If you’re doing any search engine advertising you should be tracking what your ROI is. In other words, you should be monitoring your PPC spend and your income from this spend – i.e. your conversions from PPC.

If you’re using Google Adwords, you’re in luck: Google has an array of tools that allow you to track exactly what your ROI is. You can track your ROI straight from Google Adwords, or you can tie Adwords in to your Google Analytics account and track your goal conversions there and attribute them to your PPC spend.

On top of that, Google has tools to help you increase that ROI by improving your conversion rate: the Google Adwords Conversion Optimiser and it’s big brother, Google Website Optimiser.

All these tools, each with their own approach and implementation, are a bit daunting to wrap your head around. Which should you be using and why?

Google seems to realise this and have published a free online e-book to help you figure things out: Improving Online Conversions for Dummies.

It’s a handy little e-book that goes through every one of Google’s optimisation tools and tells you what you can do with each, and in which scenario they can (and should) be applied.

Not only an excellent guide for beginners, it’s also very useful for seasoned professionals like myself that sometimes get lost amidst the forest of new tools and features Google continually releases.

You can read the book online for free or download a printable PDF version.

Improving Online Conversions free e-book is a blog post from Barry Adams.

The steady rise of spam (which is now said to make up over 90% of all emails) has resulted in less emphasis on email as an instrument of online marketing. But well-managed email marketing campaigns are still, and will continue to be, an important instrument in your online marketing toolbox with a great ROI.

Email allows you to engage with your website visitors in two-way conversations, enabling you to connect with your customers. Email marketing is a great way to enhance customer retention as well as cross-sell and up-sell your products and services.

But you can’t just start harvesting email addresses and spam them at your whim. You need to develop a solid email marketing strategy based on your customers’ needs and requirements.

In this article I will outline the basics of email marketing to help you get started.

1. BUILD YOUR LIST

The most important aspect of your email marketing is the list of email addresses your messages are sent to. A good way to build your list is to have a sign-up form on your website that allows visitors to subscribe to your emails. You can also harvest emails from your online order process and contact forms, as long as you give users a clear way to opt-out – or better still, opt them out by default and make opt-in optional.

There are varying levels of legislation for each country regarding opting your users in on your email lists, so be sure to do some research and find out what the requirements are where you’re based. It’s usually best to err on the safe side, as not only will this ensure your emails won’t be marked as spam, your users will appreciate it and you’ll have a greater level of engagement with your subscribers.

2. WRITE YOUR MESSAGE

A good email starts with a great subject line. Users are bombarded with dozens, if not hundreds, of emails a day, and the first thing they see when your emails arrive is the subject line. This is the most important aspect of your email that determines whether or not a user will open the email and read it.

Tips for good subject lines:

• Clarify the benefit: users have crowded inboxes so your email’s subject line needs to communicate a clear benefit. What will a subscriber get out of it if he opens and reads your email?
• Personalise: use the recipient’s name in the subject line, as this helps your email stand out and helps make a connection with the recipient.
• Ask a provocative question: Questions make recipients wonder and often encourage them to open your email. An example would be “Are you at risk of overpaying on your insurance?”.
• Avoid spam words: words like ‘cheap’, ‘free’, ‘instant’, and dozens more are often interpreted as signs of spam.
• Be mindful of character limitations: many email clients cut the subject line off at some point, either due to the user’s screen resolution or the program’s layout. Understand what part of the subject is seen by most of your recipients.
• Test, test, test: try out different subject lines with different formats and benefits, and never stop experimenting.

Next is the actual content of the email. Needless to say this needs to match the subject line. If you make a promise in the subject that you don’t keep in the content, chances are most readers will either delete your message straight away, unsubscribe from your list, or report your email as spam. Too many spam reports and your email will never reach another inbox ever again, instead being redirected to your recipients’ junk mail folders and thus oblivion.

It’s generally a good idea to write email content following the same guidelines as for website content: strong headlines, structured content, and clear calls-to-action.

This means starting with a strong headline that describes the content accurately and challenges users to read it. Then you need to divide your content into short paragraphs that are easy to read – large blocks of text are unattractive and discourage readers. It’s also a good idea to emphasize key phrases in your text with bold and italics so that readers that quickly scan through it still catch the general idea.

