There is a trend happening at the moment across every single website we manage for clients – the proportion of mobile visitors to the site is doubling year on year. Currently most of our client sites are averaging between 10 and 15% of mobile visitors. This is up from about 6% this time last year.

We have heard site owners say:

“yes, but these are smartphone users, they can see and use my site on their devices.”

True, but there’s a massive difference between ‘can’ and ‘like to’… and in virtually all cases, a non-mobile site will massively underperform a mobile one.

Analytics will give it away – if the bounce rate is measurably higher, and the pages viewed is measurably lower, then your site may be usable, but it is not liked and, ultimately, will not perform for you. Here’s a good example:

You can see from the above illustration that pages visited is down, duration is down, bounce rate is up and, ultimately this site’s performance will be punished as a result with conversions halved.

This is OK whilst the figures are at 12% of site visitors, but what happens when it’s 25% next year, or 50% in 3 years’ time?

Sounds fanciful? Let’s see some statistics:

• There are more mobile phones in use in the UK than there are people
• By 2013 more people will use mobiles to get online than PCs (Google)
• 57% of people would not recommend a business with a bad mobile site (Compuware)
• Gartner Research predicts Mobile Ad Revenue will be $3.3 bn in 2012 (and $20.6bn by 2015)

And, if that’s not enough evidence, then just take a look around you: people are using their mobile devices for business, whilst travelling, out of office or home and even when in a social environment. And this trend is going to increase as people become more experienced with such devices.

Have You Also Accounted For Mobile in Your Email Marketing?

If you measure your email marketing and the devices they land on, then be prepared for another shock… Between 30 and 40% of your email recipients are now viewing your email in their mobile device.

Email layout and design is therefore simplifying and shortening to account for smaller screens… but there’s also a further hidden issue – if they click through on an offer or promotion, then your email performance is going to suffer if you send them to your normal website rather than a mobile one.

What Are Your Mobile Site Options?

What you do next is entirely up to you, but we are here to help guide you through the maze of options for mobiles – site or app? iOS or Android? Commerce or QR?

If you can have a smart mobile strategy then the opportunity is far greater than the cost. Just ask Ergo, we’re here to help – simply call 01962 605 000.

This is a difficult question because it all depends on what ‘well’ is. Most websites have some half-hearted attempt at on site optimisation, but often that’s just about as far as it goes.

So, before you speak to anyone, here are four suggestions from us which will help you understand if your website really has had a good start.

So, How can You Assess if Your Own Website is Optimised?

Here are our five best SEO tips that anyone can use to help them understand a site is well optimised:

1.Check Your Page Title – Homepage First, Then Other Pages

Go to your website homepage. Look up, above the content in the page to your tab bar (or top of the window in older browsers) and read what it says.

If your page title just says your brand name, or ‘Home’, or has text with nothing in particular to do with your business, then the chances are your site is not optimised.

As a second check, look at other pages on your website too. They should have different text, related to the content in the particular page, and relevant to your services or products.

2. Check Your Page Headings

The main heading in every page should be tagged as a ‘H1′. Again this is a technical term, but is important as Google sees this as the most important written content in the page, and therefore this heading should carry the most relevant keywords for your page.

To find it for your website, right click on the page and choose ‘View Source’. Once you see the source code, search for a word or words in your heading on the page to find where it is. Then look at the code ‘tags’ either side of the heading. Ideally they should say <h1>. If you can’t find them, the chances are they are images and will not be fully read by Google.

For example this page has this:

<h1>Check if Your Website is SEO Optimised</h1>

3. Make Sure Your Images Have Relevant ‘Alt Tags’

Google knows that every image placed in a site has some kind of relevance, but generally only looks at two things: where it links to (if it links at all) and the ‘Alt Text’ on the image.

So, for example, if you look at the above image in this page, then you can see that it’s ‘Alt Text’ is: ‘Is Your Website SEO Optimised’ which is relevant to the page it is on and not just ‘screenshot’ or ‘image’.

