Conversion Rate Web Marketing Blog 

I’m really trying hard to look for email marketers who care about what their email looks like in the preview pane. It’s too easy to find bad examples, and I’m caved into the urge to expose them! So here are the three bad examples that I received today.

If it wasn’t for my recent posts on the subject, these emails would not have lasted in my inbox for more than five seconds (With the exception of Paul Kelly’s email, because he is an Australian Music Legend).

Example 1 - Paul Kelly

There are 2 main problems with this email.

1. It’s obvious that without seeing images, there is absolutely nothing to see. No content (as we define it, “useful information“) whatsoever.
2. The descriptions of the images that would usually give us some idea of what we’re missing out on can’t be seen because they are black text on a black background. The reason for this problem is that the HTML Code of the email references an external style sheet. This is blocked along with the images in the preview pane.

Now web programmers often like to be different from the mainstream. So it’s quite likely that they don’t use Outlook for their own email. However if you want to succeed in email marketing you simply can’t ignore the massive market share that Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express hold.

Technical Note: In Outlook 2007 Microsoft has switched to the the Word rendering engine for HTML messages. This has wiped out many of the HTML and CSS techniques that we commonly rely on to produce a good readable email. You’ll be shocked at how poorly it treats HTML emails. It will rank as one of the Microsoft Outlook team’s dumbest moments, but we’ll have to live with it.

Make sure your technical people test your email in Outlook (whether they like it or not!).

Example 2 - Chaos.com

More of the same with the Chaos.com newsletter. Apart from the lame “click here to view this newsletter online” there is nothing at all to see in the preview pane.

Have email marketers given up on high open rates? So much effort has gone into creating a catchy subject line for this email, but it could all have been wasted by not picking up on the subject in the body of the email.

Just like in web marketing, if there’s no scent of the subject line in the content of the email, readers will quickly lose interest.

Example 3 - POW WOW Events

This email presents quite a confronting array of images to the user. Again, there is absolutely no useful information in the preview pane.

There’s no reason that the headline seen in the complete email (left) could not have been text. That would have at least given the reader a cue that they should to download the images to see more.

The first and most simple way that you can boost your email marketing open rate is to check how your email looks in the preview pane in Microsoft Outlook.

If you are marketing consumers, you should also check to see how it looks in Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail.

Remember that email is one of the most time sensitive mediums of all marketing. With the barrage of communication that busy people receive every day, you need to make sure that your message is sharp to get through the noise.

From the author: How effective is your email marketing? The answer lies in your conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your email marketing you need a combination of the best email marketing tools and a team that includes experienced web marketers, email designers, web programmers, copywriters and editors. That’s why we created Bitemark.

Contact us on 03 9012 6600 for a free conversion rate review of your email marketing.

Ever wondered what it takes to get the most out of your eCommerce website conversion rates? Well, let’s start with the basics.

You must give your website visitors all of the information that they require to make a purchase.

Seem simple? A good eCommerce system and good information are the first steps to maximising your eCommerce website conversion rates.

Here’s some of the information that is typically required on your product pages for a user to feel comfortable making a purchase.

Product details

At a minimum, your product copywriting should detail the benefits of the product and the problems that it solves. Information that’s required includes things like:

• Features
  • Size, colour, height, width, depth, weight etc
  • Options, add ons, upgrades, requirements
• Benefits 
• Stock levels.

Think of the things that your customers always ask about your product and make sure they are addressed in some way.

Product pictures 

For a physical product, you should have:

• A hero shot - showing the product doing it’s job (like making someone look good)
• High resolution closeups - Consider using a flash zoom in utility
• Showing details of Front, Back, Sides, etc

Interestingly a good flash close up zoom utility gives the user an experience similar to that of touching and feeling the product. It’s a great conversion tool for eCommerce items like shoes and clothing.

Even a virtual product like an eBook should have a product shot. 

Trust elements

In order to have any chance of making an eCommerce sale. you need to satisfy the question of trust. You can go a long way to doing that by keeping important details up to date on your website. Details such as:

• Your physical address, phone number and email addresses
• Pictures of your physical location, staff, factory or warehouse 
• Information on how to get help
• Product Warranty, Guarantees 
• Shipping Policy
• Payment options
• Returns Policy
• Privacy Policy

Once you cover the basics and start to get more advanced, you can add things like product reviews, recommendations, comments and live help to your eCommerce website.

