It’s harder than it looks!
Launching a new website is no easy task especially when you’re a marketing company marketing to marketers! Yowza! But we’ve done it and we’re damn proud.
You see this isn’t just a pretty website. Sure it does a sexy job unveiling Segment&Serve – Sitebrand’s personalization platform that was previously known as the Retail Marketing Suite. But more importantly, this website is an example of modern marketing – one that we can hold up to the world as an example. I know I sound rather cocky saying this, and those who have done this will understand my perspective, but let me tell you why.
- We use our own product, Segment&Serve, for Personalization
- We use Marketo for marketing automation which provides us Lead Scoring and Lead Nurturing.
- We use silverPOP for Email and List Management.
- We use Google Analytics for Measuring (Coremetrics coming soon!)
- We are integrated with Salesforce.com for Customer Relationship Management.
- We use Joomla for Content Management – this gives us total control without any outside assistance.
- We are in the process of implementing HubSpot for Search Engine Optimization.
So just how are we personalizing the website you ask? Let’s count the ways…
If you do the math, we have 6 campaigns (not counting default), with 9 different options for Skytext (the text on the right hand side of the Billboard), with AM and PM visual backdrops (our control group is night time if you get that image during the day - control groups are presented about 10 percent of the time so that we can measure the actual impact of personalization by comparing results against the control group), which means we have 6 X 9 X 2 = 108 different potential campaigns available to run. And that’s just on the home page alone!
We will be adding more campaigns throughout the entire site as we evolve it over time. For example, our next campaign is to have the phone number listed on the bottom right of every page dictated by your GEO location; hence, a UK visitor would prominently see their toll free number first, instead of a North American toll free number.
What it comes down to is this: the modern marketer is a complex being. They must be technical – really technical. They need multiple solutions to manage the entire lead and customer engagement. They need vision to understand the prospect experience. And they need strategy to drive prospects to the online site where the funnel essentially begins. They need to own the funnel from start to almost finish instead of just handing off a lead to sales as soon as a pulse is detected. This is truly where personalization shines as it persuades visitors to engage further and commit faster to conversion points such as purchases or downloads. And marketers must be number crunchers capable of measuring their progress all along the progress, which only gets more complex when you add multiple marketing tools to the mix, by using pretty little dashboards.
The worst part is – most executives absolutely do not understand the breadth and scope of the talents required to do this job successfully. To all of my fellow marketers out there who live this life daily, and revel in the chaos as I do along with my team, allow me to congratulate you for practicing a noble, if somewhat frustrating, profession. You truly are a special breed.
If you are intrigued by this approach to Lead Engagement, I strongly suggest you check out the upcoming webinar we are doing with Marketo later this month. I think you’ll love it. It’s only 29 minutes long so you have no excuses not to attend.
Speaking of personalization and engaging visitors, you may find the breakdown below somewhat interesting. This is a high level overview of our 108 home page billboard messaging campaigns.
Default Content
-> “Looking to Personalize?…”
First time & Geo-location
US Visitors -> “…Sitebrand says hey!”
Canadian Visitors -> “…Sitebrand says hi!”
First Time & Geo-location & Referrer URL = blog.sitebrand.com
Canadian Visitors -> “Like our blog eh? Sitebrand thanks you…”
US Visitors -> “Like our blog huh? Sitebrand thanks you…”
Returning Visitor
-> “Back for more? Checkout the latest buzz!”
Returning Visitor & Referrer URL = blog.sitebrand.com
-> “Blogged out?…”
First Time Visitor & Search Engine = Google
-> “Google brought you but Sitebrand keeps you”
Returning Visitor & Search Engine = Google
-> “…Still looking?”
SkyText (this is the text to the right of our Billboard)
- To be successful, you need to reinvent your marketing practices. Use Segment+Serve.
- Analytics will only enable you to measure your failure rate - unless you Segment+Serve.
- If your shopping cart abandonment is high, it’s time to Segment+Serve.
- Is your conversion rate too low? It’s time to Segment+Serve.
- If your website visitors are not buying, it’s time to Segment+Serve.
- Can you test your marketing initiatives in real-time? Let Segment+Serve do it for you.
- Need more online transactions? Are your goals not being met? It’s time to Segment+Serve.
- Spending too much money on e-marketing with little ROI? It’s time for Segment+Serve.
- Bounce rates higher than you like? It’s time to Segment+Serve.
Competitor Billboard Content (this is the text if you are coming from a competitor of Sitebrands)
- First Time Competitor Visitors -> “Looking to personalize?”
- Repeat Competitor Visitors -> “Back for more?….”
Competitor Skytext Content
- Sitebrand is the industry leader in Personalization. Care to join our team?
- Checking in on Sitebrand? Join our team and learn firsthand why we’re the industry leader.
- Instead of visiting Sitebrand, join our team and be part of Sitebrand. Now hiring!
- The careers section is part of the Company navigation. Apply now. Join the industry thought leader.
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Posted in Darryl Praill
2 Comments
Chris Goward at 11:13 on September 5, 2008
Kudos for navigating the site redesign process intact and practicing what you preach with all the best bells and whistles!
Now that you’ve got a technological marvel as a baseline, you could add improving your conversion rate with Google Website Optimizer. A quick look at the new site reveals several easy changes that could significantly lift your conversion rate.
As examples of hypotheses to test:
1. Grey text on a dark background is very difficult to read. I attempted a couple times on your home page but gave up when my eyes crossed.
2. Assuming your main ‘money’ call-to-action is a Free Demo eval (or a newsletter signup), it’s at the bottom of the page, well below the ‘fold’.
You’ve got a great starting point that would make a fantastic Conversion Optimization case study. We’re happy to help, of course.
Chris
You don’t need more traffic. You need more Actions!
Darryl Praill at 11:29 on September 5, 2008
Thanks, Chris, for the feedback. Like anything, web site design is always subjective. That’s the beauty of being in Marketing - you open yourself up to a variety of opinions. Hence, by adding the bells and whistles, you can quickly substantiate the impact of the site and the decisions made in the design and implementation.
Your comment about the text is the first we’ve really heard about it although we know the site does have degrees of impact depending on the quality of the monitor. We’ve experienced that first-hand in our own offices based on the different monitors that exist. In fact, the original design had the secondary pages all black as well but we intentionally went with a white background on the bottom two-thirds to overcome this issue. Hence, your feedback is actually consistent with that initial design decision.
The call-to-action on the home page is actually a nice-to-have. The intent of our home page was not to push for a call to action but rather to engage and drive the visitor deeper into the site. However, since we did have real-estate below the “fold”, we decided to add that nice-to-have call to action “just in case” someone was interested immediately. The real calls-to-action are in the secondary pages and are located in the left and right hand columns. These are above the fold.
I’m always open to an expert, like yourself, working with me to improve the effectiveness. Like my blog posting alludes to, it takes all of the pieces working together, in their optimal state, to truly harness the power of Marketing. Drop me a line and tell me more about your services.
Thanks for the feedback.
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