Phantom CTO

Getting the most out of your website conversions doesn’t have to be a shot in the dark. By using A/B or multivariable testing you can let your visitors tell you what they respond better to. I use Google’s Website Optimizer to do my A/B testing for my small business clients and running split tests without documenting what results occurred can lead to a disaster when  you try to remember several tests back and base decisions on them.

Get a Process for Documenting Your Split Tests

Josh Baker wrote a detailed post on how he documents the processes and results of split testing with a spreadsheet. He wrote out every step he takes for documenting his split tests. To give those visual readers a better idea of what documenting a split test looks like, I created this mind map for you and with his permission I’m sharing this for you to create better processes in documenting the results of your split testing. Download the Documenting A/B Testing in Excel Mindmap as a PDF

Social Technologies: Your Customers Are Revolting

The Small Business Take-Aways on Social Technology

Embrace your customers.

Turn negative customer experiences around.

If you have negative comments out there, find a good will advocate or find people to answer on your behalf that align with your company.

If people are complaining about your product and service, ask them directly how they could do to improve it.

Take the influencers of your market inside your company and give them a sense of belonging.

If your market is ignoring your messages. Give up control and let the market make its own meaning. GoDaddy did this by just giving talking points then free reign on the creative aspect and their company stood behind the finished work. They are now getting better results than their lagging ads.

Thanks to Simon Stapleton for the find!

Here are 7 questions to help your business gauge how your website treats your users experience. If you’re looking to increase engagement with your audience, check these rules of thumbs for common pitfalls and workarounds.

Have a Uniform Site Wide Navigation?

When a visitor comes to your website the navigation should do two things: show them where they are and show them where they can go. The navigation should be the same throughout your site because it gives your visitor an anchor while browsing your site. Lose the anchor of a standardized site wide navigation and frustrated visitors will sail away.

Can You Spot The Links at a Glance?

Links are a foundation of a website.They should always stick out from the regular non-hyperlinked text on your site. Traditionally, links are underlined and blue while the rest of text is black and not underlined. You don’t have to keep it the same, blue and underlined but you do have to make sure that it is in contrast to your regular text.

Does Your Visitor Need to Register Before Seeing Content?

The answer should be no. If a visitor landed on your site by search or by recommendation, give them the information they were looking for without any roadblocks. A user will leave a site if you place a barrier to your content. They’ll go to the next option on the search result and not think twice about your site.

Too Much Detail on Registration Forms?

Detailed registration forms are a huge reason why people abandon sign ups for something they’ve shown an interest in. When making a registration form ask only what will directly be needed to get them to the other side and submit the form. Sometimes just looking at a long form will turn a visitor off. If you’d like to have additional information, ask for it once they have already signed up and are willing to give you more details.

Are You Paginating Long Articles?

Writing for the web is different than for other media. When a visitor comes to an interesting article and scrolls down to see a page 1 of 5 at the bottom, a user gets scared away. You’re asking them to commit five clicks to finish reading your content without offering them any reward for doing so. Breaking up your content also hurts your search engine optimization because it is harder for the search engine spiders to understand the full context of the article if its not all on the same page.

Is Your Copy Brief and Easily Skimmed?

When writing for the web, keep in mind that the attention span of visitors is very short. To draw them in give them an interesting hook that they can then scan the page and see if they are interested in reading the entire article. While you may be passionate about your content, give your readers visual breaks and quotes that can pull their attention should they get bored with reading long chunks of text.

Can They Contact You From Your Website?

Have contact information easily available throughout your website. You may have done a great job of delivering value to your visitors but sometimes they need to reach out and contact you directly. Make sure you let your visitors know that you’re easy to reach by having a phone number listed, an email address to send queries or an on page contact form they can submit.