With most modern analytics packages the conversion rate can be calculated within the system fairly easily if you’ve set up the appropriate goals and tracking.

Conversions are any event which you consider to be a goal of the website.

For most e-commerce sites, this will be a sale. For other sites the outcome the site needs may be to get the visitors’ email address, for the user to leave a comment, download a file or to click a particular link.

There are two calculations commonly used to calculate the conversion rate. One is to take the total unique visitors over a period and divide by the number of conversions.

Sometimes a small month-on-month change in the conversion rate will seem disappointing given the gains that are often spoken about in conversion rate optimisation of 50 or more percent.

Not every site can be increased by large amounts straight away, but even a one or two percent change every month can add up to a significant difference to your company.
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As a follow up to GoCompare No Longer Ranking for their Brand Name I decided to have a quick look at the SERPs and see that GoCompare rank #1 again in Google.co.uk for their brand.

When looking at some of the terms they target they’ve improved a little, but are still ranking badly.
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This morning I saw that Patrick Altoft on his search engine optimisation site had mentioned that GoCompare had been penalised again.

Patrick had previously mentioned a penalty after he looked at paid links in the car insurance vertical.

The latest article points to an email published on Red Cardinal showing how GoCompare requested some of their links.
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BackTweets is a very useful service that searches for a URL in the major URL shortening services on Twitter.

Their bookmarklet takes over the current window and away from the content you want to search twitter for. My version below will open a search in a new window or tab preserving the original page.
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I had a hosting client call me recently telling me the site wasn’t working in Chrome. I duly checked and saw a warning given that the site contained links to malware.

Initially I thought that the WordPress install had been compromised in some manner, but I knew that the code base was the latest as I use a cron job based on this update WordPress script and the plugins were minimal and again up to date.
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… unless of course you’ve already seen me answer something like this on facebook, 43things, etc etc…

Our favourite bonobo Richard Dewick of Makak Media kindly invited me to participate in the meme.

The Seven Things:

• I’ve worked in banking, as a COBOL programmer, an assembler programmer, music retail, games development and web development.
• I was born in Neath, Wales of an Irish father & Welsh mother.
• I wrote the official solution to the games Abe’s Oddysee and Quake amongst others.
• Sergeant Bilko (The Phil Silvers Show) is probably the best American comedy ever. I would slap Steve Martin with a wet fish until his nose bled for the travesty of his movie remake.
• I am (or at least was) a Reverend Doctor. (Internet style). No, I can’t marry you – at least not to another person.
• I don’t drive and I sold my motorbike years ago after nearly killing myself when drifting in thought as I rode the thing into on coming traffic.
• I spend a good proportion of each day making random bass noises.

Who’s Next?

• Richard Kershaw – Quality Nonsense
• Anita Campbell – Small Business Trends
• Chris Aves – Ninth Space
• Gregor Spowart – Mass Media Design Blog
• Newport SEO
• Stuart Brown – Social Communications
• Kol Tregaskes – Squashy Frog Photography

The Meme Rules

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged.

Occasionally I hear of sites being penalised by Google and quickly dropping out of the SERPs. This can often be the result of spammy links being injected into the site’s template.

Often the links are hidden from everyone apart from the search engine spiders, so a quick normal visual check won’t reveal the problem.

In those cases a site search at Google for the domain name + a spammy term can show the infected articles.

The following bookmarklet will take the domain you are currently visiting and search Google for site:domain and add four common spam terms. Each Google search is opened in a new window giving you the original site plus four new tabs for each of the searches.

javascript:(function(){ window.open('http://www.google.com/search?pws=0&num=100&q=site:'+encodeURIComponent(location.hostname)+' viagra'); window.open('http://www.google.com/search?pws=0&num=100&q=site:'+encodeURIComponent(location.hostname)+' payday+loans'); window.open('http://www.google.com/search?pws=0&num=100&q=site:'+encodeURIComponent(location.hostname)+' cialis'); window.open('http://www.google.com/search?pws=0&num=100&q=site:'+encodeURIComponent(location.hostname)+' ringtones'); })();

To install the bookmarklet, just drag the button below to the bookmarks bar in your browser. To use, click it when you are visiting a domain you want to check for spam. It’s that easy!

Site Spam Hack Test

When I shared this bookmarklet on the SEO Book community forum, Aaron Wall mentioned the Blogstorm post, “How to use Google Alerts to find out if your site gets hacked” as an alternative for constantly checking your own sites.

