Collecting analytics data about your site visitors is a good thing. The theory behind collecting information is that if you have some sensible data, you can better plan when executing business objectives. But, like most good things, there’s a catch.

You need a way of testing all this wonderful data against your theories of what works. If you don’t, you will be left with a big blob of information that doesn’t do your organization much good except supply icing for colourful reports.

For example, how useful is it for you to know that, on average, your website visitors spend 40 seconds on your landing page?

Or, what intelligence do you get from knowing that your customers drop out at the third step of a registration process on your site?

You can get all of this data from analytics, but so what? How does that translate into implementing changes to your site to help achieve results? If only there was a way to use this data to help achieve business objectives…

Enter Optimizer.

It’s all about testing. No, I am not talking about a 100 question multiple choice exam. Think simpler. Think kindergarten: A or B questions. With Optimizer, you can test two different scenarios against each other to see how your visitors react (split testing) and use that raw data to see which scenario works better. It’s so simple that it makes achieving business objectives a breeze. And the best part is that you can test anything: content, call to actions, graphical elements, even user interface concepts.

Let’s take one of our previous raw data examples and see how Optimizer can help. Let’s say your customers are dropping out on the third step of your registration process and you want to find out why.

You have two theories as to why they are leaving:

#1) You are asking them for too much private information.

#2) The third step is too long and the user gets bored and leaves.

Let’s say you decide to test theory #1: you are asking too much private information (maybe you are collecting credit card data to verify someone’s age). You decide that this step is not necessary and you remove the credit card details and run a split test (some visitors go through the original registration process while some go through the modified version). You let this experiment run for a while and then review the results. The version of your site which successfully converts more visitors into registrants is the more optimized site.

Congratulations, you just ran your first simple split test and achieved a business objective: getting more registrations.

Of course, real life optimizations can be far more complex. You can run multivariate tests to see how several versions of a site perform and you can make the tests more efficient by testing multiple elements simultaneously. For time sensitive projects (such as a product launch) this type of testing becomes crucial as the website success is a function of time. By running split tests, you reduce the time it takes to discover the most optimized configuration for your site.

Running proper test campaigns takes knowledge, a good grasp of usability and a well defined business objective. Next time you are pouring over your analytics data, think about how your site is meeting your business objectives and consider how a test campaign can help you meet your goals.

Image Credit: brockvicky/cc

“What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else” By Geoff Colvin, Senior Editor of Fortune magazine

I recently read this book and I was very fascinated by it. The book focuses on world class performers and asks the question: “What makes the best in the world the best at what they do”?
Most of us believe achieving the highest levels of performance is a mix of natural talent and hard work. But this belief is wrong.

Natural talent when combined with hard work will make you better than the average, but this combination will not put you at the top of your profession. A good example is a top amateur athlete who faithfully practices for many years with blood, sweat and tears and may be the very best on their team or in their league; however they will never reach the highest peaks of their chosen sport or go on to win an Olympic Gold Medal, regardless of the amount of hard work, practice or time they put in.

On the other hand, we have all witnessed the superstars who rocket to the very top in a very short time, and play as if they were born with some sort of super -human mutant ability. They break every record and win every championship. These are the super elite, those who set the bar high for their fellow competitors. How these superstars accomplish this is what the book examines.
Researchers have concluded that an individual’s natural gifts do not a superstar make. Could it be the willingness to work harder than everybody else?

No, it’s not that!

Maybe it is just being more mentally tough (an intensified fortitude) than the average competitor?

Nope. It’s not that either.

Researchers have converged on an answer. It’s something they call “deliberate practice.”

What is deliberate practice?

Deliberate practice is a specific and unique kind of activity, and it’s neither work nor play.

Deliberate practice is designed specifically to improve performance.

The key word is “designed.” The essence of deliberate practice is to continually stretch an individual just beyond his or her current abilities. An example is Tiger Woods , who intensely applies this principle (and which is no secret among pro golfers). Tiger has been seen to drop golf balls into a sand trap, step on them, and then practice shots from that near impossible lie. Tiger Woods may face that buried lie in the sand only two or three times in a season, and if those were his only opportunities to work on that shot, he’d blow it just as you and I would.

Deliberate practice must be repeated a lot.

High repetition is the most important difference between deliberate practice of a task and performing the task for real. Two points distinguish deliberate practice from what most of us actually do. One is the choice of a demanding activity just beyond our current abilities. The other is the amount of repetition.

Feedback on results needs to be continuously available.

You may think that your rehearsal of a job interview was flawless, but your opinion isn’t what counts. Can you really trust your own judgment? In many important situations, a teacher, coach, or mentor is vital for providing crucial feedback.

Its highly demanding mentally.

Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration. That is what makes it “deliberate.” Continually seeking those elements of performance that are unsatisfactory and then trying one’s hardest to make them better.

Its hard.

Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that’s exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands. Instead of doing what we’re good at, we need to seek out what we’re not good at. The reality that deliberate practice is hard can even be seen as good news. It means that most people won’t do it. So your willingness to do it will distinguish you all the more from the crowd.

