@hedenius, a distinguished and most prominent colleague of mine came up with the idea for this post. The 100th post of jesperastrom.com. Social Media and conversion is one of those questions I think about all the time. The foundation for my analysis lies within the presentation I held at Searchmeet in 2009. It is all about baby steps, looking for small conversions leading to the final goal of a financial transaction.

1. The landing page is only about the offer

One of the greatest misconceptions when it comes to social media conversion is that of the offer. When you are working with search engine traffic or e-marketing, they you are looking at putting an offer in the face of your visitor that he or she can say yes or no to. You try to make your offer seem as valuable as possible by highlighting it, by making putting it in the proper placement or by simply covering the whole page with it.

Social media traffic does not want the offer. At least not the offer you are interested in selling. They think that the offer is in the way of the deal. When they trust you, then they will come to your page for that offer through a brand search. If you only highlight your offer, then you will be stuck with only a fraction of the value you could generate from the users you receive from social media traffic.

First rule of social media conversion is that you shouldn’t sell anything. You should build trust, then sell when the visitor returns through the search engine. Help them research through social media. Give them the tools to do this research and help them tell others about it. But DON’T offer them to buy anything at this point. It simply doesn’t make you a credible talking partner.

2. Making your Value proposition all about the money

Which brings me to the second misconception about social media traffic. It doesn’t matter how much money you put on the table. Think about it this way.

Your goal should be to become a part of the group. If you have ever been associated with a group of people you know that there is a social hierarchy in any one of them. You know that there is this one person that you all care if he/she is there or not, and you know that respectively there is a person that you simply don’t care if they’re around.

If you put money on the table first, then you will only be the person the group comes to if and when that money is on the table. You need to get the group to respect you. Cause just as in the group. If you are that one person who is the cool kid in the click, people will listen to your suggestions.

If you make your value proposition greater than money. If you make it about trust, or as simple as friendship, or as a source of invaluable information. Then your value, and the value of your services will increase accordingly.

3. The shortest way is the most profitable

For search engine traffic, or at least the buyers that come from the search engines, they have a set mind that they want to buy. You should give this traffic one option when they land and this should be an obvious one. They should be able to hit buy and be out of there in a matter of seconds.

When you’re looking at converting social media traffic you have to take the way around the park first. Disregard the Dell Outlet for a while cause that is just spam, really it is. If you’re looking at converting social media traffic you’ll have to take it in steps. You have to think of where they enter in the purchase process rather than just offering them one single way to convert. With this I mean you have to give them the option to subscribe, the option to sign up, the option of becoming a member or just leaving a comment.

When doing so you’re collecting some valuable piece of information about them that you can then later use to convert them. CRM-style!! If you learn about your client first and then make the offer, then you’ll be able to extract more money out of each buy.

4. People are rational, that’s the rational

Most conversion theory, just as economics is based on the notion that people are rational. In real life, we know that no one in this world considered a human being is rational. We all have our “just cause” preferences that screw up our clear judgment. When converting traffic from the search engine, the buying process has already begun with the search. The buyer is already on his/her way to make the buy.

The social media visitor thinks differently. You actually have no idea in what frame of mind they are. You know what they are interested in as they arrived at your website clicking a link. This represents great information for you when trying to convert them. However, it doesn’t tell you about their frame of mind. Thus, you need to find that out instead of trying to push them towards a sale.

The best example is if you think of real life when you’re out shopping and you have an item to return to a certain store. If you’re only offered the chance to buy more when you arrive at the store you’ll be pretty pissed off. I mean, if the clerk doesn’t accept your claim to return the good, doesn’t understand your need, then you will probably leave and be reluctant on coming back.

When looking at social media traffic, these people are just the same. You have to have a look at them, understand what they’re about, and then aim to convert them to what they like, in the tone that they want it. I mean, in the example of the store above, it is not uncommon that you can sell more stuff to a customer gone happy, than one that is pissy with some garment they do not want.

5. Direct conversion is all that counts

Anyone engaged in social media will have two KPIs skyrocketing if successful. First of all it is mentions online. Second of all is brand searches in the search engines as well as direct traffic. These are the three most important KPIs out there for social media conversion. You know that your conversion rate on brand search terms is HUGE. Look in your statistics.

Thus if you can increase this metric, it is great for you. One of the best ways to increase brand searches and direct traffic are to get into the head of people. You best do that by talking to people.

