Conversion Conference Blog

We are excited to announce the “Ask The Experts” session at Conversion Conference East – 2011.

The session will take place on Day 2 of the conference from 2:30pm – 3:30pm and is all about you…This is your chance to get those questions answered. Make sure you get your money’s worth.

We could all use more expert advice—but can’t always afford it…Here’s you chance (at no extra cost)

This session will feature a panel of experts in various areas who will field questions from the audience. Our speakers’ areas of expertise span across all channels and disciplines of conversion optimization including but not limited to

• A/B testing
• B2B
• B2C
• Form fill optimization
• Lead generation
• E-commerce
• and so much more…

Don’t be shy, let us know what EXPERTS you would like to be present and what topics you would like covered and we will make sure it happens.

Check out all the EXPERTS and their specialties

Post your questions in the comments section below or send us an email at conversionconference@sitetuners.com with the subject line “Ask the Experts.”

If you have to first convince your boss it’s worth your time and the company’s money to go, you’re not alone.

There are plenty of Other Conversion Conference attendees that were and still are in your shoes. That is why we wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to convince your boss that it would be ludicrous to not send you to Conversion Conference.

We have put together this page with facts about the conference, feedback from Conversion Conference San Francisco attendees, and a justification letter that you can download and customize as you see fit, adding immediate problems you’ll be able to solve and long-term initiatives you’ll be able to implement.

What are you waiting for? Early Bird Registration ends TODAY!

Download the letter now

By Justin Rondeau
Director of Marketing, TemplateZone

Last time I spoke at the Conversion Conference, I was in the camp of ‘If you are asking what the ROI of social media is, then you are asking the wrong question’.  Obviously this was not a particularly popular stance, being among some of the top eMetric and web analytic minds today.  So let me revise my previous stance, with some tips that will help you reap the benefits of Facebook in a clear and measurable way.

First and foremost, when you start using Facebook (or social media in general) you need to have clear goals.  These goals should be clear and precise, nothing like ‘I want to increase my social presence’.  Define what about your social presence you want to increase, such as Like Count, increase engagement, decrease unsubscribes, etc…  As a rule of thumb, I wouldn’t be so concerned about increasing your like count to enormous degrees. I would be much more concerned with the percent feedback on each post.  I stress this percentage for two reasons:

1. The more engaged your fans are, the higher your EdgeRank.
2. Whenever a fan interacts with your page, this activity is placed into their network’s news feed increasing your social reach.

Obviously you cannot interact with fans if you don’t have any, so you need to increase your like count to a reasonable degree and then nurture your fan base. I would suggest driving traffic from your website with a ‘Like Box’ or other various social plug-ins.  If you don’t mind spending a little money use Facebook ads to drive targeted traffic to your page.

Fan-Gated Custom Tab

One of the single most important factors for companies who cannot rely on brand identity for an increased like count, is a custom landing tab.  A custom landing tab will increase your like rate by roughly 50%, per a study comparing an identical Facebook ad where in one case the user landed on the wall and the other on a custom page. The landing tab on Facebook is essentially the same as any other landing page, have a clear call to action that entices your unique visitor with an offer and visual cues.

It is not enough to have a single custom tab, you want to take part in Fan-Gating, the act of one design being served up for non-fans and as soon as the fan likes your page a new design is served up.  Some great Fan-gated pages can be found on Red Bull’s and Coca-Cola’s Facebook Page. Below is an example of a Fan-Gated page on the High Impact Designer Facebook Page.

Notice the first design uses the arrow as a visual cue and the semi transparency as a teaser of the content underneath. We also utilize a lead generation form to get more information about our fans, namely their email address.  In this campaign, when we email a user a Facebook audit, we ask if they would like to get promotional materials and more tips about Facebook with a double opt-in link. After a user clicks this link, we have successfully turned a Like into a marketable lead who is genuinely interested in our brand.

Fan-gated content can be difficult to create if you are not a coder.  There are free applications on Facebook, but they require you to have a completed design and HTML code completed prior to using the application. You then take the code and copy and paste it into the application and it develops the page.  If you come to my session at Conversion Conference I will have a handout reviewing this process in great detail.

What does Social do for You?

