Social Media Blog by Michael Brito
Insights into the social web & real
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I have asked this question before but in a different way. It was a post I wrote about two months ago, The Holy Grail of Social Media: Conversions or Conversations? My summarizing hypothesis was that social media as a communication channel might not be the best strategy for customer acquisition and/or direct marketing as would search or display advertising.
Just yesterday, Reem asked a similar question on her blog – What’s more important: a million impressions or 5 relationships? — which was originally asked by Joe Marchese, President of SocialVibe, during a panel at the OMMA Social conference in New York. According to Reem, he was specifically asking this question about those who actively participate in social media. It was a great question that many marketers struggle with today; and if we are talking about social media users only, I echo this sentiment loudly. That is, real relationships [...]
If you are selling products or services directly from your website, it is imperative to formulate a strategy built around persuading visitors to become customers. Ignoring this simple concept can result in poor conversion rates, lost revenue opportunities and a complete failure in e-commerce effectiveness.
Quick Conversion Statistics
Conversion rates, or the percentage of consumers that actually make a purchase, varies from one website to another. A recent study by Intermarket Online states that the average online consumer conversion rate is 2.7%, and that 62% of merchants have a conversion rate of 2% or less, while 5% have in excess of a 6% conversion rate. A Forrester Research study of 41 online merchants found that conversion rates typically vary from 1% to 4%, with under 2% for 70% of merchants. Amazon and CDNow get 6% to 8% rates.
Online Purchase Decisions
It is true that website traffic is essential, but getting potential customers to [...]
Google’s quest for taking over the Internet is continuing. They have released a public beta of its Website Optimizer, a new service that allows marketers to test various versions of landing pages to determine which one has the most effective conversion rate. The Website Optimizer allows marketers to test different variables on a landing page (i.e. different headlines, product features, copy, and creative to determine which configuration has the best conversion rates based on revenue or other metrics. According to ClickZ, Google is providing the beta service “on an acceptance basis” to AdWords and Google Analytics account holders who’d like to sign up.
Technorati Tags: website optimizer, google, conversion rates
Many times, I read in various blogs and forum posts that a solid SEO strategy (with good rankings) is good enough to attract visitors to a website. I completely disagree with this view. While SEO is an important component of any integrated marketing campaign, paid search must not be overlooked when implementing an online strategy. According to Clickz, the paid search market generated approximately $10 billion in revenue in 2005 and is expected to grow 41 percent in 2006. How can any organization, marketer or blogger ignore these astronomical figures? Additionally, according to a study by WebSideStory that monitored twenty B2C e-commerce websites, paid search had a median order conversion rate of 3.4 percent, while organic search results produced a conversion rate of 3.13 percent. The data set included more than 57 million search engine visits.
Technorati Tags: paid search, search engine marketing, seo, search engine optimization, organic search
The question often arises for many marketers whether or not to bid on branded terms, especially if they already rank number one in the natural search results. While this argument may hold some ground on the surface, bidding on brand related terms enables marketers to occupy more search engine real estate and have greater control over the brand messaging.
Trust and credibility are also factors to consider. When a consumer searches for a branded term, and other search results are returned (perhaps retailers or affiliates), a customer can loose trust in that brand; and the company image loses credibility.
In my opinion, brand related terms are the most valuable terms in any search campaign. They are the most likely to attract the highest levels of relevant traffic because consumers are already interested in the company’s value proposition. The result is higher conversion rates and a more positive customer experience.
Okay, I know this [...]
I recently wrote an article about website conversion because after years of online shopping and browsing the internet, I am tired of seeing horrible websites that look as if they were put together by some template builder from Homestead (no offense if you have one); with no thought or strategy on how they were going to convert me (a website visitor) into a profitable customer.
The following points are discussed in my article, Practical Tips for Converting Visitors into Customers:
Persuasive Copy Writing
Know Your Metrics
Improve Your Navigation
Call To Action
Reduce Download Speed
Substance Over Style
Recapture Lost Sales
Content
Technorati Tags: web strategy, online marketing, internet marketing, conversion rates
I just read this article about BTB marketers having a hard time converting sales leads because they are requiring user registration before letting them have access to more content on their site (i.e. articles, white papers, etc.) Not sure how I feel about this; I mean, how else are they going to generate leads? If it’s a white paper or some industry study, perhaps they offer some content for free (maybe a few chapters) and then ask for registration when visitors want full access to the report.
Technorati Tags: online conversion rate sales leads
As consumers are becoming savvier on the Internet, it is becoming more difficult for online marketers to increase/maintain their conversion rates. A conversion rate can be defined as a relationship between website visitors and the actions considered to be a “conversion,” such as a sale, a download or a form submission. This metric is often expressed as a percentage and is used to drive decision making for online marketing strategies. The following are some examples (still used today) that are sure to kill your online conversion rates:
Pop-Ups: I don’t know about you but even when I notice my Google Pop-Up blocker signaling that there is a pop up trying to infiltrate my browser, I immediately get turned off and hit the back button. I am amazed that with the saturation of pop-up blockers on the internet, marketers still insist on using this tired old technique.
Pop-Under: Although not as popular as [...]
