Web Marketing Strategy Update

If you want to improve your website sales conversions — and I’m sure you do — have a read of MarketingSherpa’s new Ecommerce Benchmark Guide 2007.

This is not the latest, greatest marketing twaddle of some Internet marketer who’s been online all of 5 minutes, but no-nonsense, “just the facts please” information from people in the trenches that will help you:

• Raise shopper-to-buyer conversions and increase buyer lifetime
• Improve search engine marketing ROI, despite rising costs per click
• Reduce shopping cart abandon rates
• Increase email open rates, number of clicks received and conversion rates
• Compare your own marketing stats to those of your peers
• Ensure your marketing tests and site revamp ideas are approved by management

The completely new guide contains a whopping 223 charts & tables, with data from 1,913 ecommerce marketers’, and results from surveys of 2,449 online shoppers. There’s also “best-of” data from 30 independent research organizations, plus 6 brand new eyetracking heatmaps for sites like Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart and others.

As I write this I’m split testing 4 different pages on the The Amazing Formula website.

Split testing means that an equal number of visitors will see each of the pages. We are tracking the orders from each, so we will know which page converts best.

Today, I want to talk about WHAT I’m testing, how and why. This is what I want you to do:

1. Visit The Amazing Formula site

2. Notice the BLUE IE BAR at the top that has a number, right next to the blue Internet Explorer icon.

3. Refresh the page in your browser and watch as that number changes. You will see that the ENTIRE page changes.

If you’re having difficulty getting the page to refresh properly, hold down your shift key while you click on refresh.

4. Keep refreshing and you’ll see a total of FOUR different page designs that I’m split testing.

COMMENTS ON THE PAGES

1. You might not see the opt-in “fly in.” We had a problem with the DHTML (dynamic html) code. Lisa’s going to fix that this weekend or on Monday.