There is a lot of work that goes into creating a great looking Facebook tab, and sense there are still no real direct ways to measure the path from Like to Conversion people are claiming either ‘You don’t need to know the ROI’ or the opposite ‘There is no ROI so I won’t use it’.

Well both camps are completely wrong, when did we get so lazy? There are so many tools out there for measuring social media metrics, and there are some very BASIC tricks we can use to see where the conversions came from.

Personally, I use social media to build my list and generate qualified leads. I have, and until something drastic changes in the minds of Facebook users, will always oppose direct sales on Facebook.  There are some outliers, as there always are, where a page developed a successful eCommerce platform on Facebook. However, as we all know, just because a company is the exception to the rule doesn’t mean your company will be (The Amazon Outlier anyone?)

So you still want to sell?

Alright, so some people still want to sell on Facebook. Though I always suggest against this, here is a tip you can use to verify that your sales came from social.

First, if you are going to sell, create a fan-gated page with an offer ‘Like us and get X% off your purchase’. Once the user likes your page the coupon will be served up.  If you really want to get more out of Facebook, require them to fill a form out to get the coupon. Make sure you make a coupon that you can easily distinguish from any other promotions, e.g., FB25.  Now when someone purchases and uses this coupon (assuming it doesn’t leak out to coupon sites) you can attribute the sale to Facebook.

To Recap

Facebook is a great way to generate leads and build up a community of brand evangelists through customer interaction. Currently, the trend in social media is that community building is the most important part of your social campaign. I hold that it is impossible to build a community without first bringing people together.  A great looking action oriented Fan-Gated Facebook page is the most important part of your social media campaign.

It is worth noting that 90% of the people who like your page never return to your Facebook Page. Instead of visiting your page, they only interact with your page through status updates. This statistic and the below points are why social media specialists are honing in on interaction:

1. If your fans interact with your page, your EdgeRank will rise
2. If your EdgeRank rises, the more your fans see later statuses
3. If your fans see later statuses and are intrigued by the content, then they are more likely to interact with your page
4. If a fan interacts with your page, then your status is seen by their personal network
5. If your status is seen by your fan’s personal network, then your social reach increases
6. [Conclusion] If your fans interact with your page, your social reach increases

By increasing your social reach, your company’s messages are now viewable by people who are not directly fans of your page. On top of your company’s message being seen by more users it is seen juxtaposed to a trusted friend’s name. Essentially you are getting a personal testimonial to a particular audience who trust the person giving the testimony.

However, you can’t just expect to reach all sorts of new connections immediately. The ambiguity in the latter half of the third premise is a gigantic wildcard. You need to post content that people want to interact with; further interaction is what increases your social reach giving you the coveted ‘viral’ effect. I would suggest going to Byron White’s session about Content marketing to learn to create content that people want to read.

If this peaked your interest, come to my session where William Leake and I will go over tips for a great looking Facebook Page, Facebook ads, and how Facebook can not only drive traffic to your website but build your brand through a zealous group of brand evangelists.

About the Author

Justin Rondeau graduated Suma Cum Laude from the University of New Hampshire in 2009 with a BA in Philosophy. Though Justin studied Philosophy he found his niche in marketing while doing the copywriting for TemplateZone and found great success in analyzing social media trends. Justin believes that philosophy is what has made him so successful in the marketing field because philosophy, like marketing, requires rigorous analysis and an ever evolving approach. Justin directs social media strategy and email marketing for TemplateZone and its suite of services, including High Impact Designer. His expertise on landing pages and Facebook page layouts was instrumental in shifting the product mix offered by TemplateZone, in addition to setting a new course for the company’s marketing and branding.

See Justin Live!

Justin will be presenting a session with William Leake, of Apogee Results, on “Social Success: Using Facebook as a Landing Page & Converting in the Social Eco-system” at Conversion Conference East 2011 in New York City. See the full agenda and read more about this session. Also check out Justin’s new product site High Impact Designer.

Want to save $700 on Conversion Conference? Contact Justin to request a discount code!

By Brian Lewis
Acting Director of Optimization, SiteTuners

Despite their well-meaning intentions, a lot of online marketers are burning precious marketing dollars every day. And the number one reason they’re wasting money is their ineffective landing pages. Why do so many marketers continually fail to design web pages that improve conversion?

