Reading Jakob Nielsen’s great article today, ‘Reduce Bounce Rates: Fight for the Second Click’ , got me thinking about delivering my first few trainings when I was with ClickTracks. The reason for this was this heading…

“Unique Visitors” Must Die

Before joining ClickTracks, I felt that Unique Visitors were a pretty important, if not the most important, stat to pay attention to. But, I soon learned the error of my thinking. First of all that metric, depending which type of reporting you are using (log files vs. java script) tends to be wildly inaccurate. (Based on IP addresses in log files and cookies in java script).

But, accuracy aside, it is an even more misleading stat, as Jakob Nielsen explains -

“Chasing higher unique-visitor counts will undermine your long-term positioning because you’ll design gimmicks rather than build features that bring people back and turn them into devotees and customers.”

The funny thing is that people don’t want to hear this. They want to believe that the Unique Visitor count, regardless of any other attribute (e.g. the fact that they leave the site immediately and never return), is the end-all, be-all metric. Countless times when reviewing the concept, ‘Don’t focus on Unique Visitors’ during the ClickTracks training sessions, I was questioned, even challenged.

If Unique Visitors are not the key metric, then what is? This is a great question and can vary from site to site. But, it all boils down to be able to segment out key groups of visitors.

Conversions – What are the business goals of your Web site? There should be more than one. Purchases are the most obvious conversion activities on an ecommerce site, but also important should be lead capture (getting someone’s email address and the permission to continue the conversation with them). Segmenting out visitors who convert can result in valuable behavior information and the ability to improve your site and increase conversions.

Return Visitors/Loyal Users – How many times do visitors return? How frequently? Following the paths of return visitors can give you great insight on the high impact sections of your site. Determining how often and how frequently they visit can give you great insight on the when you need to be updating your content and broadening your inventory.

Word of Mouth Traffic – Is online or offline conversations driving traffic to your site? It is possible to break out the traffic that likely gets to your site from word of mouth. Once the traffic gets to the site, following their path will give you very interesting insight on what people are talking about.

High Quality Traffic – Visitors who spend a significant time on your site (more than 20 seconds). Once again, breaking out this visitor group and following their paths through your site is the only way to find out if they are sticking around because they are happy and finding what they want. Or, if they are hopelessly lost and ping-ponging back and forth through the same pages on your site.

It is well worth getting ‘unstuck’ from the single-focus mentality and take a much broader look at your Web site traffic, not only to get a better understanding of the important traffic but also to be able to improve the user experience.

Last night, I was online shopping for a new beach bag and bikinis for my upcoming trip to the Outer Banks. I typically prefer to shop in brick and mortar stores, because I enjoy the shopping experience – touching and feeling what I’m buying. However, I had a busy work week and hadn’t had a chance to get to the mall.

For the bag, I started with my default luggage site – eBags. I don’t say this about many ecommerce sites, but I love this site. It is user-friendly and exemplifies a near-perfect ecommerce experience. I quickly found the perfect bag and moved on to swimsuits. I started at beachbliss.com, a site InStyle magazine recommended. Due to poor navigability, I gave up after two clicks and went to my old standby – Victoria’s Secret - where I ordered a cute suit that I’ll be sporting next week.

What differentiates eBags and Victoria’s Secret from Beach Bliss and what defines a good ecommerce site? Quite a few things:

Searchability – When shopping online, I need to be able to easily find what I’m looking for. I don’t have the time or the patience to click through multiple pages, requiring reloading. In an offline store, I can scan over an area within seconds to see if they have what I’m looking for. I need that same efficiency with my online experience.

eBags has great navigation, search, and filtering. Users can shop by brand or type of bag. The categories/types of bags are spot on and are very descriptive — not just “messengers,” but “men’s” or “women’s.” To make searches even more precise, users can easily filter down to cost, color, material, and top rated.

On the flip side, Beach Bliss has virtually no filtering or searchability. When I clicked on Swimsuits – Bikinis on the home page, I was taken to a page with 30+ brand subcategories. Users have to go to each brand to see what kind of bikinis that particular brand offers. I don’t search by brand unless I’m looking for something specific. When browsing, the last thing I want to do is page through brand after brand. A “View All” option would have been nice, but no luck.

