Anatomy of a Landing Page: Design Elements Exposed

Landing pages have become an important part of the marketer’s toolbox. To create effective landing pages, you should understand the anatomy of a landing page and it should be part of your landing page and optimization framework. After optimizing thousands of landing pages over the years, Bryan Eisenberg wants to offer this framework for understanding the 10 key elements of a landing page.

Not all of … [ Read more ]

Planning a Link Bait Strategy

Six steps to getting Web site visitors to take your link bait and how to hold on to them.

My Simple Organization Maturity Model

Where is your organization in developing your digital marketing measurement and optimization capabilities? A simple model points you in the right direction.

Ten Big Questions Every CMO Must Ask

The advent of digital and social media has introduced important new questions to ask, evaluate, and ask again. Here are 10 to consider.

Conversion Rate Optimization, Upside Down

Way too many conversion rate optimization projects are coming up empty. Companies feel they work too hard for too little return. Most conversion rate optimizations efforts are focused on pages and elements but don’t focus on the entire persuasion scenario. Perhaps and understanding of The Hierarchy of Optimization can help.

Four Actionable KPIs You Don’t Know About

Typically, site analysis must be customized to individual marketing objectives. But there are a few common key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be applied across the board. Here are four KPIs every marketer or site owner can leverage to identify opportunities and improve results. Best part is, these are easy ratios to create using any Web analytics tool and Microsoft Excel.

How to Choose a Web Analytics Solution

Clarifying the issues involved in managing and measuring Web analytics is critical to e-business success. My goal isn’t to recommend one product or another. I want to arm you with the right questions so you can make up your own minds.

The four basic factors we use to evaluate the best provider follow, with a little added detail. They’ll help you determine which is the solution … [ Read more ]

Beginner’s Guide to Segmentation Analysis

Knowing what your audience is doing on your Web site is good. Knowing a thing or two about your visitors so you can classify them into segments is better. And treating different segments differently with specialized messaging is priceless (with apologies to that credit card company).

Getting to “priceless” takes audience segmentation analysis. In simple terms, it helps optimize site performance by customizing the experience for … [ Read more ]

Len Ellis

Designed by and for the smart, the Internet appears to be a neutral space, but its three organizing principles — egalitarianism, elitism, and efficiency — are organized in such a way that the smart get even smarter.

Beyond Price/Position: The SEM Strategy Loop

Chances are, you’ve implemented a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign strategy. That often means a position/price-based strategy on Overture and a price-based strategy on Google (perhaps a copy strategy, to keep CTR high). You concentrate on position and price to drive visibility and traffic. Though visibility and click volume are good, the strategy has flaws. Big flaws.

Price/position strategies ignore results and are static. Inefficiencies … [ Read more ]

Building Successful Brands on the Web

“To promote a brand is to promote mood, color, and feeling. This must occur quickly and repeatedly. The short TV-spot format framed a whole way of promoting a brand. Many marketers and advertisers think in short, intense bursts. It’s about that wonderful catch phrase, that compelling image.

Successful Web brands must take a very different approach, as Google (and before it, Yahoo!) illustrates. A Web brand … [ Read more ]

Gerry McGovern

Online, brand with words. Brand with accurate, well-written, up-to-date content. Brand with classification. Brand with navigation. Brand with the search process. Brand with the purchase process.

Meeting the Needs of Traditional Advertisers

“According to a recently published study by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the Internet currently accounts for only about 1.5 percent of all marketing money spent by advertisers. The top six advertisers spend less than 1 percent of their budgets for online ads, whereas Americans spend approximately 12 percent of their media time online.

The big question is why. Looking for an answer, I hosted “What … [ Read more ]