Strategic alignment of fractured markets offers significant opportunity to leverage mutual resources for consolidated goals. The consolidated marketplaces will help to drive a single point of contact for your clients, and providers, allowing for significant leverage…

Huh?

I could probably decipher that if I read it a couple of times, but do you really want to force your users to decipher what you do? Unless your business is booking murder mystery dinners, and an invitation to one requires deciphering hidden messages, then you should just speak plainly and leave out all the gobbledygook nonsense-speak.

A couple of years ago, Hubspot in conjunction with David Meerman Scott, created a Gobbledygook Grader tool that checks a block of text that you supply, such as website copy, press releases, brochure copy, etc.) for the use of “gobbledygook, jargon, cliches and over-used, hype-filled words”. It’s still a great tool to use, and I recommend trying it now and then to double-check your own content.

UPDATE: Looks like the tool has been taken offline. That makes me frown. It used to be at http://gobbledygook.grader.com

Keep It Simple – Make It Easy To Understand

I’ve touched upon landing pages and utilizing a call to action before, but the one thing all of these ideas have in common is that you should very simply, very plainly, get your message across. Descriptive text, calls to action, landing pages, etc. are all most effective when the resulting message is simple and clear. If you clutter up that message with a lot of jargon and gobbledygook, your prospects will leave in a hurry (and in a confused, foggy state of mind as well).

It’s easy to fall into the trap of using jargon, even when you purposely try to avoid doing so. I’m guilty of it myself. In fact, I ran my eBusiness coaching home page through the Gobbledygook Grader tool to see how it would fare. Overall, it did pretty well, but it didn’t get a perfect score. In fact, its Gobbledygook Grade was a 91 out of 100. You can see the full report of my test at http://gobbledygook.grader.com/report/id/2335430/87c43059e991273336eb443b01afff5c. You’ll see that the grader found 3 words on my page that are considered gobbledygook.

I’ll need to work on increasing my score, but in the meantime, I wanted to leave it alone so I could share this with you, and let you see a real-world example. I recommend running some of your web pages through the tool, specifically ones that should be informing your users of something important – landing pages, about pages, product description pages, etc. No matter what kind of grade you receive, the experience will ensure that you look at your content in a different way, and will force you to question whether or not you are making your point, or whether you are merely spouting off a bunch of confusing, jargon-based gobbledygook words.

If you run your page(s) through the tool, consider sharing your grade here with us, and let us know what insights you might have gotten after taking a closer look at your copy.

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Post tags: David Meerman Scott, Gobbledygook, Grader, HubSpot, Jargon
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Actually, that last item is important. “Entice someone to do something“. In fact, every page on your blog or site should entice someone to do something, regardless of any other purpose that page may serve. Perhaps you want to entice visitors to stay on your site a little longer, or read another post, or check out an offer you have in the sidebar. Whatever goals you have for leading your users to take an action, the path to achieving those goals should be present at all times. In that sense, every page is a landing page, and every page should have been designed with that thought in mind.

There will be times you’ll design one page with the idea of it being a landing page to convert users to buy a product, sign up for a newsletter, or whatever it is you wish them to do. Those landing pages are usually fairly well thought out, and you may have even used tools or tutorials to help you with your landing page design.

But don’t forget to think about the rest of the pages on your site. Even if your blog posts aren’t selling something, the surrounding template should have some sort of conversion in mind. Make sure you’ve placed your calls to action in the areas that convert best. That may be at the top of your sidebar, or within your header. It may be at the end of each blog post, or after the first paragraph of a post. Whether you use great tools to easily create landing pages, or you run A/B tests to optimize conversions, you have to make sure you don’t limit your conversion optimization to just one or two main landing pages.

Always be thinking about how you can lead a user to take the next action – whatever that might be – and make sure those calls to action exist on every page of your site, because every page is essentially a landing page.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Landing page
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Want to know my most successful online marketing strategy? The one that has consistently generated more income than anything else I’ve ever tried? No? You don’t want to know? Ok, never mind, then.

Oh, wait, you were saying yes, not no. Well that’s different then. Good because I have the entire strategy outlined for you in a step-by-step post that I’ll link to after you read this.

Just kidding. I’m not going to send you elsewhere or have you download anything. I was just messing with you. So, kidding aside, let’s just get to the meat of this post.