Now. Brand search increase most often get rewarded to the SEO people in your organization. Even though they haven’t done anything to increase the search volume. This is one of the greatest lessons you can learn about converting social media traffic. IT doesn’t convert right away. But it increases your overall conversion rate as your brand searches increase when you’re doing it well.

Update #1: Just as @Jaamit from FreshEgg SEO says, links are a truly one of the MOST important KPIs when working through social media. I can’t believe I didn’t write it from the get go. But, I guess I’ll reward Jaamit with a link instead of getting pissed off and thank him for pointing out my mistake. Thnx for the comment!!

Update #2: Stumbled across this post about brands and behavioral economics that is HIGHLY useful when trying to explain for old school ppl what social media and conversion is all about.

Why SEO conversion theories don’t apply

Basically, SEO traffic has a specific frame of mind that you can convert through. Social media traffic has no such frame of mind. At least not that you know of. In order to convert the social media traffic you first of all need to find out the frame of mind of the user, then convert the user. Lesson learned right?

The secondary effect is that your brand becomes more dense in online conversations. This requires a lot of work, but we can see that those companies well integrated in social media made higher revenues than those who didn’t engage in social media. Those engaged were more frequently mentioned. Those more frequently mentioned got more of the business.

Especially in mature markets. Social media becomes what conveys the online consumers to buy from you as they believe you are the best choice (regardless if all rational says otherwise). SEO then takes care of them when they are ready to buy.

Now, how you go about doing this is up to you. Or to me…

To share and support this blog post please go to Sphinn and spinn it!

This list is aimed towards you who work with conversion or eCommerce and need help with troubleshooting why your pages aren’t converting. These are some of the obvious reasons you might want to check out first before moving onto more advanced test and targeting.

Conversion of online traffic is and has always been a hot topic. This list aims at giving you some advice along the way.

1. You promise more on the source page than you deliver on the landing page

Regardless if you are attracting traffic through Social media or Search engines or Banners, you are in a hole world of mess if you offer something in your link or banner that is not available on the landing page you are directing your traffic to. If you write “compare your alternatives” then the alternatives should be comparable on the landing page. If you say you have the world’s best offers, then they should really be the world’s best offers. At least your page has to give the impression that they are. If you do not manage to deliver on your promise you will not convert regardless of how optimized your page is otherwise.

2. Your load time is horrible

This is not only a bounce rate inflator, but also a real conversion killer. If the load time is long, then it is quite natural to see that extreme amounts of traffic falls off at that time in the conversion process. If you want to enable people to buy stuff from you, then you shouldn’t keep them waiting. Patience is not a trait seen too often in Internet users.

3. Your haven’t optimized based on referring domain

You really have to pay notice the referrer of the traffic to your website. If your traffic comes from the search engines you can generally assume they are more purpose oriented than the research oriented traffic coming from social media. In order to convert a purpose driven visitor you have to give them exactly what they searched for and right away. In order to convert a research driven visitor you need to give them all the information available on the topic. Then they will book mark you until they want to buy what you offer. In order to be successful you need two parts in your website that takes aim at satisfying both of these needs. A good example here is Amazon.com. Easy to convert, and easy to read more about the product. Researchers scroll you you don’t have to put all the links to “read more about…” in the top of the page.

4. You run the same design and features regardless of market

If you are running the same business across several different markets, cultures and TLDs you cannot rely on tests done on one market. You cannot even rely on tests done to a sufficient significance for all markets. You have to test every market individually. This is because culture, trends and opinions differ from market to market, and although there are patterns in the way users interact with a website, regardless of culture, there will be huge gains to optimize your pages with this in mind.

5. You use distracting colors and images just cause “they look good”

I know you have them in your organization. The people who do not care how things work as long as they look good. These people should be terminated as they will cost you LOADS of money. They might be lucky a couple of times or a lot of times, but in the long run they will cost you a shit load of money. If you put something blinking on your page, it should sure as hell have a purpose.

Taste is something you cannot base your decisions on when it comes to converting traffic. Taste is highly individual and even though you take a vote in your group you are tainted by internal organizational sicknesses that makes you blind. THIS cost you money. If you want to sell more, you need to test, target and then let the data make the decisions for you.

6. You don’t take season into consideration

If it is xmas, people want to buy gifts, when it is spring people want to fall in love, in fall people want comfort and in summer people want freedom. Just generalizing, but it is important to meet the buyer where their mind is set. Prepare seasonal changes in the design of your website. Then execute them depending upon weather. You will definitively see effects in your conversion rates. Don’t try to sell sun in the desert.

