December 16th, 2011
 Let’s face reality – we judge AdWords performance based on the response, not the clicks. CTR and clicks are important to Google, but businesses are interested in the response they get. Response creates value and it comes mostly from the web experience. The right keywords and ad copy is what gets to the click and without the click there is no web experience. We have to remember however that there is a limit to what AdWords can really do with 95 letters and spaces.
After the Click Happens the Rest is Up to the Website
There are lots of different types of responses that businesses are after; the most popular are an online form completion, phone call, order or some other positive action by the visitor. Which one will be your priority is a decision you need to make before you design the website. Some people want the phone to ring, but in a smaller business where you do not have staff to answer the phone you may want to stress the online form.
Position Counts!
This might seem obvious, but regardless of the type of response you want it needs to be above the fold. This term actually came from the newspaper industry and it meant exactly what is says. In the internet world above the fold means that you can see it when you first land on the page without having to roll down. The challenge here is that not every computer has the same size screen so the fold is a concept not an exact physical position. The vast major of screens are 17” or above so using that as a standard to decide what is above the fold is a good general guideline. One of the classic problems with designers is that they fail to remember that not all the audience is using a 30” monitor like they do so they design response above the fold for their monitor not the masses. Make them test their designs on a 17” monitor.
It is Getting to be a Mobile World
There is no doubt that mobile devices are coming into this world quickly. If you think a 17” monitor is a design limitation, wait till you deal with this one. Design for mobile delivery is yet another design challenge, and here you have to realize that people are responding to less and less information so you have to adapt to that. Gone are the days of long copy, now your message is being delivered on a screen where 5 inches is considered huge. Mobile devices current range 3.5 to 5 inches and to be readable you need to be brief and to the point. Most of the time mobile visitors want directions, phone numbers, or very small specific information. Rule 1.01 in response design is; Give them what they want!
Be Clear About What You Want
If you want a phone call then ask them to call and if you want a form filled out ask them to do that. We see websites all the time that just assume that the person knows what they want and the simple truth is that is a dangerous marketing practice. Ask for the order early and often and make it very clear what you want them to do.
Stay On-Topic
When a person goes to a search engine and puts a query in the box that is the start of a conversation. Your website should continue that conversation. If they started out with a search for Water Heater Installation, connect them to content related to that. You want to avoid just dropping them on your home page and expecting them to hold the conversation together by themselves. In this area there is a challenge and that is that we break traffic down to a very fine level and it may not be worth the expense to have a specific page for every ad group. You want to have refined content related to the keyword for the keywords that make your business work. If you’re a plumber and get lots of frozen pipe work in the winter, then talk about it. The more your landing page content matches the search the more it’s going to connect with the searcher.
If it’s Important, Measure it
We see websites all the time that violate this rule and most of the time it’s the phone number that is overlooked. As a minimum get a phone number that is unique to your website and use it only there. There are several ways to implement this but one of the easy ones is that you pass your website a URL tag that says show the paid traffic phone number. Any good website designer should understand how to do this. On forms make sure that the design goes to a unique thank you page that confirms that someone will get back to them. For some reason some web designers want to reuse the same page and just rewrite a section of it. While this will work it makes tracking the response more difficult than it needs to be. A unique thank you page is not really an option.
Offer Choices
Some people like online forms and others like phones. If both are of value to your business then by all means offer both because the total response will most likely go up. Simply stated people like choices. Forms get better responses during the off hours and phones get better response during business hours. There could be several reasons for this and the most likely is that people would rather email than leave a voice mail in a general mailbox after hours.
Get to the Point
People are in a hurry and yet most websites drift around and waste our time with lots of unnecessary words and details. The golden rule here should be: give them as much detail as they need to make an educated decision but no more than that. This is hard because different audiences will respond to different levels of detail but do the best you can. As a minimum tighten up your language and keep the words to a minimum. Use lists rather than paragraphs and use good highlighting to make scanning your text easier.
Do not ask for too much
We see this one all the time where the client wants much more than the market is going to give them on a first contact. We are often contacted by companies that just want the order and they want nothing to do with the early sales cycle details. The problem is that the market is only going to give you want you earn, and going from a first hello to a closed deal is rare in most situations. Now there are some products that this works with, but you have to ask yourself how often to you buy on the first exposure. The likely answer is not very often.
