eVision Online Marketing Blog

Looking back over years of working with clients, I truly believe the most important ingredient to search marketing success is the quick implementation of recommendations and tests to improve conversion rates.

Our clients who continually implemented recommendations and tests and persevered eventually succeeded. Those who couldn’t failed (Or more often they delayed their success for years till they could implement recommendations and tests quickly and missed a significant amount of income over those years).

The underlying issue is that all (yes ALL) web sites that have not been improved systematically do an ineffective job of converting site visitors with little or no prior knowledge about the company and its products and services. This includes most of the non brand keyword phrases being searched on to reach a web site (from both organic and PPC search results) as well as visitors from many other referral sites.

In this article I’ll show you how to estimate the conversion rates for your brand vs. non-brand keyword phrases using Google Analytics. You’ll see the difference in your conversion rates and should be able to estimate the potential increase in income if you work to improve conversions rates on your web site

Most of the best retail ecommerce sites achieve conversion rates within the industry average of about 1.5 to 3%.

You can increase ecommerce conversions 2-4x by ensuring your company’s personality shines through on your web site, showing your visitors what makes you different and why they should buy from you, while helping them decide what to buy.

At the same time you’ll likely see improvements in organic search results because of the unique content you’ll add to your web site.

I’ll be presenting “Want to improve conversions rates? Stop cycling important messages in Flash! At Pubcon in Las Vegas this week.

Our user testing shows few people watch an animation long enough to see multiple messages. In this case study we improved conversions 300% in key adgroup for this client by “Freezing” an animation on an important message.

You can download the slides. Includes Best Practices for Animations.

In this 2 part Video (with companion text article) we show why it’s so important to have an effective custom “Page not found” error page (A 404 error page) to improve results from search engines. We cover and demonstrate some important Best Practices for 404 error pages.

You’ll Learn:

What are custom “Page not found” (404) error pages and why are they so important in search marketing?

The most important elements to include on 404 error pages.

Why you need to use Absolute Links on 404 error pages.

Why it’s important to set these error pages up so they send a 404 error code to browsers (and search engines) rather than a redirect code (as some web site owners/managers have done).

Many web site owners have heard the term “analytics” and mistakenly believe that the site stats they have seen running on their website is analytics. They are unaware of how strong a tool site analytics is for online marketing and improving conversion rates.

In this article I’ll demonstrate the difference between site analytics and site reports and point out how analytics can help not only measure marketing results but help site owners increase business from their web sites.

Video on the web is growing quickly. We’re employing video more and more to improve the user experience which leads to improved conversion rates.

Ron Jones has posted a two part article on Search Engine Watch outlining 5 steps for optimizing Video for search.

In this article you will learn what makes a great primary navaigtion bar. Our user testing shows that ignoring nav bar guidelines will cost you sales and customers. You cannot create a good user experience without a good nav bar.

The nav bar plays an essential role in creating good first impressions and setting site expectations. New visitors will scan the primary nav bar when they first arrive on your site home page. When nav bar link labels are confusing, or important visual cues are missing, visitors are less likely to engage. If visitors have only come for a quick comparative look, confusion equals exits.

Our client had a Flash animation cycling through 4 messages on the home page. We “Froze” the animation on the most important message. This resulted in a significant increase in sales at a lower cost per sale.

Comparing the conversion rates for brand vs. non brand keyword phrases on your web site can be a real eye opener. Improving the conversion rates for these phrases can lead to increased business. We’ll show you how to do the comparison using an example from a real client’s PPC campaign that was unknowingly losing money for 2 years on non-brand phrases!

User testing reveals that good graphics design is essential to improving conversions. In the early days of the web some leading usability experts claimed that graphics didn’t belong on web sites, how wrong they were.
 
Good graphics design does more then present an appealing facade.
 
The Stanford Web Credibility (http://credibility.stanford.edu/) studies show that 47% of users make [...]