This post is part of a series examining some oft-neglected online customer touch points and exploring ways to optimize them.  Today, I’ll look at a type of page very similar to thank you pages - the logout confirmation, or logout thank you page.

As appealing as a loading dock?

Logout thank you pages are utilitarian, and often overlooked. Similar to an e-commerce confirmation page, a logout page appears after a completed transaction, so it’s outside the sales or conversion funnel.  Also similar to other types of thank you pages, logout pages are typically starved for design and marketing attention. All that creative attention is focused on the site’s interior - the cool account management tools, real-time information, or whatever else is provided in the logged-in area.

It shouldn’t be this way. Logout thank you pages can be a prime opportunity to support your brand and offer more ways for your current customers to engage with you.

It’s where and when you say it

I recently re-read Paco Underhill’s great book “Why We Buy” and was struck by how his discussion of store signage and zones could apply to web sites. According to Paco, it’s important to take every opportunity to communicate with customers, but communication alone is not enough.

The message must suit its environment.

Store owners, in Paco’s example, should understand what shoppers are doing in each area, or zone, of a store before placing signage there. What actions are customers taking in that zone? Are they walking quickly past, or are they waiting in line? What else is in that zone to look at, what might customers be thinking? As he puts it,

“Each zone is right for one kind of message and wrong for all others. Putting a sign that requires 12 seconds to read in a place where customers spend 4 seconds is just slightly more effective than putting it in your garage.”

(Read the full article…)

As an SEM practitioner, I am a self-proclaimed fan of Google AdWords.  I love the ease of their platform, I love the depth of their reporting, I love our dedicated Google agency team and I especially love the ROI that Google AdWords drives for our clients.   To be honest, Adwords management is a dream compared to the other major PPC engines.

But while there are many things to praise Google for, I’m not totally naive.  Google is a business.  A BIG business.  One that needs to continue to make money and grow in order to appease stakeholders and further secure their dominance.

As a result, Google doles out some advice to its advertisers that is questionable at times.  Not to mention, some of their account defaults make it all-too-easy to run a less-than-optimal campaign if you are a newbie to the game.  In short, not everything that Google puts out there is in the interest of the advertiser.

Here are four examples of when you should think twice about blindly following Google’s defaults and advice:

“Optimizing” Ads to CTR (Google revenue), rather than conversion (your revenue)

When setting up a Google account there is an option to ‘Optimize’ your ads or to ‘Rotate’ your ads.  Upon first thought, you might think that ‘optimize’ sure does sound nice.  And hey, it has already been chosen for you by default so why argue?  Google states that this will simply allow you to ’show better performing ads more often’.  They even explicitly state it is ‘Recommended’.

In actuality, if you are an advertiser whose primary goal is to maximize conversion (sales, leads, etc) then the ‘Optimize’ default is not for you.  Why?  Because ‘optimize’ by Google’s definition means serving the ads that have the highest click-through rate (CTR), NOT the highest conversion rate.

Why would Google push for ads that have the highest click-through rate?  Well, at least partially because ads that get more clicks produce more revenue for Google.  Google will also make the point that ads with a higher CTR are more relevant and therefore provide a better user experience.  But it’s hard to completely ignore the Google revenue incentive. (Read the full article…)

With all the emphasis lately on how to market in a down economy, I’ve decided to go against the grain and dole out some advice for those organizations wanting to make less money (this is the “Just Behave” column, after all, and it sure seems like we could benefit from some decidedly contrarian thinking). Seriously, everyone is so focused on helping the weak “profit-seeking” companies weather this financial storm that the needs of all the strong companies needing to waste money have been overlooked. Well, not on my watch. So for those companies looking for ways to keep those pesky customers at bay, here are my top recommendations for how to utilize SEM to achieve your unique objectives.

(See the full article on Search Engine Land: http://searchengineland.com/how-to-lose-money-alienate-your-customers-16536)