And finally you need to finish with a clear call-to-action. What do you want readers to do with what you’ve just told them? If you want them to visit your website and buy a product, tell them! If you want them to forward your email to their contacts, encourage them! Use buttons in combination with text links and get users to interact with your email.

3. FORMAT YOUR EMAIL

A good subject line and strong content aren’t enough to get the most out of your emails. Your message needs to look good too. A plain text email will look boring no matter how good the content is. Nearly all email programs support HTML emails, which means you can write email messages the same way as you build web pages.

However, there is one big difference: there are huge limitations on the HTML code you can use in emails. Every email program, from Outlook to Hotmail, from Gmail to Thunderbird, handles HTML differently. On top of that many advanced features used in webpages, such as CSS and JavaScript, won’t work at all in most email programs.

This means you need to keep the HTML code as simple and straightforward as you can. A good rule of thumb is to avoid using any CSS and scripting languages, and stick to plain simple HTML code using tables to build your email’s layout.

If you don’t have sufficient knowledge of HTML, there are literally thousands of email templates available for download online which you can use and adapt for your own emails. Of course you can also avoid the whole HTML hassle and just use plain text emails, as long as you understand that your emails will look unexciting and may not be as effective.

4. USE EMAIL MARKETING SOFTWARE

So you’ve built a list of subscribers, written a good email and formatted it in an attractive layout, and you’re ready to send it out. You can use your own email address for this and manually send it – this is adequate for small lists. (Just make sure to use BCC so your readers don’t see the whole mailing list!)

But if you want to get serious with email marketing, the best approach is to use professional email marketing software. Good email marketing software does most of the hard work for you: managing your subscriber lists, building good HTML emails, and reporting on the success of your email campaigns.

There are hundreds of options available, usually in the form of online services, and for all different business sizes. So you don’t need to have a big budget to make use of good email marketing software.

A good place to start is AWeber, a very popular online email marketing service provider that offers cheap rates for lists under 500 subscribers and has over a hundred ready-made HTML templates to choose from. (Disclosure: I am an AWeber affiliate and get paid a small commission for every sign-up through this website.)

5. MEASURE AND IMPROVE

Once you’ve sent out your first email campaign it’s important to analyse how it performed. Did you achieve what you hoped for? If not, why? Was the open rate low? You may need to work on better subject lines. Were there few clicks from the email to your website? Maybe you need better content or stronger calls-to-action, or maybe the HTML layout wasn’t right.

With email marketing, as with your website, you’re never done testing and improving. There’s always a way to get more out of your marketing campaigns and increase user engagement. Never get complacent, but strive to continually improve your email marketing.

6. ENGAGE IN CONVERSATIONS

Email started out as a two-way communication medium. Despite the rise of unsolicited bulk email, that core essence of email hasn’t changed. Don’t just send out your campaigns and turn a deaf ear to what your subscribers say, but engage with them.

A good way to do this is to make sure that the reply-to address of your email campaigns is a valid email address. Yes, you may get a lot of mail delivery errors and out of office replies, but you will find that many users will reply to your email marketing campaign in various ways. This is not a bad thing – quite the contrary, it means that they took the time and effort to respond to your message.

Engage with your readers in conversations, whether they’re complaining about your email or complimenting you. Not only can you get valuable feedback on your email marketing, you will also build customer loyalty this way as well as enhance your online reputation.

Another method is to put polls, surveys, and contests in your emails. This increases user interaction with your emails and will allow you to gather valuable information from your customers.

TO SUMMARIZE

Email marketing is a powerful instrument that can bring strong value to your online marketing efforts. A well-run email campaign will ensure your customers keep coming back to your website. A badly run campaign however can have a detrimental effect on your reputation and might hurt your long-term prospects. So put the effort in and you’ll find the rewards will exceed your expectations.

Connect With Your Website Visitors Through Email Marketing is a blog post from Barry Adams.

I’ve written before about website clickflow and content optimised for the sales funnel. I want to expand a bit on how you can turn visitors in to customers with strong calls-to-action.