Remove Roadblocks to Your Response
I have seen hundreds of sites with unnecessarily complex response design and every decision you engineer into the process is an opportunity for the customer to leave. We have seen errors on screens that issue messages that might make sense to some programmer but for an ordinary person might as well be in an alien language. Make sure that a non-programmer reviews every error message given by the system to make sure it makes sense to mere mortals.
Nothing is Perfect
In closing there is no perfect response design and you need to experiment consistently to find the attributes that push your audience’s buttons. Remember that small things can make big differences and you never know what they will be until you test.
Tags: conversions, Response Design, Thank You Page
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in web experience | No Comments »
December 16th, 2011
 The short answer is you can, but the real question is should you? Ask yourself, is your business better served by staying focused on the business of your business or learning and playing with AdWords? Are you really going to dedicate the time necessary to learn AdWords? Google has invested millions trying to make it simple enough for anyone to run. They’ve only been partially successful. Like any profession, the devil is in the details. It seems easy enough – you create a campaign, write an ad, and select a few keywords and AdWords is running and money is going to Google. Unfortunately what is not happening with this basic simple set up is the creation of value for your business.
I have made my living as a search engine marketing expert since 1994. In all that time I have never had a client that did not know their primary keywords and more about their business than I do. However they rarely understand the issues involved in effectively targeting those keywords.
Plumber keywords are a classic example of this because the typical plumber should only target searches with “Intent to Engage Services” but many searches will be either non-specific or off topic. The keyword Plumber Los Angeles is a good example. At first blush this would seem to be a great keyword but what if the real search is “Plumber Jobs in Los Angeles”? This search matches the Plumber Los Angeles keyword and most plumbers are paying big money for that search, and many others of questionable value. We often see incredibly broad terms like Plumber and that is an accident looking for a place to happen.
I own a pipe wrench but that in no way makes me a plumber. I can install a faucet and sometimes it does not even leak very much. However it takes me twice as long and it never lasts for a long time because I do this so infrequently that I never do it right. It always takes five trips to the hardware store to get all the right parts and most times I need to buy a few of the parts a couple of times. Plumbing only looks easy until you have to actually do it, AdWords is the same way.
AdWords seems simple enough until you get under the surface. There are three major networks, seven types of keywords (Positive/Negative; Broad, Modified Broad, Phase, and Exact). Matching is not just to keywords because you also have keyword themes, direct placement, and remarketing audiences in the Display Network. The keywords are a selection model for a system that has millions of searches per day and the system is an interactive auction with literally thousands of variables involved. As a person that was trained as a computer programmer I can tell you without hesitation that AdWords is the most complex system I have ever worked on because you never know what a person with a blank search box will type in.
AdWords is very much like the old game show “Family Feud” except it happens millions of times per day and you have to guess the word, write an ad for it, and figure out the right bid. Marketing is an ecosystem and AdWords has a role that interacts with other parts of the process. AdWords creates traffic to your website but to create value the website much bring the person to the action of contacting your business.
The question is not can you run AdWords, because you can. The question is should you? Or is your business better served by staying focused on the business of your business?
Tags: AdWords Experts
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in DIY, adwords | No Comments »
December 16th, 2011
There are thousands of firms that list AdWords as one of many things that they do. The problem is the more they are about these other things the less they are about AdWords. Most web design firms and SEO firms will list AdWords and present themselves as experts but most of the time they are barely literate in the issues involved.
Experience Counts
Experience counts in AdWords, just like any other field. AdWords was launched in October 2000 with 350 customers and it was not until 2003 that AdWords was opened to the general market.
 In 2005 Google launched their first Certification Program for Google Advertising Professionals. In 2009 the certification program was renamed “Google AdWords Certified Partners.” Look for the Google AdWords Certified Partner logo and click on it to see that the certification is current. This logo should send you to a Google site that will contain basic information about the partner. If the link is missing be very careful in checking references. Google lowered the requirements for the certification in the last few years so it does not mean as much today as it used to.
The Right Connections
When the challenges become tough the difference between success and failure often come down to whom you know. Look for a partner that has a positive relationship with Google and current certifications. Besides Google a good AdWords Expert will have connections to Web Design, SEO, Hosting, Ad Agencies, Graphic Artists, and many other areas involved in the professional management of a website.