4. Make Sure There’s Keyword Consistency Across These Items

Once you’ve looked at all the above for a particular website page, then you should be able to answer a simple question.

Are these keywords consistent:in the title, in the headings, on the images and in the page content?

If not, then it may be that your site is part-optimised or the content writers have not liaised with the website developers.

5. Write a Decent Length and Write Good Copy

Finally there needs to be enough written content on the page for it to be fully indexed. If you want a page on your site to gain strong rankings, then it needs to have at least 250 words in the page. Less than this and the page will not carry enough weight.

However, write it properly. Don’t just stuff it full of phrases and keywords in the vain hope that it will perform for you. It has to be well researched and written. Pages are also checked for grammar and ease of reading and if your page is poorly written then it will suffer as a result.

Not only that, but if a page does get good ranking and traffic, then it needs to perform for you. If it’s poorly written then you won’t get the conversions you need.

You have been warned. In fact, you’ve had more than a year and a half since it was first announced that the EU ePrivacy law was coming into force. So, whilst it may be a daft Eurocrat edict, it’s here, and you’ll have to deal with it.

The new EU Cookie Law is coming into force on 26th May 2012 so, for your benefit, here is a sensible guide and next steps for businesses in the UK wanting to ensure that they understand this law and are taking proactive steps to tackle it for their website.

Not Heard About The ePrivacy Law?

This law forces all website owners to inform website users clearly on the ‘cookies’ (small files placed on the users computer to identify that they have visited the site), and give clear direction on how users can opt out of cookies placed on their computer.

However, not all cookies are equal. A cookie which is deemed essential to the operation of a website (for example a cookie used for a shopping basket on an ecommerce site) is an example of what is acceptable and necessary. A hidden third-party tracking cookie shared with advertisers is an example of what is being specifically targeted by this law.

Put simply, the more intrusive or unnecessary the use of the cookie – the more you need to seek overt consent from your website visitors.

Which Cookies to Watch Out For?

These are the types of cookies which need proactive action on your site. You almost certainly will be using at least Analytics:

• Analytics – third party and non-essential to the workings of your website. First party (hosted) ones still need to be identified
• Advertising – first or third party advertising cookies will need to be overtly opted into
• Affiliate – similar to advertising, if you use affiliate cookies you are sharing cookie data with third parties
• User Identification – any cookies used to identify return visitors

Before May, at Least Demonstrate an Intent to Comply

It sounds like a disaster, and if implemented on 100% of websites, then the new ePrivacy law would not only be extremely expensive to comply with, but ultimately frustrate all website users to the extreme. Imagine if every site you visited had ‘tick this’ or ‘click that’ as banners or pop ups? Nerves would be frayed.

However, the important point is this: you need to do something. Here are four steps you can take straight away in order to show that you are taking this matter seriously:

1. Update your privacy policy – the chances are that your privacy policy is not up to date with the latest information on the cookies you set, and what their purposes are. You need to do this anyway so it should be done as a matter of course
2. Download a suitable document with guidelines – it is important that you can demonstrate that you are not just operating on your own instinct, our recommendation is to download the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) guidelines on the ePrivacy directive, print it off, and keep it for reference to demonstrate that you’re compliant
3. Conduct a cookie audit – discover every cookie your site sets when visited and document for what purposes they are used for
4. Remove unnecessary cookies - there are many cookies that are set by sites which are never used. For example your site may be using a content-management system, but you don’t actually NEED that cookie: so make it optional or don’t set it

However, for some using Third Party Cookies this may not be enough. It is important to perform the audit and then seek legal advice to ensure that your policies are compliant and you are taking enough action on your site to comply with the law.

Want Some Help With This?

You can do all these things yourself, but it may be that you want an independent audit from an agency familiar in all these things to not only tell you which cookies you set, but provide clear reporting and guidance on what to do about it.

Just contact us, mentioning ePrivacy in our contact form, or call 01962 605 000 and we’ll be able to help.

