In this Part 2 article on Search Engine Land I’ll outline some relatively simple ways to improve conversions once people enter your web site from any traffic sources including….

Don’t Send Visitors Away From The Page Too Early

Did They Miss Any Important Messages?

What Do You Want Them To Do next?

How To Measure Changes With Google Analytics

Test Calls To Action

Simple Highlighting Changes Can Make A Huge Difference

Test Adding Forms On The Page

Loose The Form Verification If Possible

Read “How To Increase Organic Keyword Conversions. Part 2”

It also helps your organic search results by making your product pages unique from most other ecommerce sites and by adding much more content for search engines to index and return in search results.

Rob talks about how to create compelling content including…

• Start by simply writing more about the products you sell
• Write Buyers’ Guides for Product Categories
• Write candid and detailed product reviews
• Write Unique Product Descriptions

Read  “How to Boost Sales through Compelling Buyers’ Guides,
Product Descriptions, and Product Reviews”

For More Ecom Info

Increase ecommerce conversions 2-4x and improve search marketing results by helping shoppers decide what to buy. An article with many examples from Rob Snell’s web site and examples from the Crutchfield electronics site. Crutchfield has also done a great job establishing themselves as experts in their field while helping shoppers learn what to buy.

6 Steps to Successful Ecommerce Site Search Implementation; Features Short List

All About Ecommerce Shopping Carts, Merchant Credit Card Accounts, Sales Tax Collection

$1Mil to $1Bil in 10 years: Zappos. What You can learn from them (especially Internet retailers)

What You Can Learn About Social Media from Woot.com, a retail ecommerce site

• Using photos and text to establish yourself as an expert.
• Showing people what to buy with buyers guides that help shoppers understand what product they need.
• Telling shoppers why they should buy from you.

Read “How to Optimize Your Online Ecommerce Store,  Rob Snell”

Also see “Increase ecommerce conversions 2-4x and improve search marketing results by helping shoppers decide what to buy” an article with many examples from Rob Snell’s web site and examples from the Crutchfield electronics site. Crutchfield has also done a great job establishing themselves as experts in their field while helping shoppers learn what to buy.

In this article on Web Marketing Today Jeff Sexton gives tips on merchandising with product pictures and videos.

Read “Merchandising with Pictures and Videos”

I’ll be speaking in this session: Increase Your Post Click Conversion Performance on Tuesday at 4:15 pm in Salon B

Session Overview: Sure, you’ve figured out how to funnel all of the traffic to your site. But are you paying attention to those post-click behaviors? The panelists in this session will examine ways to keep the process going. Know how to convert traffic once they make it to your site.

I’ll be presenting…
“Improving Conversions Rates for Keyword Phrases”

How to Compare Keyword Conversion Rates and Select Important Keywords to Focus On.

How to Check for Issues with Landing Pages for Organic Keywords.

Tips to Improve Conversions Rates Once Visitors Reach Your Web Site.

Click for more information and to register

Save 20%, Use Coupon Code rc-6845315 When Registering

Hope to see you there!

PS – Adventurers Wanted!
The last few years during PubCon, I’ve taken a morning or afternoon for an adventure. Here are pictures from the last years

Here are pictures from previous years

If any one wants join in I’m open to ideas!

From one of Google’s Blogs, “In the online shopping world, site search quality is a huge factor in converting browsers to buyers, and in keeping customers happy. In fact, 43% of visitors to online retail sites say the very first thing they do is type the product name or product category into the search box (Source: Marketing Sherpa).

While most of the top retailers have a search engine on their websites, the speed and accuracy of search results can make a real difference in visitor engagement and conversion rates. Visitors spend an average of only 8 seconds before deciding whether or not to remain on a website (so fast, accurate results can make a big difference in conversions)”. (Source Marketing Sherpa).

6 Steps to Successful Ecommerce Site Search Implementation

One: Place your search box in one of the places people expect it to be found such as above the navigation bar (see examples below).

Make the search box field large enough to handle most inquiries without the search term scrolling to the left as it’s typed.

