|
|
Written by Emily Wilson on May 14th, 2012.
1 comments
If your company is on Facebook, make sure you do your homework and abide by their ever-changing page rules; or  you could be severely punished for failing to do so. Just ask kiwi brands Velvet Burger and Hell Pizza.
Velvet Burger, a gourmet burger bar started in Dunedin, built its loyal following of Facebook Fans to nearly 10,000. And just like ‘that’ they were “goneburger” when Facebook HQ deleted their page for breaking their rules.
You may have also heard Hell Pizza went the same way, losing its page and 20,000 fans along with it. Hell managed to get the page back through someone-who-knew-someone who worked at Facebook, but sadly, in most cases, if this happens to you, you’ll be starting at the drawing board.
These were both New Zealand companies, who yes do have a large following of fans, but that won’t stop Facebook from deleting your 200 or 800 strong fan page either. So how do you avoid the same fate? Well it pays to know the rules, and keep an eye on the rules too, as they can change as regularly as clockwork. And unfortunately for you, because you ticked a box agreeing to the terms and conditions, ignorance of the rules is no excuse.
As Facebook says: “We reserve the right to reject or remove Pages for any reason.” And they’re not kidding. Don’t think you’ll get a warning either! Poof! One day it could just be gone.
So what are the rules? There are Facebook rules that page admins break on a daily basis, included in the list of what you CANNOT do that follows are no doubt many rules you’ve been guilty of breaking.
Cover Photo
Facebook don’t want you to use your cover photo as an advertisement. Its premium real estate so it can be pretty tempting to use it as ad, but it’s a sure way to lose your page.
The Rules
Use a unique image that represents your Page. This might be a photo of a popular menu item, album artwork or a picture of people using your product. Be creative and experiment with images your audience responds well to.
Cover images may not contain:
-
Price or purchase information, such as "40% off" or "Download it at our website"
-
Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page's About section
-
References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
-
Calls to action, such as "Get it now" or "Tell your friends"
All cover images are public, which means anyone visiting your Page will be able to see the image you choose. Covers must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties' intellectual property. You may not encourage or incentivise people to upload your cover image to their personal timelines.
Promotions
You might begin to feel guilty as these rules are broken all the time. It doesn’t mean that they were made to be broken though; it’s these rules that caused Velvet Burger to lose their page and their fans along with it.
The Rules
-
Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App. Do not use your page to create wall promotions (see below for more details)
-
Promotions on Facebook must include the following:
-
A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant.
-
Acknowledgment that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.
-
It may pay to have a statement in your promotions terms and conditions on your website and on the app page.
-
Disclosure about who the participant is providing information to and that they are not providing their information to Facebook.
-
You must not condition registration or entry upon the user taking any action using any Facebook features or functionality other than liking a Page, checking in to a Place, or connecting to your app. For example, you must not condition registration or entry upon the user liking a Wall post, or commenting or uploading a photo on a Wall.
-
You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.
-
You must not use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion.
-
This gets broken all the time, e.g. the most likes wins
-
You must not notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles (timelines) or Pages.
These rules also apply when promoting your competition/promotion. So when you advertise (eg: Facebook ads) or reference a promotion (eg: in a wall post) you need to follow the rules.
Common “Wall Promotions” that break the rules, because you’re using Facebook features and functionality to run the promotion, are:
-
Share this (update /photo/video) to be in to win…
-
Upload a photo/video …
-
Every 25th new fan wins…
-
Add a comment …
-
Invite your friends to like our page …
-
Answer this question …
-
Photo with the most likes wins …
Data Collection
If you collect content and information directly from users, you will need to make it clear that you (and not Facebook) are collecting it, and you will provide notice about and obtain user consent for your use of the content and information that you collect. Regardless of how you obtain content and information from users, you are responsible for securing all necessary permissions to reuse their content and information.
You cannot collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without Facebook’s permission.
If you are developing applications for Facebook make sure you comply with Facebook Platform Policies.
Page Name
Page names and Facebook Web Addresses must accurately reflect Page content. Facebook may remove administrative rights or require you to change the Page name and Facebook Web Address for any Page that fails to meet this requirement.