Watch out for the common Tricks
Make sure that the services are affordable and that you own and control them. There are several tricks that happen in this industry and you need to avoid all the following:
Fixed Monthly Advertising Budget
AdWords is an auction so any form of fixed budget is probably not to your advantage. A fixed budget opens up a profit potential for the provider and they are probably better at this than you are.
Percentage of Ad Spend Fees
This is a conflict of interests because you are paying the person that sets the bids a percent of what they spend! The more of your money they spend the more they make and that is never going to end well.
Selling individuals keywords
This is usually a trick that revolves around the selling a word that has very low volume for a fixed price. The providers profit is driven by your loss and they know the volume of the words.
Programs where you do not own the website or phone number
These are the most horrible trick of them all in that you are trapped in the relationship and your organic traffic is at risk. Never run online advertising for a site you do not fully own.
Long term agreements – any more than month to month is a problem.
Advertising investments should produce results and if they do then you will never cancel them. If the provider needs you to guarantee more than month to month you really have to wonder why.
Check References
An AdWords Expert should be very easy to verify in this world of social media. Look for references on their LinkedIn.com profile and read the profiles of the people providing the references. Watch out for reciprocal references and friends rather than business relationships. AdWords is a business to business trade and the references should look like that. When in doubt connect to the reference and ask them more questions.
Talk to Them
By all means pick up the phone and talk to the people that will be supporting your account, not just the ones selling you services. Make sure you like the way they think and how they solve problems. If you cannot get past the sales person to the actual service providers then keep asking.
Tags: AdWords Partner
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in adwords, adwords expert, google | No Comments »
October 28th, 2011
The headline of this article makes a song from the 60s play in my head, but the question is really quite serious. In many cases the organic, or free listings as they are often called, have vanished from the top half of the first page of Google. This requires that many businesses rethink their website optimization and the organic only strategy. Below is an example of what is happening in many searches.
What is happening in this case is that Google is seeing a search term that it thinks will be best served by localizing the search. Since quality of the search results trumps all other things in Google, we get a page that is entirely missing the organic listings. Google has decided that the quality of the search result will be better served with AdWords and Places listings and in many cases we think they are right. The intent of the person doing this search for AC repair is most likely looking for a local service provider and the searcher is better served from AdWords and Places.
This does not happen all the time but it is very common in the more competitive metro areas. In less competitive areas you will often find one or two organic listings between the end of the AdWords section and the start of the Places. This is huge departure from several years ago when you would see eight or more organic listings on top of the first page. There are still organic listings on the first page, but you have to roll the screen down to see them.
What this means to us is that if your keywords are commonly localized and you have an organic only promotional strategy, you better revisit that decision. You can figure out if your keywords are likely to be localized by doing a Google search and if a map appears then there is a high risk of this happening. You have to remember that Google personalizes the results so just because you saw your listing does not mean everyone will. There are thousands of variables involved in creating a search engine result page and so they vary hugely.
This phenomenon highlights the fact that claiming your places entry is critical and if you serve outside of your local city you really have to consider using AdWords for those areas. Even if you have a first position organically a change in the search to another city that you also serve will be missing your site.
Most of the words that this happens to are services that are connected to the geography. Things like Air Conditioning, Plumbing, Hair Salons, Car Dealers, Restaurants, and many others. If your places listing is important to your business this is probably happening to you.
Tags: Organic Score, SEO
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in SEO | 1 Comment »
October 28th, 2011
 Twas the night before Christmas, when all though the net not disk drive was stirring, not even in the cloud. The clicks are hung by the SERP with care, in hopes that Saint Google soon will be there. The AdWords Experts are nestled all snug in their beds while visions of new features danced in their head and I am sure you know all the rest.
Every year in the fine tradition of the Christmas letter, I write an open letter for the things I want to see in Adwords. Before I get started with the details I would like to note that many of the things I asked for in prior years I actually got, so maybe this letter isn’t as silly as it seems.
Negative Search Query Report
I would like to start with a billion dollar idea in hopes that some Google Engineer will adopt this idea and make it their own on their 20% time.
A negative SQR would show us the searches that we lost during the time period because they were dropped by a negative word. Negative keywords are a great tool but they are also dangerous because they are silent. The Negative SQR would allow us to see errors in the keyword model and correct them. The recovered revenue from this report will probably pay for itself every month.
Enhance Budget Controls
Budget controls get difficult as the size of the account increases and one glaring problem is the lack of an account wide budget control. This would be across all campaigns and when the daily budget was exceeded in aggregate it would shut down the traffic.