7. The one mile one page one form

I have seen to many examples of long registration forms. PLEASE put your registration forms into a process of at least three steps. Write a 1 – 2- 3 in top of the registration form page. Then use Ajax to load the next section as a user completes the previous one. This way you’ll reach two extremely converting principles. First of all you will get the most important data such as e-mail address and nationality in the first stage of the sign-up. Secondly you will have nicked the user completely as they feel a sense of satisfaction from completing step one, then step two… woops they are almost done… so they better fill out the difficult stage number three. You see. When they have filled out so much info, they might as well take the extra 5 to do the last page.

If they don’t, then you can still save everything they have done up until this stage and then send them an e-mail in the evening saying, “you only have one step left to complete your order” or you can send them an e-mail saying “your super savings offer will expire in 60 minutes, return to the stage in your registration where you logged off the last time”. You will convert MAAAAD times doing the latter

8. You’ve optimized for the wrong keywords

You might be number one for a single word in a highly competitive vertical, but you still don’t convert. You ask yourself why?? Well, most commonly you have optimized your website for a word that is not a converting keyword. This happens all the time and it is generally not the words with the highest traffic volumes or the fiercest competition that converts the best. It is the action driven keywords that do. So if you are optimizing your website for the keyword “make-up” then you are probably in the wrong place. But add a brand name and a buy into that mix and perhaps you are in a better place. This one is a no brainer but sometimes corporations optimize with link spam towards words that are completely useless when it comes to sales. Think first, test some, do research, start where it is easy to end up no 1 and then move to the more narrow words.

Ok That’s it… won’t share more, but please e-mail me or add me on LinkedIn and I’m sure I’ll give you another 35 quick hints on why your page might not be converting

Have you ever wondered why your digg or stumble traffic does not buy your stuff when on your website? Here is the foundation to my view on how you should go about converting social media users into buyers in theory. In later posts I will talk about how you should do this practically.

Previously I have been talking about The Mindset of an Online Consumer in Social Media in a previous entry. This entry however will take a deeper look into how you make your social media user become a returning customer just as you are converting your SEO-traffic today. If you are not converting your SEO-traffic today, well, then perhaps this will give you some insight too.

The Value Staircase of Online Business
The Suspect
As a user enters your website, regardless of source and your aim is to convert this user into a buyer, that user for you is a Suspect. You have no idea of who it is more than what you can tell from your analytics tool. Sometimes that is a lot, but most of the time not enough to know what kind of offer this person is out to get.

The Prospect
If the user entered from the search engine, you might know what keywords they used. Are those keywords “buyer” keywords such as “wanna buy your stuff right now” it would be an indication that a user wants to buy your stuff. That user has then taken a step in the ladder and has become a Prospect. Similarly, if your user enters from some other website or via direct referral, but starts klicking buttons such as “products” or “payment details” or perhaps even “terms of service”, that user indicates some kind of interest in buying your stuff.

The Lead
The next step in the staircase is the Lead. A user converts into a Lead whenever they leave some kind of personal information to you that can identify them and enables you to contact them again at a later stage. Ie. a Lead can be an e-mail address, a name and a phonenumber, a license plate or basically anything that gives you access to contact data of that person.

The Conversion
Bonus and Jackpot! We’ve now reached the phase where you start making money. As soon as a user makes a transaction, a buy or any kind of final goal you set out for your site users, they have become a Conversion.

The Returning
If you have a user that has converted once and then come back to convert again, you also have a Returning customer. These are the highest valued users in all of your traffic. Returning customers are often satisfied users. Satisfied users are generally net promotors of your business.

The Buyer and The Information Seeker
Enough about the value staircase of online business. It is time to take a look at two types of traffic that you get to your website. There are several other types of traffic, but we’ll only handle these two big groups in this post.

The Buyer
Generally entering your website from the search engine on keywords that are related to your products. Either general product categories or even stronger -> specific brands. If in combination with a “support keyword” such as “online store + brand name”, then you sure as hell got a buyer on your website.

A buyer can also be identified based on how they click on the website. If they enter and the first thing they do is to click – “Offers” – then you can be pretty sure you have got a buyer. It is not as rock solid as the keyword indication, but is definitively strong enough to bulk that person with the buyer group.

Buyers are there to buy stuf if you’ll just let them do so swiftly and easily. The buyer has a ME perspective, ie. they have a problem that they need to solve -> they need to buy something and get out of there. They are in other words highly pupose driven users.

The Information Seeker
In contrast to the buyer, the information seeker behaves completely differently on your website. Usually an information seeker enters your website through a referring domain or through keywords with word combinations such as “where to..” or “how to..” or perhaps even “compare ..”.

