive way.  More importantly, to those investing in Optimization, or thinking about investing in Optimization, what do YOU want to see from our industry in 2010?  Let us know!

It’s an interesting predicament that he, and like-minded entrepreneurs, are in: Can a unique, persuasive website be created if you don’t know anything about creating a website, and don’t have the resources to hire someone to do it for you?

YES! (I’m an optimist)…  BUT (I’m also a realist), you have to be willing to “do your due diligence.”

Because I know that many of our Grok followers are like my friend, and are of the DIY school of thought, I thought I’d create a list of where to begin if you’re inspired, “broke” (i.e. don’t want to shell out $100,000+), and want to create a website.

1. Figure out what you want to sell and if there’s a market for it. There are some markets that are over saturated; within which a mom-and-pop site would have difficulty competing.  Examples of this are SEO, iPods, and shoes. You generally have a better chance if your “product” is something with quality you can control, like a service. When you’re competing in an industry where everyone is selling the exact same thing, your only means of differentiating yourself from your competitors is price, delivery time, and freebies (like shipping).  This makes your chances of success much slimmer.  (I warned you that I’m a realist).

2. Check out the competition. Do some keyword research. Figure out who else is out there in the area that you want to succeed in. This day and age, it’s extremely rare that you’ll create website for a business that isn’t already out there. If you’ve already determined that there’s a market (see #1), make sure that you can offer something better than your competition. Go to their website(s) and pick out what you don’t like from a visitor/customer perspective and how you’d do it better, then make note (WRITE IT DOWN OR YOU’LL FORGET) to do it.

3. Create a UVP. If you’re a Grok follower, you’ve heard us (possibly for years) go on and on about creating a UVP (unique value proposition) but I promise that if you spend the time on the front end creating a strong UVP, you’ll reap the rewards in the long run. Think about why you want to start this business. What need is there in the industry? What do you want to do better (and with more passion) than anyone else out there? How will you accomplish this goal?

Ok, that’s enough to get you started. Stay tuned for part two! (Note: None of these steps can be completed in a few hours, let alone a few days, for even the most diligent of workers. Remember, you signed up for the long haul, and I’m not promising that you won’t have to work hard, but you’ll be working smart.)

I scan the list of unread messages in waves: First, I pick off the obvious junk messages.  Then, I scan the “From” fields and subject lines to make sure I at least recognize who these messages are from and that they’re “legitimate.”  If anything looks questionable, it’s deleted in a few seconds.  Sound brutal?  It is, but that’s the reality in many consumers’ minds, and we consumers get more savvy and suspicious each day!  I do not envy the jobs of email marketers, and those who are successful deserve high salaries and our respect

This post won’t cover the importance of optimizing your “From” fields and your subject lines in order to maximize open rates.  That should be obvious, and it’s been covered plenty over the years.  Let’s instead assume that you’ve made it into a prospect’s inbox, you’ve passed their suspicious screening process, and you’ve enticed them to open your message.

Now, besides meeting the expectations that the subject line set, what else can you do to optimize the content of your emails? A few tactics are: having good “images blocked” layout, strongly worded calls to action, and clear incentives.

Another often overlooked optimization you can work on is your copy, particularly the “tone” or “voice” aspect. As I regularly read marketing emails, I’m amazed how boring they all sound.  Who is writing these?  Who are they writing to?  They read like the copy was written by a committee of marketers, not a person who’s excited and passionate about what they sell.  If you write your emails to “everyone,” you will resonate with no one.

I did receive a decently-written marketing email before the Holidays, and the tone was so audience-appropriate that I saved it.  Let’s go through the various elements and see what lessons there are, from beginning to end:

1. The Salutation: The email was addressed to the “[Brand] Fam,” and while it would be worth doing some testing, I think it worked for a couple reasons.  The decision not to use my name actually worked because I’m savvy enough to know that type of weak first-name “personalization” isn’t genuine.  The shortening of “Family” to “Fam” works because the company sells hip, urban clothing and accessories, so it begins to set an appropriately informal tone.

2. 1st paragraph: The first paragraph covers the “why you’re receiving this communication” requirement:

I wanted to hit you up because I see that you haven’t shopped at [website] in a while.  I know the economy has been messed up and that may be one of the reasons you haven’t shopped recently.

This is a reasonable explanation for the communication, delivered in a genuinely “street” tone.  While the real truth may be that they segmented their database and I ended up in the “hasn’t bought in last 90 days” batch, I don’t think about it when I read good copy.  And, whether this tone is carefully crafted by an expert copywriter, or an honest missive from the young CEO, it doesn’t really matter, because the tone of the copy has gotten me to lower my guard and engage in the marketing conversation.

3. Offer: While somewhat predictable, the next paragraph of the email offered me a 20% off coupon code.  While offers should be carefully optimized, I like that the offer came early in the copy to clear out those who can be easily persuaded to purchase using an incentive.  Assuming I’m not in a buying mood just yet, let’s read on…

4. Body copy: Assuming that those who read past the coupon code were Humanistics or Methodicals, or needed additional persuasion, the rest of the copy hits a couple points:

But if there are any other reasons I want to know!  We pride ourselves on our connection to our customers and if you had any problems, issues, or aren’t seeing what you like just hit me up on my email and cell # is below.  Actually, hit for any reason if you have ideas or just want to chop it up.