You want to know what my most successful online strategy is. You want to know which strategy has consistently generated more income than any other strategy I’ve ever tried. So come closer and I’ll whisper it to you now.

… Leave them wanting more …

That’s the four simple words that work best for me. Of course, as with anything “simple”, I want to make sure you understand the concept as it is intended. Lots of people could easily misunderstand what I mean by “leave them wanting more”, and do it all wrong, so please bear with me as I explain what I mean when I use those words.

Essentially, every chance you get, give your users every bit of information they “need”, but don’t give them any more than that – at that moment. Allow me to demonstrate by equating your site’s information to that of a restaurant’s food.

When your hungry user arrives, you don’t want to hand a bowl of tasteless dirt to him. You want to give him a nice hot bowl of information soup. You want him to be happy with what you’ve given him.

However, if you satisfy his immediate need with one tasty and satisfying information dish, and then let him know that there’s more he could have that is just as good, or even better, you’ve established the proper hook. You now have a user who likes what you’ve served him, and he has every reason to believe that any other information you serve him will be at least as good if not better. The chances are high that he will want to taste every item you offer to him.

On the other hand, if you give him every dish available, all in the first course, he’ll be completely full, and have no need to engage in your site any longer.

Use This For Every Monetization Method

Allow yourself to imagine using this same strategy no matter what form of monetization you might employ on your site.

Selling Products: If you have various products that you sell, use this method to either upsell customers to more feature-rich products, or use this method to get them to add more items to their cart than they originally intended to do.

Consulting: If you do consulting work, this strategy works very well. You can fully answer one common question that typical clients face, and then list other common problems you’ve helped solve for clients who’ve hired you in the past. Using summary teasers for each problem listed goes a long way. Since you’ve already shown completely and fully how you solved one problem, the teasers for the other problems will be enough to make them wonder what the rest of your solution was.

Affiliate Marketing: If you are an affiliate marketer, use this “wanting more” strategy to fully explain why a product you endorse will help someone who has one particular problem. Then lead him elsewhere to find out what else this product can help with, or guide him towards other similar products that may solve slightly different or bigger issues.

Advertising: If you rely on contextual advertising, such as Adsense, you have slightly less control, unfortunately, since you don’t control which ads will show up on your page. However, you can still use this strategy. Always imply that there is more information that can be learned about the subject. Of course, that’s very likely to be true, since information is virtually endless on any topic. But by purposely bringing this fact to the user’s attention, you’ve implanted the idea in his head that there’s more he should know. Yes, you’ve provided enough quality information to make him happy, but you’ve subtly encouraged him to extend his knowlege. By implanting that suggestion in his mind, he’ll be more inclined to look at the related ads and click through to find additional coverage on the topic.

Obviously, you don’t want to actually encourage him to click on the ads, as that is often against the TOS of the ad network. It’s certainly against the TOS of Google Adsense, so never ever encourage clicks on ads if you are running Adsense.

The key with monetizing via ads is not to tell him what to do, but to just give him the slightest subtle thought that there’s always more great info he could find, if only he didn’t stop here.

Don’t Forget The Bowl Of Dirt / Soup

It’s easy to get this strategy wrong if you forget to give your user a great dish that makes him happy. Yes, you want to leave him wanting more, but you must first make him feel like what he did get was fantastic! You want him to think that the bowl of information you served him was the best he’d ever had. Only then will he truly want to follow your directions (explicit or subtly implied) as he moves on to the next course. If you’ve served him an information bowl of dirt instead of a nice, warm bowl of tasty soup, he’ll simply click on his Back button and be done with you.

If you remember to serve your user well, and THEN leave him wanting more, you’ll have mastered my most successful online strategy.

Good luck! If you’re ever interested in seeing how I can help you succeed in your specific journey, check out my ebusiness coaching site.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet Marketing, online marketing strategy
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“It does not matter how much traffic you receive if those visitors do not take the desired action. … Investing in increasing your conversion rate will pay off much faster and better than increasing your traffic.”

Use Effective Landing Pages To Increase Conversions

If your goal is to increase conversions of any kind – sales or giveaways of your own product(s) or affiliate product(s), lead generations, newsletter signups, etc., then you need a page that is designed specifically to convert that traffic. Traditionally, that meant spending considerable time becoming an expert or considerable money hiring an expert in landing page conversions. Those days are gone. If you aren’t a landing page expert, and would rather not spend a lot of time or tons of money, you can still create an effective landing page on your own (self-hosted) WordPress blog by simply installing a landing page plugin.

