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Website Visitor Conversion in a B2B Environment

Todd Miechiels — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:51:43 +0000

Last month I had the good fortune of becoming ‘certified’ in Landing Page Optimization through MarketingExperiments out of Jacksonville Beach Florida. Several times a year, their team brings a hundred or so marketers through the 2-day workshop. The material is similar to that of their free Wednesday web clinics but in a much more intense, and hands-on workshop environment.

After attending the workshop I felt a renewed sense of purpose as a search engine marketer towards challenging my clients to focus on and improve their conversion rates, I wanted to provide some of the highlights in my next few columns. Conversion defined

Why do we get blank stares whever we talk about ‘conversion’ to executives? Perhaps this clear definition will help aid us in the future:

Conversion is the process of successfully achieving the primary objective of a specific page or website.

There are a few key concepts in that definition I’d like to emphasize that all too often overlooked by some marketers. The first being ‘process’, rather than a single event. The second being ‘primary objective’. Get a group of marketing and sales people together in a room for a web strategy meeting and ask them each to state the primary objective. Too often we blow by this critical step in a rush to tackle easier, less meaningful issues.

The ratio at which visitors achieve the primary objective on a webpage is called the conversion rate. Quite simply when we increase the conversion rate, we are more profitable and successful. So why don’t we spend more time in this area? I think a lot of us give up too early, giving it our best attempt, instead of seeing it as an ongoing process by which sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail, but we always learn.

The scientific secret conversion formula

What I am about to reveal to you is highly confidential. Many a man has literally gone insane trying to unlock this mystery. Seriously though, Dr. Flint McLaughlin has developed, patented, and graciously shared with us a heuristic to help make sense, and practically, methodically attack the opportunity to improve our conversion rates.

The conversion sequence: C = 4m + 3v = 2(i-f) – 2a

If you are like me, the first time (and second and third time) I was presented with this ‘formula’ my stomach rose to my throat as anxiety of failed math exams and chemistry experiments reemerged in my mind. RELAX. Let’s break it down:

C= The probability of conversion. That’s easy enough.

m= Motivation of the user. This is basically how badly they want what you have, and the reason they want it. This is the element you have the least control over.

v= Clarity of value proposition. This is probably the most important element because you do have control over it. I’ll be writing about this next month in detail.

i= Incentive to take action. What are you offering to stimulate a desired action.

f= Friction elements in the conversion process. Anything that impedes the visitor from taking action. Common friction causes are forms with too many fields, or confusing options/choices.

a= Anxiety about entering information. This could be things like testimonials, an award, Better Business Bureau logos, etc.

A little less art, a lot more science

All too often ‘enhancements’ are made to a home page, or landing page, because some creative person, an award winning agency, or the executive with the highest authority (or that executive’s nephew), suspects such a change will help make an impact. And while there’s no doubt being creative, possessing outstanding copywriting skills, or just having a uncanny knack for going with a gut instinct can help lift conversion, if you are looking to mitigate risk and get real results, these should all be things to pull from, as work through this clear and linear conversion sequence.

Working with, and through this conversion sequence will put purpose and defensible rationale behind the changes that you’ll be making to your pages in the future.

Learn. Apply. Get results.

You’ll be amazed at how differently you approach a page when you’ve got a framework to guide you. I think you’ll also be surprised and pleased with the results that you can achieve with this methodology. In the next few columns I’ll be focusing on one or more aspects of the conversion sequence, starting with the ever-important “Clarity of Value Proposition”.

In the meantime, I invite you to get your best (or worst) landing page, and using the conversion sequence featured in this article, begin to ask, “How clear is my value proposition? Where is there unnecessary friction on this page? Who are the people coming to this page? Why are they here? What do I want them to do on this page?”

Until next month, keep pressing forward!

Todd Miechiels is a business-to-business internet marketing consultant. His website is www.miechiels.com. The Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.

Building a Profitable Web 2.0 Web Site

Theodore F. di Stefano — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:30:00 +0000

Competition for building a profitable Web site is quite fierce. Yet many of us have dreams of a unique concept that will attract viewers, followed soon thereafter by advertisers. I’m not sure what percentage of aspirants succeed in this quest, but I would venture to guess that it’s a very low percentage.

