John Cow dot Com » Strategic Planning

Split Tests Simplified & Explained – First, A/B Testing

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:51:57 +0000

So what test should you start using?

Google’s Website Optimizer gives you two options: and A/B test or a multivariate test. But it’s not as clear-cut as that.

There are actually two ways to run an A/B test using Google’s Website Optimizer. One using the given A/B test option and one using the multivariate test option, and then there’s the actual multivariate test using the multivariate test option.

Confused yet?

I sure was when I started, but here’ a (hopefully) clear, non-jargon using explanation of what does what in regards to A/B testing (we’ll devote another post to true-multivariate testing).

The A/B test that Google gives you allows you either the capability to run a complex page comparison test or to completely waste your time by running an invalid test whose results are useless, depending on what your skill level with testing is going in. You can guess which end of the spectrum I was on when I started testing.

Here’s the reason for that:

Google’s A/B test runs a split-traffic test to multiple pages. ‘Pages’ is the key word there. Since you are testing whole pages, there is the ability to change multiple elements on each page. And as I’ve mentioned before, when you test multiple things willy-nilly, you get skewed results that you can’t trust because you don’t know what one thing caused the change in results. But thanks to me, you now know better, and so you’d better not do that.

**note** The once instance where changing multiple things can work is when you are testing one overlying thing, like a design scheme, which has multiple elements, but they are all tied together in some way and contribute the one thing that you are testing. But this is the only time I would recommend running an A/B test with multiple variations within one page.

You can run what is considered a ‘classic’ A/B test using Google’s version of the A/B test, you just need to practice some restraint, and make sure that you are only testing one element per page. Keep to that rule, and you’ll see some great results that you can actually use. The main point of the A/B test is to compare different versions of one element on a page. You could do an A/B test of a buy now button color and test red (control), blue, green, and yellow.

This is really an A/B/C/D test, but since it is only testing one aspect of one element on the page, it is an A/B test.

The A/B test is really the simplest to set up and run, so it’s a great place to start testing if you’ve never done it before.

Since the multivariate test allow you to isolate specific elements, you can also use it to run an A/B test. Doing this, and isolating only one thing to test, will ensure that you are not accidentally changing anything else, since the only part of the page that will be tested is the element that you identify. Everything else will appear exactly the same as before.

It’s up to you whether you choose to use Google’s A/B test of the multivariate test to run your classic A/B tests.

Listen to this post at Cinchcast.com –> A/B Split Testing

(This post is a contination of the series of Becoming a Trusted Expert. You can read the previous posts at http://www.johncow.com/how-to-become-a-trusted-expert-online/)

7 Steps for Successful Split Testing – Kinda Science-y Stuff

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:00:34 +0000

This is a continuation of the Trusted Expert posts on testing…

For testing purposes and the examples we give, we’re going to be using Google’s Website Analyzer which is part of Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/). Why? Well, for one, because it’s free and therefore accessible to everyone; and secondly, because it’s a darn good testing platform… free or not.

Google’s Website Optimizer is free, powerful, fast and easy. What more could you want? It allows you to perform A/B and multivariate testing.

Why is it free?

Because Google knows that if you improve your conversion rates, you’re more likely to invest in more advertising campaigns, users are happy because they’re happier with the sites that they find through searches. Basically, everyone is happy and Google makes more money.

Makes sense when you put it that way, doesn’t it?

There are other, paid services that you can use to further your testing, measuring, and optimizing practices. But this series is all about making the most out of what you can get for little or no money spent, by concentrating on the buyer and conducting your communications strategy in a totally different way. For that reason, in regards to practical applications for testing that will be covered in this part of the series, we’ll be concentrating on how best to utilize the free Google tools.

The important thing to remember about the Google Website Optimizer is that it is a tool. It only provides the metrics, it can’t tell you what changes to make. You have to infer that for yourself. If you want the tests you run to be meaningful and give you the feedback you need to improve your site, then you need to make sure you’re going about it the right way, and making the most of the free tools that Google gives you.

Later in the series, we’ll be going through exactly what you should be doing to get you started with testing. Where you take it from there is up to you.

Before we delve into the nuts and bolts of actually running a test, there are a few things you need to remember for any test you run, whether it’s #1 or #1001:

Always start the test with a goal in mind. Know what you expect the outcome to be (although you may be wrong – very, very wrong; that’s what you’re testing.) In scientific tests, this is called the hypothesis. Your goal is the basis and the reason for the entire test.
Determine what you metric of success will be before you start the test. How much better is good enough to be considered a success? 5%? 10% 50%? Only you can decide that.
Remember not to muddy the waters. If you’re testing the color of the checkout button, don’t also change the shape or the font or where it appears on the site. You could get an amazing result, but you won’t know what variable was responsible for the change. Be especially aware of this when testing copy; any other changes you make, even inadvertently, to the layout or the font or any other aspect of the display will totally negate the validity of the test on the actual content.
Remember that you always need a control. Even when you’re dong multivariate testing, you still need to use the original version of the page to act as a control, something to compare the test results to.
Use descriptive names for your tests. You may be able to keep track of the fact that Tests 1-10 were about buttons and Tests 11-15 were about headlines, but what about when you’re at Test 345? If you give your tests clear, descriptive names, it’ll be easier for you to find the information and results when you need to refer back to them to plan more tests.
The tests mean nothing if you don’t learn anything from them. Your test isn’t really done (or of any use to you) unless you’ve analyzed the results and applied the learnings to your site. You then use that knowledge you’ve gained as the basis for the next test, because…
And finally, …You’re never done testing. There will never come a time when you can say “That’s it, it’s perfect, I’m done.” Even if your site is perfect and performing at it’s utmost capacity at that moment, the internet is a fluid, changing thing, and you need to make sure (through testing) that you’re keeping up with the changes and keeping you and your site relevant and maintain your presence on the web as a Trusted Expert.

(This post is a contination of the series of Becoming a Trusted Expert. You can read the previous posts at http://www.johncow.com/how-to-become-a-trusted-expert-online/)

Maintain Your Trusted Expert Status – The Importance of Testing and Where to Start

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:13:00 +0000

Every single page of you website has elements in it which affect how people view your website. And each of those elements came to be there because of a decision you made.

But was it the right decision?

