~~~High Rankings Advisor – Issue No. 236~~~
Your Host: Jill Whalen [jill@highrankings.com]
________________________________________________________
~~~IN TODAY'S ADVISOR~~~
*Guest Article:
----> Understanding Your Conversion Rates
*This Week's Sponsors:
----> SEO Training Class on August 15th
*Stuff You Might Like:
----> Offer Expiring 7/31 on B2B Lead Gen Book
*Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week:
----> Using the NoScript Tag
*Advisor Wrap-up:
----> 5 Years of HRF and 25 Years of...
________________________________________________________
~~~Introductory Comments~~~
Hey everyone!
It sure is quiet around town lately. I think most of the U.S. must be on vacation. For those of you still plodding along, enjoy the newsletter! – Jill
_____________________High Rankings______________________
SEO Training Class – August 15th Class Has a Few Seats Available
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______________________________________________________
~~~Guest Article~~~
++Understanding Your Conversion Rates++
By Karon Thackston © 2008, All Rights Reserved
The question is a rather odd one: "What's your conversion rate?" The correct response would be another question: "Which conversion rate?" What most people are really asking is how many sales have you made? But the sales process – in almost all cases – takes more than one step.
Most online businesses have several conversion rates. With certain exceptions, there are multiple steps from getting a visitor to click from the search engine results page (SERP) to ultimately making the decision to buy your products or services, make a donation, subscribe to your site, etc.
Fact is, every step in between can be viewed as a conversion. And each of these micro-conversions can reveal interesting information about your sales path and how well it is functioning.
Page Titles and Descriptions
Using an e-commerce site as our example, let's start with the page title and description that the search engines use in the SERPs. You control both of these and can make them say practically anything you want. The first conversion you encounter involves getting prospects to notice your title and description in the SERPs and click through to your site. The only way to do this is through the copy you write for those two tags. There are no graphics in SERPs for web page results (only for video and/or image results) and you have no control over font size or color. It's all about the words.
While there are lots of ways to drive people to your website, when you're talking about organic or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising you have to get people to click your listing in order to start the ball rolling. If you aren't getting clickthroughs (conversions from the engine results to your landing page), you need to rework and test these two tags.
Home Page/Landing Page
If you have a true landing page (a page specifically created for people to land on after clicking a PPC ad that coordinates with the PPC ad), this may be your last conversion point. In the most organic sense of the phrase, a PPC ad is laser targeted to one product or service. The associated landing page is also laser targeted to provide the details of that one product or service. The visitor either buys or she doesn't.
Most people, however, aren't using true landing pages. That leaves home pages and a host of other types of pages that are meant to serve as landing page surrogates. This means that when someone clicks your listing on the SERP and winds up on your home page, they now face another choice: Where to go from here.
This is a second conversion point. Is your copy doing its job? Are people dumping out of your home page? If so, why? Were the title and description misleading? Perhaps what you sell is subject to personal preference. After all, "solid redwood planter boxes" don't all look alike. It could be the visitor didn't care for the style of planters you offered. It could be that your copy didn't do a good job of describing the product or service, or that it left out vital information like "free shipping," etc. Maybe you're cursed by being in an industry that has an overabundance of tire kickers.
You are likely to have numerous conversion rates that result from visitors leaving your home page and clicking deeper into the site. Is the conversion from the home page to the "oak landscaping beams" page higher than the planters? Compare the two pages. Are they designed the same? Have similar copy? Whatever the reason, test to see how changes to copy affect the conversions from this page.
Are you using true landing pages in conjunction with your PPC campaign? (You really should have a separate landing page designed and written specifically for each product/service you advertise.) If so, your testing will be more focused because there's only one product or service involved.
Individual Products and Services
The further you get into the belly of a site, the more specific everything gets. Keywords get more descriptive, product and service details are more precise, and sales or other related actions become the primary conversion.
When you get to this level, it's easier to determine the conversion rate because a sale has occurred. This is the one conversion rate most people rely on. As you can see, however, all the steps beforehand are vital to getting people to this moment in time. If one is out of sync, the process can potentially shut down.
When you test your copywriting, take it one conversion point at a time. As you perfect each step, you'll begin to notice that the entire process gets smoother. You'll also notice that the final step – making the sale – comes more easily than ever before.
Karon Thackston
Marketing Words Copywriting Blog
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-Ze1yRj/HmhhTM%403508155-zsKVY2xZhzjnw
Share your comments and thoughts here:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-h6VxRvoll7d4U%403508156-aIya59ZbFriM6
If you liked this article and the zillions of others Karon has written over the years, you may be interested in the following message and offer that she just sent me:
"I have a very special offer for your subscribers. Remember my ebook 'How to Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)'? Well, I've changed the name! It's now titled 'Writing With Keywords.' Why change the title? Because too many people mistakenly thought this ebook was about how to cram keywords into every possible part of your copy. As you know, that's not what it's about at all! It delivers 11 legal and easy strategies when you're writing with keywords (and thus, the new name).
"It's the same content as the original Keyword Saturation ebook, but I've added a very important chapter that I've never seen covered before. The new chapter is about the effects of punctuation and stop words on copy. You'd think the answer would be 'There is no effect.' You'd be mistaken.
"The price to everyone else will stay at $39, but for High Rankings Advisor subscribers, I'll reduce that cost to $29 from today (Wednesday, 7/30/08) until Friday, August 1st, at 5:00pm Eastern time." – Karon
So there you have it! You'll need to use the official High Rankings Advisor affiliate link to receive your discount:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-Fz7IG19uWtHHs%403508157-pHrtHZGZfK4a2
~~~Stuff You Might Like~~~
++Offer Expiring 7/31 on B2B Lead Gen Book++
This is your last chance to save a few hundred bucks on MarketingSherpa's B2B Lead Gen BigBook...erm Handbook ;). The $200 discount is only good through July 31...so act quickly if you want it. (You know you do!)
See my previous thoughts and information on purchasing this amazing marketing book here:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-B62l6u0ghKaCE%403508158-UPhu518uVkJp6
~~~Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week~~~
++Using the NoScript Tag++
Forum member "Webstream" wonders if it's okay to use the "noscript" tag as a place for links and text on a site that is all Flash and images.
See what the other forum members think and/or share your own comments here:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-CuBtR5KJb/TkE%403508159-f2.T0yV9qcB2g
~~~Advisor Wrap-up~~~
That's all for today!
Holy smokes...I just realized July is nearly over. Besides the fact that time is slipping by way faster than usual, the 31st of July also means that the High Rankings Forum is now 5 years old!
In addition to that awesome milestone, July 31 also means I've been married one more year. Yikes, I just did the math, and apparently I've been married for 25 years...a quarter of a century...how could that be? (Doin' the math again...2008 – 1983...eek...yep...looks like 25.) The funny thing is this totally snuck up on us this year. What's the 25th anyway? Silver? Gold? Bronze? Tinfoil? ;)
Catch you in 2 weeks! – Jill
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