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What happens when you spend every waking moment tweaking your site, adding content, categorizing products, etc? You become intimately connected to your site but you can simultaneously lose sight of how first time shoppers are experiencing it. This perspective is vital to creating a shopping experience that leads customers from the home page through the checkout page.

Use the Customers’ Eyes

How do you obtain the beginners mind necessary to view your site from a fresh perspective? Follow the guidelines below to evaluate your site as a brand new customer might.

What Causes Customers to leave your site?

The first step to evaluating your site from a customer perspective begins with understanding the disease of Site Abandonment. As with any disease, there are usually multiple factors at work. MarketingExperiments.com has found that most visitors jump ship for the following 3 reasons:

1. Lack of Relevance

2. Points of Friction

3. Creation of Anxiety

Lack of Relevance:

If a customer comes to your site from the keyword “green cleaning products” and they land on a page for “Comet” you can be sure that they will leave without buying a thing. It is your job to provide a logical connection between the keywords used to navigate to your site and the landing page you are presenting to visitors. If the keyword “scent” does not follow through from the advertisement (or search result) to the landing page on the site and then onto the product page, you will lose that valuable customer to a competitor.

Points of Friction:

In addition, if a customer is unable to navigate your site to find the product they are looking for, they will leave. This friction caused by poor navigation is the number one reason why shoppers leave a site without buying. A prime example of friction is if a customer searches for the product they came to buy and irrelevant search results come up. This disparity is enough of a roadblock to send the visitor packing. Your goal as the experience creator is to remove all roadblocks between the landing page where a visitor arrives and the checkout page.

Creation of Anxiety

The final trigger for increased bounce rates are the elements of your site that cause anxiety in the mind of the visitor. When a customer comes to the shopping cart and is presented paragraphs of warnings about shipping, he or she will abandon the cart. The reason is that there are twenty other competitors who probably offer the same product and who don’t scare customers while they are in the checkout process. Avoid creating points of anxiety at all costs. However, if you do have to explain a negative element of your site, do so in a positive way. Utilize fonts that are positive and write in a tone that is friendly and explanatory. The last thing that you want to do is have a paragraph of bold red text listing all the places where you don’t ship.

Summing Up

Take a step back, examine your site and ask yourself these questions: Is my site relevant to my target market? Are their any roadblocks preventing my visitors from finding the products they desire? Are there any warnings, broken links, or confusing policies that will cause anxiety in the visitors minds? If you are able to find any issues with your site, take the time and effort necessary to fix each one.

In today’s e-commerce world there are too many competitors waiting just a click away. Once you have a customer on your site, try to do everything possible to keep them. This doesn’t mean trapping them in Kafkaesque navigation scheme, it means providing a simple, intuitive, positive shopping experience that will convert a majority of fist time visitors into sales.

Take the time now to examine the issues customers are facing on your site. It may be hard, it may create more work for you in the present, but in the long term it will lead to a successful, profitable e-commerce website.

By Jeff Petrosillo
jeffp@ebizinsider.com

Conversion optimization takes traffic and conversions to the next level. Great web design is irreplaceable, but it is a bird shot approach. Conversion optimization speaks directly to each segment of visitors differently based on demographics.

Examples of Optimization…

Most merchants I know have spent the majority of their marketing dollars driving traffic to their websites. They usually target first time visitors where improving conversion rates will make a huge impact on returns.

Let’s look at two geographic segments: Canadian shoppers and New York shoppers. A Canadian searching the web for a particular product finds a site, looks at the about us page, sees it is an American site and then looks for a site that has a .ca URL. Shipping rates, duties and customs can be tricky with international orders; therefore they would rather stay within the country even when shopping online.

Their conversion rate is dramatically lower than that of domestic shoppers. A strong conversion optimization campaign can fix this.

A maple leaf banner on your site saying “Canadian shoppers get flat rate shipping…click here” will catch their attention. On the landing page, explain that they will have to pay duties. Informed shoppers won’t call your customer service department complaining about surprise duties.

New York shoppers pay sales tax if the website’s warehouse is located in New York, but if it is not, they don’t. Announce: “New York shoppers pay NO sales tax.”

Other Areas to Apply
Optimization Strategy

• Lost Shoppers – A shopper comes from a Google ad, lands on an item page and uses the search box. After viewing another product, they return to the search. Now is a great time to say “Can’t find what you are looking for, have us help you – 1-800-555-5555”

• Average time per visit – Analytics say that when customers are on the website for more than X minutes, conversion rates plummet. Have a banner that directs them to a clearance page or a product finder.

