I met Chuck from Pop Labs at SES NYC several weeks ago and I've seen a couple of his YouTube videos on SEO/SEM, Linkbuilding, Social Media and now… Chuck has put out a video on Conversion Rate (Rap).

 Here's the words to this rap song (I don't see he's got a Web Analytics Rap yet)

You launch a campaign but thats not all you need,
your campaign not working if its not generating leads,
no contact forms no phone calls
no new sales man you destined to fall,
spent your money on words that was way to vague,
then optimized your site for the wrong keyphrase,
look, it's not easy but it can be fixed,
if you do it by the book, with no gimmicks and tricks,
google rules are strict, its a must you abide,
do it right and get rewarded that's how we survive,
first pause your ad's no more hits on your card,
money don't grow on trees at least not in my yard,
did you set up analytics please tell me you did,
gotta figure out whats generating them clicks,
take the time to go and search with the words you chose,
do any of your competitors show with any of those,
then what you do next,
check your ad text,
spice it up a little add some adjectives,
check your link display,
and check your CTA,
and check your site design it might be chasing them away,
and is your site complete and is your deal sweet,
competitive industry, can you compete,
you might be obsolete probably best to retreat,
before your finances deplete and then you face defeat,
but if you are elite,
then stay in your seat,
you client base cold I can show you to the heat,
lets start with your meat,
talking about your content,
it drives the search engine anything else is nonsense,
make it keyword dense, that's just common sense,
but don't write for the search write for your audience,
after all, they the ones grab the phone and call,
the search engine won't do anything but crawl,
now don't drop the ball, identify your goal,
set conversion tracking, remain in control
like a cop on patrol, evaluating traffic,
respond to your clients, reduce all the static,
when you get a lead, you should be ecstatic,
contact em immediately, that's just automatic,
ask em where they from and add it to your demographic,
ask em what they search but be charismatic,
then close the deal if you have sales skills,
they already qualified, just show em the appeal,
I'd rather get 100 clicks and close 35,
than get a 1000 clicks and I only close 9,
listen to my design, don't get caught up in the rhyme,
you don't have to be number 1, strive for top 5,
we can talk about positioning another time,
if you follow the guidelines you'll be just fine…

I spent a half hour watching a video on designing webpages for conversion; new software is also going to be introduced to help website owners do this and you can signup to find out about it by going to the link above and watching the video.

However, I'm not writing my post about that - it's more about the idea, suggested in the video, that a human being, by evolutionary design, only sees about 2% of the visual scanning field (what their eyes can scan) at any one moment - and when we sit in front of a computer - the screen/monitor takes up 20%, perhaps, of our visual range - so we're only seeing 10%, at most, of the screen at any one moment - and the rest of the screen/website we're looking at is blurred.

Nothing new here, and it follows very closely what GrokDotCom and other Conversion Rate Specialists suggest - that making it easier for people's eyes to scan (easier for the brain …too) can add up to 25% to you conversion rate.   In other words - if you normally got 3 out of a 100 visitors to convert (whatever that is for your site) making your site easier to scan will get you the 4th conversion.

That's pretty interesting - because you can only go so far with Web Analytics - but if you see a page has a high bounce rate - then you still need to tell someone (your client/stakeholder) what could be improved.

I guess I'll try out the software but just looking at the video I was able to pick up a couple of problems in one of my current SEO clients - and that's before we get into the content itself - which is another story.  Once you watch the full video, it's obvious what's wrong with this site - and why it has a high bounce rate (I know that because I've done the analytics for over 2 years).

The content itself - house plans are a tough sell now - with a glut of built homes that are empty - and while I'm not sure how many of the architects I've dealt with are doing in any detail, I believe, given the economic circumstances - it can't be that good.

Which sorta suggests that design can only do so much - and that part of the other story might need to be the content/offer itself - maybe that needs to be switched or improved, as well.

Which reminds me of the post on The Online Business Measurement Quadrant posted by Dennis R. Mortensen (a friend and fellow member of my WAA Social Media Committee, BTW, and one of the owners of the IndexTools Web Analytics Platform).

