Website Optimisation After SEO

It seems a little strange to optimise your website after a search engine optimisation project but you must remember that is a never ending process.  If you have completed your SEO, engaged in inbound marketing in all its elements and haven’t achieved your goals now you should  concentrate on Conversion Optimisation.

Off Page Search Engine Optimisation Part Two

This post is the first in three separate posts explaining more on website optimisation after you have completed a SEO. In a previous post called "Off Page Search Engine Optimisation" I described how Google ranks website, how search engines return search queries and gave a few tips on inbound marketing tactics.

Now is the phase in the project to explore what happens next continuing along this never ending journey of website optimisation. The most important topics now to focus upon after you’ve completed your SEO project and engage in communicating with your customers are:

• Conversion Optimisation
• Revenue Generation
• Engaging with Customers.

 Conversion Optimisation

 The rest of the post is concerned with Conversion Optimisation. I take a different standpoint when I look at conversion optimisation. I focus upon a holistic view of the process path. A taditional approarch might be this:

While the traditional approach may centre upon analysis of the sales funnel and the leaks that exist from the moment a prospect enters the funnel and then drops out at various stages in the cycle, I focus upon four tactics when I review a conversion optimisation and these are:

 

Tactic 1 - Craft your marketing messages around your value proposition.

Tactic 2 – Maintain cognitive momentum in every step of your sales process.

Tactic 3 – Never underestimate the power of a value based headline.

Tactic 4 – Use testing as a means to developing your customer profile.

 Tactic 1 Craft your marketing messages around your value proposition.

The essence of marketing is the message. The essence of the message is the value proposition. And unless you’re able to articulate your value proposition clearly, concisely and forcefully you’re lost in the crowded market place. The goal of a message on a website or in an email is to get a click to a sign-up form, to the buying process or to a newsletter and in so doing you need to stress value in the click.

How do you craft a forceful value proposition?

Scientifically, a value proposition can be expressed in a formula that simply says the net force of a value proposition is the perceived gross force of the perceived value less the gross force of the perceived cost.

pNf = pNv - pNc

 

It is in the mind of the prospect his/her perception of value exceeds the perceived cost.

pNv > pNc

There are subsets of this to consider. We are dealing here with perceptions, human nature and individuals with different attitudes and values. However there are common attributions that we, as humans, share about perceptions of value.  These common attributes are:

• appeal
• exclusivity
• clarity
• credibility 

If the value is appealing and exclusive, and it has been expressed with clarity with credible language, as humans we will probably convert and buy. If you then combine these factors with incentives and high motivational factors but lessen the anxiety and or frictional factors in the buying process then you have a winner strategy. Not easy but can be applied to your marketing message.

Tactic 2 – Maintain cognitive momentum in every step of your sales process.

Conversion optimisation must be looked at as a holistic process from the moment the prospect visits your website to the moment he leaves it after buying or not. The process steps of a visit to your website may be defined as:

• Clicking on a paid ad or entering the site
• Reading the landing page or the Home page
• Clicking on the buy button or call to action
• Completing the buy form
• Processing the purchase procedure

 Your value proposition must be re-said, re-emphasised, and repeated at every steps of the process to confirm the buying decision. That is what I call emphasising the derivative level values of the central value proposition, the perceived value of the prospect, the product level proposition and the process level proposition.

In each and every step of the buying process there's a series of micro Yes’s that lead through the buying process to the ultimate YES of paying for the product or service or sign-up form or whatever the goal was. These series of micro Yes’s occur at different levels in the process, for example, on entering the site (central value proposition must be expressed), on clinking to move forward in the site (prospect level perceptions of value and incentive are working here), on clicking to purchase (product meets perception and anxiety is reduced) and at the buy stage (process levels are easy and friction is reduced). The value proposition must be stated at each level and this is to maintain the cognitive momentum.

Tactic 3 – Never underestimate the power of a value based headline.

There are two principles that every marketer must be aware of.

1. For every action you desire a prospect to make (a click or sign up) there must be an immediate promise of value that outweighs the perceived cost of that action.
2. Like the central value proposition, the derivative value propositions can be measured by its: appeal (desirability), exclusivity (availability), credibility (believability) and its clarity (understand ability).

 Webmaster should optimise websites for thought sequences of the visitors that manifests itself in appeal, exclusivity, creditability and clarity of the value proposition.

When crafting a headline there are two principles to remember:

1. All marketing messages must be centred primarily on the interests of the customer. Therefore when it comes to crafting headlinesemphasise what the prospects gets rather than what he must do.
2. The goal of an headline is similar to the opening scene of a film and thai is to arrest the attention and get them into the first paragraph. There utilise a point first structure that means place the value at the front of the headline.

Tactic 4 – Use testing as a means to developing your customer profile.

 

 

The internet is the biggest laboratory there is. It has billions of users to test all plausible scenarios.  However there are key principles to testing on the internet.
Key principle #1 – the goal of a test is not to get a lift but to get learning.
Key principle #2 – to achieve the maximum of learning your test should be designed around two key elements;

• A research question (always starts with “which” – e.g. which ad gets most clicks).
• A theory question (what does this test tell me around the behaviour of the prospect).

To assist you to formulate a good test it helps to remember the value proposition question: If I am your ideal customer why should I buy from you and not from one of your competitors? 

 Conclusion

Employing these four tactics will assist you in reaching a greater understanding of why you’re getting a series of micro Yes’s along your optimisation path of greater conversions. The process begins with a value proposition that should state what you do, what the benefits are and how you do it to enhance your prospects goals.

About the Author

Vincent Sandford is an SEO expert at SEO Synovation a web marketing agency for small and medium sized businesses in European markets. he may be contacted by email:  info@seosynovation.com.