• Keyword searches – If someone comes in searching for a product line with a specific keyword and then moves to a completely different line of products, they are probably not finding what they want. Ask them “Still looking for _________, click here to view our entire _________ selection.” On the page you drive them to, use the same strategy mentioned in the lost shopper campaign.

Imagine customers in a brick-and-mortar store. What would you say to someone endlessly walking up and down each aisle of your store? What if they stopped 5 feet short of checkout?

You must interact. It’s why brick-and-mortar stores convert visitors at vastly higher rates than online stores.

The Clutter Problem

Filling every page on your website with banners leads to clutter, loss of consumer focus and lower conversion rates.
The solution is to show the consumer
only relevant messages. Show the Canadian shopper the Canadian
banner; show the New York shopper
the New York banner.

You need technology to do this, the knowledge to dig through the analytics, the resources to design the creative and the time to implement and optimize.

Conversion Optimization
from Solid Cactus

We created our own optimization program because we know the value and because many merchants don’t have the time or resources to implement a strategy.

It works like this:

1. We research your traffic, segments, and conversion rates to identify groups with poor conversions

2. We pick a few pieces of real estate on your site to deliver relevant messages to these segments

3. We use technology to identify visitors within those segments the second they land on the website and deliver a message we’ve tailored specifically for them through an attractive banner

4. We review the results, optimize
the campaigns and then target
new segments

By Sean Gove
seang@ebizinsider.com

help make the experience more personal, which keeps shoppers on your site.

Once the desire is there, the last step is provoking the customer to act. Any good salesman will tell you the call to action is the most important part of a sales pitch.

A key to e-commerce success is writing persuasive copy – copy that provokes a desired response. On the web, that could be anything from getting people to read the next page, follow a link, sign up for a newsletter or whitepaper, or buy a product. The bottom line is–good copy sells!

Speak To Your Audience

Speaking to your audience is arguably the most important aspect of content writing. Look at the vocabulary your target audience uses. By speaking the same language, you make your readers feel comfortable and show them you know your business, your products and them.

For instance, if you’re marketing designer purses targeted toward young women (ages 16-29), using a light-hearted, fun-loving vernacular - as opposed to rigged sales talk - will give you credibility with both your audience and search engines.

Search Engines Love Good Copy

Adding fresh, new content to your website is helpful for search engine optimization and increasing linking efforts, as well as building and marketing your brand.

Search engines crawl websites searching for text. Therefore, the best way for website crawlers to decide what your site is about is to provide rich, invoking text on every page.

Try to make your website ‘sticky’ – to keep customers on your site browsing, reading, and interested as long as possible. When you feature content that is related to what people are looking for, they’re not only more likely to stay on your website, but they will also potentially remember and recommend it to others. Should they find you to be a reputable, expert source of information, interesting, entertaining or thought provoking, they’ll also be more likely to remember your site for future purchases.

Power of the Word

“The words you use, either written or spoken, can have a powerful effect on your audience - if you use them carefully and skillfully. Whether your goal is to inform, to persuade, to call for action or to entertain, your words and your stories can be powerful. They can be powerful, because language is software for the mind. Learning how to write that software well is well worth the effort.”

— David McNally, speaker and author of the best-selling book Even Eagles Need A Push.

Copy is Selling in Print

Lackluster copy that fails to invoke emotions, tell compelling stories, create vivid mental imagery or excite your potential customers about your product or service is a common reason why websites fail.

Copy is selling in print. Therefore, its job is no different. Since e-commerce lacks the human interaction you would normally get in a face-to-face sales encounter, your copy plays an even more important role. It must communicate that same enthusiasm your salesman would, energize your potential customers, excite them about your offer and entice them to buy.

By Michelle Johnson
michellej@ebizinsider.com

Anyone who has set up a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign knows the work and care required to target the right set of keywords for your site. However, the irrelevant traffic you worked so hard to avoid is still sneaking in to your account. It’s time to learn about the positive benefits that negative keywords can have on your PPC.

A Keyword Primer

First, let’s have a short lesson on regular keywords. When you bid on a keyword, you have to choose a match type. Match types determine the variety of traffic that your keywords can trigger. Three common varieties of Google Adwords include broad, phrase and exact match types. Broad match keywords bring in the greatest variety of traffic, while phrase and exact are more restrictive. The broad match of “cufflinks” can bring in traffic from users who search all of these phrases: “cufflinks”, “solid gold cuff link”, “kuff link”, and “win free cufflinks”. Broad match is the fastest way to capture a wide selection of relevant traffic, which makes it an important part of your PPC campaigns. However, broad match can also attract a lot of keywords in which you aren’t interested. This is where negative keywords work their magic.

