Convince and Convert Blog: Where Social Media and Email Collide

Thanks to Jason Falls for the inspiration (okay, it’s a straight rip-off) for this post. Jason pointed out five lesser-known bloggers that he reads regularly (including Convince & Convert). His post seems to have triggered an a-ha moment, as several other excellent social media bloggers including Mack Collier and Amber Naslund have posted similar lists of people to read. 

This is truly the genius of the World Wide Web. A hyper-linked community that enables users to find interesting and useful content based on the recommendations of real people, enabled (but not driven by) technology. 

Here’s my Fab Five bloggers. People I read that may be less well-known by Convince & Convert readers. Also, because I work in email marketing and digital marketing in addition to social media, my list is not purely social media focused, as are those cited above. 

Tamara Gielen

Tamara’s blog BeRelevant is dedicated to B2B email marketing best practices. Tamara doesn’t post a ton of her own content, but her ability to cull down the huge output of blog content about the email industry, and include only what’s legitimate and groundbreaking on her own site is a godsend. 

Tamara is also the founder of the Email Marketers Club, a social network for professional emailers with more than 1,700 members. By day, Tamara is the Director of Email and Digital Dialogue for OgilvyOne. She lives in Belgium, and can be found on Twitter @tamaragielen 

Bryan Eisenberg

One of the few folks out there who have been in digital marketing as long as me, Eisenberg is a conference staple (especially search conferences). His insights into customer experience, usability, information architecture, and conversion rate optimization are simply unparalleled. If you need to get more results from your Web site, he’s a guy to follow.

His blog Grokdotcom is more of a company-wide production now, but still brimming with insights. Watch for his regular series of books too. His new one, “Call to Action” is outstanding, and “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark” is required reading for all Web designers, project managers, and information architects I hire. 

He’s on Twitter @theGrok

Dan Zarrella

A great blogger with no shortage of opinions about social media, search, and cross-linking. Not afraid to rock the boat, Dan Zarrella brings serious science to the discussion of social media and viral marketing. He believes that “going viral” is no accident, and I believe he’s the number one guy to watch in terms of the emerging confluence between blogging, other forms of social media, and SEO.

He’s got some very useful tools for maximizing the search and viral friendliness of your blog. Check them out in his Tools section. 

Dan is on Twitter @danzarrella

Michael Gass

I do a lot of work for ad agencies and PR firms, and Michael Gass’ blog Fuel Lines is redefining how agencies think about business development. A great example of a blogger picking a distinct topic and absolutely owning it, Michael eats his own dog food (and the food of other dogs as well). You see, his consulting business is based on helping agencies use smart blogging, SEO, and social media to generate inbound leads - rather than shooting in the dark making cold calls.

In addition to regular, insightful posts about the future of ad agencies, Michael has added a ton of value to his blog with a sweeping survey of the agency biz dev landscape, and a “best agency blog” competition.

Michael has been a huge help and a great friend to Convince & Convert. If you’re at an agency (and even if you’re not), read his stuff. He’s on Twitter @michaelgass

Jason Falls

Yeah, he put me in his five. But, I would have had him in here regardless. With the tsunami of blog posts, opinions, pass-alongs, retweets, and me-toos out there, Jason Falls maintains an exceptionally high quality level. If he says something on his blog - Social Media Explorer, it’s worth reading. If he sends a tweet, the link is worth clicking.

Unlike many (most?) social media consultants, Jason is actually a practitioner of the art. His work for Jim Beam via his agency Doe Anderson is one of the legendary examples of social media press releases and integrated microsites. His blog isn’t about what social media will become, it’s about what social media is now, and how to do it right. 

Jason is a straight shooter that’s not caught up in his own emerging Web fame, and among the top tier of social media and PR 2.0 “names” I find him to be the most dedicated to sharing and extremely giving with his time. He was an early champion of Convince & Convert, and I’ll never forget that. (Chris Brogan is another one that’s amazingly cool to lesser known folks, despite his insane schedule and content generation volume). 

