How to increase sales by improving your product pages?

If you review the analytics for an ecommerce site using the content drill down in Google Analytics you will often see that product pages have the greatest "footfall" measured by total number of pages viewed by page type. This shows the importance of making the design, copy and calls-to-action on product pages as good as you possibly can. You can really reap the rewards of small changes across page templates for all product pages. To give you ideas of what you can test and improve, here are my 6 recommendations on how you can improve sales by improving your product pages.

1. Split testing

Split testing, for me is a fundamental element of ecommerce, as it allows you to accurately reflect on multiple pieces of content or designs.  Also, given the simplicity of some of the A/B testing tools available (especially…

Is in-house management or outsourcing the best model?

This is the third and final post from Karen Nielsen in her series on localising marketing for international marketing. In her first post she reviewed the opportunity from international marketing and in the next she recommended how to plan and deliver a successful location strategy. This post gives guidance on the pros and cons on the different models available to manage your strategy, a reminder on what can go wrong and how to measure your localisation strategy. Generally speaking, I find that companies give localisation very little thought until such time as growth begins to stagnate and they are forced to look at alternative revenue streams. So what happens when you have exhausted the potential in your domestic market? Since creating innovative products and services can be an expensive, high-risk strategy; it is not surprising that the majority of companies…

Creating website conversion strategies to improve ROI

Over the last four years we have completed research with thousands of digital marketers in collaboration with Econsultancy reviewing what they are doing to improve their website conversion. There are literally hundreds of different ways to improve conversion and we know digital marketers battle to know where to start. However, based on this year’s in-depth analysis, we believe we have now managed to break a very complex issue down to the five most important ways to improve website conversion. These are: Responsibility: Make one person responsible for website conversion, give them authority and accountability, plus ideally a financial incentive. Structure: Implement a structured approach. Conversion rate optimization needs to be a systematic process, not a one off project. Testing: A/B or MVT is the best way to keep improving your website performance. Usability Testing: The best way to understand why your customers are doing the things they are…

Widely expected (and useful) new tool introduced

Google have recently launched a new tool to its Webmaster toolkit, giving you the ability to identify and remove (at least in Googles eyes) unnatural or spam inbound links (from other sites to yours). Google have become more active in notifying webmasters of problems with inbound links, this now enables you to remove the offending link(s) from Google's link graph without contacting the owner of the other site. You may have received a message from Google in the past saying that they have identified unnatural, spam or paid links to your website, this usually left you having to identify the potential problem links and approaching each website to get the links removed. Not a massively effective process and neither is it a good use of your time. Bing also launched a similar tool earlier this year.

Here is an explanation of this new tool from Googles, Matt Cutts

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4 tools that give you a fuller view of your online marketing spend

If your business receives a high volume of inbound sales calls referred from your website, then tying your telesales function into your marketing metrics is absolutely crucial to ensure you understand the overall performance of your online marketing spend. This key marketing requirement has led to different call tracking measurement tools being created and made available to marketers which I'll introduce in this post.

Why integrate call tracking?

Call tracking measurement has often been something restricted to a sales manager giving them an understanding of volume of inbound calls and then looking at the conversion rate to sale, generally broken down by agent. However as marketers, we need to understand what made a customer call in the first place. When we understand this we can make (more) educated decisions on marketing spend. Without call tracking in place, if we look purely…

12 tests to review how well digital marketing is managed in an organisation - a presentation hosted by the Chartered Management Institute at Liverpool John Moores University

I was invited to give this talk by Gillian Cosser, principal at the CIM Liverpool Study Centre, so we also had many CIM members at the event too. In the presentation I looked at approaches to managing digital marketing successfully by applying 12 tests to review how a business is managing marketing now and how it can improve it. …

Design, Content or Brand .. is one more important than the other in (re)designing your website?

Website design can be an opinionated business. These opinions are sometimes informed, sometimes not. Occasionally the opinions are not necessarily to do with the design itself, but more to do with the politics within a business. Personally I am all for design of any nature to be stress tested by a client or the market. However, how many of us have made changes to a successful website design, just so we feel like we have been involved?. We also need to recognise that website design is a fluid process. We are dealing with an entity that is constantly evolving. This means that when creating a new website design, the Designer has to take into consideration multiple facets; including: is the website 'on brand' (or does it look…

Red Bull: A lesson in modern marketing?

I was debating writing this post, after all there's so much written about the Red Bull Stratos mission in the 2 days since it was finally completed. Yet I've not seen much written about how the event supports branding and marketing. I think there are certainly learnings for marketers like us, most of us who aren't multi-million pound brands.

So, what are the practical marketing ideas that we can really take from all of this? Here are our 4 lessons from the Stratos mission... Success comes from committing to the hard work. Red Bull included, was this easy for them - no way. The Stratos project took 7 YEARS to plan and execute with ex-NASA engineers which means that Red Bull started doing the work seriously as early as 2005. We…

Presenting content based on sensory preferences in your email campaigns

We all have our preferred way of communicating: some people prefer to talk, some prefer to write, others prefer to touch or being hands-on. I remember when I was training to be a Primary Teacher, we learn't how young children learned by touch – hence all the tactile based exercises you did in your first few years at school. Furthermore, I used to observe the children’s reactions when sitting down to read them a story, they would all clamber in close hoping to be able to touch the fabric on my dress or skirt. On the days that I wore silky soft fabric, I noted that I always received a lot more ‘you look beautiful today Miss’ comments from my lovely little six year olds. So, taking a note or two from the four main learning styles, which are used by presenters,…

Virgin media Generation IP: 2025 video gives a glimpse of the future.

One of my students recently pointed out this new simulation to me and I thought it worth sharing since it’s interesting with it’s long, 13 year, view forward. Generation IP:2025 was created by Virgin Media Business in conjunction with The Future Laboratory. It follows a scenario of a father and daughter spending some time together. While the blurb on YouTube says “it provides an exciting glimpse into a hyper-connected Britain in just thirteen years’ time”, I’m not sure about the “exciting” part. We’re all apparently going to be very calm and stress-free, empowered by our mobiles. The gestural interface and glass-like device look cool certainly, but there’s a lack of emotion and it all seems quite dark to me as the daughter mixes family life with business. How do you find it?…