Negative Positives

If you sell cufflinks but you don’t actually have a solid gold pair for sale, then “solid gold” would be a great negative keyword. Additionally, if you aren’t planning on giving them out for free, then “free” is another negative you should add to your account. You can add your negatives directly into individual ad groups, or they can be placed at the campaign level if the negatives are applicable to multiple categories.

Identifying Negatives

Now you can block unwanted traffic, but how do you actually find that traffic in the first place? If you’re not using negative keywords, you can almost guarantee that some of the PPC traffic currently coming to your site is unwanted. There are three great places you can go to start your negative keyword hunt. The first is in your initial keyword research. When you plug your core keywords into a keyword research tool, there are terms you choose not to use. Go back to that tool and take a look at the keywords you didn’t add to your campaigns. Was it because the volume or the cost per click was too high? Or did you pass those keywords by because they had nothing to do with your business? Add those irrelevant keywords to your negative keyword list!

Do Your Homework

The Search Query Report from Google Adwords allows you to see the actual search queries that are triggering your ads. Many of the search queries are the actual keywords on which you are bidding. Keep digging and you’ll start seeing variations that you aren’t bidding on, and this is where it gets interesting. Let’s run a search query report for the cufflinks ad group we were working with earlier. We found some individual styles that you don’t carry: “dragon cufflinks” “copper cufflinks” and “plastic cufflinks”. None of these keywords had a large volume. In fact, blocking them only saved you around $1. But running Search Query Reports and blocking lower traffic keywords can turn into big savings in the long run.

The final tool for researching negative keywords is your own analytics program. Google Analytics allows you to view the keywords driving traffic to your site. You can parse them out by paid (PPC) and non-paid (organic) keywords. Then you can analyze stats that include pages per visit and bounce rate. Not only is analytics a great tool for finding negative keywords, it provides additional insight into how all your keywords are performing.

Update, Update, Update

Like the rest of your keywords, negatives should be periodically reviewed. If you add new inventory to your store, be sure negatives aren’t blocking newly relevant traffic. As your business grows, you may find that you don’t need to be as restrictive with some categories as you once were. Negatives are a critical part in the success of your paid campaigns. Isn’t it time you started feeling the positive effects of negatives on your PPC?

By Jean Lloyd
jeanl@ebizinsider.com

As pay-per-click (PPC) advertising becomes more and more popular with online advertisers, e-commerce operators must be increasingly wary of the latest scams and most recent forms of fraud. Pay-Per-Click online advertising has grown into a multi-billion dollar business and the stakes and downside risks have never been greater. One online development that advertisers need to be acutely aware of is that of “click fraud.”

Click fraud is the clicking on an online advertisement for reasons other than the good faith intention to purchase the associated goods or services or to obtain information. This fraud can be perpetrated by competitors or unscrupulous marketers and it can cost an advertiser countless sums of money in wasted advertising dollars.

Why Click Fraud?

There are several motivations for click fraud. One is to make an advertising campaign appear more effective. For example, a marketing company, seeking to generate unjustified revenue, might arrange to have advertisements it has developed for a client clicked by those who are not potential customers in an effort to improperly inflate the results and make their marketing seem more effective than it really is. Another motivation is to force a competitor to pay for worthless clicks. For instance, someone can repeatedly click on a competitor’s ad without buying. This makes the competitor waste money for no results, leading them to assume their conversions are not worth the investment, which in turn can cause them to bid less aggressively or lower their overall advertising budget. If it works, this has the effect of lowering the cost of that advertising. There are a number of other methods and motives for perpetuating click fraud and new scams are being discovered daily.

How Click Fraud Works

There are several ways to actually generate the amount of clicks necessary to effectuate click fraud. Two of the most prevalent are to either manually click on advertisements themselves or to use automated software programs designed to continuously click on PPC advertisements. In other words, someone can sit on the computer all day and do nothing but click ads (or pay someone to do so), or they can implement software to automatically click those ads over and over again. These methods can result in thousands upon thousands of fraudulent clicks.

Detecting Click Fraud

Since it is almost impossible to know the true intentions of someone surfing the Web, detecting and proving click fraud can be very difficult. No matter what methods of detection you employ, no process is infallible. Both Yahoo! and Google have methods to detect and prevent click fraud. These systems are constantly evolving and both keep the details relatively secret for security purposes. They both utilize a variety of click monitoring techniques and have people examine click activity and investigate cases where click fraud is suspected. If click fraud is found they will then take action. A number of other companies are developing their own solutions for identifying fraudulent clicks and dealing with click fraud. There are managed solutions as well as software applications and other online resources available to help advertisers deal with this problem.

