Category: Social Media

Not that long ago, I shared with you “10 Marketing Campaigns From Big Brands That Won Over Reddit.” We decided to follow that up with an additional 10 brands who have found success on Reddit for a number of reasons.

• Reddit has almost 164 million unique visitors each month.
• There are more 7 million pages every month.
• Reddit is the tenth most popular site in the United States and No. 33 in the world.
• On average, a Redditor spends 85 minutes on the site.

In short, Reddit is a popular website with an active and loyal following.

However, brands remain hesitant when it comes to using Reddit as part of their marketing campaign, often because they either don’t understand the power of Reddit online or because they believe leads Reddit will not convert. To squash those fears, check out what the following 10 brands have achieved on Reddit.

1. The Economist

The Economist is a weekly publication that has been operating since 1843 and has a circulation of around 1.5 million readers. Despite calling itself a “newspaper,” The Economist has done an excellent job of embracing social media and offering digital versions of its publications to keep up with the times.

The publication has also taken the steps to break into the Reddit community. For example, several years ago Tom Standage, the digital editor for The Economist, wanted Redditors to ask him anything – like the company’s digital approach and if there were any upcoming trends in media that they should know about. Members asked their questions and Tom responded instantly. It was a simple and effective way in welcoming the Reddit community by giving them a behind the scenes look at how The Economist works.

More recently, Jacquie from The Economist asked Reddit what products they would want to see The Economist make. While there were some serious questions, Jacquie did a great job of engaging the members who weren’t taking the question as serious. She’s clearly someone who gets the community and wasn’t scared to interact with members.

2. Amazon

Since Amazon is a relatively new e-commerce company, it was founded in 1994, it just makes sense that the company would stay on top of the latest techniques for online marketing campaigns.

Previously, I discussed how Nissan teamed up with Amazon when the Versa Note was sold on Amazon. The campaign began when Nissan asked Redditors what they would want from Amazon – which Nissan then bought and sent to the users. The icing in the cake, however, came when an extremely large Amazon box arrived in a town in Wisconsin. Finally, a redditor solved the mystery by figuring out the Amazon had just shipped a car.

When Amazon isn’t shipping cars to customers, it also uses Reddit to share deals and pre-order windows. For example, AmazonJosh teased that there was going to be a major announcement on July 13, 2015. The teaser was an image of a rooster with the caption “No, Esteban! Not until Monday!” If you’re lost, no worries. In the thread, it was explained as follows:

“Esteban was an Amazon employee who gave this sub some info about when certain Amiibo would go live on the site. A cult following resulted in Amazon posting a picture of a rooster on Twitter. Allegedly, the rooster is Esteban.

So this picture, from AmazonJosh, likely implies that something big and Amiibo-related will occur on Monday, and the tie around his beak is to keep Esteban’s mouth shut so as not to spoil the surprise.”

Not only does Amazon use Reddit to promote upcoming products, it pays attention to subthreads that matter most to users.

3. HTC

Social media networks are a great place for brands to handle customer service issues. But, this actually backfired for Samsung in 2014 when a competitor came in and saved the day for one Reddit user.

A Reddit user by the name of TweektheGeek started a thread asking redditors for advice on how to handle replacing his Samsung S4. The phone was burned and melted the battery. The user contacted Samsung who promised a replacement phone and a box to return the damaged phone. After a month, the new phone was not sent and TweektheGeek was ignored by Samsung on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. Enter a product manager from HTC.

The rep from HTC, who goes by the name of jetleigh, offered to send TweektheGeek a brand new  HTC One (M8). The catch? If TweektheGeek did receive the new phone from Samsung, they would have to auction off the Samsung phone and donate the money to charity. The Reddit community loved the customer appreciation that HTC was displaying and promised to make the switch to HTC. As on user noted, “This is better phone advertising than all of the commercials and internet ads I’ve ever seen all put together. As soon as my contract is up, I’m switching to HTC.”