Follow the convention of using a “Search” or “Go” button to the left or right, along with the term “enter search” or something instructive such as “enter item # or keyword” in the search field. Of course, make sure “enter search” disappears as soon as the first character is entered in the search box.

Examples of Site Search Placement

 Notice the similar placement in all the above?

Two: Insure that your site search tool records the search terms that people enter so you can review them at your convenience.

Three: Insure that the search tool is able to be modified to “map” results to existing and new terms. So that, for example, a hungry Cajun from New Orleans can enter “Poor Boy” or even the colloquial “Po Boy” and find it mapped to the sandwich results instead of getting a “nothing found” response.

Here’s an Example to Try:

Go to LL Bean’s site, www.llbean.com, and search on “tops”.

Notice that many of the results do not include the word “top” or “tops” in the descriptions. Apparently they have “mapped” these products to be retuned for this common search phrase.

Four: Review the results for products people search for that you don’t carry. Should you consider carrying them?

Five: Map misspelled variations people are searching for to the proper results.

Six: Monitor the search terms carefully and use the information to improve your site. People may be asking for a variety of information which should be apparent at first glance. They should never have to search for contact information, basic product categories or your location. Even though it will be obvious to you, if others are searching, consider modifying the site to improve its visibility.

Some Features to Consider Putting On Your Site Search Short List

Google released its Commerce Search (GCS) last November and while we’re not advocating for Google’s site search, you have to figure these guys know a little about search! Here are some important features in Google’s Commerce Search that you might want to make sure your site search handles.

Search Suggest and Auto completion. You’ve seen this on Google’s web search and it’s very helpful in site search too.  As the shopper types into the search field suggestions build up in a drop down below. The shopper only needs to point and click on a suggested search phrase to complete the search.

 Search Suggest and Auto completion

Spell check, stemming and synonyms – By leveraging the larger Google search engine, GCS can include these advanced search and synonym options, so the shopping experience is smoother for customers – even customers who mistype.

Parametric search and sorting – GCS allows users to refine or sort results by category, price, brand, or other attribute; this is fully-functional parametric search for e-stores.

You often get only one chance to make a sale and many folks won’t come back if they don’t find what they need. Use the right search tool and optimize its results and you will increase conversions and improve customer satisfaction (and loyalty).

 

Side Bar: I was recently shopping for something online for bicycling. There was a listing on a review site for two online sites that carry a product I was looking for. I went to the first and didn’t see a site search and didn’t quickly see the vendor’s name for the product I was looking for. So I hit the “Back” Button and went to the other retailer’s site.

Learn How eVision Can Help You
Get More Business From The Internet

A client just launched their redesigned web site and their ads unknowingly were resulting in many Page Not Found errors (404 errors). Most Adwords users may not realize that the Auto Tagging feature can result in “Page Not Found” errors that are not detected using the Ad Preview Tools within Adwords. 

If searchers receive a “Page Not Found” error when they click through from your ads most will just hit the Back button and return to the search results to click on a competitor’s ad (But only after you’ve been charged for the Clicks). Those few who take the time to continue on within your site may get frustrated trying to find what they were looking for since they will not be starting from an ideal landing page. This will significantly reduce your conversion rate -  wasting many dollars in Adwords Click charges and missed business opportunities. 

Here’s the Auto-tagging issue

Auto tagging is the default method for integrating Adwords data with Google Analytics. It’s turned on by default when you create a new Adwords Account 

With auto-tagging turned on, a unique ID parameter is added to the end of your Adwords destination URLs. For example: 

If your ad (or keyword) URL is http://domain.com/product/index.htm 

Then Adwords will append a parameter such as:

 …./index.htm/?gclid=COaGrdOLECreRY75QodSWZnJw  

On some dynamically driven web sites this can cause a hiccup resulting in a Page Not Found error. 

Unfortunately most adwords advertisers rely on the ad preview features within the adwords system. However the ad preview features do not append an auto tag parameter to the URL. So the landing page can appear to load ok in the preview when it fact it fails to load correctly from the actual ads. 

