Conversion Mystery- Clues to get the insight into clueless

Chemists working in a lab knows there are many complex reactions which cannot even be balanced and fully understood but they can predict the speed rate of the reaction by knowing the single slowest part of it. This way they can even speed up the process and slow it down by simply applying a suitable catalyst.

Same is true with an assembly line producing car, bicycle or any other engineering good. The rate of producing the outcome is independent of the complexity of the processes involved. It only depends on the slowest of them all. If you can figure out the slowest process you can control the speed of the outcome.

The principle and its application goes far beyond manufacturing the chemicals in a lab or goods in a manufacturing plant. If a panel of judges not knowing each other are giving marks for a performing contestant. A single, the most sensitive one, who uses maximum variation on scale would be deciding the outcome of the whole event, provided we assume others are behaving  predictably or you may say they choose what you and most would choose and ignore what you and most would ignore !!

On the web we have many tools to identify which part of the funnel is slowest to pass through the conversion stage, and we have many tailor-made solutions for them too. Google analytics does a decent job figuring them out and any person having report in his hand gets creative enough to think of the probable solutions. Not a tough job!! Through some hits and trials and playing around with presentation people do improve upon some parts of the abandonment phases in the funnel.

However, the improvement in the eyes of cruel judges who holds the key to winning the war on the internet is not an easy task. They see what you can’t see. They figure out what you can’t figure out. They are the people who choose others over you. They are the people who leave you for something better than you. They are the people who goes to your competitor. You should look appealing to the most cruelest of them all. The most abnormal ones, the most weirdest of them all. Make these people speak about your site, through all around feedback. You won’t get clue about them from any analytics tool on this earth. It has something to do with feedback gathering mechanism.

Feedback is more important than routinely analyzing stats about traffic and conversion. Create occasions to make people speak. Get yourself into a ring with your competitor and ask people to rate. Hear the harshest voice from all around. If you want extraordinary success, you need to think beyond what you yourself and people like you think.

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“Rich Media Rocks 2012” by Microsoft in Delhi, India

Rich Media ads or interactive ads, which after the advent of  “Permission Marketing” theories, and Google’s hyper emphasis on unobtrusive advertisement had made it   a bad word for content on internet. A simple, clean and clear-cut presentation became recipe of acceptance for visitors, publishers and advertising platform providers. A good presentation on a page should meet all the three goals: the goal of the visitor , the goal of the publisher and the goal of the advertiser. A publisher should neither provide content solely for Visitors, who are selfish enough to leave the moment their goal is met, nor for the advertisers alone who would benefit mostly from interruption and turn the visitors off. Somebody has aptly described a path between Permission and Interruption as Intermission, which provides a refreshing break which is beneficial for all. So, rich media has actually room in the sphere of Good User experience. Microsoft sponsored conference on March, 1st, 2012 was to spread this sort of awareness among Marketers and Advertisers.

Nivelle Taraporewalla, the opener, claimed he was under-prepared and offered some unquestionable insights. His observation that web has moved beyond desktops to many new devices and applications of which TV too would become a part of it, raised no questions. A country Director of a company like Microsoft seldom offers views which even remotely touches the borderline of debatable topics. Should they drop a hint and people start reading between the lines. So, his presentation was more to do with his position rather than his unpreparedness.

Pushkar Sane, was the next speaker . His view on why you shouldn’t interrupt Facebook friends, with blunt marketing pitches, sounded convincing. He coined “Friends or Facends!” to demonstrate how relationship may sour because of insensivity, which touched the nerve of the audience. He elaborated it with many examples, how taking things for granted, may harm you in the long run. I overheard many people praising him during lunch time. I myself acknowledge such speakers leave everlasting impression on audience.

Trevor Yeats talked about Microsoft products as was expected of him. His presentation was very well prepared and appeared flawless. People asked him many questions and it appeared like the audience had warmed up by then and a momentum was set in. I asked him, why Microsoft sells its Banner ads through direct sales unlike Google which anybody can target through auction bid, from right inside the adwords dashboard. He answered, that it has something to do with Google’s focus on Search and Microsoft’s on Portals, though its a notable point. 

Farshad Family shared his insights on web tracking and how facebook cookies and other related means are used by Neilson’s tracking software to successfully predict the demographics and consumer behavior. He was demonstrating how this software is capable of improving the targeting of ads and how they boost the ROI. It was an interesting session.

After break John Paul Stift and Andrew Young, both from Microsoft presented useful insights, on purchase behavior, attracting through creating experience, converting interest into action and fostering long lasting advocacy. One of them, I don’t remember exactly, claimed a very high level of CTR through rich media engagement.

Oded Lida Greiss shared his own experiences and success with Rich media campaigns. He impressed everyone with his case study on trappers, whose campaign he himself had created. He shared how this campaign turned viral and drove sales and traffic astronomically. A large part of his presentation, the visuals, were non-english. People talked to him about cost of such campaigns and cost effectiveness, because they appeared to be very unique, a kind of their own. He replied, such costs are “redundant” compared to the cost incurred on purchase of the ad slot itself. A diplomatic sort of answer!