Pay Attention!

Also, proper management of PPC campaigns is critically important. Advertisers who monitor their own PPC campaigns should review the related records, reports and logs to identify unusual activity. They should pay attention to discrepancies between the number of clicks they pay for and their anticipated conversions. If an advertiser works with a third party who is responsible for managing the advertiser’s PPC campaigns, they should make sure that the company is qualified, capable and honest.

By monitoring responsibly, an advertiser can quickly become aware of invalid clicks and take steps to stop and prevent click fraud. Ultimately, there is no foolproof method to detect or prevent this problem. There will be more internet scams and scammers tomorrow than there are today. However, advertisers can mitigate their damages by staying educated and informed, remaining attentive, and being quick to act when a problem is discovered. If an advertiser is willing to spend money on advertising, he or she should also spend the time and money necessary to protect that investment.

Imagine you could quickly and easily advertise on every message board, blog and news site across your industry. Imagine creating text and banner ads for thousands of potential new customers. Imagine your ads on competing sites! Stop imagining. You can do all of this and more with contextual advertising.

Once you’ve optimized your pay-per-click for search, content networks are a great way to get your name out to potential customers. The major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) offer contextual advertising. They partner with thousands of content sites to place ad blocks throughout each site. When you turn on the content network, the search engine will scan the content of that campaign and compare it against sites in the content network. When they find a match, your ads can run on that site. Your ads may display on blogs, news sites, forums and even competing online stores.

Content networks charge on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, but network bids are set on the ad group level instead of the keyword level. This is because engines look at the sum of all the keywords and ads, rather than the individual parts. You can choose separate content bids or let the engines determine your content bid from your search bids.

Content networks can extend your brand far beyond your current marketing efforts. They tend to have a higher volume of impressions, so more people are seeing your name. Even if the effect isn’t felt directly through your pay-per-click campaigns, you may still see an increase in traffic. It takes time and testing to maximize your content network results. Be patient.

Content Network Best Practices:

• Test in Google first. Google has the best reporting features. Optimize your content campaign and expand to Yahoo! and MSN when you start getting results.

• Create a separate content-only campaign. You can run content in the same campaign as search, but you can judge performance better with content in its own campaign. Consider creating a separate budget for content ads while you are in the testing phase.

• Use broad match keywords. Since the engines look at the whole of your ad groups rather than individual keywords, you only need a broad match. Using more than 50 keywords in one ad group increases the difficulty for search engines to determine the ad group’s theme.

• Use negative keywords. If you sell flowers, but not roses, you should make “rose” a negative keyword to avoid showing on sites dedicated specifically to that flower.

• Avoid dynamic insertion ads. Dynamic insertion ads automatically pull the keyword that triggered your ad in a search and place it in the ad text. This works well on search because it makes the ad more relevant to each user’s search query. Since there are no searches being performed on content sites, the keyword used is random and may not make much sense.

• Exclude sites with low performance. Monitor traffic either with placement reports (in Google Adwords) or an analytics package. If a site is delivering low quality traffic, add it to an excluded site list that works similarly to negative keywords.

• Use a mix of generic & specific keywords. While you wouldn’t use generic words like “flowers” or “hats” in a regular search campaign, consider adding some in your content campaign. Mixing broad industry terms with brand and product keywords gives the search engines a more complete picture of your business and the types of sites you want displaying your ads.

• Write a strong call to action. Since browsers on content network sites aren’t actively looking to make a purchase, you need to grab their attention. Use phrases like: buy, find, learn more, save now, limited time offer, etc.

Once you get your feet wet, consider advanced features like image and video ads. Target individual sites and maximize your exposure on them. Google, Yahoo! and MSN have been investing in their content networks to create a better advertiser experience and the results have been impressive. With so many tools at your disposal, isn’t it time you gave the content network a try?

By Jean Lloyd
jeanl@ebizinsider.com

Video has long done what static content cannot. While conveying a meaning via words requires precise communication and a strong command of a written language, video can quickly convey messages using imagery.

Adobe Flash technology expanded online video deployment by making it quick, easy and mainstream. Embedded video technology was quickly abused due to its “wow factor” and just as quickly became an annoyance to those who sacrificed precious bandwidth for meaningless video that should have been simply text. What changed? The addition of interactivity and social networking with online video has turned it into a true marketing and conversion generating medium.

The most widely known viral marketing video website is YouTube.com. They have built a business around serving videos that are generated by the public. The purpose of this website is to showcase new content that is meaningful to viewers. Other websites have been quick to jump on this idea and the result is an emerging industry where you can watch your favorite TV shows and share videos of your new baby.