With the evolution of the Web to the Web 2.0, the task becomes even a bit more challenging. For those who aren’t familiar with the term Web 2.0, Wikipedia can help out: “Web 2.0 is a living term describing changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and Web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the Web …” The complete definition also mentions video sharing sites.

Though the competition is fierce in the Web 2.0 space, it’s encouraging to see a recently formed company quickly create critical mass, thus attracting advertisers and creating a cash flow in less than a year of operation. That company is As Seen On TV.Info, a privately held startup.

A Winning Business Model

It all starts with a winning business model. (Business models are discussed in my article for the E-Commerce Times titled “Why Startups Fail.”) As Seen on TV.Info’s (ASOTVI) business model is unique in several respects.

It creates side-by-side video viewing of an actual Direct Response Television (DRTV) product offered for sale with a critical review of that product. This capability leverages online video technology to visually contrast the major claims of vendor infomercials with reality. Additionally, it does this with a patent-pending, Web 2.0 approach that uniquely provides objective online “You Tube-styled” video reviews, posted in parallel (via Flash Video players) alongside product vendors’ infomercials, thus allowing consumers to see for themselves what products can really do, and what they can’t do.

You might wonder who will be advertising on this Web site. The CEO of the company, Robert Gelinas, told me that he will not accept any advertisement from a company whose product does not pass vetting. In other words, if the product doesn’t work as advertised, ASOTVI will not accept advertising dollars from its manufacturer. He also made it clear that ASOTVI publishes negative reviews whenever warranted and that “no one gets a pass” with a review that isn’t merited. He added that reviews are published at the company’s discretion.

ASOTVI has found a unique niche for itself in that no other independent, objective review organization exists for what is one of the largest segments of the retail industry, DRTV. This segment is noted for its hype and exaggerated claims, as most TV viewers can attest.

An advantage to viewers who want to check on a product is that they can do so at no cost and without cumbersome registration. All they have to do is go to the site and check out the product, assuming that there is a review of the product of their choice.

Revenue Streams Are Important

Of course, a Web-based company needs a steady flow of revenue to survive. ASOTVI’s business model calls for a cost-per-click (CPC) advertising model that comes from either a product’s Review Page, a Run-of-the-Site (ROTS) campaign, or both. Additionally, the company will generate revenue through Cost-Per-Action (CPA) campaigns that flow through associated affiliate networks. Thus, ASOTVI generates revenues from product reviews, even if a product’s vendor doesn’t choose to commission an advertising campaign.

Gelinas noted that a significant part of the projected revenue stream of the company are the numerous retailers of both As Seen on TV products and competitive products. He then added that the site draws large numbers of visitors who have much in common, making them a targeted audience for retailers. As DRTV campaigns mature, the products are then picked up by mass market retailers who in turn feature select displays of As Seen on TV products appropriate to their own merchandising programs.

From my perspective, the retailers can state in their advertisements that, unlike television commercials, customers can see the actual products on display for themselves, along with a parallel review of same.

Getting Products to Review

There are so many products advertised in the DRTV space that one has to wonder how the company gets products to review. I asked this question of Gelinas. He told me that vendors actually send ASOTVI samples of their products which the company then reviews. ASOTVI thereafter produces 2-minute product review videos at no charge to the vendors.

The company has targeted consumer-related product companies and retailers. The greatest present interest in advertising on the ASOTVI site obviously comes from the companies whose products have been favorably reviewed. These companies commission advertising campaigns for their products.

Thus, each time that ASOTVI favorably reviews a product, it creates a potential advertising client. So long as that review stays on the company’s site, the manufacturer of the product remains a potential, if not actual, advertiser. And, the more products that ASOTVI reviews, the larger its advertising clientele becomes. This advertising base will expand in the future, as explained above.

It is indeed a rare instance when a business can identify a niche, a vacuum, so well. This talent has enabled ASOTVI to create a critical mass of advertisers by reviewing (at no cost to manufacturers) company products, thus creating advertising revenue by posting video reviews on its site of actual products that have appeared on TV. And the video review, as mentioned above, is conveniently placed right next to the manufacturer’s video of its product.

I went to the site and first looked at a manufacturer’s TV advertisement of its product, then clicked on the review of the product to see if the claims matched up. I found browsing through the site and being able to get “both sides” of a product’s story quite user friendly.

The Quality of SEO Matters

Jeffrey Smith — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:38:09 +0000

The quality of SEO matters now more than ever. With constant revisions to dated algorithms, search engines are savvier than ever in discovering sites that lack the proper quality to rank competitively.