Page names must:
-
not consist solely of generic terms (e.g., “beer” or “pizza”);
-
use proper, grammatically correct capitalization and may not include all capitals, except for acronyms;
-
not include character symbols, such as excessive punctuation and trademark designations; and
-
not include superfluous descriptions or unnecessary qualifiers.
Facebook Ads
Before you run Facebook ads, have a careful read through the Facebook Advertising Guidelines here. There are so many that it deserves its own article.
You should also read through the guidelines for yourself and decide if you are breaking the rules; this post is just a guide and a mere tip of the iceberg.
Written by Emily Wilson on May 14th, 2012.
0 comments
Email marketing is a great cost-effective way to get your message out to your clients. But there is no point in spending time building a database, creating a special offer or filling your newsletter with enticing pieces of information if no one reads your message.
That is where the all-important subject line comes into play. You need to craft your subject line. It needs to stand out from the clutter of the inbox; while still being relevant to the message in the email. Many a marketer has tried to use a trick subject line to increase their open rate; but with spam filters hot on the heels of unsolicited mail, you may find that your message goes directly to the trash bin.
To avoid this you want to consider making your subject line useful and valuable to your reader. This means you will have to know your target market. Like a trailer to a movie, be specific about what is coming in the feature: the email message. What you have said in your message should be interesting, so make sure your subject line reflects this. Your reader is often time-poor so you should create a sense of urgency so they feel compelled to read your message now. However if every message is perceived as urgent: none will be. So use urgency with care.
Beyond subject lines; the key to good email marketing is building a relationship with your customers. You need to earn their trust. They should know that what you provide is good content, exclusive offers or whatever they have signed up for. If you emails are constantly about selling your product and offering no other value you will soon have a long list of unsubscribes.
Over time, the most compelling thing about an email message should be that it’s from you. Even before they read your subject line, your recipient needs to know at a glance that you’re a trusted source. Some email marketers choose to put the same identifier in the subject line every email, for example [Zeald] Top tips for crafting subject lines. This can both help and hinder your message, as some people will set up a rule filtering you into another folder where your message will go unread and unheard.
Be mindful of trigger words. These are the words that prompt a spam filter to put you in the trash can. Below is a list of words that often set the spam filter off, however if you use some of the words sparingly, not paired together, not all in CAPITALS and your message is content rich then it is ok to use them in your subject line.
|
$$$ |
100% free |
Ad |
|
Affordable |
Amazing stuff |
Apply now |
|
Auto email removal |
Billion |
Cash bonus |
|
Cheap |
Collect child support |
Compare rates |
|
Compete for your business |
Credit |
Credit bureaus |
|
Dig up dirt on friends |
Double your income |
Earn $ |
|
Earn extra cash |
Eliminate debt |
Email marketing |
|
Explode your business |
Extra income |
F r e e |
|
Fast cash |
Financial freedom |
Financially independent |
|
Free |
Free gift |
Free grant money |
|
Free info |
Free installation |
Free investment |
|
Free leads |
Free membership |
Free offer |
|
Free preview Guarantee |
‘Hidden’ assets |
Home based |
|
Homebased business |
Income from home |
Increase sales |
|
Increase traffic |
Increase your sales |
Incredible deal |
|
Info you requested |
Information you requested |
Internet market |
|
Leave |
Limited time offer |
Make $ |
|
Mortgage Rates |
Multi-level marketing |
No investment |
|
Obligation |
Online marketing |
Opportunity |
|
Order Now |
Prices |
Promise you |
|
Refinance |
Remove |
Reverses aging |
|
Save $ |
Search engine listings |
Serious cash |
|
Stock disclaimer statement |
Stop snoring |
Thousands |
|
Unsubscribe |
Web traffic |
Weight loss |
|
|
|
|
With that said is there a secret formula to subject lines? It may sound simple but subject lines have to ultimately describe the subject of your email. You will often find that the simplest subjects such as May Newsletter, will win every time, over Get a free offer inside. When it comes to email marketing, the best subject lines tell what's inside, and the worst subject lines sell what's inside.