We have literally thousands of berserk new styles that have dropped on the site in the last week for both men and women…it is never too early to do a little holiday shopping or buy yourself something nice…you deserve it!!!!

The first paragraph is great for Humanistic shoppers, and establishes personality through use of the first person as well as credibility.  And the tone continues to be informal and hip, yet consistent.  The next paragraph entices the Spontaneous profile with the ‘new styles in the last week’ hook, and goes on to mention both gift shopping as well as shopping-for-self.  Basically, telling me it’s OK to shop for myself even though the Holidays were coming up…smart!

5. Secondary call to action: Those who didn’t click on the coupon code primary call to action still needed a nudge towards the site, so the email goes on to provide secondary calls to action for those who kept reading below the fold (or beyond the preview pane).  The links pointed to “new arrivals” landing pages for men and women.

6. Closing: The email ends with the name of the founder of the website/brand, a cellphone number, a personal Twitter address, and a personal Facebook address.  My critique here is that the “sender” should have clearly identified himself at the beginning of the email, which may have added credibility and gotten more people to stay engaged and read the good copy.  But, it’s still impressive that the founder has signed this email and included some pretty “personal” contact information.

So despite some grammatical issues (which only add to the personal tone of the email in this case), it’s a pretty persuasive email from a lot of different angles.  And, even if I don’t convert based on this marketing touch point, the company built its brand equity for later with personal communication, style, and voice.

I hope you found this inspirational.  Let us know if you would like help optimizing email marketing campaigns.  Or, if you feel your emails are strong, perhaps you need to optimize your email campaign landing pages and checkout?

As we all evolve our optimization approaches, one of the things to watch out for, especially for those who are just getting started using optimization tools and tactics, is what I refer to as “optimizing first and asking questions later.”

This means that you start investing in optimization (resources, new content, testing, etc.) without first asking the crucial “who,” “what,” and “why” questions related to your efforts. If you don’t know who your prospects are, how can you be thinking about optimization?  If you don’t know what you want them to do and have some informed ideas about what might be stopping them from being persuaded to do it, how can you design a proper test?  If you don’t know why their motivation is breaking down in the funnel, how can you develop more persuasive content?

I’ve seen some companies investing heavily in trying to optimize an aspect of their site, but when I ask, “What do you think is discouraging your prospects from converting?”, they don’t have a solid answer.  I guess that in some sense it’s my job to have that answer, or at least know the steps to take to arrive at one, but still I’d like everyone to at least have a reasonable and informed guess about what’s sub-optimal in their online conversion experiences.

The risks of this approach are:

• Frustration – if you’re investing in optimization, and not moving the needle, it’s indeed frustrating
• Losing your optimization budget – if you fought for an official optimization budget, and don’t get results, guess where that budget is headed: elsewhere.
• Wasted time – if you take a ‘random luck’ approach to optimization, it will take you far longer to get the results you’re after
• Wasted money – if you’re investing human resources in developing test variations, or making content changes at random, you may never get your ROI.  Also, every day that goes by where you’re optimizing the wrong way has an opportunity cost.  As soon as you get it right, you start making more money.  So delaying the getting it right costs you money!

Let’s take a specific example: You target the first page of your checkout process for optimization because it has, say, a 68% abandon rate.  Any decrease in that abandon rate would likely mean real dollars, so it’s a good place to start.  So, you go out and look at a bunch of “big name” shopping carts, take notes, and start changing your page to look and behave like theirs.  Or, you develop some test variations where elements on the page are different colors, different labels, different placement, etc.

Taking this type of approach, you may luck out and experience some optimization-like results, but you’ll never know why!  And, where do you go from there?  Any further experimentation could undo your results. That is optimizing first and asking questions later; it’s dangerous stuff, folks.

How to ask questions first, and optimize later:

• Have a brainstorm with team members to capture possible reasons why your abandon rate is 68% on that page
• Doing competitive analysis is a possibility to get ideas (but not a good idea to just start copying other online stores)
• Ask your prospects via survey.  Comb your customer service transcripts for clues.
• Develop marketing personas (free PDF), and use them to help you empathize with the questions or concerns your prospects might have
• Look at the “scent of information” that prospects followed to get to the first page of your checkout.  Have you set expectations somewhere along the way, then forgotten to fulfill them or do some reassuring?
• If you’re not comfortable with these efforts, outsource your online optimization to experts.

Once you’ve completed these types of exercises, and asked the sometimes difficult questions, then it makes sense to start investing in formal Optimization efforts.  Like studying before an exam, we know that even some basic pre-work will amplify the results you’ll see

[Editor's note: the phrase 'optimize first and ask questions later' is loosely based on a quote attributed to Hermann Göring ("Shoot first and ask questions later...").  Seeing as Mr. Göring was a bad man, we want to convey that we aren't trying to cast any positive light on his deeds.]