Nearly any merchant in a vertical market can benefit from online videos with a strategic goal to increase conversions. Amazon.com and Gap.com understand this and have quickly added online video to support their products. Marketing Sherpa cited online video as a contributing factor to raising one DVD Merchant’s subscriptions by 40 percent! If you have a physical product, then online video can be used to help drive conversions. It’s all just a matter of planning and execution.

In order to use online video to its fullest potential, you will need a few key components. Be sure to read the entire article first as you will be making decisions in the first steps that require an understanding of the steps which follow. Specifically, you should decide how you will deploy your video during the planning stage because the call-to-action you choose may be limited based on the type of deployment you choose. Below are the steps to consider when going online with video. While this article is titled “Low Cost Video Solutions…” the high end will be mentioned so that you are presented with a choice of well-rounded options:

Step 1 - Have a plan

This is the most important step as it outlines the reason for having a video. Many video implementations show a clear lack of purpose (beyond “that’s what people are doing now”). Map out the purpose and quantifiable goal for the video. Is it to be used for training to lower support calls, for demonstrations that increase subscriptions, for boosting sales of a particular product or is it merely a viral tool meant to acquire traffic/new customers? Decide first. You don’t need to write a Hollywood novel, but you do need to plan the message and imagery that will drive the video and ultimately achieve your goal.

Step 2 - Make your video

The quality of your video will depend on your budget. The greatest videos are typically created by production studios with live models and professional scripts. This works the best, but also costs the most. The low end alternative—the digital camera–is available to nearly everyone. Digital cameras (with video capabilities) or digital video cameras are common now and finding one you can afford is easy. If you are strapped for time, you may consider using online stock video resources like istockphoto.com. However, the likelihood of finding stock video that meets your needs and drives consumers is slim. Also, be aware that these videos (even the royalty-free ones) have license restrictions that must be carefully observed. Your best bet is to stick with having unique videos. You’ll own the rights and you’ll be assured that your competition will not be able to use the same video on their website.

Step 3 - Edit your video

After you have captured the video, you should edit it to strengthen the story’s pace and continuity (you followed a rough script when recording the video right? See Step 1 if you haven’t!). A production studio can handle the bulk of this work and supply you with the clean final output. The low cost alternative is to download your video from the camera to your PC and edit the video there. Mac’s and PC’s both come with default video editing software. This software is usually very limited and the compressed output is typically less than favorable, but the price is right. Adobe Flash has simple video editing abilities. For quality editing in-house, consider using Final Cut Pro. Be mindful when adding audio. All videos should have an on/off switch because background music quickly becomes tiresome and not all of your visitors want to be greeted with a voice or music clip while surfing in a quiet cafe. Furthermore, not everyone can hear your videos (due to and impairment, mute, lack of speakers, etc) so your messages should be obvious when limited to visual queues and text.

Step 4 - Deploy your video

Adobe Flash is the number one choice for quality and customizing your call to action. Find a developer who is familiar with Flash and can build an interactive interface flexible enough for you to manage.

In addition, you will need to find a web host to server the video files online. Your web hosting choice should be reflective of the amount of traffic your video will receive. High traffic websites demand high-end web hosting servers. If you choose a low-end package (usually because of cost) the result may be slow video playback, a slow website and annoyed visitors. Be sure to make your intentions known to the prospective web hosting company so that they may recommend a package that meets your needs. Consider an online service which offers pre-made interfaces and provides the hosting for you. These services usually require subscription and hosting fees, but you’ll have professional help when you need it.

If you aren’t going high-end immediately, the Web 2.0 option is YouTube.com. YouTube.com is not the only web-based video hosting and deployment service, but they are currently the most well known. YouTube.com allows you to upload your video for free. However, the video will carry their branding, they handle the compressions (which can be good or bad) and your ability to insert a call to action is limited to the text you place in the video during the editing phase.

Online Video Hosting Services:

YouTube: www.youtube.com

Formats Supported: .wmv, .avi, .mov, and .mpg

Google Video: video.google.com

Formats Supported: .avi, .asf, .mov, .wmv, .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .ra, .ram, and .mod

Google recommends MPEG4 format with MP3 audio or MPEG2 with MP3 for the fastest uploads.

Step 5 - That’s a wrap!

Once you have your video in a hosted environment, the final steps are to place the appropriate HTML code onto your web site landing page of choice. The video code will vary depending on how you choose to deploy it. If you are using Adobe Flash, then your developer should be able to embed the video for you. If you are using YouTube, the online website will present you with the necessary embedding code when you upload your video. Be sure to have a developer who is proficient with HTML and who understands your website’s coding structure. The code should be strategically placed where the video will be displayed in an easy to see location.