Jason is a must-follow on Twitter @jasonfalls

Who Are Your Fab Five? Leave Them in the Comments, Or Write Your Own Post

Welcome. If you like the content here, consider susbscribing to my RSS feed. You can also find me on Twitter @jaybaer

I just finished giving a speech at the western region meeting of the National Council for Marketing & Public Relations in Sedona, Arizona. 

NCMPR is the association of community and technical college marketers. A really interesting group that needs to harness social media and work with prospective students on an individual, relevant, highly personal basis. 

While this presentation was specifically for NCMPR, there is a lot of material that will be valuable to anyone looking to launch and maintain a social media and digital marketing program for a mid-sized business or organization. 

Key points in this presentation:

- Media outlets have exploded, causing audience fragmentation

- You have to communicate to audiences individually, because they don’t herd together like the old days

- Using the power of audience segmentation

- Digital marketing is critical in this new hyper-targeted marketing world, because online users identify themselves through their search queries and site usage

- Ways to find prospective community college students (Twitter, Facebook, Blog search, Flickr)

- Web site is the key to translating awareness of your college (or any brand) to action

- Web content needs to be transparent, real, and multi-modal

- Lead acquisition is critical for colleges. Give users multiple call to action options. 

- Secrets to good form design

- Web site testing and optimization basics

- Lead nurturing via personalized follow up and triggered communications

Comments are very much appreciated. Enjoy. 

Do you need to know whether people on a Web page are clicking on the navigation, the logo, photos, or links in the text? Of course you do. And ideally, you should be tweaking your pages and testing often to maximize results. (that’s why we’re on version 3.2 of the Convince & Convert Web site copy in 9 weeks). 

For specific areas of digital inquiry like this, it can be easier and more useful to utilize specialized software rather than navigate through the massive array of features contained in an enterprise application.

If you need to figure out which elements of a Web page are getting clicks, and measure versions against one another, CrazyEgg is the answer. This simple software program only does a couple things, but it does them exceedingly well in an ultra easy to use fashion that puts it in the same “why isn’t all software this good” category with Basecamp, iphone, and Conceptshare. It’s Web-based (nothing to install), works in just about any browser, and handles analysis quickly.

CrazyEgg also lets you filter out internal usage (for more accurate reporting) by clicking a link in your dashboard or by sending an email to users you don’t want to appear in your reports. 

Web analytics and click stream data at your fingertips

Here’s how CrazyEgg works.

1. Sign up for an account. Fees range from $9 per month to $99 per month for deluxe version, based on how many different Web pages you want to track, and the number of combined monthly visits to those pages.

2. Add tracking code. Paste one simple line of javascript into the HTML of the Web pages you want to track. This should take approximately one minute, and if your Web developer or IT department says differently, they are being difficult and you should immediately bribe them with Red Bull or an XBox game. 

3. Wait for traffic to come. Once you have visits to your Web pages, you’ll be able to access your CrazyEgg reports online instantly. (alerts and other information can also be sent to you via email or RSS).  Reporting is where this system really shines. They offer multiple, highly visual ways to view click stream information that is far more compelling than a spreadsheet. For instance:

OVERLAY

- Clicking [+] for each links shows how many times that link has been clicked, and the more+ link shows you from where each clicker came (and their search term if they come from search). I can see that 16% of the 44 people that clicked “Digital Marketing Blog” from my home page came from Google. It also tracks outbound links, so I can see what other blogs in my “Links We Like” section get clicked.

CONFETTI

- Shows colored dots representing clicks on each link. Every color represents a different referring Web site. This is very useful for visually determining click pattern differences between visitors coming from Google and typing in www.convinceandconvert.com directly, for example. (Orange and Red, respectively)

HEAT MAP

- Perhaps the easiest to grasp and the most awe-inspiring report, the heat map shows frequency of clicks through color variations. Brighter colors = more clicks, so I can tell in one second that the “Digital Marketing Blog” link on the home page gets significantly more clicks than anywhere else on the page. 