Written by Casey Hartigan on May 14th, 2012.
1 comments
You are the only one that can tell which kind of goals are right for your business. This is why there are so many options for creating your own goals. Here are a few goals that you can setup right away that we think will be useful to a lot of businesses.
If one of the objectives of your website is to generate leads or enquiries then chances are you have one or more forms on your site that your customers are asked to fill out. We find that while these forms are useful they don't offer a true indication of how well your site is functioning as a lead generation tool. Often people can't be bothered filling out long forms, or they don't provide enough information and you can't reach a potential customer - subsequently your website records low enquiry numbers.
What your website doesn't record is the number of people who click straight onto the "Contact Us' page and give you a call or an email directly. Previously you had no way to know how many people were contacting you after seeing your website. By setting up a ' specific page was loaded' goal you can get a great idea how many people are going to your contact us page. If they visit this page chances are they're looking for your phone or email, so the number of visitors will give you a great idea how well your site is generating leads.
Tips to measure "contact us" page loads...
Written by Emily Wilson on April 11th, 2012.
0 comments
Explore ways to operate more efficiently whether you’ve had a bumper 2012 or struggled through the year, it will help to improve your 2013 bottom line.
With the close of the 2012 tax year, you should now be armed with useful figures to benchmark and assess your business performance. You can therefore use this data to implement strategies to improve your results for the 2013 tax year.
It is never too early, or too late, to start planning ahead. The reality is that to make the most of your budget, you need to lock in some strategic plans now and prepare for the Christmas rush. Use the time now to reflect on business operations and find ways to work smarter.
One way Zeald can help you work smarter is with Website Results Consulting, which is designed to assist you in achieving maximum results from your business website. A Website Results Consultant will look at the ‘big picture' objectives of your business and make recommendations about how to optimise your website to maximise your online results.
You want to build on your positive trends. Look out for areas where you are doing well, see if you can do even better and make the most of your competitive advantage or market conditions. Look for ways you can maximise sales and revenue during peaks.
If your gross profit margin has improved year-on-year, can you continue the trend in 2013 with a small increase in prices, or by buying in bulk, sourcing new suppliers or trying other products to reduce your cost of sales?
Try to minimise or (if possible) negate negative trends. If you see a pattern in your sales cycle eg post-Christmas sales slump, looks for ways to increase turnover, such as appealing to a different market segment by offering package deals, off-peak specials or add value by offering something for free with purchase like a lesson. You could even look at adding a new product, which is especially helpful for seasonal slumps.
The new financial year is a good time to look back over the year that was and look to the year ahead. Review your progress relative to your business plan – or to write up a business plan, if you don’t have one. It’s relatively easy to get side-tracked by a new idea or opportunity, so you’ll want to assess if you’re on track to achieve your business goals and ensure you’re not diversifying when your goal is to specialise in a niche market, for example.
This is also an opportunity to assess whether your goals and plans are still valid. Have market conditions or trends changed? Did you uncover a new opportunity that you would like to explore? Schedule some time to review your plans and work strategically for the 2013 tax year.
A common goal for businesses in 2012 is to focus on customer satisfaction and growth in new markets. To retain customers, business owners should structure their businesses to be more service focused and be proactive to keep existing customers from jumping ship. New Zealand is quickly becoming more competitive as an economy.
To gain new customers, you will have to increase activities in new markets. This increasing trend of diversifying into new markets shows Kiwi business owners are looking at opportunities beyond the current, constrained performance of the local economy. Again, this trend towards a broader mix of products and new markets will position the whole country well for the future.
New Zealanders are also recognising the importance of the digital economy and finding ways to use the internet to engage both local and international markets. According to a recent MYOB Business Monitor survey 25% of business owners hope to increase online sales and 41% of all businesses say they are likely to use their website to drive offline sales.
If you are thinking of broadening your market then you may want to consider a multi-currency add-on from Zeald. Multi-currency is a facility where the visitor can choose a currency from a drop down box of available currencies and then have all the prices on the website display in the selected currency. This improves results by making it easy for users to understand pricing, it makes it obvious to international audience that you cater to them, that you deliver to them. This means you sell to customers by expanding to international markets without the expense of opening international offices.
