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Facing criticism over “fake news,” inappropriate search suggestions and more, the search company is looking for long-term and comprehensive solutions.

The post Google studying ways to deal with offensive search suggestions & results appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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“We got a $300,000 opportunity this week from live chat on our site.”

I’m filled with pride as I hear our VP of sales make this statement. I worked hard for six months to get the sales team invested in live chat as a sales channel and I’m finally seeing the results.

It wasn’t easy, though. For many weeks, I sat in meetings or sent detailed reports trying to explain that while we had dozens of leads coming in through live chat, they weren’t being followed up on. I sadly watched the leads’ value diminish the longer they sat in the database.

But now that the sales team members were committed, live chat was proving to be a lucrative channel. I had members of the sales team asking me every week to add them as agents. They wanted in. They wanted in, because the most valuable leads are those that are on your website.

People visiting your website are there looking for something. If you can provide them with the answer they are seeking, you are going to win their favor. That’s where live chat comes in. The ability to connect directly with your visitor, at the moment they have questions about your product is an incredible driver of marketing-qualified leads and sales.

However, you only get out of live chat, what you put in: It’s difficult to realize the kind of results above without joint investment from your marketing and sales organizations. So, how do you get everyone involved? Below are the steps to getting leadership, sales, and marketing, on the live chat train.

 

1) Get People On Board With Live Chat
Identify an Owner and Then Determine the Benefits

You need a live chat champion. The champion will most likely live in the marketing team. Once this person is identified, it’s critical that they set expectations with leadership, the marketing team, and the sales team regarding what live chat will accomplish.

It depends on the stage and structure of your business, but there is a likely a gap that live chat will fill. Define your initial expectations for the benefits that chat will provide. Here are a few suggestions.

Improved understanding of site effectiveness
Better insight on site visitors
Increased site conversion rate
Increased # of leads
Increased # of MQLs
More sales opportunities

Choose one of these improvements as a goal and make it your focus for the roll out and testing of live chat. Then, set a specific amount of time and an approach to your test. At the end of that period, measure your results.

Test It Out

Get started with a trial. Most live chat providers have a trial and SnapEngage offers a 15-Day Free Trial. It’s incredibly easy to setup. The setup typically just requires adding a snippet of code to your website. Once you’re up and running, you can start to validate the improvements you’ve defined almost instantly.

As you conduct your test, there are a few ways to know if live chat is working:

You are chatting daily with your site visitors and chat volume is increasing
The bounce rate on the pages where chat is installed is decreasing
Marketing is driving conversions from visitor to lead through live chat
You learned something from your chat conversations about your market or how to improve your website
Your sales team closed a deal with a lead that came through live chat
The chat agents are consistently using the tool

Illustrate the Benefits

After you have conducted your test, report your findings and the improvements you experienced to the sales and marketing team. Then, project those improvements out over a longer period of time to provide a full picture of what the future with live chat might look like.

As I mentioned, people who use live chat as an acquisition and conversion channel often find it to be one of the most successful drivers of leads in regards to volume and quality. We’ve seen that clients who use chat, experience a 10-20% increase in conversion from visitor to lead. If you experience an increase in your site conversion rate of 10%, show the impact of that over time.

Here’s an example:

 

Without Live Chat
With Live Chat

Site Visitors/Mo

10,000

10,000

Conversion Rate

10%

20%

# of Leads

1000

2000

Qualification Rate*

36%

36%

Close Rate*

27%

27%

# of Customers

97

194

Ave. Revenue/Customer/Yr

$1000

$1000

Revenue/Yr

$97,000

$194,000

*http://blog.capterra.com/average-b2b-conversion-rate/

That’s a huge increase in revenue opportunity–nearly $100K per year–just by improving the conversion rate with live chat. 

If you can illustrate these kinds of benefits to sales and marketing leadership, they will be pumped.

If you’re looking for more information to present to your sales and marketing leadership on live chat’s ability to bridge the gap between marketing and sales, you can also read our guide, How to Leverage Live Chat to Get More Out of Inbound Marketing.

2) Implement Successfully
Define ownership and accountability

For chat to be a successful channel for your business, accountability needs to be clear. Most importantly, there should be committed chat agents who will respond to inbound chats. Without that, chat provides no value.

Here is the most common accountability structure we see marketing and sales teams use when it comes to live chat:

Marketing or Marketing Operations: Frequently, marketing is the cheerleader of chat. In this role, they are commonly responsible for implementing, training, and measurement.
Lead or Business Development Reps (LDR/BDR): These are the committed chat agents. This team is responsible for managing the inbound chats, qualifying them, and then handing them off to sales.
Sales Account Execs: Once the leads have been qualified and passed along, sales is responsible for the following up right away and moving qualified leads through the sales process.

