Digital Marketing Success KitJAN 2012/ MEDIATIVE.CA

JAN 2012 / MEDIATIVE.CA

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CONTENTS

1. Getting Started with Facebook Advertising2. Introduction to Location Based Services3. Group Buying: Getting Started4. Introduction to Retargeting 5. 5 Tips to Get Started with Mobile Pay Per Click6. 8 Tips for Mobile Advertising 7. 10 Website Mistakes to Avoid 8. How to Leverage Google Places 9. Optimizing your Website for Special Events 10. 9 Tips to Optimize Your Shopping Cart 11. Case Study: 22% Increase in Onsite Conversions with Simple User Experience Changes

JAN 2012 / MEDIATIVE.CA

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GETTING STARTED WITH FACEBOOK ADVERTISING CHEAT SHEET

Facebook is really one of a kind in the world of advertising platforms. It can be frustrating for beginners with its non-standard metrics, quirky interface and confusing options, but for those brave enough to overcome those obstacles, it is also a channel to an audience of over 800 million active users worldwide (Source: Facebook), 50% of whom log on to the website on any given day. Those active users form a set of interwoven networks based on interests: an average user has 130 friends and is connected to 80 pages, groups and events.

Why should you consider Facebook advertising?

Demographic and interest-based targeting. Facebook is naturally a good fit to advertise consumer products, and/or to generate a buzz around your company or a particular event, directed at users with specific demographics or interests. You should be mindful that your interest targeting will only be as accurate as the information put by Facebook users on their profile.

Network-based advertising. This allows you to leverage your existing followers’ networks to get your message out and increase your follower/fan base. You can choose to target your followers only, or exclude them to only target friends of your followers.

What are the options for advertising?

Facebook now offers a wide variety of advertising products. Make sure you pick the ones which align best with your marketing objectives:

The Classic Facebook Ad: This type of ad is great to direct traffic directly to your website (ideal for lead generation, e-commerce etc.)

Sponsored Like Story: These are great if you want to increase your follower base.

It is obvious that a recommendation given by a person is more likely to influence a user’s decision. But if the person giving the advice is someone you know personally, then the chances are that you are going to pay even more attention to it.

When someone « likes » a post or your entire Facebook page, people in his/her network are made aware of it by the display of an ad (provided they are in your target demographics), and may publicly like your page as well. This ad format takes advantage of your existing audience’s social influence and has the potential to spread exponentially through personal networks, rapidly expanding your targeted audience over a short period.

Page Post Ad: Use these ads if you want to promote posts from your Facebook page (if your company page contains relevant and updated content). These ads are a good remedy against ad fatigue, ensuring users are always presented with fresh content.

Facebook Ads For Pages: These ads promote your page to a targeted audience. Users will be able to become fans right from the ad. Users in their network who are already fans of the page will appear inside the ad, which helps spread the message through personal networks.

What metrics should you measure?

Reach: number of unique people who saw your ad.

Frequency: average number of times a person saw your ad

Social Reach: number of people who saw your ad with the names of their friends who liked your page or post in it. This is only used for Sponsored Stories and ads for pages.

Connections: number of people who liked your page or post within 24 hours after seeing a Sponsored Story.

CTR : it is rare to get even close to a 1% CTR. You are basically asking people to interrupt whatever they are doing to click on your ad.

How do you track conversions from Facebook?

Although Facebook doesn’t offer its own conversion tracking code that you can paste on your website, there are some tools to track traffic coming from Facebook, for example, Acquisio. The tool offers an easy conversion tracking solution for Facebook with interesting cross channel attribution options as well as campaign automation rules.

If you’re not using a platform like Acquisio, you can always rely on the web analytics solution of your choice and tag destination URLs yourself.

Remember that in the case of a sponsored story containing a link to your website, it may be difficult to identify whether the click originated from an ad or regular news feed.

Facebook provides plenty of advertising options for advertisers. Remember to keep your FB page engaging and actively manage your community.

Facebook releases new features on a regular basis so make sure you always check for new options - the next one might just be the perfect fit for your advertising strategy.

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INTRODUCTION TO LOCATION BASED SERVICES CHEAT SHEET

Connecting with potential customers is now more direct and much simpler than ever before due largely to the growth of mobile devices that have built-in GPS such as smartphones. Mobile is bringing us new concepts where a user can scan a QR code, declare a presence by ‘checking-in’, receive a push message to unlock an interaction in store, and much more.

Marketers can now identify individuals and their locations, making is possible to intercept potential customers when they are in a location where they can be converted into buyers.