You’ll never know how much better you could be doing unless you test.

While it may seem like a daunting prospect with all of the potential testing situations available to you, you need to start somewhere. Any testing is better than no testing at all. But if you go off testing willy-nilly, you may be getting skewed results because of other factors that are influencing the results.

Here’s what you should be looking at when you’re starting to test, in this order:

Function – I know, duh, but you’d be surprised at how many people ignore basic functionality for testing brighter, shinier, more interesting things, and then don’t understand why they don’t see results. If half of your pages lead to nowhere, and you’ve got a ton of broken links, and your shopping carts keep emptying, or there is an error in your opt-in form, then how can you expect to see good results when you’re testing the picture on the front page?

Make sure everything works on your site first. The worst impression you can make is that your site is not properly run; it will undermine the trust level with your users so profoundly that the best content in the world will not save you.

Accessibility – The basics of accessibility is making sure that all kinds of browsers can load your website, and that it looks like it should on all of them. You can test this out at a site like http://browsershots.org/ which will test how your site looks in all the browsers you can think of, including Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.

Other aspects of accessibility that you may not have considered, but are equally important are thinks like:

font size
language issues
script (java, php, asp, flash) errors
problems with things loading properly.

This is when it is very useful to have developed your buyer personas before addressing these concerns. For example, if your personas consist mainly of an older demographic, then size on font and clarity may be an important accessibility issue for you to consider.

Usability – Now that your site is functional and accessible, you have to start thinking about how people use your site. This is another opportunity for you to customize your site for your buyer personas.

What kind of font or layout to they prefer?
How do they move through the buying process?
What kind of navigation are they looking for?

It could even be something as simple as whether they prefer a blue button or a red one. A lot of the A/B tests you’ll do will have to do with usability (we’ll go through that whole process a little later – don’t worry.) There are a lot of things that you can find out about your buyers and your website through usability testing, and the improvements you can see from a few small changes is huge.

Intuition – The intuitive feel of your site is a little more subjective and can be harder to pin down. It as a lot in common with usability, but the intuitive level of your site is more about the entire user experience than about any one specific element. Through testing of intuitive elements, you can find the things that are preventing your users from completing the desired action you want from them.

These elements can include specific things like:

point-of-action assurances
customer reviews
color scheme
graphic design of the site itself.

Intuitive elements are the things that evoke a certain emotional response from our buyers. By testing these elements you can make sure that the emotional elements of your site are hitting the right notes with your buyer personas and further establishing yourself as a Trusted Expert in their eyes.

Persuasion – The persuasion elements of your site can be some of the trickiest to identify and tie down. These are the elements that actually persuade your buyers to perform the desired action. You only deal with persuasion issues after you’ve resolved all the other problems with your site.

Where to Start?

It’s important to focus your efforts on the things that will effect the most positive change with the least possible expenditure of time, effort, and money. Once you’ve addressed the basic concerns (functionality, accessibility, usability) then you can move on to the more emotional aspects (intuitive and persuasive elements). That still leaves a whole lot of testing to do.

Here’s how you can narrow those choices down:

1) Take a look at your site’s metrics.

This will tell you where you need to start testing. **Note – if you don’t have a site yet, make sure to address all of the concerns in order and build your site to meet your buyer personas needs and you’ll save yourself a lot of testing and you can go right to testing the emotional elements of your site to get a better response rate. Everybody else, keep reading.

2) Identify the following:

Pages with the highest bounce rate
Pages with the highest exit rates
Pages with the lowest time spent
The 5 most important pages on your site

3) Rank & Prioritize

Once you’ve identified these pages, you need to rank them in order of importance to you and (which really means in order of importance to your buyer personas, since it’s all about them, remember?) and where they fit along the functionality to persuasive scale, starting at the bottom.

You now have your list of things to test, and in what order to test them.

Also, in these areas, you can identify where your site has been lacking in thought leadership. Take this opportunity to change these areas so that it reinforces the idea of You the “Trusted Expert” in your niche.

Now you have a game plan to start testing with. Too bad you don’t know anything about actually running tests…

You didn’t think I’d leave you hanging, did you? That’s the next part!

(This post is a contination of the series of Becoming a Trusted Expert. You can read the previous posts at http://www.johncow.com/how-to-become-a-trusted-expert-online/)

SEO & Being a Trusted Expert

Jason Katzenback — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 03:13:44 +0000

You may not realize it, but the things that will make you a Trusted Expert will also help you with your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)…

…which will improve your natural ranking with Google…

…which will help people searching for your product or service find you in the top of the search rankings…

…which makes them think of you as a Trusted Expert!

See how that works?

If you want to be a Trusted Expert (and of course you do) you need to be all over SEO. That’s because people inherently trust natural search results more than PPC ads when they do a search.

Why?

It does not matter what the logical truth is, it’s the visceral emotional response (I am such a genius for knowing that big word) that counts, and gets people to take action. So, if you want to be considered a Trusted Expert in a certain niche, then you need to rank well in your target keywords.

You may expect this post to be full of SEO tips and tricks, but what you don’t realize is that you’ve already been doing a lot already to improve your SEO, if you’ve been doing all the things that I’ve recommended to become a Trusted Expert (and you have been doing those things, haven’t you… cause here is the previous post in the series if you missed it Press Releases the More Technical Stuff)

- Your blog. Google and the other search engines loves them some blogs. Every time you post, you improve your credibility and your standing with Google. Blogs are also a great way to target new keywords – a good blog post with the proper keyword density (2-5%) can bring you in a ton of new people if targeted correctly.

- Your online press room. Again, Google loves anything that provides fresh content, and you’re going to be posting every single press release you send out (and again, you are sending press releases out now, right?) This is especially important because the online press release services only keep your press releases indexed for a short time. Anyone searching on the terms you used in those press releases after that time will be directed to your online press room/latest news area. And if you don’t have an area for your press releases, then they’ll end up…at someone else’s websites.

Beyond your Trusted Expert content, there are a loads of basic technical things you need to be doing to improve your SEO.