Product Info and Photos – Since my preference is to touch and feel something before buying it, I want to be able to virtually touch and feel it online. eBags does an excellent job of communicating a bag’s size, scale and look via multiple photo angles and techniques. They put items (running shoes, water bottle, ipod) into the bags, as well as take a shot with the bag on a mannequin.

Free Shipping and Returns – All three sites offered free shipping if you spend over a certain amount. However, eBags was the only one who offered free returns as well. This makes ordering from them virtually risk free. Victoria’s Secret also makes returns easier – providing a pre-addressed label, but users are charged $5.95 for returns. Free returns from VS would be a big plus, since swimsuit cuts and sizing vary so widely.

Customer Ratings – I love to know what other people who bought the bag thought of it. Consumers have less incentive to lie/mislead – unlike product manufacturers. So, I weigh their objective opinions much more heavily. I have often changed my product selections based on customer ratings…and have never been disappointed. ebags has customer ratings, plus a “Best of the Best” category that highlights bags customers rated highest.

Upsells/You May Also Like/Recommendations – Just like when I’m at the grocery store and I throw in a pack of gum and a magazine while in line waiting, I will usually fall for an impulse buy if presented with a targeted, easy offer. When buying a swimsuit, the odds are good that I’ll add flip flops or a cover up, especially when the site features them on a page I’m already on and makes it easy to add them to my cart.

Victoria’s Secret has definitely learned that this tactic works…Beach Bliss has not. BB is losing out on many upsell opportunities. Offering a glimpse at similar items is also a good strategy – gets users to browse more product and thus, more likely to buy something.

Nan wrote a few weeks back about Brand Whores and Brand Evangelists. I am definitely the latter, as you can see by my longer-than-recommended blog post (ignoring our own Blog Tips). But as I’ve demonstrated, when you have a great product/experience, users will become your biggest cheerleaders, just because they want to share a good things with others. No incentive necessary, although if offered, I’d be happy to accept commissions from eBags.

Do you have any favorite online shopping sites?

What can help set a great blog post apart from a good blog post? Sometimes, it can be as simple as merely adding a picture or two. Pictures help to…

1. emphasize a point
2. break up text
3. visualize the point being made

When I was on my recent vacation, I found myself taking pictures of stop signs, or building construction, or police cars.  All the while I was thinking - ”I’m sure I’ll be able to use these in a blog post.” In fact, sometimes a picture can generate an idea for a blog post (on occasion a picture can be a blog post – i.e. “Caption This”).

If you don’t have a library of your own stock photos, there are plenty of free & low cost stock photo sites out there.  You can just go to Flickr and search for a matching image there. Of course, make sure that the license of the photo gives you the rights to use it on your site, before you actually do.

Here are a few photos from my personal Flickr stream, feel free to use them.  Link back to them or to here to let me know the interesting and different ways that you use them.

Upon discovering that a blog is an appropriate marketing channel for your company, you need to build the site. Designing a blog for a company is not a great deal different from building out any other part of a site, or creating a new corporate site.

Tip #1: Do not use a generic template through Blogger/Blogspot or Xanga.

If a blog looks like a hundred thousand other blogs, how is that branding the company to people who come to the site? The word “Official” cannot enhance a bland template. Templates can be your friend if they are tailored to the corporate colors and can include official logos. Including graphic elements that tie into the corporate site can allow the blog to retain its uniqueness while still being professional.

Tip #2: Determine the target audience.

Using the same template as the rest of your site may be appropriate for reaching corporate partners, but it may not be engaging enough to put a personality on the company to engage future customers, clients, or shareholders. By focusing on audience segments, one can determine whether the blog design should have featured articles in various categories in a magazine-style, or whether it will be one column of chronologically dated posts.

Tip #3: Develop a wire frame. No, really!