It’s because of what I call the biggest myth to landing page effectiveness. This myth is based on the notion that an effective landing page is brought about by simply improving the aesthetic appeal or graphic design of an existing landing page by, for example, moving stuff around on the page, adding images of happy, attractive people or changing color schemes.

Some may think that by designing a “cooler-looking” or “more dynamic” or “different-from-my-competitors” looking page that they’ll entice more visitors to convert. The problem is that, fundamentally, these changes still don’t satisfy the various needs of the different types of visitors that land on that page.

In actuality, aesthetic design is just one factor, and in fact, should be guided by other behavioral factors such as:

• Psychological – Despite what we’d like to believe, humans, by nature, approach the purchasing process in a most-irrational manner. It doesn’t matter if you sell B2C or B2B, humans buy based on emotion and later justify the purchase based on facts.
• Sociological – Human decision-making is also governed by social norms, beliefs and peer pressures which all vary based on the make-up and demographics of your potential buyers.
• Economics – Landing page design needs to also be based on:
  • Knowing how you stack up against your competitors in price, service and value;
  • Understanding alternatives available to your prospects.
  • Marketing Design – The marketing essentials include readability, offer clarity, articulating your competitive advantage and the visual cues used to ultimately guide the visitor to the conversion.

These behavioral factors create the foundation to the overall persona of your visitors. Understanding these personas is critical to designing a landing page that will improve conversion. You’ll want to think of this as, “who are my visitors and what roles will they play on my site”.  The goal is to get inside their psyche to understand:

1. Why they’ve arrived on your site;
2. What’s the specific problem they’re trying to solve, and;
3. What will motivate their decisions

By identifying and understanding prospect personas, you’ll be creating a landing page that speaks to their wants, needs, fears and motivations, ultimately enticing more to convert to customers.

About the Author

Noted author and speaker, Brian Lewis brings over 20 years of both hands-on and strategic online marketing experience spanning a diverse range of industries. In addition to co-hosting the Internet radio show “Best Search Strategies” on WebMasterRadio, Brian has led panels at Search Engine Strategies Conferences, Search Marketing Expo, SMX Advanced, PPC Summit, Conversion Conference, Affiliate Conference, AdWords Advantage, Online Marketing Summit, and Online Marketing Institute. Brian’s articles have been referenced in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Target Marketing, eMarketer, Search Engine Watch, Website Magazine, SEM Journal, and DM News. He continues to be in demand for speaking engagements on PPC, SEO and conversion optimization around the world. He earned his B.A. in Economics from the University of California, San Diego and his M.B.A. from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, graduating both schools with honors.

See Brian Live!

Brian will be presenting a session with Howard Kaplan, of Future Now, on “Persona-Driven Conversions – Walk A Mile In Your Visitors’ Shoes” at Conversion Conference East 2011 in New York City. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save $700 on Conversion Conference? Contact Brian to request a discount code!

by Chris Goward, WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization

Hopefully you’ve already got your ticket for Conversion Conference and are looking over the agenda planning how to get the most out of the day.

Let me give you a hint on one session you definitely don’t want to miss today.

On Monday afternoon, right after the lunch break, two of the top Landing Page Optimization experts, Chris Goward (yours truly) and Tim Ash, are offering an intensive hour of landing page recommendation services.

You can get customized recommendations for how to test improvements to your landing pages from, not one, but two expert perspectives. Plus, watching us pull apart everyone else’s pages is a whole lot of fun!

The Landing Page Analysis Framework

I will be using WiderFunnel’s popular Landing Page Influence Function for Tests (L.I.F.T.) Framework™ in the session to show you how to create powerful and testable hypotheses.

WiderFunnel uses the LIFT Framework to identify testing opportunities when planning Conversion Optimization experiments on web pages.

The six elements in the LIFT Framework can hurt or improve your lead generation and sales conversion rates.

As the LIFT Framework shows, your Value Proposition is the vehicle that determines your conversion rate potential. It encompasses the full set of costs and benefits your visitor perceives of “converting” into a lead or customer. To optimize your web site for conversions the LIFT Framework shows that you must increase the Relevance and Clarity of your page message, decrease Anxiety-causing and Distraction elements on the page, while creating a sense of Urgency.

