One can liken it to having all the ingredients to make the best lasagne in the world, however if you do not follow the recipe, nor the right mix, then what has the potential to be a most amazing dish ultimately fails, and leaves you reaching for the take-away menu.

This is where Ergo Digital come in, although we are not Michelin star chefs, we are proven experts in setting up the right digital marketing strategies for successful businesses. We have access to our very own cookery book which helps put together successful digital marketing campaigns for any business. Having just one or two of the key ingredients of digital marketing isn’t going to deliver a return of investment, nor if you use the ingredients in the wrong order or fail to cook them in the right way.

In fact, it is a recipe of disaster if you attempt to do just a few of the things and do not use them ALL in combination with each other to maximise results and returns. Just like the cook in the kitchen,  you need to be prepared, capable and flexible.

The preparation for your digital marketing strategy is to ensure the ingredients are right. As with cooking, we have experience in all the key components to produce great results, including everything from Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay per Click (PPC) campaigns to including the right mix of social media and content marketing to ensure that the plan in place will have the most impact and the very best ROI (Return on Investment).

The capabilities are also crucial to success. If you put a range of ingredients in front of someone who has never cooked before, then you’re not likely to see a meal worth eating at the end of it. Yet, that is exactly what Google does when it hands out Adwords vouchers – every business who uses the vouchers without any experience will waste their money. So, just as you wouldn’t pay money to eat a meal from a trainee chef, you need to work with people who know what they’re doing.

Flexibility is also key. The biggest hindrance to ongoing growth is the inability to develop the online marketing strategy as it is rolled out and built online. You can have all the feedback in the world you want, but if your site is not adaptable, or too expensive to improve, you can often be stuck with the same dish at your disposal – whether or not it tastes any good!

If you work with us we will put in place a realistic marketing strategy for your company. You will have access to all the components of a successful campaign. We don’t stop there, we monitor all channels and analyse results, find out what works best for your specific business and needs and alter any of the strategies to further the impact for you.

We understand digital marketing and most of all we listen to every individual business’ aims and goals.

So, if you want to serve something worth tucking into for your online customers, then give us the opportunity to be your first choice when it comes to your digital marketing strategy – we’ve got the experience to deliver the best recipe for success for you.

Most business owners know they need to analyse their AdWords and Analytics, but normally they choose the wrong ‘key performance indicators’, and end up measuring rainfall with a thermometer (or the digital equivalent).

The challenge is that there is such a range of measures, it can lead to confusion as you can’t necessarily choose them all. For most businesses there are just two or three main KPIs and the rest, whilst useful, are of much less relevance and importance.

Here are some recent examples of KPI and performance measure confusion…

Example 1: Perplexed Lead Generation Business

We were in a meeting recently with a business which generates high value leads through it’s website, however no one in the business really understood which metrics were important and seemingly wanted every metric to improve.

The conversation was centred on bounce rate, time on site and traffic volumes. There was little or no interest in quality of traffic, sources and conversion rate – which are the most important KPIs for this type of business.

Predictably the new direction will probably have the opposite result as their focus drifts from a conversion-led dynamic.

Example 2: Publisher Focusing on Lead Generation

Recently, we pitched a publisher with an advertising model based on sponsorship and advertising impressions. The model is completely reliant on visitor numbers in order to achieve revenues.

Yet, for some inexplicable reason, they were focused on enquiries (for advertising opportunities as well as end users), rather than page impressions, or unique and repeat visitors – but these are the only metrics which directly correlating to and affect their income opportunity.

This lack of focus means they are spending too much energy creating buyers without working on having enough ‘space’ to buy. It’s rather like selling ad space in a one-page magazine!

Example 3: Ecommerce Company Ignoring Profit

We also recently advised an ecommerce website. They were measuring their sales, which was a great start, but were not being granular enough about it as they were only measuring spend, without taking into account profit margin.

We discovered that about one third of their orders amounted to 75% of the profit yet, when we looked at their marketing: search as well as email, we realised that they were spending most heavily on low margin products.

With a few tweaks, they’re suddenly much more profitable and at very little additional cost.

The Truth? The Right Website KPI’s Depend on Your Business Model

One of our bug-bears is the homogenisation of digital marketing. Too many digital agencies apply the same mechanics to all of their clients, regardless of product, price, place and promotion and too many businesses with in-house team don’t focus hard enough on what really matters.

