1. Find Your Best-Selling Products

First, conduct a bit of research on your business to find out what sells the best. You may already know this intuitively, but research into actual sales figures and profit margins will be of use. In certain cases, great-selling products or services may not generate income for your business due to slim profit margins. Alternatively, you may wish to prioritize other products / services with less traffic, but higher margins.

Additionally, consult your website and social media analytics to see what actually interests your audience. Particular landing pages or social media posts may receive more traffic than you realize, which is worth noting. You might start by examining a subset of products or services, focusing efforts to generate powerful landing pages that convert. Certain businesses (such as an e-commerce clothing store) may have hundreds of products with a different type of sales cycle. Understanding how and why your customers buy from you will help in the design of good landing pages. For example, an online clothing store with $20 items will have a shorter sales cycle than stores selling $1000+ items.

Finally, to help refine your list, a business SWOT analysis can highlight both successful and problematic areas to change. A SWOT analysis looks at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats: serving as a lens to examine your business. A brief analysis of these four categories reveals products or services that need attention and a marketing redesign. In addition, opportunities for growth are typically revealed that can help improve your digital marketing efforts.

2. Design Attention-Grabbing Landing Pages

Following the analysis done in step 1, you can focus on designing landing pages that grab the attention of your customers. The SWOT analysis (from step 1) will clarify the unique value proposition of your business. Leveraging what sets you apart from your competitors will dramatically improve your marketing. Drawing the attention of your clients to these unique properties will show why they should buy your product or service. Focusing on what it can do for clients (from their perspective) supplies a compelling reason to make a purchase. Be sure to present a powerful, unique value proposition.

For example, when Apple, Inc. releases a new product, they market it clearly with their users in mind. Rather than listing out technical specs first, Apple makes use of vibrant imagery from actual product usage, showing us what the product can do. For instance, iPhone marketing will headline how it is capable of low-light photography, and show crisp images taken in low-light. These may include someone blowing out birthday candles in the dark or sitting around a campfire at night. These contextual examples help people imagine what owning the new product might be like. Concrete examples show users what they can do themselves with the product.

Other phone manufacturers may try to tout superior hardware in their product (such as the camera’s F-stop or shutter speed; or more powerful hardware specifications). However, Apple creates a compelling reason to buy through examples of use, using storytelling and vibrant imagery. Finally, a clear call-to-action is presented: a button to ‘buy’ the product. This enables users to enjoy the described benefits of ownership, as conveyed by their marketing and storytelling.

3. Create a Powerful Call-to-Action for Lead Generation

A good strategy for designing landing pages is to place yourself in the shoes of a typical customer. Make sure that marketing content speaks to your customer’s goals and desires. Do not communicate from your own perspective. Tell a story or show an example of a client using the product or service to communicate from their perspective. Rather than starting with what you offer, addresses how you meet their wants and needs first. This helps prospective clients imagine themselves using your product or service while raising social capital.

Once you’ve created compelling landing pages for your top products or services, what can you do to raise conversion rates? Analyzing your marketing for clear calls to action will shed light on whether you are compelling your audience to take further action. Frequently, we want customers to make a purchase. However, most business models and sales cycles are not this straightforward. Often, businesses want their prospects to ‘take the next step’ and reach out. This may be requesting users to send a message or call the business. If this is the case, the call-to-action should be as straightforward and simple as possible.

What is the End Goal for Lead Generation?

For each landing page, decide on the best ‘next step’ for your sales cycle and for lead generation. Then, focus on making that process as simple as possible. In other words, analyze the landing page at a macro and micro level to be sure the process is easy. Want users to reach out? If so, a short form at the bottom of the page may be best for lead generation. Asking users to fill out a long form will probably cause many of them to fall off the bandwagon. Too many form fields can cause users to question why so much of their personal information is needed. Or it may simply annoy them by having to spend too much time filling out the form.

To conclude, this step should focus on compelling your prospects to act and making that action as easy as possible. Analyzing the user experience (UX) of the landing page is an excellent way to see what needs improvement. Streamlining your landing page UX and fixing issues will result in better lead generation. Business processes might be considered as well, including how transactions are managed. If users fill out a form, who gets it? Integrating forms with a CRM tool (software for customer-relationship management) could be a smart decision. A good place to start might be with a free UX audit from CueCamp.