For more information about the WiderFunnel LIFT Framework, please visit www.widerfunnel.com/lift

Mark your agenda to attend:

1:20-2:20pm, Monday, March 14
Rapid Fire: Live Page Critiques (S6)

Even if you don’t submit your page for an analysis, you will learn lots from watching the analysis of all the other pages. You’re likely to take away a juicy nugget of insight or two that will pay for your Conversion Conference ticket many times over.

About the Author

Chris Goward is Co-Founder and CEO of WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization. The company’s conversion optimization methods have helped clients by up to 400% for lead generation and e-commerce sales. Chris shares case studies and fact-based conversion marketing principles that deliver results for clients like Intel, eBay, Epson, Google, SAP, Electronic Arts, and many more.

Chris is a regular speaker at SES, SMX, eMetrics, PubCon and IMC. His work has been published in Marketing Sherpa, Search Engine Watch, the Google blog, Search Engine Marketing Journal and DM News.  You’ll find more information at http://widerfunnel.com/chrisgoward and on twitter @chrisgoward

By Amy Africa, CEO, Eight by Eight

Think increasing conversion on your regular website is tough? Well, fasten your seatbelts because the problems you’re facing there are only a tenth of what you’ll experience when you enter into the land of selling on a 2 x 4. It’s a challenge to say the least. Here are five things you simply must know…

1. Users expect a connect between your mobile site/app and your regular site and marketing materials. Granted, you don’t have to be EXACTLY the same but you do need similarity as more than three quarters of your folks are going to use BOTH FOR THE SAME TRANSACTION. Where is the connect the most important? On all your entry pages, especially your “official” home page.
2. You must know what your users are doing online to achieve any kind of significant conversion to, well, anything. Whether you want inquiries or orders, you need to know what your users are doing with their phones before you start asking for it. Why? Because people who come from Facebook behave differently than people who come from Twitter and people who come from Twitter aren’t at all like people who come from your e-mails and text messages. Granted, this sounds like a ridiculous tip but the truth is that it’s one of the most critical. Why? Because a lot of social media activity is done on smart/feature phones and if that’s the case with your business, that could be the first place you look to get more sales/inquiries. Companies who are interested in mobile tend to overbuild areas in hopes that if “you build it they will come.” That’s ok but it’s usually better to build where the users are first.
3. Onsite search trips everyone up. Sadly, whatever search problems you have on your site will be about 30 times worse on your mobile site. That’s the bad news about mobile. The good news is that if you can streamline some of your issues, your increased conversions will more than make up for it. (So few companies are doing anything on mobile that even if your site isn’t perfect, a little effort will go a very long way.) Your onsite text search will be heavily adopted if your navigation is weak. Therefore, if you want to make your site better without breaking the bank, work on your navigation, especially your jump links.
4. Mobile checkouts need to be more than miniaturized versions of your regular checkout, no matter how perfect your traditional checkout is. Building the perfect mobile checkout is a difficult process and it takes time and a lot of testing to see what works and what doesn’t. While you’re working on it, make sure that you offer lots of alternatives to ordering on the handheld – put your phone number all over the site till you think you have it in far too many places. Then double the occurrences. Same with your e-mail address and any click-to-call or mobile enabled live chat and text messaging options.
5. Abandoned cart programs work like gangbusters. As a rule of thumb, take whatever your performance is on your existing program and then triple it. That’s what you should get from a mobile abandoned cart program. (You’ll get even better results if you include text messaging in your efforts.) Remember, a program includes more than one e-mail (preferably 5-6), pop-ups (midis, catfishes, sidewinders work best), outbound telemarketing efforts on large orders, and so on.

Bonus tip:

Speaking of text messaging… It will be one of the best tools in your arsenal. Test it now, before it gets really popular.

About the Author

Amy Africa has been in the forefront of web usability studies, web design improvement, and successful e-commerce for over 15 years. Amy has been widely published in industry magazines and has been featured at web conferences around the globe. Her depth of knowledge, backed by intensive field testing and web user studies, has earned her the reputation of a voice to be heard on Internet topics ranging from site improvement, traffic building to analytics, email marketing and mobile.   Check out Amy’s blog.