If I wanted to see whether I should rename “Digital Marketing Blog” and change it to “Internet Marketing Blog”, I could make that change and then start a new CrazyEgg test. Comparing the before and after results reports is incredibly simple, and telling.

No Excuse for Not Running A/B Web Site Layout Tests

Many agencies and client marketers I speak with believe that methodically testing landing pages (see blog post about landing page testing), shopping carts, and other key Web pages is a huge hassle. It’s not, and CrazyEgg can help you get into a habit of testing.

For agencies, the perceived value of CrazyEgg’s heat maps, etc. is very high for clients and its a system that for $9-$99 per month, I recommend universally.

Have you used CrazyEgg? Something similar? Are you ready to start testing? Leave a comment.

Welcome to Agency Advantage Tools, a regular blog series at Convince & Convert that spotlights inexpensive or free digital marketing tools.

There are literally thousands of different Web sites, applications, plug-ins, widgets and more devoted to helping digital marketers do their jobs better or faster. Most advertising agencies and PR firms are too busy doing actual marketing to keep up on this flood of innovation.

So, here at Convince & Convert, we’ll do the work for you. We’ll scour the Web to find the tools that are worth adoption at agencies.

Website Grader - Search Optimization Success Snapshot

Today’s tool is Website Grader. This exceptionally easy-to-use Web site shows you in an instant how your site, your clients’ sites, and/or your competitors are doing with regard to search engine optimization.

Website Grader is owned by Hubspot, an integrated, Web-based suite of tools for search, blogging, social media, content management, and competitor analysis. We’ll review the full Hubspot offering in a future edition of Tools You Can Use.

Website Grader takes information that has been in demand for years (number of links, page rank, metadata, etc.) and presents it in a very clean, easy-to-understand format. There have been a number of sites that provide portions of this data, but none with the savvy interface and non-SEO-professional tone.

You just enter your Web site’s URL, enter the address of competitors if desired, provide an email address (if you want a printable report), and click “Generate Report”. That’s it.

Analysis take about 30 seconds.

The resulting report provides information on 23 data points across four categories:

• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO
• Blogosphere
• Social MediaSphere
• Conversion
• Competitive Intelligence

Average length of stay on a Web site is approximately 2 minutes and 30 seconds overall. Approximate length of stay by visitors coming from search is about 10 seconds. Why the difference? Search users are less likely to know your company and its attributes in advance, and they know there are several other options available to them simply by clicking “back”. In short, search engine users have the attention span of a 4 year-old after three s’mores and a cup of grape Kool-Aid. 

Most marketers engaged in even semi-serious pay per click programs have determined that creating specific “landing pages” to sync with particular search terms can help combat the flighty nature of search users. If a user searches for “mustard” on Google and clicks on your ad, you don’t take them to your home page, you take them to a page that’s all about mustard. You don’t even mention ketchup. Why confuse the user with information that doesn’t specifically address their needs?

This ability to determine the specific interests of the consumer (via their search phrase) and give them marketing messages that match is perhaps the most powerful capability of the Web as a whole. It’s as if consumers are walking around with thought bubbles over their heads describing what they want to buy. 

Not to be ignored is the important fact that Google (and I presume Yahoo!) are now including the content (and download speed) of landing pages as components in the “quality score” that determines where your PPC ad appears in search results. Meaning, if the page that lies behind your Google ad is not uber-relevant to the query, your ad will be penalized for it. This makes creating great landing pages a necessity, not a luxury. 

For agencies, the creation of landing pages is a critically important service that is not often being offered to clients with the appropriate voracity. If the client is thinking about a Web site redesign, but isn’t ready or doesn’t have the budget, creating a series of outstanding landing pages can help the agency prove its Web design mettle. Further, if a variety of messaging and/or design approaches are being considered for the new Web site, testing the efficacy of those approaches on landing pages is a smart move. 