It also gives you the ability to tailor your pricing to international markets. For instance, if you want to charge a higher price to a UK or US customer, you can. For more information about this add-on you can visit the online store.
|
If you want to make the most of your budget, use your website to drive offline sales and improve your online sales then we have an experienced team waiting to help you! Let us help you generate more sales and enquiries with your website. Talk to one of our friendly team members today. |
Written by Casey Hartigan on April 11th, 2012.
3 comments
Did you know that what other websites say about you is just as important to search engines as the content on your own website? Search engines consider websites that lots of other websites are linking to to be better quality, and will therefore show them further up the page. You can easily find out who is linking to you by using the free and easy tool, Open Site Explorer.
By plugging your URL into Open Site Explorer you will be able to see a few stats about your links. The real valuable information is under "Inbound Links". Here you can see exactly what websites are linking to you. For bonus points try plugging in one of your competitors URLs and see who's linking to them. Chances are they have links from a directory or blog that you could also get a link from! There's nothing wrong with a little bit of sneaky online espionage!
Written by Emily Wilson on April 10th, 2012.
0 comments
The internet is a marvellous thing. It has made the world a smaller place, changed the way we communicate information and indeed the way in which we live. However, without the right precautions, the internet has made us more vulnerable to scammers and hackers.
Con-men are by no means a new thing. They pre-date the internet by millennia; however now those con-men take the form of hackers, they have discovered ways via the internet to gain access to your information, including your financials, if you are not careful.
To protect yourself from hackers, con-men, viruses, malware, spyware and the like there are a few things you can do. Firstly make sure you choose a reputable website design company to build and more importantly maintain your website. When choosing a company to design your website you should look out for some of the more obvious attributes such as experience, qualifications and track records, and the not so obvious such as where the company might be in five years’ time. If the company is forced to shut-up-shop at the very least you are in for some major disturbances.
You’ll also want to run some security software to keep any major virus threats at bay. However there are far more subtle dangers out there that require a bit of common sense.
-
Scammers and Con-men. We all know the kind of emails that, thankfully, mostly end up in our spam folders these days. They’re the ones that sound too good to be true, play on your emotions or ask you to help them transfer money; these often standout as obvious scams but still do catch out people every day, costing them a lot of money. However scammers have gotten smarter and more technically savvy. Some can seem so legitimate, using reputable logos, email addresses etc., which when in a hurry can seem like just another invoice – so always be on the lookout.
-
Fraudulent orders. If your e-commerce business is selling “highly resalable” items, such as jewellery or electronics, you need to be especially aware of people making orders with stolen credit cards. You can avoid this most of the time by working with your bank and using a proper payment gateway. Using a reputable third-party payment gateway such as DPS, means that credit cards are entered on their website, where they should have more resources to deem the card reliable and it also protects your customers as you never have their card details. To protect yourself from credit card fraud you should take some care before shipping orders overseas and possibly even call customers when they have made a large order.
-
Out of date software. Most people won’t be aware that some software when it is out of date provides another source of entry to hackers. “Bots” scan the internet continuously looking for software that is out of date and has known weak-spots, or major security flaws. These weak points are exploited and your website is taken over, which is then used to distribute spam or a virus. This is another reason it pays to have someone continuously updating your site.
Most threats to your website are going to be more of a nuisance than a disaster. For example if you publish your email address on your site you will receive more spam email. Your website might run slower because a “bot” is trying to, unsuccessfully or not, break your website.
To reassure your customers that your website is a reliable and safe place to shop the best thing you can do is prove you are a real person/company. It is a good idea to have a detailed policy for refunds, returns and privacy published on your checkout page. Publish true testimonials with the person’s name attached to them. Provide information about your contact details, including your physical address, especially if you are targeting the New Zealand market; make it clear that you are a kiwi company that they can contact directly. SSL certificate logos can add to your creditability (SSL “encrypts” information that is transferred between websites and users) but as anyone (even the baddies) can get a verification badge; it is no substitute for proving you are a real person who stands by their products.