A call-to-action is a button, phrase or link that tells your website’s visitors what to do next. That ‘Buy Now‘ button, those ‘Click here to read more‘ links, that ‘Register for a free trial‘ banner… they’re all calls-to-action.

Your website needs calls-to-action (abbreviated: CTA) to help turn visitors into customers. Internet users rarely take the time to thoroughly read text or contemplate a website’s purpose – they are used to surfing quickly and with purpose.

It’s therefore very important that you make it instantly evident what you want your website’s visitors to do when they come to your site. Do you want them to buy a product? Tell them. Do you want them to subscribe to your newsletter? Make it clear.

Here are some tips for effective calls-to-action:

• Short and concise - make it instantly clear what the action is you want a user to perform. Don’t elaborate too much but get to the point.
   
• Self-evident - a CTA that makes a user think is a bad CTA. Users need to know instantly what is required of them, so make sure your CTA is totally self-evident.
   
• Bigger is better - I’m not encouraging you to turn your whole web page into one big red CLICK HERE button, but don’t be too shy using big buttons either. Often webdesigners err on the side of caution, so don’t be afraid to try bigger buttons.
   
• Contrasting colours - Blue buttons on a blue background don’t really stand out much. Use contrasting colours, like bright red, neon green, or eyebleeding orange. This makes buttons and links stand out more from the regular content.
   
• Persuade - What works better: “Buy Now” or “Buy Now and get a 10% Discount”? That’s right, the 10% discount. Spice up your CTAs with extra benefits such as discounts, free samples, bonuses or limited time offers.
   
• Above the Fold - if you put your CTAs low on your webpage, changes are most users won’t see it as they have to scroll down the page to get there. Make sure you have a strong CTA high up on the page so visitors see it right away, then repeat the CTA lower on the page for those users who do take the time to read on and scroll down.
   
• Experiment - don’t be afraid to try out different CTAs on different pages on your website to see which one works best. You can also run tests with services like Google Website Optimizer to find the best call-to-action. As with many things on the web, continuous testing results in continuous improvement.

Implement strong calls-to-action throughout your website and you’ll have a more effective site that converts more visitors into customers.

If you want to read more about effective CTAs, read this great article from Smashing Magazine: Call to Action buttons: Examples and Best Practices

Use Strong Calls-To-Action To Increase Conversion is a blog post from Barry Adams.

After their successful Search Engine Optimization Guide, Google is continuing to provide excellent entry-level guides for website owners. Their latest guide, Make Your Website Work, gives best practices that help turn your website’s visitors into customers.

The guide is viewable online at Google’s Conversion Centre or can be freely downloaded in PDF format.

Google Explains How To Make Your Website Work is a blog post from Barry Adams.

1. Part 1 – Choosing your keywords
2. Part 2 – Writing good ads
3. Part 3 – Create landing pages that convert

In part 1 of this guide to search engine advertising we discussed how to choose the right keywords to advertise on. In part 2 we showed how to make effective ads. Now in the final part we’ll tackle landing pages.

Search Engine Advertising – Step 3: Create Landing Pages That Convert

You’re targeting the right keywords and your ads generate a lot of clicks, so now you have all these extra visitors coming to your website. You’re paying for these visitors, so you want to turn as many of them into customers. The best way to do this is not to send them to your website’s homepage, but to a custom-built landing page.

Image you’re an average internet user. You’re looking for a new sofa for your living room, and you do a Google search for sofa’s. You see an ad on the search results page which appeals to you, so you click on it. You end up on a general furniture website’s homepage and now you have to look for their sofa’s section. Chances are you don’t have the patience for this, and you use the back-button to return to the search results and try a different website.

So you click on a second ad that seems interesting, and this time you land on a webpage that talks only about sofa’s. It shows you pictures of sofa’s, it has a nice offer for a discounted sofa on it, and there are many links from this page to various different categories of sofa’s. This site appeals much more to you, and you’re likely to stick around longer and maybe even order a sofa from these guys.

The first advertiser you clicked on made the classic mistake of sending PPC traffic to the website’s homepage. From the homepage a web user needs to start his search all over again, navigating your website until he finds what he was looking for in the first place. The user has to go through more clicks and has to invest additional effort, something internet users are notoriously unwilling to do.

