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…
In part one, I shared my sordid story of buying a battery for my MacBook Pro from a third-party. In short, I went to Fastmac.com and bought a battery on a recommendation from a colleague. Impatient to receive the battery for an upcoming business trip, I learned (only after the purchase) that the product was on back order.
I asked the question: did Fastmac.com bury this information on its site to increase conversion? Well, the folks at Fastmac…
When you convert a visitor to a sale or to a lead, hopefully you have scored a run your competitor won’t. Pete Rose liked to say “Somebody’s gotta win and somebody’s gotta lose and I believe in letting the other guy lose.”
Pete received the nick name “Charlie Hustle” for his unique playing style. He may not have been the athlete with the most talent but he worked harder than anyone…
While compiling (many) posts into a book is a common enough practice these days, how many people systematically plan out their blogging to optimize the construction and marketability of their book?
How many people craft different blog posts tackling the same subject from different angles and designed to appeal to different Temperaments?
How many people publish their nonfiction/business book in mind with a firm understanding of what they want the book to accomplish for them, what a book reasonably can accomplish, and what it takes to make that happen?
The simple truth is that it’s incredibly unlikely for authors to make money on their non-fiction book, but fairly common for authors to make money because of their book - IF they intelligently market their book…
How far are you willing to go to convert a sale?
Would you be willing to lie? Cheat? Steal?
I didn’t think so. Most of us wouldn’t.
How about just ever so slightly burying a fact — one that’s essential and potentially harmful to your sales — at the bottom of the page?
Now you judge.
My Little Tale
One day several weeks ago, I noticed my Apple MacBook Pro laptop battery was driving toward a slow and painful death…
Here are the top 10 converting websites for March 2009*. These are based on Nielson Panel data and are calculated by toolbar user to final conversion. Conversion-rate data is based on visitor conversion rates, not session conversion rates: i.e., No. of unique customers/No. of unique visitors.
1. Schwan’s 50.5
2. FTD 27.2
3. ProFlowers 24.3
4. Vitacost.com 23.7
5. Woman Within 22.7
6…
Patrick Sullivan Jr, describes himself as “a professional UI fixer constantly striving to make the cow more purple-er so the sneezers keep sneezin.” Some of you may remember Patrick’s name from our Always Be Testing book where we highlighted the success his company Jigsaw Health had with our conversion coaching service and Google Website Optimizer (in early beta). His story was also published in Inc Magazine and by Google as a case study…
At around 1:20pm, while presenting at the “Survival of the Fittest 2.0″ session at Search Engine Strategies last Tuesday, I get the text message from my wife “I am in labor.” At 11:32 pm Matthew David Eisenberg joined our family. Baby and mom are doing well. My daughter and other son are enamored with our new addition.
Driving home that night from the hospital brought memories of my Mom and Dad and their great words of wisdom around parenting…
After the first dot-com bust, “content is king” was the rallying cry of any competent Web worker. Back then this revelation was novel online. Soon after, this mantra became a cliché. As it often goes with clichés, they start out as something true and meaningful. Eventually, the words become common, outlive their value, and are so overused that they’re easily ignored.
Saying content is king is the equivalent of saying money is valuable; it’s true but obvious…
Did you miss my webinar last week with ClickZ? A recording of Post-Click Marketing: Maximizing Conversions Once Visitors Arrive was just made available.
Roy William’s published the 10 things never to do in your advertising. How many are you doing?
Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet - I don’t completely agree with the author but Danny Sullivan strongly disagrees…
Here are the top 10 converting websites for February 2009*. These are based on Nielson Panel data and are calculated by toolbar user to final conversion. Conversion-rate data is based on visitor conversion rates, not session conversion rates: i.e., No. of unique customers/No. of unique visitors.
1. Schwan’s 42.10
2. ProFlowers 36.50
3. Quixtar 33.20
4. Vitacost.com 28.90
5. Woman Within 24…
I’m thinking of building a monument to Simon Rodrigue, AVP e-commerce for Sears Canada. Why? Because of his chosen theme for the upcoming closing keynote at the eMetrics Summit Toronto. He’ll be talking about something regular readers know I’ve had a passion about for the last decade:
OK so now you have a bunch of different data sources and a few people dedicated to be analysts but the business doesn’t seem to change, what’s wrong?
This week on his blog, Rodrigue wrote about “Building up the Sears…
FutureNow just released its latest white paper, “The Leading Edge: Increasing Qualified Leads Online.” This white paper will teach how to:
Get your copy of “The Leading Edge” now…
Thanks to our friends at Contentwidgets, we developed this little quiz to see how persuasive your copywriting is. Please take a try at the quiz and leave your score in the comments below.
—————————————————-
Starting as low as $1000 per month: FutureNow’s OnTarget software-as-service. Will help you increase your leads and sales today…
No one but search engines and media properties make money from people clicking on ads. If you rely on sales of products or services, the revenue is a consequence of being seen as relevant to your visitors’ needs. After that click you must also instill trust, persuade visitors that you solve their problem, and that it’s simple to buy from you. The original conversion guru, New York Times bestselling author and ClickZ columnist, Bryan Eisenberg, will be presenting proven ideas on what to provide visitors after they click through…
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” ~ Michael Altshuler
In January, I was sitting with Jack Love publisher of Internet Retailer as he was being interviewed on WebMasterRadio. Jack told my friend Jim Hedger that it didn’t take much to look good over the last 6 or 7 years in the ecommerce space while industry growth was 25% or greater year after year…
Are you selling your white papers short with poor merchandising?
