Archive for the ‘Conversion Optimisation’ Category

How to use AdWords Search Funnels

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Ever since Google Analytics launched, a big criticism has always been its focus on the last click in the customer journey.

As any marketer knows, a business usually reaches potential customers a few times before they finally buy. So to reward the marketing channel with the final touch point takes value away from all those other channels.

Robust, detailed tracking solutions (we use DC-Storm) provide hard evidence of these multiple touch points. Using lifecycle reports you can drill into all the keywords someone used before they finally bought from you. And if you can see these touch points, you can attribute some marketing value to them all.

Finally, AdWords and Google Analytics have wised up to this, with their recently introduced AdWords Search Funnel Reports (ASFR).

And there’s something a little bit special about AdWords Search Funnel Reports. Whilst other tracking solutions can tell you which keywords generated clicks on the customer journey, the ASFR can tell you which keywords created clicks and impressions on the customer journey. So this report can tell you when a customer saw your ad even if they didn’t click on it.

Here’s some new metrics that the ASFR reveals:

Assist clicks: These are clicks that did not lead directly to sale, but occurred in the lead up to a sale.
Assist impressions: The same as assist clicks but for when your ad appeared but was not clicked on, and did not appear immediately prior to a sale.
Path length (clicks): The number of ads clicked before a sale.
Assisted conversions: The number times a keyword or campaign played a role in the journey to a sale.
Last click conversions: The traditional metric – when a campaign or keyword was the last one before a sale.

So what are the most useful reports to look at?

To start with, try the ‘Assist clicks and impressions report’:

With this, you can find out how many times a keyword or campaign assisted a sale, whether it generated a click or an impression.

If you’ve got keywords that are great for assists, then these are good keywords to target for expansion.

Then try looking at the ‘Top Paths report’:

With this report you can identify the particular combinations of keywords or campaigns that led to a conversion. You can quickly see the customer journey that often moves from generic keyword to brand keyword.

That’s it for now

The AdWords search funnel reports can highlight much greater depth to your data. If you want Euston Digital to use AdWords Search Funnels in your PPC Search marketing, get in touch.

Tags: adwords, adwords search funnels, customer journey
Posted in Conversion Optimisation, PPC, Search Engines | No Comments »

Welcome back to Euston Digital

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

You’re probably reading this text because you’ve clicked on one of our adverts.

Last time you were on our website we attached a cookie to your browser, telling us which pages you visited.

We then used Google Remarketing to reach you when you were off doing other things online.

We can use Remarketing to get users back to your website too.

If you want find out more about Remarkeitng, or if you want to stop seeing our adverts (we can do that too!), get in touch.

Tags: remarketing, retargeting
Posted in Conversion Optimisation, Display | No Comments »

How to find out which keywords lead to phone calls

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Search Engine Advertising is great. You bid on keywords. People click on your ads. They buy from you. You know which keywords they searched with and you bid up.

Right?

Not always. Often this virtuous circle is broken, all because there are phone numbers on websites. And as soon as a website visitor picks up the phone, we can’t track them.

Up to now.

Telephone Tracking that links up with your AdWords campaigns

Euston Digital can now tell you which keywords lead to phone calls from people on your website. This means we can:

*Identify exactly which keyphrases are converting.

*Focus on high conversion keyphrases.

*Truly optimise your website for both PPC and SEO.

*Improve your website’s profitability.

How does it work?

Using some slick programming and javascript, we auto-populate your phone number place holder with a dynamic number. Our system hooks up the keyword searched with the number called. The circle is made virtuous again.

How easy is it?

In short, its very easy. We’ll do the whole thing. We’ve made the system very easy to use.

*We will set up all up

*We will install all the necessary scripts on your website

*We will tag all URLs

*We will make any changes as you need

How does it integrate with my current analytics?

We’ve already integrated the system with Google analytics, and we’re working to add it to other commonn platforms too. So you won’t need to log into multiple locations to compile your reports, it will all be available in one place.

What’s next?

To find out how we can integrate phone call tracking with your Pay Per Click Management then get in touch.

Tags: google analytics, phone call tracking
Posted in Conversion Optimisation, PPC | No Comments »

Top 12 Tips for your product pages that turn browsers into buyers

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Euston Digital doesn’t just drive vast quantities of traffic to our client’s websites. We help convert those visitors into customers.

Elsewhere we’ve given you specific advice on improving your website conversion rate. This time, we’re going to give you some tips on how to improve your product pages.

1. Product images

*Try testing out product images in use vs in the showroom
*Place product images on the right side of product pages
*If at all possible, allow customers to zoom in on the product
*Include multiple images of the product.
*Make sure the images are of a high quality. Consider having a professionally shot product image – nothing turns people away like a poor product image

2. Product description

Don’t just regurgitate what manufacturer tells you. Write concisely but engagingly about it as though you love the product.

3. Customer reviews

These can boost conversion by up to 30%. Collect reviews, but wait until you have enough before displaying them.