Have a Google friendly site map and submit it to the google webmaster tools.
Use a robots.txt file.
Add your primary keyword phrase to your title, description & keyword tags (only one time in each)
Have your main keyword in an h1 tag (only once)
Use your alt tags and add your primary keyword to one of them (most important is to describe the image but when possible add a keyword to one of them)
Make sure no two titles and descriptions on your site are the same (Google often deems this as duplicate content, even though the pages might be completely different)
Internally link to your main pages with the keyword anchor text you want to rank for (internal linking is very important and often overlooked)
Link to related high authority resources (Google likes seeing you offering visitors relevant info and linking to high authority sites)
Check for broken links and images (Google hates errors)

There are a lot of other tips and tricks to improve your SEO, but this is a good place to start. Like most things about being a Trusted Expert, it all comes back to the content. Properly targeted content not only brands you as a Trusted Expert, but it also improves your SEO and makes it easier for people to find you, which helps them to see you as a Trusted Expert.

Funny how reciprocal that is… well i think so anyway… sort of.

More on Press Releases – the More Technical Stuff

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:19:29 +0000

OK, so now you know that you have to write press releases in order to become a Trusted Expert. You know that they’re good for business, your blog, or whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish. But how exactly do you go about it? And in this post, I’m not talking about the content, since I covered that in the last post. Here’s the things you need to figure out to get your post seen by the right people:

1. How you’re going to distribute the press release. There are many options out there. First off, you need to decide your main distribution. There are many press release distribution services out there, both paid and free. While you have to pay money for the paid service (duh), the top paid services have a much wider and larger distribution. (It’s really a case of getting what you pay for.) If you’re really strapped for money, stick with the free one, getting your message out to some people is better than none. Here are some PR distribution services:

You should also make sure to always simultaneously publish your press releases to your online press room/ latest news area of your site, which I’m sure you all built after my last post, right?

2. What keywords you’re going to target. You need to treat your press release just like any other kind of content that you put on your site. And all of your content needs to keep in mind those keywords that will resonate with your buyer personas.

3. What links you’re going to include. At the very least you need to include a link to the area of your site that the release is talking about. Ideally, any time you mention something about your company, you should be including a link. Talking about the company history, or if you’re the company, information about you? Then link to the About Us/Bio page. Remember, you want to make it easy for your buyers/readers to find you.

4. The social media you’re going to utilize. Using social media tags will make your press releases easier to find, and they also give you the opportunity to reach new buyers/readers in the specific niche that you’re looking to target. The big ones are Technorati, del.icio.us, and DIGG, but there are many more. If you’re not sure how to go about using social media tags, Todd Defren at SHIFT Communications has a social media press release template that they have made available for free; you can find it at http://www.pr-squared.com.

And don’t forget to mention your news on your Twitter and Facebook as well, but those Social Media tools and how to use them to become a Trusted Expert deserve a post all their own.

Using Press Releases to be a Trusted Expert

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:33:32 +0000

In my previous posts in the Trusted Expert series (Starts Here), I’ve mentioned the importance of press releases and how they can help you become a Trusted Expert. Well, today I’m going to talk about them some more. That’s how important press releases are to you and your business. If you haven’t been taking advantage of them yet, you need to start. Now.

Press releases have a two-fold purpose: they give you the opportunity to reach your buyers directly with news about you and your business, and they are fantastic for improving your standing wit h the search engines.

The first thing you need to do is add a press release/latest news page to your website. This will be where you put all the press releases after you send them out. Not only does it give your customers a chance to find all the latest information about your company, but it also indexes like mad and the search engines love it. Just make sure that you keep updating it regularly – it won’t look good if the ‘latest news’ on your website is more than six months old.

A lot of people don’t send out press releases because they don’t think they have anything to write about. Here are some easy ideas that anyone can use to base their press releases on:

You’ve added a new product to your site
You’re speaking at an industry related conference
You’re sponsoring something or donating something
You’ve written some Trusted Expert content
You’ve found a new use for your product
You’re targeting a new segment.

Once you know what to write about, you need to start thinking about how you’re going to write your press release. When press releases were only written for the traditional press, all you had to worry about was making it interesting enough to be featured. Now you still have to try to please the news outlets, but you also need to make sure that your press release resonates with your buyer personas. One of the best ways to do this by including a special offer that appeals specifically to your personas and will compel them to take action, whether that’s going to your site, signing up for a newsletter, or buying a product.

So, to recap, here’s what you need to do to get started using press releases to make you a Trusted Expert:

Add a press release/latest news page to your website.
Come up with a list of reasons to write a press release.
Figure out what offer you’re going to use to compel your buyers to take action.

In the next post in the series, we’ll go over the more technical details of an online press release, like keyword targeting and density, optimizing the press release for search, and the social media release.

Being a Trusted Expert and Blogs Part 2

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:46:42 +0000

As I mentioned in the last post in the series (yes i am going back 4 weeks here), How to Use the Free Tools Available to Brand Yourself as a Trusted Expert, the next step in using blogs to become a Trusted Expert is to start your own blog.

So, how do you decide what to blog about? Well, you could blog about anything really, but since this series is about how to make your online business more successful, I would recommend that you do it about your business and your products (niche). Duh.

Exactly what about your business may be harder to decide.

Do some research (you should already know from your reading/commenting phase) and see what’s out there in your niche. Is there a gap that you could fill? Is there some information about your category that you think is important to get out there, and that will resonate with your Buyer Personas? Then that’s what your blog should be about.

Now here’s the list of things you’re going to want to know before you start your blog:

Your Domain (URL). Is it going be an extension of your existing main website, or will it have a unique name with branding and just point back to your site? Or is your blog going to be the main site? If so, you also need to decide what persona and feel you want your blog to have, which will influence the domain, tagline, and name you choose. If you are already adding your blog to your existing site, then you are somewhat limited as to choice, as it should relate back to the original site in some way. But if your blog is the whole site, then the sky and your imagination in the limit.
The tagline – remember that both the name and the tagline become searchable, so you need to pick them carefully to make sure that you’re indexing under the right keywords for your business.
The name (seems simple, but you’ll probably spend more time coming up with this than all the rest).

The reason why I’m telling you to take some time to come up with these 3 things is this: while you can change them later, as the search engines will reindex a site and you’ll maintain your rankings, but you will lose something more intangible – the branding and peronsa that you had built with that name or URL.

