Conversion Rate Web Marketing Blog 

Hiring a marketing consultant can be a smart move. Particularly if you run a business that doesn’t have a marketing department (i.e. most small businesses).

Often B2B and professional services companies are created by people who are very good at what they do, but who are not necessarily good at articulating it. Sometimes they struggle to describe what it actually is that they do, let alone how and why it will benefit you.

That’s where a good marketing consultant can help. A marketing consultant can help you to:

1. Clarify your uniqueness and competitive advantage (USP)
2. Position your brand in the market (your perception)
3. Use advertising, direct marketing, PR and events effectively
4. Improve your selling tools and skills.

Without a clear, consistent and understandable message to offer, it is practically impossible to create an effective website.

How important is your website in the scheme of things? We’ve worked with Gene Stark of Stark Reality Marketing on a number of projects, so I asked him this question.

“Online Advertising is now the fastest growing media category that has overtaken Cinema and Outdoor Advertising. Your website has today become your most accountable and effective marketing tool, if it’s designed, built, promoted and maintained correctly.  If your marketing consultant doesn’t understand this then you are in serious trouble!”

Even for small businesses the opportunities for low cost, high return marketing will be on the web. And that’s why you should see a marketing consultant who understands websites intricately.

From the author: If you regularly advertise for leads in the Yellow Pages®, in the newspaper or on the radio, then there’s a good chance that your website could be generating more leads for you than it is. The key is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your web marketing you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too!

Contact us on 1300 248 362 for a free conversion rate review of your website.

US company Tealeaf recently released some interesting research related to errors on eCommerce websites.

“42% of online consumers abandon or switch after experiencing online transaction issues.”

http://www.tealeaf.com/news/press_releases/2007/0917.asp

It can be difficult to emulate the problems that your customers experience, so there’s a number of simple actions that you can take to give you a chance to keep your customers.

1. Where possible make sure that your eCommerce system logs and reports on errors
2. Make sure that your eCommerce system handles errors gracefully. There’s nothing worse than seeing an error something like this during a transaction…  “Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to yourwebsite.net:80 (Connection timed out) in /a/dev-01.yourwebsite.com/system/libs/core/http-connection.class.php on line 73″
3. Follow up on customer complaints quickly and systematically. Your customer’s help in resolving an error could save you many silently lost orders.
4. Communicate with your customers and ask them for the information that you need to replicate their problem.
5. Have your software team address technical issues as a priority.

Treating your customer with respect and addressing their issues will give you a chance to recover the situation and keep the customer. By ignoring complaints you will miss the opportunity to fix the problem and, according to Tealeaf’s data, probably lose the customer.

From the author: If you run an eCommerce website then you might wonder, “How do I know if I’m getting as many orders as I could through my website?” The answer to that question is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your eCommerce website you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too!

Contact us on 1300 248 362 to find out how you could boost the conversion rates of your eCommerce website.

According to the Marketing Sherpa Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008 long URLs are on the nose.

 ”What we discovered was that long URLs actually work as a deterrent and stop viewers from doing what they’re supposed to do (click!). Instead, viewers spend time trying to decipher what’s in the URL itself. Those viewing the listing with the long URL actually ended up clicking on the listing immediately after it 2.5 times more than those viewing the listing with the short URL…”

So to rephrase, if your website has long URLs it’s likely that people seeing it in Google will skip right over your site and click on the site after yours.

Here’s an example of a long complicated URL: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/12454-64287-89301-321860-f50-1844701.html

Here’s an example of a good URL: http://www.harrisma.com/promotions/promo_hp_compaq_dx2200.html

This is a serious problem for many content management systems that generate long complicated URLs. If you’re using a content management system, make sure the URLs it generates are people friendly. If they are people friendly, then they’re likely to be search engine friendly as well.

From the author: If you regularly advertise for leads in the Yellow Pages®, in the newspaper or on the radio, then there’s a good chance that your website could be generating more leads for you than it is. The key is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your web marketing you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too!

Contact us on 1300 248 362 for a free conversion rate review of your website.

We recently conducted a conversion rate review on a website for a company that creates metal finishes for non metal objects such as doors, signs and other building elements. To introduce our readers to how a conversion rate review works, we thought we’d publish a brief summary of our conversion rate review.

Client: Metalcote Pty Ltd

Website Objectives: 

Metal finishing is a niche business with appeal to the construction and shopfitting industries. This is B2B and, due to the nature of the work that they do, Metalcote is looking to generate leads. Since metal finishing is a relatively new idea Metalcote also sees the need to educate their prospects on the possibilities of the work that they can do.

This is a really nice looking clean and simple website. Kudos to the web designer who chose a nice readable contrasting font for the text rather than the super light grey on white that many web designers seem to choose.

For the purposes of this summary, we’ve chosen to review the following four elements of the lead generation conversion process.

1. Usability
2. Content
3. Conversion
4. Traffic.

Usability -  How easy is the website to get around?