Location based services are personalized, immediate, and user-centric applications, accessible via any mobile device with built in GPS. LBS can include services relating to navigation, mapping, location sharing, check-in, and local search to name a few. LBS users are able to access information and services related to their physical location - from finding the nearest coffee shop, to receiving coupons to their favourite store.

Location Based Services are solutions that:

• locate the user• tell people where the user is• provide a context to the user’s location.

Who Uses Location Based Services and What For?

• According to Edison Research 30% of Americans over the age of 12 are familiar with location based services and sites, but only 4% are using them.

• A 2011 study by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association found that users are increasingly interested in services that send information or coupons

that are geotargeted to their cell-phone more than any other sort of mobile advertising.

• According to Microsoft (2011), 70% of

Canadians that use a geolocalization service find geotargeted advertising to be important and 36% of them have taken action after they were exposed to an ad.

Get Found Locally With These LBS Examples!

Geotargeted Display Ads: Different display messages are displayed dependent upon the user’s location.

Local Search: 97% of consumers search for local businesses online. Local search directories are usually free and often have a social element to them by letting customers provide reviews. Effective mobile local search will identify the location of the user and provide options of what is nearby. Yelp is an example of a local search service.

Location Triggered Notifications: These are alerts that are sent to a user once they are in the vicinity of a store or business that they have opted to receive alerts from. E.g. a user can receive a notification from their favourite coffee shop for a discount when they are nearby.

Social Local ‘Check-Ins’: Checking-in is the act of saying “I’m here!” Geolocation services, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, allow users to identify themselves as being at a certain business or other location, sharing what they are doing with friends, earning badges (virtual tokens for certain behaviours) and other virtual rewards in the process. Check-ins are usually combined with some form of social network,

allowing the user to find other people in their proximity, and also be found.

Facebook Places is very similar to Gowalla and Foursquare, but allows users to tag their friends who are with them when they check-in, giving businesses and organizations an even better indication of who is at their location or event.

BenefitstoMarketers

• Marketers can take advantage of the geographical position of the mobile device by pushing new products and services to customers, and through social networking, users can share this information with family and friends instantly.

• Check-in allows a company to obtain information on their customers, see who their regular customers are and offer special deals to them. Best of all, instead of approaching users for information, it is the user that voluntarily gives their information! Geolocalization and check-ins allow you to create strategies and tactics that are super targeted, where communications and offers are more and more personalized, making it more likely to convert them into loyal customers.

• Being able to connect online advertising, customer reviews and recommendations, and social media hype to a brick-and-mortar location is something most advertisers have strived to achieve for years.

The right message, to the right person, at the right place, and at the right time.

Things to Consider • Be clear on the goals of your campaign

as this will help determine the type of LBS you decide to use, and also how you are going to measure your performance. E.g. If your goal is to increase visitors to your store, then your best options would be to use check-ins, local search, trigger based notifications etc. However, if you want to increase brand awareness, you may want to concentrate on promoting your brand through display advertising .

• Always keep your budget top of mind. Investigate all costs involved.

• Be aware of privacy concerns. Always ask before using people’s locations for any form of marketing, notify them about how their info will be used, and provide an opt-out option.

• Keep in mind that LBS cannot be your sole means of marketing as you will unintentionally isolate customers without a smartphone.

• Checking-in does not necessarily mean that the user made a purchase, or is a loyal customer. They could simply be engaging with the service for the deal.

People want information. Having local, relevant information available at their fingertips 24/7 is a trend that is not slowing down any time soon. LBS makes it easy for marketers to target consumers who are ready to buy in specific and focused geographic locations – knowing where your customers are, when they are there, and what they want is invaluable information that makes acquiring and retaining customers that much easier.

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GROUP BUYING: GETTING STARTED CHEAT SHEET

Group Buying sites work by requiring a minimum number of people to buy an offer in order for everyone to get a large discount.

Group Buying sites have exploded in the last couple of years to all corners of the globe, including Canada which alone has more than 100 sites. It’s the hottest trend in marketing for small and local businesses for a good reason!

Pros of Group Buying:

• It’s very cost effective for generating direct, trackable sales.

• It’s a very low risk model for retailers - merchants only pay for sales that are generated.

• Merchants can generate online revenue and transactions without having to set up any sort of ecommerce infrastructure.

• Group buying sites expose your business to new potential customers – those who are on an e-mail list and see a great offer, but weren’t necessarily looking for that product or service at that time.

• It can reduce the barriers keeping buyers from an indulgent impulse purchase. Promotions, including Group Buying, play on short-term gratification and amp up the “reward” portion of buying motivation so that the “risk” limiter doesn’t stand a chance.

• It can encourage brand switching - promotions can sway a purchaser from one brand to another, but this typically only happens where risk is minimal.

• It helps move excess inventory.