Improving Conversions With Informed Design Choices

The following sixteen pointers provide an overview to improving the conversion rate and general customer satisfaction with your businesses website and landing pages.

1. Focus on what’s in it for THEM using clear benefits and your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
   1. USP must be unique and specific
   2. Example of weak USPs: using lowest or best price (no longer credible)
   3. Example of great USPs:
      1. Fed Ex: “Get it there overnight” (was unique when they first used it)
      2. Domino’s “30-minutes-or-free guarantee”
      3. Strongest reasons why buying from you is best FOR THEM
2. Headline packed with specific, measurable benefits (not features)
   1. The more specific the more believable
   2. Improved headlines can increase sales by 400-1000% or more
3. Up to two sub-headlines with the second and third strongest benefits
4. One-click navigation
   1. No more than three clicks to order – two is better
   2. Navigation in the same place on every page – left side or top only
   3. Buttons must be clear on what they do
5. Use all your strongest benefits above the fold
6. Have a clear “Call to Action” clearly telling visitors what you want them to do
7. Establish Credibility
   1. Use Testimonials that include:
      1. Specific, measurable results
      2. Use first and last name
      3. Web site address
      4. At least the state and ideally city and state
      5. Photo of person
      6. Use 1 minute video clips for the ultimate testimonial
   2. Explain why you’re qualified to help them or solve their problems
   3. Show that you’re “just like them”
   4. Make it interesting – tell a story
8. Place Your List Opt-in offer above the fold on every page.
   1. Writing Your Offer
      1. Make it compelling
      2. Emphasize the benefits of joining
      3. Use a clear Call to Action
      4. Link to your privacy policy
      5. Request first name, last name, and email address (other sources recommend first name and email address only)
   2. Following Up
      1. Use your list to build relationships over time.
      2. Send a free monthly newsletter
         1. Information with a strong benefit
         2. Entertaining or informative
         3. Highlight the contents in bullet points at the top
         4. Generate back-end sales with member only discounts and special offers
         5. Include link to privacy policy
         6. Include unsubscribe information
9. The Sales Copy on Your Site IS Your Sales Person
   1. Long copy is best if:
      1. You sell only one product
      2. You sell a service
      3. You have one type of product with limited variations
      4. Use separate sales letters/pages for multiple products
   2. Short copy is best for sites with many products
10. Transfer Ownership by writing your site as though they already have the products/services offered
11. Remove the risk
    1. Compelling, powerful “no risk, 100% money back” guarantee
    2. Do not limit the guarantee to 30 days – 60, 90 or one year is best
12. Create added value for buyers with free bonus items such as e-books
13. Create Urgency and encourage immediate sales with:
    1. Limited time discounts and offers
    2. By rotating free bonus items regularly
14. Make it easy for customers to contact you in multiple ways
15. Use effective formatting techniques
    1. Scannable
    2. White space
    3. Limited number of fonts and colors
16. Consider using Hover Ad technology for:
    1. Opt-in mailing list
    2. Contests
    3. Surveys
    4. Last minute offers
    5. New product announcements
    6. Coupons
    7. Time limited offers

Written by PPC Think and reposted with permission.

Amongst other recent Google Analytics changes such as the new data segmentation features, the accounts overview may appear as a fairly small addition, but this lets you quickly and easily see changes to your sites and accounts for day, week, month and year periods without having to drill down into individual sites. This feature can therefore can alert you to any problems or unexpected successes far earlier than your regular analytics schedules might allow.

Here we’ve displayed the “all accounts” overview, from here you could then get an overview for individual domains within the account. This overview can be so useful that it might be wise when building new sites to theme the analytics accounts to contain sites with similar content or revenue schemes into groups.

Within each account, you are now presented with a similar overview but for each of the individual websites. Again you can display the data in day, week, month & year views. Data is displayed for visits, average time on site, bounce rate and completed goals which can be selected as the percentage change.

Benefits of the Accounts Overview

• Theme similar domains into content, geographical or revenue groups
• Save time keeping an “eye on things”
• Use the daily figures to spot domains with problems
• Quickly spot emerging trends with weekly view
• Get a deeper feel for the traffic levels throughout your portfolio
• Spot low traffic domains with potential that otherwise get ignored.

Using this data you can quickly see the changes to individual sites without having to visit all the separate domains specifically, any emerging traffic trends you spot can be developed or countered quickly.

Are there other uses for this presentation of the data that you’ve discovered? Please do comment and share.