may 2013
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DOUBLING YOUR SALES WITH SCARCITY
EUGENE WARE
>> THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD, KINDLE FIRE, ANDROID AND THE WEB
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INTERNET UPDATE
THE
STATE OF THE INTERNET In this section of Internet Marketing Magazine our editor Greg Cassar cover’s the facts and provides expert commentary on what are the big plays that have recently happened online and how they affect you. What is Bitcoin? Good question, and not one that is easy to answer. In short it’s a new decentralized digital currency that is not controlled by any Government or ‘World Bank’.
complex algorithms. The whole system is designed so that bitcoins are released slowly into the ecosystem and the value of the currency is not destabilised.
In theory it’s a more pure system because there are protocols in place so that it can’t just have more and more of it created, but time will tell with that one.
It sounds all very futuristic but its slowly becoming a reality with some influential players like Wiki Leaks and Wordpress now accepting Bitcoins as cash.
Bitcoin is an online currency without a physical presence. You get Bitcoins by having your computer mine
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Watch this 3 minute video below from Mark Fennell and Duncan Elms as they do a great job on explaining this complex new phenomenon.
Online Fraud Continues to Hurt eRetailers With Internet Marketing Magazine’s sister Marketing Agency we work with growing many eCommerce stores. One of the big trends that we’ve noticed especially in the last 12-24 months has been the rise of online fraud.
multiple machines to perform tasks. Botnets are often created by hackers developing and distributing malware that once activated allows the computer to be commanded and controlled by the botnets operator (the hacker). A large botnet has been attempting to break into WordPress websites around the world by continually trying to guess the username and password to get into the WordPress admin dashboard. This has affected almost every major web hosting company around the world in the last month. These attacks are called ‘Brute force’ attacks and have reached epidemic levels. Some hosting providers had to lock out their own customers from administering wordpress sites by denying access to login during the worst of the attack whilst they worked on additional defence strategies.
The most common online fraud we see is the use of stolen credit cards to purchase high value resellable items like consumer electronics. CyberSource, a unit of Visa recently said in its annual report that retailers revenue that was online fraud increased over the past two years to reach an esti- mated $3.5 billion in 2012. This figure has risen 30% since 2010. International online orders also have a higher fraud rate, the report says. For the 54% of survey respondents who accept international online orders, the fraud rate last year for orders placed outside of North America was 1.6%, twice the overall e-commerce fraudulent rate of 0.8%.
If you own a wordpress site there are several things that you can do to decrease the probability of your site being compromised. These include but are not limited to: • Upgrade your wordpress version to the latest eCommerce retailers now have a wide range of version tools available to them to help detect fraud. These • Upgrade your plugins and theme files to the include software that predicts the likelihood of a latest version transaction being fraudulent; known stolen credit • Remove any inactive themes as they are still card databases; order velocity checking and manuvulnerable to be hacked/exploited even if they al methods such as contacting credit card owners. are not being used • Change your default login username from the ‘admin’ username Major Brute Force Attacks against Wordpress • Set very tight passwords • Install the ‘Login Limits Attempts’ plugin and Some quick background info: A botnet is a collecother relevant WordPress security plugins. tion of Internet-connected programs running on internet marketing magazine may 2013
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Amazon Coins to be given away by the Tens of Millions It seems we have a bit of a ‘virtual currency’ theme running throughout the ‘State of the Internet’ update this month with Amazon soon to release its ‘Amazon Coins’.
choose to pay with a credit card or using Coins. Amazon Coins can’t be used for subscriptions, and customers won’t be able to spend Coins on Kindle books, music from Amazon MP3, or anything else Amazon offers. Amazon Coins cannot be cashed out or exchanged between customers, so the term “currency” is a bit of a stretch.
Amazon Coins is a new virtual currency for U.S. customers to purchase apps, games, and in-app items on the Kindle Fire. When Amazon Coins launches in May, Amazon will give out tens of millions of It seems the real reason to launch this new paydollars in Amazon Coins to customers to spend on ment methodology is as a way to drive more volKindle Fire apps, games, or in-app items. ume and velocity in digital goods purchases on the Kindle Fire by letting customers try out the buying process there for free in the hope that they will get hooked. Wordpress Turns 10 The Internet moves at a very fast pace. The widest spread development platform online is only 9 years old. Webmasters and geeks all round the world will be celebrating and partying when on May 27, 2013 WordPress turns 10.
Developers will still receive the same royalty payments regardless of what payment method is used. One Amazon Coin is worth one cent, so if an app costs $2.99 it will cost 299 Amazon Coins. For customers, it’s an easy way to spend money on Kindle Fire apps and games. They’ll be able to purchase as they do now, but with the ability to
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It was first released on May 27, 2003, by founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little as a fork of b2/ cafelog. Christine Selleck Tremoulet, a friend of Mullenweg, suggested the name WordPress. Wordpress in now largely developed by the development community surrounding it.