In the not so distant past, obsession with the home page, tons of off-topic links bullied their way past search engine algorithms, now, those days are drawing to a close.

Search engines, like people have become fussy readers with a preference of what they consider as a top caliber website that offers educational or beneficial information based on co-citation and engagement.

No amount of SEO is going to pull the wool over the eyes of advanced artificial intelligence like search engine algorithms that look at link clusters (the time stamp and proximity or link velocity of inbound links), search volume click-through data as well as the quality of the sites referencing your own. To be clear and direct, quality is the cornerstone of a successful online presence.

We have known all along that relevant content strategically organized in a way that fundamentally supports information retrieval such as (theming and siloing), has strong internal links and has persuasive and compelling content and usability was the objective.

It appears that with the penalty of de-indexing (rather your site falling out of favor with search engine spiders) that websites that lack quality are ignored (until they are endorsed by their own authority or the authority of other relevant websites).

This has always been the objective of Google and other search engines (to provide the most relevant result), so naturally it comes as no surprise that the quality of the index is under constant scrutiny and revision.

As search engines evolve, SEO’s must likewise follow suit. So, if your still worried about meta-tags and keywords, instead of thinking about usability, quality content development based on semantic themes, impeccable information architecture and creating robust and dynamic websites that support their own rankings (authority sites) then it’s time to reevaluate your take on SEO.

Starting from deep within your site, build valuable content, cross-link your pages using tangible naming conventions and remember, search engines rank pages, so make each page with purpose (like an organism or piece of a holistic puzzle).

In closing, I wanted to share another resource who hails from the same school of thought and not only has pioneered a whole other level of advanced SEO, but are able to succinctly communicate it to others who can grasp the brilliance of their blueprint.

The project is called Krakken and at the helm is Russel Wright from themezoom with a band of the most brilliant engineers who have spent the past 3 years developing one of the most amazing feats of programming to deliver a premier SEO tool that most SEO’s only dream about.

Here are a few videos about the application and how it works.

The take away is, build quality sites that develop their own authority that search engines will view, elevate and regard. Instead of just building links and trying to bully your way to the top or search engines, it’s time to do the work, produce the quality and the long-term rewards are imminent.

Starting with SEO in mind with quality control at the nucleus of your internet marketing campaign vs. trying to make a square peg fit in a round hole is the gist.

We hope you enjoy the resources and look forward to sharing other valuable insights from other SEO’s from around the web. However, I must admit, with access to tools like the Krakken, those still stuck in the SEO metrics of yesteryear have a dwindling chance of staying ahead of the bell curve.

Google and other search engines have always said it is about creating quality content, well, now they have algorithmically created benchmarks within their spiders and indexing system that are keen to spot inflated or unnatural linking patterns, schemes or systems designed to exploit a loophole or weakness.

My suggestion, heed their warning and start building authority and authority sites that can stand the test of time or algorithm updates. The basis is and always has been about quality and as long as your website and content exceeds in this category, you will have nothing to fear when other dated methods fall by the wayside.

Qualified Impressions Translate Into Sales

Jeffrey Smith — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:11:32 +0000

Its not always the quantity, but the quality of visitor impressions that make the difference. Qualified impressions that translate into leads, sales or click through conversion are the true basis of SEO.

Out of every 100 visitors that visit your site, how many fill out a contact form, pick up the phone, download a special promotional? If you answered 15-25 visitors, then your pages are optimized for lead generation and conversion. Granted not every visitor that finds your site is going to want something from it, the idea is to set the stage for quality vs quantity and the right type of visitor who has a genuine need for your product.

Once you have conducted extensive market research, then cater to their needs and distinguish your website from your competition to leave a lasting impression. People purchase when they want to, not always when you want them to. However, by sending the right signals you can expedite trust through employing usability and testing multiple offers to refine your pitch, your keywords and attract the right consumer.

Curiosity is the basis of commerce when the “I’ve got to have it” impulse flares up and people shift from information foraging to credit card ready click, shop and drop-ship buyers, you’ll want to ensure that they find your site vs. your competitors. That is the real value of SEO, finding the keywords that convert and funneling those visitors to the most appropriate page to test their response.

Finding the right type of traffic is only half the battle, getting them to stay, dig deeper into your content or make a purchase is the real objective if commerce is part of your online model, which is why qualified impressions are better than stragglers drifting in on a whim.