Have the shopper click to play your video rather than having it play automatically when the page loads. Consider “user initiated” playback akin to politely ask them if you may speak before further interrupting whatever they are doing.

Once the script is in place, review your video with pride, share it with peers and monitor your analytics to see if your shoppers agree. The barrier for entry into the online video market has never been lower, so act now! Online videos have proven benefits to multiple vertical markets. They present your messages in a more intimate manner. Video allows you to convey expression, attitude, excitement and most importantly, allows you to guide your consumers. The question now is, is your first call to Best Buy or your trusted developer?

Here are a few online video samples:

Sample of Demonstrative Videos with a Call-To-Action
http://www.airgundepot.com/

Helpful / Viral Videos
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Apadq9iPNxA

By: Miguel Younger

It is easy for e-commerce merchants to monitor pay-per-click advertising to see if people are clicking on your ads. It is easy to see if your website is listed in the first ten results of a search engine. What’s not easy is figuring out how to make the most of your pay-per-click advertising or your organic listing. Below are some methods small businesses can use to drive traffic.

The landing page is crucial to the equation. It’s where you drive people, answer their questions and hopefully help them fulfill their shopping mission.

MarketingExperiments has done extensive testing with landing page optimization by focusing on how to improve conversions. Their tests conclude the number one threat to conversion is site flow disruption. Simply put, when the message you use to drive people to your website doesn’t match the message on the landing page people get disrupted and conversions drop.

Give the landing page the attention it requires. Typically, a landing page requires design and programming work just like a section page or item page, but the results can be well worth the extra effort.

Let’s say I’m a lawn and garden supply company and one of my pay-per-click ads says “Get ready for Spring” sending them to the following landing page:

What’s the first category that people see? “Winter and Seasonal.” Because my general home page has not been updated to match my ad, I have caused a disruption in my intended message. After people saw the Spring ad, they thought they were going to get supplies for spring time gardening. But I didn’t deliver. Some people will click the ad and hunt for spring-time supplies, but many won’t. MarketingExperiments saw an increase in conversion by over 100% with one controlled experiment!

Do this with your OWN site.

THE AD

Your ad should create the value and give people a reason to click on it and visit your website. Headlines should be compelling but not misleading. Misleading copy can generate lots of clicks and cost lots of money, but the goal is to drive qualified traffic to your website.

THE LANDING PAGE

Spend the time to make your landing page more effective. First, remove as much “clutter” as possible from the page. This includes things like left hand navigation or newsletter sign-up. You want people to focus on one goal and not be so distracted that they lose interest in your page.

Second, examine the heading at the top of the page. This headline should be compelling and support the value. It should use language that is similar to your ad copy.

Third, consider how much information you should put on the page. Should you simply put an “Add to Cart” button or an email form? MarketingExperiments found that there are four factors when determining how much information to put on a landing page:

- Cost

- Perceived risk—anxiety

- Level of commitment (high/low; long/short)

- Motivation Type (rational/emotional; analytical/impulse; want/need)

They found that short copy performs better when the cost to the visitor is low (or none at all), the risk is low (or none at all), the commitment level is low (or short) and the visitor is motivated by emotions, impulse or by a feeling of “want.”

Long copy performs better when the cost is high, risk is high, commitment level is high (or long) and they are motivated by rational, analytical or the feeling of “need.”

Then, consider the placement of elements like images and the call-to-action area (add to cart or sign up).

THE ACTION

The call-to-action is important, but so is the process when shoppers complete the action–the checkout process. It should be similar to the landing page with as little information as possible. Any information should be supporting, not distracting and should limit any site flow disruption.

Finally, do a test to determine which elements works best with the offer and the different elements on a page. For more information and test results, visit http://www.marketingexperiments.com.

In Part I of this series, we discussed the basics of affiliate marketing (What is it? How does it work? Who are affiliates?), as well as the benefits of joining a network instead of establishing your own independent affiliate program. We also discussed which network to join.

This segment will explore setup of your new affiliate program, integration with your existing marketing efforts, as well as common missteps and how to avoid them.

Setting Up Your Affiliate Program
Establishing an Affiliate Program is not an overnight project, but requires a good deal of time and patience. After signing on with a network, you will need to set up all of your program details including program description, creative elements, keywords and base commission.

