Living in New York City, I like to venture out and explore. What are the digital entrepreneurs and marketers on the streets of New York thinking these days?

Last week, I dropped by BizTechDay 2010, a bona fide professional networking event with an impressive speaker lineup—now touring major U.S. cities—that came from humble beginnings as just another Meetup.com group. What could be a better testament to the power of “conversation”—it’s not just about retweets!

Here are three takeaways that I thought could serve as useful illustrations of conversion optimization principles.

Takeaway #1: It’s not about finding people for your product; it’s about finding products for your people

Throughout the event, the audience was treated to a number of new ventures. These ranged from full-scale presentations like the crowd-funding disruptor Profounder  to one-minute pitches like the troubled-youth-educating Ruby Nuby.

The distinguishing characteristic was that they had started with identifying a need in the marketplace. They noticed that people wanted to accomplish something, but didn’t have the right tool or the right support structure. Profounder helps people aggregate venture funding from a wide network of friends and family, yet bypassing the awkward dinner table conversation. Ruby Nuby charges companies for training their software developers, and piggy-backs pro bono training for the disadvantaged youngsters.

When we teach about the clarity of the value proposition on landing pages, one subtle point is so often overlooked: that a value proposition is not determined in the boardroom; it grows out of need.

Takeaway #2: Propaganda makes bad PR (even to the folks at FOX News)

I rarely get to deal with traditional PR, so Clayton Morris’ presentation on how to get TV exposure sounded exactly like what we teach in landing page optimization. His point was: eliminate unsupervised thinking in your press release by clearly communicating value to TV producers.

In Clayton’s world, companies bombard him with press releases that focus entirely on what the company wants to tell the world: new CEO is crowned, new product is launched, and so on. What this cookie-cutter PR misses is that he and his producers are not looking to learn about your company—they are looking for TV show content.

A press release that is not focused singularly on showing how you can add value, is asking Clayton & friends at FOX to figure that out on their own. While they are certainly capable of doing so, these press releases arrive by the hundreds. Which ones get through? The ones that require less work, ones that clearly demonstrate how the story can be used, practically laying out the screen play.

Takeaway #3: If a keynote is given without a PowerPoint, it still does make a sound

Not surprisingly, all things “social” received significant air time, Seth Godin dominating the speaker lineup with an impressive performance. However, the event certainly was not about social media.

Why was Godin’s presentation effective? Relevance is part of it. Engaging tone and enjoyable anecdotes were also key—it came across as more of a conversation than a presentation.

It also helped that to most attendees, he was the biggest name on the roster, if not the reason for showing up. At the same time, he didn’t need to work hard to establish credibility even with those who had never heard of him—he was introduced like a celebrity, plus each attendee had received a free copy of his latest book.

Conversion optimization lessons

In speaking with business executives and marketing professionals, by far the easiest way to explain conversion optimization in five minutes is to illustrate the three “golden” questions. These are primal questions in the minds of page visitors—whether conscious or unconscious. Your pages must answer them definitively.

1. Where am I? – Relevance has been proven repeatedly to increase conversion, and establishing relevance requires that you answer the underlying need. Start by considering why visitors had clicked or typed in your URL in the first place. They were prompted by something: an ad, an organic search result, a word-of-mouth recommendation, etc. Whatever that previous experience was, it both answered a need and created an expectation. Therefore, when the visitor sees your page, you must immediately—in the logo, the headline, the first sentence—make it clear that their need can be met. You can’t meet that expectation in a sentence, but you can start the conversation that leads there.

2. What can I do here? – A Web page must lead visitors toward a specific objective, like a press release must clearly demonstrate what the TV producer can get out of it. Some site visitors will indeed jump through hoops—especially if someone they trust had recommended—to do business with you. However, when people browse through search results, they are not trying to understand what your site has to offer—they are trying to eliminate you from consideration. In the simplest terms, you need a clear, unbroken eye path that leads from content that communicates your value proposition to the call to action that is obviously the primary purpose of the page.

3. Why should I do it? – I knew when I was sitting in a keynote presentation. But that’s because the speaker was Seth Godin. Your landing page, however, is not Mr. Godin. Lack of credibility is a silent conversion killer, leaving executives and marketers scratching their heads, wondering why visitors browse, but don’t buy the best fill-in-the-blank. The answer is: because they don’t trust you; because everyone says they’re “the best.” To go from “this seems like a good product” to “I am buying it,” third-party credibility indicators are essential. The bigger the brands of those third parties, the more credibility rubs off on your site. At the very least, establish social proof with customer testimonials that clearly indicate that whatever you want your site visitors to do, is their best choice.

Related Resources

Are your testimonials properly optimized?

Anti-crowdsourcing: On (not) getting marketing ideas from your customers

Social Media and the CEO: Does Twitter know more than Henry Ford?

Value propositions are still a major source of confusion and frustration for marketers, as our most recent web clinic reaffirmed.

While the clinic focused on three problem areas (identifying, expressing, and testing/measuring value propositions), 32% of the 487 marketers in our live poll chose “all of the above” as their biggest challenge. That “all of the above” was the leading answer is telling. Many marketers still aren’t sure just what a value proposition is, much less how to craft a powerful one.

The clinic presented examples and a Value Proposition Worksheet (PDF) and is now available online in three formats for your convenience:

• View the complete presentation (slides and audio)

• Read the print-friendly research brief with additional links
• Listen to the audio-only version

You might also want to review this roundup of value proposition resources, and check out the links at the end of the research brief.