4. Analyze & Create Resources of Interest

Take a multi-pronged approach to your digital marketing and create interest by offering resources to potential customers. Using the list generated in step 1, think about any resources that might help your customers engage with your business. For instance, a marketing company might realize that their audience often wants to learn about email marketing basics. In this example, creating a short guide as a downloadable PDF will capture prospects. Asking users to fill out a short form (name, company, email address) will capture leads for future prospecting.

Downloadable guides, e-books, blog posts, interactive workshops, and how-to videos are a handful of resources that you can use to generate interest. These efforts support a digital marketing strategy that makes an effective use of your website as a lead generation machine.

5. Newsletters and Social Media Posts

A monthly newsletter with valuable information or discounts may be a way to stay connected with customers, without overwhelming them with too many messages. A proper balance of touchpoints, with high quality information, is key. Email newsletters can offer resources of interest, upcoming sales, or industry news. In cases, segmenting your email marketing list will allow more personalized, customized email marketing to your audience. For instance, if you own an online clothing store, emails might be personalized based on gender, shopping habits, or other interests. As shown above, emails can be sent to customers that did not complete their purchase with an incentive to do so. An analysis of your marketing strategy and business objectives will clarify the type of resources you can offer for the highest impact.

Similarly, social media can be an effective way to draw people to engage with your brand. Like newsletters, a suitable amount of content for your business will help generate quality conversions. Posting low-quality content daily can overwhelm those following your brand, causing users to unfollow you on social media. Alternatively, posting too infrequently can cause a loss of interest. Analyzing your business objectives and designing a social media strategy to create a buzz for your business will draw prospective clients to your website. Additionally, hashtag research can separate your audience by interest, demographics, and location: enabling you to deliver personalized content to their social media feed.

6. Use Paid Ads & SEO for Lead Generation

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is concerned with optimizing landing pages (and websites) to rank highly on Google search. According to Google, the first five organic search results capture over 67% of all clicks. If your website ranks below the first page or search results, SEO can help improve your search rank to capture more traffic, which leads to more sales. Further, SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media, according to BrightEdge. Optimizing your website for keywords of high relevancy has a drastic impact on the traffic driven to your business website from search engines like Google.

The steps outlined above support an overall content marketing strategy, which aims to drive quality traffic to your website and drive business growth. Besides organic search rank, you can place ads on Google to get to the top of search results. Likewise, social media ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn will generate prospects and drive traffic to your website. Enabling retargeting / remarketing on your paid ads will push ads to users that previously interacted with your brand. Retargeting users is based on their analytics data. These users are more likely to convert based on their earlier interest in your brand.

Summary

Digital marketing efforts are driven by both quantity and quality. Focusing on both the quality (your website / landing page user-experience) and quantity of leads (your inbound marketing efforts) will generate success. To make your website a lead generation machine, the six steps described in this article will help you reach that goal.

Incorporating a multi-pronged marketing approach across social media, search engines, and paid ads will drive new prospects to your website. What happens once they reach your landing page is up to you, and the user experience provided on your website. For a user experience analysis of your website, you can request a free audit from CueCamp.

Depending on your business, a range of marketing touch points are needed before a prospect becomes a qualified sales lead. When possible, personalized content of high relevancy is more likely to convert a prospect. High-quality content, delivered on a regular cadence, results in a website that will engage your prospects. Crafting a content marketing strategy to achieve this goal will turn your website into a lead generation machine.

Written by: Matt Sharritt, Ph.D., Founder, CueCamp

The post 6 Easy Steps That Will Make Your Website a Lead Generation Machine appeared first on CueCamp.

User-friendly Experience + Simplified Buying Journey = More Sales

For the business owner, a well-designed e-commerce platform allows them to run their business easily, and can help streamline daily operations and customer service calls. Following are some tips and best practices to follow to help grow both organic traffic and sales conversions.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and UX

User Experience and SEO are critical components of any e-commerce site, especially as industry verticals are becoming more competitive. Digital advertising prices continue to rise and generating organic traffic is essential. In addition, cross-functional expertise is required to build a website that has good UX and SEO, as these fields continue to overlap. Google algorithms are becoming better at reading page content, placing priority on well-designed content that is not artificial. Prior black-hat tactics to raise search rank, like loading page footers with keyword-dense text, are now causing page ranks in search engines (like Google or Bing) to drop. Driving organic traffic can feel daunting and will take time, but will pay-off in the end with good SEO practices.

Website Sitemap

Part of good UX and SEO involves a well-designed sitemap. A sitemap reflects the website page and navigation structure, and hierarchically organizes website content. Adding a sitemap to Google Search Console is important for any e-commerce site, so that search engines crawl and understand product information. Google will be notified to any changes that you make to your site, which should happen on a frequent basis so content does not become stale. A sitemap not only makes the new content you post discovered quickly by search engines, but is reflected in the website navigation to users (helping tell them about the content on your website).

