You Have Multiple “Homepages”. Time to Fix Them All.

By Susan Pascal Tatum | May 13, 2008

This may come as a surprise to you – especially if you don’t spend half your day thinking about your website – but nearly all technology websites have more than one home page.

How can that be?

We tend to think of the home page as the entry point for a website, and most sites are designed somewhat like a company org chart with the home page in the CEO position. The “CEO” gets most of the attention.

But in reality visitors enter your site on different pages.

Some do start on your “home page”. Some enter on landing pages. Others start on internal pages that rank high on non-paid search engine lists. Still others enter on internal pages linked to by other websites.

Every entry page serves the role of a home page for that visitor, and every entry page should be tested and tweaked to perform best for you.

Here’s how to do that:

Step one: Identify your top entry pages.

Any web analytics program should show you where people are entering your site. In Google Analytics, it’s in the Content section on a page called “Top Landing Pages”.

Step Two: Check the bounce rate.

The same page on Google Analytics will show you what percentage of visitors to each entry page bailed immediately. Remember, if it’s anything other than a pay-per-click landing page, you want your bounce rate to be under 50%.

Step Three: Pick the pages with the highest bounce rates and test some changes.

Presumably you’re already testing to improve landing pages for your pay-per-click advertising campaigns. If not, read 5 Tests to Increase Conversion Rates on Landing Pages.

What about the other pages?

The same factors that affect your official home page and your PPC landing pages can be used to improve performance on all of your entry pages. These include:

You can get more details about improving effectiveness of these pages by reading What Technology Buyers Don’t Want to See on Your Website.

Don’t know where to start?

This blog is full of articles about optimizing effectiveness of homepages and landing pages. Take the time to read them and you’ll have a great sense of where to start.

Not the do-it-yourself type? We can do it for you. Check out our Website Review and Recommendations service.

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Website Challenge. Weekend Special.

By Susan Pascal Tatum | May 9, 2008

Have you checked your bounce rate after reading yesterday’s post about website effectiveness? Did you learn something? If you haven’t looked at your bounce rate, go do it now. You could be wasting lots of money sending visitors to a site they instantly leave.

Here’s a special offer for TechnoBuzz readers. If your bounce rate is higher than 50%, send me your URL and we’ll tell you why. We guarantee we’ll give you at least one easy change you can make to improve your website’s effectiveness.

This offer is good until 6 PM Pacific Time on Monday May 12.

Just email your URL and bounce rate to info[at]tatummarketing.com. Or you can submit it here.

By the way, if your bounce rate is lower than 50%, I’d like to see your site too. Send it to me as well.

Cheers.

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Does Your Website Look Better Than It Really Is?

By Susan Pascal Tatum | May 8, 2008

If you read this blog regularly, you may be tired of seeing me go on and on about building a better technology website; but there’s a very good reason for it.

Most business technology websites suck. And that’s not just my opinion. There’s plenty of independent research to support the premise that business technology buyers – actually buyers of any type of business-to-business product or service – are far less than thrilled with vendor sites.

Why? Usually because it’s too hard to find the content they want – if it even exists on the site at all.

Look at it this way. Business technology buyers are busy people. They have a job to do. They need information and they need it quickly. They’re not surfing the internet to be entertained (at least not right now). They’re trying to make an educated buying decision. Sounds a little like you and me, doesn’t it?

Most technology websites throw a bunch of graphic obstacles in the visitors’ path. This is commonly done in form of gigantic billboard images, distracting flash, busy complex pages and virtually unreadable type.

Ask yourself this question. Do you want a site that looks cool or do you want a site that helps convert traffic into customers?

If you have a professionally designed site, there’s a roughly 80% chance that your site looks better than it is.

Want proof? Take a look at your bounce rate. If it’s higher than 50%, you’ve got a problem – or a great chance to make a big improvement depending on how you want to look at it.

So, what can you do about it?

If you’re the do-it-yourself type, you’ll find plenty of actionable ideas in articles on this blog. Just search on “website”. If you want a fast solution with the help of experts, check out our Website Review and Recommendations program.

When was the last time you closed a deal where no one on the buying side had ever visited your website? I thought so.