Value propositions vs. branding taglines

To further clarify what’s not a value proposition, here’s my response to a question from one of our clinic participants regarding the www.JewelryDays.com website, and its tagline …

The statement “My Life Is Beautiful” makes a catchy tagline, but it’s not what we consider a true value proposition. Why not? Because it doesn’t answer this question: “If I’m your ideal prospect, why should I buy from you instead of anyone else?” Answer that with “My life is beautiful” and you’ll clearly see the disconnect.

I’ve taken a look at your About Us page, and though I’m not an expert on your market, I’d suggest that your strongest value proposition can be found within this idea:

“[Our] innovative diamond search technology evaluates the cost, size and quality of the diamond to help consumers make informed and customized purchase decisions. Consumers can graphically see the tradeoffs required when weighing each of these factors, and speak to or e-mail professional graduate gemologists with their questions.”

I would argue that buying diamonds hinges mainly on quality and trusting the seller; both are especially challenging for websites vs. brick-and-mortar stores because there’s not a real face-to-face person, you can’t touch and examine the diamonds before you buy, and returns are a greater concern due to shipping. Largest selection means more to wholesalers than an individual who only wants one or two pieces. Lowest prices has appeal, but can also raise anxiety with regard to luxury items such as diamonds, as it naturally conflicts with the desire for quality; skeptical consumers know that the highest quality and the lowest prices don’t go together.

So, what could really set your site/company apart is not the selection or prices, but offering a search that truly helps buyers make informed, customized decisions by weighing the tradeoffs. Again, I don’t know how many other sites offer something similar, but if your search technology really is superior — and is the one area where you excel over competitors — your site needs to express that much more clearly on the homepage.

Right now, that impressive search function is barely even visible on the homepage, much less promoted as your unique advantage over other diamond jewelry sites.

Take another look at the Down & Feather Company example from the clinic, and see how the redesigned site showcases the company’s “Perfect Pillow Policy” value proposition. Try to crystallize your innovative search and helpful buying process into concise, powerful language — and apply it to your site in ways that will drive prospects to use your site. That will be much stronger than the “beautiful” tagline.

Probably not. Our research indicates that most sites don’t use credibility indicators to their full advantage. You’ve probably noticed the same thing when your marketing cap is off and you’re visiting sites as a hunter or browser (or howser?) in your free time.

When you’re the customer, do you trust that long list of rosy, anonymous quotes over in the sidebar, or filling a whole page of its own? Does that type of testimonial influence you positively, or make you more skeptical? How do text quotes compare to video and audio clips or a customer rating system? What kind of lift can your conversion rate get from a review or award from a known brand, like PC Magazine?

Those are among the questions we’re working to answer in our optimization experiments. And we discussed recent research results and best practices in our July 9 clinic: Using Testimonials Effectively: How credibility indicators can help (or hurt) your conversions.

As we noted in the clinic, the multivariate tests we examined also included changes to other page elements. However, our goal in sharing this research was to show that credibility indicators can indeed play a significant role in conversions — both positive and negative — based on how they are applied. While these tests didn’t isolate the specific impact of testimonials, the results make a strong case for additional testing and support the best practices we’ve identified in previous experiments.

So, science aside, what are some real-world keys to applying credibility indicators and making them more powerful?

• No matter what the format (text, video, audio), testimonials should be placed strategically on your pages to alleviate anxiety; focus on order forms and sign-up pages first and foremost.
• Standalone testimonial pages need to have clear, direct links and calls-to-action to transaction pages. Relying on the navbar tab = missed opportunities.
• Lead with the highest authority testimonials, but first ensure that the application fits your target audience. Example: If you’re appealing to SOHO or small-biz buyers, recognize that using quotes and logos from corporate Goliaths like IBM, GE, or Bank of America may send the wrong signal.
• Less is more with content: Keep the blocks of praise compact and easy to scan, with bold highlights for relevant phrases or terms like quality. Same goes for video clips: shorter ones will load quicker and convey the message faster; use a timestamp that lets prospects know it’s only a 30-second clip before they click.
• More is more with attribution: Quotes with a full name, title, company, and photo, are more believable than just initials and a city.

Those are just a few takeaway ideas. To find out more about the underlying principles, case studies and examples, plus a live page critique, please check out the full clinic and post your thoughts or questions here in the comments section.

By Mike Clowe

Research Analyst,
Marketing Experiments

How important is it to provide credentials on the Web? The Web is an essentially anonymous media. Businesses claim to be whatever they want, many times without any proof at all.

In the wake of the Wikipedia scandals, where two of their top contributors were found to be grossly misrepresenting themselves, it is becoming increasingly important to provide credentials to prove what you claim to be is actually who you are. The Wikipedia incident was just an example of what is happening throughout the internet. As the online world and the off-line world come closer together, people are starting to check claims made on the internet against the facts.

Wikipedia will come out of this just fine. They will ask their authors to identify themselves, but other than that nothing will change. Now imagine if this had happened to an online retailer. They would be out of business. The biggest fear many online consumers have is getting cheated. This is why many businesses use credibility indicators and have live operators to address customers’ fears — to build trust. All of that trust can be destroyed by one false claim.

It all comes down to Transparent Marketing. As businesses we need to represent ourselves fairly and honestly to our customers. Not only that but we need to provide clear and concise proof that what we say is true. The age anonymity on the web is coming to an end.

We have written an article on Transparent Marketing with additional examples and information about how you can convey trust with your customers. Click here to read more about Transparent Marketing.