So, while you can go back and change it afterwards, putting a little thought and effort into it before you start will save you a headache and a bunch of rebranding after.

Here are the other things you’ll need to know when starting up your own blog:

Your design. There are a lot of software choices out there with customizable interfaces. If you’ve already got a look and feel that you like for your website, you can modify it and use it for your blog. Or, if you want something a little more stand-alone, you can just use the same colors (to connect it to your main site) but has a completely different look and feel. You can always go back and tweak it later, so don’t stress out about this one as much. Design is much more of a learning experience, and plus you’ll be testing elements to know exactly what your buyers want (and don’t worry, we’ll get to that part later, too).

Your voice. Blogs, more than any other kind of writing on the net, need to have a personality. The most successful blogs have their own unique voice that is so strong that you can almost imagine the person talking when you’re reading it. And although I’ve done posts on good grammar before, you need to walk a fine line – yes, use good grammar and spelling whenever possible, but you can also take liberties if it suits your voice. I’ve used non-good grammar thingies (see) where it’s appropriate. But if you keep to good grammar in every other way, it will be obvious that you’re doing otherwise for color and humor rather than that you don’t know any better.

Above all, keep in mind that your blog is supposed to be about you and your business. Don’t try to be something that you’re not – a big part about being a Trusted Expert is the fact that you are authentic.

Last point on this topic… just start a blog. I am serious here and I highly recommend everyone have a blog that is on a topic they are passionate about and especially if they want to be viewed as an expert in that niche.

How to Use the Free Tools Available to Brand Yourself as a Trusted Expert

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:59:40 +0000

As I’ve mentioned before, you can’t become a Trusted Expert by buying advertising. It’s been a long time since advertising built trust, especially on the web, and we’ll never see those days again.

Now, if you were using traditional advertising theories and strategies, you would now be stumped as to what you could do to promote your business. But you’re not, you’re dealing with the online world, and you’re going to be applying new theories to this new way of reaching people. You are a Trusted Expert (or at least you will be by the time I’m done with you.)

And a Trusted Expert has tools at their disposal that they can use to establish their position in their category as an authority. And best of all, those tools are free. I’ll be going over those tools in the next few posts, starting with blogs.

Blogs

Your blog is your best resource for positioning yourself as a Trusted Expert. And you don’t even have to have your own to use it this way. Here’s how:

First thing to do – start reading blogs. (Which, if you’re here, you’ve already started doing.) Read ones in your category and niche, read ones outside of it. Bookmark and subscribe to the ones you like, and maybe even to a couple that you don’t like but has fantastic numbers. You’ll start to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t, how to reach out to readers, how to generate traffic, and how to create controversy and create publicity for yourself.

Next step is to start commenting on those blogs you like, don’t like, etc. Make sure you’ve got something reasonably intelligent to say, hopefully something witty, and link to your website. Not only will you get some additional traffic to your website from the blog, it makes Google’s search engine like you more.

Keep your eye out for comments on your category or niche; think of something useful to say (remember, you want to be a Trusted Expert!) Give people advice or help where you can. If it’s applicable, invite the person with the problem to take it to email where you can help them even more. Next time that person is looking for something you sell, chances are they’ll go to you.

If you come across a blog or comments that mentions you, your product, or your website in a negative sense, for goodness’ sake address it. Explain who you are; offer up the chance to address the problem directly. If there truly was a screw-up, admit it and apologize – in this age of “It’s anybody’s fault but mine” you’d be surprised how many people will appreciate a “Yup. I messed up; but I’m fixing it and it won’t happen again.” People will appreciate your honesty and realize that we’re all human and forgive you. And more importantly, associate you with a real human being and not a faceless corporation. (Note – they will do this the first time this happens; keep screwing up and, even if you admit it, you’ll look like an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s doing – the opposite of a Trusted Expert.)

More to come in the next post about what to do when you start your own blog….

Website Design & Being a Trusted Expert – Part 2

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:14:54 +0000

Do Your Visitors See Their Perfect Reflection In Your Website?

Continued from Website Design & Being a Trusted Expert Part 1

The first thing a buyer wants to see when entering your site is something they can relate to; the site has to resonate with them. If they can see something of themselves in the site, they will inherently trust it more.

You need to think about the site organization – you need to make sure that there are the appropriate links that relate directly to what buyers are looking for, and that follows their thought process so that it looks logical and organic to them.

Once you’ve identified the situations that your targets are finding themselves in that causes them to seek you out, and you have the starting point for how to organize you navigation. Make your buying process follow the path of solving those problems. You then have the opportunity to communicate your expertise in solving these problems, build an empathic report with them, and move them further along to completing the buying cycle.

Who your target audience is will also influence the formats in which you talk to them. You need to think about your buyer’s preferred media and learning styles. Some groups will love to read long copy, while others prefer things short and to the point. An older target audience might not enjoy videos or podcasts as much as a younger audience. Whatever the personality of your target audience, your site also has to have its own distinct and memorable personality. And you need to make sure that, once you’ve decided on what that should be, that you stay consistent with that tone throughout all of your communications.

Price point is also important when it comes to how much sales copy to use. If you are selling a low priced offer (less then $97), you do not need 30 pages of sales copy… keep it to about 4 full page scrolls max. If you are offering a free trial (Pay $1 now and then get access for 30 days), then use even less copy. Focus on the benefits and let the free trial do the selling for you. In fact (obviously depending on the target audience), for free trials, short pages with a video and few bullet points work VERY well!

As you start to get repeat visitors, they will develop an emotional and personal relationship with you. They will expect to see and hear things in a certain way from your. To change that voice drastically without any warning will undermine the trust you’ve built with them. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be testing things (that’s a whole other series of posts) but you need to make sure you’re not making dramatic changes in the personality of your site without cause.

Don’t forget the importance of images and pictures in setting up the personality of your site. They are powerful tools that, when chosen correctly, can really resonate emotionally with your audience. When chosen incorrectly, they can be off-putting, and ruin the atmosphere that you’re trying to create. This is a good place for testing – most people focus on the hard things, like the offer, or buy-it-now buttons, but you’d be surprised at the difference an image can make in your conversion rate.

A few important things to understand about images.