Just like fashion, the mob rule can be swift when dealing with how your brand is perceived. One day your hot, the next day your not. By keeping your landing pages polished, free of clutter and up to date goes a long way to lower bounce rates and create more traction for your website from the millions of impressions with consumers attached looking for what you have to offer.

The Importance of (KPIs) Key Performance Indicators for SEO

Jeffrey Smith — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:05:04 +0000

When it’s time to determine how effective an SEO, advertising or marketing campaign is, the need to establish KPIs (key performance indicators) as benchmarks to measure goal conversion, time lines and tactical objectives.

Performance benchmarks exist for a very specific purpose, to measure conversion and marketing objectives, but KPIs also allow us to extend beyond one-dimensional thinking and truly develop long-term strategic and pivotal advantages.

Sometimes your website has all the right ingredients, but lacks proper execution. Increasing landing page conversion by 15% for example is one KPI. Improving lead generation, product inquiries or phone calls by 43% within a specific time-line using four new marketing methods.

Such examples of performance are based on gap analysis (from existing performance levels of where you are and where you want to be) however they provide valuable insight into the effectiveness of a campaign.

For example, if it is implied that you will increase traffic, increasing traffic alone is not a KPI. If the traffic is not converting into sales, then you need to look beyond the surface level and delve deeper into the root cause that produce the effects. Often it resides in usability, how obvious is your navigation, how obvious is the conversion objective or is your message diffused amongst too many other competing elements.

When looking to fine tune performance, determining metrics such as the time spent on a page, the keyword used to deliver the traffic, which related keywords are overlapping if any, what is the existing bounce rate or engagement metric for the page and what call to action exists on the landing page in question.

Factors such as those mentioned above allow you to create a base level KPI to improve performance individually or across all of these metrics simultaneously. However, without analytics or performance tracking, you are just grasping straws when it comes to delivering or reproducing consistent or future sales volume.

The necessity to specifics is all part of the SMART model:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Result-oriented or Relevant
Time-bound

Combine this with the KISS model (keeping it simple) and the who, what, where, when and how factor and you can essentially craft a series of objectives for each major landing page in your site by assigning unique, yet attainable benchmarks.

Landing Pages and Bounce Rates

Jeffrey Smith — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:46:05 +0000

Landing pages or how to create landing pages that convert is an intriguing and debatable topic. Depending on visitor expectations and the relevance to the topic covered can make your pages candidates for high bounce rates (higher than 50%) vs. a successful conversion rate of 5-15% for pages that hit their mark.

You can never tell where traffic will either (a) congregate or (b) land on your site (until you test your offer), which is why quickly communicating the key benefits to the visitor is essential to engage emotional triggers from the onset (3-5 seconds of skimming is the rule of thumb).

Once you manage to earn their attention, you must funnel that attention until a conversion objective is achieved. We can surmise that traffic arrives either through direct traffic, referrals or search engines and context is important to the visitor to send the right signals for website user engagement.

Under this premise, each page is yet another opportunity to give the visitor what they need (whether that is information, products, services or entertainment). In any capacity, engagement translates into an even more useful metric worth pursuing, true website authority, which is the real objective of SEO.

Despite your best efforts to coral traffic, people have their own free will and method of how they surf and traverse pages and what objectives they have for when they initiate a search. If your page and their objective are conducive, then higher conversion is typically the result.

Is is the best idea to target competitive keywords with landing pages?

The obvious answer depends on the strategy that best describes your business model. Funneling reader attention to one specific conversion objective is the goal of each page. This is for two reasons (1) you want to send a clear signal to search engines that relevance is on topic to ensure a higher relevance score and (2) you want to minimize higher bounce rates (over 60% means your page needs work).

Granted, with the occurrence of keywords stemming over time, even though you may have intended that a person will only find you for the specific keywords in your site, or keywords that the page is optimized for, there is a broad match factor that impacts search relevance.

Does Your SEO Have a Game Plan?

Jeffrey Smith — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:13:39 +0000

Just like sports, with SEO having a solid game plan is integral for achieving your objective.

Unless occupying space below the fold or landing on the third or fourth page of search engines is your goal, then you will need a game plan to unify all of the facets of your internet marketing campaign to achieve success.