True, but unfortunate, Client Story – We started working with a new retail ecommerce client not long ago whose ads were resulting in Page Not Found errors possibly for many months before we tested for it (they had been running adwords for at least two years before we began working with them). After we had their IT fix the issue their conversion rate jumped almost significantly! That error probably cost them thousands of dollars in wasted Adwords click charges and much more in missed sales opportunities. 

 

Video Demonstration of the Auto-Tagging Issue (about 4 minutes)
 

Click here to view the embedded video.

How to test for issues with Auto-tagging  

• Append ?gclid=test or &gclid=test (if your destination URL already contains other parameters) to the end of your AdWords destination URL

Examples - 

http://www.domain.com/shop/index.asp?gclid=test 

http://www.domain.com/shop/category.asp?catid=1&gclid=test 

• Paste this modified URL into your browser’s address bar, and press Enter
   
• Check the results -

If the expected landing page loads and remains loaded with no problems then you should be ok. 

If the results are anything other than the expected landing page, such as a Page Not Found error, you have a problem.

You should consider turning off Auto-tagging at least temporality while you troubleshoot the issue.  For our clients once their web developers were made aware of the issue they were able to either fix the auto-tagging issue or switch to manual parameters (discussed in the Google help document in the For More Info section below. Google refers to this as tracking clicks manually by tagging links)

See the link in the For More Info section to Google’s help page for instructions on how to disable Auto-Tagging and for their troubleshooting guide. 

Request to Google – Please, if auto-tagging is turned on, then the ad preview features should add an auto-tag too!

More Info

Google’s Help page with a link to their troubleshooting guide
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55590

Learn more about Page Note Found errors (404 errors) in our Video/Text article

We’ve been in the Internet marketing business almost 12 years now. Looking back I can tell you that our clients who have been the most successful at search marketing are those who have been able quickly implement recommendations to improve search results and conversion rates, setup landing page tests, test various offers and messages etc, and who understand that it can take many months or years to become successful at search marketing and Internet marketing in general.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a few clients who could not get recommendations or tests implemented in a timely manner leading to failure or more often delaying their eventual success for years!

Our clients who continually implemented recommendations and tests eventually succeeded.

Your Web Site Is Almost Certainly Ineffective At Converting People Who Searched On Non-Brand Keyword Phrases!

It’s virtually guaranteed that a web site that has not been improved systematically will not do an effective job of converting site visitors with little or no prior knowledge about the company or its products and services.  This includes most of the non brand keyword phrases being searched on to reach the web site (from both organic and PPC search results) as well as visitors from many other referral sites.

In a previous article I took an educated guess and said that I thought about half our new clients who had not worked at improving the conversion rates on their web sites had significant issues with this. Wrong! I’ve gone back through a few years of client data. It’s 100%!

Yes, your web site likely does a decent job of converting those who searched on your own brand phrases, indicating that they already knew about you, but for most web sites there’s just not enough people searching on their brand phrases to be successful. More importantly, don’t you want to be successful generating business from the non brand keyword phrases too? Of course you do or why would you even be focusing on search marketing at all? Certainly you’re not focusing on search marketing just to do well for you own brand phrases?

I’ve said it so many times I’m sure I sound like a broken record, but it’s not just about getting the traffic to your site. What happens after people reach your site is as important, maybe more important. You’ll need to improve conversion rates on the site, very often implement recommendations to improve conversions, implementing landing pages to test, testing offers, messaging, possibly pricing etc

You Simply Can Not Succeed At Search Marketing Without Improving Conversions on Your Web Site

So if 100% of web sites that have not been worked on to improve conversions do an ineffective job of converting site visitors who searched on non brand phrases then you are doomed to failure unless you improve conversions on the site. You must improve conversions on your web site.

Focusing only on increasing traffic to your web site for non brand phrases, via organic search (SEO) and/or PPC, will likely increase the traffic to the site, but very few of these searchers will be persuaded to become customers.

In other words your search traffic will increase, but your business will not grow very much. You’ll spend time and money to increase traffic for very little return.

How to estimate conversion rates for brand vs. non-brand keyword phrases using Google Analytics

You can get a quick look at the conversion rates for your top keywords using Google Analytics if goal tracking is step up to measure important goals such as leads or purchases or at least to measure strong indicators of imminent conversions.