So, let’s do a very quick ‘deconstruct’ job on this:

Headline – Do Not Ask a ‘No’ Question

“Do You Need More Automotive Europe?” is a mouth-watering invitation, isn’t it? It’s almost asking you to question whether it’s worth being on this particular email list.

Sadly, this will only do one thing: increase the unsubscription rate, because, when it comes to email, no-one needs more, do they?

Body – Don’t Rely on Images

Don’t mistake us, images are really important for email marketing. A well placed image or highlight can increase click through and engagement substantially.

However, as you can see from this screen grab, for those (and there are many of us!) who have images by default switched off, if you only have images, then your message is lost.

User Experience – Think Logically

We expect the sender saw this email in a nice, bright 27″ iMac screen with the image in it’s full designed glory. Sadly, no one thought ‘what will the recipient see’. No one thought about the substantial proportion of recipients who’d see an empty box.

Worse still, because of this, you can now see the full problem:

• A headline raising the question of interest in receiving further emails
• An empty box
• A large unsubscribe link

The result will be that more people will unsubscribe than will actually see the promotional image.

Personalise – Think About the Receiver, Not Your Process

Finally, to cap it all off, because of the missing image, what you see is something impersonal (not even a salutation) an empty box and then the only content other than the privacy and unsubscribe links is an American address selling a European service.

Make Sure You Avoid an Email Fail

There are so many things you need to get right with your email marketing even before you design and send an emailshot. Every part needs to be meticulously planned. If you want us to help you, then please call 01962 605 000 or send us an email via our funky form.

And, even if you don’t need help, share this page with your contacts using your favoured social flavour!

The ‘hit’ of not optimising for mobile devices is clear: from smartphones in particular, the bounce rate can be close to twice as high, and the number of pages viewed halves – so for as long as you don’t have a mobile site, you’re limiting your opportunity to reach and sell to your mobile visitors.

With tablet sales predicted to exceed laptop sales in 2013 and smartphone penetration continuing to soar… your future market will increasingly be using such devices to relate to, and interact, with your business. The challenge for you is to make the most of this opportunity.

Yet, many businesses fall at the first hurdle. We often speak with businesses who don’t choose the right solution and end up investing, sometimes heavily, in solutions which are not right for them… particularly Apps. These are not the same as a mobile website and, if not considered carefully, can just end up disappointing you, rather than getting you the results you want, underneath the veneer of app success is an ocean of failure.

So, here’s a quick run through of your options, and the best mobile solution for you…

Small Online Business / Low Traffic Site?

You need a mobile site, but can afford to wait until you think it’s the right timing for you. The perfect site for you is a small bespoke built mobile site (possibly using Google Mobile Site Builder) which is mobile-friendly with shorter content and simpler navigation.

The only two exceptions to this are:

• If you have ‘high ticket’ sales or customers, in which case they will not only be more likely to be using mobile devices, but your investment will be covered by the increase in business
• If you have aspirations to grow rapidly online, in which case you’ll need to plan for the future

Medium Online Business / Medium Traffic Site?

You will probably have hundreds of mobile visitors every week and, if you’ve not done anything, then you almost certainly will be losing a substantial business opportunity. You need to develop a considered, and bespoke mobile site. Don’t leave it to Google, you need something better which designed, written and managed specifically to suit your business objectives.

The exceptions to this approach include:

• News, content and media sites: you need to do much more than just make a pared-down version of your main site, you need to adapt it to integrate the full content and advertising
• Non-commercial websites: if your existing main site doesn’t earn you any direct revenue or business opportunity, then your mobile site won’t generate income for you

Large Online Business / High Traffic Site?

If you haven’t already, you need to get a mobile site for your mobile visitors in place as quickly as possible. You need to consider very carefully how the site will work – is it for lead generation, do you want to sell, are they going to search your site, does it need to integrate with the rest of your site… and, most importantly, how are you going to manage it?

You also need to think carefully about whether you need an App or not. The most simple litmus test is whether you think your mobile service would benefit from re-use: is it a shop? Is it media / entertainment? Is it interactive? If so, then an App would complement the mobile site (and can even be effectively promoted by the mobile site).