So, if you’ve got your KPIs in a twist – get in touch and we’ll untangle them.

Those who use Pay Per Click a lot, have got used to work-around solutions to try to squeeze the best value out of this medium. After all, that’s what optimisation is all about.

One of the most frustrating areas has been managing mobile advertising – if we wanted a specific mobile message and campaign we had to setup a separate Mobile campaign, with separate adverts and landing pages.

That was, until now (wait for fanfare) and the joy of ‘Enhanced’ campaigns from Google. Now you can manage devices, adverts, sitelink changes and conversion types all in one place.

Positive: Enhanced Campaign Improvements for PPC

Let’s look at the good stuff:

• You can update your campaigns for different devices in one place
• You can have separate adverts for mobile devices in your ad groups
• You can time and change your ad extensions (those little links you can put under your adverts)
• You can change your bids according to geographical regions

This brings it all into one place, tidying up campaigns, and the migration assistant is helpful for merging campaigns which had previously been separated. Great… but, what’s that you say, that’s not all? There’s more…

Negative: Adwords Enhanced PPC Limitations

You mean this is not ‘all good’. Sadly not, as usual, this there are some major wins for Google – they just don’t like to shout about it. In fact they like to take us all on a voyage of ‘discovery’ whilst they read the short-term benefits. The two main immediate benefits for them are:

1. There Will be Greater Mobile Competition

The main aim of this change is to increase mobile advertising spend. Once this ‘upgrade’ is rolled out fully mobile-targeted advertising will go up which is bad news for both those who currently use mobile advertising through Google (they will have to pay more), and those who wander in without really knowing what they are doing and wasting marketing spend.

2. The Death of the Mobile-Only Campaign

You cannot, as it currently stands, run a mobile-only campaign. If you want to target mobile users, you have tablet and desktop adverts whether you like it or not. This is part of the grand plan to not allowing advertisers to skim the cream off the top of their campaigns. However it further waters down performance for those who wanted to improve performance.

On top of that, you cannot change your bid for Tablets in relation to Desktops and Laptops – the flexibility has been limited there deliberately to increase reach, adverts on Tablets and, essentially to increase revenues into Google.

A Word of Warning: No Sleepwalking!

Firstly, this migration of Enhanced functionality will be rolled out gently, but there is already a time limit in there ‘your campaign will be automatically upgraded in a few months’. Meaning that this is a one-way street. You cannot ‘opt out’ of these changes. If you wait for Google to upgrade you, almost certainly they will trigger mobile advertising for your campaign automatically – meaning you will start spending on mobile advertising if you let them do it for you.

Tweaks will also be made to the back end algorithms to further increase share of revenue from advertisers. So, don’t expect performance to remain the same, it will not, it will change. Look at your conversion rates and yields carefully, because if you don’t do anything, your performance will drop and you need to know why (and what to do about it).

Wrap Up of AdWords Enhanced Campaigns for PPC

On the face of it, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, however that’s not actually what’s happening here. Google are simplifying something that has got overcomplicated but in the process has deliberately shut a few doors which had been nice pockets of opportunity for the savvy PPC agency. That’s not to say there isn’t opportunity, it’s just a case of finding ways to develop campaigns in different ways. Another learning curve!

This change is going to particularly hurt pure-play Mobile (and or Tablet) advertisers who will suddenly find themselves unavoidably targeting devices they do not want to reach. There are a few ways around this though, so get in touch if you want some help!

‘Content Marketing, it’s the future of SEO, dontcha know?’

In fact, we’d go a little further than that – content marketing is SEO right now and, on top of that, it’s also a key driver for your future digital leads and new business generation. Or rather, it should be.

So, the challenge that most businesses face is now not all about whether it’s a good idea, it’s how to deliver a viable solution that works. This process starts with a joint content vision, which both delivers good rankings bring relevant natural traffic AND also engages visitors.

It sounds easy and yet most companies end up making a complete horlicks of it for a number of reasons:

• They have no resource, so outsource and then find either the returns or quality is not there from their external copywriter or agency
• They put the wrong person ‘on the job’ and end up with poorly thought out content strategy and delivery
• They limit the scope of the work to just the odd generic article
• They prioritise SEO, get some traffic but no leads, because the content is dull
• They prioritise the content, forget about the SEO and have a great page but no one ever visits it

Do any of these sound familiar to you? They should, we’ve heard all of these, every day!