From the main Google Analytics window click Traffic Sources / Keywords. Then click on a Goal Set tab (see the screen shot)

Scroll through the keywords and compare the conversion rate(s) for your brand phrases vs. important non brand phrases (phrases that are relevant and on target).

To see more than the default number of keywords (usually the top 10 phrases by visits) scroll to the bottom of the chart and select more rows in the Show Rows: drop down selector.

A More Precise Method

To be a more precise scroll to the bottom of the listing of keywords to the Filter Keyword field, choose “Containing” or “excluding” in the drop down, then type in some unique part of your brand or non brand phrases and click Go. You can enter multiple keywords by separating them with a “ | “ (it’s the upper case of the \ character located just above the Enter key).

So for example if you want to enter some Google brand phrases you might enter:

google|adwords|android

You can export the selections or keywords and calculate totals for conversion rates etc for your brand vs. non brand phrases (you can break them out by various groups of brand and non brand phrases etc)

You should expect a higher conversion rate for your brand phrases. People who search on your brand phrases knew something about you before they came to the site (possibly from referrals, print or other traditional media, or perhaps they were past clients, resellers etc) however in our experience the ratio for the conversion rates of your brand phrases vs. the non brand phrases should be not much higher than about 5 or 6 (i.e. the brand phrases should convert no more than about 5 to 6 times better than the non-brand phrases.). Much higher than this is a signal that your site may not be doing a very good job of converting people who searched on non brand phrases.

 
Do the Math – Slow Implementation Can Be a Huge Opportunity Loss, Even Leading To Failure

Unfortunately, we’ve had a few clients who could not get recommendations or tests implemented in a timely manner. Sometimes this was due to limitations with template sites that are often used within Content Management Systems and/or ecommerce sites. However, more often it was due to backlogs in IT or with a client’s independent web developer.

Some of these clients were forced to put their search marketing efforts essentially on hold for years until till they could get to a point where they can get web development tasks done quicker.

In one case, after years of frustration a client of ours has essentially fired their IT department, taking responsibility for the web site away from IT all together. They are having the web site rebuilt by an outside firm that will handle all site updates under the direction of the Marketing Department (which is where responsibility for a web site probably should lie if the site’s main goal is to increase business).

Assume that through quick implementation of conversion improvement recommendations and tests that a web site’s conversion rate doubled within a year (this is actually at the low end for most of our clients). Now assume that this improvement in the conversion rate leads to an additional $250,000 net income (income, not revenue) each of the following two years. That’s an additional $500,000 in net income over 3 years. 

Do the math using your own metrics and estimate the potential net income opportunity you’ll miss if it takes you 2-3 years just to start making progress at improving conversion rates (as has been the case with some of our clients).

Continually Work To Improve Conversion Rates for Non Brand Phrases and You’ll Eventually Succeed

I truly believe, from experience, that implementation and perseverance are the most important factors to internet marketing success and more specifically search marketing success or failure (or more often delayed success).

Clients who continually implemented recommendations and tests eventually succeeded. Those who couldn’t failed or more often delayed their success till they could implement recommendations quickly.

If you’re having issues implementing conversion improvement recommendations and tests determine why and correct it quickly or you could delay your eventual success for many years.

 
For More Info

Get Rich Quick with PPC! Sorry, PPC Success Takes Time Too. A case study of a client where our Adwords campaign initially was not converting well enough to pay off. It took a year, but we now have a successful campaign, one where the client has taken ad budget from other ad venues to fund the PPC campaign because it generates leads.

Improve the conversion rate for non-brand keyword phrases for search marking success. A Case study where a client’s PPC campaign was losing money for years because the site is not converting people who search on non brand phrases very well.

4 Initial Keys to Internet Marketing Success. This article covers 4 important keys to success, two of which are the topics of this article, implementing recommendations and tests and perseverance.

eVision’s Social Media Service

Today, Social Media (such as Facebook, twitter, blogs etc) should be an integral part of a businesses’ marketing plan.

