The seconds pass by in your visitor’s mind as they arrive to your website. If they don’t bounce immediately because of poorly targeted marketing efforts and sucky landing pages, you’ll still be lucky if they’ll stick around for the next 2 minutes. It’s like every visitor to your website has a timer in her head and if she can’t complete her task in the allotted time, she is out of there.

How are you wasting your visitors time?

Does it take a…

...continue to read "The 120 Second Visitor"

In our last post, we looked at LandsEnd product page and showed you how we would change the flow of the page to maximize conversions. Today we’ll look at a scenario for LandsEnd, that starts at a pay per click ad for “Polo Shirts” and ends up in the cart.

Our search on Google started with the term “polo shirts” but provided us with an ad for “Polo Shirts for Man.” I guess women must never search for “polo shirts” even though…

...continue to read "Conversion Makeover: LandsEnd.com – Part 2"

A week or so before the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in San Jose, the “company” I was supposed to analyze during my live conversion clinic – review had to cancel.  So Jim Sterne, the conference organizer, challenged me by asking if I’d be willing to “show our magic” (his words) on one of the top converting websites in the industry – a site that supposedly does over a billion dollars in sales.  And to handicap me even more, the…

...continue to read "Conversion Makeover: LandsEnd.com – Part 1"

Get Elastic’s recent post on reducing friction kicks butt – providing incredibly clear explanations of too-common Website flaws along with great examples of how to do it right.  I wish I wrote it.  Not only did the article reduced me to green-faced envy, but many of the post’s links pointed to further “must reads.”

Do yourself a favor and go read it now.

swfobject.embedSWF("http://www.youtube.com/v/M0j019xNXhg&rel=0&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=0", "vvq-2452-youtube-1", "425", "355", "9", vvqexpressinstall, vvqflashvars, vvqparams, vvqattributes);

...continue to read "Instant Clarity on Common Website Problems"

My name is Bryan and I am a screenshot addict.

When I fall off the wagon, every so often, I’ll go ahead and pick a keyphrase and start clicking through PPC ads and their landing pages and take screenshots of the whole entire experience. You can’t imagine how often the experience from keyword to ad to landing page is broken. I want to call them and yell at them to subscribe to OnTarget. I don’t do it. Instead a few weeks…

...continue to read "#1 Pay Per Click Marketing Lie"

“Do I really need that?”

Those are probably the 5 scariest words in website optimization today.  More and more visitors are asking themselves that question and then not buying.

They’re applying a considered purchase mindset to much lower price-points than ever before.  And most websites’ copywriting is coming up short in the face of this new challenge, since most of it was written to describe rather than to intensify desire or persuade.

So with that in mind, here’s a quick and dirty…

...continue to read "7 Ways to Win Over Reluctant Buyers"

As part of my Texas Tech series, I’ve been corresponding with West Texas entrepreneur and football fanatic (sorry for the redundancy), Tom Grimes, who has consistently offered outstanding commentary and feedback on the Texas Tech and Coach Leach phenomenon.

In fact, his last e-mail was so good and applied so well to most lead generation websites that I thought I’d share it with you directly:

“…Leach recruited the BIGGEST OFFENSIVE LINE in college football (bet it’s bigger than most pro teams as…

...continue to read "Texas Tech Tuesday – It Ain’t Just About the Website"

While most copywriters have avidly studied Claude Hopkins’ Scientific Advertising, very few have even heard of Theodore MacManus, let alone read his book, The Sword Arm of Business.  And yet MacManus was, in some ways, a more successful ad man, having:

Established his own (very successful) ad agency Launched the Dodge and Chrysler brands Hired and mentored Leo Burnett, creator of the Marlboro Man, Tony the Tiger, Pillsbury Doughboy, and many other advertising icons that made his clients rich Turned positioning…

...continue to read "Sword Arms vs. (Semi) Scientific Advertising"

When Michael Lewis wrote his article on Coach Leach and the Texas Tech Football program, that program was known as an offensive powerhouse that relied on sheer scoring power to outgun opponents.  Its defense wasn’t mentioned in that article, and one can only guess the omission was intentional.  Just look at their game results against Texas and OSU for 2005-2008:

What you can see is that up to 2007, Texas Tech continually increased it’s offensive scoring, but to mixed results…

...continue to read "Texas Tech Tuesday – Challenge Organizational Traditions / Assumptions"

A lost wallet lies on a Manhattan street, stuffed with cash. A white middle-income male, New Yorker, between age 30 and 44, picks it up. Will he look for the rightful owner, or pocket the cash?

With that level of “targeting,” it’s anyone’s guess. There just isn’t enough information available.

But if George Costanza, the white middle-income male New Yorker between age 30 and 44 from “Seinfeld” picks up the wallet, everyone knows exactly what he’ll do.

He’ll keep the money.

By allowing you…

...continue to read "The Case for Persona-Based Lead Generation"