4. Red Bull

Red Bull is a brand that knows its audience and has done a consistent job of creating content or sponsoring events that its audience would find appealing. Because the energy drink is popular on reddit, Red Bull takes advantage of the popular subreddits that are most relevant to its brand.

For example, Red Bull reminds the gaming community about the upcoming Starcraft II gaming event that is taking place at the Red Bull Training Grounds in Orlando through redditads. What’s the ad? Just a simple reminder of the date and time of the event with a link to the official page. As Reddit user NoseKnowsAll stated, “Now this is an advertisement I can support. Thanks for the reminder red bull!”

5. Xbox 360

Is Samsung dropped the ball with its customer service, then Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has proven to other brands that Reddit is an excellent platform for handling any questions or concerns regarding their product in an effective way.

What makes Xbox stand out, however, is that it actually funnels the customers into the right subreddit so that the issue can be resolved in a timely and efficient manner. This gives Redittors a chance to identify their specific problem, create helpful links, share useful directions, and provide a platform from the community to share their experiences with the Xbox 360. Xbox 360 even wants to know what customers will move onto when support ends for the 360 next year.

Top-notch customer service keeps your customers happy and shows them that you actually care about how they feel. When you accomplish this like Xbox has, you’re able to maintain your current customers.

6. Fathead

Founded in 2006, Fathead is a company that manufactures life-sized, precision-cut vinyl wall graphics. So, you can imagine what occurred when a fan ordered a Fathead of New England Patriot’s quarterback Tom Brady for their office and was sent a Tim Tebow Fathead – in a rival Jets uniform no less – instead? The user went to Reddit to voice their frustration.

After posting the mishap on experience to /r/NFL, this became the #1 post, and also something of an overnight internet phenomenon. Fathead sent in it’s PR crisis team and handled the situation perfectly.

Fathead sent the user their complete collection of Tom Brady Fatheads, they placed an ad in the NFL subreddit to address the mixup, and created their own user account. Fathead was completely transparent by admitting that they made a mistake and even had some fun at their own expense.

7. Newcastle Brown Ale

What happens when you are a brand that wants to advertise in one of the largest sporting events of the year but don’t have the budget or connections to do so? You could get creative like Newcastle Brown Ale did and ask users to create an ad for you.

As part of a satirical ad campaign, the “If We Made It” video series with Droga5 asked the Reddit community “If we made a Mega Huge Game Day Ad targeted just at reddit, what should be in it? Tell us and we’ll make it.”

The results? The campaign had more than 850 comments and over 900,000 views in just one day! It was also named as Reddit’s “Best Branded Content” for 2014.

8. Ford

To celebrate Pi Day, the Ford Motor Company launched the “FordPiDayChallenge” back on March 14, 2012. Ford engineers posted 42 different mathematical questions throughout the day. Each user was given 3 minutes and 14 seconds to solve each question. The first person who answered the 42 questions correctly received a one-year membership for “Reddit Gold.”

This was a creative way to create something unique and get the Ford engineers in on the marketing fun. More importantly, was that Ford wisely named this campaign the “FordPiDayChallenge,” which helped spread brand recognition when word-of-mouth spread. The campaign was even picked on mainstream media outlets like CBS, which helped it gain additional exposure.

9. Nordstrom

In 2014, Nordstrom became one of the first luxury brands to create its own username and community on Reddit. The username, Nordstrom1901 was named after the year that the store was founded, and is being used to interact and converse with consumers in real-time. For example, Nordstrom hosts several AMAs that give customers a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of the brand.

One recent AMA was by Jorge Valls, the Men’s fashion designer for the brand. He let the Reddit community ask him questions like how far in advance the fashion designers decide on fashion trends and the expansion into new markets. According to Nordstrom spokesman Dan Evans, “We continue to learn more about Reddit and what our customers want to hear from us, but so far the response has been favorable.”