The trick to making it all work is making sure that your web design uses space effectively in order to present information in a logical way so that a website visitor can process it.

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 be 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 362to find out how you could boost the conversion rates of your eCommerce website.

Since I wrote about email marketing and the Outlook preview pane two weeks ago, I’ve been on the lookout for good examples of email marketing.

It turns out that Missy Higgins has an email marketing savvy record label. Take a look at the example to the left of the Missy Higgins concert tour email that went out on the 22nd of November.

Missy’s record label Eleven appear to have held back from the urge to make their email an art piece, and have delivered an instantly digestible message that works. As you can see,

1. You don’t have to download pictures to get the message
2. The headline is clear and readable
3. The text is scannable
4. It’s instantly apparent what the email is about.

Good job Eleven (Like the amplifiers in Spinal Tap, they really do go past ten!). It’s good that a company that’s smart with email marketing like this is involved with so many awesome new Australian artists.

Here’s an example of an email that we produced seen in the preview pane.

With this email, a form was used and pre-populated with information from the database. The key here is to make it so easy for readers to respond to the offer that the response rates will go up.

Our tips to create an effective email marketing campaign in this age of blocked images and the preview pane are:

1. Use a strong text headline in the email as well as a strong subject line
2. Keep any header design elements like banners to a minimum
3. Make sure the body text is scanable by using short sentences, bold and bullet points
4. Make sure that the email can be read without downloading images (i.e. check that it’s not all skew without the images).

From the author: How effective is your email marketing? The answer lies in your conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your email marketing you need a combination of the best email marketing tools and a team that includes experienced web marketers, email designers, web programmers, copywriters and editors. That’s why we created Bitemark.

Contact us on 03 9012 6600 for a free conversion rate review of your email marketing.

If you’re sick and tired of waiting and paying a fortune for a web designer to update your website, then should you be looking for a content management system?

Here’s a scenario that was recently described by Platform Interactive (Makers of a proprietary Content Management System) boss David Barnes of : “The customer gets sick of paying and waiting each time they want to update their web content, so they ask for a content management system.”

It’s a frustrating and common scenario, and a content management system is often offered as a solution. But, we wonder:

• Is a content management system the only way to update your website minus a web designer?
• Does a content management system represent real value as a solution to this problem?

Is a content management system the only way?

Since a website in any form is just a bunch of HTML files, any HTML editor will do the job. There are literally hundred of them available, many of them free.

Several of our small business customers are now using Microsoft Expression Web (Kudos to Microsoft for the name change to try and shake the stigma of Frontpage). They access their site via FTP, and we built the site in a way that’s very easy for them to create new pages and menu items.

Problem solved, cost $200.

What is the value of a content management system as a solution?

Consider how often your website changes. Now divide that by the price of the content management system.

To implement a proprietary content management system will cost you anywhere from $1,000 - $20,000. For this exercise let’s say that it costs $5,000.

So, 12 changes to your website / $5,000 = $416.66 / change.

Now even if you updated your site every week, it’s still expensive.

What are the drawbacks of a content management system?

1. Content: The best content management system in the world will not create your content, and content is far more important than the system it lives in. 
2. Leaky Abstractions: No matter what you create your website in, it will suffer from one big limitation, HTML.  HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is the language of the web and what we’re doing with it today is way beyond what it was designed for. As a result it’s sometimes tricky to do even the most basic things. Content management systems often complicate this by adding another complex layer of abstraction.  
3. Operator: It’s likely that the person who’s delegated the job to run the website in house will be not be fluent with HTML. Just to write this post I had to delve into the HTML code to fix the formatting because I pasted in a quote from another website and the dodgy formatting came through. Lucky i’m a reformed programmer!

Click here to see some examples of what can happen when a content management system is let loose.