Add MCC Negative Keyword Reporting
Negative keywords deserve some respect and they need to be supported in the reporting process. Nowhere in the MCC can you get negative keywords extracted to a report yet they are critical to the process of AdWords.
MCC Level Change Log
In our business we have over 100 accounts and several people involved in the maintenance of accounts. It would be great to have a central log that you can view all the changes in the accounts and who is making them.
Annotations
Google Analytics has had this for a long time and AdWords needs this desperately. We should be able to click on the date in a chart and add an annotation so we know what caused certain data to move. Keeping notes on an account is a very basic function that you expect in today’s systems.
Bounce Rate on Keywords, AdGroups, and Campaigns
For an account that is linked to Google Analytics the bounce data flowing back to the keyword and up the data hierarchy would be a great tool.
Formula Based Bid Updates
Let’s face it bid updates are a painful manual processes that really do not have to be like that. Since AdWords already has filters to create sets of keywords all we need is to add an update function that supports simple formulas for update. This does not need all the fancy math functions just the basics of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Keyword Lists
Similar to the function now supported in Negative Keywords keyword lists could be added to an adgroup just like a single keyword. The advantage of this is that you would not have to duplicate the keywords when you reuse them in another adgroup or campaign. It is very common to have the same set of keywords in different campaigns because of other controls such as geo or device targeting.
Segment Totals
Segmentation is a great tool in AdWords but it can be difficult to work with on larger accounts. When you segment with top and side it shows every campaign but it never totals it for you so it is difficult to see that is high or low for the value. If the detail is segmented it would be swell if the totals were as well.
Trend Line in Graphs
Graphs display the actual value but often we are looking for is the trend not the data value. It would be nice to have this option on the graph so you could see if the cost per click is trending up or down although we would not want to lose the data view we have now because it is very useful.
Scheduled Bid Updates
Now that we have filters and bid formulas we should be able to set up schedule and a time period to perform the update. This should be as simple as saying on the 10th of each month using data from last month apply this filter and formula.
Batch up the changes
I have to be honest the constant roll out of changes makes managing AdWords Accounts a nightmare. It is a common experience in our offices to discover a new feature that just rolled into production or maybe a beta that looks like a production change. In the olden days software changes were batched together into organized releases with good documentation. When they went into production everyone knew it and we also knew what changed. While we understand the value of the development model of release and refine we think that there should be a production level of code and you should be able to opt in or out of being a beta. When a beta is active in an account there should be some notice on the account so you know not to look for it everywhere else.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight, “Happy Conversions to all, and to all a good-night!”
Tags: Saint Google
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in google | No Comments »
October 28th, 2011
 Do me a favor… grab your phone and open your business’ website. Don’t have a web capable phone? Go find one, they’re everywhere. Then make other people in the office do it as well. What do you see? The results may surprise you. You could get anything from a blank screen to your whole site just smaller, and it can vary greatly from phone to phone. As more people do their web surfing from their phones this little exercise is going to become more and more important, especially if you’re paying for traffic!
Designing for desktop and mobile are two very different things. Simply displaying your desktop site on a mobile phone is often a huge mistake. The interface and design standards and the goals of the visitor are very different. This is why we are seeing an entirely new generation of Mobile Content Management Systems specifically built for mobile design. Within these systems you can rapidly create a mobile website and bring it online with all the functions that most people expect on their phone.
We have one client in a local service business with 12 offices in the mid-west that created mobile sites in just a few days using GetGoMobi.com. Some designers think that forcing mobile devices to mobile sites is a good idea, we think not. The desktop version of the site often has functionality not in the mobile site that the person may want to access. Conceptually we like to think of the mobile site as not a replacement for the desktop site but a supplement designed specifically for the needs of the mobile user.
The thing you have to realize when it comes to smart phones is that they’re taking over many people’s casual web usage. Need to look up an address, settle a bet, decide what’s for dinner, Google someone you just met, kill time while waiting for something? The smart phone is going to be a “go to” tool for that. I have some friends that aren’t super heavy internet users who have dropped conventional internet services at home completely because their iPhone or Android device fills that gap. I realize that may seem a bit extreme, but these people are out there and if you’re not looking forward for a way to make your web content more compatible with smartphones then you’re going to be in trouble as this trend gets more pervasive.