Many sites offering “free” white papers, case studies, or resources in exchange for some visitor information utterly fail to merchandise their downloads. Yet if your website doesn’t treat your white paper as containing valuable information, your visitors won’t either.
The problem starts by thinking of these downloads as free…
There has been plenty of hot air blown into the bubble that’s getting ready to burst on Internet marketers again. I watched it happen the first time. With all the financial chaos crashing around us now, the last we need is the blind ignorance of the “new economy” happening again.
Earlier last month some hot air came from Interactive Advertising Bureau CEO Randall Rothenberg, who wants to prevent the Internet advertising economy from becoming “performance based…
Jeffrey and I were having a discussion about Twitter. Mind you, Jeffrey doesn’t Twitter. I do. He says he has never felt comfortable at small talk. Even though he does do Facebook updates occasionally. Help us settle our discussion (read brotherly argument) about whether or not Twitter would have worked with 70 characters, 210 characters or any other number.
—————————————————-
Starting as low as $1000 per month: FutureNow’s OnTarget software-as-service…
Here are the top 10 converting websites for January 2009*. These are based on Nielson Panel data and are calculated by toolbar user to final conversion. Conversion-rate data is based on visitor conversion rates, not session conversion rates: i.e., No. of unique customers/No. of unique visitors.
1. Schwan’s 52.50
2. ProFlowers 27.30
3. Quixtar 22.40
4. Blair.com 21.80
5. Office Depot 21…
If you can make it to Search Engine Strategies in New York, March 23-27th, you may have a chance to win an extreme makeover and work with Ethan Giffin of Groove Commerce, Tim Ash of SiteTuners, and me of FutureNow. This may be the most fun of the three sessions I will be involved in at SES.
Other events:
On March 3rd, also in New York, you can catch me at The “New” Rules of Engagement featuring Patti Freeman Evans of JupiterResearch…
Yesterday, I posted the Missing Google Analytics Manual. That was relatively easy to put together since there are so many wonderful resources already written about it. However, as I tried to put together this post, I realized a real gap in the knowledge base available. I’ll be posting this as an ongoing series, that I might turn into a best practices whitepaper.
The “Voice of the Customer” (VOC), can be obtained in many ways: surveys, reviews, customer requests, interviews, focus groups, field reports, etc…
Get the most out of your Google Analytics with this collection of links to implement, configure and get insights from Google Analytics. * Last updated 2/27/09.
Initial Setup of Google Analytics
Google Analytics Setup Checklist
A Video Tutorial to Google Analytics Setup
Google’s Support Installation Guide
How to speed up your website when using Google Analytics
8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do To Mess Up Their Analytics
How to Link Google Analytics to your AdWords Account
Click here to view the embedded video…
Personalization, done effectively, is a lot more than making product recommendations or using technology to welcome a visitor by name. Smart personalization is the process of providing more relevant content and offers to your visitors based on their preferences and behavior.
I call it persona-lization.
Thankfully, today’s technologies have come a long way from those that would recommend “customers who bought my book ‘Call to Action‘ should also buy clean underwear…
Last week, I had the pleasure to record this webinar with my good friend Craig Danuloff, CEO of ClickEquations. Some of you may remember Craig from the webinar we did a couple of months ago on Google’s Quality Score: Exposing the Secret Factor to PPC Success. I asked Craig to explain to us the details behind his much anticipated e-book on maximizing Pay Per Click marketing, and he was kind enough to take the time out of his schedule…
…With any one person that you think could help your business, who would it be? Why? What would you discuss? What would you hope would come out of that meeting?
I can think of many people who I would enjoy spending the day with, but the person I would choose may be a bit obscure for most people. I would like to spend the day with Scott Cook. For those of you who don’t know who he is, Cook is the founder of Intuit, the billion dollar+ company behind Quicken and QuickBooks…
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 their “Photo Finish” study of more than 400 Americans age 40+, reports MarketingCharts…
How would you like to get business advice from Seth Godin? I did. But then again so did you. Let me explain:
On Independence Day, July 4th, 2008, Seth Godin wrote a post titled “Two Simple Web Businesses” where he declared the world’s need for “fixed-price web podiatrists.”
Podiatrist? Hmmm…OK, well I don’t have a foot fetish, but I do have a fetish for helping businesses make more money from their website by improving their conversion rate…
By now, many online retailers should be familiar with the abbreviation “RFM,” which stands for recency, frequency, and monetary value. For a refresher, here’s my explanation from 2002.
Over the past several columns, I’ve examined conversion rate basics. This week, we continue our study of the basics with an updated look at RFM.
Recency represents the number of days since the customer last completed the action you’re profiling…
You're looking at my set of tools. The custom search engine helps me find the answers to questions more quickly. The RSS aggregator keeps me updated with industry news that matters. And, in the near future, I plan on documenting the major steps and considerations used in SEM as a check list (although it will also work well as a list of tutorials).
While I built (and am improving) the above tools for myself, it seemed like a waste to keep them to myself. After all, good will breeds good will, and perhaps you'll even help me find more great blogs to follow.
In the name of good karma, all my outgoing links on this site are followed. Treat others as you wish to be treated, right? Besides, I think the authors who we read daily deserve all the thanks (links) we can give.
I hope you find the SEM News feed and the free SEO search tool helpful.
- Brett at semdaily.com
