This week’s edition includes tips for increasing your average order value, simple steps to making your website more user friendly, leveraging your thank-you pages, practices to help increase your conversion rate, and some Google Analytics tips:

- Increasing your average order value (AOV) is something that is often overlooked.  Amp Up Your Ecommerce: 7 Tactics to Boost Average Order Value from KISSmetrics covers 7 simple tactics that you can implement on your site and also has some tips on how to take these concepts further

- MarketingProfs’ Three Steps to Making Your Website More User Friendly  outlines three steps to checking the usability of your website along with tips for improving the user experience on your website, and explains the importance of website content, layout, and testing

- There are plenty of opportunities to keep your prospect engaged with your website, content, and brand even after the conversion event.  How to Leverage Thank-You Page Real Estate for Better Marketing from HubSpot offers 8 Ways Your Thank-You Page and Emails Can Keep Prospects Engaged

- Conversion Conference shares some practices that helped achieve outstanding conversion rates results in 4 Good Practices That Will Help You Improve Your Conversions By +20%

- Tips, best practices and maybe even a few Analytics secrets that will help you set up and maintain an effective Google Analytics account for your website can be found in 12 Most Rewarding Tips for Google Analytics from 12 Most

That will cover it for this week and I’ll leave you with a quick reminder to request one free conversion idea for your website as well as to signup for our blog updates and conversion tips newsletter. If you have any tips, suggestions, or resources you’d like to share please leave us a comment below and please feel free to suggest topics that you would like to see covered in future Conversionator posts.

Donna has been in the Marketing and Research fields for over 20 years working with a wide array of industries and contributes The Conversionator weekly roundup post to the Diamond Website Conversion blog.

It’s tempting to view conversion optimization as a checklist of things to test or things to tweak on your site.

And while optimization does largely depend on your attention to details, knowing what to change requires a more foundational understanding of conversion optimization basics.

Why do certain strategies increase conversions while others turn people away?

When you can answer this question, you are well on your way to discovering what needs to be changed on your site, with or without someone else’s checklist.

Let’s take a look at four conversion optimization basics that will revolutionize your approach to online success.

1. Great designs are invisible. The goal is to give people what they while making it as easy as possible to get where they want to go. When your design elements get in the way of the visitor taking a desired action, they have become hindrances to conversion. Bad designs include things like confusing navigation, distracting animations, misleading headlines, poorly written copy, and poor placement of essential elements like the call to action. Good designs place elements in intuitive places, communicate clearly, and make it easy for the visitor to get where he wants to go.
2. Conversion is psychological. Conversion happens in the mind before the customer clicks. That means your goal must be mental persuasion, not merely techie gimmicks. Make an emotional connection with your reader that places an emphasis on urgency, need, and benefit.
3. Simplicity is KeyThe more complex your design, the more engaged a viewer will have to be to accomplish his goal. And in the fast-paced world of web browsing, that can be a fatal mistake. Focus on the three kings of conversion: readability, clarity, and usability. Make it easy to read and assimilate information, make it clear what you want the reader to do, and make it easy to accomplish that action.
4. Test, test, test.No conversion optimization strategy is complete without testing. In fact, testing may be the most important of the conversion optimization basics, because without it, you have no way of knowing how effective your website is. Could you be converting at a higher rate? What elements are standing in the way of conversion? Testing is the only way to know for sure.

One you have a solid grasp of what you’re trying to accomplish, you can move past these conversion optimization basics and begin evaluating some of those best practice lists you’ve been poring over. But never forget, a checklist is only beneficial insofar as it accomplishes the goals listed above.

We’re testing call to action buttons at the moment.  The wording that drives me crazy when I see it on a call to action button is  “submit” which always brings up images of having to kiss the ring of a king or something equally silly … what wording on a call to action button drives you crazy?

This week’s edition includes forgotten content marketing assets, Net Promoter Score insights, tips for Google-proofing small business SEM and for conducting competitive intelligence assessments, and seeing Instagram in a new way:

- Most businesses are sitting on a treasure trove of entertaining and relevant content that their prospects and customers would love. 5 Content Marketing Assets You Forgot You Had from Convince & Convert suggests five places to look for interesting content to share

- Increasingly, companies are adopting the Net Promoter Score as the corporate metric. 10 Things To Know About Net Promoter Scores And The User Experience from Measuring Usability explains 10 things to know about the Net Promoter Score if you’re concerned about improving the user experience

- There have always been many shades of gray in SEO, which is why language matters, and how small business thinks and talks about SEM guides action. Search Engine Watch offers up How to Google-Proof Your Small Business SEM Strategy so that small business can continue to enjoy the benefits of Google’s massive traffic

-  Competitive intelligence assessments empowers you to anticipate and face challenges seen and unseen. 10 Tips For ‘Spying’ On Your Competition from CBS News Sales Machine shares 10 perfectly legal ways to conduct online “espionage”

- Although Instagram is primarily used among smartphone owners and consumers to document their daily activities, 4 Ways to Make Instagram Work for Your Small Business from Flowtown shows how businesses can also tap into Instagram’s popularity and utilize the app to reach their customers on a more intimate scale

That will round it up for this week and I’ll leave you with a quick reminder to request one free conversion idea for your website as well as to signup for our blog updates and conversion tips newsletter. If you have any tips, suggestions, or resources you’d like to share please leave us a comment below and please feel free to suggest topics that you would like to see covered in future Conversionator posts.

