Our follow-up live optimization clinic on PPC campaigns drew another great response and several questions from our participants. Thanks again to all those who joined us and submitted their campaigns for review.

You can now access the clinic here: Optimizing PPC Ads, Part II.

Two of the questions that we touched on in the clinic, but are worth expanding on at greater length, concerned effective eye paths for landing pages, and using the word "free" in your copy.

What are the five elements that control the eye path?

Size, color, motion, shape, and position. For optimal results, ensure that your pages are designed with the most important decision elements in the most important places along the primary eye path. Use these five elements to guide visitors to the call to action, keeping in mind the typical "F-pattern" that most people use to scan web pages.

Previous research briefs that covered this topic include:
Landing Page Confusion
Optimizing Site Design

When, if ever, is "FREE" a bad word?

There's no doubt that FREE is still a powerful word. Despite the awful reputation it's gotten from SPAM, bait-and-switch offers, heavy overuse, and the growing skepticism of post-modern consumers, the word "free" works and will continue to work for generations.

Yes, we all know there's a catch and "there's no free lunch." But when we're shopping online, we gravitate to free shipping or delivery. With ecommerce, commodity sales, and small-ticket items, we practically expect something for free. And the word often gives a nice boost to PPC campaigns.

B2B and large-ticket items are a little different, but free offers are ubiquitous there as well. How often have you seen free price quotes, e-books, research, consultations?

That said, "free" by itself does not guarantee an improvement. You don't just plug it into a headline, or ad and page copy, and expect results to skyrocket. The usage has to be appropriate to the context: the offer, the channel, the audience. If that's not the case, a "free" or two, or several more, especially in all caps and/or bold, can turn people off.

Instead of making a hard and fast edict, or pointing to tests where "free" did and didn't work, here are some questions to consider when you're drafting your copy:

• Would the offer and copy still be compelling without "free" -- or is the "free" a crutch?
• Will your target audience perceive the value of the product/service and offer with the freebie, or might that tarnish the perception?
• Is the word prominent but not overbearing (bold, caps, exclamation points, every other line) in the copy and call to action?

That actually brings us to the topic of our next, ahem, free web clinic: Optimizing Your Headlines: How changing a few words can help (or hurt) conversion on August 27. Learn more and reserve your spot here.

Posted by Hunter Boyle on August 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our July 30 live optimization clinic on PPC ads and landing pages was our most successful webinar to date. Thank you to everyone who participated, especially those who submitted their campaigns for a real-time review.

You can access that clinic here.

Much of the feedback from the session revolved around the high level of interaction among our presenters and the audience. Although we reproduce and post our clinics in three formats (flash, audio, and text), that interactivity is one key element you only get from the live session.

Due to the positive response, we'll be presenting a follow-up session: Optimizing PPC Ads, Part II (LIVE) -- August 13.

Part II will essentially pick up where we left off, as our team of optimization experts will:

• Expand on the two types of relevance vital to paid-search success
• Optimize a new slate of search ads and landing pages
• Address your specific PPC questions with an expanded Q&A

This will be our final clinic for the year on this topic, as we are gearing up for our new Landing Page Optimization Workshops.

Even if you attended the first session, you're sure to come away with practical ideas and strategies that will help improve your paid-search efforts. Also, if you have specific questions about PPC campaigns, please post your comments here, and our team will try to answer the best of the bunch here and/or in the live clinic.

Posted by Hunter Boyle on August 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

At our recent clinic on PPC campaigns, our optimization team critiqued actual landing pages and ads submitted by attendees. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to get to all of them in the hour-long session.

One page we weren't able to cover was sent in by FreedomVOICE Systems. You can click on the screenshot for a larger view of the page and sample PPC ad. (To avoid skewing their numbers, we won't use the real URL.)

FreedomVOICE said top performing keywords included "toll free number" and "800 numbers" and that optimization steps they've already taken included testing ad copy, using negative keywords, and setting position preference.

The analysis and suggestions that follow are from two of our leading analysts, Jimmy Ellis, Director of Optimization Research, and Aaron Rosenthal, Director of Channels Research.

Jimmy Ellis:

The current page is trying to do too many things at once. The objective of this page is most likely to get someone to "search" for the phone number. And the results page (if they find an available number) should be trying to get them to "start their free trial".

Some of the obstacles and problems I see include:

• Ad copy starts with 800 numbers and a 15 day free trial and landing page starts with "unmatched reliability" and no "real" headline.
• Design does not flow properly and has multiple competing elements and objectives that are not in the proper sequence. Currently visitors are asked to "order" ... then to learn "more" ... then to "search for 800 numbers" ... then to compare plans... but why are there contracts with a free trial?
• You should never put an "order" section or button on a free trial offer. It instantly increases customer anxiety and makes them second guess the benefit of the free trial.
• The sequence that would likely work best would be: Search for the toll free number, then compare plans, then start the free trial (ordering is removed completely), with links to allow them to learn more if they need more information after their number search.

To reduce friction and anxiety, increase the expression of the value proposition, and improve the clarity from top to bottom, here's how I would redesign the page:

1. Start with a headline that says something like, "Toll Free 800 Numbers -- 15 Day Free Trial".
2. Subhead: Search for your new Toll Free 800 Number.
3. Then feature the blue phone/search box.
4. Security and credibility indicators go under the blue box (move up from the bottom of the current page).
5. The End.
6. The order info, features, and comparison would be displayed and communicated on the phone number results page -- when they are ready to make a decision.

Aaron Rosenthal:

• That incentive "Free teleconferencing for 1 year" at the top of the page gets lost in the design. Most people won't even see it.
• All the different boxes make the information very difficult to digest.
• As for the ad, you may also want to test using "free" in the headline and in the URL subdomain.
• Also, make sure to test subdomain vs file folder. We have seen that subdomain does not always outperform a file folder; sometimes the file folder format works best. Example: TollFree.FreedomVoice.com (subdomain) vs. FreedomVoice.com/TollFree (file folder).
• If your rates are substantially lower than 2.9 cents per minute you may want to test using this in your ad copy because it would give you an advantage over the advertiser in the number one spot.
• That takes me to your value proposition: If you are the least expensive, or you've been doing this the longest, or ...? Test that in your body copy.

I concur with all of the above and would reiterate that the eyepath on this page needs immediate attention. We know that your designer will hate our suggestions. Nevertheless ...

• Try using heatmaps and clickmaps to see where visitors' eyes and clicks are going. Then simplify the graphics. There are 18 shiny bubbles on the page, including the keypad and five different call-to-action buttons, splashed from corner to corner, drawing visitors' eyes all over the place. The different colors don't provide enough contrast to overcome the similar shapes. Plus, all the shiny bubbles and fish-eye warped stock images convey more of a funky, grab-a-ringtone vibe than a B2B offer.
• I'd also examine the analytics against your sales funnel to refocus those calls-to-action. How many clicks do you get on the live help, "Click to Call" button? Not many? Test a new page without it.
• You could also use stronger calls-to-action on buttons if you broke out of the bubble shape with an oval or rectangle. Example: "Get Your New Number" instead of the "Search" button below the keypad.

The goal is to strip out any elements that get in the way of a clear path to a decision/conversion. By making this a more focused, relevant page that closely matches visitors' expectations from the ad, you can expect significantly better results.

We hope you find these ideas useful and, just like our clinics, we'd like to hear your feedback as well. Use the comments feature to share your thoughts on the page and/or these suggestions.

Thanks again to FreedomVOICE Systems for providing its campaign information for the live optimization critique.

Posted by Hunter Boyle on August 1, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)