There was an interesting article in USA Today a few days back.

They quoted, among other points, the following from a study by the Nielsen Norman Group.

“Individuals read Web pages in an "F" pattern. They're more inclined to read longer sentences at the top of a page and less and less as they scroll down.”

It’s an interesting visualization of how people read a web page, with the most attention being paid to the headline, and the level of attention diminishing the further down the page people read.

On the face of it, it makes sense. But I think we can take the thought a little further by optimizing the copy with a view to getting as close as possible to an “E” pattern.

Our own testing has underlined just how important the headline is when optimizing a page to deliver a high conversion rate.

The headline is the top line of the “F” pattern. And the better the headline, the closer you will get to an “E” pattern.

In other words, a page that converts well is succeeding in holding a high level of attention right the way down to the call to action.

Or, to play with the analogy a little more, an “F” pattern is a Failing grade for the page. An “E” pattern is a sign of an Excellent page.

This Wednesday at 4:00pm, EST, we'll be conducting our 60-minutes call on how to fight click fraud. You'll learn how to identify click fraud, and how to minimize the chances of being targeted.

Reserve you place on our click fraud call here.

When you are making a purchase online and come to a page in the shopping cart where they ask you to enter a discount code or coupon code, how do you feel?

If you have a code, you probably feel quite good. If you don’t, you’ll likely feel you are about to pay more than you need to.

We have yet to research this topic, but it might be an interesting area to test. What is the net impact of offering discount codes? Does the increase in conversion of those who do have a code offset the potential loss in conversion of those who don’t, and feel short-changed?

As for “where” you can get your hands on the code number, here is an example of how things can go wrong, as decribed in a recent article by Jack Aaronson.

“I've been on several sites lately that have ads on the front page for special discounts. The ads contained promo codes, which the user had to enter during the checkout process. The ads were graphical, so there was no way to copy and paste long codes into the correct box during checkout. I would have had to write them down and enter them manually. That's a barrier.”

One of our subscribers wrote in with this question about page layout:

"We are at the early stages of building a new site. Of course, we've looked at all our possible competitors' sites. It seems like most companies follow the same plan. There's a marquee/banner across the top. Then, there's another block immediately below running across, usually with some Flash that highlights what they think is most important. Below that in the remaining 2/3 to 1/2 of the home page are 3-4 columns that divide information into things like white papers and case studies, product info. teasers, news, and company info.

The result to my thinking has always been that:
1. They all look pretty much the same
2. Too much information jumbled together on one page.

Have you all done any research on this? Is it on the MEC site and I just missed it?"

Yes, we do have some figures in this. You’ll find some data and analysis in our A/B Split Testing brief.

You observation is correct – many site home pages are cluttered with too many competing elements.

There are likely two principal reasons for this.

1. In the case of very large companies and organizations, there are too many stakeholders involved, all insisting on space on the home page, regardless of the impact on readers and general usability.

2. In the case of smaller companies with cluttered home pages, the cause is usually either a lack of a clear value proposition or a loss of nerve. (You can listen to our recent teleconference clinic on Value Propositions here...)

Here is an approach that might help.

First, figure out your value proposition. What is it you offer that is valuable to your readers, and different in some way?

Express that in 10 to 20 words, and place the text square and central on your first screen.

Do that, and every visitor will know exactly what you offer, and whether they want or need it, within the first few seconds.

To determine what else to place on the home page, you need to balance your visitors’ needs with your business needs.

First, your visitors’ needs: It is likely that 80% of your visitors are hoping to achieve one of two or three things on your site. Figure out what these two or three things are, and give them plenty of space. As for the 20% you won’t please, don’t stress about it. Pleasing 80% is pretty good.

Second, address you own business needs: What is your priority when someone comes to your site for the first time? You need to be clear about this. Is it to collect their email address? Is it to have them register for something? Is it to make an immediate sale?

Now you need to make sure that these three elements are in alignment.

Look at your value proposition...look at what you show to your readers...and look at what you are asking from your readers.

Make sure there is a natural fit and flow between all three.

As for all the “clutter”, put it on second level pages and make sure your principal navigation links make it clear where it can be found.

Then build the page.

Then test. And test again.

How can one combat click fraud when running PPC campaigns? How can you minimize the chance of being targeted? And how can you find out if you have already been paying for fraudulent clicks?

Suspecting we had been a victim of click fraud ourselves, we set out to answer these questions and share our findings.

In addition to documenting our own experience, we have spoken with other PPC experts around the world and developed a 10-point plan.

