What is your website conversion rate?
Average conversion rates range between 2 – 5 %. That said, here is the chart listing the “Top 10 Online Retailers By Conversion %” from marketingcharts.com (via Neilson Online)
conversion rate optimization
Small tweaks to your landing pages can get that spike in conversion rate you always wished for.
In a recent landing page optimization project I did, I have achieved an increase in conversion rate by 200% by following changes to the call to action button
- Moved it from below the copy to top of the right side bar
- Changed buy now button design from dull, flat, grey to Gradient, embossing, little glossy black button
Over 40% conversion rate which is not as impressive when compared to their 50.5% conversion rate in Mar’2009. See Chart 2.
Conversion rates depend on a number of variables. Good thing about variables is that they are variables…i.e., you can make variations to these to get to optimum performance.
- Don’t just drive traffic to your site, drive targeted traffic.
- Understand visitor behaviour and their intent.
- Tweak & experiment with your landing pages accordingly.
- Note changes and record performance of such tweaks.
- Rinse & repeat the process
12 tools to measure social media marketing
Businesses have been unsure of ways to measure social media campaigns, social media ROI and syncing the stats, if any, to sales data and vice versa. Here are 12 tools that I came across that can be used to track the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.
One important fact one needs to remember here is, Social media optimization is not a number race. Businesses need to focus on growing brand awareness, customer acquisition, engagement, interaction, conviction, retention, sales, profits, and customer satisfaction rates.
So without further delay, here is the list of tools I promised.
Google Analytics: Free tool to track and report on a company’s Web site usage and online marketing activities.
TwitterAnalyzer: Free online tool analyzes a company’s influence on Twitter, including number of daily Tweets, users who are re-Tweeting your messages and their unique reach.
HootSuite: Popular free service manages and analyzes multiple Twitter users and accounts. New iPhone app links HootSuite account to mobile phone.
Radian6: Sophisticated tool that tracks conversations about competitors and share of mentions, among other metrics. Pricing starts at $500 a month per profile and $100 a month per user.
ViralHeat: Delivers real-time data from video sites, microblogging platforms and Web sites. Prices range from $9.99 a month to $139.98 a month.
Bit.ly: Free URL shortener that tracks information such as number of clicks, traffic sources and what time clicks occur.
Scoopler: Free real-time search engine that organizes content being shared on the Internet as it happens through blogs and major social networks.
TweetMeme Analytics: Similar to Google Analytics, the app is useful if you use TweetMeme’s re-Tweet buttons on your site. Prices begin at $50 per domain per month.
PostRank Analytics: Suite of tools to measure social engagement on other platforms and services. Shows messages and comments from other sites that contribute to your statistics. Prices begin at $9 a month.
Twopular: Tracks the most popular trends on Twitter at no charge.
Xinureturns: Provides a free overview of your Web site presence on popular search engines and social networks.
Omniture: Captures, stores and analyzes digital transactions from Web sites and other online channels as well as offline channels such as point-of-sale promotions and call centers. Prices vary per user.
Google Analytics Annotations
Google Analytics introduced a small but very dynamic feature called “Annotations” that is tremendously useful both to analysts as well as executives, who are usually not up to date on granular details about website activity.
This newly launched “annotations” feature enables you to annotate and bookmark major campaigns, ebbs & flows in the graphs regarding events that happened on specific days within your statistics for future reference. This will help to explain a spike or drop in traffic to other members within your organization, without having to dig through the past, thereby saving tons of time.
This is a great feature which will end up saving many people a lot of time. The concept here is that there can be real collaboration between those who put together campaigns and those who see the analytics without that important data. Rather than going through old emails to analyze the traffic surge, or shopping cart conversion increased, users can bookmark this event when it happens for future reference. This will sure make end of month reporting a lot quicker!
An easy annotation that outlines a “cause and effect” for the data consumer can save a lot of time and trouble. Annotations complement existing anomaly detection by capturing the tribal intelligence of your company, which tends to be the most expensive and easily lost resource of all. A simple note from a colleague can save hours of real work (and frustration) for an analyst who is tasked to explain a usually dry set of numbers. This short video will show you how to use Annotations.
Another advantage is that different members within your company can instantly see the results of other teams’ actions. In other words, annotations can be created by anyone involved with the production and promotion of a website for everyone else to see.
- The PPC team can announce major changes to their campaigns.
- The SEO team can annotate changes to the website so that results can be tracked over time.
- The PR team can update dates of events, enabling the tracking of offline activities into Google Analytics more easily.
- The media buying team can provide updates of major banner campaigns.
This should help encourage teamwork, as everyone involved will be able to grasp the whole picture and coordinate activities with other teams’ activities. Google has started rolling out this feature and has indicated it should be live for all users mid January!
