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Easy Clickbank Management with the Right Tools
Clickbank has been around for years and has earned an excellent reputation online.
They make it easy for anyone to be able to take credit card payments from their
websites without the hassle of obtaining a merchant account.
SES: Search Engine Marketing Heading Up Forecast Says
With the SES: San Jose starting today, JupiterResearch, a division of Jupitermedia
put out its online advertising forecast for 2005 as one of the first pieces of
information from the conference. The forecast predicts online advertising will
continue its growth well into the future.
Tags
& Folksonomy: Latest Internet Trend
There is a new branch of the Web growing like a well organized storm cloud. This
recent trend on the Web can be used to strengthen your presence with major search
engines and reach an active audience that is highly interested in your content.
Marketing
Using Minisites
When it comes to making money online, there are a wide variety of web sites with
different graphics and copy with some being very detailed and some not.
E-commerce: The Bop Approach
For centuries and most of the decades in the 20th century (i.e when computer was
invented) access and communication was the tool of rich and ultra rich people,
prohibitively expansive to ‘not so rich' and ‘not at all rich' people.
Google Snatching Real Estate Business From Newspapers
Two new real estate reports were released Wednesday by Classified Intelligence
and Borrell Associates. Word is that Google is trying to lure real estate ad money
to Adwords...
The Hybrid Blog and Ping
For the past two years, one of the best SEO inclusion tactics was the use of blogs.
Blogs have become a base standard in SEO marketing, but as times change, so does
the efficacy of any tactic.
Cost-Per-Action in the Near Future
To say that the search engine marketing industry is booming would be an understatement.
And Pay-Per-Click (PPC), the method by which advertisers pay each time a searcher
clicks on their sponsored link as a result of a search query using relevant terms,
is a large part of that industry.
Utilizing Backend Inventory Solutions for E-commerce
The advent of the internet has opened the door for e-commerce, which not only
includes B2C businesses but also supports B2B business relationships.
Legal Downloads? 180 Million Of Them
The International Federation of the Phonograpic Industry (IFPI) said on Thursday
that the number of legal, paid downloads had tripled during the first half of
2005. This is great news for the RIAA and MPAA as more and more people switch
to the legal download side of things.
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08.10.05
Turning Visitors In Buyers – SES
 By John Stith
One of the oldest questions in sales is how to convert visitors into buyers. This
question applies to any type of business, whether a car dealer or an ad agency
or a great online store with some really groovy products. Chris Richardson attended
the session and did a few conversions of his own.
Trying to your convert your visitors into customers? Talk more about with people
who know at WebProWorld.
Detlev Johnson, VP and Director of Consulting at Position Technologies moderated
this affair. Michael Sack, Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer
at Interceptor and Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder and Chief Persuasion Officer at
Future Now Inc. provided plenty of insight into turning looks into purchases.
Most of the session was dedicated to targeting the correct keywords and adjusting
your site layout and its content accordingly. Both speakers were incredibly knowledgeable
and beside targeting the keywords, both strongly suggest using a good web analytics
package for your site. These analytics will give you the necessary knowledge to
make the appropriate adjustments.
Bryan Eisenberg from Future Now imbued the audience with his knowledge of the
tricks of the trade. He said producing persuasive online copy was important. Be
aware of your sites analytics (how it performs with visitors) and make appropriate
adjustments. You need to know the visitor behavior when they visit your site.
He also said improve the navigation. Bad navigation ranks as one of the worst
problems in ecommerce. Also, splash pages are bad and will drive away visitors
from your site. Home pages should be simple and invite your visitors to venture
further into your site.
About 10% of visitors leave a site after the first page. If a user lands on a
page that contains the keywords his looking for, then visitors are more apt root
around and conversion rates rise exponentially. Conversely, if page doesn't have
what they are looking for, they won't look through the site and they usually leave.
He emphasized that links should propel visitors towards their goal in most cases
and that this needs to be as instantly gratifying as possible. The longer a customer
has to navigate through the site after the landing page, the greater the chance
of them bailing on your site.
Query language infers intent and you should prioritize the traffic and target
those more apt to buy. Become familiar with the traffic potential for a term you
are targeting and learn how well the target word converts.
Use eyetracking principals when positioning content. Inform the customer their
item has been added to their shopping cart when they choose to do so. If they
have to check and see themselves, they can and will stop the process. Also substance
over style when delivering content meaning white backgrounds, blue borders, underlined
links etc.
Improve the download speed and page load time. Once again, waiting customer means
losing customers. If it takes too long, conversion rates are lower. Also make
sure you give users plenty of information about the product they've selected.
Don't be stingy with it. Understand your visitors motivation for visiting your
site.
Mike Sack from Inceptor added a lot of additional information. He quoted Fortune
magazine saying, "Conversion rate is the most powerful Internet metric of all."
He emphasized some of what Eisenberg said and added his own comments.
First he said, you have to prepare your site. Do conversion benchmarks by comparing
your site to successful competitors. Study them and imitate them. Don't reinvent
the wheel, sites brag about their conversion rates. The information about conversions
is out there. Understand what on your site actually converts and bring this to
the forefront. Know what people are looking for and make your site fit these queries
because you can't change how people search.
Next he said target your traffic. Most people won't go to a third page. Target
the proper keywords because the more specific a search, the higher chance of converting.
Also, give your audience what it wants by delivering them to what they're searching
for as directly as possible. Take your customers to what they're searching for,
don't leave them to do it for themselves. Make sure you test different layouts,
including calls to action and landing page info.
Then track your conversions. Tie conversions back to keyword searches; see the
buyers' click path and this includes direct and deferred conversions. Track offline
conversions as well. Nine out of ten conversions happen offline. Also if you don't
track those online conversions, you might make unnecessary adjustments that deter
your offline conversions.
The offline conversions mentioned happens when a some goes to a Lowe's website,
for example, and finds the product they need. Then the customer doesn't order
it online, they travel to their local brick & mortar store and purchase the product
and take it home. A lot of business happens this way.
Then test, analyze and adjust. See what works and continue to improve upon it.
Get rid of what doesn't work and look for new things. This can really apply to
PPC campaigns because the right subtle change can greatly increase that conversion
rate.
In the end, he said use the power of suggestions. Route traffic towards other
items of interest (like items on the initial landing page or the checkout page).
These entice visitors to hang out for a while continue to buy. In some businesses,
they call these add-ons or upsells. But these little things can increase your
sale totals. Make these products that tie into what customers look for like flashlights
and batteries for example. These little things make all the difference in the
revenues, which is the name of the game anyway.
About the Author:
John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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