Max Foundry created this landing page plugin that saves tons of time (and lots of misguided mistakes) by providing you with 6 landing page templates that you can use for any of your WordPress pages. The landing page templates look great, but more importantly, they focus on designs that are proven to increase conversion rates and sales. Since each template is completely customizable, you can create variations of each and then test them to find out which ones perform the best with your visitors. Here’s a quick look at the templates with the default options.

Easy To Use!

And just like premium themes that let you make adjustments via easy admin options, this plugin does the same. All the adjustments, such as background colors, seo metas, logos, screenshots, headlines and subheadlines, forms, call-to-action buttons, testimonials, etc. can be changed right in the options panel. Below is a screenshot of just a few of the options you can edit from your plugin admin panel, to give you an idea of how easy it will be.

“Each landing page template is highly customizable – fonts, sizes, colors – it’s all there, and easy to use. There are 9 different backgrounds for the call-to-action button, the 6 most web-friendly fonts, over 30 font sizes, and an unlimited number of colors to choose from, just to name a few customizable options.”

But how do you use it? That’s what I love the most. After installing and activating the plugin, you simply create a page, and choose one of your new landing page templates in the Page Attributes dropdown. Save as draft and suddenly, voila!, all the new landing page options will appear below the main edit box. Fill out the options to customize, publish, and pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

Oh, and one more thing. Not only does it come with 6 landing page templates, but it also comes with one of those long-form sales pages, and it works exactly the same way as the landing pages do. Sweet!

I can’t imagine anything could be easier than this.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 20 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Conversion rate, increase conversions, landing pages, plugin, WordPress
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Stories Connect On An Emotional Level

Storytelling For Sustainability

Stories bring an emotional context to the unfamiliar, enabling us to not only process information, but determine if that information should sway us. Truth is, you can’t win anyone over with a superior argument. You need to connect with them on an emotional level.

>> Follow Marc Stoiber

Customer Stories

Online Storytelling Marketing: The New (Old) Way of Delivering Your Brand Message

Every company has a story to tell, they just have to find it. And the best way to find it is to start talking to your customers at a very personal level. Don’t just ask them what they think about your products. Talk to them about themselves and their experiences. Once you get into their psychology, you start getting qualitative information. If you’re a creative person, you’ll come out with a story.

>> Follow Dana Todd

If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.

- Benjamin Franklin

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

- Dale Carnegie

If you are hoping to increase conversions, or you are simply interested in the art of persuasion, consider mastering the art of storytelling.

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Post tags: Benjamin Franklin, Dale Carnegie, Dana Todd, emotional marketing, Marc Stoiber, persuasion, storytelling
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It is much easier to double your conversion rate, than it is to double your traffic. One of the key components of conversion rate optimization is testing.

Google Website Optimizer was built for that very reason and is designed to give you the ability to test different ideas against each other in real time and see what works and what doesn’t.

Unfortunately, it does not seemlessly work with WordPress. In a typical setup, Optimizer would track visitors all the way to a confirmation page. Since most affiliate offerings require you to link outside of your site, you have no way of monitoring which pages perform the best. This tutorial is designed to show you how to track link clicks within your affiliate pages without requiring a confirmation page.

Step One

Setup your Google Website Optimization account.

Go to Google Optimizer and login. Click on “Create a new experiment”.

Step Two

Choose the multivariate experiment type.

Step Three

Check the “I’ve completed the steps above and I’m ready to start setting up my experiment” box and click “create”.

Step Four

Fill out the experiment details.

In this section you will name the experiment and specify the page to be tested. Put the test page as the confirmation page as well because we will be monitoring clicks on this page.

Step Five

Check the “You will install and validate javascript tags” and click continue.

Step Six

Install this WordPress Plugin and navigate to the page you want to test in the WordPress Admin Section.

You will see this below your WordPress text editor:

Step Seven

Install the control and tracking scripts inside each section.

Google provides you with several different scripts that must be placed within the test page for the experiment to work. The plugin has color matching boxes for the scripts which make it easy to match.

Place the control script in the control box and the tracking script in the tracking box.