From the Desk of the Editor Good news for iTunes lovers in that we will be going live with the ‘Internet Marketing Magazine’ podcast in the next month. It will contain the audio from the best of the Interviews we’ve done over the last 2 or so years and some new stuff as well. We’ve had some great in-depth conversations with some pretty switched on marketers, so being able to now carry those interviews around in your pocket will be a great thing for those of you who like to consume marketing knowledge whilst on the go. As the Internet Marketing Magazine community has continued to grow we’ve had more requests at our related Marketing Agency from business owners to assist them online than we can physically handle. So in order to help more of you get access to the right information for success online we’ve started analysing the types of requests that have been coming in and will in the very near future record some new training on those subjects we are getting the most requests for. Keep a look out for those in the weeks and months to come. If you haven’t got access to the member’s area please feel free to do at http://internetmarketingmag.net/become-member/ (it’s free). This
month’s complete audio interview with Eugene Ware has now been added. It has lots of learning’s in it that were not included in the magazine, so be sure to check it out. A special thanks to those who have left reviews in the apple platforms as it really helps us out. If you are getting good value from Internet Marketing Magazine and you can spare 1 minute of your time to click this link to give us a quick honest review that would be greatly appreciated (click ‘view in iTunes’ then scroll down and click ‘write a review’, thanks :). We hope you get great value from Internet Marketing Magazine. Wishing you the best of success online, Regards,
GregCassar Greg Cassar Internet Marketing Strategist & Editor Internet Marketing Magazine
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internet marketing magazine may 2013
F O R E B AY
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EXPERT INTERVIEW
DOUBLING YOUR SALES WITH SCARCITY
EUGENE WARE
An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg Cassar Eugene Ware is the CEO and founder of Noble Samurai. The makers of the popular market research market Samurai with over 500,000 users and 70,000 customers in just four short years. Eugene was a marketing consultant for the leading property investing portal Propertyinvesting.com where he launched several products that created $570,000 in 37 minutes, and another one which was $960,000 in less than 7 days. Eugene also co-created Real People Real Income Product with Ed Dale, which is the forerunner of The Underachiever Method with Frank Kern. Eugene’s background in technology and expertise in marketing has lead him to be considered by some to be the mad scientist of the internet marketing world. Who is Eugene Ware and can you tell us is a little bit of your story? Eugene: I try to keep a relatively low profile because from past experience I’ve really seen the down side of trying to build a brand around a personality or name. Doing so makes it difficult to sell a business later on. My background is in technology. I started out knowing nothing about sales and marketing. I really saw online business as something that could really help me, and help out a lot of other people escape from the rat race. I really worked out that sales and marketing is absolutely the number one thing that could help boost your business. Then I did a lot of use the word ‘ninja’. So our first idea was to really study, and a lot of courses, and made a lot of mis- build the brand around that. takes to learn what works and what doesn’t work out in online marketing. Then my wife had a go at me and she said you can’t name your business around being a ninja because Greg: You were talking about brand. I really these guys are assassins. They kill people for money liked your vision with starting with the end in and that is not necessarily the brand values you mind when discussing building to sell. Building a want to reflect. brand is obviously very important. Was the Samurai brand the intention right from the word go, or So it evolved to the Samurai brand - it was perfect did it evolve over time? as it stood for people who are educated, principled people that would fight for the underprivileged, Eugene: It was partly intentional and partly and live by a strict conduct and ethics. That I think good fortune like all good things. There was and really summed up what we’re about trying to be still is a very popular term at the moment that is - a light in a pretty dark ‘online wealth creation used to describe a cool new software tool or mar- space’, and not lie to people about what it takes to keting trick - they say that it is a ‘ninja tool’ or just be successful.
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What does Market Samurai do for the business owner or Internet Marketer? Eugene: If you ask most people they would probably say that Market Samurai is an SEO keyword research tool, and it does that well. But that is not its background. Market Samurai stemmed out of a big problem, which is to help people more reliably pick markets to compete in online. I was working on the Real People Real Income product with Ed Dale. We had this problem where we had this incredible step-bystep course which taught people who had no idea exactly what to do to create an e-book; to create a sales letter; to create all of the marketing associated with creating an information product it. It was an identical process.
MarketSamurai.com
Eugene: Well the sad thing is it was not the product because the person that did the best actually had the worst product in We had three people go through my opinion. It wasn’t the marit and they followed the exact keting because we helped them same process, and nothing else write the copy for the sales lethad changed just the markets ter, and the process was exactly that they chose and they got the same. And what we really three very different outcomes. discovered is that it was the marOne of them broke even; one of ket at the end of the day. them lost money from day zero; and another person just started So you could be a brilliant marmaking a bunch of money from keter, but if you are in a bad market you are still going to get day one. mediocre or average results. And the sad thing was that all You can be a really average marof these people put in the three keter in a really great market months or six months of hard and you can make a lot of money. work to produce this product, Part of that is what Market Samuand it just seemed relatively ran- rai helps you to do and this is the way I look at it anyway. It helps dom why... you identify the market. In online Greg: Was it the market that was marketing, markets are essendifferent, or was it the individu- tially keywords, so people type al’s marketing, or a combination in keywords to find stuff online, or even find Facebook groups or of the two? whatever it is.
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So we created a tool that helps you identify the right keywords to be targeting your website. Market Samurai essentially allows you to put in some keywords you might be looking to search for. It helps you filter out these keywords by a whole range of different criteria to identify the keywords that are best for your business. These can then be utilized for creating web content, optimizing your site, and for advertising. Google has really changed the SEO game with Panda and Penguin updates in the last year or so. What are your thoughts on best practice modern SEO in 2013 and beyond? Eugene: I think there’s two ways to look at what has happened. One is in one way nothing has changed and in another way everything has changed.
Google publishes this set of Webmaster guidelines/policies, and they have for many many years, and it shocks me about how many people do not read these things. They listen to what some people will say on the forums, or they are picking up a new product, but they never really read what Google says are acceptable practices. So in that sense, if you’ve been following those guidelines, then you are probably unaffected for the most part. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is that there have always been ways to get yourself ahead - particularly around link building, that have worked very effectively. The big game changer has really been that in the past if you got caught doing things which Google doesn’t want you to do then the worst that will happen is that all of the work that you’ve been doing that would turn the dollar back to zero. You would still probably drop in the rankings, but it is just like that work had been undone.
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you could be a brilliant marketer, but if you are in a bad market, you are still going to get mediocre or average results.
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Whereas, what has happened now effectively is that the way that you’ve been building links in the past can actually be poisoning your website and can have a negative impact on your rankings now. We’re certainly seeing a lot of people where it is actually better just to start a new better website rather than trying to recover one that has been lost in the past, so that’s been the big change. Greg: I think there’s also the focus now on content creation - it has always been there, but definitely if you take out all of that inbound linking where people used to effectively be able to buy their way to the top by having the most money to spend on the best SEO companies and the best inbound link strategies. Whereas now I actually think that the changes are really good and fair because if you produce better content than me, and your site is more relevant and people are getting more value from it then your site is going to rank better than mine in theory. So it is more of a natural ecosystem. Eugene: Yes so it’s really an opportunity in disguise because potentially what has happened with SEO is that it is now less around tricks and algorithms, and ratios, and numbers. It has basically now boiled down to marketing. So if you’ve actually got a solid foundation in marketing and in creating value for people you actually can do quite well.
