It is common for marketing professionals to confuse the two strategies of conversions and branding in their Internet marketing and Website design efforts. There are very clear differences between the two. Branding is the thought that you leave in the minds of your target market and how you position yourself different from competitors. Conversions are the act and process of generating a lead or direct sale from your Website. As a rule of thumb, larger and well-established businesses are more concerned with branding, or gaining market share through perception on the Web, think Coke and Pepsi, whereas the smaller to medium sized firms are more concerned with getting leads or direct sales.
When smaller firms heavily brand their business online with high-end graphics and design elements, they run the major risk of loosing valuable conversions. When larger firms focus too much on generating conversion on their Website, they run the risk of loosing market share due to weak branding.
The key lesson to learn for the vast majority of companies on the Web is this: Do not let branding efforts get in the way of conversions.
Tom
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September 26th, 2006
Converting web visitors to customers or potential customers is a key function of many web sites. This podcast examines tips and tricks for conversions.
Keys
- For e-commerce sites, don’t let shipping be a barrier to purchasing.
- Make sure that you’re clear on the goals of your site: selling, getting leads, providing information.
- Be sure there are lots of ways for users to convert using on-page forms.
- On lead generation pages, pay careful attention to the quality of your offer. Make sure you offer something users will really want and that they can’t get on the site. Add value and offer something that solves a user’s problems.
- Take the time to get the Better Business logo and the Hacker Safe logos on your site.
- Keep forms simple! Long lead-capture forms alienate users.
Action Plan
- Determine what type of conversion you’re going after and set a target
- Develop a tracking system for ROI
- Do usability testing
- Modify, test, everything!
- Make sure you have good analytics
- Once you’ve maxed conversion rates, go for more traffic
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September 25th, 2006
Google, Yahoo, MSN currently account for 83% of search traffic. Listen to this podcast for tips on getting found in the organic (free) search engine listings.
Resources
Action Plan
- Create great content that your users will want to read! Don’t be a search engine spammer.
- Carefully prepare a keyword list relevant to your site
- Be sure to have a conversion strategy in place when users do land on your site
- Create a program for getting other sites to link to your site, and be sure they do so using your key words
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September 1st, 2006
