1. What is the best way to generate sales online? A Forbes study shows that 48% of marketers said that search engine optimization (SEO) was the best method for generating conversions online. It’s always easier to start when visitors have some level of intent.

2. Search drives more sales, but shoppers are thinking longer before buying.

3. Does Google Analytics overstate the value of search? Econsultancy research shows that it might.  Make sure to at least set your cookies for 30 days.

4.…

...continue to read "TheGrok’s Not-To-Miss Links for the Week 6/12/09"

1. Econsultancy shares how the Verified by Visa program may be a conversion killer.

2. Dr. Ralph Wilson interviews my good friend Avinash at the eMetrics summit about Useful Key Performance indicators for small business. Ralph also did a few interviews with me. Here is the first one on “The Winning Edge“:

3. Mars Chocolates is being punished for a bad ‘Fling’ – first when people search for the website they end up sending people to a porn site. If that wasn’t…

...continue to read "TheGrok’s Not-To-Miss Links for the Week 5/28/09"

So your friend shows you this book he can’t stop raving about. After giving it the old dust-cover/random-flip-through examination, you pretty much decide to buy it. Now, when you arrive at amazon.com, my question is: are you at all interested in the book recommendations that Amazon has for you?

Absolutely not, right?  Or at least not yet.

You came to buy a specific book.  You’ve already got a task in mind and browsing random books aint it.  You’ll likely…

...continue to read "Does Online Browsing Bend the Laws of Scent and Relevance?"

After my initial post on blog-ified and geographically falsified landing pages, I ran into a few more such pages and they all shared the “2-product combo with a free trial of each” strategy.

So it’s only fair to ask: can you get sophisticated and wary audiences to buy pseudo-snake oil simply by switching from extolling the virtues of a single miracle product to praising the miraculous combination of two semi-wondrous products?  As in this teeth whitening example:

Well, yes, actually.  …

...continue to read "Are Two Products More Credible Than One?"

I guess it was professional curiosity, but I actually clicked one of those facelift-in-a-bottle ads while visiting some blog.  And hell if I wasn’t intrigued by the landing page’s sleaze-bag persuasive techniques.

Take a look at the screen shot I took of the landing page.  What do you think most caught my eye?  Here’s a hint: think layout and bolding.

Straight out of The Ogilvy Playbook

Here are two relevant quotes taken from pages 73 and 90 of Ogilvy on…

...continue to read "Ogilvy-inspired-but-Sleaze-ified Tricks"

The spending level for Valentine’s Day gifts this year will be slightly lower than last year – $140 to be spent by men (versus $166 in 2008), and $75 (versus $90) to be spent by women, according to the BrandKeys Valentine’s Day Index, writes RetailerDaily.

Mature consumers prefer single-image advertisements over ads with multi-image collages by a margin of 66% to 34%, and also gravitate to images that show products and lifestyles,  according to a recent image-preference survey by Creating Results according to…

...continue to read "TheGrok’s Not-To-Miss Links for the Week 2/8/09"

Don’t miss the 15 year old and still current Calvin & Hobbes on the financial crisis http://bit.ly/RqdH.

Don’t miss my interview with David Szetela on PPC Rockstars today. You’ll hear us discuss the top page and ad elements that every PPC advertiser should test.

What do you think – Is Twitter the Next Second Life? http://tinyurl.com/8nof7j. You may also want to read The State Of The Twittersphere? http://tinyurl.com/6upklq. GigaOm claims Followers Aren’t Really Friends on Twitter. This leads to some of the challenge of…

...continue to read "TheGrok’s Not-To-Miss Links for the Week 12/29/08"

No less of a copywriting authority than Gary Bencivenga has declared credibility as THE most important factor in effective copywriting.  Why else would he call “Yeah, sure” the two most powerful words in advertising?

Once you’ve gained the reader’s interest through relevance, buyer confidence is everything – without it the sale is lost.  That’s why methods of substantiating claims and establishing credibility are frequent topics of mine.

And it’s also why Tom Wanek’s blog is a must read.

No where else will you find such a…

...continue to read "A Blog Worth Following"

1. Site-Perf – get an accurate, realistic, and helpful estimation of your site’s loading speed. The script fully emulates natural browser behavior downloading your page with all the images, CSS, JS and other files – just like a regular user. A unique feature is that site-perf.com allows to measure packet loss ratio with reasonable precision.

2. Customer Focus Calculator – will analyze the words on your page and determine if your copy is more about yourself or your customer. This tool will measure…

...continue to read "33 Free Tools to Make Your Website Better"

Amazon just launched Windowshop.com. When you get there you see a wall of images that you can then scroll across using a mouse or keyboard. By zooming in you get a preview of a particular album or film or book. If you want to purchase it, just click through to the Amazon website.

They advise people to come back every Tuesday to see what is new. I am not sure why they didn’t include a way to subscribe here.

When you go…

...continue to read "Window Shopping the Amazon Way"