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| "Most e-commerce sites only convert three out of every 100 people who visit their sites." |
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Study by FutureNow |
Landing Page Quick Checks.
Some of the simplest but possibly the most important items to focus on while testing a landing page are:
> Bonus gifts.
> Coupons.
> p.s. messages.
> Guarantees.
> Opening sentence.
> Closing sentence.
> Images.
> Calls to action.
> Headings.
> Link text. |
| Bryan Eisenberg, co-founder of marketing consulting firm FutureNow. |
| "I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I'm not sure which half" |
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Often attributed to Lord Leverhulme the founder of Lever Brothers | |
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Greetings!
Welcome to Inside Edge - your report on the latest Digital Marketing trends and advancements that can turn your business into a more profitable e-Business.
Landing Pages are Taking Off.
With increased adoption of Internet Marketing, Landing Pages are becoming an essential step in online marketing best practice. Businesses are realising that traffic to their home page is not resulting in a good conversion into customers.
If you are spending money on online advertising like pay per click to bring in traffic, it is surely worth that extra effort to give your business every opportunity to translate that traffic into customers. And then in turn into revenue and profit. Read on to find out how you can do this.
Creating Effective Email Newsletters.
For more information on these or any other aspect of improving your Digital Marketing give me a call sometime, 01422 823 075.
Janet Smith
Making Websites Work |
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Digital Marketing Top Tips:
To help you avoid your newsletters being classified as spam:
> Make sure your 'from' email address is recognisable.
> Don't use special characters in your subject, eg. & ? !
> Don't use brightly coloured text; avoid red and pink.
> Ensure there are no mistakes within your HTML coding.
> Use a universally available font.
> Avoid spam phrases, eg 'click here', 'free shipping'.
> Avoid multiple exclamation marks and full stops.
> Don't overuse capital letters. | |
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| To: Tech Support |
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| Subject: Installing a Husband.
Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow-down in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.
In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such
as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 and then installed undesirable programs such as Footy 5.0, Cricket 3.0 and Golf 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.
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I can highly recommend Miller's Florist. Flowers of Distinction.
  As a member of the exclusive Flowers for Business organisation Miller's Florist specialise in understanding and satisfying the floral and house plant needs of business customers.
Fresh, well presented flowers show potential clients and customers that your care about the details, are professional and like to go the extra mile. Whatever your floral requirement for business, hotels, restaurants, dentists, Miller's will work with you to make it extra special. Office flowers and plants need not be expensive and with Miller's including delivery and vase hire they represent a fantastic value, first impression. |
| Landing Pages: |
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| Because not all Traffic is Created Equal.
 With the growing adoption of online marketing methods (pay per click, email marketing, search engine optimisation) businesses are spending an increasing proportion of their marketing budgets on attracting greater numbers of quality visitors to their website. But as Jim Novo, customer data guru and co-chair of the Web Analytics Association's Education Committee comments "Not all traffic is created equal".
Just as there are several ways you might be bringing in traffic - organic search listings, pay per click, direct mail, magazine advertising, a radio or TV commercial or even just your business card; there are just as likely to be several different types of website visitor, each with different needs and requirements.
If you are spending a portion of your budget on driving traffic it is definitely worth spending a little more on that traffic in order to make sure some of them turn into customers and deliver a good return on investment to your business. Bringing visitors to your home page won't necessarily get them to take the action you desire. So what will?
A focused, custom-made Landing Page.
 Landing pages are really taking off and if you haven't already considered it, it is probably time for your business to take advantage of this simple, yet highly effective tool. Stefan Tornquist, Research Director at MarketingSherpa quotes statistics indicating that "an improved landing page can result in an average 40% increase in conversion".
Landing pages must cater to different types of visitors. Depending upon where they have come from, these visitors will have varying amounts of information about your company. For example, a link from a search ad brings in a relatively 'uninformed' visitor as compared to a more engaged visitor who clicks on a link in your company newsletter. The landing page for these two kinds of visitor must be dynamically designed to cater to each of their needs and lead both to convert.
Web analytics research shows that visitors to a landing page can broadly be sectioned into four groups:
- Those who come to the page and click away in less than 5 seconds.
- Those who linger for a few minutes, then click away.
- Those who abandon the page mid-way through conversion; they start, but don't complete the desired action (filling a form, making a purchase, downloading a whitepaper or a free trial).
- Those who finish the process and convert.
Which Landing Page visitor must you Focus on, and why?
 All of the above groups are important because they have at least taken the trouble to click a link and look at your landing page. Tornquist explains that it makes sense to initially focus on the first and third group.
The second group clicks away after some time so you know that they did make an informed decision (We're not suggesting you ignore this group, but simply recommending that you focus your priorities). The fourth group is now a valuable contact or customer and you must nurture it for continuing business.
