Join Lori Druen and Scott Million as they discuss how to define conversion points based on client goals, and how to develop campaigns aimed at hitting those defined conversion points.

 LeapCast 11.19.2008: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This quarter, we’re talking a lot about conversion.  Landing pages are one invaluable tool for improving conversion rate, but within each landing page you need to determine the best messaging, layout, and calls to action to optimize conversions.  This determination is made by testing, testing, and more testing.

There are two main options for testing: A/B split and Multivariate.  A/B split testing allows you to test two versions of a single element on a page (like two different images).  While extremely effective, A/B split testing can require a significant amount of time to optimize all elements of a page (since you can only look at one element at a time).  Unlike traditional A/B split testing, multivariate testing allows for simultaneous testing of many varied elements within a landing page.  This can provide for much faster optimization by analyzing the best combination.

Multivariate testing can be a significant undertaking.  Specialized software is required to track the results of all of the variations and serve the right mix of content to determine the best performing.  In addition to the software, page coding becomes more involved, as pages need to be integrated with the software and all variations of content need to be populated.

Despite the requirements and challenges, the use of multivariate testing is on the rise for two reasons: it works, and it works faster.  There is simply no faster or more effective way of optimizing landing pages for the best results.

Customer expectations are something my team deals with on a daily basis.  Client Services works hard to make sure our clients have their needs met and are thrilled with their experience doing business with LeapFrog Interactive.

Keeping customers happy is something all companies obviously want to do but for those brands in the online marketplace, customer satisfaction may require some new ways of thinking.

For example, some companies have been hesitant to commit any of their advertising budgets behind social media.  However, a recent study has found that 60% of Americans use social media, and of these users, 93% believe a company should have some sort of social-media presence and 85% believe that companies should utilize social media as a means to interact with their clients.

For any brand, big or small, that’s a large number of potential customers that expect your company will have some form of social media they can use to communicate with you.  So if you haven’t committed to social media, the time might have come when the expectations of your customers may force you to reconsider your thinking.

Luckily, social media isn’t as scary as it might seem.  It’s really just talking with your customers in a conversational manner in the space where they are the most comfortable.  It can be as simple as a blog on your website, commenting on questions that are posted throughout offsite blogs and/or more involved efforts like a full blown social media page.

The key to social media is understanding how to communicate appropriately with your customers.  In order to satisfy the expectations of that large percentage of online users, successful social media involves being able to provide good old-fashioned friendly, reliable and respectful customer service.  So while the wrapping may be different, inside the ingredients for both social media and customer service are still basically the same—listening to and helping out your customers.

A Content Management System (CMS) can be a valuable resource for a brand to have at its disposal when management of its website becomes a complicated prospect.  However, there is a time and place to invest in one.  Some brands may not have websites large or complicated enough to warrant the control that a CMS provides.  How can you determine if it’s the right time for your company to move forward and invest in a CMS?

Here are a few signs that you’re ready for a CMS.

•    Your website has grown to the point where it has a large number pages and the content on these pages is frequently updated.
•    Your website is growing steadily with the addition of large volumes of new content.
•    Your marketing team owns the website but content changes must be requested through your IT department, which has proven to be a challenge in the past.
•    Your site is very large, and its many different sections are owned by many different groups within your organization.  As a result, each of these sections has its own look and feel.  Rather than seeming as if it was created by several different companies, you want your website to have a unified appearance and have all of its sections share the same branding.
•    Your website’s administration is being handled by several people, each making changes to only parts of the site rather than the website as a whole.

If any of these scenarios apply to you, it may be time to make room in your budget for a CMS.

The days of shiny destination portals and product sites as all-encompassing consumer conversion tools are over.  It is no longer enough that a destination page features a slick presentation; a de-rigueur over-designed marquee that promotes your product.  Sensitivity in design is necessary now that users have become more familiar with website use, functionality, and purpose and expect them to provide more than just an advertising pitch.  To get consumers to value the site and perform any conversions you intend them to do, your site needs to offer features such as toolsets and other engagement points that are useful and enticing enough for repeat visits for information as well as for functional tasks which yield information and useful results.

