If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ?00 X 100).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

HOW TO INCREASE YOUR CONVERSION RATIOS BY UP TO 300% OR MORE IN LESS THAN 90 DAYS

Provided by SE-Optimize.Com

If you’re interested in increasing the traffic to your website, you’re on the right track. But don’t stop there! Yes, traffic is great, but if your visitors aren’t converting into customers, it won’t do your bottom line much good.

More importantly, even if you are converting a fair amount of visitors into buyers, unless you’re regularly testing the multiple variables of your various marketing messages and landing pages, we guarantee you that you’re missing out on easy money.

Q. But how can we test every variable on our website that could affect sales?

A. This is where Multi-Variate Testing comes in.

But first, let’s talk about the traditional method of testing, also known as “Scientific Advertising.” This will help us answer the more immediate question, “Just how important and profitable is testing?”

SCIENTIFIC ADVERTISING

Claude Hopkins revolutionized advertising with his marketing handbook, Scientific Advertising. In it, he explained that advertising need not be a gamble. That we can scientifically track, analyze, and guarantee profitability for any advertising campaign—provided we test each element of the marketing message to continually determine the best version of a headline, an offer, pricing, and so on.

To properly compare one element’s effectiveness against another, advertisers would conduct A/B Split Tests. These would provide two identical versions of an ad or marketing message with only one element altered.

So, if we were to test the headline first, we would create two versions of the headline. 50% of the recipients would receive the marketing message with Headline A and the other 50% would receive the one with Headline B.

We would then take the better performing headline and test it against yet another headline until we were satisfied with conversions.

Next, we’d test another element, such as the introductory paragraph, in the same way, and so on, across all elements.

THE CHALLENGE WITH SPLIT TESTING ON THE WEB

Split Testing is considered a requisite for any advertising campaign. However, few business owners bother to test the marketing messages that appear on their websites, their landing pages, in their email campaigns, and product descriptions/purchase pages.

One reason for this is that sometimes we forget that our website is a sales channel—that every word of text, every link, every image and even the layout, color, and design, are all sales agents responsible for selling our product or service.

Therefore, we concentrate on driving traffic to our website, accepting whatever conversions come our way. We forget that we can systematically improve our website’s sales conversions.

Now, the second reason few business owners test their website’s ability to convert is that the web simply moves too fast. Many sites are now dynamic with constantly updated copy, new offers, and shifting markets or demographics.

Scientifically testing marketing messages online is nearly impossible when you are forced to test one element at a time across a large enough audience. By the time you know which elements work best, that particular product or service is no longer being sold, or your company’s messaging has shifted.

THE COMPROMISE

Businesses have found a compromise between the low-risk/high-profit scientific advertising methodology and just plain giving up. This is where traditional website analytics come in.

Though a company would be hard pressed to scientifically test and improve its marketing messages, it could track and analyze its visitor behavior to try and ascertain what its audience wanted and how they would behave.

Such analytics are powerful, but they cannot give us definitive answers that directly translate into increased sales conversions.

This issue leads us back to Multi-Variate testing, which we promised to cover…

WHAT IS MULTIVARIATE TESTING?

Multivariate Testing is a unique and rapid methodology for testing multiple variations across dozens of elements to not only reveal the winning version of each element, but the winning combination of various elements.

Until now, such testing was impossible. For instance, if you had 15 elements on your website that you wanted to test, and 2 variations for each element, that would require 32,768 different versions of your website that would each need to be tested among a large enough sampling of your visitors. This would take nearly a century to test and is of course not nearly plausible.

However, just as search engines have developed sophisticated algorithms to measure and analyze numerous elements on your website to determine relevance, we now have algorithms to accurately rotate, measure, and analyze thousands or even tens of thousands of variations of your website. The process does not alter your website’s code, nor interfere with your visitor’s experience.

Now, you can determine in as little as 90 days the absolute best combination of elements to create a marketing message or web page guaranteed to far out pull all your previous website efforts.

WHERE TO BEGIN

As powerful as multivariate testing is, you’d expect it to be an excruciating process to get moving and implement. But thankfully, it’s not!

Unfortunately, very few professionals or companies offer multivariate conversion analysis. You can probably count us on one hand.

However, this this actually works to your advantage! Our analysis experts will work with you to determine which elements you’d like to test and how many variations of each you would like (you can have two variations for one element, four for another, and so on). We will analyze your current traffic, support inquiries, and competition, to ensure we’ve covered all your bases.

Next, you’ll create the different variations of copy necessary for testing (or one of our professional copywriters can do this for you), and provide any graphics for design variables.

We then customize our software with your data and let it run through a series of mathematical queries to determine the 10-20 combinations of element variations that will deliver the highest impact to your sales.

As each new visitor lands on your site, our software rotates these versions , collecting data to determine which version pulls the best results. You receive daily results and weekly reports during this time.

Once enough data has been collected, our software calculates precisely which combination of variables will maximize your sales gain (in addition to just the 10-20 combinations actually tested).

This results in 3 or 4 “greatest gain” versions of your website that are then tested in a traditional A/B Split test. We compare these to your control (original) version of your website so you can see the precise increase in conversions and sales.