10. SpaceX

The Space Exploration Technologies Corporation was founded by PayPal and Tesla founder Elon Musk in 2002. When SpaceX was ready to launch the Falcon 9 rocket on January 6, 2015, Musk participated in a AMA that discussed everything from SpaceX’s technology, AI, Mars expeditions, and even the daily habit that Musk believes has had the largest impact in his life – it’s showering if you wanted to know.

Much like Bill Gates’ AMA, Musk used Reddit to show that there’s an actual human behind their brand, as well share insights into how the SpaceX rockets work and what to expect in the future. SpaceX has also invited its software engineers to partake in a Reddit AMA.

It was a great way to connect with the members of the Reddit community who were interested in coding and the manufacturing process of SpaceX’s rockets.

Conclusion

While Reddit can be an extremely difficult place to advertise and market your brand, there are brands who are achieving a high-level of success on the Reddit community by using it for customer service and giving users the content or information that interests them the most.

Are there any other brands you know of who are succeeding on Reddit?

By Albert Costill SEO Tips.

Want to see what other books SEJ has covered? Read our other reviews in the SEJ Book Club archive.

I was extremely excited to dive into Pam Didner’s Global Content Marketing for this month’s SEJ Book Club. I’ve met Pam at several industry events and have had the pleasure of seeing her speak. Pam’s energy is contagious and her knowledge, abundant.

Pam spent the majority of her career leading a Fortune 100 company to strategize, create and implement global marketing efforts. Recently, she refocused her efforts to establish a boutique consulting firm that serves enterprises, associations, small businesses and start-ups.

In her book, Pam highlights a variety of insights surrounding content strategy, the content marketing cycle, features of a great content marketer and teams, and what the future has in store for global content marketing.

What Makes Up Content Strategy?

Content is everywhere. It can be a video, a blog, an image, a webinar, an e-book, or a newspaper.

“In the web industry, anything that conveys meaningful information to humans is called content,” according to Erin Kissane in The Elements of Content Strategy.

Building upon that, Amanda Maksymiw’s definition of content marketing hits the core: “…the process of developing and sharing relevant, valuable, and engaging content to target audiences with the goal of acquiring new customers or increasing business from existing customers.

Pam’s definition of “global content marketing” builds upon those even further:

“Global content marketing is the process of developing and sharing relevant, valuable, and engaging content with target audiences across countries with the goal of acquiring new customers or increasing business from existing customersglobally.”

Why globalize your content? Pam elaborates on a few key reasons:

• Content marketing is nothing new
• Everyone is constantly searching for something
• Content creates perception
• For the love of our devices, we chase content
• Content marketing needs to help your customers find “it”

One of Pam’s key points surrounds her revitalized “Four P’s” E. Jerome McCarthy, an American marketing professor and author of Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, initially presented the four elements of marketing which have served as the basis of marketing for the past century:

1. Product
2. Price
3. Place
4. Promotion

In the 1990s, Robert Lauterborn introduced the four C’s as new definitions for the four P’s:

1. Consumer (versus Product)
2. Cost (versus Price)
3. Convenience (versus Place)
4. Communication (versus Promotion)

The 4 P’s of the Global Content Marketing Cycle

 

Pam then proceeded to identify four P’s to creating a global content marketing plan:

1. Plan: Strategy before execution
2. Produce: Create content that matters
3. Promote: Distribute content in the digital era
4. Perfect: Measure and optimize to drive maximum impact

How to Build a Global Content Marketing Team

Once you have a plan in place, it’s time to assemble a team.

A global content marketing success is the combination of coming together and working together, then staying together through the 4 P’s stages of the content.”

Pam suggests there are three A’s for the team to come together and three C’s for the team to work together.

The three A’s and three C’s serve as a foundation for the team to stay together through the stages of the Global Content Marketing Cycle.

 

The book expands upon each P, providing insights and case studies on how various teams put each element into practice.

What Makes a Great Content Marketer?

It’s a brave new world in terms of content marketing, and a variety of skills are needed to do it well.