It’s much better to send the user straight to what they want to see, which the second advertiser does. This way the user doesn’t have to find his way through your website. He immediately sees content that is relevant to his search query.

Elements of a good landing page

1. Relevance: First and foremost the page you link to from a search engine advertisement needs to be relevant. Just like the ad needs to contain the keyword you advertise on, so does the landing page. If you advertise on the sofa keyword, your ad contains the word sofa, you can’t send users to a landing page discussing kitchens or chairs. You need to send them to a page that talks about sofa’s.

Be sure to include the actual keyword you advertise on clearly visible on the landing page, preferably in a headline. This tells a visitor that the landing page is relevant to the search query they typed in to start the whole process. If you use several different phrases to say the same thing, you’ll probably have to make different landing pages for each or use dynamic HTML code to show the exact keyword the user searched for.

When you advertise on many different types of keywords, you will have to create a lot of different landing pages. It’s a lot of work, but it will always pay itself back in a higher conversion rate, higher revenue, and more return on your advertising investment.

2. Clickpath: Sometimes the landing page can be the conversion page. If you offer a downloadable ebook or small specialized item, your landing page can also be the page where users can place an order. But often you’ll need to give your users additional information to guide them to a conversion – product options, specifications, accessories, etc. Guide them through the sales funnel, from general overview to detailed information to actual conversion.

An important aspect of the clickpath is that you shouldn’t make it too easy for users to diverge from it. Take away your regular site navigation if you can, try to keep the visitors of your landing page in a clickflow that guides them to a conversion. If users sidestep your clickpath and instead go to your site’s homepage or another page, chances are you’ll lose them there.

3. Calls to action: Once you get a user to click on an ad and arrive on your landing page, don’t leave them hanging. You need to take them by the hand as it were, show them where to go and what to do. Use action words like ‘learn more, ‘click here’, ‘order now’ in your content and in your links to additional pages.

4. Easy conversion: It should be as easy as possible for a user to place an order. Don’t ask them for information they don’t really want to give up. Keep your forms short and simple and only ask for the very basic information you need to complete the order.

5. Persuade: Selling is the art of persuasion. Employ tried-and-proven persuasion methods such as testimonials, special offers, guarantees, authorative sources, instilling confidence, and more. Include them on the landing page itself and on every subsequent page you send your users to.

6. Fast loading: Your landing page should load very quickly. If a user has to wait for a bit before your landing page is displayed properly, the urge to click that back-button will grow. Make your landing pages lean and efficient to optimize loading times.

7. Measure: It’s not as simple as putting your landing page out there and waiting for the money to come pouring in. It’s imperative that you know what users are doing on your landing page. Do they stay and read your content or do they leave? What links do they click on? Do they convert into customers right away or do they bookmark the page and come back later? Do they follow the whole clickpath or do they leave prematurely? If so, where do they tend to leave your site the most?

All these things and more can be measured and analyzed with a good web analytics package. A good place to start is Google Analytics, a free service that contains all the web analytics functionality you’ll need. Use the data you gather to make informed decisions about what to improve on your landing page (and your website as a whole).

8. Experiment: Creating good landing pages is never an exact science. All aspects of a landing page, from the headline to the color of the buttons, can have an impact on the conversion rate. Experiment freely, but do it in a controlled manner. Tools like Google’s free Website Optimizer allow you to perform extensive tests with all kinds of different aspects of your landing page to optimize your conversions.

Don’t test too many things at once – experiment with one or two changes at a time, no more. Allow your test to run for enough time before you make up your mind. And once you find a landing page setup that works well, use that as the basis for a new round of further tests. Never stop testing and improving.

9. Conform to the guidelines: Last but certainly not least, be sure to read the editorial policies and guidelines of the search engine you advertise on. Google, Yahoo and Live all have strict policies about advertising on their search results pages. There are guidelines you’ll need to conform to for your ads and your landing pages, or you’ll risk paying more for each click or worse, not getting your ads shown at all.

