Today is Thursday, August 21st, 2008

Visitor Conversion

How to Track Phone Calls in Google Analytics

July 15th, 2008 • georgelane • 1 comment • Related • Filed Under

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If you do pay per click marketing and take inquiries or sales over the phone, this could be a breakthrough tool:

Mongoose Metrics - Offline Phone Call Tracking

I haven’t tried the system yet, but according to their website, you can actually track exactly what web pages, ads, keywords, generate phone calls to your business. Awesome.

Unfortunately, this service doesn’t seem to be available in the UK yet. What a shame.

Before this service, it was very difficult to track exactly where a telephone call came from in an online marketing campaign… And even though you can ask prospects what they searched for in Google to find you, research has shown that most give you the wrong answer.

There was simply no easy answer to this problem (except may be “click to talk” buttons), until Mongoose.

Mongoose Metrics - Offline Phone Call Tracking

Check them out, and if you’re in the US, let me know what you think of the service!

Cheers for now,

George

PS: You may also want to check out this article about how to split testing a web page using a phone call as your goal. Very interesting stuff.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: offlinetesting, offline analytics,

Great New Heatmap Analytics Tool

April 7th, 2008 • georgelane • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

Here’s another great tool for you.. and best of all it’s freeeeeee!

It’s call ClickTale, and is a brand new way of analysing visitors to your website.

Rather than just dry analytical data, ClickTale give you “heat maps” (similar to those in eye tracking studies) to work out what visitors are doing on your website. You can even watch videos of what your visitors are doing.

It’s pretty amazing, but scary at the same time! Check it out here:

http://www.clicktale.com

This kind of data, until now, would costs thousands to produce with in depth eyetracking studies. I stongly urge you to test this on your website - It’ll give you some great insights into visitor behaviour that could lead to a breakthrough in conversion rates.

Enjoy.

Some great landing page tips

March 8th, 2008 • georgelane • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

Here’s a great article by Jerry West talking about creating great landing pages for pay per click. I really wish I learned this about 4 years ago rather than learning it the hard (and expensive) way!

Here’s the articles:

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Landing Pages - How to Win
by Jerry West

Landing Pages are the weapon of choice for affiliate marketers.
Marketers who do not employ Landing Pages either do not understand the
concept, or they are just plain lazy. Usually, it is the latter.
Laziness is often contagious.

A Landing Page is more than just a duplicate of your sales page renamed
for a PPC campaign. A Landing Page often strips out many elements of
“effective design” and focuses on selling the product or service.
The main purpose of your Landing Page is to give the visitor two
choices: Buy or Leave. Nothing else. Don’t distract them with other
options. That is why they are there - don’t make the mistake of giving
them too much to choose from. If you want to get them to subscribe for
more information, fine. Then create a “name squeeze” page, but don’t
confuse yourself. Landing Pages are for one reason and one reason only
… to make a sale.

Here is a short laundry list of what I do when I create a Landing Page:

Font Face, Color & Size:
There is one thing that most people hate, and that is 4-5 different
fonts that clutter up the landscape of the page. Different Fonts for
headlines is fine. Different fonts in your body text is not good, it is
distracting. Don’t do it. Keep to one font in your body text. Testing
shows that the best “off line” (print) font is Times New Roman. This is
why it is the default font on the internet. Big mistake. Testing shows
that Times New Roman is one of the worst fonts online. Why? It causes
rapid eye fatigue.

The best fonts? Verdana and Arial. Standardize on Verdana as it
consistently outperforms every font out there in terms of reducing eye
strain and increased readability. Use standard fonts in the body of the
page, if you want an usual font for a headline, create it as a graphic
so it will look the same on every computer. You want your message to
have the look you intended.

The text should be readable. The standard size is “2″. Text should
always be dark on a light background (black text on a white background
is preferred). Landing Pages aren’t designed to allow you to show off
how “cute” you can be. This is serious stuff, you are selling. Put on
your “best face”.

Make the Links Easy to Find -
Now, having a cool CSS file that makes the links change colors, add or
remove underlines is fine on your site. Knock yourself out. However,
they have no business on your Landing Pages. Why? Because confusing a
visitor is not your priority, getting them to buy is.
Use standard linking practices to avoid confusion. If a potential
customer can’t distinguish between text and a link you are going to
lose. That’s not good.

Standard colors are:

Unvisited Link - Underline in Blue
Active Link (when the mouse “hovers” over the link - Red
Visited Link - Purple

I recommend not messing around with the visited link, just have the
standard unvisited and hover so the visitor has some interactivity and
the link will “catch” their eye. I have done a ton of testing and the
standard linking practices always have better conversion ratios.