Simplify Page Content (and Clutter)

Clear, simple to understand content can raise engagement with your audience. In many instances, “less is more” – as said by Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, a German-American architect that pioneered the minimalist movement. Your website visitors appreciate you communicating your message in a simple, yet efficient manner.

Similar to a cluttered advertisement, websites with distracting content, too much text, or an unclear message will lose their effectiveness. Over time, more and more things fight for our attention, and the average user has a shorter attention span. Users are willing to spend less time figuring out what you’re trying to get across, so get the job done with simple, clear messaging on your website. Design each page using proper keyword research and ensure landing pages have a clear engagement goal in mind so that your content has a purpose.

Optimizing Website Structure and User Journey

Supporting the intentions of website visitors is critical to raising conversion rates. Whether the goal is to sell a product or communicate an important piece of information, users should be able to fulfill their needs as efficiently as possible when using your website. If a product is difficult to find or a message becomes muddled, conversion rates will fall.

Part of optimizing the user experience (UX) of a website is to ensure that different types of users (personas) are able to achieve their goals efficiently: whether it be completing an action or finding information. A well-designed navigation structure will help the user journey, so that users can find what they want in the least amount of clicks (and with less confusion along the way).

Make Sure Your Site is Responsive

More people are becoming accustomed to purchasing groceries, clothing, home décor, and vehicles in the comfort of their homes. According to Forbes, Cyber Week had 62% of traffic coming from mobile in 2018, and fifteen percent of orders of were placed on mobile phones over the Thanksgiving holiday. Other sources place over 60% of website visitors (and climbing) using a mobile device like a phone or tablet. With this in mind, websites need to use a responsive design to be sure that content is optimized for mobile devices. The lack of an intuitive UX can result in user frustration, causing visitors to leave before completing a purchase on a website.

Website speed

Website performance contributes heavily to page rank and SEO, as well as usability. Research by Google describes how sites appearing on page one of Google display content in 1.19 seconds on average, while those on page two display primary content in 1.29 seconds. Some tools that can help you gauge and improve your website speed are Website Grader by HubSpot, Google PageSpeed Insights, and Pingdom Website Speed Test.

SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate

An SSL certificate authenticates your website to encrypt data that is being transferred from a website to users. SSL certificates ensure that a website is secure when visitors make purchases, which is important is the growing age of e-commerce. An SSL certificate encrypts sensitive user data, such as personal bank information, phone numbers and addresses.

Google Chrome, the most-used browser, has begun notifying users when a website is not fully secured with an SSL certificate. Fully encrypting data using SSL will provide users the best, most secure experience: ensuring that sensitive data is transmitted securely between the browser and web server. In a world where data breaches and security are becoming commonplace, users will trust and show loyalty to brands that value their privacy and sensitive information: highlighting the need for SSL certificates on websites.

Conclusion

Optimizing your website has a powerful effect on your marketing effectiveness, as well as your bottom line. Increasing conversions on your website, whether serving a goal of purchasing products or communicating information about your business (in a clear, efficient manner) will attract new customers and build loyalty. By optimizing the user journey for your website, different types of users can be served in a more effective manner.

The skill sets involved in designing a website continue to broaden and overlap. Experts in development, graphic design, SEO, UX, marketing and content writing need to know how their design decisions impact other areas of design. For example, designing a page around a keyword (SEO) impacts the website structure (UX), written content, and image content on the page (which can also impact website speed). A working knowledge of these fields is required to balance design decision trade-offs to make websites more effective, and this expertise can yield powerful improvements. In many instances, a simple analysis of a website by an expert can present some low-hanging fruit, which can have a huge impact on results.

To gauge how your website currently measures up, and identify some low-hanging fruit that can improve your website, request a free website marketing analysis from CueCamp. This report is in video form, generated by CueCamp’s team of experts to show the user-friendliness and marketing effectiveness of your website. Start out on the right foot, and reach out today.

Authors: Shannon Olear & Matt Sharritt, Ph.D. (CueCamp)

The post Boost Store Profits: E-commerce Experience Optimization appeared first on CueCamp.

Inbound Marketing begins with establishing social media profiles on various platforms that will work for your type of business – in order to start engagement with potential customers.