Conclusion
Creating good landing pages for your Pay Per Click campaign is not an easy and straightforward task. To do it well you’ll need to invest a lot of time and effort in building and perfecting your landing pages. But it’s never a wasted effort. Again and again the results show that good landing pages turn many more visitors into paying customers, and help earn back the money you invest in seach advertising several times over.

Search Engine Advertising: a Step By Step Guide – Part 3 is a blog post from Barry Adams.

In a previous entry I’ve spoken about the importance of a well thought-out clickflow that guides your website’s visitors from page to page. This clickflow is the basis of turning visitors into customers.

An internet user goes through several phases of information requirements in the process of searching for and purchasing a product online. There are many similar versions of this purchase-funnel model, and for this blog post I’ll stick with a simple one: Discovery, Consideration, Purchase:

• In the first discovery phase the user is typing generic terms in Google hoping to find websites that offer generic, high level information about the type of product she’s looking for. You’ll get visitors on your site in this phase by optimizing your product- and category-overview pages for this type of information. Include generic terms that users will search for and make sure the information on your website contains the right type of high level information about your products. Don’t get too technical here, detailed specifications are appropriate for the second phase.
   
• In the consideration phase you can present much more detailed information about your products. These webpages should be a level below the overview pages in your website’s navigation tree and here it’s important to be more specific. In this phase a user wants to see specifications and comparisons between products he’s found in the discovery phase. Ideally you’ll want a system that compares products based on defining features and functions.  You’ll also want to include statements that may persuade a user to choose for you as a vendor. You should mention your company’s and product’s unique selling points.
   
• In the third purchase phase you’ll want to repeat these persuasive arguments on your website so that a user is affirmed in her decision. It’s also important to make the purchase process as smooth and simple as possible so that a user doesn’t encounter any obstacles before completing the purchase. The order form needs to be clearly indicated and easy to use. Remember you should strive to help your customers instead of merely sell to them.

There are many more aspects of your website that can help you turn more visitors into customers, but a solid clickflow and content optimized for the user’s purchasing process are the essential ingredients. Get these right and you’ll have a solid foundation to build on.

Optimize Your Content For The Online Purchase Funnel is a blog post from Barry Adams.

Search engines are the motors that drive traffic to your website. Getting your site ranked highly in search engines is an important factor of success. The discipline that focuses on this is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short.

In an effort to help beginning webmasters get underway with SEO Google has published a Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (PDF). It’s a very useful document that describes the basics of good SEO. Some of the topics in this guide have also been a part of previous blog posts here, such as:

• Page titles
• Site navigation
• Good content
• Headlines
• Using images
• Web Analytics

Other topics in Google’s SEO Starter Guide include description tags, URL structure, anchor text, the robots.txt file, and more. It’s an excellent guide for both new and experienced webmasters that want a solid handle on how to build and maintain a successful website.

Download Google’s SEO Starter Guide (PDF)

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide is a blog post from Barry Adams.

We’ve already discussed the basics of a good navigation for your website. The last tip in that article, linking to other pages on your site from within your content, deserves some extra explanation.

Your navigation alone isn’t sufficient to get people to the right content on your site. When you’ve managed to capture a visitor’s attention, you need to guide them to the right content. Your navigation menu alone won’t accomplish this.

Imagine you’re reading a book. At the end of a chapter you want to move on to the next chapter. Wouldn’t it be irritating if you had to return to the table of contents of the book first, and then find the new chapter?

A website works in a similar way. When a user is reading your content, you shouldn’t ask them to go back to your navigation menu if they want to move on to the next piece of relevant information. You need to link to the next page(s) from within your content. This ensures the user’s attention will remain focused and, more importantly, you get to influence what the user reads next.

With this principle in mind you can guide your website’s visitors through a clickflow, a set of pages with different but connected content that guide your visitor from the entry page all the way to where you want them: your conversion page.

The concept of a clickflow deserves much more attention than I can give it here is this blog post, but I want to give you the basic idea. Use links from within the content of your site to create a smooth, uninterrupted reading process for your users so that they can easily and effortlessly find the right information to help them in their decision-making process.

Guide Your Visitors To Your Conversion Page is a blog post from Barry Adams.

