R.O.I. MEDIA

Any person or company that specialises in selling some sort of product online knows that when it comes to the end of the month only one thing matters. You look at your reports and financials and the only thing that you want to see is an increase in sales and products, and of course moolah, dollars, pounds, deniro, pesos, yen, dosh, bucks – it doesn’t matter, everyone is aiming to make more.

The harsh reality is that this is never easy when it comes to building and designing websites that need to convert. Some of the common reasons are that it usually comes down to user behaviour and trends, and like the moods of all women, this is unpredictable and can change at any second. 

Here are a few enlightening ideas to help with taming this 500 pound gorilla.

Heat Map Software - Of course there are a few tools that you can use, like heat mapping software, which lets you see where most of the clicking activity takes place on your site, try some of these:

• http://www.crazyegg.com/
• http://www.clickdensity.com/
• http://www.labescape.com/
• http://www.fusioncharts.com/powercharts/charts/heat-map/
• http://www.virante.com/analytics/heat-mapping
• http://www.feng-gui.com/
• http://www.hitmap.com/
• http://www.clicktale.com/

Google Analytics – This is so useful that entire books could be written about how to use this advanced website tracking software platform. If you are not using this already, then you’re either a newbie internet marketer or a complete idiot.  Try some of these ideas:

• Set up some goal funnels within analytics to track and see where users are entering and exiting your website throughout the purchase process. Take note of which exit pages have the highest exit rates, and optimise them immediately by using tricks like “Calls-to-Action”, “easy sign up forms”, better content, and high quality “Trust branding”.
• See which pages keywords are driving the most traffic to your site and also to which pages. Armed with this info you can change your tactics and re-design those specific pages that are already receiving high amounts of traffic.
• Dig a little bit deeper and find which areas, countries and cities your biggest fans and visitors come from. Knowing this allows you to shift your focus on your customer demographics to better target your products to those areas, cities and countries.

Google Adwords/PPC – Also not something to miss in your arsenal for making sales online. If you don’t know what this is, then you definitely need to talk to one of our consultants or you need to find yourself an updated version of “PPC/Adwords for Dummies” – because you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Try some of the following on for size:

• Use your AdGroup themes to set up your landing pages. When you’re using AdGroups, you’re already testing ad copy to see which ads and keywords work best, so why not use this information to optimise your conversions campaign.
• See which AdGroups convert best and export these. Design your new landing pages using the top 3 keywords per AdGroup that have the highest search volume (plug them in here to find your search volumes). Begin creating onsite copy for these landing pages using only these keywords while keeping the use of standard conversion basics in mind, like, opt-in forms, trust branding, etc…

Headlines – This is probably one of the most important focus points of your landing page so make it count and – try not to use any old and tasteless approaches like: “Hello, and Welcome to my Site Blah Blah Blah”. Get creative and get ideas by seeing what the best of the best in your niche are already doing and using. You can also use your Google’s Adwords Title Snippets, which you use for your PPC Ads that appear on the search listings in Google, as an indicator on which types of headlines work best.

Benefits- Emphasise these in a list format in the order of your product’s “value hierarchy” to your target market. Bullet points work well and make it easy for people to consume this type of information.

Testimonials – Consumer trust is so important – I can’t stress this point enough. If and where you can, try to use live testimonials recorded in video format and upload them onto your site via YouTube. Some of the biggest players are doing this very successfully. Alternatively, use quality images of your customer’s faces with relevant and clickable links, combined with their valued statement about your company. The more you can get from your customers, the better for your conversions.

In the end you need to take serious note that once you’ve set up a conversion campaign, you need to look at it, study it, and constantly tweak and re-asses your strategies from time to time. If this is too time consuming for you, then you need to consider another career, job, or business model. Keeping on top of this is not easy, but you only need to strike gold once to feel that the payoff was worth every second you spent.

Here are some very useful resources to peruse at your own leisure, and be sure to make notes and follow through:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/heat-map-tracking-do-you-feel-the-heat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_map
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/increase-landing-page-conversion-rates
http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/articles/101-google-website-optimizer-tips/
http://www.bplans.com/business_calculators/
https://gomockingbird.com/
http://searchengineland.com/how-to-build-multi-purpose-landing-pages-for-small-budget-advertising-84997