4. Add to cart buttons.

Get these right. We’ve spoken about cart buttons in more depth here.

5. Call to action

Have 1 main call to action. Don’t confuse the user by asking them to do too many things. ‘Buy now’, ‘get in touch’, ’sign up for our newsletter’ etc. What do you really want them to do?

6. Cross selling and up selling.

Yes its a good idea to add other complementary products to the page. But you don’t want to distract the user from buying the initial product. Consider adding other products but only use small images.

ndorse others with the statement ‘other customers buying product x also liked y’.

7. Consider varying the price.

Unsurprisingly this can have the single biggest impact on conversion rates.

8. Stock availability.

Make it clear whether an item is in stock or out of stock. If you disappoint customers buy letting them buy something you can’t supply, they’ll never come back. Stock levels can serve as a call to action (only 3 left so order now)

9. Delivery times.

Tell the user when they will have the product in their hands.

10. Feature lists

Include a feature list with every product, a list of facts about that product. Tell users what their product can do, and what’s included (or not)

EG. Bread Maker
400w
3 Baking settings
Automatic timer
1 year warranty

11. Benefit Lists.

Tell customers why it’s great. So for the features above:

400w: Enough power for home baking
3 Baking settings: Get bread just the way you want it
Automatic Timer: Get fresh bread ready for the morning
1 year warrantee: Rest assured it will be replaced.

12. Shipping charges.

Be clear what it costs to send the product. Make sure customers know what is included and what is not. If at all possible try to make it free.

Thats it.

Making changes to your product pages can yield vast improvements in conversion rate. If you want Euston digital to improve the conversion rate of your website then get in touch.

Tags: converversion optimiser, cro
Posted in Conversion Optimisation | No Comments »

How to Make the Most of Valentine’s day

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

For those of you who need reminding Valentines is now only 6 days away. Why would you need reminding? You see it everywhere. Shop windows, web pages, email reminders, it’s everywhere!

Plan your Valentines Day content

Many of you will be planning Valentines related content  or offers on your sites over the next couple of days. But it doesn’t stop there. 16th of Feb is Pancake Day, 14th of March is Mothers Day, 17th March St Patricks Day, 2nd April Easter starts.

Make the most of the Event

The question we’d like to ask is does all this ‘event’ related brand association increase conversions on your website? Of course, there will be a different answer for every product on every site.  Will the content reduce your bounce, or are many of your customers so un enthralled they’ll click away immediately? Does the themed content carry a product offer with it? Is it the offer that increases conversion rates or the theme.

Test different Messages and Landing Pages

Euston Digital can help you find the answers to these questions. If you’re planning new content themes for and future event, or just wanting to test a new layout, we can A/B test the traffic we send through and monitor conversion rates to give you the insight as to whether it’s good for conversions or not?

For a one off fee of £200 you can get information which would enable you to optimise all your future themed campaigns.

Don’t waste your time and money

Don’t waste time, labour costs and marketing budgets on campaigns that don’t improve conversion rates. Euston Digital can help you focus your spend on the marketing that delivers results.

Tags: ab testing
Posted in Conversion Optimisation | No Comments »

ReMarketing on the Google Content Network with Euston Digital

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Euston Digital are excited to be taking part in the Google AdWords Remarketing BETA.

What is Remarketing?

Lets say someone visits your travel website looking for a hotel:

They look at a few hotels, and then leave your website.

Later on that day they’re browsing a website that is part of the Google Content Network. With Remarketing, we can reach out to that person and show them an advert for your website:

The user will be reminded that they were on your website, and decides to return and buy.

Why remarket?

Remarketing has been credited with a real boost to conversion rates. Only 5%-10% of people visiting your website end up buying from you. ‘Remarketing’ targets those people who leave without buying, and nudges them back to your site. They’re already familiar with your brand, and are therefore more likely to convert.

Network Performance

Compared against other Advertising Networks, a Remarketing network outperforms in almost every case.

Campaign Results

Early results indicate that click through rates and conversion rates make these campaigns amoungst the best performing.

Scale

The Google Content network is huge. Make it work in a small way and it will really scale.

How does Remarketing work technically?

We work with Google to produce javascript tags. You will need to place these on your website, on your sign up process, and on your confirmation page.

This javascript sets a user cookie that tells Google whether:

*They’ve visited your website

*They’ve entered the sign up process

*They’ve bought something from you

We can then target those users according to which of these situations apply to them.

For example, for those users who have entered the sign up process but then left, we might want to reach them with an advert that gives them that product at a discount.

For those users who have bought something from you, we might want to reach them with an advert for a complimentary product.

Here’s  a good visual:

For more information about how Euston Digital can use Remarketing to boost your sales, get in touch.

Tags: google, remarketing
Posted in Conversion Optimisation, PPC | No Comments »

Keep people on your website using video

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

As a market leading PPC, SEO and Social Media agency Euston Digital spend lots of time and money driving traffic to our clients websites.