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With SEO now what you are trying to do is move away from optimizing for certain changes to optimizing for customers engagement. As you mentioned content marketing is really a big thing that is really taking off now - putting out fantastic content looking at how you can do that in a leveraged way. I think that there are ways that you can get a lot of bang for your buck by taking the content that you are already doing and syndicating it. So for example we are doing this recording at the moment, it is going to turn into an article and turn into blog posts on your website, plus Podcasts on iTunes. So its about just getting the stuff out everywhere and not for back link sake, but just to actually get the stuff in front of an audience. Then you want to optimize all of your content to promote engagement with Facebook and Twitter and like buttons and competitions to really promote this user engagement. At the moment I’m seeing a lot of people getting a lot of really good results from video. So, just little short videos and sticking them on YouTube. And doing a little bit of SEO you might even be able to do a few back links just from a page that you happen to have it embedded in or something to that video just to give it a little bit of love. We’ve got a product called Article Samurai which is a content syndication product. But a lot of people are using Article Samurai to build some links to a YouTube video, and are seeing really good
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results in getting the video ranking. Because essentially YouTube is the number two search engine if you look at it that way as well as obviously showing up pretty highly in the search results.
social proof, scarcity, commitment and consistency, plus liking.
We mentioned earlier scarcity and urgency. What are your thoughts on urgency and scarcity and its role in the sales process?
But from my testing I’ve done thousands of split tests, and I’ve done tons and tons of sales messages. The one thing out of all of those six factors, which works without fail, is scarcity - almost two to one compared to the other stuff. The second would probably be social proof, but scarcity is by far and above the highest factor.
Eugene: Being a very left brain person coming from a software engineering background, I’ve always had a big problem with marketing, and it seemed like a very very soft skill. So I was really excited recently that there has just been a lot of scientific study into what makes people take action. In the incredible field of neuro marketing they can measure what is going on in the brain, and there are all of these studies of it happening.
Robert Cialdini talks about these six factors, but he doesn’t say he which of these factors is the best or the most effective on average.
Greg: On a subconscious level not even consciously thinking about it. Eugene: It is scary, it is really absolutely fascinating too. You need ethical products and to use these new developments for good. A guy named Robert Cialdini, working with a bunch of scientists did some research and wrote this incredible book called “Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion”. They came up with their being six different ways (factors of influence) that have been shown scientifically to be able to influence people. These are authority, reciprocity,
Scarcity is having some element of your offer that is limited. So that can be a limited time. For example you can have a special offer that expires at a certain time. You can have scarcity in terms of limited quantity of your product or service available. You have an offer without a deadline without scarcity versus exactly the same offer, but with scarcity you’ll out sell two to one. That’s just massive if you think about whatever your conversion rate is now and then doubling that - that is insane.
Greg: So was it like a different price up to a certain time points, and then it is gone?
ferent markets at the moment and also in a couple of different countries as well.
Eugene: Yes, purely a time based thing with a scarcity based sell. And again we expected a two to one increase in conversion, and it was actually four and a half time the increase.
So for people who haven’t come across it before how does the product work? From my understanding is that it came from your internal testing and then you guys widgetized it effectively and turned it into a WordPress plug-in is that right?
Greg: The exact same traffic sources and everything? Eugene: The exact same traffic, which was Facebook traffic, and completely split tested no difference. The sales message was the same it was just like everything was kept the same just the presence of a deadline. Greg: What I think is going on is it forces the decision. So say for example I put a product out there and you are looking at it, and you are thinking “Yes, maybe, that looks pretty good”, but if that special price is only there until tomorrow you’ve got to think about “Yes let’s give it a go.” Whereas otherwise you may think “Let’s come back to that when I come back to my email next.” or ”I’ll look at that next week.” There is nothing really forcing you to make the decision, or prompting you to make the decision now. Eugene: Absolutely it just forces you to make a call and if you are on the edge you are more likely to take action than not take action.
Eugene: Yes, well part of the success story behind Noble Samurai has really been the fact that our marketing funnel converts so well. But the secret to that has been was basically if you sign up to get a copy of Market Samurai then if you purchase within the first seven days you will be able to get that for $97 instead of the retail price of $149. Then the price jumps to $127 for a couple days then jumps up to $149. There are two important things here. One is it is supported by auto responders so they are reminded at the critical point through the sales process through auto responder. The second is that the scarcity is visualized as there is no point mentioning an offer if there isn’t a strong visualization that this offer is going to end. So it is bringing that and making that offer really really visual so you obviously do that in your emails in subject lines in emails and on the page. But particularly on a web page a really really effective way to do that is through showing a countdown timer saying how much time they’ve got left.
Greg: To push you over. Especially if you incorporate it with other things like for example the social proof and taking away the risk with guarantees and the like. You start to compound all of those things together with the scarcity as the key lynch pin and you really can generate powerful offers. That is why when I saw this I got really really excited I thought it was a big game change for me as a direct response marketer. We run effectively a traffic and conversion agency and as soon as I saw I thought ‘wow that’s brilliant’. I was talking about it the other day with Mal Emery over a quiet beer and I stated “Scarcity Samurai is the best WordPress plugin of 2013 for increasing sales from direct response marketing.” It’s true. We are testing it like crazy in a whole bunch of dif-
Scarcity Samurai Countdown Example
And people have been doing countdown style marketing for a long time. But what we did with the Market Samurai sales funnel is enable evergreen launch segments essentially.
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How Scarcity Samurai Works
Greg: If you are still on the fence thinking about if Scarcity Samurai is worth trying, I think you should go for it. It definitely is worth testing for pretty much any market because We developed that in and about you really don’t have much to lose, eight months ago we moved all of but you really have a lot to gain. If our custom websites over to Word you can increase your conversion press and we basically re-built our rate for your sales even 20%-30%, scarcity system as a WordPress plug- imagine what that is going to do to in. your numbers - it really is a massive game changer. So as soon as people opt in for the trial that is when the timer starts, that is when all of the offers and things were relative to it.
What is the technology under the Eugene has given you as an Interhood, does it use cookies or how net Marketing Magazine community does it keep track of stuff? member a special offer with the link below, check it out. Eugene: It does use cookies. Eugene, thanks for sharing. What happens is if someone clicks a link in an email that special link ac- Tools and Resources listed in this tually has enough information to tell feature article: the system about the original offer. 1. Market Samurai So if they share that link with oth- 2. Article Samurai er people then the timer will show 3. Influence (book) the same deadline if they open that 4. Scarcity Samurai May Only link on their mobile device, or their discount from Eugene desktop device for their computers they will see the same deadline.
