Good things are happening. This will be our last post as we will no longer be publishing here on Typepad. We are aggregating all our content in one place, GrokDotCom.com .
You will now find our blog, our podcasts, our newsletter as well as a few new goodies, all in one convenient place.
See you over at GrokDotCom.
From Dow Jones MarketWatch...
Keyword inflation, low conversion rates sending merchants elsewhere
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- A growing number of online advertisers are bidding a partial goodbye to Google Inc.
Frustrated by the soaring price of Internet-search advertising and diminishing returns from the ads they buy, mid-sized advertisers say they plan to reduce how much business they do with Google this year -- in some cases, significantly.
Last year, for example, eBags.com co-founder Peter Cobb spent between $5 million and $8 million to peddle suitcases, handbags and other carrying cases online. Google got 75% of that amount.
But this year it will get "significantly less," Cobb said. "The Google percentage has got to go down," he said.
In many cases, the cost of an eBags.com ad placed on either Google's own Web site or one of its affiliates now equals 45% of the price of the product it promotes. That's crimping the company's own profit margins and forcing it to look elsewhere to market its bags.
"We're testing print ads right now," said Cobb, whose company will spend up to $8 million on ads in 2007. Read the rest of the article
The article continues...
Keyword search prices on many terms rose between 40% and 60% last year, according to advertisers like Dan Sackrowitz, chief executive of Bare Necessities, which sells lingerie online. He saw his Google ad budget soar 50% last year.
The problem is obvious, traffic costs are puffing up like a marshmallow in a microwave and advertisers are having a hard time finding ways to increase traffic and lower costs. Simply put, Google advertisers are hooked.
Instead of looking for ways to increase return on traffic investment, the average marketer will look for another traffic fix. We've said before that the marketing battleground of the future is not traffic acquisition, it will be traffic conversion.
The exceptional marketer is looking for ways to optimize their keyword and landing page conversion rates.
Optimizing landing pages is something we've been doing with our clients for quite some time. We are a premier channel partner with Google and their new testing platform Google Website Optimizer beta. If you are interesting in our landing page optimization coaching service, we are going to take on a few testers over the next few weeks to participate in this beta with us. Contact us if you want to know more.
I had to do a double take when I read this article. I am still irked that these fundamental conversion issues keep popping their ugly head.
It's Mouse Rage Syndrome, and it infects all Internet users sooner or later, according to a study of 2,500 Web users that was released Tuesday. Conducted by the Social Issues Research Centre in the United Kingdom, the study identified key factors that can negatively affect cardio functions, as well as the immune and nervous systems.
What's the root cause of Mouse Rage Syndrome? It's primarily caused by badly designed and hosted Web sites, according to the research center.
All Web surfers are familiar with the causes: slow-loading pages, layouts that are difficult to navigate, pesky pop-ups, and unnecessary ads, including banners. And, of course, the killer cause: site unavailability.
"The test results indicate that users want Google-style speed, function, and accuracy from all of the Web sites they visit, and they want it now," according to the SIRC report. "Unfortunately, many Web sites and their servers cannot deliver this."
Courtesy of EETimes
I thought we had beat the drum one too many times when we published "Get That SIte to Me Fast" in GrokDotCom in 5/2002. In case you need more evidence, in November Akamai and Jupiter Research put out a press release about research that shows 4 seconds as the new threshold of acceptability for retail web page response times.
If you aren't sure how long your site takes to load you may be held liable for Web Rage!
I'm an avid
reader of Avinash Kaushik's blog, Occam's Razor, and I quietly
anticipate each new post. In general,
Avinash is incredibly insightful, thought-provoking, and just fun to read.
But as a
fan and follower of his work, I was surprised by many of the statements in his
recent post, "Measure
the Real(tm) Conversion Rate & Opportunity Pie." It’s almost as if
Occam cut himself shaving.
It’s
possible that Avinash didn’t have time to examine every angle—especially since
he was putting presentation slides together for London at the time, and we all
know how that goes—so I’d like to address the more dangerous and misleading
conclusions that can be drawn from so-called “Real™ Conversion Rate” thinking.
The article
first caught my eye when it described, among other things, how to "…improve
your Conversion Rate in 10 minutes by doing nothing more than applying simple
math." Sounds fantastic! After all,
here we are as an industry spending tens of millions of dollars
measuring marketing efforts that cost tens of billions of dollars when,
all the while, a solution needing less time than a cup of coffee sits
under our collective noses. “This will be great,” I thought.
The problem
with the argument presented in the article is that it strikes me as a
marketer's version of the Anthropic Principle:
the notion that the universe is the way it is because we're in it. Such
scientists are that the forces of Nature are balanced just-so because every
other variation would not allow Life (i.e., us) to exist to observe it.
Applied to
marketing and analytics the message becomes: "We're professionals who toil
to effectively persuade. All those industry-typical, outrageously-low
conversion rates can't be our fault because we work too hard, so there
must be something wrong with the math." In other words, let's fit the data
to our expectations, rather than the other way around.