Step Eight

Edit and install the conversion script.

The conversion script is designed to detect someone entering the confirmation page from one of the experiment variations. We have to edit the code to track link clicks.

This is how the code will look:

<script type="text/javascript">
if(typeof(_gat)!='object')document.write('<sc'+'ript src="http'+
(document.location.protocol=='https:'?'s://ssl':'://www')+
'.google-analytics.com/ga.js"></sc'+'ript>')</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var gwoTracker=_gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-X");
gwoTracker._trackPageview("/YYYYYYYYYY/goal");
</script>

This is the edited code that you will use to track the link clicks:

<script type="text/javascript">

if(typeof(_gat)!='object')document.write('<sc'+'ript src="http'+
(document.location.protocol=='https:'?'s://ssl':'://www')+
'.google-analytics.com/ga.js"></sc'+'ript>')</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
function doGoal(that) {
try {
var gwoTracker=_gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-X");
gwoTracker._trackPageview("/YYYYYYYYYY/goal");
setTimeout('document.location = "' + that.href + '"', 100)
}catch(err){}
}
</script>

Make sure that you replace the “UA-XXXXXXX-X” and /YYYYYYYYYYY/goal with the numbers that are in your original script.

For more information on this, visit Google’s help page.

Step Nine

Add conversion code to links.

In order to monitor specific links, we must add a snippet of javascript to each link we want to track.

This is a normal link:

<a href="http://www.example.com/promotion">Featured Products</a>

This is the link with the tracking installed:

<a href="http://www.example.com/promotion" onclick='doGoal(this);return false;'>Featured Products</a>

Step Ten

Set up the content test section.

Google provides two pieces of code that you put above and below each section that you want to test. In this manner, Google automatically replaces and switches between different content to test variations.

You can wrap the whole post with it or just specific sections of the content. I like to wrap the first paragraph, the body section and the call to action section.

Step Eleven

Install the headline and CSS page sections.

The headline of your blog post is probably the most important feature that needs to be tested. In order to test the headline you will need to make some light changes to the theme files.

Open up your single.php (for blog posts) or page.php (for pages) and header.php inside of the theme editing section of WordPress. Add the page sections to the headline and the CSS call.

CSS:

Headline:

Click the validate button and make sure there are no errors before continuing. It will let you know how many page sections you have available to edit.

More than likely you will get the following error:

This is due to the fact that the control script is not directly underneath the first head tag. Go into your header.php and move it (if it exists) or create it.

Step Twelve

Finally, create your variations.

Once everything is validated and you can now start creating page variations. Simply click add variation under each page section you want to test.

Happy testing!

Jason Capshaw is founder of MyWebTronics, an Atlanta web design firm.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 36 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Conversions, Google Website Optimizer, Jason Capshaw
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31 Conversion Optimization Tips – and Counting

How can you reduce Distraction on your pages? How many links can you eliminate? … You don’t sell features. You sell solutions to problems.

>> Follow Chris Goward

Copy that Converts: Interview with Copywriting Maven Roberta Rosenberg

You need the words to make the sale, period. Whether we’re looking at text-only email, a simple direct mail letter or even skywriting for that matter, the words are the key to the message. However, as I mentioned in a previous response, good design supports the message and makes it easy, even pleasant to read. It also helps direct the reader from point to point, acting as a visual roadmap to the essential bits and pieces that deserve particular attention. However, what’s even more important than the creative – copy or design – is a strong, attractive offer and visitors who are hungry for what you have to promote.

>> Follow Roberta Rosenberg

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affiliate products, Chris Goward, Conversions, Marketing
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Every marketer that has a website has learned about bringing visitors to their site through SEO. He knows that a proper SEO campaign takes a lot of time and patience, but in the end, he’s rewarded with great rankings. Conversion optimization is also a patient task and is another never-ending process. But through constant testing, you’ll be able to dramatically improve your conversion rate.

If you offer a service of some sort this will more easily apply to you, but many of these techniques can be applied across the board no matter what kind of niche you are in. Conversion rate doesn’t only apply to selling a product or generating leads from a website. It can be applied to anything that you want a visitor to do when they get to your website/blog.