After that there was a lucky draw of visiting cards for Xbox 360. I had given them my name written on a piece of paper. When they picked one, it was a Lucky Piece of paper, but it was announced that it had the name of a Microsoft Employee (undisclosed) on it and hence disqualified. They announced another winner. Well, I had given them my name on a piece of paper and it appears the wise people of Microsoft thought, its uniqueness must be diluted by introducing more “piece of papers”. I suspect it must be the mind of Trevor Yeats, who had announced that “People are very enthusiastic about the Lucky Draw”, soon after I gave my “piece of paper” at the reception. Anyway, I just wanted to participate, and am happy I did.

(P.S-----> I have relied upon my own note and memory on what the above mentioned people have said. I checked for videos and other sources, which were not available at the time. Many things may not be accurate or may even have quotation shift error . Fans and followers of them need to take no offence, I would be glad to correct myself. I was the first to publish it, and there are many resources available now on the web. Some of the speakers are publishing it on their own too. )

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10 Ways to Quickly reduce the Bounce Rate on Landing Page

When bounce rate is too high, you need to reduce it as soon as possible. There are some tested methods which brings down the bounce rate without any need to scratch your head.

1. Increase the font size of text.

If it was 10, make it 11 or 12 or even 13. Higher font size surely reduces the bounce rate. You can increase them till it start looking odd. This technique works like a magic. Try it!

2. Paste a beautiful picture in the header

Paste a beautiful picture in the header.Preferably a smiling woman or a child.

3. Post with a picture

Post with a picture generally have lower bounce rate. Grab something relevant and if not possible post something beautiful.

4. Post a video on the page

A demonstration video would be great, but if you are doing a crisis management of bounce rate, choose anything from youtube.

5. Rotate a message near header

A marquee tagged message relevant to the page announcing something would serve the purpose.

6. Increase the size of tabs

Tabs with suitable size and bordering are great in increasing pageviews. Increasing the size does reduce the bounce rate.

7. Hyperlinked Picture Thumbnails Row

Arrange a row of thumbnails of pictures with caption and hyperlink to some interesting pages.

8. Use hyperlinks

Use hyperlinks as much as possible, and route them within your website. For External links be careful to force it open in a New Window.

9. Increase the length of the post

Add something more, to let the visitor feel there is still something there. It helps him to stay longer and reduce the likelihood of bounce.

10. Bullets and Numbers

Convert paragraphs into bullet-ed or numbered ones with suitable headings.

Recommended Reading

1. How to Create Custom Loading Animations to Decrease Bounce Rates

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Google Analytics is the Google Adwords Conversion Booster

Try to know your prospects as much as you can.

Conversion through off the site optimization has a limit. You can break this limit only by on site optimization.

Google Analytics gives you enough data to profile your visitors. There are many more tools to give you more data on this. However, data are useless unless you harness actionable insight from them. Google analytics throws unique visitor, returning visitor, bounce rate, geographical distribution of traffic and much more than you can crunch.

You need to make a profile of your visitor regarding, what they are looking for, how they navigate, why they leave and how you can address them in better way.

Whenever, looking into the stats of analytics always try to make a picture of your visitor into your mind and then try becoming one and try navigating your site according to their persona. It will give you the feel of what your site lacks. Too much of data are not desirable, you have just too many of them. You have some free analytics tools and some paid ones promising to throw even more data on your face. What is important is How much actionable insights you have gained from them and how capable you are to interpret them into actionable tasks ahead.

To get better insight into google analytics, you must have organized it in such a way that it gives you refined data to clearly indicate, what is up and what is down. If you don’t have segregated figures of different sources of traffic and different parameters, you are very likely to ignore potential insights that can revolutionize your business. We want refined data to look how the different traffics have different user behavior on your page. How people from different sites reacted to your page.

A single percent decrease in bounce rate may bring sharp increase in conversions. Always try to make your visitor stay a bit longer on your page. Give me some more time and give me some more attention has to be your attitude.

If you study analytics regularly, you begin to feel the shortcomings in a website by just looking at it and start feeling the required changes. On many occasions I can tell the website must be having a bounce rate of more than 70%, without even looking into the stats, because I can feel what a new visitor would feel arriving on it. If link to your goal is not visible clearly, they are very likely to miss it. On site conversion optimization mostly is to make the important links visible and clickable as early as possible. This simple looking fact, though, is the main problem of most of the websites.

If a percentage of visitor simply fails to notice your offer, your ad campaign and hence your objective fails. No matter how well targeted and well written your ad copy is, if the visitor bounces off your website because it fails to present him with what he wants you are losing.

People who ignore analytics are simply losing. Even if you are making great killings today by not implementing required changes in your website, your competitor would start making the killing because they would have moved ahead of you in terms of presentation by implementing those actionable insights gained through analytics.

You know, only 2% of people make the most online and rest are just trying and failing. to secure your place in this 2% you need to be on toe. Conversions won’t always be coming at the same rate if you don’t position yourself to meet the coming challenges. So, in the days of throat cutting competition, it is not your adwords campaign that fails, but you fail to accept adwords and analytics goes together. Any lacuna in accepting this would get you near to negativity of ROI sooner or later.

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