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CONVERSION
CONVERSE FIRST, CONVERT LATER By Toby Marshall
If there was one golden rule of B2B social networking that I would pin up as a sign over the entrance door to the Lead Creation offices it would be “Converse First. Convert Later.” We often get asked by clients for our opinion on why their social networking strategy is not actually converting into sales. By far the most common reason is that they focus too much on conversion too early in the relationship, without having the necessary conversation first. Collaborative Marketing You see, most of your potential customers are not on a network like LinkedIn to be sold to or read advertisements. They are there to gauge the market, find opinion, voice their concerns and issues within their industry and to meet like-minded professionals in their network; they want to talk to you and learn. Brandon Evans is CEO of Crowdtap, one of the companies promoting the idea of “influencer marketing”. He helps organisations influence their potential customers in a process they call “collaborative marketing.” Collaborative marketing is, in essence, what we have been advising clients to do for some time now: using LinkedIn groups to connect with likeminded influencers in the industry, contributing to conversations and gaining credibility and authority – then taking the relationship offline, if there is business to be done. So instead of blatant marketing “at” the audience – like with targeted mail outs, billboards or air
time on TV – the advent of social networking has allowed a much closer interplay “with” potential customers, before the sales process kicks in. This of course takes a little time and patience to get right, but for small and medium business leaders that learn to master it, the rewards could be great. Trying to by-pass the all-important conversation and cutting to the sales conversion process too early will see you punished, with a drift away from your group or conversation; there is no short-cut to this process. Brendon Miskell says it well with a nice analogy: “Why is it that people can’t just think back to how they behaved on their first date – there are clear rules of etiquette there. But when it comes to business they think it’s OK to just go for the jugular – being genuine and having the patience to woo is the important phrase here.” Stephen Covey also said it well in his 7 Habits: “Seek first to Understand, then to be Understood”. In a recent article, Brandon Evans identified five trends that sum up the effect of using a collaborative marketing approach. internet marketing magazine may 2013
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He is talking more about a B2C environment but many of these points still apply to B2B. They are summarised below, with my comments added in the 2nd paragraph of each: 1. Democratized Product Development Crowdsourcing allows collective brainpower to generate new ideas for products and to get them to market. Different crowdsourcing platforms target different parts of the product creation process – funding, production and distribution.
that you are the leader in the field.
success of your social media marketing strategy.
The IP (intellectual property) of companies used to be held tightly inside ‘walled gardens’. Again, smart CEOs know that others are already sharing or soon will be, and these companies will be seen to be the leaders.
And please, if any marketer starts to sell you on a campaign whose ‘outcomes’ are raising brand awareness, quickly show them the door! That is the ultimate in quantity, not quality - meetings and sales are what matters.
In my business, we only work with clients who sell B2B – so most of our crowdsourcing is done on the business networking platform, LinkedIn. It’s great for generating and testing ideas. 4. Peer-powered media Traditional mass media messaging 2. Close, continuous customer is expensive and poorly targetrelationships ed, with many other distractions IBM’s Global CEO Study found that meaning your expensive ad may 88% of CEOs prioritised “getting get lost in the “noise”. Online closer to customers” as the main content is tailored much more goal for their business over the specifically to personal tastes and next five years. They know that a requirements; as well as being far genuine, real-time dialogue with less of a cost risk, it is more tartheir customers not only enhanc- geted at your potential buyers if es the buy-sell relationship but done well. also helps guide product development to closer suit the changing Clearly in the world of B2B sales needs of their customers. this is even more important – why ‘spray and pray’ on mass media The smart CEOs also know that when you can directly target on if they don’t, their competitors business networks. soon will. 5. Measurement of Influence not 3. Open organizations Impressions Secrecy and guarding of informa- It’s more about quality than tion has little place in the world quantity these days – influence of social networking and collab- matters more than mere page orative marketing; a competitive impressions. How much influence advantage is not so much gained are you having on potential cusby holding information but by tomers? That should be the quessharing it and showing the world tion you are asking to gauge the
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Your online interactions with potential leads begin with conversations. We have found that a great way to do that, once you have gathered a group of like-minded people together, is to ask them questions about a particular issue that is universally important to them. This will generate responses and is a fantastic way to get the conversation going, presenting you as a leader who tackles the big industry issues in the process.
Toby Marshall
Toby drives the strategy and vision for Lead Creation, managing a young team of 20 digital technology specialists who implement the strategy for Lead Creation’s clients. With more than 35 years of experience owning and managing professional services, he understands real business issues, not just marketing theory. Lead Creation has recently completed the largest ever government funded study of Australia’s Top 207 B2B Companies’ use of Social Media, which is available as a free download via their website. The article gives good insight in what to do on Social Media in 2013.
Make Your Website Easy to Read & Effective on all Mobile Phones
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USABILITY TESTING
6 WAYS MARKETERS CAN GET AN EDGE WITH USABILITY TESTING In order to market a product or service, you have to understand what people want. • What is their research process? • Why do they choose one product over another? • Where do they get confused? • What do they know that you don’t? It’s not easy to answer these questions, so we often rely on a mixture of assumptions, guesswork, and personal experience. But, there’s a better way: usability testing can be your secret weapon. Here are 6 ways usability testing can help you understand your users and gain an edge as a marketer. 1. Start further up the funnel
2. Go beyond analytics
As a marketer, you most likely spend hours poring over analytics data. Having this data is invaluable, but it is only one piece of the puzzle. Analytics can show you what users do on your site, but it cannot tell you why they do what they do. User testing allows you to get the answers you need to tackle the “why” questions. For instance, say your design team creates a new hero graphic that causes a significant drop in your click-through rate. Analytics revealed the problem to you, but doesn’t give you any insight about how to fix it. What often happens in these types of situations is that we frantically tweak the hero graphic, change colors, resize fonts, and watch analytics to see if anything we did worked.