It is generally easier to start a blog with three columns than to add a column to a two-column design. When drawing up a wire frame, create mock-ups for both the homepage and the internal pages.  They need not be the same. This is particularly important if the homepage is not going to include any full-text articles.  More posts may fit above the fold in the homepage, but an internal page would focus more specifically on an individual post.

My Best Suggestion:

When designing a corporate blog, take inspiration from sites that work aesthetically and functionally -and morph them with the corporate image. A blog should stand on its own merits apart from the corporate site.  Its design should be carefully crafted to be official without saying it, and unique enough to have its own brand.

What exactly is the difference between teal and turquoise? How about purple and violet? I’m sure there is an art school answer, but the point is – color is subjective. My teal could be my client’s turquoise.

At Serengeti, I work with clients on designing their home pages, emails, ad campaigns, and more. Since we all see the world differently – purple vs. violet – this can be tricky work. The more I can guide the creative design process…the better. Below are my rules for driving effective, productive design development:

• Ask clients to provide a list of sites they like and don’t like. Just like bringing a photo of Jennifer Aniston’s hair to your stylist when getting your hair cut; having real world examples to work from helps narrow the field of options for the designer. You can also use their list to manage expectations up front, illustrating why certain sites are successful and others aren’t.
• Always start with a comprehensive creative brief. This document gives the designer valuable background information and also makes the client explore what they truly want from the design, while also making them accountable. Be sure to clearly define the target audience and project goals.
• After reviewing the creative brief, move on to wireframes. By providing a wireframe prior to starting design, you can ensure that all key elements are accounted for. Some clients will have trouble visualizing with just a wireframe, but you’ll catch the most glaring omissions.
• Set the creative deadlines upfront and be generous with padding. Whatever delivery date the designer gives, add a day. This helps avoid disappointed clients.
• Some designers may disagree, but always ask for two mocks for every round of review. Providing multiple solutions to any problem allows the client to more easily define what they like and don’t like.
• Limit the number of revisions. Three or four is usually plenty. Otherwise, the design will die a death by a thousand cuts.
• Remember that you are the expert, as is the designer. Have an opinion and drive the client in the direction you want them to go. Do not allow them to just tear a design apart without also telling you what they like.

In the end, my purple may seem violet to my client, but at least when I follow my rules above – the end result is a strong design that we collaboratively agreed upon in a reasonable timeframe.

Landing pages are a critical part of any online marketing campaign. Yet too often, they do not get the attention and time necessary to produce the kind of quality that will deliver optimal results. It seems that landing pages frequently are thrown together without much thought and reasoning.  Sometimes, landing pages are no more than a current page on the site that relates only slightly to the marketing campaign.

Creating/choosing landing pages in this way will not deliver ideal results. While you may get lucky and have a positive ROI, you could be missing out on a lot more additional sales/leads/donations or whatever other success metrics have been agreed upon for the campaign.

Here are five tips that can help you improve the performance of your current landing pages or help guide in the creation of new landing pages:

1. The Headline is Key

This will be one of the first parts of the landing page that a visitor will see. Since you only have about 5 seconds to draw them in, it is vital that you have an excellent headline. Your headline needs to match the ad by using the same words so that there is an immediate correlation between the two in a visitor’s mind. This will give instant reassurance to the visitor that their original intent when clicking on the ad will be able to be satisfied on the site.

2. Compelling Image or Graphic

This is usually the first part of the landing page that a visitor actually sees and can either capture their attention or drive them away before they even read the content. It needs to be a compelling image or graphic that catches the visitors’ attention and draws them into the “meat” of the landing page. It should also be on the left side of the landing page. The reason is that eye movement is generally left to right, so you want the landing page to follow the natural eyes movement.

3. Be Persuasive and Stick to the Message

You are driving visitors to the landing page for a specific reason, so make sure that you don’t stray from your goal. The copy should be an extension of your ad and build off of what has been promised to the visitor. It should also be persuasive and show the visitors the benefits that your product or service will provide them and how it will satisfy their current need or desire that originally compelled them to click on the ad in the first place.