This
fascinating approach to improving conversion consists not of converting
more traffic, but filtering out what qualifies as “total traffic.” I
like to call this our “Unreal™ Conversion Rate.” It's kind of like deciding
the crime rate is too high, and therefore the solution is to make murder
legal -- thus lowering the crime rate by simply not counting an
entire class of crime. Of course, our government does this every day
in under-reporting the budget deficit when it uses current Social Security
receipts to offset current year expenses, despite the fact that those
receipts represent future debt still to be repaid. Ah, but I
digress.
The same logic was
applied to women’s dress sizes in the U.S. when the Department of Commerce
withdrew the standardization of woman’s apparel in January, 1983. It’s no secret that American women—and men,
and children—have gotten heavier since then. So, in a blatant appeal to vanity, a “perfect Size 6” became a “Size 4”
or lower! Today, there are even negative sizes for our svelte ladies. One might otherwise conclude that the thin
have gotten thinner. Yet, sadly,
thinking thin doesn’t quite do the trick.
The article
then states something spot-on: "The fastest way for you to improve
your conversion rate is to figure out what is the number of people who are in
play for even remotely being converted.”
Yes, I
totally agree. But then the piece goes on to describe three suggestions for
achieving such improvement and, in so doing, demonstrates
the H.L. Mencken witticism that "For every complex problem there is a
solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."
#1 Bounce Rate
An
interesting approach on bounce rate, defined in the article as "…the
minimum time that someone has to commit to your website, just ten seconds,
for you to even have a chance of convincing that visitor of anything." At
first, this sounds reasonable, at least until you start
thinking a bit deeper of some actual scenarios in which it would be
in play. The first time someone comes to your site, it may absolutely be true
that they do a 10-second-ish scan of your homepage. But what about regular,
repeat customers, the backbone of any successful business?
When you go
to Amazon.com to buy a book, do you stare at the site for 10 seconds,
waiting to be convinced? Or, already familiar with Amazon's fairly standard
navigation, do you instead quickly type in the book/DVD/gadget you were
actually looking for? In fact, wouldn't a repeat customer spending more
than 10 seconds at a familiar interface indicate something were wrong rather than right?
And wouldn't
this suggest several other insights? For instance, there are certain situations
where the bounce rate is an indication of something wrong in the selling
process rather than customer disinterest. Further, that there are some situations where the mental state of the
prospect indicates they know precisely what they want, rather than just idling around.
These two
points combined suggest that there are any number of scenarios and states of
mind of the personas visiting the site—all of which must be accounted for in
fulfilling a full spectrum of customer needs and goals. It seems
unreasonable that we can infer intent based on bounce rate. (Actually, I'd assert that we can't infer
intent by any analytic-centric approach; we can only use analytics to measure
the efficacy of modeled intentional paths. But that's a different discussion
altogether).
So, this
huge discount of10-20-30% of traffic caused by "bounce
rate" is really just a fudge factor so we don't have to feel as bad for
not really planning out complex sets of scenarios.
#2: “(If you use Web Logs) Filter out search bots, image requests, 404 errors,
website monitoring software ‘visits’ etc.”
To be
frank, this advice has been around 1999. The article claimed that a conversion
"realization dawned" thereby shedding some insight. If you're
still mining your own web logs and don't know to filter image requests, or
still using software that doesn't filter it automatically, then you don't need
a filter, you need a good hard kick in the ass. Maybe it's time to splurge on indoor
plumbing, or a color TV.
Then again,
if you're still doing all that AND having industry-standard conversion
rates of about 2.5%, then what does that really say about the analytics
industry in 2007?
#3 “Use Customer Intent”
This point
starts out so well; so delightfully, painfully well: "One of the biggest
mistakes business[es] make is thinking that every visitor to the website is
fair game.” I just knew the next
statement would be something insightful, such as "not every visitor is
there for the same reason,” or "visitors might be motivated to achieve
different things on your site" or something along those lines.
Instead, we
are treated to a stereotyped car dealership analogy that belies a fundamental
misunderstanding of the sales process. What's next, ‘All Democrats are Commie
Pinkos?’ or, ‘The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice?” You can read the
example yourself in the article, but the gist is that the big evil car salesman
is going to do every unethical thing in his stereotyped book to trick you into
buying a car. And you, the noble
visitor, have loftier goals that none dare call conversion.
So close to
making some headway, the article continues: "not every visitor ... is
there to buy" (true! true!), followed by the disappointing "not
every visit ... is an opportunity to convert" (false! false!). In
fact, your visitors are there precisely to convert as long as you realize that
in order for your business to achieve its goals, the customer must be allowed
to achieve her goals first.
I think
that the fundamental misunderstanding of the article is best summed up in the
following paragraph where it states "Using Market Research or Website
Surveys or other methods, attempt to compute why Visitors come to your
website.”
And what
self-respecting business owner needs Market Research or Surveys to determine
why people come to the site? To be sure those things can give insight
into why people don't come to the site, or why they come to the site and then
leave too quickly (after all, that's the proposed benefit to using Bounce
Ratio). But if you're in business and
you don't know why people come to your site, then you're in a heap of trouble,
and a survey ain’t gonna save you.
There's no
amount of analytics crunching that is going to tell you why people come to your
site. Rather, one must do the hard work
of putting oneself in the visitor’s place and empathically plan the persuasive
scenarios in which they come to the site. Then, aggressively use analytics to measure how well you've implemented
those scenarios; THAT's the secret to significantly higher conversion. Otherwise, we’re merely forcing the numbers
to rationalize our own poor planning.