What happens after you make contact with a new potential customer? Typically your social media initiatives will help drive new traffic to your website. All of the traffic that you drum up from your social media platforms will hopefully drive people to learn more about your company, offerings, and services.

Once you have established traffic to your site you can then start making direct contact with your potential customers and then create a sale.

A useful way to use the sales funnel concept is to figure out which social media platform sites will work best for your type of business. As a general guideline for our clients, we start out with a Facebook company fan page. Facebook is a powerful tool to increase visibility in your target market and engage in a relationship with your customers. With over 1.23 billion active users, Facebook is a great place to begin.

There are many different ways to start engaging potential customers by using Facebook. Our team at CueCamp helps businesses to figure out what to post, and when to post, in order to help attract new customers. Every business is different, which is why we tailor every marketing plan to fit clients’ specific needs. A solid Facebook company fan page is an excellent way to begin.

CueCamp is now offering free custom Facebook fan pages. Our marketing team will help generate more potential customers talking about your business with a custom designed and professionally marketed Facebook page. Our social media experts do it all for you by creating a page that best represents your business and its offerings, and then builds your fan base to get the conversation going.

If you don’t have a Facebook fan page or are not happy with what you have now, our team will build a page that gets you a following. Next, we will professionally market your new Facebook page to get you likes, targeting people who will be interested in your business. Finally, we will keep these new fans interested and talking about your business by frequently updating your content and creating new marketing campaigns.

If you are interested in a free custom Facebook fan page, contact us.

How can you retain traffic and turn those visitors into paying customers? Check back next week to learn about the next step in the sales funnel: your website.

Written / posted by: CueCamp

The post Inbound Marketing with Social Media appeared first on CueCamp.

According to research firm Score, Inc., the 2011 holiday season saw a 15% increase in web sales over 2010, for a total of $35.5 billion in online sales (while overall holiday spending was up just 3.8% from 2010).

The holiday season is not just about selling products to your customers. It also involves keeping those that come for the first time, and keeping them there. As said by Jakob Nielsen, “It’s an old lesson: It’s much easier to close additional sales with existing customers than to acquire new customers. People who’ve proven willing to give you money will often give you more. This is true for all sales channels, but it’s particularly crucial for e-commerce because the first order proves your credibility if you effectively handle follow-up and delivery.”

The following statistics about shopping carts highlight how website usability problems can impact sales:

21% of buyers said they “decided not to shop at any given site because of security concerns.” (Jan Riley)

1 second delay in page response = 7% reduction in conversion (Sean Work)

54% of U.S. consumers believe companies are more interested in selling products and services (Michael Fisher)

According to Aaron Marcus, Staples.com® in applying usability in their website found:

• 67% more repeat customers
• 31-45% reduced drop-off rates
• 10% better shopping experience
• 80% increased traffic

½ of your potential sales are GONE if customers can’t find merchandise on your e-commerce site

“At HomePortfolio.com we monitored site traffic, observed consumers in usability studies and worked with internal business groups. This helped us make changes that made the site’s purpose clearer and increased transaction rates measurably. The change increased the traffic up 129% the week we put it up.” (Interaction Design, Inc., 2001)

Some issues to consider that cause shopping cart abandonment:
(Charles Nicholls) & (Roger McGershen)

• Customers abandon their shopping carts when the ratio of the shipping cost to the value of the cart approaches 100 percent. Would you buy a $19.99 item if it costs an additional $14.95 to ship?
• Customers are sensitive to perceived price points. $9.99 seems cheaper than a $10.00 item. The same idea goes for shipping costs and how many items are in a cart. One study found that a $99 minimum order to get free shipping encouraged people to add more items to their carts.
• Not able to find contact information (22% abandonment rate): trust is lost if a person has no way, or difficulty in finding, how to contact you.

Nine ways to improve shopping cart retention and visitor experience:

1. Disclose shipping costs in advance.
2. Show security icons.
3. Create trust: Communicate your online store’s trustworthiness by having clear guarantees and contact information. Display company phone numbers on every page, along with hours of business, and place your guarantee and return policies prominently.
4. Easy shopping cart return: make it easy for customers to return to the shopping cart without having to go back through the purchase process.
5. Offer comparison shopping directly from your site.
6. Offer coupons and discounts.
7. Encourage user reviews and reward those customers who give them.
8. Do not have a graphic heavy page.
9. Make contact information prominent throughout your site.

When going over the final numbers of your holiday sales, consider the facts presented in this article. Consider how your potential customers view and interact with your e-commerce website. Review your weblogs and customer comments. Work with your hosting company and see how many shopping carts were abandoned. Most importantly, review the usability of your website.