Traditional website analytics only tell you about a visitor’s behavior once they are on your site. But what about all the stuff that happens before they get there? Use usability tests to find out! For example, if you are working on a website for a hotel in Hawaii, run a test and ask a user to go to Google and find a warm place to vacation. Let them go through the process of researching and deciding where they might want to go. While they’re doing this, take note of what appeals to them, obstacles they face, what type of information they trust, and how they come to their final conclusion. Testing the process like this can provide insights you’d never get otherwise.
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What if instead, you had real users test your page? It’s quite possible that there is a very simple reason that users are not converting. You can know the answer to the “why” question in less than an hour, make the necessary changes, and you’re back in business! 3. Test your shopping cart Abandoned shopping carts are the bane of our existence. You worked so hard to get a customer to choose your product and then for some reason they leave without buying. Running a user test of your cart every month will get you the most bang for your buck every time. Everyone that wants to buy from you, has to go through the cart, so if you have a mistake there you are losing a lot of money.
Shopping cart tests are also a great place to test ways to increase the average order size through related products, add-ons, and upsell opportunities.
ent age brackets. A young person may be most interested in being able to cash checks from their smartphone, and an older person may be more interested in receiving good customer support over 4. Learn from your competitors’ the phone. failures/successes Testing each relevant demoThink of the advantage you would graphic will help you recognize have if you could learn from the the unique needs of each group mistakes of your competitors and and make sure your site is well never have to make them your- balanced to handle ALL your cusself. Write a custom test for your tomer’s needs. competitor’s site and let testers tell you what your competitors 6. Start testing early are doing right and what they’re doing wrong.
Did your competitor just run a promotion that you think was a really good idea? Find out what your audience thinks about the promotion and whether it’s relevant to them. It’s quite possible you could improve on it, or maybe you’ll realize you shouldn’t use it at all. 5. Test with different personas
Please, don’t start your testing after you launch. The time to test is shortly after you draw up a sketch on the whiteboard. Getting the voice of the customer early in the prototyping stage can help you avoid costly mistakes and nail your message. User feedback in the ideation phase can help keep your concepts tied to what your customers are actually looking for and can help you build the right thing the first time.
As marketers we know our target market isn’t monolithic. So don’t test with just random people, run each of your marketing personas UserTesting.com through your tests. For example, if you are testing a bank site, you’ll want to consider how people in different income brackets perceive the bank and what features each group looks for. You’ll also want to test differ-
Web and mobile usability testing with the fastest turnaround time. Watch screen and hear voice as people in your target market interact with your site or app. Check out www.usertesting.com
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TUMBLR
TUMBLR… FOR BUSINESS? By Megan Bildner
ers who are outside the Facebook & Twitter “bubble”. Here are a few creative and interesting ways small businesses can utilize the blogging site to increase engagement and reach that “other” demographic.
have the opportunity to post unique images of their products. Fashion sites do particularly well with this. But, posting images is simply not enough to grab user’s attention on Tumblr. Brands must make their images eye catching – they can do this through unique Tutorial Posts. Tumblr is a highly captions, submit your own photo visual site, businesses have begun contests or behind the scenes posting instructional posts using a photos from photo shoots, office blend of images and words in order life or user photo customization. While Tumblr may not be the so- to draw in users and teach them cial media leader when you com- a little bit more about what their Discount Sites. Recently compapare it to Facebook, Twitter and business does. For example: a hair nies have been utilizing Tumblr to Google+, there is still room to salon could use Tumblr to post an post printable coupons and disutilize the blogging site for your instructional image based tutorial counts. Spreading news similar business or company. Tumblr will on how to braid or use a product. to this is a great idea – coming up allow you to not only showcase A restaurant could post a recipe with a snazzy image about what your products and gains follows, along with step by step images – is currently on sale or what new but it will let you connect with these are the types of things your items you have in stock is a great customers through the use of im- customers may not know and will idea to spread the word via the ages, videos and other media out- benefit your business by posting web. them on the blogging site. lets. To put it simply, Tumblr is an image blogging site. Through Tumblr’s emphasis on visual media, businesses can increase online marketing efforts and share content that relates directly to the demographic they are looking to reach. Tumblr shares may perks of Twitter, Instagram and other blogging sites but lets users subscribes to blogs they wish to follow and the content produced in that blog is directly fed to users homepage – which resembles a news-feed like Twitter.
Multimedia Blogs. Businesses can incorporate videos and audio into their Tumblr blog as well. This allows businesses an outlet to share snipits of “behind the scene” office ventures or share audio clips of everyday company life. For example: a radio show could share important audio clips from an earlier broadcast or interview or a company could show you how hectic it is in their office on Mondays – either way users gain insight into your company making the connection between you and your customers that more intimate.
With the sites spike in popularity last year, many brands are turning to the site to draw in key us-
Visually Based Blogs. Since Tumblr is image based, many brands
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Megan Bildner
Megan is currently the Jr. Editor of the Daily Deal Media and Digital MI sites with Mogul Media. Here, she is responsible for the site’s content and publication. Along with these tasks, Megan also engages with the DDM & DMI audience through social pages/groups/tweets. When she is not working on the DDM & DMI sites Megan enjoys tweeting, traveling, snowboarding, hiking, and socializing with her friends. She grew up in Michigan’s Clarkston and Lake Orion and loves being on the lake, boating, and wake-boarding. You can follow her @ Megan_DDM or e-mail her at megan@ mogulmedia.com
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LANDING PAGE STRATEGIES
13 UNCONVENTIONAL LANDING PAGE STRATEGIES TO INCREASE CONVERSIONS By Tommy Walker We talk about creating high converting landing pages, getting traffic that converts, and making the most out of your conversion points quite a bit here.
communicate the overall mission of your website, offer an irresistible lead magnet, and start your relationship with your new visitor.
But what we don’t talk about are outside of the box landing page strategies you can use to increase conversions right away. Similar to the banner blindness phenomenon, sticking to the traditional methods (like linking to your homepage from your Twitter bio) is extremely predictable from a new visitor’s perspective, and leads to what I call brand blindness. What follows are 13 unconventional landing page strategies that, if used well, will break your visitors expectations on first visit making them more receptive to what they find on the page and lead them into a flow through your site. On that note, for these strategies to work it’s vital you consider the environment the visitor is coming from, and the conversion you’d like to take place. These pages are meant to bridge specific gaps, so without that consideration, you’ll be creating extra real estate without seeing any real results.