For companies with existing LDR/BDR teams, chat is a no-brainer. It provides the entry-level employees with a less intimidating way to interact with prospects and the opportunity to get familiar with the product and frequently asked questions they might encounter, but in a controlled environment, which prepares them for the phones.

For companies without an existing front line for sales, you can enlist sales reps, marketers, or office admins.

Another option is to do what SnapEngage does and make everyone responsible for chat. This approach provides an incredible inside view on the market, the questions prospects are asking, how people are navigating the website, and the first impression of the site and product.

Install Properly
Customize the design of your live chat tool

Having all the design elements on your site working in harmony helps to present a unified structure and visual appeal. It has also been shown to help drive engagement. Make sure that live chat aligns with your existing web presence and brand style guide. 

Place chat on the most qualified pages

It’s possible to choose where your live chat panel appears and where it doesn’t. Taking a strategic approach to where you place live chat on your website will help gradually introduce your team to live chat and also help focus resources on your most qualified leads.”

Instead of installing across the entire website, install chat on only your most qualified pages. These are the pages that people who are further down the funnel are visiting, such as the product page, the pricing page, schedule a demo, or start a trial areas of your website.

Make it personal

Add names and pictures of your agents to make the experience more personal. It’s important to provide a human touch. By adding pictures and names, you establish credibility, which improves the likelihood of conversion.

Train Your Agents

It may sound obvious, but it’s important that you familiarize your chat agents with all of the features and settings. You can expect that live chat tools will have a general guide to chat. But beyond the general overview, it’s useful to find the unique tools that are going to create efficiency and collaboration for your team. Most live chat tools have features such as:

Keyboard shortcuts to help make chatting more efficient
Canned responses to ensure that your chat agents are leveraging existing marketing content to answer common questions
Territory (or other) assignments and chat transfers to send chats to the proper team member  

Integrate with your CRM

Much of the power of chat for marketing and sales comes with integration. SnapEngage integrates with several marketing and sales software providers, like HubSpot. These integrations allow you to store all of your prospect and customer communication history, including chat activities, in one place.

It also provides the seamlessness of assigning leads to the proper team members and the ability for those team members to see a history of lead interactions (including detailed transcripts), so you always know what’s been said. It’s also possible to include chat activity as a lead scoring criteria to support your lead qualification process.

3) Measure and Improve

Continual measurement and improvement is critical to the success of a live chat program. As you roll out the program, be sure to define accountability and set up a scorecard to measure performance on a regular cadence.

Each group and individual should have a clear understanding of who is accountable for what. Again, the most basic action that the group needs to be accountable to is responding to chats.  

Also determine who will own measurement. When it comes to measuring how successful live chat is, you can start at a high level and look at volume and quality.

# of chats
% of visitor to chat
# of leads (from chat source)
% of chat to lead

If you want to go a bit deeper, you can follow your chat activity down the funnel and track a few sales-related metrics.

# of sales opportunities (from chat source)
% of lead to opportunity
$ in pipeline (from chat source)
# of closed sales (from chat source)
$ in sales (from chat source)

Other, more specific things to monitor and measure are chat performance by different criteria such as:

Site page
Visitor geography
Chat agent
Product
Etc.

You can derive a ton of valuable data about the effectiveness of live chat that will only help you optimize and improve your marketing and sales performance. It’s important to recognize that a live chat program isn’t a “set it and forget it” program.

Continual improvements can make a huge difference and will continue the interest and investment in live chat as a marketing and sales channel.

 

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Depending on where you are right now, these words may have just zoomed thousands of miles, across the bottom of several oceans, at nearly the speed of light, to reach your screen. Yes. The. Internet. Is. Magic.

A few of months ago, my friend Lo and I were given a challenge by the YouTube channel What’s Inside. Could we get our hands on a chunk of an underwater internet cable, so they could attempt to cut it in half? We didn’t know how we’d do this, but figured there was a way (lots of emails). And of course, we were excited to find the answers to our own questions about these cables in the process.

Like, how many underwater internet cables are there? (More than 250 active, fiber optic cables that connect cities and data centers all over the world.) What’s the history of these cables? (The first transatlantic telegraph cable is more than 150 years old.) Do sharks really bite them? (Yes, but they don’t pose as big a threat as internet headlines might lead you to believe.) How much traffic can they handle? (The equivalent of 10 million YouTube videos a second.) How big are they? (Skinnier than a breakfast burrito.)