Cons of Group Buying:

• Merchants have to take hefty price cuts.

The total cost to them varies depending on the details of the offer, redemption rates, and the type of business.

• Discounting can reduce brand loyalty – consumers may become accustomed to discounts, and can easily switch brands when a competitor runs a deal or coupon. It can build an expectation of discounts, whereby they only make a purchase if a discount is available.

• Coupons and Group Buying work well in certain markets (B2C), and not so well in others (B2B). B2B is more about risk avoidance, and there is little reward driving these types of purchases. Not only will a coupon offer fail to eliminate risk in these circumstances, in some cases it will actually increase risk by raising questions about the credibility of the company offering the discount.

Compare Sites

Once you have decided that Group Buying is something you want to add to your Marketing Strategy, you need to evaluate the sites that are available and determine which ones will work best for your business.

• Ask for a Media Kit that explains the costs involved.

• Look at the number of unique visitors per month.

• Does the site have an email list – how many people are subscribed?

• How long between signing a deal and the offer running?

• What’s the demographic reach of visitors? • Are reports provided for performance

tracking?

How to Get Started

All Group Buying sites will have their own process, but for Mediative’s Deal of the Day site, the process is as follows:

1. The first step is to talk to a rep to understand how an offer can work for your business and determine the details of the proposed offer.

2. Once an agreement is signed it will be sent to the production team to create the offer page. The merchant will then be sent the copy and creative for approval.

3. Depending on the city and how many other offers are booked, the typical run time would be between 2 – 4 weeks of an offer being signed.

4. Sit back as the offer is emailed to thousands of members.

5. Members then share the offer with other members and non-members through their social networks and the word about the product or service spreads like wildfire!

6. After the offer has run the merchant will receive a report with the names and voucher codes for the customers who purchased the offer so that it’s easy to track and manage redemptions for those customers.

Key Takeaways

• Group Buying suits some markets better than others. If you are a B2B merchant, group buying is probably not going to be the best strategy for you.

• Consider your target market – is most of your business from repeat customers? If so, Group Buying sites can be great for new customer acquisition. If your offer tends

to be a one-time purchase, it probably isn’t the best option for you, unless you are trying to get rid of excess inventory.

• Do your homework – you may only make approximately 25% of what you would normally make on a sale. Calculate how many deals you would need to sell to make it worth your time.

• Watch your price point, and look for up sell opportunities – if the average price of a meal in your restaurant is $15, offering a $10 voucher for $5 allows you to make some money from the voucher, and encourages people to spend more once they come in.

• Be prepared for an influx of new customers in the days following the close of the deal – you don’t want to spend the time and effort attracting new customers only to scare them away with poor service.

Is it worth it?

82% of organizations who tried group buying as a marketing strategy want to repeat the experience, while 66% of those have seen quick and profitable results (Mediative.ca)

Consumers clearly want and are willing to spend on deals, merchants love the fact that they’re paying directly for customers, and publishers are thrilled to tap into the world of local commerce.

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INTRODUCTION TO RETARGETING CHEAT SHEET98% of visitors to a website will leave without buying anything (Source)

Retargeting is an advertising strategy where your ads are displayed to a user who has already expressed an interest in your offer by visiting your site, clicking on an ad, opening an email, etc. The emphasis is on re-engaging people who have visited your website and left without making a purchase.

How Does it Work?

Retargeting works by identifying people who visit your site, segmenting them based on their behaviour and preferences, and then displaying your retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites online.

• Identifying the User: A retargeting pixel is placed on a webpage, whether that is your homepage, offer pages, deal pages, email newsletters, advertorials, contest pages etc. Each time a user visits the page which contains the retargeting pixel an anonymous retargeting “cookie” is placed in that user’s browser.

• Segmenting and Retargeting the User: Users are then placed into specific segments which will allow you to display retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites. Segmentation and retargeting is particularly popular in the battle against

shopping cart abandonment. By knowing exactly what the user was intending to buy, and the stage at which they abandoned their cart, a successful retargeting campaign can win that potential customer back. E.g. A user who abandoned their cart at the shipping prices page sees a banner ad offering free-shipping on that exact item when they are on another site. Retargeting can convert a sale that would otherwise have been lost.

BenefitsofRetargeting

Retargeting is all about targeting the right people, with the right message, in the right place, at the right time, and is a great value-added tool for virtually any online advertising campaign:

• Retargeting is easy to implement, and can be integrated with any web based promotion or campaign.

• It extends reach and exposure beyond your initial media plan - you can remarket to, and recapture visitors through other sites on the internet, even after they have left your website.

• It’s highly targeted - you can reach out to visitors who have shown interest in your product or service and tailor your advertisement to match what your visitors are looking for.