The first group clicks away very quickly, without even giving your page a chance. You should make modifications that will orient them in space, time and meaning of the page so that you can at least move them into the second group of people who stay longer.
The third group signals a red alert - something is definitely amiss on your page if people chose to convert and were not compelled to complete their action. Is your online form too long? Is your delivery policy unclear? Is there a broken link? Do visitors come across something they may not have been expecting? It could be any one of these or more that puts your visitor into the third group who abandon the conversion process.
 With increasing complexity, testing the efficiency of a landing page is critical to your understanding of how you can generate a Return on Investment. As WSI Internet Marketing Consultants we have access to training, resources and experts from industry leading firms like Google, Yahoo! and MarketingSherpa to help you design and test business generating landing pages for your business.
To make sure your landing page speaks to your visitors and leads them to conversion , contact us today - 01422 823 075 .
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| Email Newsletters: |
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| Designed for Impact.
 Putting how to do it aside, if your email newsletter is well designed with images, graphics and colour it will generate more interest than a text only one. The benefits of sending html based email newsletters are self-evident; turning appropriate words into links increases the interactivity of your email newsletter and the chances of someone visiting your website.
When creating your email newsletter you should consider:
Your ability to use corporate design across both your email newsletters and your website consolidates awareness of your business. Perhaps most importantly, an html email newsletter can be tracked; who opens it, who visits your website, who forwards it, who contacts you, valuable data to help you get more customers.
However, not everyone can, or chooses to, view html emails. It is important to offer a text based version of your email newsletters for anyone who chooses it. As we increasingly see people surgically attached to a mobile device for reading their emails, this becomes even more essential.
Good use of graphics and images really add a quality to the look of your email newsletter. Placing text in image files gives you complete control of the layout of your newsletter on the recipients computer, but only if their email service doesn't automatically block images!
Images should be relevant to the content and your newsletter should be readable and make sense even if all the images and graphics are blocked. Top of article.
When designing your email newsletters you must consider the different ways people view them. For example, as mentioned above, many people may view your newsletter on the small screen of a mobile device, many others may use a preview pane to view emails, others may have several tool bars at the top of their screen, compressing their viewing window. Try to ensure your layout can communicate your most important messages regardless of how it is viewed.
Take great care if you are tempted to incorporate graphs, multi-columns and lots of images. Make good use of the technology available for design and layout but simple is often the best route to ensure everyone gets your message. Top of article.
Newsletters should always include multiple calls to action - links to your website, downloading a white paper, contacting you, taking part in a competition, taking advantage of a promotional offer. You should always attempt to answer the questions:
- Why should I read this newsletter?
- Why should I agree to continue to receive this newsletter?
Answers should be obvious, try to plant a little fear that if they don't read it or they 'unsubscribe' they will be missing out. Top of article.
Your logo and company name should be prominent within your newsletters, ideally at the top. Also, make sure you provide several contact possibilities: phone numbers, email addresses and website addresses should be included as minimum requirements. Better response can also be generated if you include the names of people to contact. Top of article.
There is no denying that spam filters are having an increasing impact on email marketing. It is paramount that the design of your email newsletters gives you the best chance of actually making it to your contacts' inbox. Top of article.
To give your email newsletter the best chance of success you need to be consistent with all your marketing messages. Telling readers about a promotion in your newsletter and then linking to your home page where there is no sign of the promotion is not going to work (see Landing Page article!) How many times have you received a newsletter that interests you enough to click on a link only to arrive at a website that fails to deliver on the promise? I bet you didn't become a customer. Top of article.
One of the real benefits of online marketing is that you need never quote Lord Leverhulme again. By simply dividing your database randomly into quarters and having two offers and two designs you can start to learn about your contacts' preferences and start to refine future campaigns, adopting those elements that work best.
Most of this sounds simple enough, but it's amazing how many businesses fail to undertake even the most basic of these principles. If you take advantage of a little bit of technology and plan your campaigns thoroughly you can steal a lead on your competitors.
 As a WSI Internet Marketing Consultant I recommend the Constant Contact email marketing service. It requires no technical knowledge, is simple to use and extremely cost effective. Try it yourself, free for 60 days.
01422 823 075 or 07785 255 042
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| From: Tech Support. |
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| Subject: Installing a Husband.
First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system.
Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and don't forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.
But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta.
Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources).
Also do not attempt to reinstall Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Cooking 3.0 and Hot Lingerie 7.7.
Good Luck. |
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If you made it all the way to the bottom, well done! Quite a lot to take in.
To help you prioritise what you should do to improve the business generating performance of your website, do give me a call - 01422 823 075 or 07785 255042.
Janet Smith
WSI Consultant
Digital Marketing
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