But getting people there is just a small part of the marketing mix. Converting those visitors into customers are what distinguishes a good website from a great one.

We work with our clients to improve their website conversion rates. An important way to do this is by using moving images and audio. That’s why we’re very pleased to announce the launch of our website video service.

We can create and deliver short videos, and place them on your website. We’ve used these videos to boost website dwell times and retain eye-attention thanks to our imaginative creative.

Here’s a short showcase:

Our video film projects range from 30 second clips to much larger projets. If you’re interested in finding out more about web video production and whether your website would benefit from having a tailored video, get in touch.

Tags: conversion rate
Posted in Conversion Optimisation, Web Video | 1 Comment »

9 Tips to boost your Website Conversion Rate

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Digital Advertising Agencies are good at sending their clients website traffic. But what happens if that traffic doesn’t turn into sales? You tend to get this:

“Don’t blame me, your website doesn’t work”

At Euston Digital, we drive bucket loads of high quality traffic to our client’s websites. For us the story doesn’t end there. Once that traffic is on their website, we work with the client to get as much of that traffic to the confirmation page.

Here’s 9 tips to help turn website visitors into website customers.

1. Product Images

*Selling an expensive product? Then provide detailed photos and images. The higher the price, the more info and images you’ll need
*Put your image gold above the fold. Don’t make people scroll..
*Use interactive (such as javascript image zoom) and video technology to showcase the product

2. Buy Now Buttons

These are one of the most important elements to boost website conversion. Here’s the rules:
*Make them eye catching by using a contrasting colour to the rest of your page.
*Make the button big and easy to read
*Make your ‘buy’ button rectangular and horizontal.
*Icons on the button can add further emphasis
*Place your buy button just to the right of the product image.
*Make sure there is at least 1 ‘buy now’ button above the fold.

3. Checkout form

*Don’t make people register on your website.
*Only ask for essential info
*Keep the form easy with big but few fields
*Reduce the number of steps in the checkout. Each time you ask visitors to progress to the next stage is an opportunity for them to exit.
*Use clear language not industry jargon
*Use an ‘expand’ jquery to reveal addition BUT OPTIONAL information that a user can leave.
*Errors: Highlight errors inline rather than with pop ups.
*Don’t reset the form if it is submitted incorrectly. Preserve all the correct bits, and highlight where the errors are.

4. Use a Progress indicator

Use a numbered line across the top of each page in the checkout to show users what stage they’re at in the registration process. It reassures them of where they are, and how far they’ve got to go before its all finished.

5. Reassure the customer with the right information

Within the checkout process the customer should have access to the answers of the following questions:

1.    Can I return the product?
2.    Can I review my order before confirming?
3.    How do I contact customer support?
4.    Are you going to charge me now?
5.    Can I revise my order later?
6.    What’s the total price including delivery?
7.    How long before it is delivered
8.    Is your website a safe place to leave my credit card details?
9.    How else can I pay?
10.     What are you going to do with my contact details? Are you going to sell them?

Remember to keep the form simple – answers to these questions should be shown on a +show or -hide basis using technology like javascript ‘accordian’

6. Gather email data so you can reach them again

It’s important that you don’t block any purchases by asking for unnecesary information. But grabbing your website visitors’ permission agreed email address allows you to build a valuable database of future propsects. These emails will form the basis of your customer community.

My three bits of advice are:

1.    Don’t force your customers to opt in their email address unless you its unavoidable.
2.    If you haven’t got opt-in permission by the time they hit the confirmation page, ask for it then.
3.    Ask for their opt in permission when you send them a confirmation email
4.    Give them the option to sign up to a newsletter without buying anything. Its the chance to get some value from visitors who don’t buy from you.

7. Where did you hear about us?

Don’t bother asking where they heard about you. Many people can’t tell the difference between a search engine and a browser. Others will have multiple sources. Most won’t remember. Many just click the top option. The information you get will be skewed enough to be almost worthless.

8. Use official stamps to build trust

Wherever possible, use the logos of independent trade bodies to add authority and reassurance to your website. Make sure to add them above the fold to minimise bounce rates.

These might be:

*Qualifications
*Industry bodies
*Affiliations
*Secure payment gateway badges
*Places you’ve been seen (like TV)
*Brand names you sell

9. Test and Test. And then test it again

Of all the advice on this blog, this is the most important. Whatever change you make, test whether it improves your website conversion rate.

At Euston Digital we use Google Website Optimiser to test website changes until we get robust, statistical proof that the changes we have made actually work.

Website Optimiser diverts a percentage of your traffic to the ‘new’ layout to find out whether website visitors have a better response to it than the original.

That’s it.

Getting visitors to your website is only half the story. Converting them to customers is what distinguishes average websites from great ones.

Follow these simple rules to improve the conversion rate of your website.

If you’d like to know more about how Euston Digital can improve your website conversion rate, then get in touch.

Tags: conversion rate, web design
Posted in Conversion Optimisation | 9 Comments »