If you are spending money on Search Engine Marketing (SEM)/ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and focused on traffic targets rather than conversion rates – STOP.

Put that cart back behind the horse. Instead of buying the keywords for a specific search term and sending traffic to a page with low conversion rates, drive traffic to valuable content with higher conversion rates.

How? By experimenting. Work your content until it works.

Experiment with user experiences

Maximizing user retention and action means testing your content. Be ready and able to make adjustments.

Tools like Google Website Optimizer can help you measure content effectiveness. Through A/B and multivariate testing, you can see the higher-quality content rise to the top.

Gone are the days when you could expect to drive hordes of traffic to a landing page and hope that something would happen. “Blind faith” is not only ineffective, it actually can result in a user experience that damages your brand.

Open your eyes and get involved with your content. Get your hands dirty. Stop suffering from analysis paralysis. Stop wasting time discussing what you think will work and allow your customers to show you what works.

Pull, don’t push

We find in our testing that simple things like images and headlines can drastically change the conversion rates on a specific page. As you begin to pull in more engaged users with more engaging content, you can really capitalize on the nuances.

Increasingly, this will allow the quality of your content to drive the monetary value of your content.

Page e-valuation

When you’re optimizing your conversion rate, try giving each page – or better yet, each piece of content (video, podcast, blog) – a numeric monetary value.

For example, in our Breville case study, we showcased how content can increase conversion rates. Let’s say the price of an espresso machine is $100. If Page A sells 5 espresso machines and Video B sells 20 espresso machines, then Page A is worth $500 and Video B is worth $2000.

This helps you to visualize what is working and will suggest ways to replicate and build on your successes.

If that doesn’t help, think of your content portfolio as a giant rolling snowball avalanche. You want to keep increasing the ball (converting) so it gains momentum (engagement), building upon itself until it knocks over the decrepit old ski-lodge (your competition).

No matter how you look at it, if you want sales to increase, you have to get rolling with content experimentation.

Takeaway

Increase your conversion rates by experimenting with and testing your content. Continually adjust to what works with your audience.

My question to you

What tools do you use to experiment and measure your content?

Tippingpoint Labs is a digital content creation shop founded in 2002.

The art of storytelling has been around since the dawn of humankind for good reason – people love to be engaged and entertained.  The essence of good content often falls back on a good story.

You can tell a good story if it ….

…is emotional.
If you want to produce an effective video or television commercial or an email campaign, make sure it’s emotional. You’ve got to make your audience feel something. Make them feel happy, excited, sad, or make them giggle. If it’s emotional it’s memorable.

… has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
I don’t care how short your TV spot is, or how small your banner ad is, if you don’t have a logical beginning, middle, and end to your story, it’s not a story! To connect with your material, your audience must feel a catharsis. They must feel like they can connect with your message. They can’t connect if they don’t understand the story.

… is simple.
Many of our clients are possessed with the desire to over-complicate their stories or their customers’ stories. Keep it simple. Leave out all the technical mumbo jumbo that complicates the story. Stick to the emotional aspects that resonate with your audience.

… is memorable.
Chances are, if you tell a simple, well-formed, emotional story, it will be memorable. But make sure that it is. Audiences love to retell a good story, and if you’ve created a memorable story, you’re enabling your audience to pass it along.

… is told in their words.
Don’t over-script your talent, or over-write your copy. Let them tell the story the way they want to tell it. The more honest and unrehearsed your talent is, the more powerful and emotional your story can be.

So, next time you’re working on a video production or some new blog content, remember you’re telling a story. The outcome will be more successful, more memorable, and more emotional than you thought possible.

Tipping Point Labs is a digital content creation shop founded in 2002.

The Nieman Marcus of the high end sites is Danilo Black, which designs and produces digital magazines. A co-venture of eminent designers Eduardo Danilo Ruiz of Monterrey, Mexico, and Roger Black of New York, Danilo Black has introduced “dynamic media” for a handful of publications. The showcase is FLYP (pronounced “flip”), which dazzles readers with video, photography, and good writing in an array of subject areas. FLYP has been called the LOOK magazine of the Internet.