Your affiliate program description is your first opportunity to describe your company, your audience and why the affiliate publisher should choose to partner with you. Prospective affiliates can gain valuable insight into the nature of your business and whether your products are a good match for their audience. Be sure to include target demographics, top products, any ongoing consumer incentives (e.g. free shipping, hassle-free returns, low price guarantee). The more information you provide, the better your affiliate partners can target customers.
Affiliates will scan this description for important information, so make their job easier. Use bullets, hard numbers, and essential details to accentuate the most relevant information.

Repeat some of the same information from your Program Description in an acceptance email for new publishers. By providing this information to the affiliate at the point of acceptance, you’re reminding them of the best type of customer they need to target. Include contact email or phone numbers to open the lines of communication as you move forward.

In addition to your program description, develop creative for links. This can include banner ads, text links and advanced links.

Syncing Your Affiliate Program with Existing Marketing Agenda
When creating the banners and text links, remember to not only develop captivating ads that represent your brand, but ones that sync with your overall marketing agenda. Analyze your yearly promotional calendar so you can plan to advertise any sales or promotions on your website. Remember, your banners will be reaching many people who may have never heard of your store, so be sure to give them a reason to visit.

This is a great opportunity to build and expand your brand. Maintain a consistent look and feel from your banner through your website to develop an identity with the consumer. Because major retailers like Best Buy and Target have established certain colors and themes with their brand, most of us could identify their weekly newspaper inserts even if their logos were missing. A consistent brand identity helps you create established brand leverage.

Overall, keep your message consistent within banners, text links and program descriptions on your website. Keep the same overall color scheme throughout your site, although seasonal variations are acceptable for promotional purposes.

Couponing* through your Affiliate Links
Aside from the generic holiday ads be sure to offer additional special coupon sales through your affiliate links. Many Super Affiliates are coupon/deal sites with a dedicated following of savvy shoppers. By offering regular coupon discounts and free shipping codes, they can send you many additional customers.

* Couponing to build your program will be discussed in Part III of this series.

Do I Need a Product Catalog or Datafeed?
In most cases, yes! The more resources the affiliates have at their fingertips, the more they can promote you and the greater the opportunity for success. By offering links to each individual product through a product catalog or datafeed, affiliate publishers can pick and choose the specific products they would like to promote, or use the whole catalog to promote your entire line through their online mall. Many networks charge for this, but it is a worthwhile investment.

How Much Commission Should I Offer?
Setting a standard commission rate involves a number of factors including the overall industry, trends in competitor commission offerings, and your average profit margin.

Some industries demand a higher commission in the double-digits (10-20%), whereas consumer electronics retailers may only pay 1-4%. By taking into account the average for the industry, as well as your margins, you can offer a competitive commission giving you the leverage you need within the industry.

An example of some average industry commissions:
Clothing & Apparel: 5-8%
Electronics: 3-5%
Flowers & Gifts: 8-12%
Health & Beauty: 8-12%
Home & Garden: 8-10%

If you can offer a maximum of 10%, you may want to offer 8% and hold back the additional 2% for top performer rewards. Also, many times Search Marketing Affiliates can benefit from a 2% “bump” by utilizing the additional money to send more traffic to your site. This benefits your affiliate and your bottom line.

Many affiliates want to know how much that commission percentage is worth to them. If you can earn 10% of $100, or 5% of $500, the 5% is the obvious choice. Be sure to let your affiliates know your average order value. That way they can decide how much to spend promoting your product, based on the average return they can expect.

Common Mistakes During Program Setup:
Online merchants make many mistakes during the setup and lifetime of a program. I’ll explain how you can avoid some common missteps.

1. Expecting too much too soon.
Many merchants open an affiliate program with hopes of instant gratification. Unlike other forms of online advertising, affiliate programs require a significant investment of time and money.

With affiliate marketing, it’s about making connections and forming relationships with the affiliates. Knowing who is promoting your product and the methods they are using, are invaluable in building a successful program in the long run.

2. Thinking of Affiliates as Competition
I’ve heard it time and time again, “why should I help them?” Because they help you! Affiliate publishers are a great value in selling your brand. By providing them with the information they need, they can better position your products in the marketplace.

Many people ask about creating competition within sponsored search results. This is why it is extremely important to supply your affiliates with as much information as possible. Inform them of any restrictions you have regarding bidding on your brand name and other high-performance terms where you don’t want competition, but also give them ideas on where they can pick up some traffic that you may be missing.

By providing the affiliates with information, you empower them to help increase both their bottom line and yours, too!

3. Not Taking Advantage of Available Tools
Why do I want to offer coupons? I’m already giving up a percentage! Why do I need to offer a product catalog?