A “Real™ Conversion Rate” might help your company’s self-image, but it certain won’t improve your bottom line.
We just noticed Amazon is now fulfilling orders for the softcover version of our bestselling Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results (it was due out the end of the month). This isn't just a reprint of the hardcover, this is more the book we wanted to write when we released Call to Action in May 2005, but had to rush it out early for our friends at WebTrends for their seminar series. We stripped out over 30,000 words and put back 11,000 new words. All in all, it is a much better book and we are certainly proud of the extra work Lisa T Davis and Bill Drew put into it to make it a more cohesive narrative.
The Web page was pronounced dead on October 9, 2006, after a long bought with chronic irrelevance. A large group of marketers attempted CPR and other heroic resuscitation techniques. Witnesses present at the scene told reporters that despite a few minutes of chaos, the Web page's last moments were largely serene and peaceful.
"She was a quiet and powerful beast, and she died doing what she loved," states one observer.
"While Web 2.0 technologies and persuasive scenarios were certainly contributing factors, we have determined they were not the cause of death," said a spokesman for the Web page's care provider. "She was just too irrelevant, and she never quite recovered. She just couldn't keep pace or serve the needs of today's marketers any longer." Read Bryan's Entire Article over at Clickz.
It's been fun seeing how focusing in on customer conversion rate
optimization has become the 2006/2007 Rallying Cry for Marketers,
according
to independent research firm Forrester Research Inc. In a report
titled, "Marketing Technology Adoption 2006," June 2006, Forrester
interviewed 371 marketing technology decision makers and influencers,
and more than 40 percent say their organizations "have plans to
implement Web interaction optimization software by the end of 2007."
We are glad to see the market catching up with what we have been preaching since 1998 and are looking forward to releasing more features of our Persuasion Architecture MAPTM suite of software and releasing little micro apps to make the software available to many more interested customers in 2007.
Every once in a while you read something that makes you stop, scratch your head, scrunch up your forehead and wonder violently about the state of the internet, the country, the delicate balance of the ecosystm, and even the universe. You wonder if precicious gifts like life, profit, hope and common sense can stand up to the crap storm of human mental defeciencies.
No no no, I wasn't watching Al Gore's new movie or reading about the war or Mid East politics, I was actually reading an Article at Ad Age.
The article started out innocent enough...
Historically, the most popular web-marketing metric has been traffic. How many visitors come to your website each month? How many unique, how many repeat? The web grew up with "hits" as a common denominator: The more you have, the better you are.
He continues on and brings up conversion rate as the 'new' measure. Sure he is a wee bit behind the times(about 7 years by my count) but I am thinking to myself 'at least he gets it." Then I read this...
"Pitch mode," in contrast, funnels those who respond to an ad down an intentionally narrow path. The marketer is in the driver's seat, crafting a presentation the user sees one screen at a time, usually in a linear sequence.
Now I have no gripe with Scott Brinker being wrong, wrong can happen to the best of us. What troubles me is when 'experts' play on the fears and insecurities of vulnerable marketers who are desperately trying to improve their conversion rates and might actually start to believe that 'pitch mode' is an efficient means of optimization. (Yes, despite our best efforts, some marketers still believe they are in control.)
But, Maybe I'm wrong, maybe marketers do have control. Maybe this bridge is for sale. Maybe I really am tall, blonde and have a full head of hair.
According to a recent article over at Internet Retailer paid search has a slight advantage. But before you start increasing your paid search budget, our CTO(Chief Thinking Officer) John Quarto-vonTivadar chimes in with his questions about these numbers and their implications...
Imagine that, if you will: given the tremendous amounts of money spent on paid search (huge! And costs are actually going up!), all it manages to do is achieve a Scrooge-ish +9% bump over organic search. On a dollar-for-dollar basis, you may well get a bigger conversion bang for the buck by investing in an organically planned architecture of scent, relevance and persuasion — which is what ends up scoring so well in organic search anyway — than in "buying" traffic for an otherwise cow-pathed site.
Hmmmmmmmmmm, very interesting.
Get into John's scientific head for yourself and read his entire post.
Crackvertising Pronounciation (krak-ver-tyzing) n.
1)The addiction to and/or business dependency on low cost traffic from Google search and other search advertising.
Signs of addiction include; needing more and more traffic to convert the same amount of sales, paying more and more for less and less traffic; and finally the advertiser's life becomes obsessed with the next 'fix' of traffic. Lack of, reduction of, or fluctuation of paid traffic results in severe withdrawal. The effect is usually a corresponding and parallel fluctuation in top line sales. The potency of the drug (traffic) declines over time, and the addict needs greater amounts to satisfy addiction.
This addiction displays all of the common trademarks associated with a dealer/addict based relationship.
1)Dealer provides low or no barrier of entry to try product. In this case Google hosts a perpetual party where Google gives out free 'traffic' in the form of organic search results referrals. Once the addict experiences free traffic the addict is offered better access to traffic(impressions) and is charged when traffic shows interest in the addict by clicking on a search advertisement.