However the implementation of Social Media can be very time consuming, so eVision has a service to help our client’s with this…

Learn about eVision’s Social Media Service

You’ve worked hard to improve your web site, but so have the top competitors in your field. Many carry essentially the same products, often with the same or very similar product information, and most offer similar features like free shipping, easy returns, satisfaction guarantees, fast shipping, great customer service, customer reviews etc.

Your site and your competitors’ sites all give a great first impression, are easy to navigate, employ effective site searches, and strive to make visitors comfortable about using the site and doing business with you. And so you and most of your competitors obtain average conversion rates.

You Can Double+ Conversion Rates

You can significantly increase the business from your ecommerce site, possibly reaching double digit conversion rates 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 PubCon internet marketing conference in November Rob Snell of Gun Dog Supply (www.gundogsupply.com) sells products for training hunting dogs) talked about how they’ve evolved their web site over the past four or five years so that it conveys that they are experts in their field. They educate their site visitors and show shoppers what to buy for different applications. They have more doubled their conversion rates according to Rob.

SEO Benefits Too

At the same time Gun Dog Supply increased their conversion rate they have seen improvements in their organic search marketing results because of the unique content they’ve added to their site which has made their product and category pages very unique compared to the competitors in the field.

Much of the content they‘ve added is being discovered by people searching for product information in the early stages of the buying cycle. This allows Gun Dog Supply to influence buying decisions unlike most ecommerce sites whose content typically appears in search results only when people are ready to buy specific products.

You can learn from what they’ve done.

They convey their expertise throughout the site -

The president, Steve Snell’s, picture is on every page along with a tag line.  Their “tag line” is everywhere and it’s written to help reinforce their expertise “We train OUR DOGS with the products we sell”.

There’s a story about Steve up high on the home page that helps convey his expertise. 

A story on the home page to
help convey Steve’s expertise

Buyers Guides. They’ve developed Buyer’s Guides for many of the product lines they carry to help their site visitors narrow down the product selection depending on the application. These informative buyers guides help visitors learn about the products and help them choose what to buy.

Buyer’s Guides help shoppers choose which product to purchase

Quick Picks. For visitors who might be overwhelmed by the many choices in a buyers guide, they often include Steve’s Quick Picks where he highlights one or more products that fit most users’ needs. Here’s an example:

Steve’s Quick Picks help users
quickly narrow selections down by application

Yes some of your vendors may not be happy that you’re telling customers what products to buy. If it increases your business – Too Bad! Tell them to read your buyer’s guides, reviews etc and see what they need to do to improve their product for that application.

Steve Says. For some specific products there’s a “Steve Says” section where Steve endorses the product and explains why he likes it, with, for example, favorite features, etc.  Here’s an example for “Tritronics No-Bark Collars

“Steve Says” why he likes a product, including favorite features, etc

Steve’s Reviews Steve develops his own reviews for some products. You might ask, “who’s going to trust a review by the guy who is selling the product?”, but Gun Dog Supply does such a good job of conveying Steve’s expertise and conveying trust that I’ll bet most potential customers trust these reviews. It helps that they offer a decent Satisfaction Guarantee.

Steve develops his own reviews for some products

Useful “How To” and other Knowledge Base Articles. They’ve developed many useful articles to help their customers learn about a topic such as “Introducing Your Dog to the Remote Beeper”or “How to stop Dogs from Barking”

Useful “How To” and Knowledge Base Articles
help shoppers learn about a product oriented topic

 Extensive Product Information and Images. For many products, Gun Dog Supply includes much more product information and images than their competitors who carry the same products.

At the top of a product page there’s the typical ecommerce layout of product image, headline, prices, customer ratings, and “Add to Cart” features, etc but there’s much more below this.

Here’s an example of a “No Bark Collar” product

Look at all the product information they include plus the many pictures of product features, images of how the product is used, as well as pictures of the product being used.

I looked at some competitors’ sites for this same product and those sites only included the typical product information and one or two images.

People who are interested in a product will likely scan this extended product information and read parts of it. This can help someone decide on buying a product, especially if you offer a great satisfaction guarantee.

It looks like Gun Dog Supply is taking the time to take many of their own images, a great idea which helps set them apart from the competition while providing additional product information that may help someone decide to buy.

