Posts by Louis Venter

Louis Venter is the founding director and CEO of MediaVision, a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) company specialising in all areas of search. His particular interests are organic search marketing, paid search marketing, conversion strategy and online PR. More articles and bio from Louis Venter
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Credit where Credit is due: Demystifying Attribution

This is a write up of the panel session “Credit where Credit is due: Demystifying Attribution” at SMX London 2011.

Chris started this session by discussing the value of the keyword in terms of conversion rate and sales. This is a discussion that often uses the last click wins mentality when calculating ROI values. Attribution is often far more complex than this and this session aimed to clarify many approaches.

The following are the top tips from each presentation:

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London SES – Deep Dive analytics – When Bounce Rate No Longer Floats Your Boat

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Matt Bailey: Founder of Site Logic focused on missing pieces

Matt started by saying you need to establish how you are to be measured at the beginning of every project. Define how accountable you are to that. There may be things that are out of your control. Increased leads don’t necessarily mean increased profits so make sure you have an accurate picture.

Defining your lead value is vitally important and working out what it is based on is essential in the planning phase. If you are held accountable to the revenue generated you need to incorporate your analytics into a CRM and question the data that comes back from the CRM.
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London SES Keynote – Jeffrey Hayzlett – Celebrity CMO

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The keynote was delivered by Jeff Hayzlett and was one of the most inspiring marketing talks that I’ve personally heard. He was faced with the challenge of transforming Kodak from a film company that was doing 15 billion dollars in consumer film 5 years ago. No one buys film any more so they needed to radically rethink their business to adapt to the 21st century.

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Google and Content Farms – what could the new classifier uncover?

farms

I first wrote about what I thought Google’s next step would be in March 2010. It was a post triggered during SES London 2010 while I was watching the pro automated spam agencies present. I felt that this would be the next step in Google’s on-going fight against web spam and it looks like this is now the case.

Matt Cutts confirmed that content farms are next on Google’s radar although he defines them as sites with “shallow or low quality content” which is a fairly broad brush and open to misinterpretation.
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Conversion Killers and Usability Pitfalls – Conversion Conference London

Karl Blanks from conversion rate experts started by saying don’t just whack a whole lot of best practises into your site.

Most common conversion killers:
• They aren’t in shopping mode – they are just browsing. Integrate them into your community. Offer free reports, create a forum
• Fatal distraction – you get interrupted a lot of the time. So many shopping visits are interrupted so get their email address sooner rather than later.
• They don’t believe your company or product are very good – establish trust by association. Media mentions, expert reviews, customer testimonials, celebrity associations
• Prospect defers decision – emphasise scarcity incorporate rolling offers
• Competitor gets the sale – niching, emphasise that you’re a specialist
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B2B Lead Generation Secrets – Conversion Conference London

Sandra Niehaus from closed loop marketing started by saying you need to focus on credibility in the B2B space. Clarity and call to action are equally important.

First impressions matter, the choice is made in 1/20th of a second. 75 % of people make judgements on the brand based on the design quality. (Source BJ Fogg, Guidelines for Web Credibility).

Make sure that your traffic is landing on the correct page with the correct intent, this will help drive better traffic to the optimised landing page. Landing pages should be customised based on their PPC phrase. Start with a few landing pages then roll out to the rest of the site. Show the audience that you hear them and are responding relevantly.

Mini-site vs layered landing page : the layered landing page increased conversion rate by 20% from Google traffic.

Ensure that your calls to action are above the fold and that yu have many iterations of it. (more…)

Multivariate Testing – Conversion Conference London

Dr Karl Banks from Conversion rate experts started the session which why you need to test. You need to split test because before and after tests stink, they don’t operate in the same timescale. Meek tweaking doesn’t work, small fiddly changes take forever to determine statistical relevance. Carry out bold targeted changes.
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Conversion Ninja Toolbox – Conversion Conference London

Tim Ash started the session with a tough truth. We see our web marketing as a rolling out the web carpet yet our visitors view is a castle wall that they have to climb to buy. The time has come to identify that we have all built the ugly baby. Look for problems constantly.

Top tools to find out that your baby is ugly: (more…)

Graphics persuasion and Interaction – Conversion Conference London

Sandra Niehaus, Closed Loop Marketing

What makes design conversion rate optimised?

Making the right design choices starts with asking the right questions. Client questions’ are usually tactical. The most pressing design question is “should my buttons be red?”. It’s the wrong question to focus on. The correct question is “is this design conversion optimised?”
Conversion optimised includes Usablity and Priority.

Usablity
• Good “affordance” – buttons need to look like buttons. Drop shadow text is not a button. Raised where possible. (more…)

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