25 Alternatives To Squidoo For Link Building
Many SEO experts are looking for sites like squidoo and hubpages.
Link building is an important SEO strategy to get tell Google that your site is indeed important. The more links, the better your site will get indexed and ranks better. A popular link building strategy is to make a squidoo lens and link back to your website.
So here is a list of 25 sites, where you can submit content and get free links (and some share revenue generated by your content).
1. Hubpages.com – A popular site similar to squidoo to publish online with easy to use, non-techie tools.
2. Gather.com – a user centric information sharing website where you can put all your information.
3. 43things.com – a Goal sharing website where you can make your lists about anything, mostly what you want to do. Allows to make Free blog to publish our own articles that link with our site.
4. Zimbio – Mesh of Rss feeds and articles, mostly deals with entertainment and celebrity related content.
5. Tumblr – Allows you to create your own blogs like url.tumblr.com where you can blog.
6. Knol – Google “product” though full with health articles. I have yet to see any positive reviews from it as far as link values are concerned.
7. advogato.org The site allow us to publish articles. After having an account we can publish articles.
8. asmallworld.net A community site that allows you to publish press releases and articles. You can share your views with others.
9. Weebly Weebly is a cool website that allows you to build your own web page for free. It offers some nice, user-friendly features that make it easy to create a professional looking site that will give you increased visibility and a place to link your Hub Pages, Squidoo lenses and Knols to as well as other domains.
10. Ligit: Ligit is a search powered web application for publishers. Unify your content and make it searchable.
11. Jimdo: Create Free Web Pages. Jimdo is easy to create web-pages, just sign-up, follow the link to your own Page, integrate pictures, videos and texts in seconds, change the design with a click, add as many pages as you want
12. Oondi: Oondi is a place for writers to publish their work, without having to worry about anything else. This allows them to focus on the writing itself instead of having to build a website, find visitors, find a reliable host, monetizing the traffic and so on.
13. Spongefish: SpongeFish is the place to share and show off your personal knowledge and expertise, and learn from others. People come to SpongeFish to show what they know and win prizes.
14. LaunchTags: Build a mini-page about your expertise, interests and know-how using text, pictures, video, links and blog feeds. Earn revenue brought in by your mini-pages.
15. Viviti.com lets you create a web site easily, with drag and drop. Start by choosing one of 100′s of templates (or design your own), then edit your site in place with content management toolbar.
16. Qassia: Share Your Intelligence and get exposure for your website in return. Qassia is a credit-driven intelligence engine coupled to a cascading tag-based web directory.
17. wetpaint.com: Create your own social website with wetpaint. you can create websites that mix all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks into a rich, user-generated community based website.
18. InfoBarrel: Write information and how-to guides and get paid
19. ScriblNotes: Education related site allows you to publish notes, upload typed documents, share study guides and earn money for top submissions.
20. Vox.com: Blogging platform which integrates with YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, Amazon, iFilm and iStockphoto.
21. Ning.com: Ning is a social networking site that allows to create blog posts with photos, files and videos.
And of course the popular blogging and social platforms:
22. wordpress.com
23. Yahoo 360
24. blogger
25. Windows Live spaces
I’m convinced that this cannot be an exhaustive list. What would you include in this list?
Smiles,
ShriNagesh 
Transparency In Marketing – Does It Work?
In the present world of (internet) marketing, we hear words like cut-throat marketing, black-hat marketing etc. But will Transparency in Marketing work?
Lynn Terry of Clicknewz.com has demonstrated that, integrity and care for customer/blog reader is more important than her commissions (which is quite contrary to the present marketing trends). I’m sure many of you can relate, if I tell you that I bought so many products that were absolutely crap. And you wouldn’t even have anybody to address the issue to.
Lynn promoted a great product and a lot of her subscribers willingly ordered through her link, including me. And many of us had issues due to technical difficulties faced by the product developers. Lynn goes out of her way, by traveling six hours to deal with resolving issues that caused trouble to her subscribers.
Leadership is about vision. But leadership is equally about creating a climate where the truth is heard and the brutal facts confronted. There’s a huge difference between the opportunity to “have your say” and the opportunity to be “heard”. The good-to-great leaders understand this distinction, creating a culture wherein people have a tremendous opportunity to be heard and, ultimately, for the truth to be heard.
When you conduct autopsies without blame, you go a long way toward creating a climate where the truth is heard. If you have the right people on the bus, you should almost never need to assign blame but need only to search for understanding and learning.
You MUST read the entire post on Lynn Terry’s blog to learn a live example demonstrating “transparency in marketing”.
Kudos to Lynn Terry,
Shri