It’s time to take your website much more seriously.

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Checklist for Creating More Effective Web Conversion Forms

By Susan Pascal Tatum | May 6, 2008

In a perfect world, there would be no need for web conversion forms – no need to request (demand?) those bits of contact information before allowing visitors to download information, request a demo, or take your software for a trial run.

In this perfect world, your website would be so fantastic, so perfectly aligned to your prospects’ needs, they would either buy immediately or keep coming back to your website on their own.

Okay let’s wake up. In the real world, technology marketers must do what they can to get visitors’ contact information in order to follow-up. Your success in getting this contact information is a balancing act between what you offer and what you ask – and how you go about asking it.

The web conversion form plays a vital role in how successfully you capture the information you need. Its elements are continuously tested and studied by smart marketers and other experts. There are no hard and fast rules about what works and what doesn’t work, but we do know a few things about conversion forms that will substantially increase your chances at gaining your prospects cooperation.

Use this checklist to guide you as you design – or improve – your web conversion forms.

Other factors also play a role in how well your web conversion form works. Layout, of course, and colors, style and size of the type, and use of images all contribute. But those are subjects for a different article.

For now, review the list above to evaluate your existing conversion forms and as a guide when you create new forms. You’ll find your conversion rate may just go up.

This article was inspired by a post on web conversion forms written by Melissa Burdon at Future Now. You can read her post here: 7 Tips for Boosting Web Form Conversions.

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What Technology Buyers Want to See on Your Website

By Susan Pascal Tatum | May 2, 2008

Yesterday I wrote about the 8 things that technology buyers don’t want to see on your website. Today’s article answers the obvious question. “Okay, so what DO they want to see?”

The oft-quoted (by me) Enquiro Research’s Business to Business Survey 2007 asked participants to rank website factors on a scale of 1 to 7 based on their importance in influencing the buying decision. Here are the factors in order of importance:

  1. Clear and easily found pricing information
  2. Product information in a straightforward text based format
  3. Downloadable product information
  4. Comparisons
  5. Information about the company’s approach to customer service
  6. Technology papers
  7. Case studies
  8. General information about the company
  9. Knowledge bases
  10. Downloadable whitepapers
  11. Multi-media presentations
  12. Online chat functions
  13. Webinars
  14. Podcasts

Similar research by MarketingSherpa as well as my own personal experience with our clients’ sites support these findings.

What message does this list have for technology marketers?

Focus first on providing extensive, clear product information in simple text format. Until you have that right, webinars, videos and podcasts and such are unlikely to do much good.

Rich media and so-called Web 2.0 tactics still fall way down the list in terms of affect on the buying decision. Should you avoid them? No. Just get the other stuff right first.

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What technology buyers don’t want to see on your website

By Susan Pascal Tatum | May 1, 2008

A couple of weeks ago I gave an online marketing presentation for SoftwareCEO University. One of the topics that drew the greatest interest was “8 Factors that Reduce Website Readability”. So, I’m printing the list here for those of you who missed the presentation.

  1. Graphics – especially a large billboard image at the top of your home page. Although (according to MarketingSherpa) 80% of business-to-business websites include a billboard image, visitors see it as a barrier to communication.
  2. Too many columns - generally more than three. Mutliple columns make a page more complex and complexity makes it more difficult for visitors to find their way around the page. Also, wider columns – up to a point – are easier to read. Research suggests that lines over 65 characters in width become harder to read.
  3. White or light type reversed out of a dark background. Black type on a white background is easier to read. Period. Even gray type on a white background – which seems to be very popular on blogs – makes reading more difficult.
  4. Type smaller than 12 points. This is especially true if your audience is over 40.
  5. Flash. Most technology marketers have stopped using spash entry pages (finally!). Web usability studies have repeatedly shown that visitors to business websites are extremely annoyed by these pages. More recently eye pattern studies have also shown that flash images on webpages themselves distract the visitor from reading the more important text. Interestingly it seems that a large percentage of the companies who use the billboard image mentioned in #1 compound the problem by including flash in the image!
  6. Too many colors. Too many different type fonts. Too much going on. Simplicity is good.
  7. Poor use of bullets and subheads. While business website visitors prefer simple text pages, they tend to scan or skim the pages rather than actually reading them. Bullet points and benefits-oriented heading ensure that your message is conveyed to the scanners.
  8. Hard-to-find navigation and links. Visitors want to move easily around your website. They don’t want to spend time looking for the next link and they will click on the most unlikely places on webpages. Make it easy for them to take the next step.