For this category, there are no exceptions. If you’re a large brand or business, you need to take mobile incredibly seriously because these are the devices of choice for the connected world we live in today, and as they improve and connections get faster, then mobile will be increasingly the way that people use online.

Are you ready? Give us a call on 01962 605 000, or email us and we’ll try to help steer you in the right direction.

As we look ahead, we’ve spotted six things that anyone involved in digital marketing should take note of… here goes:

1. Mobile Finally Delivers

It is common to get premature in excitement over new technologies. For example: the dot-com bubble was burst on the delay between the promise of the eCommerce revolution (2000/2001) to the actual fulfillment of that promise (from 2004 incrementally to today and beyond).

The same is true of mobile – yes, we’ve all replacing our old titchy ‘just call and text’ handsets with funky new smartphones for the last 3 years or so, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s an immediate payoff.

Expensive data plans, clunky interfaces, steep learning curves and lack of confidence in security has meant that many have not used these devices to their fuller potential. Now, that has changed. The devices are better, the pricing is much more competitive, the user-experience is tight (and not just the Apple iOS platform any more) and social media is driving increase in use.

Here are some stats for you to consider. By the end of 2011 these were the stand out numbers:

• Over 30% of emails are now opened on smartphones / tablets, over 50% at weekends (evenings)
• Over 40% of posts to Facebook are from mobile devices
• When incorporating tablets into ‘portable PCs’, Apple will become the world’s biggest portable PC supplier (volume and turnover)

If you have not planned for the mobile revolution then make sure you do this year. Ideally this quarter!

2. Bing Comes Second… A Good Second!

And that’s no bad thing when position one is secured by Google. You can be sure that Microsoft are going to be pressing hard to increase market share but their merger (read: takeover) of Yahoo! Search and Search Marketing, plus their ‘relationship’ with Facebook means that Bing has got a bright future and enough traction to take an increasing share of the advertisers’ buck.

3. The Social Backlash

There is no doubt that Social Media continues to gather steam – growth, use, time on site – whatever metric you want to use, it wins.

There is no doubt that IF you want to engage, speak with, understand better, relate to you customers and prospects, then Social Media is an excellent place.

However, where there IS doubt is how brands, products, services and companies can make this work to their advantage for two main reasons:

• Lack of imagination: we don’t know how many businesses do this, but many have the ‘Field of Dreams’ approach to their Pages (‘build it, and they will come’). Er – no they won’t… build it, put no creativity thought into it, and they won’t come. And for the few that do will leave. This is a social media, you need to think socially
• Narrow focus: you cannot treat social media like direct marketing and measure response and revenue out of it. If you do it this way you will fail for too many reason to mention in this article (TBC at a later date!)

At the same time, these principles need to be accepted: a ‘Like’ is worthless unless it becomes a ‘do’, impressions on your social pages are worth less than impressions on your own website, social media advertising is patchy at best (particularly LinkedIn) and the true cost of social media is the time spent managing it.

So the social backlash will mainly consist of businesses who thought (or were persuaded into) that either it would be self-fulfilling, or that it’s a straight marketing tool. Or, it may be that you have outsourced it to incompetents.

4. Companies Will Work Even Harder to Ringfence and Reward their Clients

It has always surprised us how little SMEs work to support their existing client base and reward them for their loyalty. Given that we can expect another challenging year, the competitive business will work as hard as possible on their existing contacts and make sure that they retain custom from as many as possible.

The smarter ones will also use techniques to use their existing customers to leverage further opportunity.

This will be the opportunity for true CRM – the management of actual customer relationships through a combination of media, not CRM as Salesforce describe it (sales channel – CRM with a silent ‘relationship’).

5. Limitations of Automation Will be Revealed

We get approached by many agencies purporting to have automated various things – from pay per click performance, to email response. All offering, for a monthly fee, to make our lives easier.

For the buyer this is serious compelling as the more automation, the cheaper and more scalable the services are. So, if it works then quickly, with little staff resource needed, then the benefits are clear.