In this post Corbett Barr says Think Traffic’s Start here page accounts for 7% of the overall email subscriptions.
This may not seem like a lot, but considering only 11% of all subscriptions come from more common 1. Start Here Page real estate the post page sidebar, this page starts It’s always easy to know the first page your visitors to make more sense. land on. Check your analytics, and you’ll see all sorts of “first visits.” Question is, what’s the sec- 2. Coming From (Social Network) ond page these visitors go to? High Converting Landing Page Rule #1: Never This is where the “start here” page comes in. Think send traffic from an ad to your home page. of it as an anchor for visitors who liked what they saw, but don’t quite know where to go next. It’s common knowledge within PPC advertising circles that pointing your ad directly to your home Your start here page is great real estate to quickly page.
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It’s common knowledge within PPC advertising circles that pointing your ad directly to your homepage is a no-no. Somehow that same rule never caught on to social networks. But really, isn’t social media a dynamic ad for your business? Consider how people get to this page: They like what you have to say, click on your profile, read your bio, click the link. Why not capitalize on this interest?
from social media channel won’t stay long because the switch from fast paced social media vs long form content is too jarring. Instead, it’s worth using “Coming From (social network)” as a way to offer a resource related to the social network (& your business) in exchange for an email address. Either that, or offer fewer options & link to the best stuff on your site to guide these visitors to a stronger point of conversion. 3. Custom Landing Pages for Guest Posts The principle of this landing page is similar the last two. When you guest post, instead linking to your home page in your bio, link to a custom landing page specifically designed for the visitors of that site.
The main point of this page, and many others in this roundup is to give extra context, acknowledge where the user is coming from, and convert that reader into a subscriber. This page by Problogger does a great job at giving visitors a quick look at the most important sections of the site.
This tactic is especially useful if you’ve mention in your byline a lead magnet that solves the problem your guest post explores. In this post Neil Patel talks about getting 1,000 subscribers in 60 days by guest bloggingexclusively. He says, “I’ve seen registrations jump over 10% with personalized landing pages like that.”
Now this is just my opinion, but I believe this page has too many links. Realistically, a visitor coming
“That personalized landing page is a critical piece… so don’t skip it. It’s truly the best way to maximize all of your hard work!”
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4. Blog Comment Landing Page When you leave comment, you leave your name, email address, and Url. But if you’re linking directly to your homepage you’re not making the most of your comment.
as well as what you’ll be missing if action is not taken.
Realistically, you won’t have landing pages for every site you comment on. But if you have landing pages for the sites you comment on the most, you can quickly orientate people after they’ve clicked your link. To do this, acknowledge the site your visitor is coming from in the headline. “Liked my comment on ConversionXL?” Introduce who your site is for, how it helps, and include a brief blurb about you. Most importantly, curate a list of links that are the contextually relevant to the section of site you’re commenting on. For example, if you’ve written great UX tutorials, and you’re commenting on one of the UX posts on ConversionXL have your landing page include links to your best UX work to draw people deeper into your site. Hat Tip to http://pro-landing-pages.com/ for the tip. 5. Post Subscription Sign-UP If you want email subscribers to actually consume your content, the first step is to get them to confirm their subscription. Ramit Sethi of Iwillteachyoutoberich.com uses a few age old practices to drive new subscribers back to their inbox and fully opt in. While there are a number of things going on on this page, the most standout is the use of the timer. Research shows when timers are introduced in “low impact” decision making, the added urgency compels people to take the path with the least resistance. On this sign up page, the path is laid out,
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6. “Thank You” Page With Entry Level Offer The “Thank You For Subscribing Page” is one of biggest missed opportunities online. When you’re designing for user flow, you’ve lead your user through a series of steps to encourage them to sign up for your email list, so why stop there?
Now that they’ve committed to getting the free thing, it’s going to be much easier to applybasic upselling psychology to get them to buy into the paid thing, IF that paid thing is a lower cost, and if the paid thing is a logical extension of the path your visitor took to get there.
offer a discount on your lower level offer. 8. Thank You Page w/ Survey What better way to learn about your customers than to ask them a few questions right after the conversion takes place?
Depending on your paid offer, it’s worth playing with different pricing strategies here. It’s also worth noting that this page could be used to convert higher priced offers if that offer acts as a shortcut. (I.e Free 20 week course on Facebook Marketing with an offer for a private hour long consultation session) 7. (Alternative) Thank You Page With “Refer A Friend” CTA. Thrillist’s invite friends page encourages freshly subscribed visitors to share their new discovery with their peers.
While this doesn’t directly affect your conversions, the feedback you gather in this survey can be critical to creating new offers or addressing design flows in the long run. Don’t quite know what to ask? This report from Constant Contact gives you sample survey questions for different scenarios.
Research by marketing professors Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein suggests that in order for something to go viral, three basic criteria must be 9. Social Media Hub Page met; giving the right message to the right messen- No doubt, at some point you’ve heard the phrase gers in the right environment. “curate interesting content.” problem is, doing this only through social media channels does nothing to In this case, the refer a friend thank you page is the directly improve your email subscription rate. perfect opportunity to encourage new subscribers who signed up for your lead magnet to share with Enter RebelMouse. A startup that focuses on pulltheir friends and increase your viral quotient. Ac- ing all of your social media feeds together and pubcording to Topsy, Thrillist’s use of this strategy lead lishing the content into one easy to digest page. to 77 extra mentions on twitter in the last month But how does this impact your conversion rates? alone. If email newsletters are a part of your overall stratBonus: Make the deal even more irresistible. In ex- egy, this page is becomes the main hub for all of change for friends subscribing via their share link, the content you’ve found share-worthy. internet marketing magazine may 2013
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are found on the resource page, making this page something to really consider. If you haven’t gotten started with affiliate marketing yet, Shareasale, Clickbank, or Amazon Associates. For more info on affiliate marketing: • 30 Tips For Successful Affiliate Marketing • Sugarrae’s Affiliate Marketing Category • Affiliate Marketing 101 11. Clever Unsubscribe Page What’s the most common reason people give for unsubscribing to your email list? Too many emails, right? This clever unsubscribe page doesn’t let your email
A call to action saying “Want me to email you only the best of what you see here?” is a great reminder that you take filtering the best seriously. This page is a huge visual reminder that an email address is a small price in exchange for finding and filtering content. 10. The Resource Library Page If you find yourself recommending the same books and resources over and over again, the Resource Library page is a you to compile all of your most commonly used resources. Generally speaking, this page is used for publishing various affiliate offers such as software, ebooks and books, information courses, or physical products. Comparing January’s income report of SmartPassiveIncome. com against the resource page, you’ll notice that a total of 14 out 25 items on the income report
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subscribers get away easy. Instead of making email email an all or nothing deal, users have the option option to receive fewer emails, in case it really is a matter of information overload. Also, notice the social media buttons under the video? By giving an alternative to email, you’re respecting their decision while subtly reminding them they don’t have to shut you off entirely. 12. Email Signature Page When someone clicks on the name in your email signature, where do you send them? Most people, it’s going to be the home page, right? But what if you could take this opportunity to introduce who you are and what you’re passionate about?