In the AdWords World we can clearly see this shift and its happening fast. So far this year we have seen dozens of accounts where the mobile traffic has grown by more than 100% in just the first 9 months of this year. In some industries we are seeing more than 10% of traffic is now mobile. In the good news category AdWords gives you control over how your mobile traffic is handled. You can configure the mobile traffic to go to a page designed for the mobile device or if your site is a mobile-wreck you can turn that traffic off and quit paying to embarrass yourself. The key here is you have to think about this because the default in the system is to engage the mobile traffic. You have to turn it off if you are not yet ready to handle it properly.
For a quick example here’s the website for Marc Ecko, a popular clothing designer, as viewed on my PC:
It’s a pretty fantastic an engaging all flash display of creative genius. Here’s Marc’s website when displayed on my iPhone:
See the problem? Although the desktop experience is excellent, the mobile visitor misses out completely. If your site has a similar problem I encourage you to go open your Adwords account and turn off mobile devices in your Adwords campaign settings. No use in paying for visitors that can’t use your site.
Now the “what to do” becomes a little trickier. You need to think about how people interact with your site and what they want. Are they after basic information like your phone number or address? Are they shopping? Making reservations? Reading? Researching? Some of these may sound odd to you but they’re not that uncommon. I’ve done searches for hippopotamus facts in a bar to solve an argument and paid my bills while waiting for flights to take off.
If you’re a localized business that provides a service or is somewhere that one would have to physically go to spend money your two big mobile needs are your address and your phone number. These are the two things people are most likely to be looking for from their phone and you need to make that information easily and immediately accessible. You could either design your page to be easily read even on a small screen, or you could create a mobile only site that visitors are redirected to when they visit with a smartphone. People like GetGoMobi can help you set these types of things up for not a whole lot of money. (Full disclosure, GetGoMobi is a client of ours).
The bottom line here is that mobile is happening and it’s happening fast. So get your team together and design a plan to deal with it.
Tags: mobile sites
Posted by Rob Dumouchel in Mobile Marketing | No Comments »
August 16th, 2011
The psychology of what is going on here is easy to see. Marketing is difficult and many in the market want the easy way to success. So Google offers a program that fits that want but it cannot serve the need.
Here is Google’s description of what AdWords Express is: http://www.google.com/awexpress/
What It Is
AdWords Express is the easiest way to advertise on Google. Creating your ad takes just a few minutes, and that’s it. Everything else is managed automatically, ensuring your ad is only shown to people looking for what you have to offer. Now you’re advertising to an audience that’s already interested in you.
Who It’s For
AdWords Express is for local businesses looking for local customers. It’s for business owners who want the benefits of a targeted online ad campaign, without having to spend time managing it.
End of Google site content.
Marketing is not simple and that did not suddenly change because Google changed the name of the product from Boost to Express. The name was changed to protect the not so innocent because the results of many tests we saw of Boost where like watching a train wreck in slow motion. We saw clients pay ridiculous amounts of money for some of the worst qualified clicks. What Boost was very good at doing was spending money but that is not typically a goal of our clients. The only thing express about this is the transfer of money from your credit card to Google’s bank account. There are so many things wrong in Express that we hesitate to waste your time detailing all of them but at its core Express is trying to target traffic without knowledge of the business.
Google is a great company, but the reality is that marketing requires a level of thinking that is currently beyond all software in the market today. Google is trying to take a keyword model assembled without knowledge of your business or your customers and produce traffic that benefits your business. That is a nice goal but it is not possible in today’s world.
AdWords is a giant step forward for advertisers but it requires thought and planning to make it produce results. If your business specializes in something other than AdWords and you need an AdWords Expert on your team please contact us.
Tags: AdWords Express
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in AdWords Express | No Comments »
July 26th, 2011
 While our business is focused on the design and management of Google AdWords, there is no doubt that our clients value results not traffic. AdWords drives traffic volume to the landing page, but 99% of the response comes from the web experience. The collection of response elements on the landing page are the key variables involved and in this article we explore the challenges we commonly see.
1. Trying to talk to everyone
The statement that “Everyone is a prospect for my business” is a clear sign that the page is going to have a message problem. Even if this was true, and it almost never is, the fact is you have to know your audience to write compelling copy. Without an understanding of the audience you have no way to understand what motivates them to action. Talking to one audience will often alienate another so even if you have the perfect product there probably is not just one reason people buy it. If I want to buy performance and you want to sell safety the odds of success are not good because we have a message to benefit mismatch. To create compelling copy for your business you have to understand the values, experiences, and perceptions of your audience.
