Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Cross-posted from the Chamber Connect Newsletter to which I contribute voluntarily.

As the old adage goes, “ask and you will be given”. Could you imagine going into a used car yard and never being asked if you would like to buy a car? It just wouldn’t happen! The same applies online and it is our job as marketers and business people to facilitate a conversion through smart placement of a call to action. Your call to action is asking website visitors to do “something”; usually in the web realm “something” means encouraging them to click a link or a button that will flow through towards a predetermined goal conversion. You have set goals for the website, setup analytics and are tracking conversions right?!

Call to Action Principles

Have a call to action on EVERY page

It doesn’t always have to be a huge red BUY NOW button (in many cases this is crude and inappropriate), but you should at least encourage your visitors to click through to another page on your site, contact you about the information on a page or download an important document.

Make your call to action stand out

Most people are lazy web browsers with short concentration spans so you have a very small window to catch the fish before it flips out of the net. Therefore, you must make your call to action obvious! This can be done by using contrasting colours, space around the call to action link, ensuring the button or link falls in the sight-line of the viewer and don’t clutter the page with lots of graphics and additional calls to action.

Use meaningful text to create urgency

Each call to action button or link should have some text that encourages the user to click and creates urgency. For example, at the end of an online purchase, your completion button text is better as “Complete purchase” rather than just “Submit”. When using in-text links you should use proper anchor text to describe where that link goes, eg, see our selection of red dresses, rather than just we have red dresses click here. Secret squirrel tip: keyword rich anchor text also helps your SEO!

Reassure the customer that clicking is ok

This might be through some related copy that gives product info, an association membership logo, an interactive button, telling the customer what to expect when they click and using related imagery to make the customer feel at ease.

5 Great Call to Action Examples

Homepage

The first example is the homepage of my favourite email marketing software MailChimp, a company with one core product which enables them to focus all the customer’s attention on one CTA. Once you have finished admiring the smiling monkey, your attention will likely drift to the bright coral coloured call to action button saying “Sign Up Free”. The beauty of this homepage is that every page element focuses attention on the call to action; the monkey’s sight line, the large headline text, the space around the button and the colour contrast of the coral on light blue. Also take note of how the font color of the blurb “MailChimp helps you design email newsletters,…” fades nicely into the background so that the call to action stands out. Direct link

The second homepage example is from McDonald’s. The challenge for the Maccas marketing crew is that people have many different reasons for visiting their website so one call to action (a la MailChimp) is not possible. What they have done instead is created a call to action hierarchy, clearly based around their website goals and what they believe their customers want to find.

As you can see the primary call to action is inviting visitors to “See our new range”, but they have also created a range of other clickable options below for customers who are looking for other information. Direct link

Landing Page

Insurance companies have got big bucks to spend on testing marketing campaigns, and as a result we get landing pages like this esurance sales page which is nothing short of magnificent. They certainly have checked all the boxes for a great landing page; related imagery, concise copy which doesn’t get in the way, reassurance that the company is credible and it is safe to click and a big call to action button in a high contrast colour. The other key thing you notice is that there is no unrelated clutter such as navigation menus, social media buttons, long text blocks or image galleries. This is to focus the customer’s attention and prevent them from getting distracted and clicking to another page. Direct link

Ok, so I lied when I said 5 great call to action examples because the next one is no bueno! The harsh reality is that this is simply not a good landing page and a major waste of pay per click advertising dollars.

So what’s wrong with it? There is a text overload, four different coloured graphics at different parts of the page pulling your eyeballs around like a tennis match, an incognito call to action at the top right (“begin now”), social media buttons stealing focus and the copy is disjointed and verbose. Take note, if your landing pages look like the one below, you need to redesign! Direct link

Content Page

This example is from ICAE and shows how a call to action can be easily included at the bottom of a general informational content page. The CTA is subtle enough that it doesn’t interfere with the content, but prominent enough to attract attention once the visitor has consumed all the information they need. The copy is also directly related to the page content and uses a friendly tone to encourage clicking. Should your heart desire you could also add a similar subtle call to action mid-way through the content. Direct link

So there you have it. 4 good examples and 1 not so good. I hope this will encourage you to ask your website visitors to take action through a carefully crafted call to action, all leading towards more conversions and a better web experience for your customers.

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Looking for help with creating a great call to action? Contact Zhoom to see how we can help you increase conversions!

Most of us would probably rather pull out our fingernails than delve into the deep dark world of data analysis. So to get you started, we are going to do some hand holding, back massaging and slowly climb into Google Analytics with a simple analysis of a Facebook campaign.

This article comes as a follow up to April’s feature, Getting Started With Google Analytics so please read this first if you haven’t already.

Goal: Promote event on Facebook. Gauge visitor response to landing page.

We will assume that you already have created a page on your website to promote your event. This is your landing page.

Procedure:

• Create a special Google Analytics tracking link (tracking URL) and add to Facebook.
• Shorten this link for visual effect.
• Gather Data.
• Analyse visitor data from the Facebook campaign in relation to the landing page interaction.