Our search for a cable took us to New Hampshire to visit one of the factories that creates them, as well as aboard a ship to see the Monet cable being loaded onto it. Our trip also taught us things we never knew to ask. For example, the internet smells like a freshly paved driveway. And when these cables are loaded onto the ship, they’re coiled by hand. Which means they’re literally walked the entire distance that they will eventually stretch. (In the case of the Monet cable, from Florida to Brazil.)

If you haven’t already, please watch the video version of this story above, so you can see for yourself what a fascinating, lengthy part of the internet these cables are. And if you’re curious about something else related to Google or how the internet works, I hope you’ll leave me a comment on YouTube, or send me a tweet. Not only will your words potentially travel thousands of miles and to the depth of the ocean to reach me, but maybe one day, I’ll get to travel to some far off corner of the internet to bring back an answer to you.

P.S. We also successfully completed our mission and delivered a chunk of cable to What’s Inside. To see whether or not they could cut this cable in half, check out their video.

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Make sure your reviews don’t contain profane or vulgar language. If they do, Google can remove your review rich snippets.

The post Google reviews schema guidelines to prohibit vulgar or profane language appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

The post SearchCap: Google review guidelines, photo insights & PPC campaigns appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Digital marketers are under tremendous pressure at the moment to produce results with their marketing budgets. Gone are the days where a business just threw money at something and no care about the result. Instead we are in a world where every campaign needs evaluating to understand how it is performed against other marketing channels.

The first part of this article will help you understand how ROI is calculated. Then the second part looks at how to predict traffic. The final part will bring everything together to understand how predict what ROI will be achieved as a result of implementing an SEO fix.

What Is ROI and How To Calculate It

ROI is a metric used to measure how much was gained vs what effort was put in. It’s a metric that highlights which campaigns have performed best. Marketing & Digital Marketing managers want to be about to know if they spend X, then how much are they going to get in return 2X, 3X.

The formula for ROI is simple:

ROI = (Increase from Campaign – Cost of the Campaign) / Cost of Campaign
(£72,000 – £5,000) / £5,000 = £13.4

This means that for every £1 spent the client has earned £13.40.

How to Work Out ROI for Non-Transactional Websites

While working out the ROI of a website that sells online is reasonably simple to work out, doing the same for a website that relies on advertising revenue is difficult because we need to carry out a few calculations to use the ROI formula.

For example, if we were working on a campaign for an online magazine, which costs £2700 per month and this months, year on year there had an extra 89,122 sessions what’s the ROI?

What we need to do is first work out the revenue earnt. We use the CPM price which stands for Cost Per Thousand which is a marketing term used to denote the price of 1,000 advertisement impressions on one webpage.

In this example, we will assume that the site earns on average £35 per CPM with 3 different ads running on each page means that the revenue is around: £105 per CPM.

So now we have our CPM price we need to work out how many impressions or more commonly known as pageviews we have had. To do this we use the following formula:

(Sessions x Avg Pageviews Per Session) = Pageview

So, in our working example:

(89,122 x 1.55) = 138,139 pageviews

Now we understand how many pageviews we have achieved we can work out the amount of revenue using our CPM:

1,381 x £105 = £145,005

So now we have the total revenue finger we can now using the formula to work out the ROI:

ROI = (Increase from Campaign – Cost of the Campaign) / Cost of Campaign
(£145,005 – £2,700) / £2,700 = £52.70

Which means for every £1 spent we earn an additional £52.70.

It’s worth considering that this calculation presumes that all the advertising slots are sold and it also doesn’t consider bulk purchase deals which is often happens with buying media placements.

Our data is only an example of how the calculation work however the more arcuate the data the more accurate the result.

Working Out Traffic Predictions

It’s now for the second part which is how to make traffic predictions. Now like any form of prediction it is just a prediction which means its highly likely to be wrong. However, the more predictions you make the better you will get. However, we are going to show you some quick technics to make sure you are as accurate as possible.

The first part of any traffic prediction is understanding where traffic will be heading in the next 12 months if you did nothing, i.e. natural growth.

Now there is so many days to do this, however I will share you just one way I do it, however you are free do use your own method.

To predict future traffic, I go to Google Analytics and I click on Acquisition > Campaigns > Organic Keywords.