Web Analytics only captures part of the story of what's going on based on what there is to measure (see chart below - which I still think is incomplete, BTW) -

In this chart a hierarchy of measurement is implied, with Sentiment on the Y Axis and Content on the X Axis.  Of course, there's no place for the kind of measurement in the Stomper video, so that's where it might be incomplete.   But the idea that you can structure experience, structure measurement is what makes it possible to even attempt to answer the questions of what people who visit are doing on a site and why - and what tool to use to gather that data.

So, in a way, what the Stomper Video addressed was 25% of the online experience (perhaps more) that a user could control, just by placement, by chucking data together, by finding eye tracking patterns.  It doesn't address what the content is or even if the offer is any good.

Which gets back to my client again - certainly measurement can be enabled - chucking of data and improvements in navigation are needed - but unless they also modify the content itself - in tune with what the feedback from the Web Analyst (me, in this case) provides, that work is a waste of time.

Unless we have a framework to experiment with, and actually do the experimentation, we're probably not doing actionable Web Analytics.

But I'll end this post with one more thing I learnt in France this month - and I don't recall where I heard it, perhaps at the French Blogger Dinner - (French Blogger Dinner - and at the last minute), that converting clients happens out of trust - you pick something small first, that you can verify, can change, can measure, a battle you can win first, and once  you are successful in that - you can, in some cases, get buy in to larger changes.

If there's anything I failed with in this client, and some of the others, it was here.  

And I'm learning - when you want to gain success - start with small goals, small triumphs; once proven, you can get buy in to do the larger changes.

And that's one of the things I'll put into practice more in 2008. 

Gord Hotchkiss writes some pretty compelling posts, and lately, I've been reading them all … including the latest on The Whys of Buy: Visualizing the Buy where Gord relates a story that originally appeared in About.com Sports Medicine category on Visualization and Muscle Strength

"…Now research is suggesting that visualization can actually strengthen muscles. Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio investigated the strength benefits of imagining exercising a muscle. They reported that just thinking about exercise helped maintain muscle strength in a group of subjects.

They split 30 healthy young adults into 3 groups. For 15 minutes a day, five days a week for 12 week, Group #1 imagined exercising their little finger muscle. Group #2 imagined exercising their biceps muscle and Group #3 acted as a control group and did no imaginary exercise. Those in the first two groups were asked to think as strongly as they could about moving the muscle being tested, to make the imaginary movement as real as possible. The researchers measured muscle strength before, during and after the training sessions.

Group #1 (the finger exercisers) increased their strength 53 percent, wand Group #2 (the biceps group) increased strength by 13.4 percent. "

Hmm… I have to try that!  Darn, maybe I can get my pinky to get stronger - or something else to get better…or whatever.  But wait - it does get better:

"…If your purchase process requires a commitment on the part of the buyer, let them visualize the path required to get to the end. Use your website to build the path required to navigate through things like financing, negotiation, customer service, delivery and selection of products and options. Don’t just stop at visualization of ownership. Think about the visualization of the act of buying as well."

This referred to the idea that we can write compelling copy - but unless we can close the loop, unless we can convey to people what it's like to purchase the product, use the service, unless we can give people all the information they need to complete the purchase - even if everything else is good…if we've forgotten to enable visualization of "buying" or "owning", then we've left a lot of money, a lot of opportunity on the table.

Again, I've been reading Gord's posts because he has really good content plus he writes well…and hell….I've been in Times Square on a summer night - I live in NYC (and it would smell kinda bad at 98 degrees on a Saturday night).

According to Internet Retailer you conversion rate will go up by 400% if you can use personas, possibly in your PPC Advertising - and elsewhere.  Like everything else - the results depend on the implementation:

"…When it comes to personas, the return you get depends on how much you're able to implement."

And…perhaps the best reason to use personas is to understand your audience - before you even think about converting them.

To me, the talk about Persona's from Grokdotcom (where i first read about this story) reminds me of the Systems Admin work I used to do in data centers, in another life before this one, where successful large implementations were based on figuring out a successful architecture for data-centers all over the world.

In other words, if you got the server architecture right - or in our case, the personas right, everything else could be layered on top of it - including keywords for you PPC campaign, the SEO work, Navigation, even creative.

The problem, of course, is in the implementation; sometimes, by their nature, companies can't really implement it due to internal roadblocks, politics and lack of trust for the outside vendor.