• It’s less expensive than other forms of advertising – CPM is low, and by targeting users who are more likely to convert, CTR is high.

• Repeat exposure builds brand awareness, trust and recognition while keeping your business top-of-mind with customers at virtually every stage in the buying cycle, delivering them back to your site for conversion. Even if the audience does not convert the first time they see an ad, the brand still gains traction.

A comScore study demonstrated that retargeting outperformed other online advertising vehicles, including contextual and audience targeting with over 1000% increase in lift in trademark search within 4 weeks of exposure (Source)

Retargeting Best Practices

• Find the right balance between too many ads, and not enough. You don’t want to bombard people with ads, but not enough exposure will have little effect. Ask yourself how many days do you want to keep the cookies you have collected, how long are you going to retarget the users for, and what is the maximum number of times that users are going to see your ads?

• Make sure your ads are well branded with engaging creative – ads that include prominent images, brand names, specific promotions, pricing or product offers are likely to perform better. Engaging creative in the form of banner ads work better than text ads for branding and retargeting. Run several tests to find out what works best for your audience.

• Think about the pages you are placing your retargeting pixel on – you want to know that the people you are spending money on by retargeting are actually those that are interested in your product or service.

• Be aware that even though someone may not click on your ad right away, it may influence their decision to visit your site at a later date, therefore always review website conversions and your retargeting efforts together.

• Have measures in place so as not to retarget to those who have already converted on your site.

TofindoutmoreaboutretargetingandwhatMediative can do to help you get started,contact us today.

Potential Customer Your Site Customer Leaves

Customer sees ad on a popular site realated to How retargeting works their previous behaviour on your site

In this example of retargeting, you can see that an ad for a shoe retailer that is particularly popular with women, is appearing on a male oriented website. The ad is appearing here as a result of the user’s previous visit to this retailer’s website.

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MOBILE PAID SEARCH CHEAT SHEET

According to the CRTC, the number of data plan subscribers is forecasted to grow from 5.5 to 14 million by 2015 in Canada. Most advertisers will be forced to develop a mobile strategy, if they haven’t already done so, to ensure some kind of online presence and answer the needs of consumers on the go.

The following tips should help you avoid the most common mistakes of rookie mobile marketers and will maximize your chances of building a successful mobile campaign.

1. Pick the Right Network to Advertise On

Google AdWords: Google is the favourite search engine of mobile users, which makes AdWords a platform you can’t ignore when planning mobile campaigns. However, be prepared to be aggressive! Screen real es-tate is at a premium - only 1-2 ads will be displayed at the top of the search engine re-sults page on a smart phone screen, and you will need to literally fight with dollars to get the impressions you want.

Yahoo: Don’t underestimate the potential of Yahoo – it maintains good market share thanks to a partnership with Bell and Rog-ers, making it the default search engine on mobiles sold by both operators.

Applications: Some applications are so popular (e.g. The Weather Network) that you may want to consider dedicating part of your budget to advertising on them if it is relevant to your audience.

Types of advertising networks• Blind networks - the cheapest option

but won’t let you know exactly where your ads will be displayed.

• Premium networks - have partnerships with publishers and therefore have priority over their inventory of impres-sions. You will usually be able to negoti-ate a certain amount of impressions on the placement of your choice at a fixed cost.

• Remnant networks - only have access to publishers’ unsold inventory, and usually operate using real-time-bid-ding (RTB), self-serve platforms.

2.BuildaFunctionalMobileWebsite

If you’re thinking about having a stripped-down version of your regular website for mobile devices, think again! The best mobile websites are those which replicate the “app” look and feel, with large buttons and clear choices.

Try to think about the information a mobile user may be looking for such as location, contact info, prices, in-store availability etc. and put this information top of your mobile site, readily accessible with minimum navi-gation required.

3. Don’t Launch Without Testing!

With the growing fragmentation of mobile platforms, testing how your mobile site ren-ders in various formats and resolutions is crucial.

Sending users to a non-optimized website is a waste of your advertising money, and may impact the perception those users have of your company. Most advertising networks let you filter users by operating system. Take advantage of this to target only devices where the user experience will be optimal.

Warning: Google AdWords will display your campaigns on all platforms by default, so don’t forget to check the appropriate options in the campaign settings tab.

There are several ways to test your website’s compatibility with various smartphones and tablets:

• Opera Mobile Emulator• BlackBerry Simulator• Android Software Development Kit• iOS Software Development Kit

4. Adapt your Conversion Events

Forms: Do not use the same conversion forms you are already using on your regu-lar website. A task as simple as typing an e-mail address can become very tedious on a mobile device and may generate a signifi-cant number of mistakes, making your leads worthless.

