August 22, 2003

Day Four of the Conference
One of the most important topic on day Four of the conference was Converting Visitors into Buyers. While many attendees had decided to forego day four of Search Engine Strategies, San Jose in order to catch a flight, those that did stay, were offered some very diverse and interesting sessions to choose from. The most important topic of the day for any search engine marketer had to be Converting Visitors into Buyers. This is part Four of the conference's report from San Jose. Please click here to read part Three.

While some marketers concentrate on simply obtaining top rankings in Google, Yahoo and other search engines, those more experienced SEM's know the importance of actually converting that valuable traffic. An impressive panel of speakers provided the audience with ideas and solutions to increase a website's conversion ratio.

Inform the visitor
While iProspect is known for its rather expensive service, their pricing does allow for extensive work in the area of visitor conversion. Conversion Product Manager, Larry Kerstein, shared with the attendees different factors that help ensure a website encourages conversions. While the natural thought process might lead a website owner to write text that shouts "buy it now", Kerstein suggested that in some instances your visitor may not yet know that they need your product or service. He suggested that the copy on a website should inform and educate a visitor so that they can ultimately decide what truly meets their needs. Once they know what it is you offer and why it is better than your competitor’s offering, you can then encourage them to order from you.

Also, talking to the buyer in the language of the buyer and using benefit statements rather than product specifications, were all conducive to increasing client conversion, according to Kerstein.

Improve your existing site
Michael Sack, Chief Product Officer for Inceptor offered similar advice but suggested that you "do not have to take apart your website to increase conversions". Citing an example taken from Dell's website he backed-up his theory by demonstrating that the computer manufacturer had increased conversion rates by 6% simply by enhancing the category structure of certain areas of their website. Sack provided research from Shop.org which suggested that the average conversion rate for the retail sector was just 1.8%.

Sack also gave attendees examples of questions a visitor may ask themselves when at your website:

         Should I trust you?
         Why should I buy from you?
         What is special about your company?

The most important part of Sack's message was that website owners should simply "expose their content on the Internet". By this he was suggesting that too few websites offer enough information about a product or service and with many people using the search engines to research a purchase, marketers needed to provide this valuable information. Finally, Sack told attendees to constantly "test, analyze and adjust", giving a great example of how different types of pages tested on MSN yielded conversion rates from 1.75% to more than 3%.

Repeat speaker Heather Lloyd Martin took the conversion process to a different level when she challenged that the conversion begins with enticing a search user to actually click on your listing. She implored marketers to ensure that Title tags and Descriptions tags were compelling to humans and not just search engine friendly. She explained that a site ranked lower on a search results page, could have higher click-thrus than the number one listed site, if its listing were more enticing and targeted.

Measuring tools
Of course, in order to accurately track all of these conversions, a website owner or webmaster would need to ensure accurate reporting and tracking of visitors. The Measuring Tool Vendors session brought together different web analytics companies together in one room to explain the benefits of each of their respective products. Representatives of all the major analytics tools were in attendance, each offering the benefits of their product and how it worked.

One of the measuring tool vendors suggested that each attendee purchase Edward Tufte's "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" as it would assist them in analyzing website data. While the unique abandonment of his own product to discuss a book may have seemed strange, it is suspected that Marshall knew that the findings of the book would lead marketers to conclude that serious site measuring tools underline the importance of website analytics and needs to be a strong contender in the overall promoting and measuring tools available today.

As the final day of the conference wound down, a certain feeleing of satisfaction appeared to be felt by most of those involved. The attendees, staff, exhibitors and speakers all agreed that the event had been the most successful and well received search engine conference yet. The industry is growing at a rapid rate. Not only is there change in the landscape for the search engines, but search engine marketers are also changing and adapting very fast. With the successful launch of SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), marketers even have a "trade union" in an industry that is expected to grow by billions of dollars each year.

If you were not able to attend the conference in San Jose, we hope this series has given you an insight into the important and new developments taking place in the search industry and maybe even encouraged you to attend the next conference in Chicago in December of 2003. If you were able to make it, we think you will agree that the event was a good success.

Day One      Day Two      Day Three

Note: This is a condensed report originally produced by Andy Beal, v.-p. of Search Marketing for Keyword Ranking.com

        

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