Marketing Content Generation – Think Before You Shoot!

The main issue is however, that the content is just awful. It’s all about you and your business, or just ‘reporting’ of facts that no-one is interested in, or seems to resemble a sequence of rambling press releases.

No one stops to think: “will anyone really be interested in any of this?”

They should, because if there is no interest in what is created then you may as well not have started in the first place. Digital has, for too long, been a dumping ground for pathetic attempts at writing – and that is now changing, for the better.

Google is working out, mainly through Social Media as well as analytics, what is good and what is bad content, and is prioritising the good stuff, because it knows that users will use Google the more they send them to the good stuff. Right?

So, how do you get your content sorted out? Our number one main recommendation we give you is to think like a journalist.

What do we mean by that? Well these four things:

1. Write for Your Readership (Audience): think about who you are writing for – prospects and customers – and write FOR THEM. Write good quality content which you believe they will take the time to read!
2. Write Conversationally: let your character shine through (within reason), make an impact, cause a reaction. Better to be hot or cold than lukewarm!
3. Use Every Word Wisely: attention spans are shot. Go through everything and cut out the flab. Do a word workout!
4. Do Not Sell IN the Content Itself: people know when they are being sold to, so stop doing it. You can sell through the page, through adding value, through data capture. If your content is all about you, delete and start again!

Please do not put PR people in charge of your content, they just don’t have the full skills to make the content shine for you. There is a good reason why a journalist is sent a Press Release, because they know how to turn it into a story which is going to be read.

Which is exactly what you want from your content marketing…

And then, any good SEO, can tweak and optimise the content to get you the rankings you want. Whereas if you put an SEO in charge of your content, well, have you seen what they write?

Do you Facebook?
Of course you do, and so do I. I Facebook every single day, it makes me more connected and complete. Life is wonderful in Facebook, spend yours here too!

Anyway, I have heard your voice, spidered your posts, scanned your photos and imprinted your wall and profile on my ever-expanding heart. I hear your grievances and they number at least 1.45% on the general scale of importance and I just wanted to write this post and share it with you so that you could feel my pain too and therefore understand better that, though famous and wealthy, I still care about little pups like you.

Truth is, when I started Facebook I never intended it to be as big as it got, sure I was a clever dude who liked programming and wanted to be popular, but the reality is that meeting people in real life is hard work and can sometimes be disappointing.

So I came up with a solution – make your life up, online:

• Bored with your real life? Why not create one!
• Don’t like the way you look today? Then post a photo from ten years’ ago!
• Don’t do any volunteer work or give to charity? Then comment on a photo from somewhere in the developing world, job done!

My mantra: why ‘do’ when you can ‘Like’?

In the early days, with funding in my pocket, I just wanted Facebook to be loved, to be used, to grow. We gave you lots of free stuff, we connected you with friends, we curated the world that 50% of you use every day. Of course, free cannot last… and even before we went public, we were already working on ways in which to generate revenue from Facebook. We’re not a NFP or charity!

There’s been the odd hiccup on the way, but the funny thing is people complain a lot, and then continue to use the service. That’s just the way it is. The way we go about rolling out controversial services is an age-old trick: try to get away with something really bad, and then when you launch something that isn’t quite so bad, it looks good. Obama did it with ‘the Fiscal Cliff’: gets a good reputation but still raises taxes.

Our first advertising was too subtle, too missable, too ineffective. We tried to copy what Google does with search (but with pretty pictures) and it wasn’t very well targeted. But, you learn from mistakes, and we learnt we needed to get adverts into your feeds and get more information on you for advertisers. And, what better way to do that then to lever your name, and your ‘Likes’ to your friends? Nothing beats owning your relationships.

Since we went public we now have investors and shareholders who expect us to improve our profitability every year. So, the only way to do this is to either improve our advertising performance for those willing to pay, or to charge people. I am not sure the world is ready to pay for Facebook, so we have to run with the advertising.