We’ll be sharing the plan during our next teleconference call on Wednesday, March 29th at 4:00pm EST. As always, participation is free. But we do ask that you register ahead of time, so we know how many call lines to reserve.

This plan not only gives you the means to minimize the likelihood of your company becoming a victim of click fraud, but also provides instructions on identifying click fraud attacks as and when they occur.

PPC is an important and sometimes essential tool for many online marketers. As awareness of click fraud grows, it is necessary to learn how to protect both the integrity and the ROI of your campaigns.

Authentic blogging can bring you extraordinary exposure and rewards. Contrived, sneaky blogging probably won’t.

What is authentic blogging?

In the case of company blogs, a simple way to picture it is like this: Lock all your PR and marketing people in a broom cupboard and then open your blog and start writing interesting things about the world your company inhabits. No spin. No red edits. No reference to the company mission statement or style guide.

The power of authentic blogging lies in the voice of an author who writes well, raises interesting and sometimes uncomfortable issues, and tells the truth.

Perhaps the best known of these authentic, corporate bloggers right now is Robert Scoble of scobleizer.com.

He was already a respected blogger before joining Microsoft. Since then he has helped the company enormously by presenting Microsoft with his single, honest point of view. He’s a self-confessed evangelist for the company...but he does so without being a stooge for the company’s vast PR and marketing machine.

So what is contrived, sneaky blogging? It’s when you create a blog just to get listed faster in the search engines. Or when your PR department invents the person writing the blog. Or when the sole purpose of your blog is to directly sell your products or services.

But wait a moment...

If authentic blogging is such a powerful way to support your company by being open and telling the truth, what does this say about your other marketing channels? Is anywhere other than a blog the place where we accept we are going to spin, dissemble, manipulate and mislead?

If telling the truth through blogging is recognized as being a powerful way to promote a company, why don’t we communicate with the same transparency in every other medium?

The issue of transparent marketing is particularly relevant to the web, because this is such an interactive, shared medium. If you mislead people on your web site, you can be sure that someone, probably a blogger, who will expose you to his or her audience.

Authentic blogging is a phenomenon in itself. But it is also a starting point for us to reconsider how we communicate through all online media...like web pages, email and e-newsletters.

It’s time to shift the balance from taking our lead from traditional, offline PR and marketing practices...and welcome the lessons and influences of authentic blogging.

We have expressed some of our own views on this topic in this article on Transparent Marketing.

One of the frustrations of launching a new web site, or blog, is the time it takes to attract serious organic search traffic.

When you launch with a new domain, you know it’s going to take a while before the search engines start indexing all your pages and giving you the high listings you hope you deserve.

And when you look at the top three search engines, the speed with which they will start taking your site seriously is in inverse proportion to their reach.

While Google, Yahoo! and MSN will all make a first pass of your new home page as soon as their spiders become aware of it, what they do after that point varies a great deal.

MSN, with 13.7% of online searches, is typically the first to start rewarding strong pages with listings on the first page or two of results. (Assuming you have done a good job of choosing the best keywords, have written some strong content pages and have attracted some good inbound links.)

Yahoo!, with 28.7% of searches, will take quite a bit longer before giving your pages the listings they deserve.

As for Google, with 41.4% of searches, they have their notorious “sandbox”, in which your new site will languish for up to six months, or more.

In other words, it takes months before you can start to rely on organic search traffic to build up steam.

What do you do in the meantime?

There are numerous ways to attract traffic - through PR, word of mouth, blogging and more.

But the most reliable and measurable way is through PPC advertising.

If you want to know more about how to drive qualified new visitors to your site with PPC, and without paying too much, you’ll find some useful information in one of our recent research briefs - How to use pay-per-click (PPC) search campaigns to boost website traffic and maximize profits from day one: a 90-day plan.

In response to Wednesday’s teleconference call, one of our listeners, Michael Madden, wrote in with an interesting question:

“How do new businesses determine their core value proposition since most of that discovery lies ahead? With my broadcasting Career Center, I'm guessing the best way to approach that dilemma would be to understand it's a fluid endeavor and establish my value proposition based upon what my vision for the company would be. You know the old saying "If you don't know where you're going---you're liable to end up anywhere". I'd be interested in hearing your take on this, or advice for established companies that have such a screwed up VP they want to start over. Thanks for everything you guys do down there to make it possible for the hungry little guys like me succeed.”

Our answer:

With regard to having a vision, and to know where you are going, this can work either for you or against you. It all depends on whether your vision is powered by a strong value proposition.