4. Great Offer

Provide visitors some sort of incentive that will get them to convert immediately. This could include a limited time discount, free shipping, or receive a free gift with purchase. There is a lot of competition so, enticing them with of a great offer can tip the scales in your favor.

5. Anchor Text or Button

It may not seem important, but this can play a big role in how your landing page performs. Since these generally stand out, they are often read before the actual content. Because of this, you should never use “Click Here” or similar language. Instead, try using language that builds off the offer that you’re giving visitors. If using buttons, make sure they stand out and will catch the visitors’ eye.

Lastly, this should be an ongoing process. Continually testing your landing pages will lead to incremental increases in your ROI by converting your visitors at a higher rate.

Joy did a nice post yesterday on how Analytics can help you fix problems on your Web site that may negatively impact conversions.  Analytics data can provide a gold mine of information and is the logical place to start in terms of assessing the efficacy, or persuasiveness of your current site. 

In addition to Analytics, today’s audience research methods can provide even more information that can be critical to the success of a redesign or a new site build.  Audience research bridges the gap between what the customer’s buying process is and what your selling process should be on the Web.

Sounds like good common sense, right?  Yes, but unfortunately, the reality is that both the Analytics review and audience research are steps in the redesign/build process that – more often than not – get skipped completely.

Think back to the last time your company redesigned or built a new site.   What happened?  Most likely, a committee of internal staff got together and decided on the requirements for a new site, with “requirements” being defined as “what my department needs to have published on our Web site”.   Site objectives were probably brought up in this or subsequent meetings as well, but they were likely vague (as opposed to hard objectives such as “I want x number of people to download this whitepaper, submit a Request for Information, or purchase this particular product”).  The next thing you knew, a Web Development firm put some wireframes and a “design” together, and within weeks (maybe even days), developers were writing code.

What’s wrong with this process?  It tends to produce finished products that are designed for internal stakeholders, not potential customers — a mistake that will negatively impact your marketing ROI significantly.

Audience research methods (ethnography, usability testing, persona development and testing) are becoming more sophisticated every day.  Skipping the audience research step because of cost concerns is penny wise and pound foolish.  After all, if your Web site can’t convert traffic, why spend the money on marketing to drive that traffic in the first place?  And, if time is the issue (a launch deadline), remember that fixing something that was built wrong will take more time (and money) than doing it right in the first place.

There are some aspects of Web analytics that can be very complicated. But, when it comes to using analytics to create persuasive architecture, it is a no-brainer.

Persuasive architecture is creating the framework on your site to funnel traffic into desired paths to create desired behaviors (e.g. conversions).

The simple way to do this is a three-step process.  Figure out what on your site is working (pages, sections, navigation), figure out what on your site is not working, and create changes to make what is not working work.

Step 1- Figure out what is working
There are several different ways to do this. First, segment out the ‘conversion’ traffic and analyze it. Ask what referrers are driving traffic that converts, identify the pages where visitors who convert enter the site, what paths they are taking.

Many analytics packages offer a decent view of the data in context. So, you can see each page with the percentage of clicks superimposed over the links.

ClickTracks offers a great view of this data, not only with clicks for each segment that you create, but with detailed page analysis.  More importantly for this task, paths to and from the page for each segment are identified.

That way, you can see where all of the visitors are clicking on a page.  But, you also can see the links and paths that the visitors who convert take. Then, you can compare the high volume-low conversion pages to the lower volume-high conversion pages to get clues about why one page is more effective than others (e.g. better looking imagery, more interesting copy).

If your analytic package does not offer this visual option, you can analyze the reverse path from your goal page and then bring up your site in a browser and follow those paths forward to get the clues.

Step 2 – Find out what is not working
My favorite way of figuring what is not working can be done with the help of a visual analytics package like ClickTracks or just on your site itself.

It is very helpful to use a tool like ClickTracks to figure this out by tracing the path through the conversion process using the visual report. Often times, people on the internet are in a hurry or just don’t pay a lot of attention to the details of a page. Using a more narrow view of your page, you may realize that most visitors don’t see your ‘Buy now’ button, or that description and special pricing.