FLYP is reportedly put out by fewer than 20 people. They probably could afford to hire more, but according to Danilo Black, the magic in dynamic media is to conceptualize the story concurrently in words and pictures. Not that many people have those skills, although the best print designers have advocated the approach for years. If only more publishers had listened to them, we might see a future for print media.

But no matter. Effective storytelling can be achieved with simple animation and an engaging narrator. Consider The Story of Stuff, narrated by Annie Leonard, the highly effective polemic against consumerism that was funded by the Tides Foundation and The Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption. Deceptively simple in execution, it tells a compelling story from both an historical and an environmental perspective.

Wouldn’t it be great to see more storytelling like you see in FLYP and The Story of Stuff? Publishers will need to figure out how to put together teams of terrific storytellers and manage them like film production companies. But now, at least, we have paradigms.

• short (because people don’t read much online);
• rich in information scent, clearly summarizing the target article;
• front-loaded with the most important keywords (because users often scan only the beginning of list items);
• understandable out of context (because headlines often appear without articles, as in search engine results); and
• predictable, so users know whether they’ll like the full article before they click (because people don’t return to sites that promise more than they deliver).

He identifies the BBC’s online news page as a consistent winner, with headlines like these from “Other Top Stories”:

Nielsen points out that the average headline consumes a mere 5 words and 34 characters. “The amount of meaning they squeezed into this brief space is incredible,” he says. “Every word works hard for its living.”

To learn how well readers comprehend what they’re scanning, Nielsen and his colleagues tested links from 20 websites representing a wide range of sectors: business-to-business, e-commerce, financial institutions, government, health care, and technology. Users were shown the first 11 characters of each link and asked to predict what they’d find if they clicked on it. They were also shown each truncated link mixed into a list of ten and asked to pick the one that would get them some piece of requested information. For example, one of the ten links led to Ann Taylor’s e-commerce site and users were asked to “purchase an Ann Taylor gift certificate.”

The best links squeezed “user- and action-oriented terms” into those all-important first 11 characters. The Ann Taylor link scored the best in the study because its full link text was “Gift Cards & E-Gift Certificates”-making the first 11 characters “Gift Cards .” Successful links also:

• Used plain language
• Used specific terminology
• Followed conventions for naming common features

Unsuccessful links pushed their most important information to the end. The worst-scoring link, for example, was one from Chase Bank whose full text read “Introducing Chase Exclusive Special Benefits for Checking Customers.” The first 11 characters-”Introducing”-gave users no hint about where the link might lead. Unsuccessful links also used bland or generic words, or even worse, made-up terms.

Nielsen points out that, in reality, users don’t always stop after the first 11 characters. If the first 11 characters catch their eyes, they will go on to read the rest of the link, which should more fully-and accurately-inform them about what they’ll get if they click and how it will be different from anything else they might find. But if the first 11 characters don’t give them most of what they need, they’ll never read the rest.

Those are among the key findings of a recent study by usability guru Jakob Nielsen. If he is right, nonprofits leave a huge amount of money on the table. Today, they receive about 10 percent of their donations online, a figure destined to balloon to over 50 percent by 2020, by Nielsen’s estimate.

Nielsen paired similar nonprofits’ sites and observed how users interacted with each of them as they decided which should receive their donations.  Those observations revealed that by far the most important factor in users’ decisions was whether or not the organization offered a clear explanation of its mission, goals, objectives, and work prominently on its home page.

Nielsen cautions that this explanation needs to be specific to attract the potential donor’s interest:

Most people probably agree that, for example, it’s good to help impoverished residents of developing countries or patients suffering from nasty diseases. … The question in a potential donor’s mind is how the organization proposes to help.

Conversely, Nielsen found that the biggest donation-killers were about equally divided between poor design on the one hand (including cluttered pages and unintuitive site architecture), and writing badly suited for the Web on the other (including unclear or missing information and confusing terms).

