Online Conversion & Beyond

Amanda Watlington, speaking on Wednesday and Thursday this week, attends the PubCon meet and greet, exchanging ideas with new friends.

Pubcon opens today with a great networking event. With this crowd one can always expect fireworks.

Coming to Webmaster World

Glad to have programed in WebmasterWorld in Las Vegas this year after a long hiatus.  My business partner, Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit will be speaking there, and I'll be taking pictures and hopefully blogging from the site.

Brett Tabke and his gang put on a great conference, at which there is way more learning than posturing, a refreshing deviation from the norm.  Hope to see many of you there.

Just filled out a blogging survey from technorati, and realized I have been off the air for more than a year. Yow. Have I been busy.

Demographic Business Drivers

Our summers are spent commuting between Boston and York, Maine.  We've been making this short (75 minute) journey for better than 10 years, and while some things about York are gloriously static (downtown York Beach is like stepping back in time), nothing is immune to change.

At least two of our  friends have closed businesses (galleries) over the past year, largely as a result of the change in the tourist/resident mix.  

Tourists, often held in low regard by those vain enough to imagine themselves residents (in the end, we are all renters) bring money into the economy, appreciate the charm of a different place and bring what they can back to their own homes as a memory of pleasant times.  This is a real boon for the arts and crafts industry, which is a major economic segment in the York -Ogunquit-Kennebunk(port) area.

It's time to remember that tourists deserve our love. We need them to keep it fresh and vital.

When it comes to conversion, simpler is simply better

Today's Marketing Sherpa had a great example of a split test run on a landing page, an attempt to improve conversion by a Canadian site (All Canadian Investment Corporation).   Net result, the 3-column page with (1) least content, (2) easiest to read design and (3) button for answering the call to action above the fold solidly outperformed the single column (control) and two-column (test) with more content, longer copy.

'Nuf said.

Conversion in Tough Times

If you ever wondered why concentrating on conversion makes sense, the pinch that most of us are feeling right now should clear your mind. 

Dollars for PPC are just not there.  Internal battles for advertising funding have never been more hard fought.

Focus on conversion instead.  If nothing else, remove barriers to sales.  Make sure your shopping carts or registration processes don't confound the few who WANT to buy.

Make a promise to yourself to do one thing tomorrow that will remove obstacles to online sales.  It's high time.