Written by Casey Hartigan on February 29th, 2012.
0 comments
You've probably heard how important it is to include your businesses major key words on your homepage, but what you might not know is that Google looks at a lot more than just the text on the page. By using key words in your image file names, you can help you website rank higher in Google for those important key word terms.
Chances are your images are named something like "X20110105%homepage%product%1" - you can double check this by right clicking on the image and choosing properties. The problem with names like these is they give no indication to search engines about what the image is actually of. Instead, change the name to include key words e.g. if the picture is of a MacBook Pro, change the name to apple_macbook_pro_white. This way search engines will have more indication as to what is on the page and will therefore rank your page higher.
Written by Joseph Clements on November 30th, 2011.
0 comments
Running a successful website doesn’t have to be an uphill battle. We talk to a lot of people who bought a website, and who were full of exciting ideas to achieve online success, only to then hit a wall and lose their enthusiasm. Managing their business takes up all of their time, they lack the technical know-how to make changes or they don’t know what they need to do to make their website successful.
If that sounds like you and you want to stay focused on developing your business, and you find that you have no time left at the end of the day to work on your website, or you want to make sure you extract the maximum value from your investment then we would love to take the hassle away for you.
The Zeald Professional Services team understand exactly what is needed to make a website successful and can come up with a plan to get your site to its full potential. After all if you just bought a brand new Ferrari, nobody would expect you to service it yourself!
How we can help you achieve your website goals
We will quickly identify the major stumbling blocks that are preventing your website from being successful, and then explain in plain English what needs to be done.
• We discuss your business and website objectives with you
• Come up with a plan that will give you the best ‘bang for your buck’.
• You open a Zeald Professional Services account which gives you access to Zeald conversion, design & development specialists. A complete turnkey solution for your website.
• After our initial review of your website you will know exactly what is required to improve your traffic and sales
• We will help you get everything sorted and come up with an on-going strategy to keep your website humming
We can help you with:
Advice on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
Copywriting
Website Content effectiveness
PPC Campaign creation and management
Production of Graphics designed to enhance website content effectiveness
Split Testing & tuning
Usability Testing
Online marketing
Social media
Don’t worry if these terms sound confusing! We spend all our time optimising websites so that you don’t have to. This frees up you and your staff to concentrate on your core business, giving you peace of mind and a competitive edge over your rivals.
Written by Casey Hartigan on November 7th, 2011.
1 comments
Google Docs is something we use a lot of here at Zeald, and is a great tool that we feel many other businesses can benefit from. Google Docs is a free Web-based office suite and data storage service offered by Google. It is a free alternative to costly suites such as Microsoft Office, allowing you to create spread sheets, presentations and documents with ease. Google created Docs based on the idea that not all users have the need for the more technical functions. This means they have created a simpler suite with many advantages that set it apart.
Google Docs is an online application which means that it can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. By simply logging in, users are able to see their documents from wherever they are. This is handy for people who are always on the move or need to shift between computers a lot. Documents created on software such as Microsoft Office can be uploaded onto Google Docs which makes Google Docs a handy option for storage. Each user is given 1GB of storage space for free and documents created within Google Docs do not count towards this quota. Users are also able to pay for additional storage.
Google Docs is highly focused on aiding collaboration. Users are able to choose who is able to view their documents and give other users permission to edit them. Up to 50 users can edit a document at one time, and each user is able to see what the other users are doing in real time. Google Docs also has a chat feature within the document to allow users to have discussions during their collaboration. This means there is no need for email attachments and multiple copies of documents. Instead there is one copy of the document that is accessible to everyone who has permission to view and edit it. Google Docs also keep a record of past versions of the document, which means that if someone makes a change you’re not happy with, you will be able to restore it back to the old version.
Another useful feature of Google Docs is the form creator. Users are able to create interactive forms with ease and email them straight to the people they wish to fill them in. When a form is created it is put on its own webpage so the link can be passed on to people. Google Docs will then record their responses in a spreadsheet for the user to easily analyse. This is useful for things such as surveys. Just create the survey using the form creator, send it out to the people you wish to survey and read the results through the Google Docs spreadsheet!
