No, seriously folks, this is big news:

Pew Research, a nonprofit “fact tank” that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world, reports today that the percentage of internet users who use search engines on a typical day has been steadily rising from about one-third of all users in 2002, to a new high of just under one-half (49%).

With this increase, the number of those using a search engine on a typical day is pulling ever closer to the 60% of internet users who use email, arguably the internet is the all-time killer app…

In other words, your customers are using Search every day more than they did before and are becoming more sophisticated about their response once they land on your website – and on your competitors’ sites.

It’s high noon to make sure your landing pages are the best in town!

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This is the sixth posting in a series aimed at helping you as a Marketer evaluate conversion optimization services providers so you make the best possible decision of who to hire. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here and Part 5 here.

Q6: “What is expected from my team?”

When you hire a conversion optimization services provider, you must start off with a clear understanding of what will be expected from you and your team. If you don’t have this clear understanding, you may be in for a nasty surprise in terms of Read the rest of this entry »

This is the fifth posting in a series aimed at helping you as a Marketer evaluate conversion optimization services providers so you make the best possible decision of who to hire. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here and Part 4 here.

Q5: “Do you work with any of my marketing services partners?”

Your conversion optimization services provider must be able to work with your multiplicity of marketing partners and other services providers, and in this posting we explain why.

First, some context.

While we strongly believe that Conversion Optimization is crucial to a strong and profitable demand-generation strategy (and this is the focus of what we at WiderFunnel Marketing do), we are not narcissistic enough to believe Read the rest of this entry »

This is the fourth posting in a series aimed at helping you as a Marketer evaluate conversion optimization services providers so you make the best possible decision of who to hire. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

Q4: “Do you follow a specific methodology to optimization?”

There are lots of people “out there” who know how to use tools like Google Website Optimizer, Omniture’s Test & target, Optimost and such. (And this is especially true of Google Website Optimizer because it’s an easy to learn, free tool). However, very few of those people know how to increase revenues consistently by using the tool.

To know how to increase revenues by using a testing tool Read the rest of this entry »

This is the third series in a series of posting aimed at helping you as a Marketer evaluate conversion optimization services providers so you make the best possible decision of who to hire. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Q3: “What testing software does the services provider recommend?”

While technology is only a piece of the Conversion Optimization puzzle – it is a very important piece.

I have often listened to presentations where service providers use “testing” language but use no tools to run experiments. As a result, they are delivering nice-looking web designs but for sure they are not delivering statistically valid results!

(And, as anyone who has been reading our case studies or following this blog knows Read the rest of this entry »

I received a direct mail piece this morning advertising SMX East and it has a handy list of ‘6 essentials for search marketing success‘ on the front cover.

In the opinion of SMX, they are: Read the rest of this entry »

Interesting stats supporting the importance of keeping your key content above the fold recently from the Vertical Response blog. These stats are for email clicks, but the conclusion has been demonstrated repeatedly to be one of the top factors in website conversion rates too.

The email stats show:

43-60% of all clicks in an email happened in the first article which is mainly above the fold. Caveat, we have been using “anchor tags” above the fold to give readers a tease of what’s below. We think it has helped our click rate overall. (I try to lead with what I think is the strongest to pull readers in.)

15-30% of all clicks happened on the 2nd article.

6-8% of all clicks happened in the third article.

People avoid scrolling, reading and generally exerting effort so the Conversion Guru will design landing pages (and emails) to make your desired Actions happen above the fold.

The Google Website Optimizer team is looking for your feedback and putting some cash on the table to get it. If you give them an hour of your time to do some usability testing you’ll get a $100 adwords credit.

Sign up here

This is the second in a series of postings aimed at helping you as a Marketer evaluate conversion optimization services providers so you make the best possible decision of who to hire:

Q2: What increase in conversion rates should I expect and can you guarantee it?

The conversion rate lift you can expect will vary, of course, depending on how poorly your current landing page (or website) is designed and Read the rest of this entry »

At a time in the economic cycle when lead generation and sales enablement is most needed, when Marketers should be rethinking every investment they make and how it helps their company increase sales, a new and important study by the CMO Council comes out reporting that less than 20% of respondents say their Sales and Marketing organizations are extremely collaborative. (Read the report here) Read the rest of this entry »