The official Google Analytics blog makes a great point about the importance of bounce rates to your marketing efforts. They are a simple enough metric that can be applied to nearly any kind of website.It is a metric tailored especially for landing pages…where a high bounce rate can tell you almost as much as a defined conversion funnel.

If you need a resource for understanding which metrics provide the most insight, check out the new book Web Analytics an Hour a Day.

clipped from analytics.blogspot.com If your site conversion rates are low, Bounce Rate can help you understand why. If your Bounce Rates are also low, your troubles are likely due to site design and usability issues. In this case, you might focus your efforts on streamlining your conversion funnel or making your site easier to navigate. But if your Bounce Rates are high, you can focus your efforts on redesigning entrance (landing pages), improving the quality of traffic to your site, and doing a better job of pairing landing pages with ads.

I was reading Marketing Sherpa this morning and came across this interesting case study about how a simple change to your newsletter can make all the difference.This is a great reason to start doing that email testing that you have been putting off because the results can be amazing. Every email that goes out without a split is a missed opportunity to gain insight into your recipients behavior.

clipped from www.marketingsherpa.com SUMMARY: Sometimes even the smallest change can make a world of difference in your email design. See how one publisher transformed a related stories link into a gray utility button and immediately saw a 190% increase in clicks and traffic is up 6% on a different landing page. It’s an easy tweak that if you haven’t considered, you may want to test on your own newsletters.

I was doing my regular surfing of my favorite website today and came across another cool article that I wanted to share…

clipped from customer-driven-marketing.blogspot.com Why not let your customers pick an email template and color theme from a set of available themes when they register/optin to your marketing campaign? It could be something similar to how blogger lets you choose a template and color theme for your blog. Your mailer program could then leverage this to send out visually personalized email.

I am a fan of the Customer Driven Marketing blog and it never fails that I run across some interesting ideas every time I visit. This little musing got me thinking about how we always fret over the look and feel over our email templates…and what if we just turned it over to the subscriber? And make it a part of their preference center so they can change whenever they want? Its food for thought.

Here it is…

If you logged into your Google account recently you saw a notice about Google Analytics undergoing a face lift. So I was pleasantly suprised when I logged into my account today and saw that my account had been migrated already and I was able to take it out for an initial test drive!

I have to say that I really love the new interface. Its much more intuitive and even simpler to use and understand than before…which was hard to do since it was already a pretty sleek and easy to use interface.

Here are the main improvements:

• Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.
• Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.
• Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.
• Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every report.

I have to say that I really think the interface is a huge improvement in helping you find the information that is most important to you. Where you usually had to dig through to find the data - you are now able to get to it more quickly, save it, and share it.

So far I am very impressed. What do you think?

If you are a marketer you have to be pulling your hair out at the new Outlook 2007.

Check out the article at Marketing Sherpa.

What we have here is a major shift in how marketers will have to approach email marketing, since Microsoft has decided to move away completely from usability and technology in favor of security. (It should be noted that I don’t accept the premise of the argument that it is ultimately a choice of one or the other…)

If you are a web designer - you may want to relearn how to design using tables because the new Outlook does not support CSS floating or positioning. The irony for us old web designers is that we actually remember what it was like to hack together a design using tables - most new designers are unfamiliar with the old way of designing on the web…welcome to 1999!

If you put forms in your email - don’t expect those to render either. You know those sophisticated emails that contain surveys or registrations…kiss them goodbye because they are now the odd man out. Sit back and think about what this means as marketers…yep, it sucks that bad.

And if you were ever holding out for rich media - videos, flash, applets ect…fuhgettaboutit! Microsoft doesn’t seem to think that those spam filter issues are going away any time soon - so now it will be even longer before they become available in email. Thanks alot.

The biggest point I am making besides the fact that all of these changes really impact email marketing negatively - is that its a fundamental shift in Microsoft’s way of thinking. Instead of pioneering the way to help make email more user friendly and extending its functionality, they have decided to force us into much more primitive email. It almost feels like Microsoft is trying to revert back to 1999.

But then those were much better times for Microsoft.