Payment: No easy payment solution has yet emerged for mobile devices and most mobile users are simply not ready to take the leap. Play safe and go for “microcon-versions” instead - easy to perform from a mobile device and will establish a solid first

contact with your audience. E.g:

• Subscription to a newsletter• Mobile app download• Locate a retail store nearby• Contact a sales rep (click-to-call)

5. Analyse Your Stats

As for any campaign, analysing performance is essential in order to optimize the campaign and to draw conclusions that can be used to improve performance on the next campaign.

• Identify the best performing websites and placements: It is recommended to pick several key metrics as performance and traffic quality may vary a lot between websites or placements.

• Click through rate on Google: With Google, it’s often all or nothing – if your ads appear in the top 2 positions, you will get good click through rates. But click through rates drop dramatically from the third position, no matter how relevant your ad copy may be.

• Click through rate on other placements: Lots of applications, and games in par-ticular, generate a large share of their revenue with unintentional clicks, which are unlikely to turn into good traffic for your mobile site.

The mobile advertising market is far from mature. New technologies and tools enable new opportunities to emerge - stay on top of these as some may become very relevant to your business, and don’t be afraid to innovate.

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8 KEY ELEMENTS TO CONSIDER FOR MOBILE ADVERTISING CHEAT SHEETMobile advertising is not increasing at the same rate as mobile usage. Despite over 20M cell phone owners in Canada, when it comes to the potential for mobile display advertising and search, only 5.2M people actively use their Smartphone for browsing and apps (comScore Mobilens, June 2011).

We set out to discover as much as possible on mobile advertising – we wanted to gather intelligence on the medium, its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and obstacles, and test the mobile platform as a communication vector for advertising.

These findings are from a study conducted by Mediative between May and June 2011, and are the key elements that should be considered before getting started with Mobile Advertising:

1. THE OFFER

• For mobile advertising to be successful, you need to deliver a highly contextual, personalized mobile experience, based on customers’ past behavior and current environment, which is too convenient for them to pass up.

• Offer a compelling value proposition to potential new clients such as coupons or discounts. This is even more effective if you are able to intercept potential customers in the location where they can be converted into buyers.

• With mobile, as with all business, your choices should always be made

according to your customers’ needs and desires rather than vice versa.

2. NETWORKS

Consider the different types of networks:

Blind Networks are the cheapest option but won’t let you know exactly which place-ments your ads will be displayed on. An example is AdMob (owned by Google).

• As the number of eyeballs in the Mobile advertising ecosystem is very little, you’ll learn very quickly that the Blind Networks are the first players that can offer you volume presence.

• In our study, even though the Blind Networks gave limited metrics, they were responsible for most of the clicks.

• Blind Networks also offered the best click cost as their model is based on low CPC.

Search and Premium Networks need volume in order to play a strategic approach. As it stands today they still can’t offer a lot of visibility and volume, but mobile is growing so fast it is just matter of time. Google, Yahoo and Bing are all examples of Search Networks.

Premium Networks are particularly attractive to big brand advertisers who have the budget to pay for the prime locations. An example is Microsoft Mobile Advertising.

3. GEO-TARGETING

Not all the networks have geo targeting capabilities - in our study, 3 of the 10 contacted weren’t able to allow us to specifically target those users in certain areas.

4.PLATFORMS

• The BlackBerry strategy was built around selling to the big corporations and focused mainly on the email components. Many companies don’t allow an app/web browsing option on the employee’s devices. The opposite is true for Apple and Android who built their strategy around apps and mobile web access. Currently, mobile advertising is a reality only on Apple IOS and Android platforms.

5. SEARCH VS DISPLAY

• Phone usage is still primarily an apps device where display offers more visibility, traffic, awareness and presence than search. However, a combination of both search and display seems to be the best option, and it’s always dependant on the business objectives and the reality of your product.

6.ADFORMATS

• With the knowledge acquired in this study, we recommend mainly using the text/keywords, the 300x50 banner and

the 320x50 banner ad format.

• These ad formats work best when used on the iPhone IOS and Android. For the other types of ad formats and platforms, you should take the time to analyze your production/operational costs vs. the expected ROI, depending on your segments, targets and business goals.

• We also learned that animated banners are the worst performers.

7.TIMING

• Richer interaction can be costly for users – people are less likely to download if they are not on their home Wi-Fi, therefore take timing into consideration when planning your advertising strategy.

8. COST

• In our study, the average Cost-Per-Click is between $0.25 and $0.70, depending on the targeted verticals or locations.

Benchmark: In Canada, the average Tap Thru Rate (TTR)/Click Thru Rate (CTR) in mobile advertising is 0.50%.

