Archive for the ‘Improving Conversion’ Category

Are you one of the 60.3% that have redesigned your eCommerce site in the past year? Or one of the 74.7% that plan a redesign in the next year?

As the pile grows of discarded sites, it begs the question – why throw out your site and launch a costly redesign when optimisation could save you money and get you better results?

Trust talented writer Robert Gorell to create a metaphor linking a derelict UFO resort in Taiwan with the countless sites abandoned every day, every quarter, by businesses trying to keep up with the ‘Joneses’.

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The Agency Paradigm:

Back in October 2007, Budget Rent A Car was using an agency to drive their Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign.  Even though Budget’s media cost exceeded their revenue, Budget thought nothing of it.  It was a cost of marketing online, and if Budget wanted to be visible in Google, it was a necessary evil.  Budget had the same mindset for PPC as they did with offline marketing.  The Agency would add it to their communication mix to ensure the “Budget” brand was in everyone’s face, whether people were looking to rent a car or not. 

The “Push Marketing” paradigm to the Nth degree.

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I am going to admit something.  I sometimes have a tendency to drive fast.  I can’t control it, call it an innate need.  When I was a youngster  I rode my tricycle fast, when I was pre pubescent, I rode my skateboard fast, and when I was a teen, I rode my ten-speed fast.  In those days, the worst thing that would happen is the odd scraped knee.  

Now that I have a car which has a tendency to go fast (it’s not my fault), there is the rare occasion when the police disagree with my interpretation of following the rules of the road.  The result?  A speeding fine!

Being a responsible adult and doing my part to contribute to the Government’s unlimited pot of money, I wanted to pay the fine online.  I am too busy to post a cheque, and couldn’t even tell you where my cheque book is.  I haven’t seen one in years.   I head to the New Zealand Police website hoping to find a simplistic method to pay the fine.  I budget 5 valuable minutes out of my important day to do the right thing.

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This was scary stuff for Warner Music. It was their first attempt in creating a true multi channel strategy with the incorporation of an online plan with eCommerce being the only method to purchase the CD set. The pressure was on for Warner Music not only to do something, but to do it right. Their colleagues around the world regularly apply online channels to sell concert tickets, apparel, and music.

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It has been suggested that one of the greatest accomplishments of the Web is it’s ability to spit out a multitude of data on our customers’ behaviour – far more than is readily available offline.

No matter how solid or reliable, the data alone isn’t much of an achievement. We don’t marvel at how solid or reliable the brick is that the Ancient Egyptians used. We marvel at what they did with it. We marvel at the structures - The Great Pyramids of Egypt.

There are multiple schemas to which we can base our Great Pyramids of Data. Firstly, we will touch on one of the most well known conceptual pyramids in business (but maybe one of the least used), and then briefly introduce three more that can help to build insights into customer behaviour on the web.

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In the wonderful world of Advertising, Agency’s typically adopt or pick up “buzz words” in order to bamboozle clients.  This is done to make them sound as if they are at the leading/cutting edge of the advertising world with the hopes to secure more business.  The web is no different. 

We at Exceed Online and Alkemi New Zealand are now seeing and hearing everyone use terminology such as “Persuasion” and “Conversion”, to achieve the same.  What’s funny is the “buzz word users” truly don’t understand the meanings of each term nor do they understand how to apply each to a client’s website and strategic marketing principles. 

For those of you who have these words shoved in your face, please read on.

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Exceed Online is proud to announce the launch of Yourway Car Rentals, a fully online Car Rental business with two locations based in Auckland and Christchurch. The Senior Management team of Budget Rent A Car New Zealand approached Exceed Online stating they have plans to take on the third tier car rental market, and felt an online business model was the best approach. The Exceed team felt there was potential to be involved with something special. What made the project more interesting was they guidelines under which the project must follow:

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If you were to review the common e-Commerce website in New Zealand it appears that selling online is defined as having poor product images displayed with a price, through in a small “add to cart” button indiscriminately hidden at the bottom of the page, only viewable once visitors scroll a meter down the page.  Hey, who cares, New Zealand is selling online!

The concept of buying vs selling refers to the differences in your visitor’s buying process, and your selling process.  The greater the alignment of the buying and selling processes, the greater the success.   The challenge lies in understanding the dichotomy between the two.   

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When someone clicks on your Pay per Click ad, promotional email or organic search result, they have caught the scent.

Ensuring the message on your landing page or conversion path matches the start of the scent ensures an early gain in momentum.

Message Matching

Once you establish the scent and have the visitor follow it, it becomes all too easy to have the scent dissapear from the nose of your visitor.

Enter message matching…

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Almost everyone who drives traffic to a website knows and uses the term ‘landing page’.

But when is a landing page not a landing page?

Well, when it’s a conversion path of course.

Let me explain…

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