The entire process takes roughly 90 days or less.

Contact us to learn more and to request a free conversion consultation.

This is of course at no obligation to you to work with us. We’re simply happy to help.

So get in touch with us. You can contact us several ways:

Email: info@SE-Optimize.Com

or

Complete the following Contact Us form and one of our staff will phone you in the next 24-48 hours.

We look forward to hearing from you.

When optimizing your site for search engine statistics, one of the most important things you used to be able to do is offer a good title tag. Recently, search engines have begun to look beyond this simple headline to determine what your site is about and index it accordingly, but it can still go a long way toward putting yourself in a good position if you create good title tags with these simple tips:

Length

Google will take only the first 65 characters of any title tag to display. Any more than that and you’re wasting time and space. Be efficient and succinct right off the bat. Of course you want to optimize your title tag as well for the best results, so you’re walking a very fine line here. The difference between optimization and intelligibility is not quite as thin. The best way to get the results you’re looking for might be to simply stuff keywords.

Making Sense

But, stuffing keywords doesn’t always make sense either. If you write everything out without a sense of what your site is actually about save the word “dog collar” repeated four times, you’ll get fewer visitors. You’re writing this for multiple audiences – the search engine algorithm as well as your visitors. Find the right balance.

Capitalization

Make this a headline of sorts. You should have every word that is of any importance, or just simply every word capitalized to grab attention. More or less all copywriting is better and more effective if you use this technique and hey if newspapers have been doing it for centuries, why not you as well? This is an important step you can take in separating your text from others; however make sure not to capitalize every letter in your title. It looks juvenile and angry.

Unique Key Words for Every Page

It might be easier to just use a set list of keywords and title tags for each page of your site, but by separating them out and utilizing numerous styles and phrases throughout your website, you can further enhance your search results. Otherwise, you’ll likely never see any of the subpages of your website ranking in the search engines. By optimizing every page individually, you can receive a better chance of each individual page being successful.

Company Names in Tag Titles

Don’t do this. It’s just a bad idea. All you do by adding your company name to a tag title or headline is waste space in a search engine. The only way this helps you is if someone searches for your company name directly, in which case they’ll likely find your site anyways. You want to use keywords that attract audiences looking for products like yours. If they are already looking for your product, you probably don’t need to optimize.

Optimizing your tag titles is a key step in providing the best and most efficient description of your website to both the search engines and potential visitors. Doing it correctly is important or you’ll likely find that no one visits your site or those that do, do it for the wrong reason.

What can an intenet marketer do to secure some business right in their own home town? There has been a real surge in excitement and attention paid to bringing Internet Marketing strategies to brick and mortar buisinesses. Local businesses can and do dominate the search listings for their products and services when an effort is made to make that happen. 

Localizing SEO

Marketing SEO to Local Businesses Leading the way in their ability to capture, process and close more sales, the savvy business owner uses Web 2.0 and SEO to obtain more customers at the earliest possible opportunity. With rapid rewards leading to greater profits, it doesn’t take long for the average business owner to see the leverage in having website and SEO services done sooner rather than later. Gathering Leads Locally Many times I am asked if I have a preference for the type of businesses that I work with. While I am able to help out the start-up company, my preference is to work alongside existing businesses. Pre-established business owners tend to have a better scope of what it takes to flourish. Even if they have managed to survive without an Internet presence, they quickly realize that by adding a well thought out and executed Internet Marketing Plan, they will be able to add prospects, customers, clients and most importantly PROFIT to their business. How Much Will it Cost? The part of this business that prevents it from ever becoming boring is the fact that each and every job, each and every design or project is always something new. When it comes to your local business merchants, it is difficult to fit them all into one template or business model. With that said, costs can vary dependent upon the needs and desires of the client.

These are considerations when pricing a project: Starting Costs:

Although I enjoy this work, I’m not in it for charity, I’m in it for a business. Clients should expect to pay between 1/3 and 1/2 of the estimated contract price up front. If this is an issue, you don’t need the business. I use the position that in my initial meeting to discuss a project, I’m going to see if I want the job, not if I can get the job. Ongoing Fees:

Many larger projects can take months to complete. When this is the case, a monthly fee is appropriate and to be expected. Measurable results should be taking place during this time. Maintenance vs. Residual Commission:

This is where the real sustainable income is generated. At some point after the project is completed you have really moved from a role of designer/facilitator to one of consultant and/or “business-partner”, sine you now have a vested interest in the continued success of that business. Be sure to discuss in the pre-contract stages whether your work afterward will be on a monthly maintenence fee schedule or if you’ll work for a commission, based on the percentage of growth accountable to your work. Guaranteed Satisfaction is Paramount As I mentioned earlier, I don’t go to see if I can get a job. I go to see if I want the job. With that said, I will continue to design and optimize a site for a client until he has at least earned back his intial investment. The best way to grow our own business is to ensure that our customers and clients are always happy with the work that we do for them. Make it easy for your clients to give you referals. The bottom line is that my work is 100% SATISFACTION GUARANTEED !!!