So, my feeling is personas will increase your conversion rate by 400% to the extent your willing to work with a client firm that does this work and have chosen the right one.

According to Jonathan Mendez placing widgets on landing Pages might be a solution to low conversion rates for generic keyword phrases such as "house plans", "home plans", "floor plans", or any other generalized phase that can drive a lot of traffic, if you rank well for it, but not much in the way of results.

"…Most landing pages I see from generic queries take users to homepages or category pages. There is a better solution. You have to build it, but the returns I've seen can be well worth it. Creating APIs or leveraging existing APIs can create powerfully relevant landing pages. When the content becomes free from the hierarchy and navigational structure of your site, it allows new delivery rules to be created that more relevantly align the content with the goals of your visitor.

These types of landings are highly optimized. The change in user experience and performance can be dramatic. Sending your visitors to a comfortable LAP (Landing Application Page) provides the ability to keep users in the flow and focused on their goal. These solutions work because they pick up on the generic nature of the query by providing an immediate ability to refine and target the user with content that is only contextually relevant. LAPs can also contain multiple dynamic conversion paths. Similar to static landing pages, the presentation and delivery of the content can be multivariate and split tested. The clearest example of the benefits of Landing Application Page is Google's Universal Search. "

Jonathan Mendez cites his own blogs FeedBurner Stats in a post titled - Widgets, Landing Pages and Feed Stats - to illustrate that putting Widgets on his blog directly affected his RSS Subscriber rates.

I was thinking this might be the way to go for sites where the conversion rates are pretty low to begin with - but that I realized that it's been pretty hard to get most of my clients to do much of anything, really, and I wonder how easy it would be to get a website to function as a platform.

Sounds like this is worth looking into more, though.

According to Marketing Pilgrim, HackerSafe seal improves sales at Joann.com, or does it?

"…So is this kind of auditing worth it? In my opinion, the jury is still out. First of all, you can sleep easier with their auditing, but you are fooling yourself if you think you are completely invulnerable to hackers. Secondly, our tests have never shown a significant increase in conversion when using the HackerSafe seal."

Last month I noticed that sites using HackerSafe, overall, had a much higher population of "Addicts" according to Quantcast (visitors who come more than 30 times a month).  I wonder if higher conversion rate is tied to the number of visitors who are highly addicted to a site (if that is the right term)?

BTW, I got to see HackerSafe's office headquarters, last week, while I was attending XChange Conference in Napa Valley.

I wrote a post earlier on half the people who fill out an online form have no intention of completing it and Jeffrey Eisenberg at GrokDotCom picked up on it with a post titled "What You don't Know About Form Abandonment".

"…Marshall Sponder shares an interesting comScore study that illustrates what we at Future Now have been saying for many years: shopping cart and form abandonment happens well before people reach the form.

I'm always thrilled when additional evidence surfaces.

The majority of abandonment issues can be fixed if you focus on answering visitors' questions earlier in the "funnel" or purchase consideration process. Persuasion Architecture™ (define) is designed to anticipate the questions people have and facilitate the momentum required for them to accomplish their goals."

Figured someone at GrokDotCom.com would notice my post - it didn't take more than a couple of hours.

Interesting study from Comscore that says that half the time, once an applicant fills out a financial form online, they don't have any intention of completing it.   According to the Comscore Press Release:

"..Of those who initiated an online financial application but did not submit it, 49 percent said that they had no intention of completing the application.  This percentage was higher for deposit product applicants (58 percent) and substantially lower for credit card applicants (32 percent).  The top reasons cited by those who did not intend to complete the application included:

• Wanted more product information (23 percent)
• Not ready to apply (19 percent)
• Wanted to see if they qualified for the product (14 percent)
  

 Based on this study, it looks to me like 37% of the 50% who did not plan to complete a form online, might have changed their mind if the site provided information that was more relevant, more targeted, more persuasive.  I don't think you can do much with the 19% who are not ready…. nor should you.  If someone is not ready for your offer, leave them alone.

But clearly there's a lot being left on the table because the website copy and presentation are not good enough; that's what www.GrokDotCom.com specializes in …so it makes sense to me if your going to invest in building a site - why leave all that money on the table that you could have had if you just wrote the copy a little better - or provided more information in the right places?