The full whitepaper is available for download at:

http://results.mediative.ca/Mediative_White-Paper-A-Realistic-View-On-Mobile_Advertising.html

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10 WEBSITE MISTAKES TO AVOID

Websites and landing pages are all about providing relevant content. If a searcher comes to a website expecting to see some-thing, but that something isn’t present, that searcher will have a poor user experience, and most likely leave the site.

Avoiding these 10 mistakes will help ensure your user’s experience on your website is a positive one:

1. Poor Visual Hierarchy: a design and lay-out that does not highlight key information and does not lead the visitor to take an ac-tion will not be successful. Make it as easy as possible for the user to scan the page for the information that is relevant to them by minimizing barriers such as large, text filled complex graphics. Use text formatting and colours that are easy to read.

2. Hidden Calls To Action: you want your visitors to do something: contact you, down-load a whitepaper, etc.. Explain the process – what the visitor will receive, how they’ll re-ceive it, and when they’ll receive it. Research shows that clarity trumps persuasion.

Your calls-to-action should be:• Active: there’s nothing more frustrating

that clicking a link that goes nowhere• Consistent throughout the site: same

style of button, form etc. • Tough to resist: make the offer so com-

pelling with offers, valuable content etc. that the visitor can’t help but complete the action.

• Immediate: e.g. ‘Call Today for your free…’, Buy Now for a 10% discount’ etc

• Obvious and noticeable: without clear calls to action, your visitors won’t know what to do next. Chances are, they’ll re-sort to the back button and go find your competitor. Use whitespace, colour, and images to create a natural eye flow through the page to your call to action, and to make your call to action stand out.

3. Tricky Forms: asking for unnecessary in-formation or making forms too long, or dif-ficult to fill out means your visitors are less likely to convert.

An experiment examining the impact of form length on conversion rate conducted by Jon Miller of Marketo produced the following re-sults. There is a direct correlation between the length of the form and the conversion rate of the landing page.

• Short Form (5 fields) - Conversion Rate 13.4% Cost per Conversion $31.24

• Medium Form (7 fields) - Conver-sion Rate 12.0% Cost per Conversion $34.94

• Long Form (9 fields) - Conversion Rate 10.0% Cost per Conversion $41.90

4. Overdone or Unnecessary Flash: few people want to sit through a Flash splash page loading before they can get to your site. And with the mobile web becoming more popular, Flash is falling out of favour as a display technology.

5. Poor Error Handling: ideally, errors won’t happen. Realistically, they do. Your visitors need very clear explanations of what hap-pened, why it happened, and how to fix it.

6. Not Creating Trust: anyone can put just about anything on the Internet, so you need to provide information that will help your visitors believe you are credible and trust-worthy.

• Provide contact information – this often puts the visitor more at ease.

• Endorsements and testimonials from impartial third parties can boost the credibility of your business.

• Include certifications, logos of partners, and awards.

• Include legal information (terms, priva-cy, etc.) in language that the visitor can understand.

7. Poor Content:• Think about the customer at all times.

Be benefits-oriented and avoid too much self-promoting. Provide valuable content that will encourage visitors to return, or complete a call to action. Use messaging and images that reinforce the benefits of the offer.

• Your visitors may not use the same language that you do. Using techni-cal terms that they don’t understand or marketing fluff that is all company-centric will not help them understand what you have to offer.

• Front-load the most important infor-mation in headings and above the page fold (the point where the user has to scroll for more information).

• Don’t make your visitors read. Use bul-let points, text highlighting, and section headings as appropriate

8.“MysteryMeat”Navigation: a fancy navi-gation system may seem cool, but if your visi-tors can’t figure out how to use it, they’re not going to find your content.

9. Thinking You Know Your Users: your cus-tomers probably think just like you do, right? Guess again, or …don’t guess; talk to real us-ers and watch them interact with your web-site to gain real insight into how they look for information and make decisions on your website.

10. Relying on Best Practices Alone: do not assume that a “best practice” is best for you. They are guidelines. However, having a deep understanding of the best practices (coupled with a deep understanding of your users) will help you decide which ones apply to your sit-uation.

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GOOGLE PLACES: TIPS FOR BEGINNERS CHEAT SHEETGoogle Places is a free service for getting a business (as well as cities, points of interest, landmarks etc) listed on localized Google map search results. It is an effective way to reach customers by presenting valuable information in a prominent place on the Search Engine Results Page via a Places Page. With the rapidly increasing adoption of web-enabled mobile devices and shopping apps, it is becoming vital for any business to optimize their local online presence – even if they don’t have a website. Google Places is a simple way to take advantage of a powerful tool that has the potential to attract new customers and build a business’s reputation.