Opportunity: The home page of the website is usually the first place that a visitor will land. This is your best opportunity to say what you do and position your company. Having a basic splash page misses this opportunity and will likely create a quick exit. Remember that people come to your website for information.

Action: Use the home page to quickly and simply describe what you do and position your company’s expertise.

Opportunity: The Metalcote Logo is perfectly placed in the top left corner of the website (apart from the splash page). This is perfect to reinforce your branding, and it’s great for usability since users can immediately see that they’re in the right place. There is an unwritten law of website usability that the logo should click through to the home page.

Action: Make logo click through to home page.

Content - How useful is the website’s content?

Opportunity: This is a really interesting product with lots of uses. The only way to educate prospects about the possibilities is with content.

Action: Have a copywriter create a web page for each target use of the product.

Opportunity: Metalcote has worked on many large projects for some well recognised brands. There is an opportunity to make your prospects comfortable with you before they contact you by building rapport with them through your website.

Action: You need to trade off the trust that working for companies like Toyota, Nando’s and Chrysler can create by ensuring that those names are clearly seen. You’re already doing this in your gallery to some extent, but make sure you get their branding in the shot.

Conversion - How easy is it to get to the goal?

Opportunity: This site has a good contact page with a simple contact form. Having a contact form on each content page will give you the context of what the prospect is interested in and increase your visits to leads conversion rate significantly.

Action: Include a simple contact form wherever there is a call to action in your website copy.

Building traffic - How will visitors find this site?

Opportunity: There are many searches conducted each month using search engine keywords that are related to your field. Content is the key to getting good search engine results.

Action: Create new website copy and ensure that your search engine keywords are in the right places to make sure that you get found in Google.

So that’s a basic conversion rate review. Implementing these simple suggestions will significantly increase the number of leads generated from this website.

From the author: If you regularly advertise for leads in the Yellow Pages®, in the newspaper or on the radio, then there’s a good chance that your website could be generating more leads for you than it is. The key is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your web marketing you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too!

Contact us on 1300 248 362 for a free conversion rate review of your website.

In a push to make Bitemark green we’ve developed the “burn carbs not carbon” program. Basically, this involves encouraging the team to ride their bikes to work rather than driving.

So far our super-fit general manager Mark Standeven has joined the cause with me. Between us, we are potentially saving up to 2 tonnes of greenhouse gas emitted every year!

It’s a small start, but our personal trainer is happy! I think that the real benefit of riding to work is that:

• We’re get smarter about using energy
• Being in peak physical fitness keeps the mind sharp
• We’re reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

We want to take the “going green” philosophy further, so the next thing we are looking at is green website hosting. If you think about it, web servers generally run 24×7 in power draining air conditioned data centres. Some of the areas that we’re investigating are:

• Using servers that require less power
• Purchasing energy from renewable sources (Green power - there are plenty of providers in Australia now)
• Offsetting other greenhouse gas emissions with carbon credits.

From the author: If you regularly advertise for leads in the Yellow Pages®, in the newspaper or on the radio, then there’s a good chance that your website could be generating more leads for you than it is. The key is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your web marketing you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too!

Contact us on 1300 248 362 for a free conversion rate review of your website.

Getting your search engine keywords into the right places in your website copy doesn’t always come easily. We’re working on a website at the moment whose keywords include the terms “life planning” and “life plan.”

The trouble with those terms is that they are searched on fairly frequently by the target market of our client.  However, they’re just not phrases that you’d use in this type of website copy.

Referencing our recent article on getting to number one in Google, you’ll remember we need to work the search engine keywords into the heading, title and opening paragraph of the copy. Preferably we need the keyword in the first sentence and, if possible, the opening words of the line. 

We want the search engine rankings, but we also want the website to make sense! Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

You could say, “I was working on my life plan today,” but probably not in the opening line of this type of website.

After kicking around a few ideas in the office, we’ve gone with a question, “Will your life plan become your reality?” Seems obvious now, but there are so many times when it just doesn’t jump out at you. It can be tempting to break the rules of good copywriting at times like this.

Like life planning, successfully weaving keywords into website copy can be challenging. But it’s better to take the challenge of writing good readable website copy than to waste your effort on something that just doesn’t make sense.

From the author: If you regularly advertise for leads in the Yellow Pages®, in the newspaper or on the radio, then there’s a good chance that your website could be generating more leads for you than it is. The key is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your web marketing you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.

Contact us on 1300 248 362 for a free conversion rate review of your website. And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too!

Yellow Pages® is an Australian registered trade mark of Telstra Corporation Ltd. This company has requested
and has been granted permission from Telstra Corporation Ltd to use the Yellow Pages® trade mark. This company is not otherwise associated with Telstra
Corporation or any of it’s subsidiaries.

In this article on Clickz, Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now discusses the basics of conversion rates. It’s interesting to note that for all of the technical wizardry that you can use to optimise the conversion rates of your web pages, the basics are still as relevant as ever.

