WARNING: YOU HAVE 3 SECONDS!

That’s right! Research indicates that you have between 3 to 8 seconds to get a searcher to click on your listing or to make your visitor decide to stay on your website, rather than ‘click on’ and go elsewhere.

In a recent Conference Call, we discussed how you need to ensure the key elements of your website ‘grab’ your visitor and make them decide to stay, as well as eye-tracking studies that reveal the way that searchers view Search Engine Results Pages (’SERP’s). So here’s a bit more about how to grab your visitor and make him/her stay…

Eyeball It!

We are becoming ever more internet-savvy and impatient for results… Recent ‘heat map’ eye-tracking studies of search behaviour described by thinkeyetracking.com indicate that - in the last 3 years - we have gone from reading every line of the search results (the old ‘F Pattern’) to reading mostly just the results in the top left corner of the screen.

A study by eyetools.net similarly shows up the ‘Golden Triangle’, in the top left corner of the SERPs, dominantly viewed by searchers, with a brief glance at the top sponsored results at the top right.

And you should watch the video below, and view Google Blog page Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye, to understand just how fast the average person searches a web page to check whether it has relevant information!

And this applies to Landing and Sales pages too! As the eyetools study comments… “People don’t always realize that they can optimize their landing pages using eyetracking results to better convert their traffic into sales. If you’re paying for traffic, you can make a huge improvement in ROI by optimizing landing pages (30% boost in sales!)”.

Google Page 1

In the thinkeyetracking study, “87% respondents replied that they would modify the search terms or refine the search by category” if they couldn’t find their desired search result on the first page of Google, rather than go on to further pages.

So being in the top 5 to 10 listings on the fist page of Google results really does matter - whether for Organic or Search results!

Grab Your Visitor by the (Eye)balls!

Within 3 seconds of your visitor arriving on your website, the page needs to have convinced him/her clearly that they’ve (at last!) come to the right place!

Some of the key elements that will help convince your visitors stay on your website - and hence reduce your ‘Bounce Rate’ (people leaving from the page they arrived on) - include:

• Easy viewing of key information ‘above the fold’ in the ‘golden triangle’  - ie visible in top left corner of the first screen.
• A strong headline that includes the Keyword they used to reach your site
• A graphic that mirrors the Keyword
• Few distractions
• A clear reason to go on reading…

You can read more about background and strategies for this at the following websites

• Five Tips for Writing Effective Web Headlines
• 3 Match Types With The Same Quality Score

Don’t worry about the ‘Adwords’ angle etc – focus on what these tell us about how we need to grab visitors’ attention and lead them through our web pages by KEEPING THEIR INTEREST!

So the moral of the story is ‘think like your prospects’ - as they say, “walk a mile in your customer’s shoes!”

Grab your visitor by the eyeballs, take him/her by the hand and lead them briskly through your page sequence, feeding their excitement as you go, till you make them a ‘no-brainer’ offer they can’t refuse - what Mark Joyner calls the ‘Irresistible Offer’.

Happy copywriting!
John Thornely

How does Google rank bidders on its Adwords program?

That’s a perennial question that Google never answers directly - and as a result, leads the web advertising industry a merry game ‘catch-if-catch-can’!

It also leads to much misunderstanding by those who can’t afford to spend their days (and money) researching the actual performance of Google Ads… and find their ads being ranked in strange ways - or not shown at all!

So when a senior figure in Google comes out and clarifies the Google Ad Auction process, and how the ‘Quality Score’ of your ad (and other factors) affect both the ranking and cost of your ad (and whether it’s shown at all)… it’s got to be helpful!

And the video below, presented by Hal Varian, Google CHief Economist, is one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen of the importance of managing Adwords Quality Score and the effect on the Ad auction and your Ad placement.

Consulting Google’s Help pages is a bit like consulting the classical Oracle at Delphi - you never get a direct answer! But this is certainly the most easily understood explanation I’ve seen from Google on the auction process and ranking of your Ad.

If you’re not familiar with the basics of  Google Adwords, you can get a description of Quality Score here. But the video is clearer… So maybe Google does actually realise it needs to clarifyhow it’s rnking system works!

Happy Adword-ing
John Thornely

With the current economic downturn - and more bad news every day, despite the reported ‘green shoots’ that everyone is so desperately seeking - here’s an important question for your web business…

Are online sales holding up?

Well, there are many dimensions to that question and, unsurprisingly, many answers!

But, to look at the big picture (where the statistics are easier to find!), on-line sales are ever growing as a percentage of total sales, despite the recession. They now represent about 3.5% of all retail sales in the USA, according to the US Census Bureau, as shown in the following diagram.

US e-Commerce Growth to 4th Quarter 2008

Source: http://www.census.gov/mrts/www/data/html/08Q4.html

Yes, there’s a dip to the adjusted figures in 2008, due to the economic situation, but the trend continues…

To put some hard figures against this, the Department of Commerce estimate U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the 4th quarter of 2008 was $31.9 billion, while total retail sales were estimated at $938.1 billion - slightly down from the $1 Trillion average.

On an annualised basis this means online sales in the USA are around $125 billion… Add to that worldwide sales and you can see there’s quite a potential for the little people like you and me to be trading successfully online!

So here’s to you and I!

John Thornely
Internet Tycoons

Need to capture screenshots - or even video - from your computer?

Need a simple way of creating ‘news flashes’ or promo videos?

Well, the good news is that there’s a simple-to-use - and free - software system that allows you to do all this - and more!

Those who joined us at the recent Mastermind Workshop saw me demonstrate a free screen capture software, called ‘Jing’, from trusted software company TechSmith - you can check it out at: www.jingproject.com.

You’ll need to register, but you can select the extent of promotional material you want to receive from TechSmith (I get very little).

The Jing software installs a small ‘Sun’ icon onto your screen (see the image below, captured with Jing), which is available whenever you need to capture a screen shot or video.

Jing Screen Capture Software

The small half-sun icon tucks away discreetly on the edge of your screen (and you can move or hide the icon if you want) - I leave mine at the top of my screen away from the busier areas.

To capture a screen shot, just mouse-over the sun icon and control ‘pods’ appear (as in the image above) - click on the screen-capture ‘pod’ and you can set the area you want to capture.

Jing then gives you the option to save direct to your hard drive (so you can retrieve the image for later use) or to the clip-board, so you can paste it straight into a document.

You can also use it to capture video from your screen - and if you take the paid version, you can upload this directly to web pages - or Youtube!

And there are lots of ways you can use the images or video in your business - I suggest you check it out soon! I use it most days.

Cheers!
John