Does your website exist to sell more products? Or does it exist to help your customers?

Do you force the sales message down the throat of your visitors? Or do you guide them to solutions for their problems?

A website that merely sells can help you make money. But a website that helps its users will help you become great.

Amazon doesn’t sell books. Amazon helps people find interesting books.

Google doesn’t sell advertising space. Google helps people find stuff on the internet.

Users instantly recognize a website that merely sells. They might actually buy something from that site. But they’re unlikely to come back. They’ve been sold to. They haven’t been helped.

SEOmoz has become one of the best-known search engine optimization companies in the world. They haven’t done that by selling SEO services. They’ve done it by helping webmasters and competing SEO professionals (!) become better at SEO.

Seth Godin is a very successful author of marketing books. He didn’t become successful by selling books. He’s done so by helping his readers, in his books and through his blog.

Don’t just sell to your customers. Help your customers, and they will reward you with their money and their loyalty.

Do You Sell, or Do You Help? is a blog post from Barry Adams.

Privacy matters to internet users. People are aware of the dangers of giving out personal information, and everyone that has an email address understands the hazards and annoyances of spam.

As a result users are less inclined to type a lot of information in a website’s form. Whether it’s a contact form or an orderform, users will be reluctant to give you their information. Many research studies show that elaborate web forms turn users away.

Every field you add to a form will make it more likely a user will not fill it in and simply go somewhere else.  Especially form fields like address and phone number throw up barriers for users that are concerned about their privacy.

It’s therefore important to keep the forms on your website as short and simple as possible. A mistake I often see is that companies base their forms on their own internal wish-list of customer information. Especially sales people want to have as much information on their customers as they can get their hands on. This usually leads to long forms that request a lot of information from users, often with little to no reward for the user when he fills it all in.

It’s necessary to use forms on your website, as a form makes it easier for a user to get in touch with you. But when you ask for much more information in the form than what you’d ask for if the customer simply phoned you, you’re not likely to get a lot of submitted forms.

Whenever you create a form for your website, keep these guidelines in mind to ensure your visitors will feel comfortable filling it in and giving you their information.

Only ask for the absolute bare minimum. For generic contact forms the name, email address and message fields are enough. For online orderforms only ask for the minimum information you need to properly complete the order process. Any additional field risks a potential customer turning away and going to a competitor.

Reward your users for giving you their information. If you really, really need to ask a lot of information from your users, give them a reward that fits the amount of information you’ve requested. This reward can be in the form of a free downloadable ebook or white paper, a possibility to win a prize like a mp3 player, or another reward that fits with your target group. Make sure this reward is clearly indicated on the form itself.

Give your form proper context and explanation. Don’t just put a form up on a web page without any explanation. The best forms are those that are short and simple and clearly indicate to the user what happens with their submitted information.

Encourage your users to submit the form. By using action words such as “submit now”, “learn more”, and “sign up today” you encourage your users to fill in the form and will make them feel good about doing so.

Include a privacy policy. Link to your privacy policy and be sure that it states you will never give your users’ information to any third party. Your privacy policy needs to be in plain language as well – hiding your intent behind cryptic legalese will not engender any trust. It also helps to state clearly on the form itself that you won’t share your users’ information.

Use a “thank you” page. When a user submits the form, send them to a “thank you” page where you confirm what you will do with their information, such as replying to the customer’s inquiry, giving them the link to the downloadable reward, enrolling them in the prize draw, etc.

Measure the submission rate.  Track how many submissions you receive compared to how many page views the form itself gets. If the submission rate is very low, you’ll need to tweak your form even more. A submission rate of 20% is a good figure for generic contact forms, so don’t be surprised if your form does a lot worse than that.

Use a simple CAPTCHA [?] to ensure your submitted forms actually come from humans instead of automated spam robots. Some CAPTCHAs are overly complex and difficult to read even for humans, which leads to real people abandoning your forms instead of just spambots.

Simple forms pay off in the long run. You may generate some additional work for yourself or your sales people with the limited information you receive, but it will result in many more contact moments with your clients and eventually in more paying customers.

Keep Your Forms Short And Simple is a blog post from Barry Adams.