Joining Google Docs is as simple as signing in to your Google account and clicking on the 'Documents' tab or visiting www.docs.google.com and signing in to your google account. If you don’t already have a Google account, you can create one for free by visiting www.docs.google.com and clicking 'Sign up for a new Google Account'. There’s no software to download – it’s all on the net. So sign up, sign in and have a play. We’re sure you’ll find it as handy as we do!
|
Please don't forget we are right here. We have a team experienced in achieving great results for businesses. We can help you with Online Marketing, SEO, Results Consulting and more...Let us help you generate more sales and enquiries with your website. Please talk to us |
Written by Joseph Clements on September 22nd, 2011.
1 comments
We’re always hearing from people who have websites that are quietly humming when they should be booming. The problem is that it’s next to impossible to know what the solution is. You could hire an expensive SEO firm, improve your meta tags, run Adwords or use any number of online marketing tools out there. Even if you close your eyes and pick something at random, it takes time to research, implement and run, and it’s almost never the best option for your business.
When Guy approached us he had a specific request – he was paying too much for Google Adwords and wanted us to show him how to get the most out of his advertising dollar. One of the things we stress is the importance of taking a holistic approach to websites’ optimisation. The question we always ask ourselves is “How can we increase traffic and conversion?"
Guy had the right idea – The Adwords campaign was not bringing in enough customers, and many that did come left without purchasing anything. In fact it was costing Guy an average of $16.48 in advertising for every single sale he made on the site. Instead of focusing on Adwords we asked if we could look at the big picture and make changes that would benefit the whole site.
Top-gear was already a great website with an impressive product range, but we were able to identify some key areas to work on that we believed could provide some big wins for Guy and his business. He agreed to let us do a thorough overview of his website and booked two hours results consulting with one of our specialists. After our initial review we felt that Top-Gear would benefit the most if we focused on perfecting the basic elements of a successful website. This way both paid and organic traffic will see the difference.
Designing a winning homepage
Once someone lands on your homepage you have a maximum of 7 seconds to make a great first impression. You better make sure what you offer is immediately clear and that you show why you’re the best solution for your customer’s needs.
-
We identified a number of areas that could be improved to create more trust and credibility, promote top selling products and funnel more traffic into the right categories
Original page (click to enlarge)
New page (click to enlarge)
This is the part where we put on our white lab coats
We were pretty confident that the changes we made would start showing some big wins for Guy’s business, but no optimisation would be complete without running a split test to scientifically prove the changes were working. This is also known as putting our money where our mouth is :)
The results speak for themselves. The redesigned homepage increased the conversion rate of his top selling knife by 240.2%. Because the homepage really pushed Guy’s impressive range of products, built trust and credibility by offering a money back guarantee and a free delivery incentive, more visitors bought something, resulting in an incredible 35% increase in conversion from June - September.
The biggest win for Guy is that his one off investment of 2 hours results consulting followed by a redesign and split test will continue to show dividends. Instead of paying an arm and a leg for traffic that didn’t end up buying anything, Guy increased his conversion rate, so now whether he decides to pump traffic in from Adwords, or leave it to the search engines to bring in customers, more people will exit through the checkout page.
We’re confident we can dramatically improve your online business as well.
|
Please don't forget we are right here. We have a team experienced in achieving great results for NZ businesses. We can help you with Online Marketing, SEO, Results Consulting and more...Let us help you generate more sales and enquiries with your website. Please talk to us |
Written by Evan Cooper on August 26th, 2011.
2 comments
 Zeald has been voted Best Web Developer in the 2011 NetGuide Web Awards.
The awards were presented last night at the Hilton Hotel in Auckland.
Zeald Sales and Marketing Director Brent Kelly received the award on behalf of the team at Zeald and said that he was “stoked to win the award, especially when it's the first year Zeald has been in the awards”.
Other winners on the night included the likes of Google, TradeMe, The All Blacks, BNZ, Stuff.co.nz and Facebook, "so it's encouraging to know that Zeald is seen in such high regard and as the best choice for website development in New Zealand" Brent said.