A good toolset must involve something that the consumer can take advantage of without actually purchasing the brand’s product to do so.  Often these users are seeking information beyond the products themselves.  Something as simple as a clearly marked button, a module that enables them to forward information via e-mail to friends or facilitates a download of information, or sample applications can help make consumers view a brand’s site as a useful resource.

Use of e-mail features and PDFs, in fact, provides an inexpensive, clever, appealing, and efficient means to present information in addition to what the website itself offers.  They also make it apparent to users that the site is doing more than merely promoting the brand and the services that surround it – that the brand is larger than the momentary product pitch.

It’s important that the site’s design blows out the products and services the user can take advantage of without actually making a purchase because sites that offer these kinds of features get a lot more repeat traffic and develop a consumer fan base more likely to convert when presented with the opportunity. The conversion opportunity, in turn, often presents itself as the toolsets reveal a further need or desire.

Another element to include is useful aspect or component of Social Media.  For example, the Depends undergarment site offers a user blog.  This may not seem like an obvious choice for the brand but caregivers use this forum to share information about Depends as well as their own experiences using the products, which helps reinforce the value of the Depends brand as a whole.  The Depends site does promote its product line but the blog acts as an additional means for users to gain access to information that is of value to them.

The Depends website is an excellent example of a site that offers more that just a slickly designed product promotion geared to make a sales pitch.  It provides value and helps establish the Depends brand in a favorable light with its consumer base.  Thanks to the blog, the Depends site generates a lot of traffic because it is seen as a valuable and trusted resource to its consumer base by offering them more than just advertising.

Consumers that have trust in a brand are more likely to take advantage of an offer the brand presents them and convert.  Building this trust depends on a site design that has substance rather than just surface slickness.  Online consumers are now smarter and expect more than mere product pitch from their websites.  They are coming to a brand’s site for information related to its product, and that isn’t just the type that comes in the form of an online brochure.  A brand with a site that is designed to provide convenient access to valuable information will develop both a better reputation with its target consumer base and the trust that’s needed to get these consumers over the conversion hump.

One of the toughest challenges when managing a data center is keeping everything up and running in the face of a disaster.  Our clients depend upon us to keep their brand online and their back end operations working smoothly, regardless of the circumstances.
About a month ago, Hurricane Ike brought hurricane force winds to Louisville, leaving thousands of homes and businesses without power and an indefinite power outage to the home of our primary data center. This was the first major test of our emergency plan, and I am happy to announce we passed with flying colors.

Power was maintained to the data center thanks to battery backup that supports 4 to 6 hours of power outage.  During that window, our plan went into effect, and our generators were fueled and put into action.

While I would love to say our plan was perfect, no untested plan ever is.  One thing we had not anticipated was a fuel shortage created by such a large number of gas stations that were without power.  My fellow LeapFrog staff jumped to action and scoured the city to stock up a supply of fuel that would last us through the crisis.

The second challenge was the impact of the loss of non-essential power.  The lack of main office lighting, air conditioning, and minimal power to the offices (generator power was dedicated to keeping the data center up and running) made the environment an impossible one for us to have full staff working on location.  We were able to overcome this challenge with the assistance of friends who provided us with locations to stage temporary offices for our production staff.  With the assistance of VPN (virtual private networks), we were able to function as if we were all in the same office, even while we were spread across town.

In total, our primary data center was without power for five days.  As a precaution, however, we kept the generators running for another full day to allow the battery backup to gain a full day of charge.

While it required all my staff to work almost 24/7 (we did take short naps in shifts), we were able to keep all client services running through the impact of the worst storm in 30 years.  This success, however, has not kept us from learning lessons that will make us even more prepared for emergencies in the future.