Color Scheme -
The colors you choose should match the product or service you are
selling. Soothing yellows, greens and blues are best for skin care. Pick
your color carefully as they will either bring the visitor in deeper
into the sales process or turn them away. A site for men shouldn’t have
pink as the primary color … or secondary color for that matter.

Not sure the colors to use? Look at the competition, as it is a great
place to start. And if you still aren’t sure, test.

White Space -
White space has been referred to as “negative space” by many designers
and thus, avoided. All of those designers should lose their jobs. This
is not high school art class. You are selling here, remember? White
space is good. White space is your friend.
When I look at a Landing Page with effective use of white space, I see
perfection. Without white space, text becomes unreadable, and the
graphics and other important elements become “washed out” and the
message is lost.

White space is more than just a background “color” - it is a part of
your conversion design. This also leads into another area, page
backgrounds. Don’t use them. Over the years I have seen floral designs
on iPod sites, vacation pictures as backgrounds, and even a woman and
her cat as the background …. and these were ALL landing pages.

Page Width and Page Height -
Have you heard the term “above the fold”? I am sure you have. It comes
from the newspaper industry and referred to ads and information that was
above the folded area. Testing found that 86% of the people who picked
up a newspaper at an airport, train station, office waiting room, never
“flipped” the paper over … they just looked “above the fold” only. The
same is true online. Did you know that of the people who don’t scroll
down that 6% of them don’t because they don’t know how?
Yes, you read that right. They don’t know how.

If your landing pages scrolls vertically on a 1024×768 resolution you
need to redo it. And if you are forcing a visitor to scroll
HORIZONTALLY, you are guilty of one of the worst web design mistakes of
all time. The scroll bar is your enemy. All of your important
information, including your Call to Action must be above the fold. Period.

Page Theme -
A Landing Page is geared to sell a particular product or service. So, if
I am doing a search for left-handed golf clubs or a Hawaiian vacation, I
am expecting to see a page about those topics. Don’t be lazy. Deliver
what I want, and I will be more likely to buy. Don’t dump me on a cookie
tracked version of your home page either. The content needs to match my
search. If not, I will most likely leave.
Stress Benefits, Not Features - Very few people care about features,
most care about benefits. Stress the benefits of the product or service
and you will increase your conversions.

Call To Action -
A no brainer, right? Wrong. Too many sites fail to have an effective
Call to Action. This is typical of most new and non-experienced sales
people. They fail to ask for the order. They just assume that the
prospects understands. Newsflash: They don’t. Explain what you want them
to do in easy to understand language, or an effective graphic. A “Buy
Now” is a Call to Action, and often a very effective one.

That’s it - we know you’ll be able to put these simple, but tested and
proven landing page strategies to work in your own business, whether
you’re an affiliate or marketing your own products.

Successful Web Design - What We Can Learn from Eye Tracking

January 10th, 2008 • georgelane • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

I just found this blog post on eye tracking. It’s fascinating reading and I reckon it will give your website a real boost if you implement only 50% of what they discuss on this post. Here’s a brief summary:

Text attracts attention before graphics.
Initial eye movement focuses on the upper left corner of the page.
Users initially look at the top left and upper portion of the page before moving down and to the right.
Readers ignore banners.
Fancy formatting and fonts are ignored.
Show numbers as numerals.
Type size influences viewing behavior.
Users only look at a sub headline if it interests them.
People generally scan lower portions of the page.
Shorter paragraphs perform better than long ones.
One-column formats perform better in eye-fixation than multi-column formats.
Ads in the top and left portions of a page will receive the most eye fixation.
Ads placed next to the best content are seen more often.
Text ads were viewed mostly intently of all types tested.
Bigger images get more attention.
Clean, clear faces in images attract more eye fixation.
Headings draw the eye.
Users spend a lot of time looking at buttons and menus.
Lists hold reader attention longer.
Large blocks of text are avoided.
Formatting can draw attention.
White space is good.
Navigation tools work better when placed at the top of the page.

Check out the full story here.

Cheers,

George.

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Why Businesses Sabotage Their Own Websites…

January 10th, 2008 • georgelane • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

I’ve just re-read this before I posted — it’s a bit of a rant. Sorry about that, but I do get quite impassioned when I talk about web design (yes, I should get out more…). Normal service will resume in the next post.

===============================================================

When you or your web designer plans & builds your website, do you start with the end in mind? Or do you go get sucked into the trap of making it look pretty, or sleek to the detriment of sales?