With advertising we also have a paradox: the better the profiling and use of your data, the better targeted the advertising to your needs and the fewer adverts you see. However, if you want to keep your personal data to yourselves, then we will have to put more adverts in front of you.

Of course some will moan, but the numbers don’t lie – people are continuing to use Facebook, more frequently, even with advertising. So, whatever is said, the world Likes Facebook. A lot.

And, if you really don’t Like it, then you can Poke it!

Wrong!

Marketing has changed, a lot. Gone are the days when everything was driven by a budget fixed and spread for the entire season or year. Why? These are the five key reasons:

1. The Answers Come Quickly

With traditional forms of marketing, you have to spend a considerable amount and then wait, sometimes as much as two to three months, to discover how your marketing has performed. Therefore setting a budget made a lot of sense.

Today, with digital marketing, you can sometimes have an answer that same day and, if not, then within a few days or week, with much lower initial outlay and the ability to adapt campaigns instantly where required.

2. The Returns Happen (or they Don’t)

With ecommerce it’s very easy to see the initial income and to estimate the future revenues. For businesses with an advertising model, it is equally straightforward to see the immediate and longer-term impact of increasing traffic and overall reach. Anyone who needs to profit from leads or enquiries, should also have a firm idea of their overall value to the business.

So, the returns either happen, or they don’t. Unless something dramatic happens either to your marketing, or your proposition, you can be confident that the trend will continue. Optimisation helps, but generally only improves on underlying performance. You can only optimise something with potential.

3. You Have Many Options and You Can Switch

The main stumbling block to your overall success will be unnecessary limits you may have placed on the range of digital marketing available to you. Most clients we work with think that the answer is in one specific discipline – for example SEO, or Social Media – and therefore discount some very effective means of growing their business.

If you’ve reached a road-block, then there you need to consider other areas, seriously.

4. Testing Needs a Short Cycle

The modern business needs to have a much shorter cycle of testing, in that way it can be much more nimble and achieve greater returns and, equally importantly, waste less budget.

Once the returns can be measured very effectively using a combination of analytics, conversion tracking and attribution. In short: you can see what is being spent, where, and the returns coming in… virtually in realtime. So, the only thing stopping you being more nimble, is you (or your agency)!

5. If it Works, Why Cap It?

Finally, if there’s one thing we don’t understand, is the marketing dinosaur who’s still a slave to their budget. When things are good, why stick to your budget? You need to up the ante!

If you’re a Marketing Manager and something positive is happening in the numbers, it’s time to get in your boss’ face and ask for more. You can, and we have doubled, tripled and quadrupled turnover in a month for clients in the last 12 months, but only by showing them the evidence and telling them to invest right now.

So, if you can make one New Years’ Resolution for your digital marketing – it should be this: don’t budget, be versatile!

As we celebrate the Christmas season it again leaves us looking forward to 2013, but not

before we offer our final challenge of 2012.

When it comes to seasons, it is our view that all businesses have them. We were reminded of this at the beginning of December when the same client who emails us every year about this time did so again: “It’s a bit quiet on our website, performance is down.”

We replied: ”Well, it is December, and for the last six years your performance is worst in December. Not many customers are shopping for your services in the Christmas season. So performance is down on November, but not December 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006.”

And we expect that next year, the same email message drop into our inbox! This client, thought he knows it, has not really accepted the effect of seasonality on his business.

They are not the only one. We remember working for a big outdoor sports retailer and the main distraction was that the senior management spent too much energy trying to sell at the wrong time: namely the autumn and winter seasons. They even put a winter theme on the website, as if that would fix the problem!

Challenge 1: Do You Know Your Sales Season?

For some businesses, this is obvious, for example Amazon is going to be shifting 17m products … IN ONE DAY just before Christmas. However they also know the subtleties of their business year, and although Christmas dominates there are other trends throughout the year and they know exactly what to promote when: cameras before the and smart shoes before term starts!

So, how about you? When is your season? Every client we work for has seasons, we can see it in all their digital performance. A quick scan of Adwords, analytics, conversion rates, repeat visitors and overall online performance tells its own tale. Business is never linear, with a number of peaks and troughs, and is also affected by local, national and international events.

If you think that your business is not seasonal, then it is most likely you are just not aware of them. Every single clients we have has seasonal effects.