Also interesting, of those who wanted to complete a financial form online but didn't (34%), all could have been addressed by a better designed web site - meaning that of all the people that don't complete online financial forms, 81% could have been encouraged to the point of completion (conversion) had the site been better.

• Changed their mind about applying online (12 percent)
• Had privacy/security concerns (11 percent)
• Wanted to speak to a sales person regarding the product (11

It was probably from Gary Angel's blog, SEMANGEL, that I found out about SEM Cannibalization of Organic Search traffic last year (PPC Self Cannibalization) and I wrote about it shortly after starting Webmetricsguru.com in cannibalization by organic search results by PPC campaigns.

Gary's current article/post Measuring Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as a Channel goes beyond the other posts by putting forward that Marketing Channels can be cannibalizing each other; I find that a very interesting idea to explore.

www.Semphonic.com  has developed specific methodologies and experience to measure Cross Channel Cannibalization, though his focus in the Measuring Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as a Channel is on Search:

"…How do you measure organic cannibalization? It’s pretty trivial. The easiest way is to have a fairly extended dark period. Ideally, the dark period should be somewhat longer than the sweet spot for prospect conversion. You need to make sure you aren’t changing other campaigns during the dark period and you should also pick an historically flat time of year. You don’t want to pick March if you’re a tax preparation firm."

Seems to me that campaigns should be suspended periodically to how their presence/absence affects the rest of the marketing efforts (and that's usually judged by traffic and sales and where they come from).

"…Of great interest in the last year or so has been the interaction within a single channel. Specifically, how users use Search as a process. A number of studies have documented a general "tendency for searches to shift from sourcing on non-brand terms to brand terms as they move through the sales cycle. This can have a dramatic impact on your understanding of Ad Group and Search Effectiveness if you are using visit-based or "last-source" based campaign tracking.

"……These numbers can also be used to help understand what happens after a conversion or response. PPC Buyers tend, erroneously, to assume that everyone they source is a 1st Time Prospect. You may find, instead, that most of your PPC sourcing is existing customers looking for support or job-seekers looking for careers.

You might also find, for instance, that PPC prospects, once they convert, always visit your site via PPC. Depending on the circumstance, that may be a minor nuisance or a significant cost factor. If you have tight margins (as many publishers who arbitrage PPC do), then a visitor who always sources from Search is much less likely to be profitable than a visitor who only sources from Search initially.

This is not something I have had personal experience measuring, not in this way - but I think it would be good to do, from time to time.   The idea that all the channels might not be well aligned, while not expressly stated in Measuring Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as a Channel is suggested by the material.

Last week I was sitting across from a customer of mine who swore their website and shopping cart were superior to Expedia.  We ended up doing a full transaction in the customers' shopping cart vs. a full transaction in Expedia for the same trip.

The customer showed me their was little if any real difference in their shopping cart than Expedia - yet I maintained (and still do) that the booking a trip on Expedia was a much better, smoother experience than booking a trip on my customers' site.

Apparently, a study done by  Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology, focusing on identical search results across 4 major search engines explains why I believe Expedia's website and shopping cart are better than my client's:

 "…Researchers in Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) copied Google results pages from four different e-commerce queries, ascribing them to four different search engines — Google, MSN Live Search, Yahoo! and an in-house engine created for the study. Then the researchers showed the pages to 32 study participants who were asked to evaluate the engines’ performance in returning relevant results.

The queries included "camping Mexico," "laser removal," "manufactured home" and "techno music."

Despite the results pages being identical in content and presentation, participants indicated that Yahoo! and Google outperformed MSN Live Search and the in-house search engine.

"Given that there was no difference in the results, all of the search engines should have had the exact same score," said Jim Jansen, assistant professor and lead researcher. "Some emotional branding is having an effect here.

….."The study ties branding not just to product identification but also to product performance, Jansen said."

What that means - my positive experience booking a trip to Paris recently (via an inexpensive air fare to Paris and back) and my negative experience with a very slow shopping cart on my clients' site, in the past, affected the way I see both my clients' site and Expedia.

My thinking is that Branding Matters more than Search Engine results - a lot more - but too little thought is given to Branding in Search by most businesses that are in a hurry for better rankings.