So, what do visitors want to see? Tune in tomorrow for that answer.

Meanwhile, what annoys you most about websites? Leave your comments here.

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Content Creation for Technology Marketing

By Susan Pascal Tatum | April 30, 2008

How much of your marketing investment do you spend creating content? Have you even thought of content creation as a marketing tactic?

It’s an interesting – and useful – way of looking at your marketing program. Publishers and web experts have long claimed that “content is king”. Yet marketers are just beginning to realize the significance of this. (And I blame the lack of prior awareness of the importance of content as the reason we all see so many horribly written websites, case studies and other marketing tools today).

Providing interesting, relevant content can make or break your website and your traffic or prospect conversion efforts.  In an ideal world, your content would be so fascinating and useful people would keep coming back to your website and marketing materials over and over again. Think about it. The prospect nurturing process would be infinitely easier.

If you’re interested in comparing yourself to other technology marketers, Junta42 (a custom publishing company) and BtoB magazine just finished a survey of content spending habits. They found that business-to-business marketers are spending nearly 30% of their marketing budgets on custom content. (29.4% to be exact).

Here’s where your fellow B2B marketers are spending money developing content (the percentages refer to the ratio of marketers using these tactics):

One thing that disturbs me about these findings is the absence of website pages themselves. Anyone who knows me knows I believe that websites are the hub of any good technology marketing program. Why are marketers not budgeting for content development?

Granted, most whitepapers, case studies, webinars and online videos will wind up on the website. And blog content ties in there as well. Microsites and online portals I assume are not the company’s main website.

So, where the heck is web page content coming from? Maybe it’s more a fault of the study than it is a fault of b2b marketers. I hope so. If your web page content is bad, who’s going to want to sit through your webinar?

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Searching for C-Level Executives

By Susan Pascal Tatum | April 29, 2008

Do C-Level executives use search engines?

Over the last couple of days I’ve found myself in friendly disagreement with two different new clients who were positive that C-Level execs are above online searching. That makes me think that maybe a lot of software execs think other execs don’t search and it made me want to find the research to support my position.

So I went searching for some numbers – online, of course.

The most prominent study I could find was conducted by Forbes.com way back in 2003. Called “A Day in the Life of CEOs Online”, this was supposed to be an annual study but I couldn’t find anything more recent than 2003. However, I think the findings are still worth noting.

While taking a look at “web usage of C-Level Executives and Senior Managers of Enterprise Level companies”, Forbes found that:

A more recent study conducted by Doremus and the Financial Times in October 2007 found that although the internet is playing an increasingly important role in executive buying decisions, 59% of executives said they trust print over online sources of information, and 64% said they pay more attention to print ads than online ads.

To answer the original question, Do C-Level executives use search engines?
Of course they do.

To answer a more important question: Is search the best way for a technology marketer to reach a C-Level executive? Probably not.

However, I can think of very few business technology purchases that truly involve only C-Level executives. If you’re one of those, stay away from search marketing.

Usually though there are users, assistants, and IT support staff also involved. These are the people who will be searching for you.

So, what do you think? What are the best ways to reach C-Level executives? Has anyone had a success in searching for C-Level buyers?

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Organize PPC Keywords into Tighter Ad Groups for Enhanced Results.

By Susan Pascal Tatum | April 23, 2008

Lately I’ve been looking at many technology pay-per-click campaigns – both as part of our PPC Management service and our Marketing Coaching program. Here’s one of the first recommendations I almost always find myself making:

Take a closer look at your ad groups – you probably need to reorganize them.

Ad Groups, for those of you who don’t know, is the way Google lets you cluster similar keyword phrases to separate them from non-similar keyword phrases. They’re called “ad groups” because the same ads are used for each keyword phrase in the group. Other major search engines let you do the same thing.