2. Failure to remember the goal
My old First Sergeant had an expression; “When you are up to your ass in alligators it is hard to remember the goal was to drain the swamp.” I think this visual is really good for web designers because they get so wrapped up in the colors, images, and technology that they forget the goal is to start a relationship with the visitor. Response design is about introducing your business and moving the relationship to the first step. When you look at first response goals you have to consider that the visitor probably does not know who you are and has no reason to trust you yet. The goal is to make a good first impression because there is no second chance to do that.
3. Failure to continue the conversation
The web experience needs to be thought about as a conversation that started with a search followed by ad copy that indicated you have an answer to their information need at the landing page. When they enter the website experience you need to continue that conversation. Do not attempt to shift messages on them without transition copy. An example of this would be a general retailer that sells Italian Shoes. The search was buy Italian Shoes, followed by an ad for Italian Shoes, and the next page better be about Italian Shoes. If you drop this person on the home page several clicks away from Italian Shoes I can guarantee you will not be happy with the results. In this example message shifting would be to land on a page about shoe polish. These two items are related but you need to transition the conversation from shoes to polish (buying to maintenance). A simple transition like this one you might be able to do with the ad copy but most of the time shifting the topic requires more than the 95 letters and spaces you get in an Adwords ad.
4. Failure to ask for the order
One of my early mentors in marketing taught me to ask for the order early and often and once they give you the order shut up. Asking for the order in website context equates to a response action that stands out on the page. Often we see beautiful designs where the color scheme flows together creating harmony in the design that fails to convert. While designers might want harmony we want the eye drawn to the major response element and that often means contrasting the element so it stands out on the page. If the page is blue then we want the response element to be red so it immediately draws the eye to the element on the page. We want the response element in the center of the primary reading zone of the page and in most designs this is center right above the fold.
5. Too many options
Landing pages are often designed with too many options and the visitor gets confused and leaves. It is common for us to see a landing page with 5-10 responses or more yet the most successful landing pages have 2-3. I recently reviewed a page with conversion problems and they had over 100 options on the page and the visitor was simply overwhelmed. This is a case where more is not better, better is better. If your page has more than 10 options you need to rethink the page and go back to your audience profile.
6. Trying to box in the Visitor
Let’s face it most of us are control freaks and we try to control the web experience to the extent we can. The challenge is we have zero control and the visitor has ultimate control so this is a battle we cannot win. If you try to box the visitor in they will simply use their doomsday device (back button or close window) – one click and they are gone. We often see squeeze-pages with what we call a “my way or the highway design” with no connection to extended content or alterative conversions and normally traffic does not respond well to this design. Given one option the person will often just leave because they often like to make choices and this requires comparison. This does not mean squeeze pages do not work because, as much as I dislike them, in some cases they are the right tool. If you feel you have to use a squeeze page make sure you are not losing some secondary value that you can get from that visit.
7. Failure to consider the source of traffic
Not all traffic is created equal. Traffic from the Search Network is normally much further along in the purchase cycle than traffic from the Display Network. Your conversation style needs to change based on this audience assumption. Search traffic copy can be much shorter and focused largely on your product or service advantage in a comparison mode. Display traffic is less qualified since they just ran into your product or service this means more copy that justifies the value of the solution in general. Traffic segmentation is much more complex than just the broad source and you have to decide how granular you want to get in your segmentation.
8. Asking for more than you need
Ask for what you need and nothing more. With every item that you ask for from your visitor you run the risk of reducing your response rate. All of us have seen huge response forms that are intimidating and that increases the barrier to response because it looks like a lot of work. After saying this I know that there are businesses that need to gather lots of information on the lead and in those cases it is normally best to design a multiple stage response so you can reduce the initial reaction to a difficult form. The key to this process is to make sure that you get the most critical information on the first screen. We recently worked with a client that had a long application form and breaking it into two pieces increased the conversion rate by over 500%. On the first response we gathered the phone number or email, and the zip code. This was followed by the rest of the application and we recorded the lead after the first form. This did result in some partial applications but with the contact information already gathered the sales team could follow up on those and they recovered many of them.