I have created a lot of landing pages since I joined the internet marketing community. I was trying to keep track for awhile and eventually gave up - my last count was somewhere around 5 hundred individual landing pages that I designed, maintained, and tested. ..all for various employers, companies, and clients.

The reason that these pages were so important was because they were the gateway from all of our internet marketing efforts. If you clicked on a banner, search listing, affiliate link, press release, or anything else we used for online promotion - you were taken to a unique landing page. We even tracked print response by driving activity online. There was no campaign we ran that did not have its own landing page to test and measure its success.

So at this point I can say that I am somewhat knowledgeable about landing pages. Lets have some fun and check out two LED sign manufacturers that use pay-per-click advertising to drive traffic.

Here were the top two listings…

LED Signs by BigBrite
Free Shipping, Low Price Guarantee
Order Signs Online or Call
BigBrite.com

Watchfire Digital Outdoor
LED billboards designed and
manufactured to last. Free paper.
www.WatchfireDigitalOutdoor.com

(I removed the google tracking so it wont charge them if you click)

There are obvious differences. Lets start with BigBrite.

The first problem is that BigBrite pushes everyone to the homepage. While there are instances where this may be suitable in this one it is not. None of the information from the ad is reinforced on the homepage where there is no coherent message other than to BUY NOW!

If you aren’t ready to purchase - then what? I guess you can aimlessly navigate around the site to find what you are looking for but my guess is that you would most likely leave before you found it.

Lets contrast that with Watchfire.

This is a landing page that reinforces the message from the ad - encouraging those visitors to sign up for the white paper. They aren’t trying to sell you a sign right away - instead they want to help you inform yourself on making the decision - and open the line of communication. They realize that you aren’t going to pick up the phone right now and tell them to “Sign me up! And while your at it heres my credit card info!” Their interest is to persuade you over time to make the purchase. (BTW, these signs are NOT cheap)

Watchfire also minimizes noise on the landing page by removing all navigation and links. While they do not intend for you to buy today they still need to capture some return from your visit so they are not taking any chances. You can only take the action they intend. This is a fair trade since they are not bombarding you with anything you didn’t already expect from the ad.

When thinking about landing pages keep in mind that most of the traffic coming to your site are first-time visitors, all coming at different stages of the buying process. Very few are looking for the immediate purchase so understanding that most likely wont sell to them on this visit will probably drastically change your approach. If you look at this as more of an opportunity to begin a relationship with your customer you will most likely see more long term rewards with a more responsive customer when you go to re-sell, up sell, or cross sell.

I am a huge fan of Jimmy Johns. So is my wife, my co-workers, and many family members. After I discovered JJ’s it has been very hard for me to go to Subway - their subs are so much better than anything you will find at Jared’s old joint.

And even better, they deliver.

I learned this awhile back when I was complaining to my wife on the phone that I had forgotten my bank card at home and couldn’t get lunch. I was going to have to steal someones leftover casserole from the company refrigerator…or die of starvation. My wife informs me that they indeed deliver - so she gives me her credit card info and I proceed online.

So I jump on their website to find the location nearest to me so I can get their contact information and have them deliver the “Big John”, Gods greatest gift to man.

I am treated with what is probably the most horrible website I have seen in awhile. This is God punishment to man.

See here for yourself.

Graphically it is beautiful. It is full of animation and smooth transitions. But it is all trapped in flash (I will save the rant on flash for another post) and I am forced to sit through endless animations and loading sequences to get to the information I seek. Not only that, but none of the navigation is intuitive…I am forced to decipher all of the meaning from the array of confusing buttons to find my local JJ.

But even more creepy is that they have this creepy dude “Jimmy” (Im not exactly sure if this is the real Jimmy or not) but he is EVERYWHERE. He talks to me, folllows me around, looks at what Im pointing my cursor to, and is just overall annoying as hell. Not to mention that EVERYTHING has a sound effect. New menus pop up…WHOOSH! Jimmy bounces around…BOING BOING! Meaningless animation appears…PLOP!

I eventually found what I was looking for - but not after going through hell to get there. It makes me wonder how many people they loose just because they care more about thier personal image than the ease of use for their visitors?