Want to be successful online? Drive traffic and convert that traffic to leads & sales.

Yesterday I presented at a luncheon hosted by Women in Ecommerce down in Fort Lauderdale. Our topic was “Getting your site ready for the holidays”. What a great group of women all focused on improving the performance of their online stores and websites! My presentation was only 30 minutes so I had to really boil it down to some basics. And in doing so, I really cut to the chase: drive traffic and convert that traffic.

If you want to be successful online then you need to drive traffic and you need to convert that traffic to leads or sales. That’s it. I will put myself out on a limb and go as far as to say that everything else is a distraction. That’s right. When you are in charge of online marketing or you are focused on your company’s website, there are a myriad rabbit holes you can go down to distract yourself. Seriously. The web is some complicated stuff and getting it all to work together can be tricky. Don’t get distracted by things that aren’t going to ultimately yield more traffic and help you convert that traffic. Whenever something comes across your radar ask yourself which bucket the activity or tactic belongs in: traffic or conversions? Not a loose correlation to one of those buckets. A a strong, immediate correlation—it’s traffic optimization or conversion optimization. If you can’t neatly put it in a bucket, if it is vague, if the payoff is iffy, bag it and move on.

Keep your eye on the prize. 

3 Reasons to connect with us at Conversion Conference

We’re one week away from Conversion Conference East, and I couldn’t be more excited. Here’s a sneak peak look at our booth. What do you think?

Our in-person booth:

If you’re going to be at the conference, here are 3 reasons you should drop by our booth:

• Learn to fish. Pick our brains on how to get more bite out of your conversion initiatives. 
• Get your 5 minutes of fame. We’ll be rolling our Flip cam all day, and want to make you a star. Tell the world why you love conversion optimization!
• Grab the best swag in town. Pens are boring and notepads are old school (you have a laptop, right?). Grab one of our LiveBall hoops and have something fun to add to your office when you return home.

Our virtual booth:

If you’re unable to make it out this time, here are 3 ways to connect with our “virtual booth”:

• Follow us on Twitter. I’ll twitpic and tweet the most interesting things I see and hear. It will be just like you’re there! I’m @ioninteractive!
• Subscribe to our feed. I’ll also be doing some live blogging from the event. Follow along with the ion team’s adventures right here by subscribing!
• Do you like us? Yes/No.  There is a lot of debate over how much a Facebook “like” is worth to a company. I’m more concerned with how much “liking” us is worth to you. I promise to deliver great content in your stream from Conversion Conference! Give me a chance by visiting our page and liking ion. 

I really hope to see all of you either in person or at one of our virtual hubs! 

Fantastic 5: Online Marketing Reads of the Week

It’s Summer Friday in our office which means we get to spend the last hour of the day hanging out with other ionians doing fun activities.

Each department has the opportunity to plan out one summer Friday — this week it’s Anna and Justin’s turn… and they’re being sneaky. We received an email from them that said “details to come upon departure.” What could it be?! Where are we going?! Stay tuned for pics on the ion Facebook page as we all discover what surprise is in store. 

In the mean time, check out these five great online marketing reads of the week:

Top 11 E-Commerce Usability & Optimization Resources | Baymard Institute

Partially biased because this list does include the blog you are reading now; however, completely agree with all of the other great resources listed. Grab these feeds and stay up to date on all the latest trends in UX and conversion optimization.

Landing Page Optimization Checklist: Less is More | SeeWhy

Recap of Tim Ash’s recent presentation at the Conversion Leaders Summit. Great points for new conversion optimizers, and a solid reminder for those who have been in the game a while. 

B2B Landing Page Optimization Help: Why a Fresh Pair of Eyes Can Increase Leads & Sales | PPC Summit

This post suggests having “fresh eyes” or even “outside of the marketing department” eyes look over your landing pages for a new perspective. Of course, we would add - have lots of new eyes look over your landing pages and suggest changes through testing results! 

Communicating ROI | BtoB Mag

“The holy grail is marketing’s contribution to closed business.” — Brian Kardon, CMO of Eloqua. Great post detailing the need for marketers to “speak the language of revenue and sales.”

The Pros and Cons of Link Begging | Wordstream

This posts asks whether link begging is a workable strategy or just a bad idea. Larry Kim of Wordstream offers advantages and disadvantages and leaves the final decision up to you.

What great blog posts did you read this week? Share a link with us in the comments! 

Evaluate your online ad strategy to increase conversions

eMarketer released a recent study that shows in Q2 2010 click rates were down but conversions were up! News like this is exactly what we like to hear.

“Conversions were up substantially, both on an annual and a quarterly basis, with 43.3% of clicks resulting in a website conversion and 6.9% in a phone call.” 

If you’re not part of the growing group of companies who are increasing their conversion rates, let’s talk about why. Here are some questions to ask yourself to evaluate your online advertising strategy:

• Is your ad copy optimized?
• Are you using landing pages? 
  • Are you using campaign landing pages for each traffic source?
• Are you continually testing your landing pages?
• Are you finding actionable data from your tests that help you optimize for conversions?
• Are you experimenting with different landing experiences (landing pages, microsites, conversion paths)?

If you answered no to any of these questions, I would suggest starting with the first point to which you said no. 

All of these components are important to increasing your conversions. And they all work together to do it. 

Having one landing page, running one or only experimenting with one landing experience type won’t give you the skyrocketing lift you’re looking for. 

What have you done to increase your conversions so far this year?

Reuse, renew & recycle your landing pages

Companies that are using landing pages to their maximum potential understand that creating and testing landing pages is an ongoing process. Creating one landing page for all of your various traffic streams almost completely defeats the purpose of creating a landing page at all. The power of landing pages is that they can be so specific to the click that got the visitor there.

It may seem like a daunting or expensive challenge to create a new landing page for each traffic segment, but with the right process the return on the investment will outweigh the time and resources spent. And just because each page must be different, doesn’t mean that pages can’t just be a slightly modified version each other. In fact, to effectively manage your time and resources, I would highly suggest having such a process in place. 

This is particularly important for companies that invest a lot of resources in creating complex or advanced pages. Investing so much time and money into one page will often leave you feeling very attached to that page. You will be hesitant to drop that page if is doesn’t perform will because you will have poured so much into it.

So first, start small to test your concept and ensure it converts well. If it does, then re-use that page as much as you can! It would be a huge waste to not use your complex/advanced page(s) as much as possible. Create specific variations of a concept for multiple streams of traffic. This let’s you have the bet of both worlds—customized, relevant pages without reinventing the wheel for every source of traffic. In a tool like LiveBall you can copy a landing page, make a few tweaks and take it live instantly. It’s a lot of power and flexibility, and it’s easy to execute.

Reuse, renew, and recycle your optimized landing pages to get the most out of your efforts.