Below is live coverage of the Turning Simple Change into Big Profit from the SES San Jose 2009 conference.
This coverage is provided by Patty Adams of Vertical Measures & Gaurav Sharma of Think Mantra.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. You can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
| Turning Simple Change into Big Profit | (08/12/2009) |
| 4:06 | Gaurav Sharma: Turning Simple Change Into Big Profit
If you're a small business, you are likely leaving business on the table due to easily corrected mistakes in your online marketing plan. Whether it's making your organic and paid search ads more tempting to searchers or correcting the simple mistakes that keep visitors from converting once they reach your site, this panel will provide you with a slew of simple changes that can dramatically increase both your traffic and your conversions. This panel will also share free tips and tools on cheap and easy campaign testing.
Moderator:
Jennifer Evans Laycock, Director of Marketing, SiteLogic
Speakers:
Matthew Bailey, SES Advisory Board & President, Site Logic Marketing
Kayden Kelly, CEO, Blast Advanced Media
Lance Loveday, CEO, Closed Loop Marketing
Lance Loveday to start the session.
You have 2 options - Get Smart or Get off the Internet.
Simple changes in Organic, paid and conversions.
Why URL's matter? - Heatmap shows short URLs had 2.5 times more often after looking at the URLs than the long (ugly) URLs. |
| 4:07 | Gaurav Sharma: The long URLs actually repelled a click. It was interpreted as being less relevant. |
| 4:08 | Gaurav Sharma: The test was done for SERPs (organic results) |
| 4:09 |  |
| 4:10 | Gaurav Sharma: Don't just throw adjectives for your Serp snippets or Ad copy. Focus on what benefits user gets. |
| 4:12 | Gaurav Sharma: Aim for the most relevant traffic to begin with. |
| 4:16 | Gaurav Sharma: People judge within 1/20th of a second - Give them a sense of trust on landing page or they'll leave. |
| 4:18 | Gaurav Sharma: Improve your checkout process |
| 4:18 | Gaurav Sharma: Make your buttons better, bigger. |
| 4:18 | Gaurav Sharma: Do not require registration. |
| 4:19 | Gaurav Sharma: Eliminate the Cringe Words (Register, Create Account, Login) |
| 4:19 | Gaurav Sharma: User Single-Page Checkout |
| 4:19 | Gaurav Sharma: Answer Questions Preemptively. |
| 4:20 | Gaurav Sharma: Polish your checkout design. |
| 4:22 | Gaurav Sharma: Up next is Kayden Kelly |
| 4:22 |  |
| 4:23 | Gaurav Sharma: Talking about Google Analytics and Website Optimizer |
| 4:23 | Gaurav Sharma: 1. Measure & Analyze |
| 4:23 | Gaurav Sharma: 2. Get to Know your users. |
| 4:24 | Gaurav Sharma: 3. Identify your users. |
| 4:25 | Gaurav Sharma: Look at your key steps - Top entry points, exit points, high bounce rates. Segment out that data based on the user types. |
| 4:27 | Gaurav Sharma: Don't just look at the aggregate reports. |
| 4:28 | Gaurav Sharma: Talking about how CrazyEgg can help a website. |
| 4:29 | Gaurav Sharma: Talking about 4Q Surveys - free tool by Avinash Kaushik from Google |
| 4:30 | Gaurav Sharma: Try cheap usability tests - Like your relatives. |
| 4:31 | Gaurav Sharma: Start testing with Google Webmaster Optimizer - Needs about 2-4 weeks with good amount of traffic. |
| 4:31 | Gaurav Sharma: Eliminate guess work - Use facts! |
| 4:31 | Gaurav Sharma: Increase visitor satisfaction |
| 4:33 | Gaurav Sharma: Make multiple changes one page at a time and keep working on all the pages in funnel to increase conversion and have an effective funnel. |
| 4:34 | Gaurav Sharma: Continous improvement is the key! Don't stop, always continue to test and improve. |
| 4:37 | Gaurav Sharma: Natureair made a very simple change (2 hour work) it increased conversion by 591% |
| 4:37 | Gaurav Sharma: Understand what you are testing, understand what the conversion is. Test for micro conversions. |
| 4:39 | Gaurav Sharma: Best tips for Optimization - Keep it simple & big changes when you start. Conversion within 1-click Test pages with most potential impact. It's just an experiment, run it like one Be patient |
| 4:39 | Gaurav Sharma: Testing is your insurance policy to avoid harmful changes! |
| 4:41 | Gaurav Sharma: |
| 4:41 | Gaurav Sharma: Matt Bailey is up next |
| 4:41 |  |
| 4:42 | Gaurav Sharma: His 1st rule for usability and optimization |
| 4:42 | Gaurav Sharma: 1. If they can't find it - it's not there. |
| 4:43 | Gaurav Sharma: Navigation - Don't have too little or too much navigation. |
| 4:45 | Gaurav Sharma: Don't push too much on the homepage - Showing example as MonsterCommerce |
| 4:45 | Gaurav Sharma: He likes how Think Geek puts their navigation on the website. |
| 4:47 | Gaurav Sharma: Calls to action are the vital part of any website. Showing example of 1-800-luggage.com. |
| 4:48 | Gaurav Sharma: Showing another example - Remove button is very bright and in your face, but Checkout is below the fold. |
| 4:49 | Gaurav Sharma: Red color used on the websites attracts attention - use it for call to action and not other things on the website. |
| 4:49 | Gaurav Sharma: Do not use gradients for nav or buttons. |
| 4:50 | Gaurav Sharma: If there is only one option, select it by default. |
| 4:50 | Gaurav Sharma: Don't confuse people with similar navigation buttons. |
| 4:51 | Gaurav Sharma: Fix your 404 pages. Use custom 404 pages. Example - Apple's 404 page. |
| 4:52 | Gaurav Sharma: Don't let your IT people to write text on 404 pages. Don't mention "404 Error". |
| 4:53 | Gaurav Sharma: At least have basic SEO. On Nutregena's website, they don't have "skin care". |
| 4:54 | Gaurav Sharma: Cottonelle's website does not mention tissue papers anywhere. |
| 4:56 | Gaurav Sharma: Checkout Button should be married to the "Total Amount" |
| 4:56 | Gaurav Sharma: They should be above the fold. |
| 4:57 | Gaurav Sharma: Fry's has a little "Add to Cart" button. |
| 5:00 | Gaurav Sharma: Don't upsell if they haven't bought the product yet. Cross-sell. |
| 5:00 | Gaurav Sharma: Best example for product page - wine.woot.com or woot.com |
| 5:03 | Gaurav Sharma: Leads and Conversions - Write copy based on your niche with the Orange button. People don't know what it means. |
| 5:03 | Gaurav Sharma: USA Today does it well. |
| 5:04 | Gaurav Sharma: Email gets more subscriptions than RSS and email addresses are better. |
| 5:04 | Gaurav Sharma: Users want to - Feel smart, sense of accomplighment, reduce stress and confirmation. |
| 5:05 | Gaurav Sharma: Q&A Started |
| 5:14 |  |
