Online Market World – San Francisco – October 1-3

On Wednesday October 1st at 3pm I will be speaking on the Advanced PPC: What It Is And How To Avoid The Pitfalls panel session at Online Market World on October 1st. The panel will be moderated by PPC Summit founder Mary O’Brien. Joining me will be Jamie Smith of EngineReady, and Harry Brooks of Network Solutions.

My portion will focus on “information scent”:

Creating a PPC ad is like making a promise. How well you keep this promise on your landing page determines the success of your program. Learn how to align your landing pages with the ad copy in your PPC ads. Streamline your landing page to focus on the desired conversion action and skyrocket your conversion rate.

The conference will also feature a lot of content related to conversion improvement and landing page optimization:

• Web Design for Higher Conversion
• Maximizing Online Transactions Through Trust Indicators
• Seven Deadly Sins of Site Design
• Eight Innovative Strategies to Turn Browsers into Buyers
• Landing Page Testing Best Practices (with Google Website Optimizer’s Tom Leung)

Google Website Optimizer has also been kind enough to sponsor two book signings of my Landing Page Optimization book at the event. Tentatively these will be held after my session on Oct 1st and after the Landing Page Testing Best Practices session on the 2nd. The signings will be on a first come basis and only a few hundred books will be available, so get in line early…

See the Online Market World homepage.

Half-day Intensive Landing Page Workshop – Dallas – Sep 26th

Immediately after my solo session on Landing Page Testing & Tuning for Success at PPC Summit in Los Angeles on September 25th, I will be hopping on a plane.

The following morning I will be leading a half-day intensive workshop on Landing Page Testing Hands On: Developing Your Action Plan at the SES Training day in Dallas.

The workshop will cover:

• How to define mission-critical parts of your website
• Segmenting your online audience
• Defining and measuring the appropriate conversion action
• Modeling the financial benefit of landing page testing
• Understanding the psychology of your audience
• How to select the proper traffic sources for your test
• Critical steps in the visitor’s decision process
• Uncovering problems with your landing page
• Deciding what page elements to test
• Picking the right testing method
• Properly analyzing your test results
• Avoiding common testing pitfalls
• Gathering the required team and resources
• Setting up and running your test

If you are serious about landing page testing and want to put it into action right away, I urge you to attend.

SES Dallas Training homepage.

Landing Page Optimization – Insource or Outsource?

I recently wrote a two-part column on the decision to outsource or “insource” your landing page optimization program in my By the Numbers expert column on Search Engine Watch.

The main considerations are:

• Core Competency Focus
• Learning Curve and Lost Opportunity Cost
• Perspective
• Availability of Appropriate Outsourcing Partners
• Capacity and Schedule
• Affordability and Payment Methods

Read Part I.

Read Part II.

SES San Jose 2008 Recap

It’s hard to believe that almost a month has passed since SES San Jose, but I will try to gather my thoughts and hit the highlights (see my photos here) …

One of the impressions that I was left with was that the current search pecking order will be hard to change. Google seems perched securely in the top spot. Yahoo is almost the same size (14,000 employees vs. 16,000 for Google), but does not seem to be as nimble or innovative. MSN seems to have no vision at all as evidenced by the lackluster roadmap to nowhere described in their keynote speech by Satya Nadella.

The other key impression is that landing page optimization has finally arrived. There was tremendous buzz at the show starting with a signing of Bryan Eisenberg’s new book Always Be Testing (Bryan’s hand was cramped by the end of the signing). My solo session on Landing Page Testing & Tuning drew over 500 attendees and was very well received. I brought a few dozen books along to sign and they were gone in a few minutes.

During the same day the sponsored session What’s new with Google Analytics and Website Optimizer? was also packed. Avinash Kaushik and Tom Leung gave a very helpful update about the latest features of each product (I will blog separately about the recent enhancements to GWO).

The Landing Page Utopia: Expert Roundtable session was also very solid and featured Yahoo’s Ron Berlanger as moderator along with Scott Brinker from ion interactive, Frans Keylard from Widemile, Alissa Ruehl from Apogee Search, and Jonathan Mendez of RAMP Digital.

The nightlife was in its usual great form. With the Google Dance on Tuesday night as just a warm-up for many people for the late night partying in various other venues.

Hope to see you all next year!

PPC Summit Los Angeles – Sep 25 – 26, 2008

I am looking forward to speaking for the first time at the PPC Summit at the Omni Hotel in Los Angeles. My solo session on Landing Page Testing & Tuning for Success will run from 9:10am to 10:25 am on Thursday September 25th.

Immediately afterward Google Website Optimizer will be sponsoring a book signing of my Landing Page Optimization book. Every attendee of the conference will receive a copy.

The PPC Summit is an intimate conference with detailed and actionable information that helps you to improve all aspects of your PPC campaign. In addition to detailed presentation materials, you also have the opportunity to interact with industry experts and get your specific questions answered.

We have negotiated a special event rate for our clients and friends.

If you sign-up by September 18th, you will receive $300 off the full-conference rate! Simply use promo-code “STLA” when registering.

For additional information please visit the PPC Summit L.A. homepage.

Hope to see you in the city of angels!

Landing Page Optimization Book Success Continues

When I wrote my book on Landing Page Optimization (see the first blog post about the book), I had no idea whether anyone would read it.

The success of the book really caught my by surprise back in April, 2008.

Things just seem to be getting better and better:

The book has now gone to a second printing!

It has also been optioned for translation into five languages:

• Chinese (Mandarin)
• Korean
• German
• Polish
• Portuguese (Brazilian)

For additional information please visit http://LandingPageOptimizationBook.com.