Donna has been in the Marketing and Research fields for over 20 years working with a wide array of industries and contributes The Conversionator weekly roundup post to the Diamond Website Conversion blog.

This week’s edition includes insights into how website design can impact the bottom line, ideas for handling ‘expired content’, ways to earn your landing page visitor’s trust, the importance of aesthetics and style on your website, and using post scripts in your email marketing:

- Does Website Design Impact The Bottom Line? from KISSmetrics explores professional research that can potentially offer insights into what priorities a business should have on its web design, addresses the common questions that many website owners have, and attempts to offer tangible solutions

- Handling expired content can be an overwhelming experience. How Should You Handle Expired Content? from SEOmoz defines and shares a detailed process to manage ‘expired content’

- HubSpot compiled 10 Foolproof Ways to Earn Your Landing Page Visitors’ Trust which breaks down landing page characteristics so you can reduce landing page friction to earn the trust of your landing page visitors and capture more of them as leads

-  Business 2 Community breaks down a few mistakes to avoid if you want your site to compete with the best in How Visual and Content Mistakes Are Killing Your Company Website, a helpful reminder that you need to take aesthetics and style seriously

- Post scripts can be a very powerful tool. MarketingProfs’ P.S. Five Tips to Increase Email Click-Through Rates http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2012/7719/ps-five-tips-to-increase-email-click-through-rates explains why email marketers should use post scripts in their messages, along with five ways to create powerful email post scripts

That will cover it for this week and I’ll leave you with a quick reminder to request one free conversion idea for your website as well as to signup for our blog updates and conversion tips newsletter. If you have any tips, suggestions, or resources you’d like to share please leave us a comment below and please feel free to suggest topics that you would like to see covered in future Conversionator posts.

Donna has been in the Marketing and Research fields for over 20 years working with a wide array of industries and contributes The Conversionator weekly roundup post to the Diamond Website Conversion blog.

So how do you construct an effective call to action for a lead generation website?

Despite being one of the most important elements of your website, we see many calls to action with weak persuasion, misleading wording, or just plain boring wording. The key ingredient is missing – words that compel your visitor to take the next step and move forward.

If you could make one change to your call to action buttons that would instantly increase your lead flow, infuse them with action-oriented language.

Why Sluggish Calls to Action Never Work

Click here. Find out more. Even the ubiquitous “Submit.” These calls to action all have two primary problems that sabotage your lead generation efforts.

• First, they do not spur the reader to action. They are sluggish, with no sense of urgency or need.
• Second, they are ambiguous. What will happen if the reader clicks there? What “more” will he find out? What do you really mean by  “Submit” – are you asking him to bend over and kiss your shoes or do you really mean “send” (an equally awful Call to Action because it gives the visitor no sense of the value they can expect to get with their click?

Either the language does not give the reader any idea what to expect, or it sets the wrong expectation.

A click is a valuable commodity for you. You’re asking your visitor to spend more time on your site – what’s the value you’re giving them in return?

How to Write Action-Oriented Calls to Action

When you focus on inspiring action through your Call to Action, you can increase your leads simply by giving the visitor a gentle nudge in the right direction. The CTA should inspire need, desire, and urgency, while also making it clear what will happen next.

• Begin with a verb—And not just any verb. Use specific, communicative verbs that will compel the reader to act. Download, search, learn, compare, register, create, get and browse are all effective verbs that will energize your calls to action.
• Communicate action and value—Tell the reader what to do next to get what they need or want. It’s a tricky combination. You need to move them to action and at the same time communicate the value. You’re not just interested in clicks you want qualified leads. People who want what you have to offer.
• Set expectations correctly—What does “download” really mean? Is the visitor sent directly to the download page?  Alternatively, are they sent to multiple pages before they can complete their download? Be completely transparent and clear.  If the CTA doesn’t take the reader exactly where they expect to go, some percentage of them will get frustrated and back out altogether.

An action-oriented CTA can increase web sales by creating expectation in the visitor and communicating a sense of urgency. Don’t let visitors slip away without a clear understanding of what they can gain by clicking.

Start by rewriting just one of your calls to action and see if it makes a difference… or better yet, test your new call to action vs. your current one and see which generates the most click.

Did this idea work for you?  Tell us how it went.