What happens when a team goes into a competitive arena without a game plan? The other team employing a solid strategy wins, why, because with randomness and chaos there is no structure and without structure, there can be no accountability or the ability to recreate effects in a systemic fashion.

Since SEO is a process of layering multiple systems to embrace a common goal, depending on how adept each layer is executed and managed and how it aligns with the other layers and objectives determine the extent of the overall outcome.

If we build links to a page with the proper titles, it could get stuck on page 3 vs. the first page of search engines. Likewise, on page SEO without promotion could take months to take effect vs. days with the appropriate off page factors.

Competition is not to be taken lightly and managing multiple keywords, landing pages, structuring content, building links and promoting each page until it achieves authority is not a task to be taken lightly.

Just as some pages are designed to penetrate the defenses of a competitive keyword, others are there to serve as a foundation to anchor a long-term strategy. Each tactic must have a place and knowing when to execute a timely strategy and understanding the scope of the impact it will have is all part of employing advanced SEO strategies to produce the desired effect.

Just like sports, there are benchmarks that one can utilize to measure the effectiveness of each tactic, and sometimes you have to change up in mid game to avoid dependency on dated tactics which have a particular shelf life and expectancy (due to search engine engineers, constantly retooling the algorithm).

The moral of the story here is, start with a plan, hold yourself accountable for achieving your objectives and use time and chronology to harvest data from the past to find keywords and time periods that had a greater yield to reproduce the effect in the present tense. In closing, here are SEO basics that can separate your site from those who have not embraced SEO as a viable platform.

Considerations for Online Marketing, Advertising and Promotion

Jeffrey Smith — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:12:08 +0000

On a fundamental level, marketing and promoting products or services online is no different than traditional off-line PR and promotion.

It doesn’t matter if you are selling a product or service, you need to advertise to get the word out and create a buzz about your product or service to quickly communicate benefits in order to close the sale and achieve your conversion objectives.

Depending on the variables such as the profit margin, considerations of the sales cycle such as is the price point low enough to sell on impulse?, is there a two step close?, what is the best way to identify, target and sell to your audience? All of these simple questions must be clearly delineated prior to embarking on an online marketing campaign.

In the past, consumers had less distractions on their mind and had no problem sitting for hours browsing through the paper, actually reading a magazine instead of (power skimming) flipping through it so fast like you are trying to see the hidden animation on the pages like a stick-figure theater. Faced with less time available on a daily basis due to hectic schedules, people have less time to shop or do the things they enjoy. So, you have to be brief and to the point when you communicate benefits to prospects if you want them to react to your marketing message.

Commerce is a cycle of supply and demand and somewhere in the middle is the manufacturer, the distributor and end-user in the sales and marketing process. Regardless if the advertising encapsulates B2B (business to business), B2C (business to consumer) the core theme must be based on relevance, providing a solutions to a problem, or some type of enhancement.

The key is to appealing to peoples emotions first, then communicate the benefits to reinforce that initial emotional trigger. This involves understanding visual or intellectual appeal and implementing it in some way, shape or form to create the right emotional and rational hook for your offer.

There is an audience for just about anything, I am sure if Google would only show us a fragment of what people are actually searching for on a daily basis, we would be shocked at the variations of keywords and phrases lumped together in an attempt to find just what they were looking for.

One rule of thumb in organic optimization is, a page can be comfortably optimized for at least three variations of a keyword or related key phrase. So, if you have multiple products or keywords you want to rank for, then you should have a grasp of the necessary amount of content development and site and information architecture to support each of the major categories.

What is paramount for someone advertising, marketing and selling products online is to understand that the difference between broad match and exact match means that you should have enough pages that allow you to be pliable in your approach and have pages for general / broad phrases that link to more specific pages on the topic.

In order to rank for something, it needs to (a) exist in your website (b) be clearly delineated as the objective of the page (relevant tags, titles and links form other pages) as well as (c) have enough popularity (through internal or external links) to get the attention of search engine spiders. From there, if organic optimization is your objective, the spiders will deliver free traffic (the best kind) to your content and based on how compelling the offer is it will either convert or fail to convert them into a client or sale.

How many times have you come across pages online with the title tag stuffed with every possible variation of product related to what is on the page, but only a fraction of the items are present, or the page is sparsely populated? Don’t follow that example, robust sites with relevant information on a topic have a higher chance of ranking for dozens of related keywords and key phrases.