“It is important to recognize those universal qualities that will always remain the same and those that will need to be addressed differently.”

Pam addresses the distinction between skills that are “soft and general” as opposed to “hard and specific”. Many “soft and general” skills complement those that possess the “hard and specific” skills.

For example, many content strategists have “hard and specific” skills in web writing/editing, content development, content management, content analysis, editorial strategy, and other related skills.

There are also “soft and general” skills that content managers need to develop and/or possess complement these.

The applicable “soft” skills that will be useful depend on what is it the content marketer is trying to accomplish. Soft skills may include personas like “Business Leader,” which allows the content marketer to frame ideas in ways that make sense to their superiors. Or maybe a “Scientist” persona that allows the content marketer to be able to experiment with tools and technology. Or a “Journalist” that can connect the dots between imagination and technology while delivering business results.

Certain aspects of soft and general professional skills should be developed and possessed by those in content marketing roles.

Future of Global Content Marketing

People are human animals. Throughout the history of human civilization, we have never owned or created devices that are so personal and allow us to do so much.

We’re now more easily connected to the world around us. Big data allows us to go much further and understand what makes individuals unique, and create content around those individual needs.

That said, no matter how far technologies advance, how sophisticated search algorithms become, or how Big Data enables personalization, everything comes back to having a great product or service and creating a unique experience for the ideal customer.

No matter how the world changes, fundamental principles remain the same. The four P’s of the Global Content Marketing Cycle stay the same, even though the tactics, tools, and promotional channels may be different.

Read Next Month’s Book!

Next month’s book will be “This Will Make You Smarter” by John Brockman, read and reviewed by Danielle Antosz, SEJ’s copyeditor. Pick up your copy at your local library or on Amazon and join the conversation!

By Debbie Miller SEO Tips.

People love visuals. It’s not a secret. The idea that a picture is worth more than a thousand words has been an adage for as long as I can remember. And, despite how much has changed in marketing over the past decade, that simple truth remains.

As a result, it’s no surprise that we’re seeing more and more people embrace the idea of visual content. Studies are showing just how important this format is for our content campaigns.

Here are just a few facts to help convince you…

Incorporating images is the #1 tactic marketers rate as important when optimizing a social media post.

70% of marketers plan to increase their use of original visual assets in 2015.

Tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites, and 150% more retweets than those without them.

But despite all these facts, studies and statistics, many people still aren’t incorporating visuals effectively. If I had to guess, I’d say the reason for this is that many entrepreneurs and business owners just don’t feel capable of doing so.

Well, you’re in luck – I’ve got some great news for you.

You’re more than capable. For every statistic that tells you visuals are important, there’s a tool to help you live up to those expectations. You don’t need to have an immaculate eye for design to create visuals that engage and convert.

You just need the right tools.

Canva

Canva is a start-to-finish program that’s perfect for non-designers. It has tons of templates and tools to help you get the perfect image in just a few minutes.

Pablo

Buffer’s tool, Pablo, makes designing great social images easier than ever. Their site claims you can do it in under 30 seconds. Go give it a try, and see if the company’s claims are true.

Skitch

If you need to annotate screen grabs for a data-packed post, you’ve got to try out Skitch. Circle things, point to things, blur things and add text quickly and easily.

CloudApp

If I had a nickel for every screenshot I took, I wouldn’t need my day job. And CloudApp makes uploading those screen grabs to my team and my articles a simple process.

PowerPoint

Don’t spend so much time looking for sophisticated products that you forget about the solutions you already have. You can make great images using PowerPoint (or Keynote if you use Mac).

In fact, Hubspot created 60 customizable templates that can help get you started.

Ease.ly

You can spend thousands of dollars on a great infographic design. And I believe it’s well worth the money. But if you don’t have that kind of budget, give Ease.ly a try.

Social Image Resizer Tool

The Social Image Resizer Tool helps you get the perfect crop for your image. It even gives you helpful ratios for the different sizes and layouts you may need for your content campaigns.

