Amy Africa shocks and awes them in Phoenix

There were a lot of wows at the Marketing Profs Digital Mixer this week in Phoenix. My personal favorite was Arianna Huffington given my journalism background, but Gary Vaynerchuck and Amy Africa were close seconds. Others have captured the highlights of Gary V's presentation, but I was so surprised by my enthusiasm for what Amy Africa had to say, I just had to share. If you don't know her, Amy Africa's is a web consultant with a newsletter goes out to 850,000 people and gets a stunning a 67% open rate. That alone caught my attention.

She then proceeded to conduct the whole session as a "Who wants to be a millionaire" game which was a brilliant way to keep people engaged at the end of a long couple of days. So here were her questions and her tips:

 

1. What does PC mean: Perpetual Cart is essentially a perpetual call to action (either an order form, a download, a request to register for a newsletter or a perpetual lead form) It should be in at least in 3 places on your web site. The PC tells the user what to do. Click here now is clicked 4-6 times more often than search or conventional info buttons. As she says, you have to ask for the order constantly
2. What is most responsible for success: Navigation is responsible for 60% of success – more so than design, colors, photographs or anything else.
3. What is the 2^nd most abandoned area on an average site: Internal Search Function. The first most abandoned is the Entry Page, 2^nd is Internal search function 3rd Shopping cart or lead form. If only 17% abandons on lead forms, not enough people going there. 60% should start a transaction and not finish it. You want them to raise their hand. On search we lose 66% of the people. Which means that we have what people are looking for but they don't know how to find it.
4. What are the best performing trigger emails? Welcome, unsubscribe, abandoned site, cart and search, thank yous. Africa suggests that you send a customized email to people who try and fail to get info or buy stuff on your page. Assuming they've given you their email, but don't convert into action, you reach out and say "we're sorry you didn't find what you were looking for" These emails have the highest click thru and open rate. "We noticed you tried our search, and it didn't work, can we help – should get 60% conversion"
5. What is a drill: the action a user takes on your site. How many drills is a critical metric. If you cannot keep track of drills take page views and divide by 130.
6. What is BTF – Below the Fold. Assume that only 30% will see what you put BTF, only 10% will ever hit the back button. When your site loads visitors first look to the upper right, after second page will only look down middle column. They look left when they need help, they look to the right when they're about to leave. So whatever message is most important should be in every quad above the fold. You want to have at least 3 products you can buy and 2 PCs above the fold. You need to ask for email address 12 different ways, ask the experts, or download a white paper., more you ask, the more chances you get the order.
7. What percent of your daily traffic should come from Repeat Visitors: 40%
8. What do people see bests on line: People – they really only see pictures because it is inherently difficult to read text on line
9. What is the max amount of traffic an entry page should account for? 6-10% The better your site is in terms of if you have more than 6-10% not enough pages indexed. Don't want to drill everyone to the same page.
10. How many columns do the best converting sites employ – from eye pop to conversion. : 3
11. What does BOB stand for: Best of Breed. Who is your bob. Who is your best of breed is typical average user's favorite site. Look at the last 10 places they were before your site.
12. What has the biggest impact on conversion: The Referring URL – where they came from
13. What is #1 major influence on trigger email.. deliverability ..(getting past the spam filters) not the subject line, the creative or the format.
14. Name 2 of the least known metrics that make the most amount of difference: CTS=Clicks to sale DTS == days to sale, How many clicks does it take to make a sale, how many days does it take – they move the needle.
15. What makes up for all the other weaknesses on your site : Trigger emails.
16. What is P/S Navigation Problem/Solution Navigation -- must have . . allows a user to search in the way they want.
17. What is a plug? A non-animated banner. Plugs are mini commercials to drive people back into your site. Allows people to see things you want them to see
18. What is max amount of time to spend on an n average page. 40 seconds
19. Best way to improve product page conversion, add more "Buy now" buttons, second best way, add multiple visuals.
20. What is theming? Rotational banners that increase AAUS Average user