The Internet is filled with all sorts of threats to a brand’s network security.  Every day, hackers come up with newer and more sophisticated ways to launch attacks against inadequately protected networks.  Some brands have seen and reacted to this threat but a considerable number of companies have still not properly protected their networks from the threat of Web-based security attacks.

For whatever reason, these companies have not set aside the budget to allow for their security systems to be able to provide the protection their network needs.  This is basically like not installing alarms and locks on your business.  There probably isn’t a brand out there that would leave their offices so unprotected.  So why do some of them leave their virtual offices so vulnerable?

These vulnerable brands need to view the cost of network security as another cost of doing business.  Generally speaking, the cost of security packages that can protect a brand’s network won’t break its budget, even costing less than it does to buy all those locks and alarms.

A proper investment in network security can enable a brand to benefit from the protection provided by these security services.  One of these security measures is a good firewall.  A firewall is by far the most important security investment a brand can make.  Firewalls help protect the brand’s network from any unauthorized access.  For the corporate environment, it’s better to go with a hardware firewall than a software one because a hardware firewall can provide blanket protection for every single machine on a brand’s network.  Software firewalls only protect the PC they’re installed on.

Other security investments a brand needs to make to help keep its network safe include:
•    Anti-virus protection to protect the brand’s network from being infected by any sort of malicious software that can bring it down
•    Anti-spam protection to keep the brand’s system free from the costly clutter and system slowing burden of unsolicited e-mails
•    Regularly scheduled security scans and testing of its network to make sure that network security is still up to date and able to combat the newest threats

It’s too risky for your brand to leave its network improperly protected.  A security breach can result in a financial hit far more budget-breaking than any investment in a solid, reliable, network security package would be.  Hackers shouldn’t be able to just walk in and have their way with your brand’s network.  Invest smart and get your network secure.

I was asked recently what I thought had made the most impact this year on website design. For me, I think the top trend of 2008 so far has been the strong swing from the use of table based coding to full CSS coding for building websites. The increased use of CSS has enabled the creation of designs that can be manipulated quickly and easily over an entire website. Thanks to CSS, web builders now have the ability to switch out an entire design of a website for an entirely new one at a previously unheard of speed.

The true power that CSS can give designers is illustrated by CSS Zen Garden, a website that posts a challenge to its visitors to use its code to create a completely different design for the site. The wide range of user created spins on the website’s design featured on CSS Zen Garden provides a perfect set of examples illustrating the diversity that is possible when designers use CSS. From just the set of code used for CSS Zen Garden, over 200 unique websites have been created.

As the popularity of CSS coding takes hold and its use becomes the norm, brands will be able to have their websites keep their content intact while receiving a full design makeover much more rapidly than ever before. Sites may still need to develop fresh content over time but thanks to CSS coding, making these sites look brand new will not be the time-consuming task that it once was.

For most brands, at least some benefit can be found in every marketing channel. This is especially true of interactive marketing, where the channels represent every possible demographic and interest. The vast majority of marketers have realized that interactive is an essential component of their marketing strategy, but finding the right channels is still challenging for many.

There are two issues I have noticed that are typically responsible for this challenge:

1. Interactive channels are always changing

With the rapid change in interactive technologies, it’s no surprise that anyone not solely focused on interactive marketing has trouble keeping up. Even for those who do have a focus, it is simply not possible for one person to keep up with the changes in all interactive channels.

2. Channels are looked at independently

When brands fail to integrate their interactive marketing channels (with both online and offline efforts) they lose a significant amount of value. Interactive channels enhance each other, providing greater efficiency, awareness, and conversion. A significant online presence can also ensure the greatest return from awareness created offline.

For both of these challenges there is a simple solution: engage your interactive agency earlier in the process. While we are happy to execute a specific campaign or implement a single program for our clients, we can provide the greatest value when our expertise is brought in during the strategy and planning phases.

Join Daniel Knapp and Scott Million as they discuss planning for 2009, how to take a strategic approach to budget, and considerations to keep in mind.

 LeapCast 08.08.2008: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download