I was just on the website of a national publication which asked me to take a survey. I tend to take all online surveys that I come across. I do so for ideas on my own online research efforts and to see which companies “get it right” and ask meaningful, actionable questions. I’m amazed at how many worthless questions get asked.

However, this magazine got it right. Their first question? They showed me two magazine covers and asked me which one I preferred. I had a strong preference for one cover. They then asked me “why” I liked the cover and I wrote in my reasons. The next few questions were demographic questions and if I accessed their content only online or also in print and how often (if ever) I purchased their magazine.

The survey will give the magazine meaningful, actionable, intelligence that can substantially impact their bottom line. Knowing which cover is the most preferred and impactfull should increase newstand sales. Wouldn’t you like to know what cover for your book, magazine or product will be most preferred by your company?

And the demographic and “use” questions will allow them to segment and fine-tune their efforts. Perhaps, online users prefer one cover, while those who buy the magazine prefer another? Best of all, the survey was conducted via a low-cost, easy-to-implement service: SurveyMonkey.

What questions are you asking your customers and web visitors? Are they questions that will allow you get into their mind and increase a targeted-behavior such as buying your product? Did you used to think you had to hire a programmer to create a survey?

Last month, I did some SEO and SEO training with two small businesses, both of which are creating new web properties. One, GroupofMinds, is an arts consulting and technology company that helps arts and cultural groups use technology to expand their reach. The other, Accurate Investigations is an atlanta private investigator that does domestic surveillance such as documenting whether a husband, wife or “significant other” is engaged infidelity or cheating.

Both websites are getting new visitors, and slowly, but surely, climbing up the search rankings. However, there is one difference that is worth mentioning: Speed of indexing. When GroupofMinds makes a new post or page on their website it is indexed and in the google results page with an hour or two. When Accurate Investigations makes a change it can take up to a week for Google to recognize the change.

Why the difference?

GroupOfMinds is built on an integrated blogging platform called Wordpress. Wordpress has several built-in mini-programs (called “plugins”) that help with search engine optimization. One plugin is a “pinging” service, that notifies over a dozen internet aggregators when a change is made (Services such as technorati, feedburner, newsgator and many others). Group of Minds’ new content gets quickly indexed by the aggregators and google has multiple ways of getting to it. Accurate Investigations has to wait until google comes back to it’s website and re-index it, a process that can take days or weeks.

Take home message? Add a blog to your website. It will become a search engine magnet.

Listen Technologies: Increasing Lead Generation by 600%

Background: Listen Technologies is a leading provider of Assistive Listening Devices and other hearing solutions such as tour group audio and language interpretation systems.

The company sells through a worldwide network of distributors. Listen also sends demo units to qualified prospects who fill in a lead generation form on their website. Prospects are qualified via email and phone by a sales rep.

The Goal: Increase Lead Generation

The Experiment.

We used Google Website Optimizer to test multiple versions of the lead-generation page in order to increase the number of prospects who filled out the form.

An A/B split testing plan was developed with two main variables. One variable was a “safety” image, that let prospects know their information was private, secure and would not be shared. The second variable was page length. A page version was generated that required less information from the prospect, making it easier and less anxiety-provoking to fill in.

The Original Landing Page:

Landing Page Version #2:

This page was identical to the original above, except for the addition of 2 “Privacy Guaranteed” logos. One is at the top of the page, and the other near the bottom, next to the “submit” button:

Showing the “Privacy Guaranteed” here is critical. Note how it is directly under the “submit” button, which is the point at which a prospect has to take an action in order to proceed. When designing and optimizing a conversion process it is critical to give assurances at the point at which a person is taking an action.

Landing Page Version #3:

This page had the same “privacy guaranteed” images that were on version #2. However, this page drastically limited the amount of information collected, only requiring name, email and phone number.

Also note, that the text near the top has been changed, some has been bolded and space has been added for ease of reading.

Experiment Results:

In this test, the orginal page converted at 0%. Previous tests had shown a 1% conversion rate.