12. Email Signature Page When someone clicks on the name in your email signature, where do you send them?
Problem is, too many people using a hashtag makes conversation difficult to follow, requires your users and if the conversation is lively, your participants have a hard time interacting with each other.
Most people, it’s going to be the home page, right? But what if you could take this opportunity to introduce who you are and what you’re passionate about? While it may seem similar to the Blog Comment Page, or even the Coming From (social network) page, the major difference is, the person clicking on this link already has your email. Meaning you’re at a different point in your relationship than somebody who’s just passively checking you out on social media. Use this opportunity to add a more personal touch to your communication. Bonus: Using a service like http://dooid.me to power this page allows you to enable vCard information, allowing your new friend to add all of your details in just one click.
Also, if you’re using a live-streaming platform like Google+ Hangouts, using the default tools vs embedding on your own site means you’re missing a chance to improve your “time on site” metrics & convert viewers into subscribers. Fortunately, with a little pre-planning, this is easily fixed. All you have to do is Embed your live-stream:
Embed the email signup:
13. Live Hangout/ Consolidated Conversation Page This is a new one I’ve just started playing around with, and I’m really excited to share it with you. You see it all the time with live events, the event coordinator says “if you want to participate, use the hashtag #blahblah on Twitter.”
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And Embed Facebook Comments onto a single page:
your page directly with friends and fans comment box. If your live chat is interesting, your visitors will happy to share with their friends, maximizing the potential reach for your live event. Conclusion By putting just a little extra thought into where your visitors are coming from, you can create additional real estate opportunities on your site to break expectations, increase conversions, and maximize reach with minimal effort. Tommy Walker
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Once this is set up, you’ll have a single consolidated place for viewers to watch, interact with each other, and get bonuses.
is an Online Marketing Strategist and Host of two youtube shows, Inside The Mind & The Mindfire Chats. Tommy’s main mission is to make the concepts of online marketing fun and interesting to learn.
Bonus: Visitors can publish comments to their personal Facebook Profiles or Facebook Pages, sharing
This article is originally published on ConversionXL.
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PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS
THE POWER OF PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS AND HOW TO WRITE THEM By Lenka Istvanova Believe it or not, but the words you use (or you don’t use) to describe your products can make or break a sale. They are certainly not the only factor that positively influences conversions but they play a key part in consumers’ online shopping experience. A good product description can: • Create an emotional connection • Make your visitors take an action • Improve conversions and increase revenue Product descriptions are important for both, consumers and Search Engines Unfortunately, there are still a lot of e-commerce websites (big and small) that haven’t embraced the power of product descriptions; they either have one-sentence descriptions or even ‘better’… no descriptions at all.
tion in the online world. Make sure you apply this principle to your website: the description on your product page is a virtual sales assistant whose job is the same as a sales assistant but using the written word. Your role is to write compelling copy that will entice visitors to buy your products. Simples! If you think that your product is so simple (or so boring) that you can’t write an engaging product description then take a look at the Zappos example below. Would you ever imagine that a simple yellow towel can be described in a compelling way? Well, Zappos will change your mind:
If you have no words describing the product how on earth are you going to convince your potential customers to buy it from your website? Don’t forget about the search engines; they are not human and they can’t read images. They are also pretty demanding and if your website employs zero-words in descriptions Google won’t like you and may award you with low rankings. Think of product descriptions as sales assistants in the offline shop. They are there to guide you, help you pick the best product and answer your questions. A good sales assistant tells you everything you need to know about the product using the right set of words to convince you to make a purchase. This is exactly the purpose of a good product descrip-
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What more? They even created a 20-seconds long Example #2 – Not bad but to be honest it could be video showing and explaining everything you better. They are also missing elements such as top should know about the towel: features/technical specifications.
So, if you think that your product is boring and you will never ever be able to write an engaging description for it, think again.
Example #3 – The winner – Very good – compelling and unique
To make you believe in the power of product descriptions I have picked another example; a bath tap which is quite expensive (over £1,000) so I as a customer would like to find out more (almost everything) about this tap before paying for it. I have looked at the product descriptions for this bath tap on three different website and here are the results: Example #1 – Bad – No description at all, only the full name of the product
Customised product descriptions can have a positive impact on your sales, add value to your website and most importantly help customers in their decision making process. If you don’t know how to write them here are 5 steps you should follow when creating product descriptions for your e-commerce website: 1. Use the tone and language of your target market First of all you need to understand the person who will read your descriptions; thus, the knowledge of your target audience is the key for writing effective product descriptions. Having a well-defined marketing persona will help you write more personalised descriptions that will appeal to your customers.
