Well, the day is not over yet but I need to brain dump and keep my readers interested in all the cool analytics stuff that is going on here at the Hilton Hotel in New York City, where Search Engine Strategies is being held though Friday afternoon.
Today, I covered 2 sessions in Zoom-In; Keynote Conversation with Steve Berkowitz and Web Analytics & Measuring Success so I won't repeat that content here. I also ran into Avinash Kaushik again - always a nice thing to happen - he was standing on the side of the large room, which had a large, packed audience.
After a lunch and an excellent interview that I conducted with Tim Ash of www.Sitetuners.com (which I'll cover in another post - I have a lot of interviews to write about and they're building up! - I need a couple more hours in the day to get it all down and do it in a way that does justice to the interviewees - so I'll write all the interviews later this week that I don't get to now) and an earlier conversation with Jordan Glogau, I settled in on this session which I took no notes on but will summarize.
Marketing Notes: Converting Visitors Into Buyers
Getting visitors to your web site is only half the battle. To be victorious, you need them to convert into customers by making purchases, signing up for services or fulfilling whatever are your goals. Learn about making this conversion. The latter part of the session takes volunteers from the audience and examines their web sites live to provide general feedback about changing them to improve visitor conversion.
- Allan Dick, General Manager, Vintage Tub & Bath
- Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder and CPO (Chief Persuasion Officer), Future Now, Inc.
- Michael Sack, Director, SEM technology & Development, Idearc Media Corp.
My take: Bryan Eisenberg had a lot to say about changing small things, a little copy, wording on a button (IE: change "submit" to "tell us how you feel") that can have profound effects on site conversions. Bryan also went over the difference between A/B testing using Google Website Optimizer and MVT Testing and how he was able to get excellent results. One thing that's clear is that many problems you have in conversions are "Marketing Problems" that go beyond usability site issues.
I did not listen that closely to Michael Sack, so I don't have much to say about his presentation.
I'll be posting more later tonight.