The more tools you place in the hands of the affiliate, the more you increase the opportunity for product promotion, brand exposure and the prospect of seeing a significant profit.

With the increased exposure for your brand through banners and text links, you have the opportunity to plant incentives for consumers. You may offer 10% commission to your affiliate and wonder why you need to offer a 10% coupon code in the banner. You’re doing it to build customer interest. By using your banners and text links to offer consumer incentives, you can create immediacy, interest and conversions!

Revisiting the product catalog supplies the affiliates with product level links and allows them to promote your program in a variety of ways that you may not have available, or may not have instituted. Be sure to let them know which items convert best so they can promote your top sellers.

Affiliate programs usually involve a significant investment, so use it to its full capacity. Take every opportunity to provide information to the affiliates so they can promote you better. Use your links by meshing them with your promotional calendar. Be in tune with the marketplace, know your top sellers, know your competition and use innovative promotions to gain a lion’s share of the revenue. Your affiliates want to sell your products, so treat them as partners instead of competitors. By beginning with these tactics in place, you can ensure a great jump-start to your affiliate program.

Part III of this Series in the April 2008 issue of eBiz Insider will deal with optimizing your existing program.

Imagine you were kidnapped and dropped in the midst of a jungle. Worse, you’re in hostile territory, you hear guns and people approaching. How do you get out of this crazy predicament?

I bet you’re wishing that Rambo just showed up with all of his survival knowledge, tools, and equipment and helped you get out of this mess.

Where am I going with this? I strongly believe that in today’s fast moving data-driven age, every website owner must have an advanced analytics package. If you don’t, then you
really are lost and you’ll need a Rambo.

The good news is Google is offering an advanced analytics package–FREE! Your favorite price. Google Analytics is an advanced web package which allows you to get a 360° view of visitor behaviors and trends. Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/ and sign up for a free account. A piece of code (provided by Google Analytics) is inserted on each page of your website and you’re good to go. It’s a little more involved for Yahoo! stores, which we will discuss below.

Google Analytics allows you to understand everything that is happening from the visitors’ arrival until the time they order, so that you can make educated changes and improvements to your store. It is a given that if you are serious about making money online, you need concrete data to make educated decisions. It has become imperative for us to analyze each change made to our store, as it has a direct effect on the intended consumer’s behavior. The good old days of relying solely on your traditional hosting package’s analytics or Yahoo! stores’ analytics are over.

Google Analytics gives the e-commerce operator the capability of analyzing key factors such as:

• Total Traffic - Repeat visitors vs. unique visitors.
• Origin of Traffic –Tracking the countries/states of your users.
• Source of the Traffic - Direct, Search Engines, Other referring sites, etc
• Medium of the Traffic - Organic/Natural Results, Paid Search Analysis (One click integration with Google Adwords), etc.
• Keyword Analysis – Keywords used to find your website can help you with evaluating your organic rankings on different search engines.
• Top Pages – Most popular pages within your website.
• Page Performance - Bounce Rates/Exit Rates – people leaving your page/website, time spent by each user, etc.
• Content Drilldown - How the user navigates throughout your website.
• Site Overlay – What part/links throughout your website are being clicked on the most.

To make this even sweeter, with a little bit of code modification Google Analytics can provide key marketing insights for e-commerce stores including:

• Conversion Rates – Broken down by Medium (defined above), time of day, etc.
• Customized Goals – Allows you to specify which metrics you want to measure (e.g. - I want a visitor to land here, and my goal is to lead them here. How often was I successful?)
• Shopping Cart Abandonment – How many people are clicking on the add to cart button but not completing the transaction (Analyzing the breakdown of the cycle allows you to correct the flaws and weak spots)
• E-commerce – It allows you to see how much money each source/medium produced, and from which origin. Also allows you to see which are the top-converting products, etc.
• Tracking other Marketing Initiatives – Such as Email, media/banner placements, Yahoo!/MSN PPC, etc.

The above information is a few clicks and a couple minutes away. It’s also just a glimpse of what can be derived from Google Analytics.

There is a minor obstacle for Yahoo! Store Owners. Unfortunately, due to the Yahoo! store leaving the domain to complete the transaction (after the user adds something to the cart), you need to customize the code in order to extract marketing data like conversion rates, revenue, popular items, etc. The good news is, Solid Cactus is now offering a 20% off for Ebiz Insider readers. This offer is good through March 31st, so go to http://www.solidcactus.com/google-analytics.html and enter the coupon code “Rambo”.

The information is out there, Google Analytics will help you get it and make sense of it, and Yahoo! store owners get a Solid Cactus discount this month only. So–why wait?