Some of the basics that Bryan identified in the article are: 

• Page speed / load time
• Broken links
• Broken images
• 404 pages
• Invisible call-to-action buttons and links
• Misspellings
• Poor grammar

We’d add understanding your customers to this list.

So much can be gained from just covering the basics. It’s amazing how often they sneak through.

“You have to pay to get into Google right?” Too often there is confusion about what’s paid and what’s not in Google.

It’s time to set the record straight. Click the image to the left to see which areas of Google are paid and which are non-paid.  

The listings that appear with a light yellow background at the top of a search page are “sponsored links” or paid listings. There can be up to three listings here.

The listings to the right are also “sponsored links” or paid listings.

The listings on the left hand side on the white background, sometimes under the yellow sponsored listings, are called organic search results. These are non-paid, computer generated listings.

So how do I get my site into Google? 

Organic listings in Google can be achieved by Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. They rely on copy writing and other techniques.

Paying for sponsored links is called Pay Per Click or PPC. For Google, this involves running a Google Adwords campaign.

Which should I choose, SEO or PPC?

Well, both can yield fantastic results when coupled with a high conversion website. We consider SEO to be important since our research indicates that it:

• Attracts up to 80% of the traffic from search results
• May carry a higher feeling of trust because it’s not an ad
• Can deliver a longer lasting and higher return on investment.

However PPC is also very useful because it enables you to quickly:

• Test page conversion rates
• Supplement SEO traffic
• Explore new search terms.

There are  good reasons to use both both SEO and PPC effectively for your website. 

Every business that takes web marketing seriously wants to be number one in Google. So we recently published this page - Number one in Google: The Secret Techniques that will get you there!

Now we like having a bit of fun at Bitemark and we’re not going to publish anything on this blog that we’re not prepared to back up. So we set about getting our page on getting to number one in Google to number one in Google .

Guess what? We’re number one in Google!

To see for yourself, search Google.com.au for “number one in Google” and select the Australian sites option or click on this link: http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=number+one+in+google&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryAU

How did we do it?

1. Search Term: We decided that we wanted to be number one in Google for “number one in Google.” Then we wrote a useful and informative piece of copy about being number one in Google.
2. Domain name: We couldn’t do this as we already have a domain name
3. File name: You’ll notice that the Wordpress blog software that we use allows us to create search engine friendly URLs like this one: /number-one-in-google-the-secret-techniques-that-will-get-you-there/. This is where most content management systems run into trouble.
4. Title tag: Our title tag is: <title>Number one in Google: The Secret Techniques that will get you there! »   Conversion Rate Blog</title>
5. Heading tags: Our heading tag is <h2>Number one in Google: The Secret Techniques that will get you there!</h2>
6. First paragraph: Notice that the opening sentence uses the search term
7. Links: We wrote lots of other supporting content about getting to number one in Google like this post and linked it across to the article like this: Number one in Google.

So it really is as simple as that. Now that you can get a number one listing in Google, the real challenge is to boost your conversion rates so that you can take advantage of the website visits that come your way.

About the author: As the owner of a web marketing business, I’ve spent the last 7 years studying ways to boost the conversion rates of my clients’ websites. Today, our best websites convert up to 20% of visits into leads and 50% of leads to sales. The target for our clients is a minimum 5% conversion rate on visits to leads which is staggeringly more than the typical website at 0.1%.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too ;-)!
Bitemark specialises in designing, building, writing, managing and marketing websites with high conversion rates.

We’ve spoken to many franchises about their websites in our travels and have come to the conclusion that franchises are sitting on the biggest opportunity in web marketing today.

In the trenches, the potential of the franchise model is the ability to connect the personal interest, service and ownership of local business owners and a big brand with local customers.

The web marketing potential is similar: Connecting local business under a big brand name with local customers = Lead generation and sales.

Take the example of one of the most well know franchise businesses in Australia, the lawn mowing franchise. Our data reveals that over 4000 people search for “lawn mowing” every month in Australia. A quick Google search on Lawn Mowing does not list any of the major lawn mowing franchises, including neither Jims nor VIP.

If VIP was number one in Google for lawn mowing, do you think it would be easier for them to sell a lawn mowing franchise?

Take this a step further and imagine that VIP could show a new potential franchisee a snapshot from their Google Analytics stats of the searches that generated leads for lawn mowing in their specific geographical area.

Unfortunately, the demands of running a franchise often hold back the potential for web marketing. If you run a franchise business, the web marketing boat is leaving soon. Make sure you’re on it.

Read more how to market your franchise on the web…

About the author: As the owner of a web marketing business, I’ve spent the last 7 years studying ways to boost the conversion rates of my clients’ websites. Today, our best websites convert up to 20% of visits into leads and 50% of leads to sales. The target for our clients is a minimum 5% conversion rate on visits to leads which is staggeringly more than the typical website at 0.1%.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too ;-)!
Bitemark specialises in designing, building, writing, managing and marketing websites with high conversion rates.