Perceived Authority and Trust

No one will use a service from someone they don’t trust. Building trust is crucial in getting a customer to complete a transaction. I’ve found (and many agree) that including customer testimonials, press mentions, secure website certificates, a physical address, and a picture, as well as maintaining a personal tone within your web content are all instant solidifiers in capturing the trust of an impatient web visitor. In order to complete the trust picture, you should make sure that you are keeping the search results clean with online reputation management.

Speed of Service

A potential customer doesn’t like wasting a lot of time, so don’t give them junk they don’t want or care about on a landing page. For example, when searching for [surety bonds], people want to get in and out as fast as possible so we keep a clean layout and short, concise content that gets to the point. If you run a fitness site, you may want to have a lengthy article that gets the reader emotional before deciding to buy your service/product. It all depends on your niche, so you’ll have to test to see which method works best. Either way, make sure to show your visitors what you want at the top of the site as you only have a few seconds to grab their attention to start them down the conversion process.

If you offer a service, be sure to have a fast follow-up. Through our bonding site and other experiences I’ve had, I’ve found that the more quickly we follow up with a web site contact, the more likely they are to turn into a completed transaction or customer. It’s important to immediately contact users whether through a live customer agent or even a simple email system to let them know that you received their info and will act on it shortly.

Testing, Testing, Testing

A major aspect of conversion rate optimization is testing. You need to find what works best and what just doesn’t make the cut. An easy way to do this is to use Google’s website optimizer. This allows you to send half of your traffic to one version of a page and the other half to a different version. Not sure if ‘Military Housing‘ converts better than ‘Military Homes‘? This will let you know. Then you can test it against a different phrase and keep the one that works the best. After repeating the test for a while, you will eventually find the phrase that always gives the best conversion.

Test form layouts, test different pictures, test everything. This is the biggest advice I would give people. You may not realize it, but a different picture or even a different background color can increase your conversion rate. With the proper dedication and a little time, you can turn visitors into customers.

This guest post was written by Kevin Kaiser of Surety Bond Co., a surety bonding agency.

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Post tags: Conversion optimization, Conversion rate, Marketing, online reputation management, Search engine optimization
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Do you give web site visitors the opportunity to download a free trial of your product or service with the intention that they will come back and purchase? How are you following up with these visitors? Asking them to fill out a form and immediately giving them the download on the next page is not the best way to generate a quality opt-in list. Collecting accurate opt-in information from these visitors is essential to follow up education and making the sale.

Download giveaway opt-in conversion is extremely simple when done with the correct process. Unfortunately many businesses are leaving significant profits and subscribers on the table by using the wrong methods.

Wrong Way:

A visitor comes to your site and they fill out a form to request your free download. Upon submission of the form they are taken to your thank you page where you provide the link to download.

This person has been given your download but you have not given them a reason to subscribe to your list. They might have given you a fake email address and in all likelihood did give you a fake email knowing that they just need to get to the next page to receive your information. Since you can’t follow up with them you might have lost a sale.

Correct Way:

Insert the AWeber opt-in form on your site. Within eye site of this form provide information about the importance of subscribing to your list. Add value to your list by giving them compelling reasons to subscribe. Make it clear that the download link will be provided in the email they receive after confirming their subscription.

On your thank you page (or redirect page) they are taken to after they fill out the form you need to provide information on verifying. Verified opt-in allows you to ensure that the person subscribing did so with his or her own email address and didn’t provide a fake or malicious email. Let the visitor know that they should check their email inbox. Tell them what the subject line of the email says so they know what to look for. Convey that they must click on the link inside to verify and receive the download link to your product.

In the autoresponder they receive after verifying, give them the download link. Since they are subscribed to your list and have confirmed that the address they provided is valid you can effectively follow up providing more information about using the free or trial software, training tips, and further benefits or features earned by becoming a customer.

Using these techniques you are sure to increase your sales when converting free downloads to paid customers.

Sean Cohen, Director of Client Relations & Development of Newtown, PA based AWeber Communications, Inc. an opt-in email service provider. With 7 years managing opt-in autoresponders, automated follow up and newsletters for small businesses.

Learn more about effective email follow up.

Looking for FREE, high-quality web site or e-zine content?

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: autoresponder, Aweber, AWeber Communications Inc., Conversions, Director of Client Relations & Development, e-zine, eye site, free trials, Newtown, opt-in lists, Sean Cohen, subscriptions, trial software, web site visitors
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