Real-life (Micro) Conversion Optimization Strategy

In Scott’s recent blog post, 100% of the People Who Visit Your Landing Page, he talks about how the intersection of experience and value is crucial for marketers building landing pages. He recaps Avinash Kaushik’s observation of how often digital marketers obsess over conversation rates, without understanding the value of non-converting interactions (micro-conversions), such as interacting with a search box, watching a video or ‘liking’ a page on a social network.

In our world, conversion rate is king — obviously conversion rates equal revenue, or leads for revenue. But what if a transaction (the macro-conversion) is only part of a shared conversion goal? 

For example, for mobile traffic for a major retailer whose objective is threefold:

1. Increase mobile engagement
2. Drive in-store visits
3. Increase mobile purchases

How do you define, track and score “engagement,” in addition to hard transactions?

Our recent work with a Fortune 500 retail customer put us in this exact situation. Utilizing a solid segmentation strategy, along with a scoring system, we are able to determine the types of landing pages that drive high engagement and increase mobile purchases.

How?

Points are assigned for unique actions within a landing page. Using LiveBall’s advanced tracking & scoring capabilities, we are able to identify the absolute number of unique purchases, plus unique engagement scores as defined by ion’s team of optimization experts.

• Engaging via ‘segmentation’ (ex. clicking through to Women’s Boots versus bouncing)
• Submitting a keyword into a search box
• Interacting with store details (via Find a Store)

By focusing on these powerful micro-conversions we attempt to appeal to 100% of the people that visit these pages — not just the 2% that lead to immediate revenue.

Interested in learning more about engagement scoring in LiveBall? Chat with us live or leave a message!

Fantastic 5: Online Marketing Reads of the Week

It’s the middle of January already?! 2011 is already off to a fast pace, and likely won’t slow down for online marketers any time soon. One of the best ways to keep your ideas fresh and campaigns optimized, is to never stop reading and learning. Check out these five marketing articles I came across this week that I think you’ll really like!

Are your web visitors converting offline? |
Mongoose Metrics

This post explains how an integrated offline/online campaign can boost results and increase effectiveness of media spend. It focuses heavily on phone tracking conversions.

11 Product Page Testing Ideas for 2011 |
GetElastic

As the title suggests, this post looks at 11 product testing ideas to try and the reasoning behind why each may be effective in boosting conversions for you.

How should I develop content for a lead-gen e-mail? |
BtoB Mag

Tips for optimizing your lead generation e-mails. Not necessarily B2B focused.

 Marketing to shoppers at every touchpoint |
eMarketer

eMarketer looks at why brands and retailers must target consumers, pre-shop, in-store and post-shop to conduct the most efficient marketing programs.

Seven habits of highly effective mobile ad campaigns |
Mobile Marketer

And the either habit of SUPER highly effective mobile ad campaigns: send them to a mobile optimized, campaign-specific landing page! Bonus link: here are 10 useful tips for creating mobile landing pages.

What articles or posts did you love this week? Leave a comment below or send me a tweet with the link @ioninteractive!

Are you the mayor of mobile marketing?

According to Nielson, mobile is in. No shock there. 

The Nielson 2015 Forecast says, “retailers are using smart phones as a replacement for frequent shopper cards, sending store coupons and deals directly to a shoppers phone.” 

A great pizza place around the corner from the ion office offers a mobile discount to the Fourquare mayor, and a mobile discount to everyone on their fifth visit. Starbucks does something similar too, at all of their locations the mayor gets a discount.

Another example of mobile marketing is also right around the corner from us. The Jamba Juice a few blocks down is offering a discount if you text a certain keyword to them. 

These are great, basic examples of how to market on mobile devices, but what about mobile landing pages? 

We’ve really been hammering home the concept of mobile landing experiences recently because creating them will give you a great competitive advantage. 

The Nielson study “predicts that by 2015 smart phones will be the primary enabler of consumer shopping engagements.” Their study found that “smart phone ownership nearly doubled between 2008 and 2009 and increased their share of the mobile phone market from 47 to 59%.”

With information like that, do you really want to put mobile landing pages on the backburner?

If smart phones are going to be the primary enabler of consumer shopping in just a few years, experimenting with mobile now will ensure you have the advantage when others just begin thinking about it. 

We’re no doubt heading towards a world filled with great mobile marketing, will you be the king/queen of mobile marketing? Scratch that, will you be the mayor?

Tedd Fox on developing apps & pages for mobile devices

Mobile apps and mobile landing pages have a lot in common. They both seek to provide flawless touch navigation, they both must be edited down from their Web counterparts for the small screen, and they both are on a mission to provide a seamless user experience. 

Tedd Fox is a lead software developer at Citrix, where he demonstrates his passion for mobile application development and delivery every day. He is a co-designer of Citrix Receiver for iPad, which was the #1 free business app in the iTunes AppStore on April 14, 2010.