Sub rule A is; never ask for data you already know. For example if you ask for the zip code there is no reason to enter the city or state. Any programmer worth their salt can translate a zip code into the city and state and the savings to the user can be impressive. As an example my business is in Grover Beach California and the zip is 93433. You can make me enter 20 keystrokes to type out the city, state, zip or translate the zip and save me 75% of the typing. The easier you make it on the visitor to give you the result you want the better your results will be.
9. Dumb Error Handling
This should be a crime punishable by some sort of horrible pain because there is no reason for this to ever happen but it does. I recently tested a form for a client that give me a response that said “Correct Entry” and it highlighted my email address. My address was correct and after an investigation, that 99% of the population would never do, I discovered the error was that I already had an account and it wanted me to sign in.
Error handling is often an afterthought and error message texts are written by programmers that are not known for their great communication skills. They assume knowledge that the audience does not have they often think that if you can make the transaction then it works properly. It works properly when the visitor can make the transaction happen in a fast, easy, and intuitive way. That last one of intuitive is for the audience not the programmer. It makes me crazy when I run into pages with extensive entry that do not save my work when something goes wrong or force me to comply with a formatting that the programmer could easily handle such as phone number formats. When visitors run into an error it increases the likelihood that they will leave when they want to convert.
10. Forcing Visitors to Register
I have more passwords than I care to admit to and there are several studies that show that forcing visitors to register results in LARGE losses in business. What is really crazy about this process is that in most cases signing into the site is of zero value to the visitor so we have to ask why do we do this at all. In most cases it is because the shopping cart works that way so we force people to create and remember a password. Shopping cart technicians will tell you that you have to do it like that for security and I am sorry but that is just wrong. If you have customers that frequently return to reorder products then a registration process might make sense but if you are like most small businesses reorders are infrequent enough that reentry of the data is less work for the visitor than finding the password. If you are still not convinced that forced registration is a dangerous practice http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button/read this article about a business that reclaimed $300 million in sales by dropping this requirement.
In Closing
Response design and website design are fundamentally different worlds. In response design we are creating a conversation with someone who is interested in a specific solution as indicated by the source of the traffic. The website is designed to talk to the entire world and you have to consider prospects, customers, vendors, business partners, media, and other audiences. In response design it’s about suspects and prospects because if your customers find you from a search for what you do you have more problems than a landing page can cure. The page and copy design have to assume that this is a person who has never seen or heard of your business.
Disclaimer
We are not designers nor are we copywriters. Our job, as AdWords Experts, is to find and segment traffic and route to the best web content and measure the results. When a design fails to produce the results needed we are part of the team that works through those issues because we have the data and comparative experience that most designers lack.
Tags: Landing Pages
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in ad copy, landing-page-design | No Comments »
July 26th, 2011
![Where Does Google Make Its Money? [ infographic ]](http://www.wordstream.com/images/where-does-google-make-its-money.png)
The 20 keyword categories with the highest search volume and highest costs per click, thereby netting Google the most money, are:
- Insurance Loans (example keywords include “consolidate graduate student loans” and “cheapest homeowner loans”)
- Mortgage (example keywords include “refinanced second mortgages” and “remortgage with bad credit”)
- Attorney (example keywords include “personal injury attorney” and “dui defense attorney”)
- Credit (example keywords include “home equity line of credit” and “bad credit home buyer”)
- Lawyer (“personal injury lawyer,” “criminal defense lawyer)
- Donate (“car donation centers,” “donating a used car”)
- Degree (“criminal justice degrees online,” “psychology bachelors degree online”)
- Hosting (“hosting ms exchange,” “managed web hosting solution”)
- Claim (“personal injury claim,” “accident claims no win no fee”)
- Conference Call (“best conference call service,” “conference calls toll free”)
- Trading (“cheap online trading,” “stock trades online”)
- Software (“crm software programs,” “help desk software cheap”)
- Recovery (“raid server data recovery,” “hard drive recovery laptop”)
- Transfer (“zero apr balance transfer,” “credit card balance transfer zero interest”)
- Gas/Electricity (“business electricity price comparison,” “switch gas and electricity suppliers”)
- Classes (“criminal justice online classes,” “online classes business administration”)
- Rehab (“alcohol rehab centers,” “crack rehab centers”)
- Treatment (“mesothelioma treatment options,” “drug treatment centers”)
- Cord Blood (“cordblood bank,” “store umbilical cord blood”)
Top section of this article is the work of Larry Kim and was first published at: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2011/07/18/most-expensive-google-adwords-keywords
End of copied article.