Because they lie directly in the consumers’ research and purchase funnel, landing pages provide extraordinarily useful data that can be extrapolated for use in other online and offline marketing programs. Offer testing, photo testing, price point testing. All of these can be accomplished with landing pages with relative ease.

In fact, a rigorous and ongoing program that tests new landing page components (including multi-variate testing) can have tremendous bottom-line impact for clients, and makes the agency a hero. A multi-variate test that we conducted at Mighty Interactive for a student loan company generated a 40%+ increase in leads - resulting in a financial gain of hundreds of thousands of dollars for the client. 

When testing landing pages (and really any digital marketing element), remember that small changes can make a big difference. Background colors, font, spacing, photos, headlines and more can all impact whether a consumer will buy now or buy never. Don’t overlook button labels, either. Your action button is the last thing the consumer reads before determining whether to take action. Labeling it “submit” or something equally uninspired is missing a tremendous opportunity to set the hook at a critical time. 

If you have a landing page testing success story, let’s hear about it. 

Making the Horses Drink

The Web is the most comprehensively flawed world-changing technology ever. The ways in which you can screw up a Web site are without limit. In contrast, it’s a lot tougher to botch a fire, a wheel, a toilet, an ATM, or one of those KFC chicken/potato/corn/cheese bowls.

Like a really big Science Fair project, the Web sprouted organically and without profit motive. There wasn’t anybody in charge, there were only very loose rules, and Web site makers were left to their own devices – a hippie commune with mouse pads and tons of Mountain Dew.

The result of the Web’s socialist upbringing is that its core premise – accessing information – lacks standards. Imagine if every time you picked up a book the page numbering system was different. Some What if your cable TV only used prime numbers? Or if your radio would only tune to Pi? That’s the scenario we’re stuck with online. Every Web site requires each visitor to assess and learn its specific navigation schema.

It’s a tall order and it’s the reason why such a small percentage of Web site visitors do what we want them to do online. The percentage of Web site visitors that make a purchase on e-commerce sites (the “conversion rate”) is just over three percent. 97 out of 100 Web site visitors leaves empty-handed. Yikes.

But there are ways to help your Web site visitors understand your structure and lead them to a satisfying destination – hopefully an online order, lead, or other ROI-generating behavior.

People are People

Most of the visitors to your Web site will come occasionally and perhaps only once or twice. They do not understand the nuances and intricacies of your business, your corporate structure, or your product line. So don’t organize your site that way. If they can’t fathom the definition of a navigation label, they’re not likely to click on it. Name all navigational elements using language that your mother uses, not your customers – and certainly not your employees. Make it your mission to hunt down and kill all Byzantine abbreviations and insider jargon in the navigation – and if you have the stomach for it, site-wide.

Navigational Democracy

Ultimately, the users of your Web site will tell you what is the most important content on the site, and thus how the site itself should be organized. Examine the usage statistics for your Web site and determine the pages that are most frequently accessed and that have the longest duration of stay – indicating visitor interest in the content. Rework your site so that those pages are part of your main navigation, not two or three levels down. The behavior of your visitors demonstrates how to organize your information for maximum ease of use. If its too jarring to change your main navigation in this way, add a Quick Links box to the top right corner of every page and include in it direct links to every popular page within your site.

Lend a Hand

Most sites are buffets of information. Plenty of content, but with no real thought given to selection, sequence, or relationships between components. You develop a bunch of Web pages, organize them in a seemingly logical fashion, and let visitors decide what they want to read and in what order. That type of freedom can produce troubling outcomes, the informational equivalent of eating 4 helpings of chocolate mousse, followed by 63 coconut shrimp.

Instead, think of your site as a chef’s tasting menu. Instead of just letting the patrons go wild on your content, give it to them in measured portions in a sequence that will maximize their satisfaction.

Determine in what order you ideally would like your site visitors to access specific pieces of content on your site to move them from interest to action. Then modify every page of your site so that it either guides the visitor along that path (from step 2 to step 3), or if it’s a page that isn’t in the key persuasion process, points the visitor into that funnel.