2)Price of entry rises. At first this charge per click is minimal, but as other addicts are willing to pay more for the same click prices rise creating financial tension for the addict as the addict struggles to buy more and more traffic.
3)Dealer gets rich.
4)Addict displays common love/hate attitude towards dealer.
5)Dealer uses and develops more techniques to keep the advertiser addicted.
6)Addict attempts manipulation of the dealer to lower cost of addiction. This usually fails
The Cure - Weaning a company off this addiction is not easy, takes time and is typically very painful. To begin the road to recovery the addict must first turn their attention away from driving new traffic and towards satisfying current traffic. The first step in breaking any addiction is admitting you have a problem. If you know of anyone who may be addicted please send them this link right away.
Etymology - "Crackvertising" is word coined by Future Now, Inc.'s Bryan Eisenberg on June, 2006 Staff Training.
Like this article? Digg it?
If users don't quickly see what they clicked on your ad to find, they'll leave your site frustrated and may never return to your site or click on ads in the future. Here are some pointers for making sure that doesn't happen:
Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information about the product or service in your ad.
Ensure that your landing page is relevant to your keywords and your ad text.
Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site content.
Try to provide information without requiring users to register. Or, provide a preview of what users will get by registering.
In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user. If your ad does link to a page consisting of mostly ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional information beyond what the user may have seen in your ad or on the page prior to clicking on your ad.
You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site).
Starting with your ad, each interaction you have with your potential customers and customers should be geared towards building a trusting relationship. To avoid leading users astray:
Users should be able to easily find what your ad promises.
Openly share information about your business. Clearly define what your business is or does.
Honor the deals and offers you promote in your ad.
Deliver products, goods, and services as promised.
The above is not ground breaking advice from a Conversion Rate specialist. The above is taken directly from the Google Adwords help center.
Basic, common sense, and sound advice for any Adwords advertiser to increase their conversion rate, right?
All these guidelines sound simple, not impossible, and stir up a resounding "Duhhh, of course we should be doing that" thought in your head right?
But why are so few doing it?
Is it the Diet Coke diet phenomenon? Are some advertisers thinking that if they order a triple deck burger, super large fries and a DIET coke that they are actually on diet?
Is PROVIDING RELEVANT AND SUBSTANTIAL CONTENT really that hard?
Well improving conversion IS alot like dieting, easy in concept(eat less, burn more calories), but a little bit more difficult in practice. Planning relevant, persuasive scenarios from an Adwords ad(driving point) to the landing page(funnel point) on through to the final conversion process(conversion beacon) is tough, daunting, and often complex work. Anything worthwhile usually is.
Well if you just needed a little more incentive to improve your Google Adwords campaign, I've got good news for ya! Google is going to start charging you more for low quality landing pages.
Get relevant or get broke.
Our friends at Marketing Sherpa have their annual Reader's Choice Blog & Podcast awards currently ongoing. We're thrilled (and humbled - have you seen some of the names in our category?) to be nominated, but more than that, we're prouder than ever that some of our partners efforts are being recognized for the absolute gems that they are.
Michele's WonderBranding and Holly's Marketing to Women Online are both more than deserving of your votes (and you only have 2 more days to do so). Please do be so kind, and lend them your support- I know we have.
By the way, while you're there it wouldn't hurt to cast a vote in the direction of some of the other excellent blogs nominated, like Sam Decker's Decker Marketing, John Jantsch's Duct Tape Marketing or Joe Jaffe's outstanding Across the Sound Podcast.
You can vote here: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=28308
It keeps going down, down, down.
What?
The average conversion rate for online retailing.
In 2002 it was 3.2%, in 2003 it was 2.4%, 2004 it was 2.6%, and last year down to 2.4%
All this according to the Shop.org State of Online Retailing 2006 report.
Think about 2002, ages ago in internet years right? Now think about 2005. Today sites are better, better technology. Faster sites. Better usability. Better web analytics. Majors sites have been redesigned since 2002. More users have broadband, and visitors are more comfortable buying online.
So what is going on?
Lot of folks still waiting for their cats to bark. Are you?
Today was a busy day in the office, and one in which meetings were back to back, to back. I started talking with my CFO, took a detour to meet with a potential partner, and ended the day spending time with some new (and potential) clients. Very different audiences, yet one common discussion kept popping up, and it comes as no real surprise, it comes up daily around us. The topic you ask- the difference between Conversion and Persuasion. The cognoscenti will recall we've been speaking and writing on the topic for some time, but it's worth reading Bryan's last article nonetheless. Here's a tidbit:
The linear conversion funnel has its place. Though rudimentary and limited, it a great blunt-force beginners' tool for online marketers with little or no metrics in place (and there are far too many of those left)...
...Instead of considering the conversion funnel by itself, we should think of it as living at the bottom end of the buy/sell process. Conversion is no longer the biggest problem facing online marketers; persuasion is.
Without persuasion, there's no incentive for visitors to walk through your linear sales process. Unlike conversion, persuasion isn't linear. The conversion funnel is smooth and simple, but the persuasive resevoir that feeds it is as complex and non-funnel-like as your visitors are.
Want to keep reading?
