Web Design And Marketing

I have a new Internet marketing client who is pretty Internet savvy. He knows business, and has a very good grasp of the Internet. He runs a consumer e-ccommerce site in a niche market. He is running an Adwords campaign, and has a decent conversion rate. In a nutshell, he has got it together. So I was surprised to hear that he wasn’t using any type of web metrics / analytics.

This leads me to wonder how many folks out there are running Pay Per click campaigns, but don’t track the full cycle. If my new intelligent, Internet savvy client isn’t, then how many others aren’t? This means going beyond ” I am spending $X a day, and making $y in a day sales”. This is a good start, but not enough to optimize your true revenue potential.

Web metrics / analytics are important. And having the right features in an analytics package is even more important. Right now, I can’t find one package that meets all of my needs, so I end up using 2 together. I use Google analytics and Statcounter. Both are free, and I find quite powerful when used together. Google analytics is the main bread and butter. It allows me to quickly identify trends and patterns in visits, conversions, keywords by referral source and more. Statcounter is a simple package, but offers the one thing Google analytics cannot, individual visitor path information. I find that this is such a valuable feature, I can’t live with out. Both of these packages are free. So there isn’t any excuse to not use them.

Anyway, let’s get to my point. Get a good analytics package or combination set up and running. Why? Because then you can tell, not only which keywords in Adwords bring you traffic, but which ones result in sales. Then you can see if there is a particular time of day that results in more sales. Is there a keyword that has a higher ROI? If you can answer all of these questions, not only will it help you refine your Adwords campaign to increase sales, but it will end up increasing your overall ROI. You will be spending money where you will get the best bang for the buck, instead of casting a wide net.

Imagine knowing that increasing your bid on a particular word between 12 and 2 pm will result in 10% more sales. This kind of information is powerful, and can help you make key decisions that will increase revenue.

Filed by admin at 8:43 am under Search Engine Marketing
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Good ecommerce retailers are constantly trying to figure out ways to increase their conversion rate. If you are wondering what the bad ones do, well they just focus on getting traffic to the site. Understanding your conversion rate, and testing ways to increase it is a core fundamental of eccommerce success. So I always look at case studies and articles that experiment with conversion rates.

Recently Marketing Sherpa, released a case study “Shopping Cart Design Tests - Color & Size Lift Results 44.11%” that looks at how color and size changes impact conversion rates. The test site was an office supply site and its shopping cart buttons were all light blue and the same size and shape. The site heavily used cross sell pages between the “add cart” action and the payment page. So the site really needed to test its entire process.

What did they find? They found that a red “Buy Now” button increased conversions by 4.03%. The found that a “Select quantity” button in green easily beat the current light blue color. And interestingly enough, they found that the existing light blue button was the best version of the shopping cart button on the cross sell page.

The most interesting item in the case study, is the eye popping 44.11% increase in conversion rate when they used “Proceed to Checkout” instead of “Add to Cart”, and “Proceed to Cart” out performed “Add to Cart” by 21.8%. I would never have guessed these results. In fact, I can see myself fighting these changes. However, the data is there, and you can’t fight the data.

The biggest take away, different colors had different impacts at different stages. So the same color may not produce the same result across all stages of the sales funnel.

So what do you do with this information? Form your own tests. DO NOT just run out and change everything to red. If you are tight on resources, just A/B test one thing at a time. Try switching out the “Buy Now” button with a different color and compare the results. It sounds tedious, but proper testing is important when trying to optimize your conversion rate.

Have you had similar experiences with color changes, or simple button changes?

Filed by admin at 8:38 am under Conversion Rates
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Over the past 10 years, Web site promotion has grown from a small niche segment, to an explosive marketing channel that packs a severe ROI punch. There are many Internet marketing and Website promotion techniques, ranging from search engine marketing to viral marketing. A web site looking to establish effective promotions has a lot of techniques to consider. This article provides a brief overview of what I consider to be the 3 Internet marketing fundamentals that every web site promotion should include.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO has been around as long as the search engines. SEO has grown from a couple of programming tricks (which are now a huge No-No) into a legitimate industry that focuses on increasing a web site’s visibility.

SEO focuses on generating “organic” or natural results in a search engine. Visitors form organic search results do not eat into your web site promotion budget. Therefore a well thought out SEO campaign can reap large. According to MarketingSherpa (Search Marketing Benchmark Survey August 2005) SEO campaigns provide an average conversion rate of 4.2% versus 3.6% for Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns Depending on a web site owner’s skill set, SEO can be done in house or outsourced. Any upfront SEO cost are usually made back fairly quickly. A SEO strategy is a must for anyone running a Web site.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC consists of running a text ad targeted to specific keywords. Advertiser’s only pay when some clicks on the ad. This is a very different model than a typical cost per impression model where costs can run high without any measurable results.

PPC is a great avenue for web site promotion when a web site first launches or adds a major new category /product. This is because PPC offers instant visibility (versus SEO which can take months). PPC campaigns can start as low as 2-5 cents a click, or it can go as high as $25 per click (or even higher ) depending on the keyword. Depending on the cost per click, PPC can be very affordable.

However be sure to do your homework, as a simple PPC campaign can get out of hand very quickly and end up running quite a tab in just 1 day.

PPC is expected to generate more than $14 billion dollars in 2006 according to a January 3, 2006 Piper Jaffray “industry Note” by Safa Rashtchy . That is an increase of 41%! Estimates for revenue in 2010 is for more than $33 billion. Why is Pay Per Click exploding this way? The answer is simple, it works and the results are easily measured (which is not always the case in advertising/marketing)

Article Publishing / Syndication

This is the least expensive Internet Marketing technique, and is very effective. Article syndication doesn’t cost you any money, however it does take some of your time. The concept is simple:

1. Write an article about a topic that is relevant to your Web site and your customers.
   Create a tag line that describes your Web site and that links to it.
2. Place it on any free article syndication Web site (for example EzineArticles) . Once there, other web site owners will copy and paste it into their web site.
3. This is a great way to reach your target audience through other web site’s that share similar audiences. It is also a great way to generate traffic to your web site.

No matter which way your Web promotion strategy takes you, including these 3 fundamentals will ensure that you have the basics covered.

Filed by admin at 4:37 pm under Marketing & Promotion
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