So who does it right? We asked Kurt Hansen, founder of CharityWeb, which has processed over $150 million in donations to 100-plus clients since 1997. At the top of his list of fundraising superstars:

• CaringBridge®
• The Make-a-Wish Foundation®
• Mercy Corps

Check them out.

What’s the best frequency that will yield your blog the maximum results?

It really depends.

First you have to establish the type of blog you want as well as your goals for it. For example, a news blog selling advertising space will have a much different posting schedule than a personal branding blog or a blog used to generate leads for products or client work.

In this article, I’ll explain the three most common posting frequencies (multiple posts per day, one post per day, and a few posts per week) and the pros, cons, and optimal situations for each.

Multiple posts per day

Writing multiple posts in a day is optimal only for multiauthor news-type blogs that sell advertising space to sponsors.

Pros:

• People will keep coming back for the latest news and content – maximize content and page views
• Great for SEO [search engine optimization] keyword opportunities
• More likely to attract high quality sponsors

Cons:

• A lot of work that’s difficult to keep up with especially for one blogger
• Content quickly gets lost in the date-based format of most blogs
• Articles lack depth and focus – less likely to get links and exposure to each individual article
• Difficult to spread marketing over multiple articles

Best for:

• Big news blogs that have very large followings and sell adverting space to related sponsors

One post per day

This blogging frequency is probably the most versatile and I’d recommend it to everyone looking to grow their blogs-especially those just getting started.

Pros:

• Consistent posting pattern encourages readers to check back daily
• Gives bloggers the ability to write in-depth articles about a single topic rather than just report on news
• Good balance between content quality and posting frequency

Cons:

• Some bloggers might still have trouble keeping up
• Requires consistency and strong work ethic
• Difficult to come up with new post ideas, especially in niche topics

A few posts per week

This works best for blogs that already have established readerships and want to focus on quality in-depth articles, blogs used to promote products and services by showcasing expertise, hobby blogs on specific topics, and bloggers with limited time.
Pros:

• Do less work and maximize results
• Focus on quality, which will result in more traffic, links, comments, and exposure
• Posts are featured on the home page for a longer period of time

Cons:

• Readers are less likely to check back for new posts because of the lack of rhythm
• Inability for bloggers to keep up with the latest trends and news in the industry
• Less content mean less channels for distribution (SEO, links, social media, etc)

For me, I started off writing multiple posts per day and got burnt out fast. I switched to a once a day schedule and that worked great to build my readership and establish myself in the industry. Once I accomplished that, I changed to a few posts per week to focus on high quality and to free up my time for new projects.

The proprietor of Sensical Design, a frequent collaborator, took issue with our recent post about Amazon’s wireless reading device, Kindle, and its pro’s and con’s versus traditional print publication. His comment chided us for neglecting the self-publishing option and its many advantages for certain writers. As an example, he cited a classic in the field, the Complete Guide to Successful Publishing by Avery Cardoza (3rd ed. 2003).

What Dan didn’t say is that, if you explore Cardoza’s career, you quickly discover the true secret to successful publishing. It’s finding your niche and taking total control of it. Avery Cardoza, a mathematical wizard from an early age, began building his empire in 1991 with The Basics of Sports Betting and The Basics of Bingo.

He has been on a roll ever since. According to Amazon, Cardoza has 20-some books to his credit and considers himself the world’s foremost authority on gambling. With titles on baccarat, poker (including Texas hold ’em and video poker), craps, blackjack, slots, and casino strategies, he utterly dominates the how-to market for those who would strike it rich at the gaming tables.

Having learned a thing or two about the culture of gambling, Cardoza soon found a natural way to expand his franchise. He launched a magazine and a website designed to appeal to a gamblin’ man.

Go to www.cardozaplayer.com, and you’ll see a young (male) risk-taker’s dream come true. For openers, the site architecture is based on the Seven Deadly Sins. Lust: An up-and-coming movie starlet. Vanity: A fashionable new cool weather coat. Gluttony: inventive dishes using Beluga caviar. Sloth: Digital cameras. And so on. You get the idea.

It’s sleek, it’s tony, it’s ever so slightly risqué. Hugh Hefner now has a worthy successor. And that’s the true guide to successful publishing. Know your audience and give them what they want—everything they want.

