The first step in learning SEO is to understand how search engines work. Search engines return results in a process that includes crawling, indexing and relevancy ranking.
My journey in learning SEO hath begun. After conducting extensive online research, I’ve quickly discovered that there are thousands upon thousands of articles, resources and discussions revolving around one […]
Original post by Matt
The first step in learning SEO is to understand how search engines work. Search engines return results in a process that includes crawling, indexing and relevancy ranking.
My journey in learning SEO hath begun. After conducting extensive online research, I’ve quickly discovered that there are thousands upon thousands of articles, resources and discussions revolving around one […]
Original post by Matt
The first step in learning SEO is to understand how search engines work. Search engines return results in a process that includes crawling, indexing and relevancy ranking.
My journey in learning SEO hath begun. After conducting extensive online research, I’ve quickly discovered that there are thousands upon thousands of articles, resources and discussions revolving around one […]
Original post by Matt
The first step in learning SEO is to understand how search engines work. Search engines return results in a process that includes crawling, indexing and relevancy ranking.
My journey in learning SEO hath begun. After conducting extensive online research, I’ve quickly discovered that there are thousands upon thousands of articles, resources and discussions revolving around one […]
Original post by Matt
Throughout the month of November we will be running our “SMB blog series.” While SMB traditionally refers to “Small/Medium Business,” here at Volusion it has come to mean something else: “Small Made Big.” This month we will be sharing resources, tips, stats, and inspirations to help you turn your small ecommerce endeavor into something […]
Original post by Kate
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Original post by Kevin Kelleher
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Original post by Jennifer Martinez
More and more people are getting iPhones these days, causing Apple’s browser market share to increase steadily. In the last quarter of 2008 Apple’s iPhone even outsold RIM’s Blackberry. Whether it is the 15,000+ available applications or the accelerometer that detects how the phone is oriented in a user’s hand, people cannot seem to get […]
Original post by Kate
Picking up where we left off in the Marketing Experiments Conversion Sequence C = 4m + 3v + 2(i-f) -2a, the last couple posts covered “m” for Motivation discussing optimizing your ecommerce sites for “hunters” on home pages and search and navigation.
Today I want to look at motivation from a different angle. I want you to choose a landing page that is top priority for you to optimize. For example, your most profitable product with the highest abandonment rate. I want to get you thinking about which customer motivations are most likely to match your business, your products, your typical customer and your landing page presentation.
If you haven’t read the posts on value propositions yet, you might want to start there as this follows the same line of thought.
Ready?
Alright. First I want you to think why someone would buy online (not just browse and research products), then think about your landing page in light of the product category/industry. “Check all that may apply.”
At the store level
What is your strength as a store considering your value proposition? Examples:
At the category level
Think about how people shop for different categories. Why would someone purchase this product category online?
Victoria’s Secret sells a mix of lingerie and loungewear available only in Victoria’s Secret stores, its clothing and accessories are only available online through VictoriasSecret.com, and it sells cosmetic items like Clarins self tanner that are available anywhere.
The online channel has to understand the FUDDs (fears, uncertainties, doubts and deal-breakers) for each category may be different. It’s easy to buy lingerie you’ve tried in-store already, much more risky to purchase clothing sight-unseen which may not fit well, or be true to size or color on the screen.
You can’t control or influence why a customer is on your site, but you can attempt to segment them as best you can. For example, you may create different landing pages for affiliates or referrals through coupons and deals sites than for PPC or email offers.
They way you speak to different types of visitors will also depend on why they are at your site. You might consider having a unique landing page for gift card holders, or use a personalization tool recognize a repeat visitor and show recently viewed items on the home page (like Amazon):
Look at your web analytics for the landing page in question. What’s the top referring channel? Does this channel attract a certain type of shopper? For instance, Microsoft Live search engine offers cash back — is this a bargain shopper? Does this shopper convert higher because they are more likely to be researching an online purchase than researching online to purchase locally?
Even shopping engine users can have different demographics: SHOP.com users are 70% female, and CNet shoppers are more often male. Perhaps landing page copy geared to different sexes would perform better?
Another thing to think about — what’s the poorest performing channel? If your PPC conversion for this page is brutal, it could be your keywords or ad copy are not relevant to the page, or you have a price in the ad copy that is incorrect. It’s also important to look at how the keywords you are bidding on match where a searcher is in the buying process. Bryan Eisenberg had a great article on PPC optimization on GrokDotCom yesterday.
At certain times of the year (Christmas, Valentine’s, Mother’s Day) you can assume a larger proportion of visitors are buying gifts and you may emphasize gift finders, gift wrap options and shipping cutoff dates more prominently than other times of the year. Or, you may have buying guides for men on a jewelry or women’s clothing store all year round, understanding they may feel lost on your site.
Based on Future Now’s persuasion architecture, there are 4 general buying modalities customers may fall into based on their personality or based on the nature of a given purchase decision:
Now we’re getting into persona development, understanding different customer segments and covering all your bases with persuasive copy for the different buying modalities. It’s near impossible if not completely impossible to predict an individual visitor’s purchase role and customer personality (with technologies ever improving, we might be able to shortly). But you can optimize your landing pages to “cover all the bases” if you understand what different customer types respond to.
You may be interested in posts we’ve done relating to marketing to various customer types:
Optimizing Product Reviews by Customer Personality
Making Email Creative Enticing to Everyone
Email Subject Lines and Customer Personality
Persuasive optimization is valuable, but I suggest you think about your basics first. Start with your value proposition and present it clearly on your site. Get comfortable with web analytics and use them to extract insights about customer behavior through various channels. Then get down to the final details of testing, tweaking and persuading.
Selecting the Right Ecommerce Software in Six Weeks or Less
When: January 21st, 2009 @ 9am PT/12pm ET
Panelists:
Bill Mirabito, Founder and Principal Analyst, B2C Partners
Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend…
Original post by Linda Bustos
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