“I Am Not That Old Am I?” – People want to think they are younger then they are… so if you are relating to a target audience that is 50, have pictures that have 40 year old looking people.Use common sense here… if you are targeting a teenagers, do NOT but pictures of children (I hope you realize that is obvious).
“Show Me How I Will Look After Your Product” – You want to show what the end result of what your offering will provide. This is why you don’t see weight loss supplements with only fat people on the page and dating sites with only lonely losers on the page. Show pictures of happy couples, six pack abs, laughter and other happy things. Obviously it depends on what your selling, if you are selling a product focused on potty training, a picture of a guy with six pack abs is not really a good choice… but a happy kid on the potty with happy parents, that there is a good one.
“Show Me Where to Go” – Use arrows to highlight where to take action… this has proven over and over again to increase conversions. We all hate to admit it but we all want to be told what to do… we just don’t want others to know that. Make it as brain dead simple as possible to see exactly where your customer is to go on the page, and arrows work very well.

Make sure that there’s a way for visitors to provide feedback to you. Make the ‘contact us’ information easy to find, use ‘rate this’ buttons for your products, and have either forums or comments enabled on your blog so that people can express their opinions easily. You can get valuable information about how well your site is resonating with its intended target (or not.)

Here’s what you need to do:

Make sure all of the technical aspects on your site work properly – no dead links, no images that fail to load, etc.
Come up with a site navigation/site map that is designed and organized with your potential buyers in mind – not how you organize your company. Also on the main page that you actually are selling, try to have the navigation moved out of the “above the fold” area. Keep them focused on the offer.
Make as many places for a two-way conversation that you can: easy to find ‘contact us’ information, a forum, comments on your blog, customer ratings on products.
Make sure that the ‘soft’ elements, like graphics and images, match your buyer personas and are going to resonate with them and make them perceive you as a Trusted Expert.

Website Design & Being a Trusted Expert – Part 1

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:56:41 +0000

Before you implement your external communications strategy to bring customers in to your site, you need to make sure that your internal communications strategy is in order – that is, your website itself.

Cause the best PR and marketing campaign in the world won’t increase sales if your website sucks!

And how can it suck?

Oh, there are so many ways: obvious problems like…

broken links
bad checkout process
hard-to-find contact information

to the more subtle problems like…

focusing on your products and your wants instead of your buyers
writing in a voice that’s going to alienate your identified personas
not having any useful information on the site to establish yourself as a thought leader
having bad SEO so no one can find your site
and so on and so on!

You need to fix these first so that when you do start promoting the site and driving traffic to it, you’re putting your best foot forward and presenting a strong, cohesive website that addresses the needs and wants of your potential buyers.

While this is not a design series, and I can’t teach you how to build a beautiful site (which is an art form in itself) I can help you fix the most common mistakes people make when building a website. The tips I’ll give you are things that anyone, regardless of design and coding experience, can do to improve the effectiveness of their website.

To best leverage the power of the content that you are creating, you need to make sure that it is easy for visitors to find what they need on your site. And you do this through smart design.

Again, concentrate on solving their problems rather than trying to sell your product. Where most people go wrong is that they base their website on their own companies internal organization structure, which makes it really easy for them to find things, but how does that help the target audience? They don’t care about how you organize your company, they care about your problems.

Don’t forget the WIIFM? (what’s in it for me?) that drives their behavior.

To design your site properly (i.e. to get the most conversions) you need to learn as much as possible about the buying process for your product. You need to know how people find your site, and the length of time in a typical buying cycle (i.e. small purchases, short buying cycle, medium purchases, longer buying cycle, large purchases such as cars or homes – much longer buying cycle.) and you need to focus on walking the potential buyer through micro commitments…

Do NOT try to get them to be committed to buying from you to soon!

More to come about exactly how to do that in Part 2…

How to Create Trusted Expert Content

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:21:13 +0000

You need to provide content to your potential customers in the same language that they use. If you use similar style and language that they do, then your message will resonate with them even more. Every single thing you write, from blog posts, to emails, to press releases, to your website’s content, it all needs to take this into consideration.

Well-written materials will help your buyers understand how you can help them, why you’re the Trusted Expert they should go to when they are finally ready to make a purchase. I can’t overstate the importance of this. The content that you write for your potential customers will have a much greater influence over their opinion of you and your company than any piece of advertising that you will ever do.

But how do you know how to talk to them? How do you make them believe that you’re a Trusted Expert? Refer back to your buyer personas. They will tell you exactly how to talk to your audience. Avoid jargon; it’s the language that people turn to when they don’t have anything of use to say. It doesn’t make you sound smarter, and it’s the same stupid buzzword phrases that everyone else (meaning your competitors) is using. You will stand out from the competition by using superior content.

Understand your audience. You’ll need to consider what market problems your buyer personas are faced with and develop topics that appeal to them. Then, you need to write for that audience. If you use examples and stories, the content will resonate with them much more than just dry facts. Remember, you’re trying to build a relationship with these people. Make it interesting, and make them want to come back for more. Choose a great title that grabs attention and then use a subtitle to describe what the content will deliver. People are more likely to download, click, or sign up to get more if they have a clear understanding about what they’re getting.

Promote the effort like crazy. Offer the content on your site with easy-to-find links. Add a link to employees (if you have them) email signatures, and get partners to offer the links as well. To drive viral marketing efforts, alert the appropriate reporters, bloggers, and analysts in your category or niche that the content is available and send them a download link. Tweet it, post it on Faceook – get your information out there. Don’t rely only on your website to get info out there – use articles, comments on other blogs. This will help to drive traffic to your site as well as put you on the map with the authorities within your niche. Make yourself a Trusted Expert in their eyes, and they’ll tell the world.

People in the early stages of the buying cycle need basic information, people further along in the process want to compare products and services, both from what you offer and among your competitors, and they then need detailed information about the benefit of your products vs. someone else’s, or even one of your products vs. another one of your products. When the buyers are at the end of the buying process, it is crucial that you have an easy-to-use checkout system linked directly from your content so you can make the conversion as easy as possible for them.

Don’t forget about your communications after the sale, either. Make sure to continue the dialog with the customer, either through an opt-in email newsletter or by directing them to your forums – anywhere where you can continue the two-way conversation. You should also provide them with a tool in which to provide feedback on the sale itself.