Version 2 converted at 4/82 or nearly 5%.

Version 3, the shortest version, converted 5 out of 73 visitors - nearly 7% of all visitors filled out the lead generation form.

In other words, as a result of some small changes in page design (adding some images) and reducing the information collected, lead generation increased nearly 600%.

Listen Technologies gets an average of $3000 per system sold and approximately 25% of all leads turn into sales. Over the course of a year, this will result in substantially increased revenue.

Testing continues as we try to further increase the conversion rate.

Do you think you can benefit from optimization and conversion tuning? Read my brief page on Landing Page Optimization.

How I Work

My tests are guaranteed to make you money and increase your return on investment (ROI)

Contact Me for a 30-minute, No-Charge, Consultation:

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I am stepping outside of the topics of SEM and SEO to briefly speak about the 1000’s upon 1000’s of self-hosted Wordpress blogs that are being hacked all over the internet.

Wordpress seems to be the new “Windows” - it has a large enough installed user base and enough back-end vulnerabilities to become a favorite target of hackers and spammers. Add to that the number of new users, who may not be doing what they need to protect their databases and you have a recipe for disaster.

Most of the fixes are well beyond the scope of this blog. However, if you are mysql and php literate, you may want to start with this post at the wordpress.org forums and read Doncha’s post on Did Your Wordpress Site Get Hacked?

If you haven’t been hacked or do not know if you have, the best thing to do is to update to the latest version of Wordpress. Also, I highly recommend the Wordpress Security Scan plugin by Michael Torbert at SemperFi Webdesign. The plugin is free and open-source and it will help you find and correct many Wordpress vulnerabilities. In my case, I ran the “Scan” function and found that several of my folders had incorrect permissions. Since I changed the permissions, my blogs seem to be spam free (knock on wood).

Here’s a great blog post on 11 ways to secure your wordpress blog.

Be well and stay safe! - Ryan

When you base a major percentage of your business on technology that is driven by a single person, you naturally become concerned when that person becomes ill or steps down. Case in point: Constant rumors and speculation about the health of Steve Jobs, the CEO and Co-Founder of Apple Computer. If something happened to Jobs, I would not have immediate concerns about my Apple Computer and software. But I would be concerned. I would wonder about the future innovations and financial health of the company 2-5 years down the line.

In a similar vein, when Denis De Bernardy of Semiologic-Fame (affiliate link) began taking a back seat in the day-to-day support of his Wordpress blogging package, I became a bit concerned. Semiologic has saved me a great deal of time in the set-up and maintenance of various blogs that I have. And with Denis in the background, it was easy to get suppport on tricky questions that naturally arise when maintaining dozens of blogs. Denis is an uber-geek. He knows what he is doing.

But like many business owners, he became overwhelmed at being the jack-of-all-trades in his business, got burned out and after several years sold the business and assumed an lesser role, removing himself from daily support functions.

As Semiologic transitions to a new phase in its development, I wonder if they will be able to keep up with the needs and support requests of people like me, who often need immediate fixes for issues as they arise. Denis has years of computer science training and development experience. Can he be effectively replaced by a paid support staff?

Even the larger open-source Wordpress community has it’s problems. I’m currently trying to understand why ryannagy.com is showing up on Google with a title that reads: “Order Discount L-Tryptophan Order L-Tryptophan Online…” The Semiologic people think the issue is a Wordpress issue. Obviously some part of my blog has been hacked. But finding out how to fix it can involve digging through 100’s of Wordpress support pages and forum posts looking for the correct information. Quite frankly, I don’t have the time.

Much has been made of the fact that open-source software is somehow “free.” It’s not. Time is not always money, but it sure as hell can be. And in my case, spending a Monday morning tracking down and fixing a Wordpress bug is costing me time that I could be using to work on my client’s websites and earning income.

I am wondering if it’s time to look into a new blogging platform such as Movable Type. Or perhaps Blogger has a self-hosting option now.

- Ryan