If you don’t know too much about how pay-per-click advertising works, it makes sense to cluster keywords phrases according to the main category word(s) used.

For example, in our marketing business it makes sense to arrange keywords in groups according to topic such as websites, pay per click advertising, search engine optimization, technology marketing and so on.

A software company with a contract management product would likely arrange keywords in groups such as contract management, business proposals, supplier management, etc.

This is a reasonable place to start. But it’s not enough because it doesn’t take into account where the searcher is in the buying process and this has a huge affect on what specifically the searcher is looking for, which in turn affects what kind of ad and landing page will appeal to him or her.

Let’s go back to my Tatum Marketing example. An ad group called “PPC” could include a wide range of keyword phrases from just plain “ppc” to “ppc consultant” to “how do I manage my PPC program”. If I want to reach people searching on each of these keywords I can’t reasonably do it with the same ad.

Why?

Because the person searching for “ppc” is very early in the buying process – if he or she is even a prospect at all. This person is probably looking for a definition. He or she is not going to be interested in clicking on an ad about PPC management services. (Note: it’s unlikely that I would include such a broad term as “ppc” in our pay per click campaign. I’m just using it here as an example).

The person who searches for “ppc consultant”, on the other hand, might very well be interested in finding out about our PPC Management Services. And the person who types in “how do I manage my PPC program” has made it clear that he or she is a do-it-yourselfer and would probably be more interested in a PPC management product.

This is another example of the importance of understanding the intent of the click, which I wrote about a couple of months ago.

A successful PPC ad program requires that you make your keyword groupings more granular than most technology marketers (even PPC agencies) seem to understand. Keep dividing your ad groups until you have shorter lists of tightly related keyword phrases, offer ads and landing pages geared to the people searching for these phrases, and you’ll see your ppc results soar.

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Search Marketing for Prospects and Clients

By Susan Pascal Tatum | April 22, 2008

We talk a lot about how critical it is for technology marketers to be highly visible online. But is there a difference in being visible to people who know you and people who don’t?
 
The answer is “yes” – mostly because these people use different search terms to find you.
Your clients and others who know you are very specific with their keywords. They are the ones who search for your company name, your product name and maybe a very specific product description. They know what they’re looking for; they just need a little help getting to your website.

Prospects on the other hand use broader terms because they don’t know about you yet. They use keyword phrases that tend to describe a category or a problem.

To give you an example, in our business, clients and people who know us – or know of us — tend to use search terms like “Tatum Marketing” and “Susan Pascal Tatum”. Those who haven’t met us yet are more likely to find us by searching on “software website design” or “pay per click” or “technology marketing consultant”.

Why should you care about this?

For one thing, the use of these different types of keywords gives you a clear sign of where the visitor is in the buying process and therefore a good idea of what kind of information they’re looking for.  At minimum, you should be organizing these keywords into separate ad groups in your pay-per-click advertising program.

But Avinash Kaushik, author of “Web Analytics - An Hour a Day”, frequent speaker and analytics evangelist for Google, takes it one step further. In a recently posted article on his blog, Occam’s Razor, Kaushik proposes that brand-type keywords are best used for search engine optimization (SEO) while category keywords are the best place to focus your paid search dollars.

Actually, I’m over-simplifying a little. Kaushik writes in detail (2200+ words) about the “head” and “long tail” of your keyword phrases. Since most of you don’t have time to read a 2200+ word document I’ll summarize it for you here.
 Kaushik defines the “long tail” and its application to search marketing as “lots of key phrases [that] individually account for little traffic by themselves but collectively all those key phrases often could account for a huge amount of traffic”.

He suggests that you plot the keywords people are using to find your website. (This information is generally easily found in your web analytics report.) You’ll find that a small number of keywords – usually around 10 – account for most of your visits. This is the “head” of your keywords list and a great place to focus SEO efforts.

The rest of the keywords provide visitors in much smaller numbers and these form the “long tail” of your keywords.

If you’re like most technology marketers, you’ll find that your “head” consists mostly of brand-type keywords – the ones your customers use to find you. And your “long tail” is made up mostly of category words – the ones your prospects use to find you. This is the best place to focus your PPC dollars.

Makes sense to me. How about you?

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