This is not difficult, and can be accomplished by adding links at the bottom of your pages that guide the visitor to the next logical page. Even the addition of “next” buttons on the bottom of each page have been proven to improve conversion rates by helping visitors get to the information they need to make a decision.

Play Master and Servant

Especially on popular and critical decision-making pages of your site (but ideally on all pages), don’t be shy about telling the user what to do if they are ready to buy. It’s okay to ask for the order.

Your action buttons (call now, free estimate, request information, add to cart, et al) need to be big and compelling. Ideally, they should be the most visually arresting item on the page, using the “hottest” colors so that visitors’ eyes will land on them when they scan the page. Visitors need to know how to take action. Don’t be shy.

A recent study found that placing a small graphic of animated human eyes that “look” toward the key action button can increase response rates.

The animated eyes trick is about Wayne Newton on the cheesy scale, so that might be over the line. But, getting people to your Web site costs you something every time. Following these techniques will make your site easier-to-use and will transform more of those visitors to buyers.

What does the Internet have to do with your print, TV, radio, direct mail and other traditional tactics? Plenty.

Along with the oft-cited belief that half of all marketing dollars are wasted lies a corollary, which is that the traditional components of most marketing plans are evaluated using less than scientific means. In many cases, the perceived success or failure of a traditional marketing tactic such as a magazine ad is based on the random, coffee-breathed feedback offered by Lance, the knit-tie wearing sales associate that stops by your cubicle each morning to give you a blow by blow of each customer interaction. The one big sale Lance was able to make last month was to a woman who mentioned seeing your magazine ad. Thus, Lance advocates an eight-page full-color insert in the next issue since it’s obviously the best possible advertising vehicle.

In addition to Lance’s unimpeachable research, you may ask your customers via some sort of survey where they first heard about you. Numerous studies have shown these queries to be unreliable, as people either check the first box on the list, or whichever media they tend to consume most frequently.

So, what we advocate is the use of Web analytics to determine effectiveness of traditional marketing tactics.

With Internet access surpassing cable television in terms of consumer penetration rates, increasingly prospective customers consume traditional marketing messages first, and then evaluate your company via your Web site before determining whether to progress along the purchase cycle.

Consequently, as long as your traditional marketing consistently references your Web site, your online presence is a reliable surrogate and aggregator for your complete marketing program.

Here’s how to use it to figure out what works.

Public Relations

PR results have always been tough to measure. Historically, column inches of press coverage are multiplied by advertising costs for the same amount of space to derive a value. But that has no bearing on actual effectiveness of PR in driving awareness or sales. We log all media placements our PR division makes for clients by the date the articles ran and by publication. We also create a list of search terms that relate to each article.

Then, we look at the client’s Web site analytics to see traffic patterns after the articles ran, and measure visits from corresponding search terms.

For a recent client for whom we placed an article in the Wall Street Journal, we saw a 1000%+ increase in Web traffic, including many visits directly from wsj.com, and a spike in visitors using search terms mentioned in the article.

Marketing Mix

Similarly, to determine the relative impact of different pieces of the marketing plan, we create spreadsheets that plot when all traditional marketing activities occur such as TV and radio buys, billboards, direct mail drops, newspaper and magazine ads, etc. Then, we add a line graph that show Web site traffic, leads, and sales (if applicable) along the same timeline.

Anytime we see a spike in Web site results, we see what marketing tactics were ongoing at that time, and use that data to help determine which activities are most successful at driving results.

Message Impact

I’m not anti-focus group, but relying solely on research that asks people what they would do in theory puts a lot of artificial conditions on their buying behavior. After you’ve had a couple beers and if the light is just right, even the Pontiac Aztek looks pretty good.