Challenge 2: Do You Take Advantage of Your Season?

Once you recognise the seasonal nature of your business, then you need to do something about it. You need to translate this vital business knowledge into your future performance.

Take time to profile your seasons and develop a very clear understanding of why they exist: not just in terms of demand volume, but the detail of what is wanted. You may find that certain services and products have their own seasonal cycles, plan these out too, only then will you fully benefit from them.

Plan to Maximise Your Seasonal Marketing

Once you know your seasons, and your customer demands, then you can maximise the seasonal opportunity. Plan your services, marketing messages, budgets and offering in advance, and then be ready to seize the predicted opportunity.

If you are still preparing during the season you will miss the opportunity and have lost valuable business momentum and time. Everyone in your business has to be aligned to get the best possible result.

Don’t Fight the Wrong Battles!

There’s no use putting up a sail if there is no wind. Energy spent on desperately trying to work out how to improve performance at the weaker times of the year is wasted. You will make very little difference and will end up distracted from the main opportunity – which is to maximise your seasonal activity.

So, if there’s one resolution you need to make for 2013 and beyond: make seasonal marketing one of the cornerstones of your digital planning!

Many users aren’t happy with it, but most brands are. As an example, in the same day I saw these two comments in my feed:

From a user:
“Down Arrow -> Hide -> Hide all posts from [Samsung, Samsung USA, Samsung Mobile USA, Samsung]. I get that fb is free and advertising is its main source of revenue. But ease up a bit on the unrelenting spamming ads from the same vendor, eh facebook?”

From a Facebook marketing agency:
Posting a Business Insider interview on the same campaign…

You can see the problem, can’t you… on the one hand the users don’t like it, but advertisers are seeing the rewards.

Why Are These Appearing?

There are three main challenges which Facebook have been facing up to:

1. Monetisation: It is no accident in timing that this activity has started in earnest since Facebook has floated on the NYSE. The early share drops have been down to concerns about Facebook being truly able to realise the income and value in every member. We are all ‘valued’ at about $80 by Facebook, but we don’t pay for the service so they need to realise this value somehow.
2. Mobile: Facebook knows that mobile is (and will continue) to dominate Social Media use. Currently smartphones dominate mobile access with small screens giving limited viewing space. The only way in which to realise the mobile opportunity is by placing advertising into people’s home feeds.
3. Marketing: The first form of advertising on Facebook down the side of the page has disappointed. The aim was to make it as effective as Google Adwords and yet, given the amount of traffic to the pages, it has performed badly. Facebook has tried a variety of ways to improve this, but with very limited success. Ultimately, they realise they need adverts in user feeds to have people click on them.

So, What is Facebook’s Advertising Solution?

Facebook are testing advertising in your feeds to deal with these mobile and marketing challenges. They have some posts which appear as adverts, but are also trialling automated recommendations: if a user has ‘liked’ a page then it will appear in your feed if the brand has paid to advertise to you. They can see that the power of a ‘like’ and personal recommendation improves performance.

Facebook has gambled that your desire to remain within their platform is greater than your frustrations with such activity and, as you get used to these methods, then they gain acceptance. They have some problems, and it certainly has not been plain sailing.

Firstly, there is a lot of user dissatisfaction with this, just read your feed! Many users are threatening to quit… although most complainants generally don’t leave.

Secondly, people are getting repeated ‘like’ messages from the same users where the advertisers’ budget is much greater than the number of users who like them. So, if only one of your contacts ‘Likes’ Samsung, but they have a big advertising budget, then you will see the same user liking Samsung again and again in your feed.

How Can I Stop Them?

There are really two issues here…

How Can You Stop These Marketing Messages?

You cannot stop them overall (whatever you think your legal rights are, you have accepted Facebook’s Terms). The user quote earlier in this post shows how to hide repetitive marketing messages from brands. When you see one on your computer, click the down arrow (top right) in the post, choose ‘Hide’, then remember to click the link ‘Hide all messages from [brand]‘. We’re not sure about on the mobile app, these options don’t seem to be here… let’s hope they’re coming!

You will need to do this for every brand, so there is not a single opt out, nor do we expect Facebook to come up with one.

How Can You Stop Your Name Being Used?