Amy will be presenting a session on mobile conversions at Conversion Conference West 2011.

By Eric J. Hansen, Founder and CEO, SiteSpect, Inc.

If you are concerned about how the performance of your site is affecting business, you are not alone. Recent studies published by Amazon.com, Google, and Microsoft, among others, have shown that faster web sites not only improve the user experience but also conversion rates, average order values, and site stickiness. Additionally, major search engine crawlers are now evaluating site speed in their ranking algorithms, leading to faster sites appearing higher in search results.

Clearly, speed sells, but what are you doing about it?

There are typically three ways to speed up your site: through server performance, network performance, and web performance optimization. This blog post addresses web performance optimization.

As you look at the options available, consider solutions that not only speed up your site and reduce page load latency but also measurably improve both the end-user experience as well as your key metrics, such as conversion rates and engagement. Essentially, you are looking for a solution that accelerates the delivery and rendering of both web and mobile content through a variety of on-the-fly optimization techniques, including:

• On-Page Optimization — reduces the size of CSS and JavaScript files, combines scripts, and reorders elements for optimal processing and rendering.
• Cache Optimization — adjusts content cache settings to reduce network overhead, thereby decreasing page load time while simultaneously increasing web server capacity.
• Dynamic Parallelization — optimizes the browser’s ability to retrieve content by increasing parallelism, without requiring any change to the server or browser.
• Network Optimization — utilizes a global private cloud with real-time network measurements to determine fastest paths from any end-user location.
• Cloud Delivery — features a built-in cache that positions content closer to the end user for reduced latency when delivering static content.
• Modular Architecture — allows clients to test, measure the impact of, and deploy third-party performance solutions such as CDNs and open-source tools such as Steve Souders’ ControlJS.

The result? A faster, “snappier” user experience that can decrease page load times by as much as 50-70%. SiteSpect recently introduced such a solution called SiteSpect AMPS, which stands for Automated Multivariate Performance (Optimization) Solution. AMPS is the first web performance optimization solution that allows web and mobile site operators to automatically and non-intrusively optimize their site’s speed. This is achieved through built-in acceleration functionality deployed through SiteSpect’s powerful multivariate testing and behavioral targeting engine. Any type of site can be optimized, including those built for e-commerce, publishing, and social media; intranets; extranets; and even mobile-specific WAP sites. And because it is non-intrusive, AMPS requires no coding, no software installation, and no site modification.

Clearly, marketers and site operators have a lot to think about when it comes to their websites (and mobile websites). If you’d like to learn more about web performance optimization, visit http://bit.ly/WPOmvt.

About the Author

Eric is the founder and CEO of SiteSpect, and the chief architect of the firm’s non-intrusive technology for multivariate testing, behavioral targeting and digital marketing optimization. Eric is a frequent speaker at conferences covering web analytics and optimization, and writes regularly on topics dealing with the intersection of marketing and technology. Follow Eric on Twitter

Eric will be presenting a session on “Split & Multivariate Testing” at Conversion Conference West 2011.

Conversion Conference is the only industry event devoted exclusively to improving online conversion, and it’s coming to the Washington DC area October 4-5. Join over thirty top thought-leaders and network with peers at the parallel eMetrics show.

The inaugural Conversion Conference West 2010 was a smashing success!

The event, held on May 4-5, 2010 at the luxurious Fairmont Hotel in San Jose was well attended by by an enthusiastic worldwide audience. Attendees came from countries as far away as Poland, Sweden, Israel, German, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and Singapore.

Three keynotes by Tim Ash, Bryan Eisenberg, and Jakob Nielsen set the tone for an additional 26 sessions led by some of the foremost authorities in the field.

Sponsors had a great experience in the expo hall with steady traffic of very knowledgeable people who were “the perfect target audience” for their products and services. Facilities, lunches, and networking events were shared with the eMetrics Marking Optimization Summit – the largest conference on web analytics and measurable online marketing.

Everyone had a great time during informal networking as well as the Conversion Bash party produced by the fun-loving folks at WebmasterRadio.fm.

Check out the following event pictures:

• May 3 – Pre-conference workshops
• May 4 – Day 1 of the conference
• May 5 – Day 2 of the conference
• Tim Ash’s photo album