Another great way to see where visitors ‘fall off’ the process is by using funnel reports or scenario analysis. You may see that visitors abandon your cart looking at the Privacy Policy or the Shipping Costs.  Or, they ‘ping-pong’ through the process, a good indication that the process is too confusing.

If you don’t have access to visual tools like these, you can always use the old-school method of user testing. Enlist several people who do not spend a lot of time on the internet and have them try to make a purchase, fill out a form, or perform whatever process is your conversion.

Step 3 – Use your knowledge to fix what is not working
Armed with the insight you gather from your analytics, you can continually evolve your site so it becomes more and more effective. The concept of ‘iterative design’ is still just as important today as it was when introduced 25 years ago. Make changes and test, make changes and test.

One final note: Knowing best practices never hurts either
A few years ago when my job was to launch a new Interactive department for a traditional ad agency, I had the opportunity to attend a ‘Usability Week’ conference. The condition was that rather than just my choosing the sessions to attend, the owner of the agency and I would decide on them together.

This turned out to be way more interesting than I expected. His background focused more on traditional advertising, creativity and emotion. My background was more technical. Needless to say, my ‘wish’ list and his list were completely different. As a result, I ended up at a few sessions that I had not initially considered.

The most interesting session that I had not considered was ‘Web Credibility and Persausive Technology.’ I still have the handouts and notes I took (five years later – which says a lot).

One of the most important lessons that I took away from that session about persuasion is the importance of the credibility of your Web site in order to change visitors attitudes and then, change their behavior.

Changing attitudes:
Make users feel comfortable interacting with your site – getting to know you (your company).

Results in changing behaviors:
The user ultimately begins a relationship with you (places an order, requests information, signs up for a webinar).

There’s your website. To you it looks great, you can’t imagine anyone not liking it. All of the features you feel that a user could want are there; the navigation, the logo, the specials, etc.
Then you get feedback from one or two people that it looks a bit 1999-ish. Is that a problem? More often than not, yes.

As different techniques are applied to different website, users experience them and begin to accept those newer features as ‘the norm’, if your site doesn’t keep pace, then it may be seen to be antiquated. Now, this doesn’t mean that your site isn’t usable, that’s something for you to examine using your analytics, or through usability testing, but it can lead to a general uneasiness of the user, that the site isn’t where it should be.

Let’s take a look at the evolution of a site. Below is the Burger King site from January 1999, as you can see, it doesn’t suffer from a common problem of that time – Frames – but it did have a splash screen.

Looking at the same site today, you can see that the navigation has vanished (it’s dynamic when you mouse over the ‘Explore BK’ text), and the center of the site is interactive, with the user able to rotate the image to see the special features. Look-wise, there’s a nice gradient in the background, which just gives the site more of a 3-D feel to it.

It’s quite clear to see the difference between the 2 sites, and to see which offers a user the more ‘modern’, expected experience. So if your competition has the 2008 site, and yours looks like the 1999 one, you’re going to start off at a disadvantage when you try to get those customers to walk through your site, let alone getting them to order / donate. Updating the look and feel of your site on a regular basis can aid in both retaining and attracting new customers, as long as it’s more than just a ‘fresh coat of paint’, and there’s content and functionality behind it.

If your site is stuck in 1999, 2002 or 2005, then we can guide you on the way to where you need to be today. Typically our process involves the following:

1. Analytics Audit – What’s working for you now? Where are the roadblocks? Are you tracking the right metrics?
2. Search Audit – Where it the site now as far as the Search Engines are concerned? Where could it be? What are your competitors doing? Where are your ‘golden’ opportunities?
3. Infrastructure Selection – What platform(s) should the site use? What 3rd party applications / tools need to be integrated? What architecture needs to be in place to support the goals?
4. Site Build – The final step is to design and build the site, including the look and feel, as well as appropriate content for your site to succeed.
5. Site Audit – Is the new site functioning as expected? What tweaks need to be made to get customers through the appropriate funnels to your conversion event?