http://www.leftclick.com/blog/ LeftClick Blog en-nz Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:13:14 +1200 Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:13:14 +1200 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Boxcar PHP Framework alan@leftclick.com matt@leftclick.com http://www.leftclick.com/blog/eight-simple-rules-for-dating-my-website Maybe it says something about my current state of mind that the more I think about the parallels between online marketing and a blind date, the more apt the analogy becomes. Whatever. Here are some rules that, I think, work equally well in either situation. Disclaimer: I’m a guy. Consequently, some of these may seem a little man-centric, chauvinistic or outdated. Just remember that I’m (mostly) not here to give relationship advice. Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:00:00 +1200 http://www.leftclick.com/blog/eight-simple-rules-for-dating-my-website http://www.leftclick.com/blog/building-better-ppc-landing-pages My apologies for this article being late off the press: two new staff and being asked to author Practical Ecommerce’s Conversion Report Card has meant a bit of overload during the last two weeks. But here it is now… So you’re spending all this money on your Google Adwords, but are they really worth the expense? I often have people tell me they’ve cancelled their PPC spend because they’re not getting a justifiable return. So what could be going wrong? Let’s run a test search for one of your campaigns. Hopefully your pay-per-click ad shows up OK: now, click on the ad. Where does it send you to? Please don’t tell me it’s your home page! In the previous article, I explained how landing pages designed for pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are very different from the landing pages designed for search-engine optimisation (SEO). To recap, landing pages built for SEO live inside your website’s main structure and are designed to get noticed by Google. Landing pages for PPC, however, are specifically designed for conversion and not for getting noticed by Google. PPC Landing pages have one job: to get you a conversion! You’ve just paid for a warm lead, so now’s the time to make the most of it and not leave it to chance. Here are some ideas that can help you get more respondents to convert. Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:00:00 +1200 http://www.leftclick.com/blog/building-better-ppc-landing-pages http://www.leftclick.com/blog/landing-pages-are-you-doing-it-right However a visitor gets to your site, they can only see one page first. This first page is known as the ‘landing page’, and your visitors’ landing experience is crucial to the success of your site. The catch is that, depending on where they’ve come from, exactly which page that is could (and should!) be different for everyone. Many websites are built with the idea that the first page any potential customer will see is the home page, but by providing your visitors with content that is specifically and uniquely targeted to their needs, you should experience a dramatic increase in conversion rates. An important thing to understand is that the landing pages designed for pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are very different form the landing pages designed for organic search engine optimisation (SEO). Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:00:00 +1300 http://www.leftclick.com/blog/landing-pages-are-you-doing-it-right http://www.leftclick.com/blog/conversion101-part6 In the previous articles in this Conversion101 series, we’ve seen how good foundations, good site design and good optimisation practices can help to grow your business over time. What we need to think about now is: what else is getting in the way? Imagine that you’ve identified an issue with your site: your product category pages are losing lots of customers. You now need to decide on what to do and get it done. How will this happen in your organisation? Think about all of the stakeholders and decision makers in the process. Do you need to involve your web agency, your SEO company, get agreement from marketing, the board, your boss? Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:05:00 +1300 http://www.leftclick.com/blog/conversion101-part6 http://www.leftclick.com/blog/conversion101-part5 Web analytics tools are good at giving you a big picture view of where people are bailing out from your website, but they can’t really tell you why. To find this out you need to test your website with real users. User testing allows you to look at your site through the customer’s eyes. It involves sitting down with a typical customer and seeing how they use the website and why it’s not working for them. But you can’t just sit your cat down in front of your computer and expect amazing results. There are a number of attributes that make up a successful user testing process. Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:04:00 +1300 http://www.leftclick.com/blog/conversion101-part5