I was asked recently to look into my crystal ball and make some predictions for where the online marketing optimization space (including Conversion Rate Optimization) is headed in the next year.

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…

...continue to read "Online Marketing Optimization: 5 Predictions for 2010"

One of the things I’m looking forward to in 2010 is more and more people getting involved in optimizing their online marketing efforts.  This past year was really exciting in terms of Optimization gaining momentum (and budget) among many, many online marketing organizations.  It is, after all, the business that FutureNow has been in for over ten years.

As we all evolve our optimization approaches, one of the things to watch out for, especially for those who are just getting…

...continue to read "Don’t Optimize First and Ask Questions Later"

Perhaps you’re investing in affiliate marketing and have created some really captivating holiday banners for your affiliates, or maybe you’re investing a lot in PPC this holiday season.

Are you simply looking at whether a marketing effort is converting and bringing in sales? Are you ignoring the step-by-step process visitors are going through from the marketing effort, to final conversion point, and making some assumptions for why one marketing effort might be converting more effectively than another?

Don’t just look at conversion…

...continue to read "Increase ROI On Your Marketing Efforts this Holiday Season"

I decided to participate in the Black Friday craziness by taking a ride up to the Park City outlets to see what the hype was all about. I must say that I got sucked right into the whole thing. Take an extra 20% off the lowest listed price–now that’s what I call a deal. Every store had their own Black Friday special, but there were a few stores that were obviously missing the point. On a couple of occasions, when I…

...continue to read "Holiday Promotions Your Visitors Can’t Resist"

Lots of folks have been asking us lately about the connection between site traffic levels and online optimization strategies.  There are definitely some correlations, but there also seem to be some myths or mis-perceptions about those connections.

We often get asked:

How much traffic do I need before I start optimization?

Do I get enough traffic to my site to even consider optimization?

Will my tests take forever to run if I don’t have a lot of traffic?

How fast can I expect to see…

...continue to read "Myths About Site Traffic and Optimization"

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

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

Think about that time you had to connect…

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

When you think of a cherry picker, do you conjure up images of someone who only picks the easiest or ripest fruit? Or does it perhaps have some artisanal connotation, waiting until only the proper time before action is taken?   Is that how you go about optimizing your web site?

Or are you a lettuce picker? The sort of person that toils for long hours in the field and accomplishes a long day’s back-breaking labor of work that most…

...continue to read "Low Hanging Fruit: Cherry Picker or Lettuce Picker?"

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

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

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

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

Your objective: Stand out, differentiate yourself from your direct and indirect competitors.

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

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

Some of you may remember the graph with the curved arrow on our FutureNow homepage. For those of…

...continue to read "Conversion Rate Exercise: Take Stock of Your Stock Photos"

Conversion rate = The number of people who take the action you want them to take divided by the total number of potential people who could have taken that action.

When you break that sentence down, you start to understand how to optimize your conversion rate.

Who are these people? Are they all the same? Do they have different characteristics, needs, questions? Do all these people have the same amount of product/service knowledge that you do? Are they…

...continue to read "How to Optimize Your Conversion Rate(s)"