Page2Images

Ever wish you could take a screenshot of an entire web page – but your screen wasn’t long enough to make it happen?

Well, with Page2Images, your wish can come true. There’s even a bookmarklet that will make the process even easier for you:

Word Swag

I’ve found that people respond really well to quote images on social media. It’s no wonder they’re so popular! Word Swag makes it incredibly easy to create professional-looking images that you can share with your audience.

Infogr.am

If you want to share data in a content campaign, then you’ll need a way to show it visually. And that’s exactly what Infogr.am helps you accomplish.

Snapseed

Sometimes, great additions to content campaigns happen on the go. That’s why you need a powerful image editor like Snapseed.

Iconfinder

Every great web design project needs great icons. Iconfinder offers both free and paid icon packs to give your project the exact icons it needs.

The company just hit 500,000 icon options, so you’re sure to find something that you’ll love!

Noun Project

The Noun Project is another great source for beautiful icons. They’ve got a huge repository of images that represents an incredible number of words in the English language.

Blurgrounds

Blurgrounds come in a variety of options. These blurred background images are a great option for website backgrounds, blog headers, or social media images.

Subtle Patterns

Subtle Patterns are perfect for when you need backgrounds that are a little more, well, subtle. With 400 pattern options to choose from, the site is a great resource for your content campaign.

Pictaculous

I don’t think you can find many things that are more satisfying than an amazing color palette – and it seems that Pictaculous would agree with me.

The company has built a tool that creates a color palette for you, based off of any image you upload. It’s perfect for getting the colors just right during your next campaign.

Share as Image

According to their website, Share as Image helps you “turn images or text into viral, eye-catching micro-content that you can share in seconds.”

If that doesn’t turn you into a believer, go watch the promo video on their homepage. Yes, it’s as easy as it looks.

Gimp

Gimp is basically the free version of Photoshop.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s certainly more that Photoshop offers. But for the basic designs that you’ll make for content campaigns, Gimp can get the job done if you don’t want to shell out thousands for some software.

Picmonkey

Picmonkey has plenty of features, from tools that’ll cover your basic photo editing needs to options for building social media graphics.

Basically, if you need something simple that will get the job done, then this is the tool for you.

Tagul

Have you ever seen those word clouds and thought that they’d be really helpful in your content marketing efforts? Well, Tagul can help you put them together without the hours of work it’d take to design them from scratch.

Although there are plenty of other word cloud apps on the market, I’ve found that this is one of the most comprehensive.

CSS Button Generator

Whether you’re designing a microsite or a new landing page, your content efforts need a good looking button. And if you’re not much of a designer, let the CSS Button Generator do all the hard work for you.

There you have it – 25 great design resources that you can use for your content campaigns.

Do you have any others that you’d like to add to the list? Leave me a comment below with your recommendations!

By Aaron Agius SEO Tips.

Yandex is Russia’s most popular search engine with a 62% market share, and also has a stronghold in Poland, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Turkey. Google is still a major stakeholder in the Russia market, but if you are marketing in Russia, you should optimize for Yandex first, Google second.

Yandex has several SEO requirements that differ from other search engines, which makes SEO in Russia a different ball game. This also makes Yandex one of the most interesting search engines to optimize for because it’s different from what SEO professionals tend to work with day-to-day.

Here are 11 things you need to know about SEO for Yandex:

1) Russia’s Business Market

If you work at a company outside of Russia, you probably don’t get very many requests for Yandex SEO. That’s because Russia has its own SEO agencies that specialize in Yandex, and most Russian companies do not operate outside of Russia. Because of this, most Russian companies hire agencies within Russia. There is a very good chance you may go your entire career without ever having to optimize a site for Yandex unless you live in Russia or one of its bordering countries.