"Zeald wants to help New Zealand businesses to not only get a website, but to succeed in the online space, so it's nice to know that it's the voting public of New Zealand that picked us as the best".
Techday publisher Sean Mitchell said there was more than 270,000 votes cast in this year's awards.
Written by Hamish Braddick on July 24th, 2011.
3 comments
As the follow on from our previous Homepage radical redesign test we really wanted to see if an animation on the homepage would help to capture visitors attention and draw them into the website, or perhaps the additional load times would serve to put people off and the animation might distract users.
Original page
Following our 11 checks for Landing page optimisation we outlined a list of points for improving the page:
New page
The results
This test was run using the Zeald experiments software and shows reduced information for privacy reasons
What did we learn?
-
In this case animation does help to improve conversion
What next?
I would like to see if different uses of the animation can help to improve conversion. For example,
-
what if the animation was used to support the USP,
-
what if it showed the actual products, not in context,
-
what if the video was used to promote incentive such as free shipping, guarantee etc
|
Please don't forget we are right here. We have a team experienced in achieving great results for NZ businesses. We can help you with Online Marketing, SEO, Results Consulting and more...Let us help you generate more sales and enquiries with your website. Please talk to us |
Written by Hamish Braddick on July 23rd, 2011.
0 comments
Written by Hamish Braddick on July 23rd, 2011.
0 comments
Welcome to our first Split test experiment. We chose boltofcloth.co.nz to be our first guinea pig to test our new split testing tool; and they agreed :)
Bolt of Cloth are a Christchurch based company whose store was badly affected in the earthquake and they have subsequently moved their business entirely online. We decided to look at the homepage first, because it had the greatest number of visitors and meant that we would see some quick results. There were a number of changes that we felt should be made initially to accelerate the process. We decided that the first test should be a radical redesign.
Test Objectives: Sell products that produce the greatest revenue - Based on the website ecommerce report and in consultation with the client.
Original page
Following our 11 checks for Landing page optimisation we outlined a list of points for improving the page:
New page
The results
This test was run using the Zeald experiments software and shows reduced information for privacy reasons
What did we learn?
-
The new Zeald split test software "Experiments" works really well :)
-
The changes made to improve the homepage were positive & the split testing backed up these educated assumptions. The new page is an obvious winner after just a few days
-
This is addictive :)
Now what?
-
Apply the improved design to the homepage
-
Use the improved homepage as the starting point for making minor tweaks to improve the design further
-
Test Animated image banner and free shipping
|
Please don't forget we are right here. We have a team experienced in achieving great results for NZ businesses. We can help you with Online Marketing, SEO, Results Consulting and more...Let us help you generate more sales and enquiries with your website. Please talk to us |
Written by Evan Cooper on July 12th, 2011.
3 comments
The single most effective method to improve the performance of your website
Split Testing is the single most effective way to increase the performance of your website. Split testing is not only effective, it is also an inexpensive way of making improvements to aspects of your website, using your own customers as a democratic tool to help make decisions. Who better to understand the needs and wants of your customers than your customers!
First you need to understand that building a successful website is a process of continual improvement, which involves:
-
Establishing the goals of your website. i.e. sell products or generate enquiries
-
Optimise your important website pages to achieving these goals - these pages are known as landing pages
So what are landing pages?
-
A landing page is the first page a visitor to your site sees.
-
Landing pages are often 'linked to' from marketing campaigns, social media and email campaigns.
Optimising a landing page
-
For each landing page you need a goal. In many cases this will be to convert site visitors into sales or leads. An ecommerce homepage might be to “click through to a product”
-
Improving a landing page involves increasing the number of goals achieved, or convert site visitors into sales or leads. This is known as the Goal conversion rate.
-
Remember, your website is a leaky bucket full of holes and by plugging these holes you retain the precious customers and stop them from leaking out.You improve the number of customers who take the desired action you want them to. You improve the conversion rate of your pages and you improve the performance of your website in general.
Usually when you want to optimise your website you make changes based on a gut instinct, best practices, research, personal preference, previous experience and measuring your goal completions to give you an indication of which changes were positive or not. While this method is most likely better than nothing, this won't tell you exactly what is working or not working.