How Can Google Places Help MyBusiness?

Making sure your Google Places listing is being used to its fullest extent can make a real difference:

Get found on Google for free – You don’t need a lot of SEO experience to ensure you are visible. In fact, you don’t even need a website – having a Google Places listing is a great way of ensuring you have an online presence.

It’s easy to manage - Creating a Google Places listing is easy and once created, you can update it whenever you want – your updates will appear as soon as you have verified them. You can edit your information at any time, as well as access stats such as how many people have seen and clicked on your listing. When people are searching for you online, you want to be found easily -

but you also want to be in control over the information that is listed, and with Google Places you are.

Stand out from your competition – If you have a Google Places listing and your competition doesn’t, you are already one step ahead. If your competition also has a listing, be sure to add photos, videos, promotions, coupons, additional information etc – anything to make you stand out. Think about what your customers would want to know about your business, and put it on your Places Page.

Getting Started

Adding a listing is easy!

• Visit Google Places• Submit your information• Verify your listing• Wait for your listing to appear on Google

The core things to make sure you add when setting up your listing are company/organization name, address, phone number, website, description and email address.

To enhance your Google Places listing, consider adding the following:

• Categories - Choose the most appropriate, specific categories for your business.

• Hours of Operation - This will enhance the user experience and save the user from having to call you. It streamlines

the process to potential business.• Photos/Videos - Includng photos and

video adds visual appeal to your listing.• Reviews - Reviews are really obtained

not by how visible you are online but by following through on what you promise. If you make a promise and don’t deliver, don’t expect great reviews from your customers.

Other advice from Google is to make sure your listing is complete and accurate, in particular its location on the map. You can move the map marker to your businesses exact location. Ensure that other directories, such as Yellow Pages also have correct information, as Google obtains its information from several places, including third party providers. (www.google.com/support/places/)

EyeTrackingandClickMappingGooglePlaces

We recently concluded a research project, using eye tracking and click mapping

technology, to find out how people interact with Google map results. Where do they look on the page? Does it make a difference if a listing has reviews? The key findings were:

You want to be in the top listing - People typically start looking in the upper left part of the screen, scan from left to right, then move down to the next result, scanning a little less at each line.

Get some reviews going on your listing - When the top results have fewer social signals, lower results get more visual attention - this presents an opportunity for businesses whose websites are not listed at the top. More complete listings, with multiple clickable options like a thumbnail image, urls, and social signals like reviews, generally have a much better chance of getting attention and clicks.

We published the results in a white paper available for free. It provides important insights and recommendations to help make the most of a Google Places listing.

JAN 2012 / MEDIATIVE.CA

1.800.277.9997 info@mediative.ca

mediative.ca

OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR SPECIAL EVENTS AND HOLIDAYS CHEAT SHEETThere are several opportunities over the course of the year to optimize your website and take advantage of the spike in online sales centered around special events or holidays - Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and, of course, Christmas. An online flower retailer, for example, could see 10 times as many sales in the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, compared to any other week of the year. ComScore reports that $43 Billion passed through ecommerce in Q4 of 2010. It is vital for any business to optimize their online presence at any time of the year, but even more so when there are guaranteed spikes in online sales, as there is greater opportunity to attract new customers who are ready to spend. Are you taking advantage of this?

These 15 tips will help you to optimize your site to take advantage of special events and holidays to be more prominent in the search engine results and ultimately maximize your online revenues.

1. Review metrics from the same time last year - Take a look at your analytics data from last year. What were your top referring sites and keywords? Which were the best converting? Which pages performed well (bounce rate, conversions, etc.)? Which performed poorly? Use this knowledge to target marketing messages and/or prioritize what parts of your site to tackle first.

2. Fix the Obvious - Do a crawl of your site or use webmaster tools to check for 404 errors and broken links. Fix them. Make sure that you’re ready for 404 errors to happen by having a good 404 page.

3. Tailor Your Value Proposition to the Specific Event or Holiday - Shopping online lets your customers save time, save gas, avoid the parking lot, avoid lines, find hard-to-find items, use gift finders, wish lists, and guided selling. Incorporate this type of messaging into your site, and make it prominent.

4. Promote“DesirePaths”- Most people want to get from point A to point B as

every single page of your site.

7. Clicks to Bricks - If you have bricks-and-mortar locations, make your store finder obvious. And if you have ship-to-store capabilities, make sure that customers know that’s an option.

8. Product Badging - Help customers identify new items, sale items, great gift ideas (“Great for Mom!”), popular items, free shipping items, and top rated items by using product badging.

Marketplace, Nextag, and so on, now might be a good time to check out those shopping feeds. If you are using them already, make sure that your feeds are updated daily with the latest product information.