2) MatrixNet & Thematic Index Citation Score

MatrixNet is Russia’s page priority algorithm (similar to PageRank). MatrixNet measures site popularity and the sum and relevancy of backlinks to determine a thematic index citation (TIC) score, which plays into MatrixNet. Rather than scoring on a scale of 0-10 like PageRank, TIC is scored on a scale of 0-10,000. The TIC score is also the same for every page on the website rather than on a page-by-page basis. A TIC score quantifies the importance of a piece of content, which is included in SERPs to help users determine the quality and credibility of the content. A plugin called Yandex Elements will allow you to see the TIC score for sites with a score higher than 10. TIC scores are also influenced by rationality of content and inbound links.

3) Yandex Indexing

Yandex’s index is re-calculated a few times a month for static pages, and several times per day for blog posts, whereas Google constantly crawls and indexes content. Yandex also respects rules set up in robots.txt. Creating a sitemap will also help Yandex index your content quicker.

4) Geo-Targeting

Local SEO for Yandex is highly targeted towards a user’s metro area. Local search results are delivered to users in more than 1,400 cities, resulting in users having very different search results depending on where they are in Russia. Of course, this is mostly only true to geo-specific search queries. For companies with regional businesses, you’ll need to set up regional preferences in Yandex Webmaster Tools, add preferences to Yandex Catalog, and use regional domains or subdomains along with region-specific content.

5) On-site SEO

The on-page factors and what is most important differs greatly from Google. Here’s what Yandex looks at, and how much weight they place on each factor:

1. Heading tags – very important
2. Title tags – very important
3. Regional domains – important
4. Keywords in URLs – very important
5. Internal links – somewhat important
6. Importance of single pages – somewhat important
7. Importance of whole domain – very important
8. Length of content – somewhat important
9. Anchor text optimization – not important
10. Domain age – very important
11. Domain trust – very important
12. Importance in link diversity – very important
13. Side-wide inbound links – not important

6) SERP Snippets

Unlike Google, how your search listings appear in SERPs isn’t quite as easy to influence.

7) Anchor Text

Having a lot of variations in anchor texts of inbound links is very important. This doesn’t mean you should build a bunch of links with optimized anchor text. You should still build links naturally, but having some diversity in the anchor text will help.

8) AJAX Indexing

AJAX content is able to be indexed by Yandex, but it needs to be coded in a certain way for Yandex’s spider to crawl it effectively. See this guideline for information on how AJAX content should be implemented.

9) Social Media and Online Dialogue

Although the impact of social media signals is unclear for Yandex SEO, forum posts, comments, and blog posts seems to help improve SEO performance. Russia also has a few social media networks that are not popular outside of the country including: VK, mail.ru, and Odnoklassniki (OK). As with any social media network, creating and promoting your content can result in inbound links and online dialogue about your brand.

10) SEO Results

Early success and quick ranking is easy to achieve in Google, but not nearly as much in Yandex. Since Yandex’s indexation is slower and the algorithm takes much more time to rank a piece of content, you will need to focus heavily on showing long-term results.

11) Yandex Quality Guidelines

Much like Google and Bing, Yandex offers website quality guidelines that should be followed to improve SEO. Here’s a brief run-down of what Yandex recommends for creating a quality site:

1. Create interesting and useful content
2. Put users first, search engines second
3. Only place links on your site that will be useful to users
4. Make your site easy to use
5. Make sure the keywords you target match your site’s content, and that the context is correct for search queries

Just like every other search engine, Yandex has its own guidelines of what not to do.

Here’s a list of what Yandex considers to be black hat tactics:

1. Shallow, low quality, or duplicate content
2. Doorway sites redirecting users to other domains
3. Auto-generated text
4. Keyword stuffing
5. Hidden text or links
6. Excessive advertisement
7. Linking to other sites to increase their rankings
8. Link farming
9. Cloaking
10. Malicious behavior
11. User behavior manipulation
12. Groups of websites by the same webmaster offering the same products or services being used to cannibalize search results

Sounds familiar, right? These are pretty much the same webmaster guidelines used across most major search engines.