Lately, everywhere you go analytics industry folks are talking about AB Testing. That’s a good sign, since it means the industry is focusing on an overlooked leverage point in their web analytics investment.
This is a bit disturbing, especially when you hear people sprinkling the “AB” condiment to add flavor to anything from a focus group (“Hey, did you AB Test the response to the new company logo?”) to the mundane (“Suzie’s lamp is out, can you AB Test the light bulb?”) to the painfully comical (“Honey, let’s AB test the Lord of the Rings Director’s Cut with the Wide-Screen edition!”).
What is AB Testing?
______________________________________________________________________________
This is the begining of a 14 page paper John wrote recently about AB testing. We're still not sure how we will be distributing it but if you are interested in reading it then email me ( jeff at futurenowinc.com ) and I'll send you the PDF.
I love to going to concerts. Living in
Knowing that there are tons of shows listed, I decide to type Starland Ballroom into the search engine. I find Thursday and I click the link to get to the show page. After selecting two tickets, I choose the only option, general admission standing room. I hit the look for tickets button and went through the word verification tool. Suddenly this page pops up:
This is the least informative message I have ever received. It doesn’t define my problem and it just lists every possible problem that might have occurred while checking out. There is no indication of what I should do next and even if the show is sold out. Did I select too many tickets? Was there a problem with my ticket section selection? I will never find out the answers to this question because I will call the venue and buy the tickets myself. Ticketmaster, since you aren’t the only solution you can’t make consumers jump through so many hurdles to get what they want.
Living in New York has been a bit of a shock. It is cold, really cold. Coming from California, I didn’t
realize what it’s like walking to the subway in twenty degree weather to get to
work. I figure that a jacket would be a good gift for my sister who is coming
to
I click the Women’s icon and I get sent to a page that has a large graphic that says “Last Minute Gifts”. This sounds perfect so I click it and get sent to a page of bestsellers. Even though there is red everywhere I continue on and click on the essential belted coat.
There are a bunch of cool tools that show off the features of the coat. It’s a great looking page and they let me see the coat in each color available by just passing my mouse over the color swab. Also listed are all the materials made to manufacture the coat and its features. All this information is great, but where is the copy? Will this coat really help her brave these cold winters or is it just for show? Does the included belt have any benefits? Will she enjoy this present for its fashionable design and do different colors have specific benefits to different types of people? All these technological bells and whistles look great and get me interested in looking at the coat. The lack of persuasive copy keeps me from buying it. Even if I would have bought it there is no text reassuring me that this would have been the right gift for my sister this holiday season.
My dad likes to fish. He is in
After typing in the URL I am sent to a page that redirects me over to the site. This page had a text link that will send me to the page if I’m not redirected automatically. Suddenly I see this:
I did not come to your site to enter some contest. I want to buy something fishing related. If you wanted to offer me a contest put it somewhere on the side. This is taking up almost all of my Active Window and it looks very unprofessional. It reminds me of the pop-up ads that used to run rampant on the web. I click the “No Thank You – Close” button and finally I can see some of the top navigation. Seeing no product categories, I decide to “Amazing Deals”. I see two keyboards, and digital drums. What would a sportsman do with these items? Play his theme song? With no way to refine my search and no other navigational options on the page, I feel lost and I leave the site.
With this being the year of the podcast, I’ve decided that an IPOD would be a great present. I check out PCMall.com and I and notice that IPODs are all over the homepage. After scrolling down, I select the IPOD Nano with engraving.
While going through their sales process I was faced with counterintuitive
steps, no status indicators, and no scent. The Calls to Actions on the site are
misleading micro actions and there are too many steps to get to the checkout
process. This is the only site that I’ve been to that hasn’t taken me to the
shopping cart or shown me a message after clicking the “Add to Cart” button. Why
couldn’t I have just checked out right away? With all of these steps just to get to the checkout process, how many people are actually going through them?
Every year my friend Sarah has her birthday around the holidays. Sometimes I get her a birthday present and sometimes a holiday present. This year I’ve decided I would get her something for her birthday . 1800flowers.com sounded like it would be a good place to find a present. I didn’t see what I was looking for on the homepage, so I decided to type “birthday” into the search engine. See the screenshot below for my results.
The search result shows me 182 different items to choose from. On the left hand they have an option to “refine this search”. I figure this is a great way to find the right present. Looking closer, I notice that this tool isn’t helpful at all. Some of the options presented to me are “Anniversary”, “Wedding”, and “New Year’s”. How will these trigger words help me find what I need? If I went to a florist and told them I needed a birthday gift would they point me over to the anniversary section? Would they ask me if I needed it for New Years? The florist wouldn’t ask me irrelevant questions. This year I will just have to go down to the store and get something there.
Realizing that I might have to break the bank and get a
special present for someone, I decide to go to Tiffany.com. I’ve got the cash
saved up and I’m ready to explore the site.
With
limited knowledge about their products, I go to the right navigation and select
Tiffany Holiday Gifts. Moving down the flash navigation, I chose “Gifts for Her”.