However, the main question is: ‘is it better?’ And we believe that for marketing – the answer is a firm ‘no’. The main reason being that strong marketing needs two things: creativity and market knowledge. Give us a strong ad copywriter any day over an automaton: better copy, better click through, better quality score, lower spend, improved performance.

So, if you buy into automation, be very careful and test against a ‘human managed’ (ideally experienced) alternative. You may find that the only thing you’ll be scaling is your losses.

6. Performance of Apps Will Come Under Scrutiny

We’ve always maintained, when approached by clients wanting apps, that this is no gravy train… in fact, far from it, it’s more like a Ponzi / Pyramid / MLM scheme where the winners are deliberately PR’d to create the illusion of success. Yet, Apps are a thin layer of great success, covering a very deep ocean of failure.

Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon will court you, create a convention just for you, present bold plans to you, bring you into their carefully controlled circle and, if you’re very lucky, even get you a signed Zuckerburg t-shirt.

What you have to remember is that they’re taking about 40% of everything – and every app ties your users into them (as much as you, of course). So, the more apps they have, the better their reward and, actually, it doesn’t really matter which ones make it.

So, you can see why focusing on Rovio (developers of Angry Birds) and not the 100,000+ other games that die a death hides the true picture. Recent research suggests that the average Game in the Apple App Store takes £4,000 in total revenue to the developer, and games is supposed to be the most successful category.

So, we wish you all the best for 2012 and if you want any advice or help, then please call 01962 605 000 – we’re more than happy to have a chat.

All we can say is: the end can’t come soon enough. The clunky interface was delivered late and was dated even before it was birthed. Little was done to improve it, and as Google evolved and Microsoft entered the market, there it stood, stuck in time.

However, that was just about bearable as long as the performance worked. But, as the months went by the slide continued… 20%, 15%, 10% … now about 5% of Google’s reach.

Yet, this article is not about that… What has become increasingly unbearable is the active encouragement of click misbehaviour on Yahoo’s part. We won’t use the word ‘fraud’ for fear of litigation – but let’s call it click ‘flawed’.

We give you a tale of increasing desperation which has led to the final insult as Yahoo! enters it’s last days.

‘Off Site’ Advertising

It all started with the ‘Content Network’. The aim was simple – a search engine only has a certain amount of traffic, but by allowing other sites to carry pay per click advertising then there was more opportunity to earn.

Both Google and Yahoo created ‘content networks’ (Google’s was renamed ‘Display Network’ a couple of years back) where website owners could carry their adverts and earn from clicks out from visitors to their sites.

Naturally, the traffic from these sites wasn’t as valued (or as valuable) as clicks from search and therefore both Google and Yahoo! (and subsequently Bing) enabled advertisers to set a different bid level for Content Network clicks.

Everyone’s a winner, aren’t they… ?

The Start of the Slide

However, it wasn’t really fair. Google with a larger market share, better advertising technology and more marketing muscle (and brains) was soon able to offer third party sites much easier integration, more transparent reporting and, ultimately, better returns.

Few sites remained in the Yahoo! content network. So, Yahoo! did what seemed to be the honourable thing – they shut the network.

Well, no, they didn’t really. They just closed ‘that which they call the content network’. And then they expanded their Search network to include ‘partners’. But didn’t inform advertisers – after all, a search partner is still a search supplier, aren’t they?

And advertisers wouldn’t really know the difference…

And Google was doing it, weren’t they?

When is a ‘Search Partner’ Really a Search Partner?

Well, Google does have ‘Search Partners’, BUT there are a few important points to make about the Google Search Partner Program and what it means for advertisers:

1. You can choose whether or not to advertise on search partners in any Google campaign
2. You can easily split out and report on performance of search partners with Google
3. You can easily list those partner sites which are not working and delist your advertising on them
4. Google police their search partners very carefully and only deal directly with the partner site themselves

However, whether under-resourced, or underhand, Yahoo! didn’t really do any of these things. If you advertise on Yahoo! search, you get search partners and can’t choose not to advertise on search partner websites. The reporting of the search partner performance is difficult to split out and compare, listing the different sites is awkward and then you have to de-list them one-by-one.