We prefer when possible to mix focus group type theoretical research with measuring what people actually do in a low cost environment that gets results fast. We create a series of online banner ads that contain a distinct potential marketing message for the product or service, and then launch a quick online media buy that puts those ads in front of likely customers. Within just a few days patterns emerge that tell us which messages are salient. The trick to this approach is making sure that the ad creative is extremely similar except for the message itself. You don’t want to interpret a message as powerful, when it’s actually the photograph of the cigar smoking beagle in the one ad that is getting the attention.

While online marketing’s share of the overall marketing mix will continue to expand for the foreseeable future, it’s important to think of the Internet as more than an advertising vehicle. Those online ad dollars can be used to inform and improve the results of your traditional programs as well.

Make these changes now to improve online results

Thousands of Web sites built circa 2000-2002 are showing signs of wear and fatigue like a dot com Larry King. Today’s trend is away from flashy, narcissistic pandemics about why YOUR bolt and fastener company is the BEST, and toward obvious, easy-to-use, functional Web sites that respect the time and intelligence of their users.

You may not have the budget (or the moxie) to take your current site out back, pull an Old Yeller, and start fresh. Hence, this set of important changes you can make to eliminate small Web site lines and wrinkles, and return a fresh, healthy glow.

Focus on the User

Nobody comes to a Web site on accident. Each visitor needs something from you. The key to online success is figuring out what those needs are, and answering them as quickly as possible. Think of your site as an extension of your customer service department rather than your marketing department, and you’re on the right track.

How do you know what the needs of your audience are? Ask them. Put together an easy online survey using www.zoomerang.com or a similar tool, and invite visitors to participate. Include a question that requires survey takers to describe (or select from options) precisely why they came to the site. Use that information to reconfigure your site’s organization and content.

Once you have an understanding of what people want from you, determine how best to provide it. Create a chart of all the pages on your Web site. Does this page answer one of the primary five to seven visitor questions? If not, does this page clearly direct the visitor to another page that answers a question? If not, delete the page from your site. Your top seven visitor questions should be answerable in two clicks from the home page.

Have a Clear Home Page

The home page of your site has two purposes. Briefly describe who you are so visitors know they are in the appropriate place, and direct users to an inside page most likely to answer their question.

Do not use your home page to try to tell your whole story, and unless you are managing a Web site for a rock band, porn star, or art gallery do not put a flash introduction on your site. 93% of Internet users click that convenient “skip intro” button, so having your logo burst into flames accompanied by the first seven bars of “We Are the Champions” isn’t exactly money well spent.

Remember that many people will be seeing your site for the very first time, and thus need to evaluate each link on your home page before determining their next action. Ideally, provide 15 or fewer next click options.

Write Copy for the Web

People don’t read online, they skim. Eyeballs jump around a Web page like Tom Cruise on Oprah.

So, don’t repurpose your brochures. Instead, determine what the goal of the Web page will be, and then write it in an inverted, journalistic style. Conclusion first, then more details

Use a lot of subheads and bullet points to give the visitor’s eyes a roadmap to what’s important on the page. Keep sentences short and punchy.

Keep Score

The Internet is the most measurable medium yet devised, and features actual, honest-to-goodness counting of each person that comes to your site. It’s imperative that you use this data to consistently measure the effectiveness of your site, and make changes based on your findings.

Decide what behavior you want your Web site visitors to engage in on your site. Filling out your lead form? Calling your toll-free number? Downloading your white paper? Purchasing your product?

Whichever it is, use a Web analytics program (we recommend Clicktracks and Urchin on Demand (recently bought by Google)) to determine at least monthly how many of your visitors did in fact do what you want them to do on your site, and more importantly, your conversion rate.

To determine your conversion rate, divide the number of desired actions by the number of people who visited your site. If 100,000 people visited your site last month, and 1,000 of them filled out your lead form, your conversion rate is 1%.

This is the magic number online because it tells you how effective your site is at aligning what you want people to do with what they want from you.

If you want your site to generate a larger number of desired actions there are only two ways to do so. You can ignore the shortcomings of your site and get more people to visit – which can be a difficult proposition. Or, you can inject a little botox into your site, make it customer-friendly, and get more results from the people already there.