Set goals before you start

Self-regulation begins with setting goals. Not big, life-directing goals, but more immediate goals (for example, what you’re going to be doing today).
From the research:

• Poor performers don’t set goals; they just slog through their work.
• Mediocre performers set goals that are very general and are often focused on simply achieving a good outcome (win the sale; get the new project proposal done.)
• Best performers set goals that are not about the outcome, but rather about the process of reaching the outcome.

The best performers are focused on how they could get better at some specific element of their work. With a goal set, the next step is planning how to reach it. Again, the best performers make the most specific, technique-oriented tasks. They’re thinking exactly of how to get where they’re going. Their plan for achieving it on that day may be to listen for certain key words the customer might use, or to ask specific questions to bring out the customer’s crucial issues.

Make self-observations

The most important self-regulatory skill that top performers in every field use during their work is self-observation.
The best performers observe themselves closely. They are able to monitor what is happening in their own minds. Researchers call this meta-cognition—knowledge about your own knowledge; thinking about your own thinking. Top performers do this much more than others do as part of their routine.
Meta-cognition is important because situations change as they play out. It plays a valuable part in helping top performers adapt to changing conditions. When a client raises a completely unexpected problem in a negotiation, an excellent businessperson can pause mentally and observe his own mental processes as if from outside, and ask:

• Have I fully understood what’s really behind the objection?
• Am I angry?
• Am I being hijacked by my emotions?
• Do I need a different strategy here?
• What should it be?

Evaluate yourself

Practice activities are worthless without useful feedback about the results. These must be self-evaluations; since the practice activities took place in our own minds, only we can know fully what we were attempting or judge how it turned out.

• Excellent performers judge themselves differently than most people do. They’re specific, just as they are when they set goals and strategies.
• Average performers are content to tell themselves that they did great, or poorly, or that they “tried their best”.

In summary, this is an excellent read. This book has changed the way I view top performers and how their skill sets are achieved. The book has also made me ask myself some very tough questions, such as:

• Do I push myself outside of my comfort zone on regularly?
• Am I good at setting goals and achieving them consistently?
• Is my ego ready for an outside perspective and assessment of my skills and coaching?
• Do I know my weak points as well as my strengths?
• Am I willing to do the work that others won’t to raise the bar?
• Am I just like everybody else who came along and tried their best? (I hope not!)

All the best,
Marc Deveraux

Image Credit : familymwr/cc

Statistics show that 4 out of 5 businesses fail. This means that if you’re going to succeed in business, you need to understand what your customers want by measuring how they respond to your products. It isn’t enough to maintain a blind faith in the value of your products, you need to be quick to act when something isn’t working. The unsettling fact is that many great products simply don’t sell in the marketplace, but if you’re willing to try and fail a few times you’ll eventually stumble upon a winning formula.

The beauty of starting an online e-commerce business is that you can easily change your products and marketing strategy because you aren’t weighed down by the high cost of expensive stock and the maintenance costs of a traditional retail store. Using inexpensive online marketing, social media and analytic tools you can engage your customers, test different marketing approaches and monitor how they respond to your products without spending tens of thousands of dollars on an idea that may not sell.

Let’s take a look at the differences in startup cost and marketing for offline and online businesses with a brief cost analysis of both options.

Costs of An Offline Retail Store:

Much more money up front.

In addition to your monthly lease payment and the obligation to rent a storefront for a minimum of 6 months to a year, you will have to pay to properly renovate your storefront, create a sign and buy equipment, which can run into the thousands of dollars. Let’s go with a moderate figure of $10,000 for renovation, sign creation, lease closing costs and equipment costs.

Cost of you monthly lease.

Here in Vancouver, a streetfront store in one of the cities’ neighbourhoods costs between $50-75 per square foot. The average storefront retail shop is around 1000 square feet so your monthly rentals costs on the lower end of the commercial real estate market ($50/sq. foot) will be $4166 in leasing cost per month.

Cost for reliable sales staff.

For a retail store you’re going to likely need at least 2 staff members working 9:00 am to 7:00 pm each day of the week. Let’s say you pay your sales staff $12/hour, that will be $240 in labour costs each day, $1680 per week and $6720.

Total Cost:

$10,000 initial investment and then $10,886 per month in costs.

Costs of An Online E-Commerce Store:

Cost of web development for your website.

To get a custom e-commerce website created it will start around $6,000. This would include your entire shopping cart platform, a company blog, social media integration, user reviews and ratings, and full e-commerce analytics tracking of visitors and sales.

No cost for sales staff.

Instead of paying over $6,000 dollars a month in sales staff, you can spend that money driving traffic to your website using highly-targeted PPC advertising. If you don’t want to handle the orders and shipping of stock yourself then you can easily hire someone to do this for you at a fraction of the cost of having sales people working in your store 10 hours a day.

Online marketing is more effective.

Compared to traditional marketing, which is difficult to track, there are many advantages of online marketing.The biggest advantages of marketing an online e-commerce website is that you can track your ROI (return on investment) from every marketing dollar you spend.

Monthly web hosting costs.

To host a e-commerce website on high-speed servers it will cost you around $30/month. You will then want to hire someone to do online marketing for your website and provide technical assistance if you ever have problems with your website which will cost around $2,000/month.