And, the final straw, they didn’t police. At all. In fact, they did the opposite they aggressively promoted themselves to try to build their network. Not just directly to sites, but also through third-parties.

How do we know? Because we’ve been approached by many intermediaries who re-sell Yahoo! search partner status and then target whatever phrase you want – or rather, whatever phrase they want you to carry (for maximum revenue).

Watch Your Yahoo! Spend Closely

Suffice to say, as the final termination approaches, they have become more and more lax and Yahoo! is in a mess. We’ve had two clients who have been hit by sudden surges of clicks with absolutely no reward or positive outcome.

So, watch your campaigns closely, particularly any in which you’re bidding a decent amount. If you see sudden spikes or sustained surges in traffic, please investigate thoroughly… and if this article has tipped you off, please share it: others need to be wary.

We all want competition to Google, we want a competitive marketplace, but for months Yahoo! has been playing a dangerous game – biting the hand that feeds it: the advertisers. We will not forget.

And, because of recent experiences, as one of the last agencies with advertisers on Yahoo!, we’re more than happy to switch the lights out. In fact, they’re going out early.

1. If the adverts in the search results were less relevant to the search term, then the search engine itself would seem to be less accurate
2. If the advertising network gets paid on click-through, then to allow poor performing adverts to dominate because they’re willing to spend more means that lower revenue would be realised

So, Quality Score was Google’s smart balancing act. The premise was that if you worked hard making sure that your keyword, ad copy (in Google) and website landing page were more relevant and compelling to the reader, then you would be able to bid less for a keyword because your advert was better.

What Google SAY Quality Score Is

“The AdWords system calculates a Quality Score for each of your keywords. It looks at a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query. A keyword’s Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance. In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).”

You can read further details on the Google Adwords Help Pages. The factors include (again from the Google page):

• The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
• The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
• The quality of your landing page
• The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
• The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
• Your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown
• Other relevance factors

Now, whilst that all seems legitimate and helpful, there’s a lot that can happen behind the scenes… after all, who is to say which of these factors has much or little influence? And, just give further freedom to Google, ‘other’ is a very broad term!

What Quality Score REALLY Is

So there is a lot that can actually be changed ‘under the hood’ without any perceptible change, or even any need for Google to change it’s bullet list. What we can reveal is this: that Quality Score has changed substantially recently and these are the things you need to know

Of high importance are:

• Historical click through rate of the keyword
• Historical click through rate of the display URLs

Of low importance are:

• Account history
• Quality of landing page
• Relevance of keyword to the ads in the ad group
• Relevance of keyword to the search query
• Accounts performance in geographical region (a small enhancement of overall CTR performance)

Of unknown importance are:

• Other relevance factors

Because ‘other’ cannot really be defined.

How do we KNOW This?

Recently, we setup a test campaign for a specific service – ‘telemarketing‘. We used all the normal relevance factors: great optimised landing page on a very relevant well established site promoting telemarketing, relevant advert copy specifically promoting the telemarketing service, and a suite of well-filtered very relevant keywords promoting specifically telemarketing services. In fact, we called our Google Account Manager and they said ‘there’s nothing more you can do’.

It was pretty surprising, therefore, with all this attention to detail, when we saw that most keywords in the ad group had a Quality Score of 3. That’s right… 3 out of 10.

What it tells us really clearly, is that you can do all you can to make all the elements of the campaign and website relevant, but ultimately 70% of the score is about the Click Through Rate.

Why is this IMPORTANT for Advertisers?

The reason why this is critical is that there’s a problem here that few are aware of. The Quality Score Formula was supposed to balance spend based around click through rate.

It was not supposed to be driven by click through rate. But now, it is another name for click through rate. If you have a high click through rate, you have a good quality score, if you don’t, then they will hammer your quality score.