Then change the date to display data for the last 18 months. Make sure you set the graph to display the metrics in months and not daily as it is set to by default. Export that xlsx file and open it up in excel. Once open select the third tab called “Dataset2” and carry out the following instructions.

In the first column lists the month and in the second column lists the amount of sessions.

The first thing we are going to work out is the month on month percentage increase. We can do this by selecting cell C3 and typing the following formula:

=(B3-B2)/B2

Then set the cell formatting to Percentage and we have now just worked out the month on month percentage increase, YAY.

If you pull that formula down it will then work it down for all months.

 

Next click in cell C1 and type the following:

=MEDIAN(C3:C17)

Which this will work out the median of all the month on month percentage increase.

Next we will move down to work out the year on year percentage increase using the small amount of year on year data we have. (If you do have access to more than 18 months’ worth of data then that will allow for more accurate.)

Now select cell D14 and type the following formula:

=(B14-B2)/B2

This will work out the year on year percentage increase. Now pull that formula down in the same way as month on month.

 

Then we need to work out the Median with the following formula:

=MEDIAN(D14:D17)

So to recap where we are:

We have an excel spreadsheet with 18 months’ worth of sessions data. We have worked out what each month on month percentage increase is. Then we worked out what a few of the year on year figures look like. Finally, we have worked out what the Median figure is for both, month on month and, year on year figures.

Now what we need to do is take these new figures and apply them to past figures to then project over the next coming 6 months.

Now we need to apply the month on month Median to the final month’s data to see what next predicted month will be. So type in the following formula:

=(C17*C1)+B17

This will give the first months projected traffic using the month on month increase. From that figure we can apply the median average increase in C23:

=(C22*C1)+C22

Then for C24 to C27 we can pull down the formula. We now have a completed 6 month prediction based upon month on month growth of 9.79% which was the median growth rate for the previous 18 months.

Next we need to work predicted growth based upon year on year median of 162.01%.

To do this go to D22 and type the following Formula:

=(B6*$D$1)+B6

The above formula takes the figures for November last year and adds 161.01% on top giving us a predicted figure for November data.

As with the month on month predications we can pull down the formula down. Now we have traffic predictions based upon year on year medium growth.

So now we’re left with two sets of traffic predictions. One based upon month on month growth and the other based upon year on year growth.

The final thing we need to do in B22 is to take the Median of both months on month and year on year to find the middle ground by doing the following formula:

=MEDIAN(C22:D22)

Once again we can pull this formula down now for the following 5 months and that is now our traffic predictions for the coming 6 months. They should look something like the following:

November: 9677
December: 9580
January: 11204
February: 12025
March: 13205
April: 14381

Now we have successfully come up with some kind of traffic prediction that allows us to see potentially how much traffic we expect to see in the coming months providing we continue to see the same level of growth.

Keep Examples of other success

So we now understand what ROI is and how it is calculated. We also have learnt to make traffic predictions based upon consistent historical growth.

Next we need to understand how our recommended fixes with impact on future growth. This is probably the hardest part of the process is predicting how much more traffic you expect to gain as a result of implementing a fix.

One of the most arcuate ways of predicting impact is using past examples of successes whether that be for your own client or it is with third party sites. These come in handy when talking with stakeholders of what the expected outcome. They can be used to encourage others to support your recommendations. They can also work the other way as a way to discourage and idea.

All you need to do is take screenshots of Sistrix of what happens when X website does some large change like move a site from sub domain to sub directory. You can keep them in a folder, Dropbox or even on twitter if it makes sense. Try to keep the stuff organised because looking for a particular screenshot months or sometimes years afterwards can be difficult to find. Also, we would recommend recording the date in the title because then you know how to find the issues again.

 

The two key things to take from the entire exercise is these are proven examples, which always have more weight Plus they give you some kind of expectation should you implement the same test.

Keeping an example of changes achieves two things. First of all, its evidence to your stakeholders that it works and the second thing it does is gives you an accurate prediction.

Running Tests

Sometimes when you are making traffic predictions you do not have an example to hand. In which case we would recommend running a test.

What we mean by running a test, is taking a recommendation for example reducing the size of a header image and instead of just implementing it, just taking a couple of pages and running a test instead of applying the fix to all 250 product pages.

By running a test on a couple of pages we should be able to see the impact we will bring. For email after a month of running the image size test we can see that the two pages in a test have increase traffic by 11%. So in theory had we applied the test to the entire site we would expect to see a growth by 11% of traffic.

How to apply predictions to SEO fixes?