In comparison to their human counterparts, Web sites have certain advantages as sales representatives for your company. They work 24×7, don’t complain about the commission structure, and don’t expense $273 for dinner with “Paul” the imaginary new business prospect. But otherwise, Web sites are generally terrible salespeople.

Nearly all Web sites have (or should have) visitor action as a central goal. Whether that action is a purchase, filling out a lead form, signing up for an email newsletter, or a combination of these or other activities, enticing visitors to ACT not just READ, is the end game of online marketing – and one at which most sites consistently fail.

The percentage of your site’s total visitors that actually take a desired action during their visit is called the site’s conversion rate, and a multitude of Internet research pegs average conversion rates at 2-5%.

Just imagine what would happen if your sales force closed only 2% of the calls they made. In most companies, a close ratio in that neighborhood would result in a humiliating verbal flogging at an early morning sales meeting, followed closely by a strong hint manifesting itself in the form of a $5 off coupon to Harriet’s House of Resume Polishing.

Even more damning is the fact that the people visiting your Web site are there for a reason. By their very presence, they have indicated their interest in your product or service. They didn’t enter a random set of characters into their browser to see what might happen. Consequently, your Web site’s pool of prospects might actually be MORE pre-qualified than your sales team’s. So what gives? Why can’t most sites close more than 5% of their prospects?

There are three primary culprits.

First, despite the excessive use of hair products and occasional personality disorders, professional salespeople have one critical skill that most Web sites lack entirely – listening. In a conversation with a prospect, salespeople are trained to listen to what the prospect says and probe for need. Only when needs have been identified do well trained salespeople offer solutions to meet them.

Web sites are often exactly the opposite. The entire “conversation” is not a conversation at all, but a monologue. “This is what our company does. These are the services we offer. These are the benefits of those services.” No acknowledgement of customer need. People act because they have a problem or need, and believe you can solve it. Frame the issue from their perspective, and you’ll be able to more succinctly and directly explain why you’re the solution.

The second problem is that Web site owners dramatically overestimate depth of visit. A March, 2004 study of thousands of sites from Web site analytics company Onestat.com found that more than 80% of all Web site visitors view three pages or fewer. This has massive implications for home page design and content organization. To increase conversion rates it’s imperative that your site diagnose visitor need, deliver evidence of being able to meet that need, and encourage action within the first two pages. Don’t waste your most valuable real estate – your home page – by including on it a worthless animated sequence or other corporate welcome statement that doesn’t address need or encourage action.

If the primary objective of your site is to get people to request your free brochure about your new weed killing spray, include a large button on your home page that says “Overrun by weeds? A weed-free yard is within your reach. Click here to see how your weeds could be singing the blues by this weekend.” Corny? Yes. Effective in getting prospects to request the brochure? Yes.

The third problem is a fundamental lack of understanding that unlike in-laws and Supreme Court Justices, you’re not stuck with your conversion rate. Now that Internet advertising is hot again, companies are constantly looking for ways to increase their Web site traffic, not realizing that the least expensive way to improve results is to re-architect the site itself to boost conversion rates. If you better your conversion rate by 100% – a very achievable objective in many scenarios – you’ve effectively doubled your marketing budget.

Certainly, there are principles that are universally true, including those included here. However, when you’re ready to get serious about conversion rate improvement, the only way to do so is to test your theories. Work with your team or a consultant to create several versions of your home page. Try new navigation labels. Build multiple lead generation forms. The only way to truly optimize results is to test until you’ve found the Web site recipe that makes the tastiest casserole for your company.

Is it easy to optimize conversion rates? It’s not too difficult to improve them by ridding your site of obvious problems. But a complete optimization strategy and tactical plan can indeed be tricky. But, unless you have a large unused cubicle farm and a platinum account at monster.com, it’s a lot simpler to test new Web site options than to try a fleet of new salespeople.