The problem with this is two-fold:

1. The encouragement is for adverts which drive clicks, however most successful PPC campaigns are about getting high quality traffic in – these two objectives can be, in many campaigns, incompatible
2. The message to advertisers from Google has changed from being about relevance, to being about SPEND – about revenue to Google

WHY Has it Changed?

We don’t know for sure the reason, but this is our best guess. Until recently Quality Score was to help competition for places – so that the small guys could compete with deeper pockets and if they were smart enough, then they would benefit from investing more energy and time into their campaigns and websites.

However, now that virtually any search has at least 2-3 adverts, most have many, and (we estimate) about 50% of searches are full of adverts, there is no longer the need to be generous. So, they’re starting to turn the screw – after all, shareholder value must be met.

Which is why they are also looking at limiting the amount of adverts on a page by removing the right hand column of adverts. We call it ‘search engine optimisation‘ not of positions, but of revenues.

What’s the REAL Message

So, that’s why Quality Score is no more – it is there, in name. But it is no longer what it was and certainly we would challenge their assertion in the final line of their description of quality score:

“In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).”

It is not a measure of quality of keyword, advert, or landing page (or website). It is now merely a stick to beat you with to make you cough up more.

Spread the Word / Find Out More

If this post has helped you, then please spread the word on Twitter / LinkedIn / Facebook / Google+ below. If you’d like to find out more about how you can combat this unwelcome development, now that we’ve identified the problem, just get in touch – contact us, or send us a mention to discuss @johnnymb.

Worse, you may never discover that a little attention could double your performance. So here are our five ways…

1. Make it obvious what is wanted

Too many forms suffer from not making it clear which information is mandatory – the common symbol for a mandatory fields is an asterisk (*). However you can now apply ticks (or crosses), field colour highlights or even tooltips (friendly text prompts) to assist with a form fill, like this one:

Can you see how, with this simple prompt, you avoid user frustration and increase conversion?

Also, make sure your descriptions are easy to understand. You may know what you want with a phrase like ‘Confidential Address’ – but is that business, home, email?

2. Make it inviting

Many forms also suffer from being bland or, in extreme cases, seemingly disinterested.

If you would genuinely like someone to contact you, then say it! There’s no reason just to put a stack of fields and nothing else.

Moreover, we recommend you actually make sure that the person knows what they will get out of it. You need to answer the ‘what’s in it for me?’ if you want someone to share their personal details with you.

Finally, make sure they know what they’re opting into, or not.

If you don’t rent or sell your list, then make it clear that you don’t. If you plan to send emails out, then give them the option to untick the ‘further contact’ box. Again, be polite about it.

3. Trim the fields

If a field is non-essential, remove it. The fewer fields there are the more likely a form will be completed.

For example, if you’re following up leads anyway, then don’t ask for the full details in the form – just enough to contact that person and then complete their details over the phone.

4. Never trust your developer to get it right

Most developers and designers only care about making sure a form functions. They won’t consider the user-experience, they won’t care about conversion rates. You need to make sure that you specify the form fields needed, the field descriptions, and then test it.

Here’s an example of how it goes wrong. It’s a search field, but the ‘save as’ and ‘save search’ are in the wrong place meaning that the search button (which is the main action button) is not triggered properly when the ‘Enter’ key is pressed:

Not only that, but what is the ‘View All’? And why is it next to the Search button? This form is from a large email marketing business who should know better!

5. Use Your Forms

Go on, try your own form or, if you’re too familiar with it, get someone you trust to take a look at it.

Ask them these questions:

• Was it easy to use?
• Did you understand what information was requested?
• Did you understand what you would get out of filling out the form?
• If you made a mistake on the form, did it guide you to what you needed to change?

Bonus Point…

We always like to offer a ‘bonus’ – here’s a tip: measure your forms! Find out what proportion of visitors to a specific page then go on to complete your form. Make some changes (based on the above) and see how it affects your conversions – you’ll find that you will get more opportunities and be more successful as a result.