So to recap we have predicted traffic for the last 6 months based upon historical growth figures. We then have run a small test on a couple of service pages that saw an 11% growth in organic traffic to the service pages.

So now we have a 6 months of traffic prediction. So now we need to add another line of data that suggests what happens if we implement a fix.

An example of this might be that by adding a xml sitemap to a site increased organic which we expected to see a 10% uplift in traffic.

Now this fix will be implemented in February so we can now create a new graph that shows current predicted levels as well as how we feel the fix will impact on traffic.

Now you can see by the above graph we have two sets of data. The first in blue outlines what traffic we predict we will see at current growth levels. The orange line is the same traffic prediction however it also includes the impact that we expect to see when implementing a fix.

Not only does it allow us to clearly see how much extra traffic we are likely to see, it also shares the importance of implementing fixes sooner to gain maximum benefit.

Working out traffic predictions to SEO Fixes

So now we have traffic predictions for the next 6 months and we have traffic predictions for the amount of extra visitors we will receive as a result of our fixes we are now in a position on how much ROI that increase will bring us.

So the client that we did a traffic prediction is currently paying £5000 per month. To work out their ROI for the last months to do the following sums.

Now let’s work out what the ROI will be for our predicted 6 month’s worth of traffic. Then we can work how the ROI improves based upon out recommended fix.

Now for the purposes of these calculations we can tell you that the clients conversion rate is 2.89% along with an average order value of £50.

Now we need to find the correct figures to work out the following formula that was at the stop of the article:

ROI = (Increase from Campaign – Cost of the Campaign) / Cost of Campaign

Now the client was spending £3,000 a month so we know that the cost of the campaign over the 6 month period was £18,000.

Next what we need to work out is how much traffic did prediction say it would achieve.

Traffic Predictions with fix for next 6 months: 70,073 sessions

The we need to remove last year’s traffic: 18727 sessions.

So we now need to work out how much extra traffic they have received:

70,073 – 18,727 = 51,346 Sessions

Next we need to times the amount of sessions by out conversation rate to understand how any sales were achieved extra

51,346 * 0.0298 = 1484 sales

Now with an average order value of £50

£50 * 1484 = £74,194

Which means we can now calculate ROI:

(£74,194 – £18,000) / £18,000 = £3.12

Which means for every £1 spent the client earned back £3.12

What is also useful is working how much additional revenue our fix will bring in.

To do this you need to so the same calculations as above but with the traffic predictions data that include the fix traffic data.

74,430 – 18,727 = 55,703 Sessions
55,703 * 0.0298 = 1610 sales
£50 * 1610 = £80,491

So from the above calculations we can work out the ROI of the traffic predictions which include the improvements from our fix.

(£80,491 – £18,000) / £18,000 = £3.47

What is interesting is now we have these two sets of numbers we can say that if the client implements the recommended fix we predict that for three months after implementing the fix the site will earn an extra £6296 in revenue.

I believe any digital marketing manager will see how powerful this math is.

Being able to predict that revenue that could be returned will help on some many levels. For a target, it can highlight how you are going to hit revenue figures. The second thing is it allows developers time to understand if implementing a fix would take too long.

For example, we have predicted that implementing a fix will bring in an extra £6296 in revenue which sounds great however if the if the fix costs £7,000 to implement then it wouldn’t produce a positive return on investment.

Summary

Working out potential return on investments allows managers make better decisions by providing them with factual figures that give greater understanding of the risks and rewards.

With these predictions, you must bear in mind that these are just that… predictions and 9 times out of 10 they are going to be off or sometimes wrong altogether. The difference is its far easier to make decisions when you are presented with data compared to no data at all.

These figures are also useful to use when deciding on if an issue is cost effective to fix. For example, let’s say we believe that if a client implements an SEO fix and thus the client expects to see a £3000 uplift in revenue. However, if it costs £4000 to implement then it doesn’t provide a positive return on investment meaning it’s not worth doing.

Plus, the more time you spend predicting your sites traffic the better you will become which will then improve your success rate overall.

Richard Petersen is Search & data manager at Zazzle Media and a contributor to Search Engine Watch

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Starting today, Google Keyboard on Android is getting a new name — and so much more. Gboard has all the things you love about your old Google Keyboard — speed and accuracy, Glide Typing and voice typing — plus Google Search built in. You can search and send information, GIFs, emojis and more — right from your keyboard. As an added bonus, we’ve added multilingual typing to help you switch languages on the fly.

Search and share, right from your keyboard

It shouldn’t be that hard to search and share on your phone — and with Gboard, it isn’t.

