Selling Out and Slacking Off

Video Marketing

So I have been tinkering with video and made Kim one for he Atlanta Realestate Buisness and soon after i did it is ranking for Brookhaven Real Estate Agent.We also have one for Wedding Favors to Go selling bottle stoppers and it is on page one for silver bottle stoppers and ranking well for bottle stoppers. So what we have learned is video is really cool and it works.

SEO is Voodoo?

I honestly can’t believe some people still think that SEO is some kind of black magic or voodoo. I remember back in the old days of 2004 Brad Fallon and I were out hocking SEO services and we got the same reaction. Heck Home Depot looked at us like we had built a time machine and asking Nardelli to take it for its initial test drive.  But this is 2008 Google stock is over $500 a share and I still come across post that people think SEO guys are charlatans and scam artists. So let me set the record straight. SEO is for real and the tips and tricks used work and are necessary. If you are on the other side of this debate the reason you are is you don’t get it so I will spell it out for you.  This part is high on the redundancy factor but it must be done. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Now is a in principle often paraphrased as “All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one.” In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest hypothetical entities. It is in this sense that Occam’s razor is usually understood. Understand. Ok keep up. Lets look at the first two words “search engine”. These are the machines, like Google, that use complex algorithms, that’s math to your nonbelievers, that retrieve information off of a computer system. So now that we got that straight lets focus on the second word “optimization” now that is the idea of trying to find maxima and minima of a function. Since our function is to have our site rank well on the SERP’s we will focus on the maxima. For example if we were doing NASCAR optimization we would want to optimize our race car to win the race. Really low drag coefficient, good sticky tires, solid engine and so forth. So since we are doing Search Engine Optimization we want our web site to win on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. We want it to be optimized to win the search engine race. There are two parts to SEO, on page factors and off page factors. Or what you do to your site and what you do on your site. More on these later but you have to do both to rank well. So here is where I end the debate since there are Search Engines and they are built on mathematical function you can optimize your web site to work in conjunction with there algorithms then SEO is real.

From Creative to Conversion

What, how, and why conversion rates are an important part of your creative message. Determining your conversion rate is one of the most important metrics in determining the success of your campaigns. If you can’t determine accurately the rate at which your campaigns are achieving its desired results, you can’t make improvements to it.First, if you don’t know what a conversion rate let me explain, it is the percentage of unique exposures that take the desired action upon engagement of your message or offer. This is the same if it is a sales letter, web site, banner ad, or online display ads as they are now called, PPC, print media, email, ECT. The desired action can be whatever you decide it to be. Click here, call us, make a purchase, download a white paper, fill out a form, whatever it does not matter it is all the same. The process by which you get your unique subjects to do that clearly is not.To figure out what your conversion rate is you can use this formula:Conversion Rate=Unique Actions/Unique ExposuresNext:Tips to increase your conversion rate and squeeze more actions out of your unique exposures

Eye Tracking and Banner Blindness

All this talk about foveal eye gaze and eye tracking has one wondering that we may be missing out on the most important part and that is ease of use. OK so you can see what people see when they come to your site and you have optimized you site to work to over come the foveal eye gaze issue but what if your site is confusing to  very audience you are trying to attract.  If customers think that some of the site information you present is really  advertising information they are likely to skip right over it or go some were else.So how do you put convert important information into a graphical banner and keep your customer from ignoring it. Simplicity and continuity. Don’t have a your site in say pink and have a big ad or discount coupon in red. Customers will bounce. For example look at these two sites selling the same items both what to engage the customer but look at site one.   The live chat button is RED and LOUD and does not flow with the rest of the theme of the site, this can cause a guest to skip right over intended objective. Yes I know you want them to buy not chat but just to give you and idea.    Or look at Wedding Favors to Go. The Live chat button compliments the site and has a better chance of being clicked, we know this because we test. When we used a bold non site related color we saw a .5% decrease in click thoughts than the same live person button with the new color. Now that may not seem like much but in the world of conversions it means everything.     

Next Page »