Here’s what you need to do:

Decide that form of content best suits your buyer personas. White paper? Ebook? Webinar? YouTube Video? All depends on what your personas like best.
Decide how you’re going to talk to each persona. Based on their needs, wants, and preferred methods of communication, each message should have subtle differences in tone that will make your message resonate more with each persona.
Start writing your Trusted Expert content.

How to Become a Trusted Expert

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:00:21 +0000

To develop thought leadership, you need to start to think like your buyer personas. (See previous post in series How to Develop Buyer Personas)

You don’t want to become a Trusted Expert to everyone (well, you would, but it’s nearly impossible to do), you want to become a Trusted Expert within your buyer personas (a much more accomplishable task.)

Remember that being a Trusted Expert is about educating your potential customers on how to solve their problems, it is in no way related to trying to sell them something. It may go against every instinct you have, but you can’t mention your company (besides letting them know who the information is from) or the products or services you sell.

Really, this is what becoming a Trusted Expert is all about. It will turn you from Jim, the guy with a website that sells shed plans, to Jim, the Trusted Expert on the construction and building of sheds who helps us out by also selling plans that have been given his seal of approval. Who would you rather buy from? I thought so.

And to become a Trusted Expert, you’ve got to give a little to get a lot.

If may seem counterintuitive, but you’ve got to give away some info that is valuable enough that you could probably charge for it, but you won’t since you’re Jim, Trusted Expert, who just wants to educate people about how to build good sheds; and if you happen to need a plan to build that shed, why I’ve got one right here for you.

There are many ways that you can establish yourself as a Trusted Expert. Ways to communicate with your potential customers include blogs (hi!), email newsletters, ebooks, webinars, podcasts, video content, research reports, and white papers. Each is a way to communicate useful information that people will value, and, in turn, assign value to your company.

When preparing these communication pieces, there are several things that you need to keep in mind:

This is not a sales pitch; being a Trusted Expert has nothing to do with advertising.
Know your organizational goals.
Understand your audience (buyer personas); you can’t provide them with useful information if you don’t know what they want.
Make sure to promote your efforts; treat it as a press release worthy thing – let reporters, bloggers, and analysts that would be interested in the information know about it.
Decide whether you want to provide the content for free, or if you’re going to require people to register. You’ll get more people downloading it if it’s free, but you could also be building a qualified mailing list if you require them to provide you with an email address. Depending on what your company does and what your goals are, either option could work best.

Don’t underestimate the power using someone else’s expertise to help establish you as a Trusted Expert in your business. Hitch your cart to their star, as they say, and leverage that person’s authority and thought leadership and use it to promote your business, and you as a Trusted Expert.

Get someone who is already respected within your category to write something that you will feature on your site. It could be a guest blog post, a white paper, either a written, audio, or video interview. Not only will you get the benefit of their authority, but you can also get a boost in traffic through promotion on their site.

Here’s what you need to do:

Come of with a list of useful information that you can give to your buyers that will help establish yourself as a Trusted Expert.
Decide what, out of that information, would be the most useful to each of your personas.
Then, decide where you will promote the availability of this information so that each of your personas will become aware of it.

How to Develop Buyer Personas

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:13:16 +0000

Successful communications strategies work because they identify one or more buyer personas to target. You need to make these personas part of your planning process.

Buyer profiles, or personas, will be the cornerstone of your communications strategy. They are a crucial part of your planning process, and, although it’s tempting, you shouldn’t rush through them to get on to the fun stuff.

While you may only have one persona, or you may have several, there are still things you need to know about each group:

Their goals and aspirations
Their problems (so you can solve them)
Where they go to try and solve aforementioned problems
How you can best reach them
What is important to them
What kind of language do they use
What kind of images appeal to them
What kind of multimedia do they use

By doing this kind of basic research, you can learn a lot about these groups, and apply those learnings to your communications strategy to make it even more effective.

If you’ve got more than one persona, then you will also have to segment your communications strategy in order to target each persona individually. We’re trying to get away from the one-size-fits-all mentality when it comes to communications; it won’t do you any good to go through the buyer persona process and then try to shoehorn all the personas into one communication strategy.

By doing this basic research, you can learn a lot about these groups, and apply those learnings to your communications strategy to make it even more effective. The best way to learn about these people is to interview them, although that’s not always possible.

Look for other ways to learn about their habits – how did they get to your site, where do they go afterwards. You can also ask for information from current customers when they are completing a purchase, or give away something for free in exchange for some useful (but not personal) information about them.

By using these personas, you have a chance to truly empathize with your target buyers and to understand what they need, instead of concentrating on selling your product. You can see what drives them through the decision process.

Information you should see in your persona profile includes their background, daily activities, and solutions for their problems. The more you know about your market, the easier this will be to do.

Here’s what you need to do:

Identify the possible buyer personas for your site.
Fill out as much information as you can about your target groups; make sure to develop them into a real personality (give them a name if that helps) that you can relate to, not just generalization about a group.

How to Set Goals

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:43:10 +0000

Before all the new tools and promotion vehicles come into play, you need to figure out quite a few things. Like who your company is. And what your goals are. And when you want to achieve them. And why people should listen to you and not somebody else. In short, you need to concentrate on the content before you can start figuring out where it’s going to go.

So, what are your business goals?

Do you have a product or service that you’re trying to sell or are you trying to gain a subscription base, paid or otherwise?

Are you trying to sell a membership to something?

Trying to raise money for charity or simply trying to drive targeted traffic to your site to enable you to charge other companies for advertising?

Now write down those goals in details.

What are your short-term and long-term goals for your site? This will help you figure out what to concentrate on, and make it the basis of your communication strategy.

Here’s what you need to figure out:

Where you want your business to be in 6 months, 1 year, and 5 years.
What your measure of success will be; if it’s money, how much money? Enough to quit your day job? Everyone wants to make more money, but if you set definitive goals (bring in 35% more revenue) it will be easier to come up with a plan to achieve it.
You also need to think about some more intuitive and emotional goals – how do you want your business to be perceived? What do you want people to think when your company is mentioned?
Once you know the direction you want to go in, you have to stop thinking about what you want or what you sell.
You need to instead start to focus on who buys your product or service (and who you want to be buying your service or product.
Then, you need to start thinking about their influences and motivations, about their buying process and the needs and problems they have that drive them to seek out your product.

