3 Must Have Tools for Those Who Depend on Google Analytics [AUDIO]

What the chart said vs realitty

The staff was assembled, the stage was set. Representatives from every department plus some of the big brass were sitting around the long conference table.

I was about to present the data that showed how successful my marketing campaigns had been for the past month. This was important, because it had been like pulling teeth to get a more data-driven process in place.

IT had to be cajoled into setting up Google Analytics.

Sales had to be bullied into keeping good account of leads and sales.

Now, with the first full month of data in hand, I was going to point to some steady growth. My pitch was confident as I showed the increase in leads and correlated it with an increase in sales. I was going to be a star.

Until someone spoke up from sales.

“We didn’t get that many leads last month. Most of my sales came from affiliates.”

All eyes turned to me. What I would say next would either raise stature or destroy my credibility.

Was it my programs, or was it my analytics that caused this disconnect?

The right answer would have been, “I personally QA’d our analytics setup. These numbers are right.”

Could you have given that answer?

In my most recent Marketing Land article Is It The Site, Or Is It The Analytics? Debugging Google Analytics, I show you how to be certain that your Google Analytics setup is working as planned.

Whether you setup your own analytics or have your tech team do it, you need to know that the data you’re using is right.

Listen to the Article, Read by the Author

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Austin, Texas: The Conversion Capital of the World [SlideShare]

In case you have not heard, Austin announced themselves as “The Conversion Capital of the World” this past February. Much to the dismay of Vancouver and surprisingly, the mayor of Sochi, Anatoly Pakhomov, who flat out denies Austin’s existence altogether.

Who knew so many people would be up in arms over what is obviously a tried and true proclamation

I know, you are thinking, “Here they go again. A SlideShare? What could possibly be next? Podcast? Webinar? Oh no, an infograph!”

All great ideas that we will definitely take into consideration. Thank you.

Ok, so we are a little proud of our self proclamation, but who wouldn’t be?

In fact, Ryan Deiss of Digital Marketer, sums it up nicely with this statement: “The motto of Austin, Texas is “Keep Austin Weird,” and weird is exactly what you’ll need to be if you want to succeed at digital marketing.”

So, take a look at these 18 CRO weirdos…er…experts who reside in Austin and see what they have to say about The Conversion Capital of the World.

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What Is The One Thing That Keeps Searchers From Converting On Your Site?

There is an insidious voice speaking to your visitors from the moment they click through to your site. It camps in the back of their minds, setting up a tent and proceeding to talk your visitors out of taking action. While there are many angles this voice can work to fill visitors with doubt, there is likely one that is common to a large number of your visitors.

It’s “the thing.” Dun – dun – dun.

If you can discover and address “the thing” – the major concern shared by a significant number of your visitors that keeps them from converting – then you can make some major improvements in your conversion rates and revenue per click.

When testing, we have found that this thing will fall into one of five areas: risk reversal, value proposition/messaging, social proof, user interface/user experience, and credibility/authority. All of these nagging questions may be present to some degree, but one of them is more pressing than the others — and addressing it will give you wins early and often.

  1. Risk Reversal
  2. Value Proposition & Messaging
  3. Social Proof
  4. User Interface & User Experience
  5. Credibility & Authority

Read the rest of the article.

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A Lesson in Website Optimization from the Conversion Scientist

What is Website Optimization?

Website Optimization is the science of finding more online revenue without paying to get more visitors. 

Where do you start?

Get out your spy kits and start assessing your competitors sites. If you want, you can use a tool like Ghostery to see if your competitors have installed analytic and testing tools. If they have, you need to get moving on yours. If they haven’t, you can create a serious advantage over them but doing it for yourself – right now. In order to get a leg up on your competition and optimize your website, the time is now time to test and discover how your site is performing.

OK, so how do you do this? Easy – after you have assessed the competition, and discovered what you are up against,  call someone that will teach you the ropes on A/B testing.

Website Traffic Analysis

You need to know how your website is performing

Conversion Sciences offer a free consultation at http://conversionsciences.com/contact.

To find out the 5 important metrics used in monitoring clients’ websites and what you need to look for in your competition, check out the entire article on http://blog.marketizator.com/using-science-to-increase-conversions.html.

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Content Marketing Mistakes, And How to Avoid Them

We have a great guest post over on Conversion Scientist from Brittany at Powered by Search, and we definitely wanted to share it with you.

It’s no secret that content marketing is a huge resource for leads. But before you start writing that e-book, churning out those blog posts, and designing those infographics, ask yourself a very important question; How am I going to optimize this to ensure I generate leads?

Hubspot snapshot CTAs
We don’t want to give anything away, but here’s this teaser: Hubspot is the master of the blog CTA.

Brittany will break down the main downfalls of content marketing and show you the best way to avoid them. Commonly (and perhaps overly) used phrases like “content is king” can help convey the importance of creating content, but fails to include the importance of solid content marketing.

She also talks about the need for quality content, and avoiding the use of tons of mediocre content to get leads. As with shoes, friends, and fried chicken, content is all about quality over quantity.

Head over to The Conversion Scientist to read the entire article HERE.

For more news from The Conversion Scientist, follow Brian on Twitter and LIKE him on Facebook.

 

Want Your Website to Generate Profits?

Forget Sexy Graphics. Go Find Some Calipers.

 

Whether you’re an attorney or you sell baby food, chances are that more and more of your marketing, customer service, even customer transactions are taking place online. But there’s so much advice on what your website needs to look like and how it should perform, about user experience, design and content, how do you know what to focus on so your website fuels your business goals?

As someone who makes a living helping people increase their online profits, I can tell you it’s in one word: Conversion.

Conversion is the act of moving people through the process from looking for something, to buying it from you. In traditional mediums, that meant spending millions of dollars on advertising to get in front of your customers, then wowing them with emotion-packed messaging.

That simply doesn’t work for online marketing.

Online marketing is far more mathematical. To begin with, most companies have a conversion rate of about 2%. That means that if 1,000 people visit a site today, only 20 will buy something. But let’s say that, by making small changes that have been tested on similar sites—like increasing the size of the “Add to Cart” button—those companies could increase their conversion rate by 1%. That’s a 50% increase in sales.

There are many small changes like that that will steer visitors to take action. That’s why we want them there in the first place. We want them to join an email list, sign up for a newsletter, join a purchasing program or buy something. Conversion experts, like me, constantly study and test which incremental changes promote conversion behavior. We have worked with hundreds of customers, making small changes and measuring the impact. Just as turning the rudder of a ship a few degrees completely alters where the ship lands, small changes on a site can alter where a business winds up. Those incremental changes are seldom the kind of eye-catching, state-of-the-art, sexy changes that make site owners proud.

But they are the ones that make profits rise.

My new book, The Customer Creation Equation, and this blog, are about those incremental changes. How to find the ones most likely to increase conversion rate. How to implement, test, and measure them to make a website generate profits. Sign up for a guide of action steps to transform not only your website, but the future of your business!

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