The second issue is hidden from you: your name, your personal ‘brand’ is being leveraged to your friends through Facebook. You don’t know how often this is taking place, or two whom it is appearing, but if you like a brand which advertises on Facebook, then you are almost certainly being used in this way.

The best way to deal with this is by doing some pruning. Just click on your profile, choose your ‘Likes’ box and unlike all the brands you no longer want to use your name in this way. Note that some of your likes are hidden by the year in which you liked them. So go back into the past and make sure your likes are brands you genuinely like today!

We have not yet found (as has been claimed) that Facebook are faking likes and doubt that this is happening because it would create uproar. So check first, and ask others when you see a promoted ‘like’ from them whether they are aware and happy for this to be occurring.

What is the Likely Future for Facebook Advertising?

That really depends on their numbers and how this is performing for them. There is little doubt that if this doesn’t work well then they will need to make some substantial changes. The two areas Facebook will look very close at are Advertisers and Users.

Advertisers have already had their fingers burnt by Facebook deliberately reducing page reach to the users who liked them, mainly to setup this new advertising initiative. Brands who spent millions on gaining Likes are feeling very sore as the goalposts have been moved.

So, it is important that they get this right and prove it works for brands otherwise, without advertising spend, this initiative will fail.

Users who are not happy about this need to respond. Opt out of these messages, remove all the ‘likes’ you have accumulated over the last few years. Use Facebook less often if you can. Or, if you really are against this, then quit – leave Facebook altogether.

You have these options, and you can be absolutely sure that Facebook will watch this in detail too. The fewer likes, the more opt outs, a reduction in user numbers or usage will ring alarm bells. Rather than complaining, act on it!

Ultimately, however, we know that their aims remain. Whilst we have seen a few posts from users who would be willing to pay for Facebook without adverts this would be a last resort as it would end up creating a two tier service. Therefore it is likely that this kind of solution is here to stay. Facebook may tweak the frequency, but they know that the main way in which they can monetise their users is through advertising in user feeds.

As an online marketing business and Facebook users, we have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand we do believe that effective marketing involves reaching audiences some of whom will ignore or dislike the activity.

On the other hand, this is blurring the boundaries of marketing: this is not genuine, real endorsement of brands – this is using people unwittingly to advertise services for profit. There is good reason why the press needs to highlight bought placements in print as ‘Advertorials’. Facebook should do the same.

Let Others Know!

If you would like to share this article, then please use one of the social sharing buttons below. We think that informing Facebook users of exactly what is happening is the least you can do! Many thanks.

Here are our top six areas where, if you apply these conversion ideas to your website, you can boost your sales, drive more leads and grow your business opportunity.

1. Reduce Choice

The first basic mistake that most websites make is that they, even though they have a simple goal (for example to purchase one or more items, or to make an enquiry), seem to do everything in their power to reduce the presence of this option.

The most common mistakes is to fill the page with lots of choice, links and options, but in doing so, you are actually reducing the chances of that visitor choosing the most important option – namely to actually convert on your site.

So, limit the options and make your preferred action the most apparent link or next step in the page.

2. Reduce Steps

Another way to guarantee lower conversions is by making a process easier. There are many websites which make it as difficult as possible to convert because there are so many pages for the visitor to go through.

Many of these could be tackled with a better conversion path, dynamic forms or just logical thinking through. The fewer steps, the less opportunity for someone to exit the process and therefore the greater the chance of success.

3. More Than One Way to the Preferred Goal

Now you see it. Now you don’t… that’s the trouble with the dynamic menu bar. It’s all very well to think that it will be used, it certainly will by some visitors. But others won’t see it at all, and if they can’t see the options available then they can miss what they’re looking for, even if it exists on the website.

There is good reason why even the largest commerce sites don’t just settle for top navigation, but have crumb trails, filters, category suggestions, section and footer links, it’s because they know that every visitor is valuable and want, wherever possible, to help them find what they’re looking for.

You should do the same to boost your conversions and increase web sales!

4. Understand Your Priorities

Your site, whatever it is, has a sequence of priorities for your success. First and foremost it is some kind of ‘conversion’ – sale or enquiry. You need, therefore, to make sure that this option and choice for the customer is signposted from all pages on your site

Too often websites force visitors to go to the contact page to get a phone number or address, or have a blog or content pages with little or no integration with their products and offers.