How to Start to Build Your Own Communication Strategy

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:47:26 +0000

Now, we’ve been talking about why you should be looking at things differently, and what you should be doing instead, and we’ve even gone through how to make your website more functional in order to meet your customers needs (because it’s all about them, remember?)… oh and yes, this is a continuation from the previous post on Press Releases

The next step is to start to actively promote yourself (or, rather, why you’re the solution to their problems and establish yourself as a thought leader in your category.) But with all of the options out there, how do you do this?

It can be daunting simply because of the sheer number of possibilities.

What we’re going to concentrate on is promoting your website essentially through PR. Now, I’m not referring to simply putting out press releases, although they will be a part of the plan. When I call it PR, I use that term, but what I really mean is not-advertising. Meaning, you’re not going to have to pay for it.

Although paid advertising can and does have a part in marketing yourself on the web, there are approximately 2 billion books available (and a lot of them for free) so what I’m going to concentrate on is seeing this concept of basing your decisions on your buyer’s needs instead of your wants through to the end.

And there are a lot of non-paid resources out there that can promote your business and get people talking about you. Which is kind of what the point of PR was in the first place, before it forgot what it was supposed to do.

Remember, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t utilize paid advertising, or that it doesn’t work. But I think the things that we’re going to outline here are important that you have established first, as they are crucial to the reputation and the success of your business. Plus, they give you a big bang for your non-buck, so why wouldn’t you want to take care of this first?

Here’s what to do:

The first and most important thing to building your communications strategy is to forget about yourself and concentrate on your customer.
Understand your buyers, so you can then create a communications strategy that will reach them.

Stay tuned for more

How to Use Press Releases to Establish Yourself as a Trusted Expert

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:28:25 +0000

You may not think that press releases are something that would be useful to your business. They’re something that big corporations use when they buy out another company or some other fancy thing like that. The reality is, using press releases (properly) online are a great way to establish your credibility in your niche, garner attention to yourself and your business, improve your SEO, and of course, help to make you a Trusted Expert.

Press releases have changed radically with the introduction of the internet. While once you were required to court and try to win favor with the media outlets in order for them to feature your information. Press releases needed to be formatted in a very specific way that journalists expected, and many times you would have to employ a PR expert who had spent years cultivating relationships with these journalists and pay to be able to utilize their connections and up the chances of your story being run.

Now, with the capabilities that the internet has to potentially reach millions of people directly, we need to look at press releases differently as well. You don’t have to go through traditional media channels anymore. And so, you need to change the way you write press releases; you’re not writing for journalists anymore – you’re writing for your audience (meaning your buyer personas).

One of the main differences between traditional PR and the way PR works on the web is you are able to put out much more press releases than you used to be. In the past, if you sent out too many press releases, you ran the chance of annoying the press you were trying to reach – and many media outlets had a system where they tracked how much coverage they gave you, and you would need to save up the press release for something you really wanted them to cover.

Now, the opposite is true. It is beneficial for you to send out lots of press releases. Don’t just send them out when there’s big news is happening; you need to find reasons to send them out all the time. Just make sure that you’re saying something useful. Highlight any of the white papers or research that you have available on your site, promote any new products, services or tools that you have to offer. Any time you think that you have something useful to say to your potential buyers, put out a press release.

Make sure that your press releases are targeted towards your buyer personas – remember to write in a way that they want to hear. Also make sure to include the relevant keywords and phrases in your press release; it will help people to find the appropriate press release when conducting a search. Don’t the let the keywords dominate how you write, but try to be aware of them while you are writing and so you can insert them as organically as possible in the body of the press release.

Another way to make the press release relevant to your target audience is to include an offer that will compel them to respond to the release in some way. Place links in the press release; that way it has the potential to deliver your target audience right to your website, and ready to purchase – exactly where you want them.

If you do it right, you will drive buyers straight to your company’s products and services at precisely the time they are ready to buy. Make sure to include product information in the end-user-focused press release. Think about what’s important to your audience, and give it to them.

Another way to utilize press releases is to pay attention to what’s going on the in the news, and capitalize on that. If you’re a manufacturer of surgical masks or antibacterial hand sanitizer, then the swine flu panic was a perfect time to send out a press release about your product.

While I’m advocating sending out lots of press releases, make sure to practice some discretion; make sure you actually have something useful to say.

The key to true success with press releases on the web is to find a balance between what will work for journalists and what speaks to your buyer personas. You need to make it interesting enough for the journalists, but you also need to use the language that will resonate with your buyers. While getting press coverage is great, remember that you are writing to inform your buyers, not to sell your product.

Another aspect of press releases not often discussed is how they can improve the credibility of your website. Having an online press room or other dedicated page for your press releases will instantly lend your site some credibility and authority.

Just make sure to keep them updated – this can backfire if the only press releases you have on the page are from a year ago. That makes it look like you aren’t doing much business right now, or, if you are, you haven’t changed or improved anything in over a year. Not a good way to make yourself a Trusted Expert.

Here is a list of Free sites you can submit your press releases too….

Viral Marketing – How Can You Use It?

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:39:14 +0000

This is a continuation on my posts about the tools you can use to brand your self as a Trusted Expert.

One of the coolest things about the web is when a simple thing becomes a phenomenon; somebody creates something, and people start to share it with each other, and it reaches mass impact, and soon, millions of people have viewed this video/cartoon/story and many times it also makes its way into traditional media.
Not sure what exactly constitutes a viral explosion?

Think the Star Wars guy, the Beyonce dance, the kid all doped up after the dentist, and two of the first and most famous examples, the Diet Coke/Mentos and the dancing baby, which eventually made its way onto Ally McBeal as a plot point. When something truly goes viral, the publicity that it garners for the products involved is astounding. It can take a previously unknown product and propel it to the forefront.

The challenge in viral marketing is trying to make it happen. The most successful viral campaigns did not set out to garner publicity for a marketing purpose; they were just put out there to be entertaining or interesting, which is why they succeeded. One of the hardest things to do is to try and make a viral campaign work.

There are companies that claim to specialize in creating viral campaigns, but they are an educated guess, at most. Most agency-driven viral campaigns, are obvious that they are advertising campaigns with a purpose of promoting the products, and while they may attract some attention, most don’t go truly viral.