This is exactly what I am looking for and I’m excited that I can easily find
what I want. I get to a landing page
with navigation at the bottom of the page that features 5 items. See screenshot
below:
There are a total of 16 different pages to look through, each with 5 items on each page. The items that I see are a watch, a necklace, a pendant, another watch, and earrings. With no organization to these items, I’m completely overwhelmed and I have no idea how I am going to choose my gift. On my high speed connection it takes 9.17 seconds to load each page (if someone was on a 56k modem it would be a grueling 27 seconds a page). Do they expect me to spend my time sorting through all of these items? There is no way to narrow down my search. The only way to find out more about each item is clicking each one individually. I was excited about getting something from Tiffany & Co., but this site isn't going to help me find what I need.
This year I need to find a good present for my nephew. Since I’m not a good enough uncle to buy him a car, it is time to shop for some toys. As a kid I always remembered going to KB Toy Stores and I find their website Kbtoys.com. He is seventeen, but I figure there should be some good posters there.
The homepage’s left navigation categorizes gifts by age groups. This makes it easy to sort through all the kiddy toys. The next step has an arrow pointing down and lets me narrow down my choice by gender. After clicking “Boy”, it narrows down my search even further.
My results have found me a chair, a pet gate, and a parrot beanbag. Did I click the wrong link? My trail shows me I am on the 17 + Years > Boy > Kid’s Room Décor page. I was thrilled that KB Toys had such useful navigation chockfull of trigger words. Unfortunately, the search results that were provided were irrelevant. If I would have bought any of these items I would have been the worst uncle ever. With results like these, Toys R Us here I come.
Moseying over to Buy.com to get my brother a present, I find
the Family Guy Season 3 DVD on sale. Anything animated will keep him amused, he
is 20. I think they have good prices and I’ve seen postings about them before
on deal websites. After 5 clicks I finally get the item into my cart and hold
on to your seats because checkout here we go.
I literally have my credit card on my lap ready to type in the
numbers when I see they want me to create an account. So I click “No, I am a
new customer” because I just want to pay for the cartoons. When I hit the
“checkout” button I figure I will be taken to my checkout page, but Buy.com has
other ideas. It decides that I want to create an account. I just want to get
this done so I enter my email, my password twice and a password reminder.
Crossing my fingers I click “create account”, even though it’s the last thing I
wanted to do.
Suddenly my browser window shows me this:
When the page reloaded I received an error telling me “You
must accept the terms and conditions”. What else do they want me to do to make
this order? Following their directions I scrolled down the page to accept the conditions
by clicking the “create account” button and the page simply reloaded. Suddenly I realize the next logical step in my
buying process is to go to Amazon and easily get
the DVD.
The latest Wordtracker top 300 surge report confirms the holiday season has more than officially begun. Searches for Christmas are in the top 10, Christmas gifts into the top 50, even Christmas wallpaper making an appearance at 170 (just ahead of Brooke Burke, sadly). It's crunch time for all those b2c retailers out there.
For many of our Conversion Analysts, these next few weeks offer an opportunity to check out the bigger picture. They've relentlessly pushed to get all their website conversion assessments out the door in time for action to be taken before the holidays. Now they'll get to do what they like to do most, see what people who don't pay our salaries are doing in the online b2c space, and comment (sometimes loudly). The names will not be changed to protect the guilty!
Over the next few weeks, we'll be bringing you Tales from the Conversion Assessment System, a holiday inspired look at the big boys and their ability to rake in revenues when it matters most. We bring you
Enjoy!
I must admit, this SHOCKS me. With all the ongoing commentary regarding the fragmentation of media, and the need to create a whole new experience where the customer's content is king (or atleast queen), I thought we were all on board for the new paradigm. I thought the shift from push (direct) marketing to pull (visitors as volunteers) was clear as crystal.
Apparently not, because some college kid just raised HALF A MILLION BUCKS in just under two months. Selling what, you ask? Sp*m. You read that right- HALF. A. MILLION. BUCKS. Selling Sp*m.
I give him plenty of credit for ingenuity, and for obviously understanding the Wizard's first rule. If you're intrigued by his plan, and have yet to see it in action, surf on over to the Million Dollar Homepage, (and if you've ever weeded through your Junk folder, you're going to recognize quite a few of those logos)
If anyone needs me in the next few minutes, I'll be signing up for free hosting, while playing Texas Hold'em, and earning a quick graduate degree in the background while I wait for some "free movies" to finish downloading.
Unreal. Honestly, when will we ever learn?
You can get anything online. Against my better judgment I'm going to try this out:
The David Burke Flavor Sprays™ contain zero calories, zero fat, zero cholesterol, zero carbohydrates and FDA-approved flavoring.
The website is truly awful but I'll be proving that a person's motivations can trump bad conversion practices.
The silly Paypal shopping cart confirmation page told me that I'd get my order in 2-4 weeks (sheesh!); so If you have tried them already please let me know what you think.
Another short anecdote to end the week on an educational note!
I'm trying to arrange my travel plans for the fall dates that are filling up ever so quickly. Shop.org's Annual Summit is coming up in Vegas, so I'm thrilled at the opportunity to fly jetBlue again. Love jetBlue. Can't praise them enough. Their flight service, that is. Their conversion practices, now that's another story.