My experience and testing (as well as many other marketers) flys in the face of pretty, sleek or clever websites. 99% of them simply don’t work for most businesses.

This is because of a number of reasons, but here are a few that I’ve experienced first hand:

1. The business who wants to “impress” their competition with an expensive looking site. Well, there’s better ways to impress the competition than that… Making more money than them is a good start

2. The business who wants to clone their (more successful) competitors web site, blindly assuming it’s actually bringing in sales for the competitor. (In about 80% of cases, it isn’t. This results in the horrible “marketing incest” that happens when bad marketing gets copied by rivals who don’t know any better either. Look under the Central Heating section in Yellow Pages to see what I mean!)

3. They rely on their web designer to write the copy, come up with a strategy and market it. This is where things usually go pear-shaped…

Now, there’s nothing wrong with web designers. I work with many of them and they’re cool people. However, they are not marketers. If they were that good at marketing, they’d be doing it for a living, right?

Some of them are now catching up quickly, such as Morgan Wylie, but most web designers are left stunned when I explain how I generate business online. (One such web designer was left looking physically shocked and bewildered after getting a 20 min direct response marketing crash course in a meeting I attended, but that’s another blog post…)

So let a web designer do their job: design your website. Nothing else. Get a copywriter to write the copy, and a marketer to market it. Of course each of the professionals paths crosses, and everyone has to co-operate, but the main, specialist tasks are left to the specialists. Don’t be tempted to cut corners and hand the whole job to one person - you’ll only end up doing it again!

4. The business that doesn’t really know what their website is for. There are still huge numbers of businesses, especially in the UK, who simply throw a website up and hope for the best. This is madness!

A business website must always start with the end in mind: money. I mean, that’s the sole purpose of the website when you strip away the pretty picture, the sleek logos and the Flash animated intro, right? We’re not here for the fun of it are we? The sole purpose of your website is to get more money in your pocket. Pretty obvious really, but it’s amazing how many business owners lose sight of that.

The next natural question once you know your site needs to make money is: “how is it done?” This is when most people get the “oh f**k” moment, and realise there’s more to this internet stuff than meets the eye.

This moment usually comes when they’ve either poured thousands in the a sleek website, or they poured their heart and soul into doing it themselves, learning web design from scratch. A large proportion of people are in this state when they contact me. This is tough, because I hate giving bad news - especially when I can see a lot of time or money has been invested in a website.

When this is the case, I go for the “clean sheet” approach. We set up new Google Adwords campaigns, design and publish landing pages in subdirectories (that usually pull well from the word go), implement analytics, and rethink the marketing strategy in a lot of cases. The results can be pretty amazing. Check these results out from the last couple of months I got for my clients:

Client #1 — Massive Click Through Rate increase:

Client #2 - New landing pages = massive conversion rates.

Implemented landing pages for Adwords campaign and reduced cost per conversion (lead) from £130.53 to £40.40!

These images are a bit big, so I’ve posted the links instead:

Before: http://www.laneconsultancy.com/blog/images/lpbefore.jpg

After: http://www.laneconsultancy.com/blog/images/lpafter.jpg

Note: In the last example, look at the average cost per click: £11.02(!) - and we still made it profitable with a good Adwords campaign and landing page.

Moral of the story:

Use what works, scrap the rest (no matter how nice it looks or how much work/money went into it),
Ignore any untested advice.
Web designers as a rule aren’t as good at marketing as marketers.
Use the right people for the right job.
Test everything like a mad scientist!
It can be done. Marketing online is a steep learning curve. It has been for me, but keep going — there’s a pot of gold with your name on it!

To your success,

George.

Add me as a friend/connection!

New Marketing Audio Seminar - Free Download

December 20th, 2007 • georgelane • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

Remember I sent an email out a couple of weeks ago asking you for your
questions?

Well, the response has been fantastic - and if you did send in your
questions, thanks very much for your contribution.

I’ve just finished recording the audio and it’s now available to download here. (Right click and choose “save as”)

In the seminar I cover:

How to make your business stand out from the competition,
Viral and interactive elements on your website,
Getting ranked highly on the natural search engine listings,
How to approach joint venture partners and set up deals,
How to position yourself if you’re in a service business,
Top Google Adwords tips and a free tool,
How to improve visitor conversions,
How to find your customers needs and create good website content quickly,
My opinion on internet marketing “get rich” schemes,
How to find out if your new product or service has the makings of success with very little risk,
How to set up an email marketing campaign, why the 80/20 principle is important when sending emails.