You can search Google and share results right from your keyboard — anything from flight times and weather to news. Gboard also predicts possible searches that may be relevant to you. Text a friend “Let’s meet if the weather looks good” and see a prediction for “Weather”. With one tap, you can share today’s weather with your friend and meet up for your next adventure.

You can also search and share emoji and GIFs. Instead of scrolling and scrolling to find ? or ?, just search “monkey” to find that emoji you want. Or, find a GIF for the perfect reaction. GIF sharing works today in Google Messenger, Allo and Hangouts, with more apps coming soon as developers add image keyboard support.

So the next time you’re texting a friend your favorite cat video or news of the day, you don’t have to leave you app. Just search and send — right from your keyboard.

Smarter and faster typing

Gboard is assisted by machine learning to make typing faster and easier, including improved Glide Typing, predictions and autocorrections. And for our multilingual users, communication on a keyboard has never been easier — Gboard will now autocorrect and suggest from any of your enabled languages, so you can type in multiple languages within the same conversation without manually switching between them. Just select your languages and type.

Gboard will work in more than 100 languages as it rolls out today, and will be coming to more languages over the coming months. Get Gboard from the Play Store to swipe, search and emoji away.

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There isn’t any one single hack that will boost your conversions and fix problems like abandoned shopping carts. That’s because the things that drive conversions are unique to every website and every product. When conversions are down, many marketers turn to solutions that promise high conversion rates and guarantee a certain outcome. But the issue of conversions is not so simple that it can be turned into a streamlined, one-move-fixes-all type of situation. However, there are certain things you can do to create a page/website that is hospitable to high conversion rates.

These general issues are things that tend to hold back conversions on any website. While correcting them may not be the one stop cure for suffering conversion rates, it can put you on a step in the right direction.

Poor web design.

A weak web design can and will negatively affect your conversion rate, because it directly impacts the way users interact with your site. Poor web design can be attributed to a lack of aesthetics in color and style, outdated organization or look, over-complicated display features, and any other combination of first-impression factors.

Once a user is on your website, an impression is made within a matter of milliseconds. The aesthetics, as well as the user-friendliness of the page, needs to be on point and consistent. Do your users naturally know how to interact with your site pages? Is there a certain spot their eyes gravitate to? Are you using compelling call to action buttons?

Under-developed product/service.

Sometimes when conversion rates suffer, the issue is really within the product or service you’re trying to push. If all the other factors that weigh into the conversion rate of your unique website seem to be fully optimized and the best they can be, it’s probably time to take a closer look at how the product is doing.

An under-developed product or lack of understanding regarding the audience of that product can hamper high conversion rates. To correct this issue, you have to reassess the foundational questions of: Who is the audience I’m trying to market to? Is my product/service a clear and easily communicated fit for that audience? What piece of the product is a deterrent for consumers?

Lack of security/consumer trust.

Consumer trust is one of the single most important elements factored into high conversion rates. In order for a user to be willing to submit the personal information necessary for conversions, they have to be able to recognize your website as being secure. The slightest sign of fraudulence or error, whether it’s sloppy content or a glitch in the checkout process, can make users doubt your legitimacy.

Fortunately, bolstering consumer trust is a fairly uncomplicated thing to do. First and foremost, make your landing pages, check out processes, and website overall as error-free and polished as possible. Then, to counteract consumer fear of scams and theft, add security /business seals. This will show that your site is verified.

Complicated check-out process.

Having friction in your check out process is a good way to end up with abandoned shopping carts and failed conversions. The end goal should be to have a seamless checkout process that involves as minimal information as possible in as timely a manner as possible.

Slow load time during check out, required fields for unnecessary information (ex: “Company Name”), absent or unclear display of shipping or pricing information, and glitchy form submit buttons can dramatically impact conversions. Go through your check out process the way a user would and test how performance against these conversion deterrents.

 

It’s important to remember that correcting these issues, while helpful, may not completely fix whatever conversion issues you’re having. Your web strategy and approach to conversions should be comprehensive and facilitate the uniqueness of both your brand and audience.

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Local customers now expect a seamless omnichannel experience with your brand, and columnist Adam Dorfman believes that targeting data amplifiers will ensure that you’re present with accurate data across devices and channels.

The post Why data amplifiers matter in a world of omnichannel discovery appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Columnist Aaron Levy, a big advocate of PPC segmentation, discusses the pros and cons of device-specific AdWords campaigns and shares tips on how to get started.

The post Should you create device-specific PPC campaigns? appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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