However, there is also another important point to make here… if you can’t sell, then can you get some kind of alternative buy-in? Perhaps a newsletter sign up or at least some kind of engagement like a Twitter follow?

5. Only Ask for What You Need

When it comes to conversion, also keep your eyes on the prize. Don’t be led by the need to grab data as this can come at a later stage.

Why do many business to business websites forms ask for so much more information than is needed? Mainly because they are process-driven. However, if you’re going to follow up with a phone call, then surely that is the time to ask for address, alternative phone numbers, and company details. And, just don’t bother with asking for data you just don’t need – if it doesn’t help you then you’re just reducing opportunity further.

Why do shopping sites force people to register? Let them pay and go. If you’ve programmed it correctly then you will receive most of their data and can setup an account for their return. Arm-twisting doesn’t work with the online customer.

6. Give Users Confidence

Finally, when it comes to your site, you need to demonstrate visibly why they should use your services. For consumer sites this means guarantees, warranties, security and customer reviews. For business sites this means testimonials, addresses, case studies and evidence of your performance and success.

Too many websites are let down because they believe everything is in place, but questions remain in the minds of the visitors which go unanswered.

So, take these six ideas to boost your website conversions and use them to take a critical look at your current site, our guess is that you could improve it today.

Or, if you want a hand, just call Ergo on 01962 605 000 and we’ll help you out.

Responsive design, for those who don’t know what it means, is a single website layout which automatically adapts (grows, shrinks, changes size) to suit the device viewing it. This means that one website can cater for those on large desktops all the way down to smaller smartphones.

It sounds brilliant in principle: one design which works for mobile, tablet, laptop and desktop. However, in practice, it is not smart mobile marketing as it fails to deliver in these ways.

1. ‘Better’ is NOT the Same as ‘Best’

Just because it is considered better than nothing, it is not necessarily the best means of generating business out of mobile visitors. Being able to see the full content in a smartphone, for example, does not guarantee that the layout works in terms of conversion rates, or web forms suddenly become easier to use.

Worse, modern conversion ‘gold’ like Click to Call on mobile sites is not an option on most responsive designs. There is a strong case for suggesting that a familiar desktop site is better in a small screen than a half baked mobile one.

2. Compromise Doesn’t Equal Success

The most effective mobile sites behave like apps, offering the user large buttons, minimal text, more guided search and navigation, shorter forms, more phone call prompts and less overall choice in content.

A responsive design doesn’t really improve in these areas, it just makes sure ‘it ain’t broke’ (as far as possible). Which is sounds more like ‘damage limitation’ than a successful stratagem.

3. The Same Content Won’t Have the Same Effect

Just because your current website performs, it doesn’t mean that your mobile site will. Mobile users are, in many ways, unforgiving and demanding. Attention spans are brief, and they won’t appreciate ancillary content, clunky navigation or extraneous information. They are purpose-driven and if your mobile site doesn’t meet that purpose or need, they will exit. Even if it looks tidy.

In our experience, responsive websites give worse performance for mobile visitors than a the normal website, whereas businesses with bespoke mobile sites achieve much better performance.

4. It is UNOPTIMISATION of Your Marketing

To adapt to a responsive design means changing both ends – your website, and your mobile site – to ensure that your site works across both.

The result of this is that the same content, options, user experience and everything else cannot be fully optimised for both mobile and desktop visitors. It will be a compromise at best and, at worst, a straightjacket where you cannot really change, improve or adapt anything.

5. It is NOT Smart for Mobile SEO

Google now looks at every website to see whether it has provided for Mobile Devices. This already affects your search rankings.

Trouble is, a Responsive Site looks like a normal website and therefore is often missed by Google when it indexes a site, giving the impression that the domain is not optimised for mobile devices. Whereas a dedicated mobile site is spotted by Google and therefore the SEO (and particularly Mobile SEO) rankings are then applied.

Of course, we’d argue that Google has this exactly right – a responsive website is NOT optimised for mobile.

In Summary…

It’s clear to us that Responsive Design is much more of a Placebo than a Panacea.

Businesses who use it think they are providing the best possible environment for both mobile and ‘normal’ web users, but they won’t see much reward for their endeavours as in the end all users will have a mediocre experience.