Is your site a Brochure Ware?

Is your site a Brochure Ware?

Are you planning to invest in a new Web site? Think you can use the same content that you have on your product brochure on your site? Think again.

Too often we see companies converting their brochure into HTML and building what we call Brochure Ware.

• The pro: it’s an inexpensive way to create a site.
• The con: it doesn’t work.

The reason is simple. With your brochures and offline ads, you’re employing a “Push” model, where you’re pushing your message to your target audience. TV ads are a great example of this model. Because we’ve been exposed to so many marketing messages in our lifetime, we’ve all developed a defense mechanism that filters out most of them automatically. As a result companies rely on graphic design and visual aids to capture the audience’s attention.

On the Web on the other hand, you have a “Pull” model where visitors actually come to you. Visitors looking for a product or solution go to reference sites like search engines, conduct a search and come to your site expecting to find a product suitable for their need. Because they’re more qualified than those getting your brochures or seeing your ads for the first time, they’re looking for more relevant content than you typically put in your ads and brochures. As a result, when they come across a brochure ware, they soon realize that the site does not provide the necessary information and hit the back button.

The solution of course is relevant content. While the key to good brochure design is good graphic design and visual appeal, a good Web site is one with relevant content for its audience.

So is your site a brochure ware? If so, it’s time to revisit your site content

Search Engine Demographics

Search Engine Demographics

Recently I was asked by a retailer of women’s apparel to audit their search engine marketing efforts. The company mentioned that they were primarily targeting the Google search engine since they account for the majority of the search market share.

While true, you cannot rely on the search market share alone. You also have to take into account the demographic profile of the visitor. Consider for example the study conducted by iProspect in 2004, which states that only 41% of Google visitors are female. The percentage of female audience at Yahoo and MSN on the hand is 56% and 59% respectively. As a result, you can imagine how the company can get higher bang for their buck by marketing through the other outlets.

Search engine demographics should not be limited to gender. Age and income should also be taken into consideration. Just like print ads, your search engine marketing activities should take into account the demographic profile of the outlet and your audience. Unfortunately though, the outlets don’t publicize their visitors’ demographic profiles. That’s why you need to constantly monitor the return on your investment using Web analytics and constantly try to improve the results so that you can stay on top of the ever-changing landscape.

MultiChannel Marketing on the Cheap

Multi-Channel Marketing on the Cheap

If you’ve been following the latest trends in online marketing, you’ve noticed all the buzz about multi-channel marketing. Major players like IBM and Siebel (Oracle) are offering solutions for cross channel analytics and optimization. The problem with these solutions is that they’re not suitable for small businesses. Yet multi-channel marketing is one of the most powerful tools available to small businesses. According to a recent study by Google and comScore, more than half of purchases by those who conducted an online search is done offline. So how does a business with a small budget go about measuring the effectiveness of their site at driving sales to other channels?

The answer is to use a separate phone number for tracking sales originating from the Web site. Using this method, the phone number you’re going to display on your site is going to be different than the one on your business card, stationary or other listings. And in order to see how much phone activity you’re getting from your site, the only thing you need to look at is your phone tab.

You can use the same strategy for measuring your other initiatives. Want to know how many calls you’re getting from your Yellow Pages ad? Just use a separate phone number and now you have cross-channel analytics for a few dollars a month.

Introducing Micro Conversions

Introducing Micro Conversions

Recently I had a conversation with a prospect who was conducting a lot of different marketing campaigns to their site. The client went to a great deal of effort creating a dashboard of KPIs (key performance indicators), consisting of conversion rates for each of their campaigns. For each type of program (E-mails, newsletters, search marketing), they were able to get the dollars spent and resulting sales, as well as overall conversion rates. While I applauded their effort in measuring their success, my immediate question was “how actionable is this data”?

Consider this – what if the report told them that one of their campaign’s conversion rate dropped from 5% to 2%? What actions can they take based on the report?

This is where “micro conversions” come in. While macro conversions are often used by managers and executives to better understand their overall business, they don’t provide the level of granularity that the rest of us need to take actions upon the data.

As an example, consider an e-commerce site. The conversion rate is calculated as the ratio of transactions (conversions) divided by visits to the site. Now let’s look at the micro conversions – the steps necessary by the visitors in order to complete the transaction. Upon their entry, visitors should click on a link and go to the next step. They then have to find the product of interest, add the product to cart, proceed to checkout and complete the transaction. These steps constitute a series of smaller steps – micro conversions – that can be measured. So when the site conversion rate drops, you can refer to your micro conversions to see exactly where you’re experiencing the drop-offs. Again, the micro conversions for the example illustrated above are:

• Beyond Landing Page: percentage of visitors that made it past the landing page


• Landing to Products: percentage of visitors making it to the product page


• Product to Cart: percentage of visitors going from product pages to cart


• Cart to Checkout: percentage of carted visitors making it to checkout


• Checkout Conversion: percentage of visitors who checked out and completed the transaction

These more granular conversions are referred to as "micro conversions". They are more actionable than macro conversions because they allow you to emphasize your efforts on a segregated area as opposed to trying to analyze the entire web site and tackle a large project.

Micro conversions of course do not undermine the need for macro conversions. Macro conversions should still be used to understand the pulse of the business, but the next time your macro conversion rate drops, you know where to look next.

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