As Jakob Nielsen said, “Usability rules the Web. Simply stated, if the customer can’t find a product, then he or she will not buy it.”

If you would like some assistance with reviewing your website’s usability, please contact CueCamp.

Written and Posted by: CueCamp

The post Did Your Shopping Cart Survive the Holiday Season? appeared first on CueCamp.

1. Analyze your content
2. Update your sitemap
3. Review your URLs
4. Analyze your internal link structure
5. Ensure consistent design features
6. Check for usability problems

1. Analyze Your Content

Your site has been growing since it first went live. Do you really know what is on your site as of today? Did you create a content inventory system when first developing the site? If you did not it is time to do an inventory of your content.

When developing a content inventory, utilize either a spreadsheet or database to categorize and describe the information on every page of your website. Some things to include in the inventory are:

• Central topic or area on website; i.e. ‘Staff’ page is under ‘About’ area
• Page title and URL
• Short description of the page
• When the page was created, and revision dates if any
• Who wrote the page and who is responsible for maintaining the page and their contact information
• If there is a page expiration date
• Other pages linked to this page
• Images on the page
• Page status – keep, delete, revise, in revision process, etc.

Once you have this inventory, you will not only have a great tool for maintaining your website, but one that can assist with the future development of your website.

Finally, remember to assign someone (or team) to keep this inventory up-to-date.

2. Update Your Sitemap

Does your website have a functional sitemap? Is it easily accessible to your website users?

Having a functional sitemap will benefit your organization in several ways. Visitors go to sitemaps if they are having any issues finding the information on your website. Helping users find what they came for will enhance their opinion of their visit. If they cannot find information or are challenged in finding information, what will they tell others about the website or your organization?

Sitemaps do not need to be overly stylized; a basic HTML sitemap will work. Search engines also utilize sitemaps as a part of how they rank you.

Have Sitemap → Have improved usability & visitor experience Have Sitemap → Have SEO improvement / higher search rankings

3. Review Your URLs

Do you have a http:// and a http://www. version of your site? Or, did you move a page ( i.e. www.website.com/about/ to www.wesite.com/aboutus/)? If this is the case, then you need a 301 redirect. This will ensure your web pages retain their optimized rankings after the move among search engines like Google.

When creating your URL’s are you paying attention to how they read? Are they SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly? Making URLs with keywords in the URL will help raise your rank in search engines.

Both your visitor and search engines prefer a URL that is clean and concise. A friendly URL is like: www.website.com/about.html, while an unfriendly URL might read like: www.website.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=4view=about.

4. Analyze Your Internal Link Structure

Your website internal link structure is important for a number of reasons. SEO is a theme throughout this post, and internal links are another part to your SEO. For example, if you click on a link titled “Doing a Year-End Business Review”, the page that you are directed to should be optimized for the keyword phrase “Year-End Business Review”.

5. Ensure Consistent Design Features

Are there areas of your site that are still displaying old template designs? Are your graphics up to date and consistent across your website?. While doing your audit keep in mind your overall design, including your page layouts and company graphics. Making some quick changes not only will improve the appearance of your website, but enhance your brand image and level of trust among customers.

6. Check For Usability Problems

How difficult is it to read and understand content and navigate your site? Do users get lost, or can they find what they are looking for easily?

Usability is essential for good websites. When people visit a website, they typically  are on a mission. Once on your website, users want to fulfill their goals: whether it is for entertainment value, searching for information, or for socializing with others. If your website’s visitors experience difficulty, it does not take much for them to become discouraged and go elsewhere.

Usability is a whole article of its own. However, if you do a full website review you will be well on your way to improving your website’s usability. If usability for your website is of interest, you can request a Free Usability Report from CueCamp. This report grades your website on 20 different areas of usability, and is free with no obligation.

If you so choose, you can take your audit a step further by conducting online surveys, doing reviews of materials like your PDFs, white papers, and other material your visitors might download.  You may also review comments that were posted on your blog, or on social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook.  Also, don’t forget to review  customer emails and phone calls that were handled by your customer service department.

A website review should be done on a regular basis, but if you perform it at least once a year you will be well ahead of your competition. More importantly, you will be enhancing your visitors’ time spent on your website.  This will increase the website’s marketing effectiveness, which is why you created it in the first place. If you would like some assistance in doing your website audit feel free to contact CueCamp.

Written and Posted by: CueCamp

The post Improving Users’ Visits with a Website Audit appeared first on CueCamp.