Yandex SEO isn’t much different from doing it for other major search engines. The priorities of ranking factors are a bit different, indexation isn’t as quick, and local SEO differs greatly, but over all, it is still pretty simple to optimize for Yandex.

By Harrison Jones SEO Tips.

At the end of 2014, digital marketers put conversion rate optimization on the top of their priority list.

That’s right, ahead of content marketing, mobile marketing, and search engine optimization, marketers listed “driving increased conversion rates” as the number one priority.

And why wouldn’t we? For the same traffic, we get more revenue. It makes sense.

So as marketers, how are we doing?

According to the TrustRadius survey on Conversion Rate Optimization, 72 percent have implemented some CRO processes while only 18 percent consider conversion optimization as a part of their DNA, which is a bit like saying you do content marketing, when in reality you only blog once per month.

OK, but how are we approaching testing and optimization? Surely we’re doing this better, right?

Unfortunately, that’s not good news either, as 63 percent of marketers optimize websites based on intuition and best practices.

Ugghh! If you have ever wondered why conversion optimization isn’t working for your business, there is your answer. You are optimizing your website based on things you have heard or read.

How Can I Get Started with Conversion Rate Optimization?

You need to invest in a great set of tools, and through these tools you will have the data you need to optimize your website.

The data is important because it will help you understand how people engage with your website and how they perceive your brand. And to do this, you need to conduct research,and then test improvements. Once your tests are statistically significant, you can then implement the changes to your website.

It’s a clear framework: Research your visitors, test your changes, and then implement the winning results.

You can’t expect to understand and convert your web visitors without the right set of tools. A handyman doesn’t turn up without his toolbox, does he?

But conversion rate optimization tools are expensive, right?

Wrong!

Although the TrustRadius report shows that 58 percent of marketers spend more than $10,000 on digital analytics tools for conversion rate optimization, the conversion rate optimization tools listed below are free (at least to begin with). At this price, there are no excuses for doing CRO the wrong way.

Below is a list of 14 conversion rate optimization tools to help you succeed.

Analytics Tools

Why you need these tools: To perform quantitative research, which provides you with the numbers and hard data about where things are going wrong on your website (exit rates, bounce rates, shopping cart abandonment, etc).

Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows you to track website behavior and reports on visitors, engagement, traffic sources, content, and e-commerce sales. Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics platform on the market and can help you identify your most profitable marketing channels.

Cost: Free

CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg offers a range of tools, but the best tool to optimize your website is the heat map. The heat map allows you to see where visitors click on your website. This lets you identify pain points on a page that show where visitors are clicking and where they are not clicking.

Cost: Free 30 day trial

Clicktale

Clicktale Analytics now comes in a freemium package that tracks up to 5,000 recordings per month. Clicktale records website visitors but will hide any sensitive information for user privacy. You can watch website visitors take action on your website and understand how they use the site, or what issues they run into when navigating.

Cost: Free up to 5,000 visitors

Mixpanel

Mixpanel is an advanced analytics platform for mobile and web. While Google Analytics measures pageviews, Mixpanel helps you analyze visitors’ actions and optimize funnels. For example, an action can be uploading a picture, watching a video, or sharing a blog post. This platform allows you to understand exactly how people interact with any web page and how they navigate through your site.

Cost: Free for up to 25,000 data points

Formisimo

Formisimo is an advanced form analytics tool that records how a user interacts with a web form and checkout fields. Formisimo records how users engage with the form, the fields they do not complete, and when they use autocomplete versus manually entering their information. This information helps you eliminate fields that cause friction.

Cost: Free 14 day free trial

Research Tools

Why you need these tools: To perform qualitative research, which provides you with insights into the “why”: Why customers complete a purchase or more importantly – why visitors do not buy your product or service?

