Getting Started

A good place to start if you're new to online marketing, conversion rate optimization and persuasive design.

What is conversion rate optimization (CRO)?

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You can attract all the website traffic in the world, but traffic means nothing if your users aren’t taking any action. Every website has a goal. How efficient your website is at “converting” traffic into leads or customers (the typical goal) is the second half of the battle. Lets say your website gets 1,000 visitors over a month long period. The percentage of those visitors who purchased your product or filled out a lead form is the conversion rate. Let’s say you already have a fairly typical conversion rate of about 5%. That means only 50 people out of those 1,000 visitors actually buy anything! So how can you sell more products? You could spend more money on advertising and increase the number of visitors to your site (95% of which still wouldn’t even buy your product)- or you could better utilize more of the traffic that you already worked so hard to get.

Visitors are leaving your site empty handed for a reason. But, through a little testing and analytics, you can begin to see what your customers’ expectations are and how to cater to them. How can you persuade them to stay and make a purchase or fill out a lead form? What if you tried writing a more convincing headline and 2 more people out of the 1,000 already visiting your site made a purchase? Maybe you tried changing the color of your “add to cart” button and 3 more of those people made purchases. What if you found enough tweaks to gain 50 more sales and doubled your income?!… Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is that process. It’s the culmination of all the little tweaks that together translate into big results. It’s figuring out how to get more of your users from point A to point B more efficiently. And ultimately, making more, with less.

Get started by analyzing your website. Google Analytics is free and easy to get basic tracking up and running. Visit my resources page for links to analytic and split testing solutions.

 

What are the four P’s?

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One of the most basic combinations of approaches often seen in marketing plans is referred to as “The 4 P’s”.

  1. Product/service: Is the product/service right for your target customer/audience?
  2. Price: Is it at the right price point?
  3. Place: Is it in the right place to be purchased or found.
  4. Promotion: How will you let customers know the product or service is available, how much it is, and where they can find it?

It’s the right product, in the right place, and at the right price.

Imagine you’re selling gallons of 2% milk…
Do you try to sell a gallon to people searching for new cars on Google?
Do you sell them for $50 a gallon?
If a customer shows interest in your milk, do you try to sell them a garden hose instead?

No, no, and no!

It’s not always so obvious, but I’m sure you get the point. The same goes in online marketing. The more accurate you can be in your targeting, the more efficient your campaign will be and the less money you’ll be leaving on the table. Instead of wasting time, energy and bandwidth trying to cram every possible bit of information on to your web page, figure out which elements are most important to your audience. What 20% of your content is contributing to 80% of your sales?

What is the marketing mix?

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It’s the combination of all the different choices a business makes in order to bring a product or service to market, ultimately resulting in a sale. The right product, at the right price, in the right place, at the right time. The combination of attributes that will be most favorable to both you and your customers. The sweet spot. One of the most popular approaches is referred to as “the four P’s”, referring to: product, price, place, and promotion. You can learn more about it in my post, “What are the four P’s?”

But it’s much deeper than just these four factors! Theres tons of different things that affect the buying cycle…and significantly! Especially on the web. And that’s the goal of this website- to examine all the different factors that contribute to the success of your website. You’ll learn about things like user experience heuristics, split testing, usability, and the psychology behind how users think and respond to your page. And you can start right now! Optimizing your site for conversions isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s a process that you can learn over time as you go, testing single elements here and there until your site is optimized to its fullest potential and you’re making a lot more money because your web presence is much more efficient! Get started here by reading my post, Conversion Rate Optimization: an overview

What is new media?

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New media is basically any type of media that has the ability to be interactive.

It’s a term that’s been thrown around since the 70’s, but has more recently been used to describe various types of (usually digital) interactive media, such as the Internet, websites, email, apps, video games, CD-ROM’s, DVD’s, etc. It tends to be based largely online where data communication is happening. Chances are, if it’s not considered a form of traditional media (actual physical paper-based books, magazines, newspapers, even T.V.), then it’s probably new media.