Gun Dog Supply includes much more product information than most ecommerce sites which helps people learn about a product they are interested in.

Let’s look at the Crutchfield, the “electronics specialist”, web site

Here’s the web site, www.crutchfield.com

They use some of the same techniques as Gun Dog Supply.

They have a Leaning Center  with knowledge base articles, many employing video, for most of the product categories they handle.

 Crutchfield Leaning Centers help shoppers narrow down their product selection

Learning Center articles are suggested, along with a picture of each expert staff member/author, as visitors examine product pages or browse product categories, for example on the Wireless Home Video categories page.

On many category and product pages helpful articles are suggested along with a picture of an expert staff member/author

There’s a “Consult with an expert” feature on most pages that includes an image of an “expert”, a toll free number, an email link, and a “click to call” link.
 

On most pages a visitor can “Consult with an expert”

On some pages there are statements by the founder, Bill Crutchfield, along with his picture such as on this page about Hi-Fi or on the Crutchfield Signature Page

Statements by Founder, Bill Crutchfield,
build credibility and convey expertise

Just as with the Gun Dog Supply web site, Crutchfield’s site conveys their expertise and helps educate their shoppers so they can better decide what to buy.

Some tips for unique content such as Buyers Guides, “How To” and Knowledge Base Articles, Reviews etc

Promote Your Unique Content. Much of the “How to” and other knowledge base articles and possibly even some of the reviews and buyers guides can be promoted too, for example in a blog, via social media, press releases, even promoting to and allowing complementary industry web sites to use the content (with mentions/links etc to your site)

Include Phrases Searched On in the Early Stages of the Buying Cycle. This unique content will likely be indexed by search engines helping make your web pages more unique than the competition, which could lead to higher rankings. This content will also likely be returned in searches performed by people who are in the “discovery” phase, learning about product options. You might be able to grab their attention early in the buying cycle, much earlier than most ecommerce sites typically do.

Do some keyword reach to understand the buying cycle keywords and use them in your buyer’s guides, knowledge base articles etc. For example, the keywords that pay off the best and are therefore focused on within ecommerce sites are the keywords that signal someone is ready to buy NOW such as “Garmin Astro 220”. However the keywords used earlier in the buying cycle will tend to be much broader such as “Best gps for hunting”.

Retain These Early Shoppers. Employ methods to retain these visitors that come to your site early in the buying cycle so that they come back and buy from you not the competition, such as ways to obtain their contact info so you can keep in touch, coupons, etc.,

Summary: Convey your company’s personality on your web site and help shoppers decide what to by

When we start a new customer project we ask our clients to tell us what sets them apart from the competition and why they think their customers buy from them. Many have very compelling stories to tell. But their web sites often don’t even begin to convey that story.

Learn why your customers buy from you. Then evolve your web site to convey this and help shoppers decide what to buy with some of techniques above such as learning centers, how to articles, buyers guides, extensive product information, unique product images and video

You could improve conversion rates and improve your search marketing results by adding unique content to your site, allowing you to reach more searchers. You’ll also likely reach more searchers who are in the early stages of information gathering about a new purchase giving you the opportunity to influence what they buy and retain them until they are ready to make a purchase.

For More Info

Site Search: 6 steps to successful site search implementation (absolutely critical to ecoomerce sites.)

All About Ecommerce Shopping Carts, Merchant Credit Card Accounts, Sales Tax Collection

It’s based on the case study outlined in this article in our blog,  “Sales Killer: Cycling important messages on a home page in Flash! Proof from a client case study”

I’ve updated the case study and added some Best Practices for Animations

Highlights

• Our user testing shows few people watch an animation long enough to see multiple messages.
• Improved Conversions 300% in key adgroup for this client by “Freezing” an animation on an important message.
• Best Practices for Animations. What Our Testing Suggests

Download the slides (PDF)

If you’ll be at PubCon stop by:

Session: Increase Your Post Click Conversion Performance
Date: Wednesday November 11, 2009
Time: 11:30a 12:45p
Location: Salon B

Note – The schedule can change so check it online at www.pubcon.com/sessions.htm or check the schedule boards at Pubcon.