Peek (by Usertesting.com)

Launched earlier this year, Peek provides you with a free five-minute usability test. You simply enter your website URL, and the test participants will review your website. Having a tester browse your website and complete “simple” actions will unlock plenty of hidden usability issues that you can work on to improve the user experience and boost conversion rates.

Cost: Free

i-Perceptions

The i-Perceptions has been endorsed by Google Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, and it’s a pop up that asks three simple questions to website visitors. The three questions include:

• “How would you rate your site experience?”
• “What describes the primary purpose of visit?”
• “Were you able to complete the purpose of your visit today?”

You can use the feedback to understand how people engage with your website and find opportunities for improvement.

Cost: Free

Survey Monkey

Collecting customer feedback is essential to understanding what turns a website visitor into a customer. Survey Monkey allows you to ask up to 10 questions and collect up to 100 responses for free, which means you can ask questions such as:

• What made you buy [product]?
• What’s the best thing you like about [service]?
• How would you describe [brand] to your friends?

Answers to these questions will give you great insight into how your customers view your brand.

Cost: Free for up to 100 responses

Cross Browser Testing

Cross Browser Testing allows you to view your website in real-time through a wide range of browsers and operating systems. This tool helps you to identify why some browsers convert better than others.

For example, if you find that the latest version of Chrome converts better than IE9, then you might want to look at how IE9 is being displayed to your visitors. Using the Cross Browser Testing tool, you can see exactly how it is displayed and what you need to fix.

Cost: Free trial for 60 minutes

Testing Tools

Why you need these tools: To experiment and test your hypothesis, which is based on the quantitative and qualitative research (Congrats! You’re now testing based on historical data and no longer testing based on best practices).

VWO (Visual Website Optimizer)

VWO (which I do have an affiliation with) offers split testing for as little as $49 per month, but the free trial allows you to test for up to 30 days for 1,000 visits. You can edit, modify, and remove elements on your web pages through the VWO editor; and you can test images, copy, design, and web-forms. At the end of your tests, you can see which test won and then implement the changes directly onto your website.

Cost: Free for up to 1,000 visitors

Fivesecondtest

Fivesecondtest allows you to ask for community feedback on new landing page designs, without having to change any elements on your website. Your new design will be displayed for five seconds and then a series of questions are asked to the user. Feedback comes in the form of answers and a word cloud, to identify the most prominent elements that the user remembers.

Cost: Free for 20 responses

Unbounce

Unbounce is an easy-to-use landing page platform that allows anyone to build great landing pages without the need for a designer or IT. You can create landing pages from scratch or choose one of the many landing page templates. You can use Unbounce to create landing pages for your paid search campaigns or to quickly test out new web page designs.

Cost: Free trial

Website Tools

Why you need these tools: To growth hack your way to a better conversion rate. Be aggressive in what you want your web visitors to do, and at the very least get that email address from your visitor.

Screenpopper

Screenpopper helps you convert more users through a pop-up appearing on top of a web page, with the goal of promoting a single call-to-action. The benefit is you get the visitors immediate attention, which can be used to for conversion purposes. If your goal is to get more newsletter sign ups, you can use the pop-up to offer an incentive in exchange for an email address.

Cost: Free 14 day trial

Hellobar

Hellobar is an optimization tool, which displays a visible bar that sits at the top of a web page to draw the web visitors’ attention. Hellobar acts as a primary website call-to-action. You can include Hellobar on one page, several pages, or across your entire website. For example, if you are launching a new eBook, you use Hellobar to include a simple message to promote it.

Cost: Free

Conclusion

These conversion rate optimization tools are easy to implement and mostly require a single line of code that you or your developer can insert into the header of your website.

And while some of the tools listed above are free for the basic packages, they do come with limitations. However, even with the limitations, you will still be able to collect mountains of data to help you grow your conversion rate.

At no cost, there are no more excuses. You could double or triple your conversion rates for free!

I know I haven’t been able to include them all. What are some of your favorite conversion rate optimization tools? How many of these tools do you use?

By Steven Macdonald SEO Tips.