13. Optimize Your Checkout Process - There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing the number of people who abandon their cart halfway through the checkout process. Reduce the risk involved by ensuring that they’ve been exposed to clear messaging about pricing throughout the process, including price guarantees, shipping and return policies, taxes and fees etc.

See Mediative’s Cheat Sheet “9 Tips for Optimizing your eCommerce Shopping Cart” for more tips to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

14. Check Your Mobile Experience -NRF reports that 52.6% of people who own a smartphone said they will use their phone to research products, redeem coupons, use apps to assist their purchase, and purchase holiday gifts and items. Is your mobile experience ready for that?

15. Test! - Run some A/B tests. You can try holiday vs. regular messaging, specific promos on different pages/site sections, time-based messaging, geotargeting, specific customer segments, and so much more to see what gets you the best ROI.

5. Personalization - If you have personalization capabilities, use them! Target customers based on whether they’re new or returning, what they’ve purchased previously, where they live, and anything else you know about them.

6. ServiceMessaging - Online shoppers are naturally risk averse - they want to make sure they’re making the right decision. Help them answer their service questions by including easy and obvious content about or links to payment options, return policies, shipping policies, and inventory updates. More importantly, make sure that they can get help if they need it. Live chat and/or obvious contact phone numbers should be available on

quickly as possible. Help get them there by using promotional areas devoted to holiday features and/or develop a special holiday navigation menu.

9. The Clock is Ticking - Include time-based messaging so that customers know when the cut-off date is for shipping and when specific deals or promos expire.

10. Promote Gift Cards - Pricegrabber reports that 52% of consumers plan to purchase gift cards this holiday season. Use a promotional area to make it obvious to customers that they can easily purchase and send gift cards.

11. Add HolidayMessaging toYourMetaData - Update your title tags and meta descriptions to include holiday messaging. This can help you stand out in search results and potentially rank better for holiday-related search terms.

12. Take Advantage of All Sales Channels - If you’re not using Google Product Search, Bing Shopping, Amazon

1 2 3Our client, a leading healthcare manufac-turer, was concerned with their website’s performance and on-site conversions. Their sales model has been built by cre-ating a robust distribution and re-seller network, facilitating broad market visibil-ity and sales. They wanted to refine their online strategyto better position the site in line with their audience’s consideration and purchase behavior, ideally funneling traffic though the corporate site prior to purchasing at the distributor level.

The CHALLENGE The SOLUTION The RESULTSMediative conducted an audit that showed visitors came to the site with three main objectives - purchasing, repairs, and edu-cational materials. These were compatible with the business objectives of the site. The design and navigation had to support these three scenarios.

The primary focus was on the “purchase” objective: increasing the effectiveness of the site which would increase visits to dis-tributor sites.

Through Mediative’s Usability Expert As-sessment areas for improvement were identified and recommendations made for implementing them. These included simplifying the path to purchase, making it clearer where the products were avail-able for purchase by featuring active and appropriate calls to action on every page, and making it easier to choose the right product. This “Don’t Make Them Think” ap-proach attempted to eliminate areas in the site where customers were encountering confusion.

Quick Wins were also implemented, in-cluding reorganizing and relabeling the main navigation elements to match the mental models of the visitors coming to the site, and specific changes to the home page layout and content to align more closely with the 3 customer goals.

By simply reorganizing and relabeling the main navigation elements there was an average increase of 22% in visitors per month to distributor sites in the 3 months immediately following the changes.

From the secondary changes to layout and content on the homepage there was a 9% increase in visits to their distributors’ sites.

Sometimes it’s hard to see your website from your customers’ perspective — you could be unintentionally disrupting the flow that guides them through to a conver-sion.

CASE STUDYLeading Healthcare Manufacturer Increases Onsite Conversions 22% with Simple User Experience Changes

Digital marketing is complicated enough for insiders.

For outsiders, it’s a tangled web of technology, jargon and acronyms. The aim of this video is to get

a clearer picture of where digital marketing stands today.

Visit mediative.ca/digital-marketing and check out the video to

see how we manage to solve this century old dilemma.

In the nineteen hundreds, department store owner John Wanamaker said: “Half the money I spend on advertis-ing is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half!”

QUESTIONS?ASKONEOFMEDIATIVE’SDIGITALMARKETINGSTRATEGISTSinfo@mediative.ca

JAN 2012/ MEDIATIVE.CA

“Mediativerecentlycompletedausabilityandconversionpath analysis of our website. I was very impressed with how thorough it was, the depth of analysis and some of the specificrecommendationstheymadetoimproveoursite.”

RandyLittleson,SrVPMarketing,FlexeraSoftware