Create our Google Analytics Tracking URL

The first thing to do is to create the tracking URL. To do this we use Google’s URL Builder. You will need to copy and paste the URL of your landing page, then choose the campaign source, campaign medium and campaign name. There are other options (terms and content) but they are not needed in this instance.

Campaign Source: Usually where the link will be posted, in this case, Facebook.

Campaign Medium: Identifies the campaign medium such as email, social media, cost per click etc. In this case we’ll use Social Media as our campaign medium.

Campaign Name: Identifies the specific promotion, in this case we’ll call it the Bob Jones Concert.

When you are done, click the Generate URL button and Google Analytics URL Builder will generate a URL like this:

http://example.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social%2Bmedia&utm_campaign=bob%2Bjones%2Bconcert

You can see how your source, medium and name are now embedded in the link.

Google Analytics URL Builder Page

Hint: when building tracking URLs, try to keep consistency within your tracking fields. For example, if you use social media as a medium, this should stay consistent rather than using social media for one URL, then social networks for another. This enables you to later drill down to see data from all social media campaigns.

Shorten and Beautify Your Link

The link we are given by GA is really not very pretty so we are going to give it a makeover by using the bit.ly link shortening service. Go to http://bit.ly/, create an account the follow the guide to insert your ugly GA tracking link and shorten it to a bit.ly link. You should end up with something like this: http://bit.ly/kVwBvO.

You can even customise the link to add your own text to the end rather than the random characters bit.ly auto generates. For example, http://bit.ly/ArtistsWANTED is a link used on Darwin Hub when we called for artists to feature on the homepage.

Once you have your link, add it to your Facebook fan page… and wait a few days…

Check and Analyse Website Data Generated

It usually takes a few days for any real data to be gathered from a new campaign so give it a few days before you start checking.

Get Raw Data – Bounce Rate, Time on Site

Log into your Google Analytics account and click All Traffic Sources in the left navigation menu.

All Traffic Sources Link in Navigation Menu

This will display a table with all your traffic sources by Source and Medium, and some related data. If you don’t see the source and medium you entered (in our case Facebook and Social Media) you may need to get it to show more rows (bottom right of screen, as in screenshot below) if it is not in the top 10 traffic sources .

Show More Rows

Click the appropriate source and medium for the data you want to see and you will be taken to a summary of the data for that source/medium combination.

Click the Source and Medium

Source and Medium Data Summary Page

Data Analysis – Bounce Rate, Time on Site

Data is useless without analysis and analysis is useless without an action plan based on the analysis. If you don’t come up with something to improve on (or determine that your site is perfect … sure mate…) then your time is wasted.

Let’s look at the Bounce rate (73.81%) and Time on site (39 seconds).

This data alone tells me that our landing page is not enticing visitors to interact further, therefore they are bouncing from the site and not engaging. There are a number of reasons this could happen. Here are some of the most common:

• The landing page is not related to the text/description at the link source therefore the landing page content comes as a surprise to the visitor.
• The landing page does not encourage the visitor to take further action; there is no button to click, form to complete, product to buy, you get the idea…
• The landing page has too many calls to action and the visitor is confused as to what they should do next and do nothing.

The fix for this is to create a relevant landing page with clear calls to action and supporting text and images. Groupon does this well by really only giving us 1 option to take and supporting it with appropriate imagery.

Groupon Landing Page

Now you can give yourself a high five cos you’ve undertaken some useful data analysis! There are many other analyses you can undertake so if you have further questions or want to know more, please comment below. And stay tuned for more Google Analytics articles in the future!

Key Takeaways:

• Use Google Analytics tracking URLs when ever possible; remain consistent with your tracking fields.
• Shorten and beautify your links (also useful for Twitter or other places where you don’t want long ugly links).
• Always come up with some sort of action plan based on your data analysis. Data analysis without action is a waste of time.
• Create simple landing pages with clear calls to action.

My grandmother was a schoolteacher who, in her later years, spent most of her time shopping for bargains, doing crosswords and chatting online. As a youngster, I used to think she was a little crazy, but as I grow older I realise her views on life were in fact marketing gospel.

The Proof is in the Proofing

My grandmother could smell a spelling mistake in a perfume shop and see a grammatical error in a pot of alphabet soup so naturally, anything that she wrote was proof-read to perfection.

Read the rest of this entry »

With around 50% of consumers searching online before making a purchase decision, getting your business found is no longer a matter of posting flyers under car windscreens at the local supermarket. You need to get online!

Yes, getting online takes some effort, but the chance to connect with 50% more potential customers will almost certainly offer a significant return on investment. That said, there are a number of ways to get online with a small budget . Read the rest of this entry »

In this digital world of daily Viagra deals, Nigerian bank scams and Farmville updates, many businesses find it difficult to engage customers with legitimate email marketing. Email marketing however, can be a very useful tool provided you take the time to build relationships with your subscribers and avoid becoming a spammer.

Although many of us send a range of marketing and sales emails to customers, effective email marketing gives customers what they want, provides direction and is eventually analysed for success. This process can be simplified by using email marketing services and by taking your time to build a clean list and analyse your customer’s needs. Read the rest of this entry »