Of course, Avery Cardoza’s natural gift for gambling helped him find the perfect niche. Most would-be publishers need to search a little harder. Not all fields can be so neatly parsed.

Men are easy. Publishing is hard.

What can one person accomplish using the Web? It’s astounding.

The American Society of Business Publication Editors proved it in a recent Webinar packed with tips from two pioneers of the do-it-yourself Web world.

These two each started successful Web-based businesses essentially on their own although with support from heavy-hitting collaborators who had come to know them in their earlier 9 to 5 lives. Their message: you—or your small organizational unit—can do what they did. Do it right, and your readers will do our jobs better and see the world more clearly as a result.

If you think I’m going overboard, see for yourself.

First, go to Junta 42. Joe Pulizzi, the founder, doesn’t care whether you pronounce it the way a Latino would (hoonta), or give it the European pronunciation (shunta). Pulizzi only wants to become your favorite go-to place for information about content marketing—or custom publishing, as it was called back in 1906, when American Business Media was founded. Of course, he’d also be very pleased if you signed up for Junta42 Match (“E-Harmony for custom publishers”) and bought his book Get Content, Get Customers.

ASBPE was thoughtful enough to summarize his presentation on their website, if you want to see his six rules for becoming a media mogul. But there’s a seventh rule, which is to deliver great customer service. I know he does that because I tried to open a guest post on his blog site and couldn’t, sent an e-mail to info@junta42.com, and got the post I wanted in less than two hours.

Of course, the post wasn’t very good. Most posts aren’t. But read Junta 42’s white papers. They’re free, and they are very good.

On to pioneer number two, Harry McCracken, the former editor of PC World who left “because I wanted to scare myself” (starting your own Web-based business will absolutely do the trick) and now manages Technologizer, which, he says, provides reliable information to 400,000 visitors each month.

ASBPE summarizes his tips on its website as well, but one worth noting here is of particular importance to publications and Web content managers: Be obsessive about understanding your traffic. What are people reading on your site? What do they like?

Studies to find out can be expensive, but worth every penny.

Freedom of the press only matters to those who have readers.

Congratulations

To guest blogger Ann D. Getman, APR, Principal of Getman Strategic Communications in Cambridge, MA, who was awarded the Diane Davis Beacon Award for lifetime achievement in public relations. She was nominated and elected by accredited colleagues in the Boston Chapter of Public Relations Society of America. The award was presented at the annual meeting in Needham on November 19.

The study examined state Web sites, but the results are broadly applicable. Commissioned by the Pew Center on the States, Being Online is Not Enough: State Elections Web Sites asked whether governments were realizing the most basic of returns on investments in usability: less time on the phone answering questions.

Experts suggest that calls to state or county elections offices can cost between $10 and $100 each, depending on the staffer’s qualifications.

To score elections sites’ usability, the consultants used seven criteria. The specifics described below reflect the purpose of the Pew study, but the broad criteria apply to just about any site, whether in the public, private, or nonprofit sector.

Web Presence: How easily can users find the official state elections Web site when conducting standard Web searches for key phrases related to voting?

Navigation and Information Architecture: Is it easy to navigate to key topics? Can users easily tell where they are within the site if accessing a deep link [to a page other than the homepage] from a search engine? Are links named intuitively? Is the site organized in a user-centered manner?

Content: Is the content understandable to users? Is it easy to scan and find the right information? Is information made available in HTML versus PDFs?

Homepage: Is the homepage organized such that users can tell which information is intended for them? Are important links placed and presented so they will be noticed? Is the homepage easy to scan?

Accessibility: Can users with disabilities (severe or mild) utilize the site effectively?

Search: Is there an open search field available on each page of the site? Do search results seem appropriate? Are result titles/content understandable?

Site Tools: Are tools for looking up registration, finding a poll location, etc. intuitive and efficient?

Brief commercial message: Magnificent Publications can help you write Web content that is brief, to the point, and search engine friendly. To find out more visit www.magpub.com/webcontent.html.