Here’s why.

If your vision is based on an actual market need, with manageable competition, and a significant audience who will welcome your product or service with open arms, then you may well have a winner on your hands.

However, all too often, an entrepreneur’s “vision” is an expression not of what the market truly needs and wants, but of a personal, subjective idea.

So when someone says, “I’ve had this great idea! Let’s sell plug-in coffee cup warmers for cup holders in cars!”, you have to do some research before you can decide whether this is supported by a strong value proposition, or is simply a “great idea”.

Thousand upon thousands of entrepreneurs base their visions, their goals and their businesses on a “great idea”, without doing the leg work. And one year later their companies close.

So while vision is a great thing, it works only within the framework of a strong value proposition.

In today’s Washington Post there is another article on click fraud, pointing to both Google and Yahoo!

This quote gets to the heart of it:

”After analyzing where and when each click came from, auditing firm ClickFacts Inc. estimated that 35 percent of the referrals that Radiator paid Google for stemmed from bogus traffic. Likewise, 17 percent of the leads that came from Yahoo search results were illegitimate.”

At a time when Google is trying to reassure us that everything is fine, it’s troubling to see such high figures being unearthed.

Interestingly, the 35% figure from ClickFacts ties very closely with the figure of 30% we published in our own click fraud research a little while ago.

If the figures really are that high, industry-wide, the implications for Google, advertisers and publishers alike don’t make for a very happy picture.

Each time we complete a teleconference we feel a little nervous, not knowing how our presentation has been received. So from time to time we ask our listeners to let us know how we did. Without some feedback, we feel we are flying blind. We are happy to receive all feedback, good and critical.

Happily, the feedback from yesterday’s call was all positive.

Here are a few examples from the emails we received.

"Thanks for a great call. I have a suggestion for a call #2: real- world examples of improving and tightening value propositions. It would be really helpful for me to see you take some of those examples from your index card study, or even from real companies that have done a turnaround from a bad value prop to a good one (or vice versa)."

"Terrific conference call today! I gained a lot of valuable insight from it that I can take back to my clients. What I really love is that you have tools that you can apply to gain a practical measurement of the success of a company, based on its value proposition. I will definitely listen to it again and review the notes. I have become a "fan" a plan to sign up for future calls based on this one."

"Today’s seminar was very helpful and has stimulated my thinking about the value proposition of my business. Using the text for a Google ad as a way to force you to pin that proposition down in as few words as possible was very useful. I believe the most important aspect of the seminar is that thinking in terms of a value proposition, rather than making claims such as “the biggest” “best, etc., force me to think of what the raison d’etre of my site really is."

"Thank you so much for the thoughtful and well-conceived presentation on the value proposition. Helpful in every way. Bravo! Look forward to the next time."

If you are not yet on our list and want to receive an invitation to attend our next teleconference, simply sign up here. It’s free.

Some things happen online at a dizzying speed and, unless you have the advantage of being the “first-mover”, it will cost you a lot to catch up.

However, other things happen quite slowly.

One of these slowly emerging trends is people’s willingness to pay for content online. At the beginning, when companies tried to charge for their content, they were met with the predictable cry of, “Information wants to be free!”

That’s changing now. According to an article at MediaPost, spending on online content reached $2 Billion dollars in 2005, a 15% increase on the year before.

Here are a few interesting figures from that study.

- 78% of the money was spent in the form of subscriptions.

- The lion’s share of the money was spent on lifestyle, entertainment and online personals and dating.

- However, there was also an increase in spending on content related to investment and business.

Whichever market is relevant to your own business, the growth in spending has been rising steadily year by year. This presents opportunities for companies which have so far made all of their content available for free.

You’ll find some interesting data on pricing content in our Price Testing brief. You’ll also find information on increasing sign-up conversion rates in our Subscription Pathway Optimization brief.

If you had just ten words with which to describe why people should buy your company’s products or services, what would you say?

You probably remember the “elevator speech” concept from back when venture capital companies were pouring billions of dollars into internet start-ups.

And hopefully you heard about our own “Back of a Napkin” contest, in which we offered over $100,000 in services to the best new business idea.

Whether spoken in an elevator or written on the back of a napkin, one of the key indicators of a strong value proposition is that it lends itself to being articulated simply, clearly and very briefly.

But what is a value proposition?

Why is it important to your business?

How can you “find one” for your business?

And can an existing company find a new value proposition?

These are some of the questions we have set out to answer in our free telelconference call on Wednesday March 15th at 4:00PM EST.

Sign up here...