When a content management system really is needed

A content management makes a lot of sense in scenarios like these:

1. An eCommerce website
2. A blog or a forum is required
3. A content based application with work-flow
4. Live work-flow, proofing and auditing of content are required

For many of these scenarios, there are simple solutions freely available that would be unmatched for quality and functionality. Wordpress is an awesome example of this. For others, there is a proprietary system that might suit the application.

Website Myth - You need a content management system to have control of your website - Busted!

If you were the owner of a content management system company and you were presented with the scenario above, then I guess you have 2 choices here:

1. Sell them $10,000+ proprietary content management system with implementation, or
2. Sell them Microsoft Expression Web (or equivalent) for a couple of hundred dollars, and teach them to manage it themselves
3. Find a web marketing company that can take care of website changes for you on time for a reasonable price.

Which would you choose?

Our tip, save your money on a content management system and spend it on creating useful website content that is important to your customers!

From the author: As a web programmer I have been involved in developing several content management systems. I was hands on in developing our own content management suite called eComMetrix®.

What I know from working on hundreds of lead generation and eCommerce websites over 11 years is that there is something far more important in creating a website than the system that you use. It’s your conversion rates and it’s a measure of how effectively the content of your website engages with your website visitors.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your 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 website.

Have you ever seen a website poll like this one? I can’t remember where I found it, but it’s a little embarrassing don’t you think?

Online polls are often sold as one of the “whiz bang” reasons that you need a content management system. The sales person will say something like,  ”An online poll helps build a sense of community.”

Intangible concepts like “community” are often peddled in the web world to avoid accountability.

Whilst it’s nice, there are no real measurable business outcomes for “community.”

If you’re marketing your small to medium business with a lead generation or an eCommerce website, then a website poll is probably not going to add much to the real performance of your website.

There is an appropriate context for website polls. On news websites and popular forums they can be interesting to participate in, and are therefore engaging. Website polls work when:

• Your site already has massive amounts of traffic (hopefully it will get more than 7 votes)
• The question matters to the audience (The outcome of the poll might actually be interesting)
• Your poll fits into the context and content of your website.

If you disagree with me, then you can go and have your say on ABC’s The Chaser’s War on Everything website poll (above) here: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/chaser/war/vote/default.htm ;-).

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.

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.

I’ve had two completely opposite experiences this week with LivePerson chats. LivePerson is a software package that allows you to chat with your website visitors (like instant messaging).

Used well, as we saw in a recent conversion rate study that we conducted for US based online boot retailer Georgiabootstore.com, LivePerson is an awesome website conversion tool.

Used badly, it could be a conversion killer as witnessed in my recent visit to the HP website (See image). You know that customer service has gone out the window when you’re put on hold for 15 minutes before a LivePerson chat! 

On the surface, LivePerson is a brilliant tool that can help you to improve your customer service (and therefore your conversion rates). It allows you to do things like:

• Helping your website visitors to navigate your website and find information
• Answering questions that your site does not address 
• Assisting your website visitors to fill out forms and to complete a purchase.

But there’s even more conversion rate candy under the hood. By allowing you to review and report on customer interactions, LivePerson can give you real data on:

• Flaws in your website design 
• Bottle necks in your website navigation
• Questions that are not being answered but could be
• Content that is commonly sought and needs to be present on your website
• Problems and errors with your back end systems that might be difficult to pinpoint.

All that adds up to a powerful conversion tool… but only when you’re there to take the call!

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 be 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.

Since Microsoft introduced the image blocking feature in Outlook 2003, the question that every email marketer should be asking is, “What will this email look like in the preview pane?” It’s surprising to find that four years on, we’re still seeing emails like the example to the left.

I drew a blank when I saw this from Borders Australia in my email preview pane. It took me about 1/2 a second to delete the email, even though I love shopping at Borders.

As you can see from this capture of the email with images downloaded, it’s a classic case of form over function. Email marketing should be about content that is important to your customers, not just design and branding.

By our definition of content, “useful information“, a banner design is not content when it hasn’t downloaded yet.

So the question is, will this lack of content have an impact on email open, click through and conversion rates? You bet! What many email marketers forget is that:

Email is a time sensitive medium.