So what is split testing?
Split testing involves running experiments on landing pages of your website. You choose a page you think needs improving and duplicate the page; the original page stays the same, while aspects of the duplicate page change. Traffic gets split between the two versions evenly and the split testing software tells you how the new page's conversion rate differed from the original. If you see a significant increase in goal conversion, you keep the highest performing page and continue the process of improvement by testing other aspects on a new page.
How does split testing work?
-
Pick a page that you think needs improving, starting with the most important pages that are used to complete the goals of your website.
-
Create a new version of that page and make changes you think will improve the performance of that page, changes that you think will help increase the number of goals your website visitors complete after viewing this page.
-
Setup a split test experiment using split testing software.
-
Run the experiment. Your website will show each page in your experiment to alternate visitors. The split test measures how many visitors you get to each page and how many of those visitors complete your website goals - like making an order, completing your enquiry form, signing up to your newsletter, or clicking through to your 'About us' page etc. The split test needs to be run long enough to prove conclusively that one page is a winner.
-
Replace the lesser performing page with the one that’s performing better.
-
Repeat the process again. Measure, change, review. The idea is to keep optimising your important pages to continue improving your website’s performance.
The importance of finding a conclusive result
This is a scientific method of optimisation, relying on good accurate measurement and finding conclusive results that are statistically significant.
If your results are 50:50 - You don't have a conclusive result
If you don't have enough data to work from - You don't have a conclusive result
In order to collect enough data in the shortest amount of time, you need a reasonable amount of traffic to your website and a reasonable goal conversion rate to measure. You really want a conclusive result within a month. i.e. you don't want to be running a test for 3 years.
Split testing reports
The reports are a very important part of the split testing process. They need to make it very easy to accurately determine which page is the winner. As with any type of polling, it’s necessary to know just how precise the results of the statistics are.
That sounds easy
You already knew that you should be optimizing your website, but the task seemed like a long, difficult and expensive process that only large international companies could afford to tackle.
The power of split testing lies in its simplicity and accuracy.
Case study - Happy baby vs Crying baby?
In the split-test example below, the effectiveness of a testimonial was tested using identical pages with only the accompanying photo changing. One page used a photo of a happy baby and the other a photo of a sleepy newborn. Regardless of which you think is the best, it is the power of split -testing that gives an un-biased and scientific result for use in improving the results to your website.
The answer may surprise you - the unhappy baby beat out the happy toddler by 12%!
There are large gains to be made if conversion rates are raised. Businesses can see massive benefits from testing then implementing improvements on anything from their homepage, call to action, or a product page to create more click-throughs. It is the ability to continually improve your website and have reliable stats to back it up that makes split testing such a powerful tool.
Where to from here?
Chances are you’re so excited about starting to test your website that 10 different tests are floating around your head for your homepage alone! Be smart about your testing...
-
Come up with a plan! Decide what your end goal is (more email newsletter signups, increased click-throughs to product page, more sign-ups etc)
-
Pick an element to test. For inspiration read some case studies of other successful tests. http://whichtestwon.com/ is a fantastic blog that lets you see real tests and guess which version of a page improved results.
-
Setup the test. You might need to get new photography, graphic design or new copy written. This step takes time so its important to have a solid plan and stay motivated.
-
Run the test! Depending on your sites traffic it may take awhile before you have conclusive results. We recommend at least 1000 unique visitors before starting a new test.
-
Repeat the process again. Measure, change, review. The idea is to keep optimising your important pages to continue improving your website’s performance.
Split testing tools
To conduct split tests you need a great tool that is:
-
Easy to setup
-
Accurate
-
Easy to understand - great reports that make it obvious which page is the winner
-
Able to measure all the important goals of your website
There are a number of split testing tools available:
-
Split Test Accelerator - $891US
-
Split Testing Pro - $147US
-
LinkTrackr - $227US p/year
-
Affiliate Prophet - $97US
-
Google optimiser - Free
-
Zeald experiments tool - Free (with any Zeald website)
If you aren't testing, how do you know if you are making changes for the better?
|
Use these checks or 