Anyone who's familiar with our stuff, or ever heard us speak, knows of the 3 questions every page on the site must answer (if you don't, email me). What's the action you'd assume jetBlue would like most visitors to their website to take? Looking at their homepage, I think it must be getting more legroom, or checking in for their flights! Surely they must receive some comissions from the skycaps who don't have to deal with all the passengers checking in, right?
Ok, ok, so maybe they're unfamiliar with the Active Window- not a crime (though for anyone doing business on the web, it should be). Well, atleast they have these handy Quick Links over here to help me out. Let's see, why am I here... TO BOOK A FLIGHT. Guess that's not one of those things jetBlue would like me to do quickly.
At this point, I'm laughing out loud. Ahhh, a top navigation link to Buy Tickets-- comically, the graphic icon is of a person sitting in a seat, while the intuitive icon of an airplane links to a note from the CEO. Doh! Since I'm sure he and I will be old friends now, I'm booking him on a little vacation where the "Book Your Flight!" Call to Action isn't such a challenge to find!
"Hey John, did you see our conversion rate is 1.71%!"
"Woooooohoooooooo, I just saw on the Fireclick index that everyone dropped to an average conversion rate of 1.50%"
"Those poor suckers"
"Let's break out the Dom and celebrate!"
When setting goals for your site's conversion rate I suppose you could look at the collective metrics of your online peers, use these conversion rates as a benchmark, and celebrate if you happen to be doing better. But what if you are doing worse? Then you should look at these metrics as something you should aspire to, right? You could do that. Sure you could, but why would you? Here are the conversations most should be having...
"Hey John, did you see our conversion rate is 1.71%, we are losing 98.29% of our visitors!"
"Boooooohoooooooo, I just saw on the Fireclick index that everyone dropped to an average of 1.50%"
"We all suck"
"Let's roll up our sleeves"
I know that is harsh, but someone has to be.
Celebrating this offensively low benchmark is like celebrating when your Corvette tops out at the 15 mph mark.
There are several reaons why online conversion rate apathy abounds. First, many sites are making boxes of money, big boxes. Second, some of the money in those boxes is labeled PROFIT. Third, it is hard to miss something you never had, that being the 98.50% of visitors that never converted. Also consider that those 98.50% of people don't LOOK like people, they usually just show up as bar or a pie slice on metrics software.
But still that 98.50% worth of missed opportunities has got to be bothering someone. Anyone?
I know it bothers all of us at Future Now.
When we take on a new client we often calculate what their conversion rate should be. Some sites should be converting at 50% or more, others in the 20-40%, almost all should be converting in the low double digits.
So next time you set conversion rate goals, do me solid. Set your bar a wee bit higher than the online benchmark. And if your are still chicken to set it for a 20-50% conversion rate, then you can even set it at a less intimidating number.
How about aspiring to lose only 90% of your visitors?
If you converted 1,000,000 visitors into subscribers to your paid online service in one year, surely you'd considered yourself an online success, right?
But what if you had 7 million unique visitors, per day?
What if your digital competition was non-existent?
What if your brand was so strong, it drove 40 million visitors to your offline product, in just 3.5 months?
Would 1 million subscriptions still feel the same?
Major League Baseball thinks so, but I must respectfully disagree.
If you're not ruthlessly focused on measuring and improving your site's Conversion Rate, you still don't get it. Marketing on the 'net is a pull medium. Visitors are volunteers in the process. Clicks are people.
Each link on your site represents an active decision your visitors make. Whether you find yourself converting an "industry average" 2-3%, or even an "excellent" 10-12%, you must still consider the problem from the other side- what is your site doing that is actively driving 88% of your visitors away?
Don't be fooled by large numbers from your Analytics, especially if the largest numbers are still those of visitors being turned away from your site dissatisfied.
Mark, a friend of ours from down under posed the following question:
In thinking about sites with high conversion rates it occurred to me that Google must be a site with close to a 100% conversion rate. It loads really fast, the call to action is clear, the invitation is in the hot zone of screen space, there's no ambiguity about what the site is or what the user is suppossed to do next. If the purpose of the site is to get people to search, then anyone who gets tot he home page and conducts a search is a successful conversion. (Obviously I don't know what Google's actual stats are, but I would imagine the conversion rate is almost perfect.) In fact Google really seem to be masters of the KISS (Keep it simple stupid) principle. (And that's never easy.) And I don't think I'm being incredibly simplistic in singling out Google. Google was not the first in the search engine space, but quickly became number one, and its soaring stock price is further proof of the success of its business. To say: "Well obviously people go to Google to search." just proves my point as there are hundreds of search sites that people don't go to, to the same degree. Therefore I put it forward as a site with a 100% conversion rate. Whaddya think? I reponded: Is the goal of the searcher to search or to find? If every search generated a click-through to what the searcher found relevant then I might agree with a 100% conversion rate. I know that I have way oversimplified this but I'd love some feedback on the Google question and on whether you know of websites with 100% conversion.
Shari Thurow wrote in ClickZ Monday about How NOT to Work With an SEO/SEM Firm. She interviewed SEO/SEM firms about their most common client/prospect complaints:
You'll have to change your Web site. Accept this fact before contacting us.
