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January’s Best: Favorites in Analytics, Conversion, and Copywriting

by Ritika Puri 1 02/01/2014

The first month of the year has come and gone. Yikes!
Is anybody else wishing that time would just slow down so we could fully embrace life’s wonderful moments? Pretty soon, the holidays are going to happen all over again.
You deserve a break to reflect on all the great things you accomplished this month, so bring out your iPad and take a breather with these 12 amazing blog posts.
Here are, in this marketer’s opinion, January’s best conversion, analytics, and copywriting articles (it’s been an awesome month edition).

Conversion Optimization

1. 7 Tips for Building a Better Web Funnel
Post by: WiderFunnel’s Chris Goward via Clarity
Conversion optimization requires constant testing and iteration. And the best way to get started is to, well, start! This blog post walks readers through a marketing framework that is powerful for any  business, whether you’re part of a startup or enterprise team.
2. 14 Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Terms You Need to Know
Post by: Cate Seago via Optimizely
Jargon can be frustrating and confusing. If you find yourself wondering ‘what the heck it all means,’ don’t worry. You’re not alone. This blog post will give you the crash course you need to learn the basics of CRO.
3. 5 Mistakes Brands Make Selling Direct-to-Consumer
Post by: Linda Bustos via GetElastic
Brands and manufacturers strive to build close relationships with their customers. When executed correctly, this sales channel can evolve into a powerful revenue stream. This post walks through best practices as well as mistakes to avoid.
 4. Five Landing Page Videos that Will Make You Jealous
Post by: Me (Shameless Self Plug) via Unbounce
Online videos are the internet’s gift to the world—and are invaluable to your brand’s conversion optimization strategy. If you’re wondering where to get started, look no further than this roundup for inspiration.

Analytics

5. The Future of Mobile Analytics: What Does the Crock Pot Say?
Post by: Curtis Silver via the Adknowledge blog
“The landscape of mobile advertising and mobile analytics is changing at a quickened pace. Is your business armed with the knowledge and intuition to keep up?” If your answer is yes, it isn’t good enough. You need to be 10 steps ahead.
6. 12 Signs to Identify a Data Driven Culture
Post by: Avinash Kaushnik via Ocaam’s Razor
Numbers are only half of the analytics equation. The other half? It’s your people. This blog post walks you through the nuts and bolts of building a data-driven culture.
7. Understanding the Limits of Google Analytics
Post by: Caleb Whitemore via Analytics Pros
Google Analytics is the more powerful web analytics tool on the planet. What can’t you do? More than you may realize. This blog post explains why.
8. How to Implement Google Analytics Events in Google Tag Manager
Post by: Eric Fettman via KISSmetrics
Google Tag Manager is designed to minimize your dependency on web developers. This video makes the process as easy as possible.

Copywriting

9. 5 Ways to Offer Awesome Content Without Pulling Your Hair Out
Post by: Alexis Grant via Clarity
Does the thought of writing another blog post make you want to hit your head against your keyboard? Don’t let frustration win. Read this blog post instead.
10. The 29 Best Content Marketing Posts of All Time
Post by: Renee Warren via Onboardly
Is it cheating if I link to a blog post with 29 more content links? Be prepared for hours and hours of education.
11. Content Partnerships Fuel Startup Growth
Post by: Kate Gardiner via Contently
Distribution is the heart of content marketing. Startups can amplify their growth by teaming up with fellow content creators. This blog post explains how.
12. 16 Rules to Make Your Emails Rock
Post by: Scott Martin via CrazyEgg
It’s an understatement to say that email is a powerful marketing channel. These 16 rules will help your brand stand out from the endless amounts of spam that consumers face.
You pick #13. What was your favorite read this January?

Read other Crazy Egg posts by Ritika Puri.

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• September’s Best: A Dozen Fresh Perspectives on Analytics, Conversions, and Copywriting
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• October’s Best: A Dozen Fresh Perspectives on Conversions, Analytics, and Copywriting
• April’s Best: A Dozen Fresh Perspectives on Analytics, Conversion, and Copywriting

About Ritika Puri

Ritika Puri is a San Francisco-based blogger who writes about trends in business, internet culture, and marketing. She’s inspired by the intersection between technology, entrepreneurship, and sociology. By day, she works for a large online media company, and after-hours, she runs her writing consulting business, UserGrasp.