I think Larry’s research is good but like any data you have to be careful with what you think it means. For example we know that Attorney keywords are much more expensive per click than Insurance, Loans, and Mortgages. All of these are highly competitive and big money to Google but the value of a client, in general, is much lower in finance than legal. This report is really total revenue per keyword category not the cost per click but that headline probably is not as strong.
There is no doubt that this is a list of highly competitive and expensive keyword categories but the data is hidden in averages and categories. As anyone who has taken “How to lie with statistic 101” can tell you the best way to lie with numbers is to average them. On the other hand we have to average lots of things in this industry because dealing with all the details is just impossible. Within some of these categories like Attorney are words like mesothelioma that are being averaged in with lower value words in the same category. We have seen several examples of specific keywords with cost per click levels above $100 and in most cases they were worth the money. The truth is that the cost per click is market driven so it is set by the competition. Since the competition varies largely by market there is really no way to accurately report this data.
This type of analysis is impossible for anyone other than Google to perform because of the variables like quality score and market location. If we are looking for raw cost per click it is probably something generic like “mesothelioma” with a 1 quality score and a first position in NYC; that click is probably ridiculously expensive.
For a most expensive keyword list there are some missing items like Bail Bonds, which is a good example of an emergency service. These words are the type that the only position to target is #1 and that drives the costs up quickly. If you think about it on an emergency service like Bail Bonds, Emergency Plumbing Repair, Locksmith, or many others the only position worth having is the first one and that drives the cost up quickly. The other possible missing item here, based on total revenue, is Travel although the cost per click is less because of limited revenue per transaction.
Classifying keywords is at best difficult so I respect the work done here but if we are doing keyword categories I think Attorney (#4) Lawyer (#6) and Claim (#10) are really in the same category. Combining them would not move the results but it would bring legal much closer to the top of the list. I believe that legal keywords are expensive because lawyers are by nature highly competitive people. Add to that the high value of the clients in certain segments and you have the elements of a perfect storm in cost per click.
The most expensive keyword we have personally managed is Bail Bonds in a major metro market and the cost per click was well north of $100 but I have seen comments from others of legal class action words above $200.
Tags: High Cost Keywords
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in Adwords Auction, adwords | No Comments »
July 26th, 2011
We advise clients to compete on both the paid and organic traffic and now we are adding social media to that recommendation. Social Media needs to be part of the marketing plan strategy, even if the plan is to do nothing other than listen and learn right now. With an audience of well over 700 million no business can completely ignore this. Social Media is rapidly evolving and it is fundamentally different than advertising or PR because it is a two-way conversation and it’s time to get social.
Google and FaceBook are at war with each other and it is tons of fun to watch from the sidelines as the titans clash on the worldwide playground. The latest shot over the bow of social media is Google’s +1 and Google+, which are intended to compete with FaceBook and their Like button. The twist with Google is that they are integrating this with both organic and paid search results. So what should advertisers do now?
First let’s get the ridiculous out of way. We do not think anyone, other than someone trying to game the system, is going to vote for an ad so input at that point is dumb although output there does make sense. The input point of this is going to be the web page and there a vote is both likely and reasonably placed. This process is likely to be important to both your ad and your organic rank.
One only needs to look at the train wreck that is Buzz to see that not every Google experiment works well. Based on this we need to be careful with how much we invest in this in the very early stages. The +1 process is typical Google magic with several components but no details when you get to the implementation. One of the first things that you realize with +1 is that it is URL based so you may want to rethink your landing page, redirects, and page canonicalization.
We try to follow everything Google so we did get an early invite to the beta for Google+ and our observations are that it is functionally similar to FaceBook. The system does not have the critical mass of users that it needs to face off with FaceBook but Google is not without resources so I would not immediately disregard them. In the first few weeks the network grew to 10 million but this is still a long way from FaceBook numbers of 700 million plus. The challenge in social media is the network size not the software so Google has a huge uphill battle, but the integration with gmail is a big advantage.
At this early stage it is probably a good idea to get involved in Google+ and to implement the +1 button on your site but we think it is too early to invest your internet goodwill in the development of your contacts and circles on Google+.
Tags: google, Social Media
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in Social Media, google | No Comments »
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