If Done Properly Bad News is Also a Marketing Opportunity
A marketing lesson from Comcast:
Driving Conversions in a World Where User Attention Is Really Low
Don’t know about you but for me, 2017 has been the year when I’ve had to admit I have a problem. A problem with fragmented attention. Whether it’s email, instant messaging, or even reading research articles on conversion optimization I find it hard to focus for too long. And this doesn’t only apply to my work and personal life. This …
Stories Matter
If you have the ability to tell an amazing story you can mark-up some things 1,200%, even candy floss. And story isn’t just words, it’s also the packaging. Check out Bag of Unicorn Farts: Sells on Amazon for $10.95: And people who buy it aren’t enraged that they could by the same quantity of cotton candy for 20 cents. No, …
New Idea to Possibly Reduce Checkout Friction
I just had this idea so it’s a little half-baked but worth sharing:
Signup Message
One of the most underutilized parts of Serendipity is targeting during holidays. Even something as simple as your email signup can be transformed into a big psychological persuader for the customer. Take this example of an email signup: As you can see, it’s just a normal signup that promises the user 10% off their purchase. The thing is though, a …
Countdown Timer on Steroids
I’m sure you’ve heard about the tactic of adding a countdown mechanism to boost urgency and conversions. (BTW, I don’t think it works). Here is an example of a retailer that is tripling down on that tactic:
Customized Product Comparison Table
There is one really important aspect of improved conversions: when you let the user drive their own experience they convert at a higher rate. Drip.com understands this. When you go to their comparison page instead of showing a table with 3 pre-selected competitors Drip allows users to select the competitors they want to compare Drip against, thus improving the relevancy …
Time and Conversion Rates
People are kinetic creatures. We are never stagnant. Our views and behaviors change based on outside stimuli, whether that’s the time of day, what side of the bed we woke up on, or, are we hungry? You’d think these things wouldn’t have any effect on important things like our jobs or the future of others but you’re wrong. In a …
Quick View: Don’t Believe Everything You Read
Many sites show QUICK VIEW option on category pages. The idea, I guess, is to help the shopper buy directly from the category page. See red arrow in screenshot below: On click: Is there evidence these actually improve conversion rates? Based on the research (https://baymard.com/blog/ecommerce-quick-views) I’ve seen, and experienced firsthand, they likely have a negative impact. This reminds me of …
Stockx.com
Ecommerce is great for ideas that are utterly impractical as a physical store but make perfect sense when connecting a wide market even if only 1 in 10,000 people would be interested. Stockx.com is such an example. It’s a secondary market for sneakers. Super niche, super successful:
To Grab Attention Present Things Differently
I really like this tactic being used on ionsolar.com. It all comes down to being unexpected. So many sites put the grand total of happy customers – this is expected. People will gloss over this. Why? Because shoppers’ brains are filtering out marketing speak. This approach, on the other hand, makes the reader stop and think for a second because …
We All Make Mistakes
I’m not sharing this to bash the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). I’m sharing it to demonstrate how easy it is to make a mistake. Basically, someone in their IT department needs to configure outgoing email (DKIM and SPF):
Active Versus Passive Marketing
There are basically two types of marketing: passive and active. Passive marketing is bottom of the barrel marketing where one is simply keeping up with competitors or implementing ideas based on internal pressures. For example, if your CEO asks to increase email channel sales contribution from 5% to 6% and you respond by increasing email messaging frequency by 20% then …
Email Signup Trick
Every site shows an email signup popup, and 98% of users click the close button. Why? Because the signup request doesn’t have the right context. The user has just landed on the site, they don’t even know what makes your business unique. Tacklewarehouse.com also needs email sign-ups but they use a clever context tool to present their request. On each …
No One Cares About the Next Order
On your PPC landing pages never show a popup that promises a saving on the second purchase: Shoppers clicking paid search ads (excluding branded ads) have multiple tabs open and are reviewing multiple offers at the same time. They’re in “speed dating” mode. An offer that applies to their next purchase is a total waste. In fact, I’d argue, it …