If you’d like this kind of thinking applied not just to your forms, but to all of your site, then please take a look at our form – we believe it stands up to scrutiny – fill it out and we’ll be in touch with you.

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We’ve already covered some of the pitfalls in our first two articles: never commit to a monthly SEO contract and 5 critical keys to managing your SEO supplier. These give you the groundwork to understanding SEO better.

In this article we now give you the ammunition to manage your SEO supplier (rather than them running rings around you).

Before we start… important note… to make this work you need analytics. We’re working on the assumption that you’d choose Google Analytics, but any analytics package which can measure visits and search terms for those visits will do.

In fact, even more importantly, do you like driving with a blindfold on? No? Then get some analytics and then look at it regularly, or just give up on your web marketing!

So, onto the job in hand… Steps 1-4 can be done before the SEO visits, steps 5-6 in negotiation to reach agreement.

Step 1: Measure Your Brand Visitors

Firstly, importantly, identify searchers for your brand or sub-brands, or people working for your business. for these two reasons:

1. You will come top for this without ANY help from a SEO, and
2. They are not ‘new’ business as they have heard about you before

Step 2: Measure Your Current Organic Traffic

Secondly, identify your latent organic web traffic – the number of searchers who are already visiting your website (this will be your total organic traffic minus brand searches from above).

Step 3: Value a Visitor

This is very easy if you’ve done any Pay Per Click (Adwords) marketing. If you spend on clicks you will, almost certainly know what the cost is of your average visitor, if not, then  estimate what a visitor is worth to you.

Step 4: Target Relevant Keywords

Using your analytics and through your own business knowledge, you will know what keywords and phrases are relevant to your business. You will also see from your current analytics that you do get a number of visits on rather spurious keywords. So concentrate on keywords which are relevant and are likely to bring in relevant visitors.

Step 5: Meet (Suitably Prepared) With Your SEO

So, when you go to meet your SEO, then you can have a proper discussion with them. Set the ground-rules:

• All brand searches, past or future, are not a part of the SEO’s service, so when it comes to performance, these will not be included within the SEO’s measurements
• Your current organic traffic is where you are today. Again, the SEO has not contributed so they need to improve on this and should be measured on the improvement over your current visits and not be given credit for your current ones
• Any non-relevant keyword visits will be ignored as these are ancillary to the job in hand and a good SEO should be able to get you ranking for relevant phrases

Listen carefully to their reaction to these items. These are all fair, they won’t like it, but they are fair! And hear from them how they are going to go about gaining you extra traffic.

Step 6: Agree Targets with your SEO

You will then be able to give your SEO a target: tell them that your ‘break even’ SEO performance for you is their fee (almost certainly monthly) divided by your average cost per click.

For example, if they want to charge you £300 a month, and your cost per click estimate is £0.50 then they will need to give you 600 additional visits a month to break even in terms of performance.

If they cannot commit to this, then it speaks for itself: they are not able to deliver you enough traffic volume to cover their fees. Therefore they should not be appointed.

Step 7: Measure, Measure, Measure

We would support any SEO in two respects: firstly that improvements don’t happen immediately, and secondly that there’s no value in a ‘free lunch’ – you have to pay as you’re expecting them to work hard for this, probably harder than they do on most of their clients!

Tell your SEO that you will give them a three month trial to get to this target figure of monthly visitors from their work, and that you will pay them during this trial. If they achieve your target then you will continue working with them, if not then the trial is over.

Furthermore, tell them that once they’ve achieved this target you will be expecting further incremental improvements until they at least double this figure per month – because one of the myths of SEO is that your need to continue spending to maintain your rankings. This is barely true and only in a select few competitive business areas. If you cancel the contract, unless they have been using ‘black hat’ techniques, your ranking should be maintained.

As you measure your visits in analytics, you should start seeing improvements in SEO within a month and, even if your SEO doesn’t hit the full target, if they’re close then you should give them the benefit of the doubt… if they’re a long way short, either renegotiate until they hit the target or cancel.

In this way, you can manage your SEO rather than letting them run rings around you.

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