When you recieve traffic from a social media website it is generally, or most absolutely information seekers. Why you might ask? Well they came to your website when clicking a link posted by another user telling a story of some sort interesting enough for the now visiting user to click on it. I can say this complies to 99% of the traffic you recieve from social media websites except for one type of traffic and that is the SPAM traffic.

[Regardless of what anyone says. If your company has adopted a SPAM strategy for your social media activities you will sell stuff. Sometimes even a lot of stuff will be sold depending on if your product is a elastic or an inelastic product. But your SPAM tactics will hurt your brand. So, if your products value lies within its brand, then I wouldn't recommend this strategy. Your choice however lies within calculating what tactic will meet your short term and long term goals.]

Back to the issue at hand. Information seekers are not your website to buy. Actually, they might not even know why they are on your website else than that they clicked an interesting link and ended up there. What you will find however is that this target group of people will link, bookmark, share, comment and go bananas with your content if they like it.

Simply put, they are there to find out cool stuff, and if they do find this out, they will scare the living crap out of you as they share your content with others in their own personal way. They are on your website with a WE perspective and thus think about everyone else and how your content can be shared whilst on your website. They are in other words research driven users.

How to Convert the Buyer and the Information seeker
This is when this post starts becoming interesting as this is the question everyone asks me and I seem to be the only one bold enough to give a straight answer about it.

First of all you need to split your conversion process into several pieces and really think about how to make your user climb the ladder. Here is what I have found works for the different groups. I have displayed this with words in the “arrow blocks” above.

The Buyer Buys when:

1. They come to your website as suspects because you had good SEO or Social Media Optimization (SMO)
2. They become prospects because your design, features, information architecture complies with their liking
3. They become a lead because they seem to like what you offer to solve their problem or purpose for being on the website
4. They convert if it is easy enough to convert -> CRUCIAL try to take away all hurdles for a lead converting. It should be like a walk in the park or even less of an effort…
5. They become a returning customer if they like the stuff you sold them the last time

The Information seeker buys when:

1. They come to your website as a suspect because you or someone else has provided them with an interesting link -> good SEO or SMO
2. They become prospects the second they enter the website and starts clicking around, if they bookmark your website, if they write a blog post about it or…
3. The thing that will convert them into leads however is whether or not you spark their curiosity. In contrast to the buyer information seekers are boosted by curiosity and being updated on good content and stories. Example: If you try converting a buyer they want the best offer -> a bonus or a discount. The kind of phrasing you should use are such as “Register to get super bling bling for FREEEEEE”. If you try converting an information seeker on the other hand you should want to try with the approach “Enroll to our e-mail updates to know what happens when it happens”. (perhaps not the best copy, but I think you see the difference)
4. Then it is all about reliability. KEEP YOUR PROMISES no matter how small. If you say you’ll keep people updated -> keep people updated. DO NOT try to sell stuff through this e-mail subscription. Cause I tell you, as soon as you break a promise, they will be ruthless towards you. They will give you as much shit as they gave you praise and as we all know, bad smell travels fast. As your users are able to rely on you. When they see you live up to your transparent intentions. THEN they will buy from you. And they will not buy the cheapest stuff in the shelves. They will buy whatever you tell them to buy. They trust you, and as long as you are up front with your offer, they will buy from you as they know you know your stuff. And I know you have all felt this once or twice. You see value in stuff that isn’t actually practical value, but artificial or social value. A shoe is a shoe, but a shoe with a swoosh is just a little bit better and so I’ll pay more for it.
5. Now to the easy part. Now you’ll just have to nurture your relationship with this individual. This means admiting to mistakes, not bragging to much, keeping in touch on a regular basis and just being that soulful and trustworthy dude you’d ask to babysit your kids. Maybe not that much of a trust, but at least the kind of trust that makes you belive in the “Gates” or the “Jobs” religion.

Conclusion
Well, the main point I want to put across is that you will have to know the difference of the kinds of traffic you get to your website and then treat this traffic dependently on what kind of visitor they are. People say it is impossible to make diggers into buyers. I strongly disagree. It might take a bit more time to have them buy your stuff. But when they do start, my god, they will buy whatever you recommend as long as you tell them what they get.

Trust me. They will even buy from you if you tell them “This is the worst deal around and it is a huge freakin’ hassle. But it is sooo totally worth it.”

[I recognize this post has some holes every here and there. Please help me fill them in.]

//Jesper