I was reading a blog this morning, saw a linked article title that seemed interesting, and clicked through to the site.

The site, as you can see below, was the Financial Times.

I suppose one should anticipate the likelihood of being confronted with a registration page...instead of the page one was hoping for. But it’s still a disappointed expectation. I was expecting to see the article.

In common with others who encounter registration pages, the chances of my completing them will depend on how badly I want to read the content in question.

In this case, I was either not interested enough to register, or simply didn’t have time.

In any event, I don’t think their headline helps much. Instead of telling of the incredible value of signing up...they take great pains to tell me about the areas of their site I WON’T be able to access.

Nice sales pitch!

One final thing that made me smile. If you can read it, take a look at the url of the FT page. I love the part that reads, “barrier?” (Take a look at the page title too.)

The answer to that question is, “Yes”.

This morning we received an email with a number of questions on PPC tracking. Our resident PPC expert, Aaron Rosenthal, wrote a lengthy reply which you'll see below.

Question: I have read many of your research reports on PPC. It seems to me that the single most important thing is keeping detailed records as to what has been done so you can analyze and tweak, etc. I want to create a spreadsheet for this purpose.

Answer: Yes, keeping detailed records is extremely important. Keeping historic records of what has been tested and what shows to work the best saves helps mould future tests and refinement. The trick with PPC is to always be refining and working to squeeze the best ROI out of your ads.

Question: What elements should I include in this sheet?

Answer: You should definitely keep good data on the details of your ads:

Keyword

Title

Body 1

Body 2

Display URL

Some of the most important data you can track is:

CPC

Click-Through-Rate

Conversion

ROI

Depending upon how advanced your tracking is, you may also want to track:

Average position

Conversions by Time of Day

Conversions by Day of the week

Performance – Content vs. Search

Return Orders – Lifetime-Value

Question: Do you have a template I could make use of for this purpose?

Answer: I am sorry we don’t at this time.

Question: My company gets almost no traffic at this point and we are trying to get off the ground using PPC, which leads me to my second question-How much money do you have to spend each month to expect positive results?

Answer: This is completely set by your business and your definition of "positive results". We worked with a company that spends no more than $30 a day on local traffic, because they cannot handle more than the 2-3 leads it drives them a day. Those companies would tell you unequivocally that the results of their campaigns are positive.

In a recent article at DMNews.com, this passage really caught my eye...

“Toolbarn.com increased the click-through rate on one campaign by moving the word “free” to the first line of the ad from the second line. And Toolbarn.com turned Gatorade mix into a top-selling product online by realizing that overseas troops were buying the product and putting language in subsequent ads that let them know Toolbarn.com would deliver to APO addresses.

Allan Dick, general manager of Vintage Tub & Bath, said his company experienced “an enormous change in conversion” by increasing efforts to highlight its free shipping offer.”

There are three small changes mentioned here...

1. A change in the position of the word FREE
2. A change in text targeted at overseas troops
3. Increasing exposure of a free shipping offer

As we talked about in our last teleconference call, small changes are often overlooked, but can frequently deliver dramatic improvements in click-through and conversion.

Making your site work harder is not just about total redesigns...it’s also about relentlessly testing smaller elements on the page.

You will find a recording of our teleconference on Small Changes here, plus the notes. We’ll have the full text of the brief online within a few days.

This week the media seems to have been alive with articles and posts about click fraud. I can’t recall when the topic was so much “in the news”.

Perhaps the high point of the week was when tempers flared and voices were raised at a session of the Search Engine Strategies Conference, held this week in New York.

Doubtless this was because it is rare that marketers have the opportunity to confront representatives from Google and Yahoo! face to face.

The event and the arguments over whether PPC providers are doing enough to protect advertisers against fraudulent clicks were well covered in this article by Advertising Age. One interesting figure they quote is an estimate of how much click fraud costs marketers each year...$1 billion.

A few months ago we published our own research brief on the topic of click fraud and found that as much as 30% of clicks might be fraudulent. You can find our click fraud brief here.

In recognition of the importance of this topic we are now working on another research brief on this topic and will let you know when it is completed.

An additional point of contention at the conference was the topic of what attendees referred to as “crap” sites. This is the same topic we discussed in this blog a little while, under the heading of “trash content” sites. There is a proliferation of these sites online right now, all of them created to make some money from AdSense and other PPC programs.

Why are legitimate marketers upset about these sites? Because they compete directly for the same keywords and can also result in the cost of keywords being pushed artificially high.

I’m sure we haven’t heard the last on this...