It’s likely that you will receive many emails like this everyday. Even if you see an email from a brand as strong as Borders, you’ll still look for a compelling, relevant reason to read on…

There are some questions that you should immediately ask about your email marketing:

• Where and when is the reader going to get the email?
• Is the content of the email relevant to the reader?
• Can the reader pick up the scent of relevance from the preview pane without downloading anything?

If the reader can’t pick up the scent in 1/2 a second, then it may be time to rethink your email marketing execution.

From the author: How effective is your email marketing? The answer lies in your conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your email marketing you need a combination of the best email marketing tools and a team that includes experienced web marketers, email designers, web programmers, copywriters and editors. That’s why we created Bitemark.

Contact us on 03 9012 6600 for a free conversion rate review of your email marketing.

The massive take up of eye-tracking in website usability studies has revealed some interesting information. It’s a phenomenon known as Banner blindness…

Well, it’s not a revelation that website visitors have learned to ignore banners and ads. But, a recent article on Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox shows that banner blindness can spill over into your web content!

An interesting finding from the article was that website visitors often ignored “big red characters.”

If you have an important piece of information that you really want to convey to your website visitors, then follow these three of Jakob’s homepage usability guidelines:

• Don’t use clever phrases and marketing lingo
• Limit font styles and other text formatting
• Don’t look like an ad.

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.

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.

I recently met with the team at Fort Knox in their Melbourne Self Storage facility. In the last 2 years with Fort Knox we’ve managed to have the website overtake the Yellow Pages® as the number 2 lead source for new customers. It’s now the number two lead source behind word of mouth referral (as it should be in any good business)!

All the extra storage customers have forced Fort Knox to expand their Melbourne Self Storage complex. The multilevel site in West Melbourne is nearly completed and will be introduced to the storage market soon.

Once again this year, we’ve managed to double the traffic to the website by improving Google search rankings like:

• Self Storage
• Self Storage Melbourne
• Storage

When Fort Knox originally took on our web marketing program, the big challenge was to get visits to their website. But that’s only part of the game. The real challenge was to improve all three KPIs that we measure for lead generation websites, namely:

• Visits
• Enquiries (Leads)
• Sales

Working on these KPIs under our web marketing program we’ve been able to introduce things like:

• More informative website content
• Better use of call to action, phone numbers and contact forms
• Better conversion strategies

The net result of this has been massive for Fort Knox Self Storage. We’re very proud to have played a part in helping them to expand.

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.

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.

Number one on my list of eCommerce conversion killers is the shopping cart registration page. It really bothers me that so many online shops ask you to “sign up” or “register” before you enter the purchase process. The topic was discussed in a recent blog entry by Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now in the US, “Why must I register before checkout?”

Now as a programmer, I understand the want and need for a nice, neat and tidy database. It’s so fulfilling to have all those records matching up together and connected to each other.

As an online shopper, nothing irks me more than filling in forms! If I can’t see the shopping cart contents, shipping options and have a peek at the payment process, then the chances are that I won’t ever finish the order. Distraction, buyer’s remorse or lack of time will win out. The order may be lost forever. . .

Of course, if you have a product that is so perfect, so rare and so amazing then the effect of this will probably be minimal. People will put up with an awful lot if the end result is worth it, but there is a better way.

Why do we even need registration?

After all, if I make a purchase from you, you’ve most likely collected all of the data that you need to do business with me. Out of that, you’ll find some fairly unique data to match me up with the next time I come shopping. Add together my email address, name and address, phone numbers, etc, and what you have is something like my identity fingerprint.

The next time I come back you’ll know it’s me, and you should be able to match it up.

How could Automatic Registration work? 

See the simple example to the left. On this site, when you click on the “shopping cart” link,  the cart page includes shipping options, personal details and shipping address. All of the information needed to make a decision to purchase appears on the shopping cart page. There are no confusing choices. The next page is for payment details, and then a payment confirmation page.

If it’s the first time the user has been to the shop, they will be sent an email with a password and a link to access the account. If the details entered match an existing user in the database, then an email is sent reminding them of their account password and previous purchases.

The more steps in the process and the longer it takes to check out the more likely your shoppers are going to have second thoughts about purchasing.

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 be 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.