"We have a difficult time talking to people who honestly believe we can wave a magic wand and miraculously make a Web site appear at the top of search results, even in this day and age," said one SEO firm staffer. "In order for us to optimize a site, the site has to change: copywriting (and not just the meta-tag descriptions), information architecture, page layout, link development, you name it. The prospect's site must change in order for the prospect's site to receive increased 'natural' search engine traffic."
Another SEM firm echoes this sentiment. "When we said that the text content on your pages will need to be changed, what we meant was: the. text. content. on. your. pages. will. need. to. be. changed."
It's a valid point, but from a Conversion standpoint, it underscores a more important one to us- Why do people continue to try and attack a conversion challenge by throwing more traffic at it? It's pure lunacy to change your site to accomodate the recommendations of a firm whose stated goals are to provide more qualified traffic, when you've previously displayed an utter inability to close on the qualified traffic you currently enjoy.
Fix the holes in the bucket first, and then worry about how to add more water!
Buy one book for $13.95 and get two books free plus free shipping: your net cost is only $4.65 per book. 
We hear it all the time. The B2C sale is simple, the B2B sale is complex. At the end of the day, whether you are selling to Joe Customer who is interested in a motorcycle or Joe Business Guy who is interested in a Zerox some factors will never change. To even worry about them is folly. Consider this...Your business category is not the issue. The complexity of your sale is not the issue. Whether your sale is impulse or a considered purchase is not the issue. Buying into these notions as determining factors when it comes to your ability to design persuasively is thinking that will lead you down the garden path.
Understanding and managing your sale as a persuasive process is the only relevant issue. Read the entrie article.
Conversion rate measures the number of visitors who took the
action you wanted on your site divided by the total number of visitors. Every
end-goal conversion (Macro-conversion), like a purchase, is composed of
Micro-conversion points, like the click-through path in a shopping cart. In
order to achieve the Macro-conversion a series of decisions has to be taken by
the visitor, these clicks are measurable evidence of those decisions.
Only when you define and plan for Macro-conversions vs.
Micro-conversions then you can understand why conversion rate is truly a
measure of your ability to persuade visitors to take the action(s) you want
them to take. It's a reflection of your effectiveness in planning for every
decision and the customer’s satisfaction with your plan’s implementation. Since
every click represents a person making a decision then for you to achieve your
goals, visitors must first achieve theirs first.
Think of your customers going down different paths to the close, not simply one optimized path. If you ask a different question, you may get a different answer.
If your question is, "How do I build a single pipeline that gets me the highest conversion rate?" that's likely to be what you build.
What if you asked "How do I build multiple pipelines that give me the highest conversion rate overall?" What might you build?
From GUUUI we read the following
Most web development projects put a lot of effort into the design of navigation tools. But fact is that people tend to ignore these tools. They are fixated on getting what they came for and simply click on links or hit the back button to get there. Read the entire article.Why weren't we surprised? Could be that in 2001 our very own lovable persuasion guru Bryan Eisenberg wrote the following...
Clearly, the center area of the screen is prime real estate, the "active window" where you will either succeed or fail in persuading your visitor. This is the first place your visitor makes a conscious effort to engage with you. When her gaze returns across the screen from its preliminary scan, you want to make sure you present content that will capture her interest and motivate her through the conversion process. If anything on the page distracts her or requires her to disconnect from the center area, she is that much less likely to stay, rapt by your powers of persuasion. And if you've learned the Stanford-Poynter lesson, you'll understand that your copy is much more important than your images. (from the article Where Oh Where Did My Eyeballs Go?)If you are truly focused on persuading folks on your site put the time and effort you are tempted to put into navigation and focus it on the 'active window'. Navigation is important, just not as important as everyone seems to think. The shortest distance between your customers and conversion is not the navigation, it's the embedded links in the active window. From May 2001 Bryan also wrote...
But from our work with clients, we've discovered that the navigation scheme important to actually closing more sales is the embedded-links scheme. And it's very easy to implement. Within the body of your (great) copy, you simply place links to the places you want prospects to go next. Of course, what works best on your site can be determined only by testing. And, naturally, embedded links are only one component of a complete navigation structure. If embedded links are done well (a topic for another article), they will engage your users effectively as they browse within the "active window" of your site. The active window is the main area of your page, underneath or to the side of your main navigation. It is where you place your body text, display your products, and present your offer. It is also where you want to keep your visitors' eyes focused. If you properly engage them in this area by providing the right choices to click on, you persuade them to follow the path you want them to take. This is also why it is very important to keep a consistent look and feel around the active window. Read the entire article.Ok, what are todays magic words? I'll give you a hint. It starts with an 'active, and ends with a 'window.'
I know it's been a while, they keep Persuasion Architects particularly busy this time a year.
As important as conversion rates are to companies, there are many important considerations and optimizations that can be made AFTER conversion.
If the visitor experience after conversion is important to you, you need to know about Mal Watlington. His speciality is helping companies optimize their internal sales processes and remove the barriers that prevent their employees from achieving success. He is a frequent public speaker at national industry conferences, and has run workshops on organizational performance improvement in the US, Europe and Australia.
He's our kinda people, that's why we recently recommended his services to one of our B2B clients who needed help dealing with all the incoming lead flow from the increase they say after Persuasion Architecture.
Check out Mal's Blog Online Conversion and Beyond.