Because we’re so passionate about mobile-optimized landing pages, and Tedd’s so passionate about mobile-optimized applications, I thought it would be fun to sit down and pick his brain. You can follow Tedd @teddfox on Twitter.

Q: Usability is a huge part of the development process for mobile apps. What are your top user experience tips when designing for mobile devices?

Tedd: Luckily, I am the lead on the “experience” part. 

1. IKEA is your friend. Get Scandinavian with your app design: less is more. 
   
   Users do not need to see EVERYTHING at once. If a button is not used frequently by many many many users, it goes somewhere else, and not in the face all the time.
    
2. Design features that will actually be used!
   
   I cannot stress enough on this one.  Do NOT implement a feature that only 10% of your users would ever think about using.  I always say “no” on feature requests until the users are almost to the point of being mean! I just want to make sure a good percentage of the users want it.  
   
   On that note, I NEVER ASK, “would you like it if we implemented this or that feature?”  That is leading the user.  I have them tell us what they want.  If you ask them if they want to see this or that feature, they will say yes, but if you ask them what they want to see or do, they will tell you the truth. 

Q: Citrix supports several mobile devices, do you recommend designing specifically for each device, or following one set of principles across all devices?

Tedd: That is a double edged sword really.  We design for iPhone and iPad specifically for those devices.  Other mobile platforms (like Android) have another default set of controls.  Mainly we implement the features that the platforms allow, but we have a different user experience for each one because there is an expected behaviour for each platform.  However, I have say that the lines are getting closer and closer as other platforms are stepping up to the plate and allowing the developers to use some great controls.  Look at the official Twitter app for Android—pure awesome.

Q: How is designing for the iPad different than for the iPhone?

Tedd: Mainly you have more real estate.  We get to do things we always wanted to do on the iPhone, but did not have the room.  

The only thing is, now that you have space to design on, you have to make sure you do not feel obligated to fill it all up with junk!  When transitioning to the iPad from the iPhone, we took a few days to figure out that we did not want to just have table views and default looking split view controllers, so we came up with the workspace concept.  This way we keep the user in the app, and it feels more interactive.  When you are in a compelling application the device BECOMES the app.  It is a lot of responsibility, but we are artists before coders!

Q: What are your thoughts on pinching, zooming and scrolling?

Tedd: ALWAYS have a default size that the item snaps to.  We defaulted to the 1024x768 mode and then the user can go nuts.  We even wrote a few gestures on our own to make the experience of multitouch even more relevant.  You see, we are putting windows apps on a multi-touch device.  Windows does not have gestures, so we had to define a few because the interaction with the application needed them.  We user three-finger taps to bring up the keyboard, etc…

Q: What advice would you give to someone just starting out in making pages for mobile viewers?

Tedd:

1. Use no Flash. Yes, it can be a political thing, but you are better off if you want your content seen on the most popular devices.


2. Know which browsers do what.  Try to detect the browser and optimize for it.  If it is a tablet, use the “desktop” version of the site.  If it is a phone use the mobile version.  Nothing urks me more than using my iPad and getting a crazy looking mobile site.  Better yet,  give a link to switch between the different versions, and make that link easy easy easy to find.  

Thank you to Tedd for taking the time out of his busy day to speak with me. To stay up to date with Tedd’s work, follow him @TeddFox. 

3 Trends online marketers should be aware in 2010

According to a recent report put out by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), there are three trends that online marketers need to be aware of:

• Mobile is only going to continue growing … big time
  
  Despite those long lines for the iPhone4 launch, the PwC report states that mobile won’t even come of age until the end of 2011.
  
  A different report put out by Ruder Finn that discusses mobile users in relation to their intent to purchase, offers some interesting insight into mobile consumption. This report shows that men are more likely than women to compare prices (47% vs 30%), but women are more likely to purchase (40% vs 30%).  And, young people are more likely to shop on their mobile device than the average user (35%).
   
• Consumers want traditional offline experiences to be conveniently located on the web
  
  We read magazines, newspapers and even books online. We’ve been buying our music online in record numbers since the advent of the iTunes store. And why? Because it’s convenient. If it’s possible, you should be thinking about how to offer your solutions in a seamless manner on the web because the PwC report says users not only want but expect to find answers on the web. 
   
• Consumers are more willing to pay when presented with flexible and personalized online experiences
  
  Queue the landing experiences for entrance.
  
  Landing pages, conversion paths and microsites are all extremely flexible and personalized experiences (when done right). A basic philosophy to keep in mind when creating these experiences is: the less it’s about you and the more it’s about them, the more you will engage and convert. 
  
  Personalize your experiences. 

It may not seem like such a surprise that there is a trend towards heavy mobile consumption since our phones are so rarely used to make calls anymore, but have you though about how you are going to make the move to mobile pages? Do you know how you will create mobile landing experiences? 

Let’s start talking about it today! Tweet at us @ioninteractive with your thoughts, or leave a comment below.