Total Cost:

$6,000 initial investment and $2030/month in costs.

Minimizing The Risk

As you can see the startup costs are significantly lower for an E-commerce website (plus you don’t have to get locked into an expensive long-term lease) than a traditional retail storefront. On top of the expenses for both an offline and online business, you will need to spend money marketing and promoting your new business.

For some entrepreneurs, depending on the products they want to sell, either one of these options could be superior. However, the lower costs and better tracking of marketing for an e-commerce website provides a less risky and easier testing ground to fine-tune your new business model. For retail business owners that want to expand their operations across Canada, the United States and globally, an E-commerce website can help them dramatically expand their overall sales.

Most importantly, for new businesses an e-commerce website allows provides a relatively inexpensive way to test out your products and then easily expand into retail locations and a larger e-commerce system as your customer base increases.

A lot of small business people that I speak with are very curious about online marketing, but don’t understand how it can directly increase their business. Many of them are seeing less return from their advertisements in traditional media like The Yellow Pages, newspapers and direct mailing campaigns, and are looking to explore new ways of expanding their market share. When the advantages of online marketing are laid out, it is easy to see how it is oftentimes a more cost-effective marketing solution for small businesses.

These are some of the many advantages that online marketing offers over traditional media outlets:

1. Reduced Cost

The starting cost of online marketing is only a fraction of the thousands of dollars that Yellow Pages, television and radio ads cost. For example, you can get a free listing on Google Local that will be just as effective as a costly online Yellow Pages ad. In addition, while traditional ads may only run for a short time, a search engine optimization campaign can deliver long-term results. You can also save money with online Pay-Per-Click advertising where it is easy to experiment with small ad volumes until you perfect your strategy and then expand your marketing budget when you are assured of a positive sales return.

2. Everything Is Measurable

When you place an ad in the newspaper or a magazine, it can be difficult to assess the direct sales impact for your business. With online marketing, everything can be tracked and illustrated in detailed graphs that illustrate traffic growth, leads and sales conversions from your specific search marketing campaigns. Using a free traffic analysis tool like Google Analytics, it is easy to calculate your return on investment (ROI) so you can appreciate the excellent value generated from your online marketing budget.

3. Brand Engagement

In the crowded market, you need to establish and maintain positive brand awareness and client loyalty. Apart from word-of-mouth and leveraging your personal relationships with your established clients, a website is the most important marketing tool a business can have. A regularly updated website with well-written content that maintains people’s interest is essential to showing people exactly how your business is distinctive – and how you offer the best value to your clients.

4. Demographic Targeting

The degree to which an online marketing campaign can target and measure the response from specific demographics and regions is often astonishing to business owners who normally use traditional media. New demographic prediction and online advertising platforms allow you to specifically target the specific consumer demographics most likely to buy your products. In particular, if you want to target young people between the ages of 16-30, you’ll need an online marketing strategy to reach them where they spend the bulk of their time: On the Internet and on social media sites.

5. Real-Time Results

With online marketing you don’t have to wait weeks to see a significant boost in your business. With a paid search marketing campaign you can experience real-time results that enable you to fine-tune your marketing message to achieve your desired effect. If your marketing strategy isn’t working effectively, real-time monitoring tools allow you to easily pin-point exactly where you are going wrong.

6. Easily Refine Your Strategy

Using online marketing analytics and tracking tools you can test conversion rates at a fraction of the cost of a traditional media campaign. Online marketing levels the playing field and allows savvy small businesses to compete in competitive niches that previously would only be open to large corporations and their massive marketing budgets. If your marketing strategy is not bringing in the return on investment (ROI) that you desire, you can work to perfect it without having to launch an expensive new campaign as would be required with most traditional media outlets.

7. Long-Term Exposure

The benefit of an organic search marketing campaign that optimizes a website for specific keywords is that you will achieve a long-term return on your investment. Once your website’s visibility is well-established with search engines, it is easy to do regular low-cost maintenance of your strategy. The early adopters of new online marketing platforms like social media marketing will have a significant head start over their competition.

8. Product Information

Today’s savvy consumers want to compare reviews and opinions of friends, trusted bloggers and industry experts before they make a decision. If you can provide quality, linkable information that is what people are looking for, then the next step of converting users into paying clients can be very easy. With social media networks like Facebook and Twitter re-enforcing the value of positive word-of-mouth exposure, trust is more important than ever in the marketing field.

9. Less Intrusive

Most savvy consumers dislike intrusive traditional marketing methods like direct mailing, print ads and television advertisements. When someone buys a newspaper or magazine, they want to read interesting articles not be bombarded with irrelevant ads. While mediums like television can still be useful for maintaining awareness of large corporate brands, it is not an effective medium for most small and medium-size businesses. With online marketing, you can target consumers precisely when they are searching for products and services that your business can provide.

10. Holds Their Attention

When people read the newspaper or a magazine they may scan over the advertisements beside the article but there is no way to engage their attention. With online marketing you can encourage them to take action, visit your website and read about your products and services which results in vastly increased “stickiness” of your marketing message.