A huge amount of luck is involved in a true viral campaign. You can, however, monitor the blogs, podcasts, and forums for a viral eruption. A piece of news, properly delivered to its target market, can go viral.

The crux of viral marketing is that other people are telling your story for you, and sharing and promoting it to others. While you may not reach the level of the dancing baby or the Mentos video, you can still achieve results within your niche and a higher level of publicity with a moderately successful viral campaign.

SEO and Being a Trusted Expert

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:03:15 +0000

This is a continuation on my posts about the tools you can use to brand your self as a Trusted Expert.

When you do a search on Google, you automatically click on the first link, don’t you?

Because if they’re the first, they must be the best in that category, right?

Not necessarily; they just have the best SEO, which makes you think they’re the best, which makes them money. You want to be that site.

And although you can also gain a top spot on the search results through paying for an advertiser’s spot, there’s a certain cache that comes from being in the top organic results spot. Is it a valid feeling?

Not really, since good SEO can be bought just as easily as buying a PPC advertising placement. But that feeling exists nonetheless, that somehow the organic search result is a better, more authentic, more trustworthy site to go the than the one that is blatantly advertising. And since feelings are what ultimately drive the buying process, not rational thought, this is not something you want to ignore.

SEO isn’t this mysterious thing that only guys you pay over $100 an hour can understand. Once you understand the methodologies behind it, and how it works, it’s easy for you to make changes yourself to the way your site is viewed by the search engines to boost your rankings.

Oh, and by the way, don’t say SEO optimization; since SEO stands for ‘search engine optimization’ you’re actually saying search engine optimization optimization. Which sounds dumb. Sorry, that’s a pet peeve of mine.

There are two different components to successful SEO: what you do to your site internally, and the things you do externally. Both of these will determine what your Google rankings will be on your chosen keywords. Within your site, it’s all about taking advantage of the opportunities that already exist. Later in this series we’ll delve deeper into exactly how you can improve your SEO yourself.

Tools for Becoming a Trusted Expert – Blogs

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:57:45 +0000

As mentioned before (and probably will be mentioned another few hundred times over the course of this series) the key to your communications strategy is to think from the buyers point of view (which you know because you’ve developed personas) and to establish yourself as a Trusted Expert (by providing useful and timely information.)

So, now you need to know how, where and when to speak to your buyers directly. Which of the communication outlets should you utilize, and why? Well, only you can answer that question for your business, but here are the web-based communications that you can use to reach your buyers directly, and become a Trusted Expert.

For the next few posts, we’ll be going over the tools the internet has to offer, and how you can use them to brand yourself as a Trusted Expert. Today we’ll start with blogs, as they’re the natural first step.

Blogs

What can a blog accomplish for your company? While you may, at first, think of only of having your own blog, there are actually several ways to utilize blogs to the best advantage for your company. And, in fact, having your own blog is perhaps the last step in the process.

Before you jump into the fray, you want to understand exactly what the blogging landscape is out there. If you do it right, blogs can be the best tool your company has to promote your business, whether through your own blog, or by utilizing opportunities on other people’s blogs. Whatever your level of experience and utilization, blogs are your best tool for branding yourself as a Trusted Expert.

Here are the blog basics, for those of you who have been living in a cave, or perhaps in an area that still only gets dial-up (shudder): a blog is written using software that puts the most recent post at the tops of the page, in reverse chronological order. Posts are tagged to appear in selected categories and often include identifiers about the content of the post that will enable people to easily find it, both within the blog and also through the search engines.

A blog allows you to get a large amount of ideas out there, and because there isn’t a lot of risk or any cost involved, you can try out a bunch of different ideas and see what resonates with your audience, and what generates publicity for you. Your blog can also be one of your best tools for SEO – every word of every post is indexed by Google and the other search engines, so when people are looking for the topics you’re writing about, they will find you.

A blog has greater value beyond what you can calculate for ROI – publicity, air of authority, and new contacts are all benefits that you can’t assign a strict dollar value to.

Blogs are a free resource out there for you to use. You can get instant and unsolicited information as to what people are currently thinking and saying about you and your company. It’s like having a focus group that you can use – but for free. Every organization should be monitoring blogs to find out what people are saying about them.

In most product categories, early bloggers develop a reputation as being innovative. Once you’re comfortable with reading and commenting on other people’s blogs, it’s time to start doing it yourself. Later in this series we’ll get into how exactly you do that.

Even More About Testing (Because the Last Post was Getting Long)

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:30:06 +0000

Continued from the previous post Continually Improving Your Communications

At the highest level of testing, you will need to test all the persuasive elements in your site so you can create the best system for closing the sale possible. And don’t underestimate the importance of any element on your site; something that seems unimportant to you could make all the difference to your users. Every element on your website is meant to persuade users to take a certain action; therefore, every element needs to be tested in some way. Luckily, on the internet, testing is easy and inexpensive (well, it can get expensive if you want it to, but it can just as easily be done cheaply.)

Don’t rely on what you would want, or what you think your users want; not everyone wants the same thing you want, or wants to be treated the way you want to be treated. That’s why testing is so important – so you give your users what they’re looking for, not what you think they’re looking for, or what you want to give them. You can apply all the research and knowledge that you’ve gained in your niche that you want, try to adhere all the marketing rules that you can find, but you will never know exactly what your users really want until you start testing.

Essentially, through testing, you will be letting your buyer personas design your site for you. You start out with a plan and a best guess, but be prepared to make changes and let go of your favorite design elements if they prove to not be what your users want. Ignore the ‘rules’ of online marketing. If the internet has taught us one thing, it’s that marketing rules were made to be broken. If the internet or online marketing never changed, then rules would be ok. But it is a fluid, constantly changing thing, and while there are some guidelines you could keep in mind, don’t be married to any one strategy if is stops producing results for you.

Through testing, you are empowering your users to decide what works best, and since they’re the ones paying the bills, it’s best to listen to them. Using Google’s Website Optimizer, you don’t have to guess what they want, the report results will quickly tell you what they like, what they don’t like, and most importantly, what will make them buy and what makes them not.

Remember – it’s about what your customers want, not what you like!