Increasing Revenue by Decreasing Bounce Rate

Increasing Revenue by Decreasing Bounce Rate

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Just the sound of it - bounce rate - tells you most of what you need to know about this website statistic. Essentially, people are finding your website, only to bounce right back off.

There are differing interpretations of bounce rate. In an article named A Web Analytics Primer - What Does It All Mean?, Jordan Louis defines it as follows: "The percentage of visitors who have accessed a website, loaded only one page, and then left.")

Each page on your site will have a bounce rate and an exit rate. The difference is that when people bounce, they enter through a page and leave through the same page without having visited any other pages. Exit rate measures the percentage of departures from that page, even if the visitor entered the website from a different site and clicked on other pages prior to leaving; they just happened to exit from that particular page.

For example, say someone finds your site's homepage, looks around a few seconds, but clicks away to another website; that's a bounce. But if someone else finds your homepage, clicks on your "About Us" page, and then clicks back to your homepage before exiting, that's not a bounce, it's just an exit.

Bounce rate is the single greatest Web Metric for measuring the quality of your content, accuracy of your messaging, and effectiveness of your value proposition. If someone won't even take two seconds to click on one of your links, something is wrong with your message. Your content could either be confusing, misleading, or untargeted, meaning the person is wasting time by staying on your site - something Web users have little patience for.

To show you how important bounce rate is in terms of revenue, let's take two websites selling the same thing. They get the same number of visitors and have the same conversion rate. The only differentiator is the bounce rate.

The typical bounce rate is between 50 and 60 percent. Let's say Site A has a bounce rate of 60 percent. That means that for every 1,000 visitors, only 400 of them are sticking around to see what the site has to offer. Typical conversion rates are between 2 and 4 percent, so of those 400 visitors, between 8 and 16 people will make some kind of purchase. If Site A's average purchase price is $500, the business is generating $4,000 to $8,000 every month in revenue opportunity.

A quick note before we move on: If you compare these typical conversion rates with your own Google Analytics data and you're not seeing between 2 and 4 percent or you're on the low end of that range, you need to take a hard look at your value proposition.

Now, on with our example: Avinash Kaushik, the Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google and a friend of mine, says you should have a goal of a 30 percent bounce rate. Let's say Site B has this 30 percent bounce rate, meaning it retains 700 of 1,000 visitors. Keeping in mind the 2 to 4 percent conversion rate, Site B boasts a revenue opportunity between $7,000 and $14,000. That's a whopping 42 percent increase in revenue! Over the course of a year, that translates to up to $180,000 from simply reducing bounce rate.

In working with clients, we focus on three main areas that impact this vital Metric.

1. Complete Our XYZ Exercise

I learned this message-targeting exercise from my friend and mentor, Darren Hardy, publisher of SUCCESS Magazine and member of our Predictive ROI board of advisors. Ask yourself what you're uniquely qualified to provide and who you're providing it for. Fill in the blanks of this XYZ statement: We do ____(x)_____ for _______(y)______ so they can ______(z)_____. To help visitors immediately self-select as prospects, post this statement on the left side of your homepage above the fold. (People read left to right, and only about 10 percent of visitors will read below the fold.)

2. Eliminate Visual Clutter

Start with your homepage and limit the images, graphics, copy, links, and offers to three main items. Do the same with all content pages. A recent Harvard Business Review article reported that more choices for consumers led to inaction. Keep all graphics and copy related to the main goal of that particular page.

3. Create A Clear Call To Action

Each page should show the visitor what to do next, such as Download Free eBook, Sign Up For The Newsletter, or Buy Now. Including steps in the process (Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, etc.) also makes the visitor feel safe and assisted.

By following these three simple steps, you can reduce your bounce rate by 20 percent or more, meaning more visitors will find your content and site valuable. After that, you'll only have to convince them to stick around long enough to buy.

Submitted by Stephen Woessner on June 2013

About Stephen Woessner

Stephen Woessner is a digital marketing professional, bestselling author, speaker, and educator. He is the founder and president of Predictive ROI, whose XYZ statement is “We do digital marketing via our patent-pending predictive ROI method for $1- to $30-million-a-year companies so they see a 200 to 500 percent return on investment in 12 months — guaranteed or it’s free.” To learn more about Woessner’s patent-pending process for increasing site traffic, visit StephenWoessner.com.