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2. Stop duplicating manufacturer descriptions and using industry jargon If you are one of those who ‘copy and paste’ manufacturer descriptions please stop now! Read the Take a look at Roxy which tailors the product de- above tip and make it personal and unique. Nobody scriptions to its target market of young people and wants to read the cold descriptions that feature inteenagers by using their language. dustry jargon and hundreds of technical words. If you are still not convinced and are going to continThe phrases and words common for young people ue using generic-style text then don’t be surprised such as ‘stylish’ and ‘can‘t-live-without’ are indica- when Google penalises you for duplicating the contive of the Roxy brand and you can find them all tent. over their website as well as in the product descriptions. Make your descriptions unique and enjoy the advantage over your competitors in search results. When Roxy also provides useful hints and tips in its prod- it comes to SEO benefits, the more original content uct descriptions (e.g. ‘wear it at festivals’, ‘looks you have the better. great layered under T-shirts’, etc.). Hints and tips within the description help generating the feel of According to KISSmetrics your unique text should excitement about the item before it reaches the exceed the default word count on your entire prodcustomer. uct page. If you don’t have your marketing personas in place try thinking of the words your typical customer would use to describe the product.
3. Explain the actual benefits, don’t just list the features! A common mistake is to only list products features without explaining the benefits for the end user. When writing product descriptions keep your customers in mind and give them information they need. Your descriptions should always express the core benefits and customers should be able to quickly find out what the product will do for them and how it will improve or ease their lives. Take an example from Roxy and give your customers some hints and tips about the product in the description or show your product in a video like Zappos. According toEconsultancy product videos can increase conversions as well as decrease the number of returns. 4. Make it customer and SEO friendly at the same time The amount of information included in the product description depends on the page and the product itself. However, you need to make sure that the product descriptions provide potential customers with ALL the information they need to encourage them to make a purchase.
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Remember that an effective and persuasive product description: • Emphasises key selling points including quality and value for a customer • Includes all the necessary information such as cost, size, colour, material etc. • Conveys all the information in an easy-to-understand format • Is unique, written specifically for the product and tailored to your target audience
Make it SEO friendly by including the keywords within the title tag, heading, meta description, image caption and the copy. Avoid over-optimisation and keyword stuffing – if you have a brief, oneparagraph description don’t try to mention the keyword in every sentence as it can be obvious that you’re writing for search engines and customers can be easily put off. Avoid targeting many keywords – if you have a short product description (around 60-80 words) stick with one key term that is mentioned two or three times at maximum. You need to ensure that the copy is easily readable and visitors can quickly scan through it. They really don’t want to see a huge paragraph of a plain text. Make your descriptions more visually appealing by incorporating the following:
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• Short paragraphs • Bold text • Bullet points • Images • Tables – great if you need to include a lot of technical information (e.g. for products such as a PC) 5. TMT – Test, Measure & Tweak it! Trying out new things is a no brainer; you should keep testing new things in your product descriptions. Try to change one element at a time and test your tweaked descriptions against the original one. Record your results to find out what works best for your products and target audience. Don’t miss this opportunity and remember that even a small change can have a huge impact. Now it’s your turn! What strategy do you apply when writing product descriptions; do you use generic or customised product descriptions? Do you have any tips on how to write effective descriptions, or has there been something specific that worked particularly well for you? I would love to hear your ideas and experience in the section below. Lenka Istvanova
Lenka is a Digital Marketing enthusiast with hands-on experience in Social Media, Website Management and Email Marketing. She has a strong passion for all things digital and is currently studying towards a CIM Diploma in Digital Marketing. This article is originally published on Koozai.com
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INFOGRAPHIC
GROW BY 15% OR LOSE MARKET SHARE! By Ariel Geifman The numbers are pretty clear – you either achieve 15% online revenue growth or you lose market share to the competition. eCommerce has great potential in 2013, but is your target high enough? Are you ready to make the investment to achieve it?
Over 15%
1
o uld Ach
It’s a great time to be in eCommerce, but don’t just rest on your laurels. If you don’t grow your online revenue by double-digits in 2013, you are losing market share to the competition. Is your bar set high enough?
Growth
Sh
ie
u Yo
Reasons
ve
Online Revenue Growth
The Competition is Growing by Double-Digits As the law of averages suggests, if you grow more slowly than the market—you are losing market share. If you are in the US, UK, Germany or Japan—15% should put you in the safe zone of outpacing your competitors. Online Revenue and Growth, 2012-2013
$110 United States
$125 $142 $128 $140
China
In the past year, the share of total retail coming from eCommerce grew from 4.8% to 5.4% - overall clawing nearly $6 billion from physical stores.
40%
$47 $53
20% 0%
United Kingdom
Japan
Germany
Growth 2013/2012
5.1%
5.2%
5.4%
4.8% 4.9%
eCommerce Share of Total Sales
Q4 2011
Q1 2012
Q2 2012
Q3 2012
Q4 2012
Some Products are on Fire Digital Content and Subscriptions and Consumer Electronics grew by 26% and 19% respectively. It also looks like trying on clothing is going out of fashion with online Apparel and Accessories sales growing by 17%. Fastest Growing eCommerce Categories in 2012
4
$182
eCommerce is Outpacing Brick & Mortar
Source: US Census. Estimated Quarterly U.S. Retail Sales, Adjusted. Feb 2013.
3
60%
eCommerce Revenue (Billions) 2012 2013
Source: eMarketer, Jan 2012.
2
$343 $385
Source: comScore, U.S Digital Future in Focus 2013.
26%
19%
Digital Content and Subscriptions
Consumer Electronics
eCommerce is Becoming More Effective It seems that the massive investment in web analytics is finally coming to fruition. Conversion rates increased by 6% from Q4 2011 to Q4 2012. Conversion Rate in Q4
2011
17%
Apparel and Accessories
16% 16% Event Tickets
Computer Software
2012
United States
4.13%
International
1.34% 1.42%
4.40%
Source: Monetate, eCommerce Quarterly, Q4 2012.
5
Advertising is Key—On Key Dates Looking for methods to grow your traffic? The good news is that targeted advertising on key days can boost your revenue by up to 70%. Growth in Revenue from Paid Search on Key Dates Source: Kenshoo, 2012 Global Online Retail Holiday Shopping Report, US Data, year over year.
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
Thanksgiving Cyber Monday Free Shipping Day Day After Christmas Black Friday Green Monday
Looking for ways to accelerate online revenue growth? ClickTale is the leader in Customer Experience Analytics, the next stage in web analytics. With enterprise-class SaaS solution, ClickTale is fast to deploy and provides immediate ROI to over 80,000 customers worldwide. Contact us at info@clicktale.com
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