As a result, many advertisers are wondering (a) if this is merely a blip or the beginning of a new trend, and (b) if they can lower their pay-per-click advertising costs.

Read More on Practical eCommerce – http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3332-Cheaper-Clicks-from-AdWords-Coming-

When you spend 5 years managing conversion tests on large e-commerce websites you’re bound to have a breakthrough or two. When we test those breakthroughs on the websites of many online retailers, and observe that they consistently increase conversion rates, we build software and make it available on a pay-for-performance basis.

Time2Buy, new hosted conversion improvement software available on ConversionsOnDemand.com, is one such breakthrough.

It started with a simple question: Why?

More specifically: Why do 98% of site visits fail to result in a sale? Often the answer has a lot to do with a site’s usability and design, but there’s another factor that’s commonly overlooked…

Motivation

Largely speaking, the shoppers you’re converting into sales now are very motivated buyers. But how about everyone else? How do you increase the motivation of shoppers who lack motivation and are on the fence?

Take Control

Time2Buy enables you to take control of your conversion rates by giving you the power to motivate on-the-fence shoppers with a time-sensitive offer that expires in minutes, not days.

Send More Shoppers Rushing Through Your Cart

Once a shopper’s browsing behavior “triggers” an offer from Time2Buy they see a widget like this on the bottom corner of their screen that gives them an incentive to buy immediately:

The time they have to redeem the offer ticks away, and will be visible on every page on your site including your cart. You control the time the shopper has to complete a purchase, what their incentive is for doing so, and which items will be eligible for a discount.

Results

Here’s the aggregate data from conversion tests we’ve run on 5 large online retailers:

+25.90% lift in conversion rates when triggered
+14% lift in site-wide conversion rates
+17% increase in revenue per visit

That’s right. When shoppers actually triggered an offer from Time2Buy, they became 25.90% more likely to make a purchase! These results will vary from store to store, and while it’s not guaranteed that Time2Buy will increase your conversion rates, the data above was observed consistently across 5 large online retailers who tested Time2Buy.

Optimal Trigger Settings

Merchants are finding creative ways to use Time2Buy, and “what’s optimal” will differ for each store. For example, some merchants have observed an incredible increase in conversion rates and sales by triggering Time2Buy to all shoppers who visit a single product page on their site. We never envisioned the software to be used this way, and while we don’t recommend it, the anecdotal feedback we’ve received so far is very positive!

More commonly, merchants tend to trigger Time2Buy after a shopper accrues 3 product page visits.  These merchants usually give shoppers 10 minutes to complete their sale, and a discount between 5% and 10%.

Try It Now – There’s No Risk

We’re offering free setup of Time2Buy for select e-commerce platforms, along with a limited 15-day free trial for new users. You must sign up on or before October 31st to take advantage of this special offer. See site for other conditions.

Please go here to learn more and to sign-up.

P.S. Here are some answers to frequently asked questions:

Q: How do shoppers take advantage of the special discount?

A: The special discount will be applied if the shopper checks out in time, automatically. Our software will automatically load a coupon code setup by the merchant that corresponds to the discount.

Q: What’s the cost?

A: A small percentage of the revenue associated with the coupon code that’s configured by the merchant.

Q: I already promote site-wide sales on my site, why should I promote an extra discount?

A: In our experience, site-wide sales often do not go a long way towards motivating on-the-fence shoppers to buy. Often shoppers simply do not pay attention to site-wide promotions. Time2Buy’s patent-pending countdown timer, however, increases the odds that shoppers will see and be motivated by your special offers.

In addition, since a shopper can only take advantage of one coupon at a time, they will not be able to accrue multiple offers. Our method of triggering incentives to shoppers has been so effective that many merchants find they can give a smaller discount to merchants than they would normally give, in a way that’s miraculously more motivating to their shoppers.

Q: Can I exclude particular items from receiving a discount?

A: Yes, you do this when you configure your coupon in your store manager.

Q: Is it possible that I will be giving away discounts and paying you a fee for shoppers who would have purchased anyway?

A: Yes. In fact, depending on how aggressive your settings are, it’s very likely. Based on tests we conducted on 5 larger online retailers (see graph below), we found that the overall conversion rate impact more than makes up for this. In addition, since you have control over which browsing behaviors will trigger Time2Buy, you can create conservative settings that enable you to focus your offers on unlikely buyers.

Please do keep in mind that Time2Buy is configured to not display offers to shoppers who exhibit browsing behaviors before triggering an offer from Time2Buy. For example, if you scheduled Time2Buy to trigger an offer after 3 product page views, and a shopper presses “Add To Cart” before triggering Time2Buy, the shopper will not be able to trigger an offer from Time2Buy even if they surpass 3 product page views.

There’s no risk to using Time2Buy. Try it free for 15-days, and continue using it to increase conversion rates and sales this holiday season! You will also benefit from continuous enhancements that will give you even more power to convert more browsers into buyers.

Please go here to learn more and to sign-up.

As we move into the new year, there are still shoppers searching for great after holiday deals. Take advantage of this by setting up post-holiday sales to clear out extra inventory. Set up “after holiday” PPC ads and coupon codes to drive sales and clean out your warehouse…

Continue reading this article on  Practical eCommerce

To read more visit Practical Ecommerce This article was featured on Practical Ecommerce on December 1st, 2010.

In addition, listen to Scott offer other advice for online retailers on pay-per-click advertising.

To read more of Scott’s article visit Mashable.com This post was featured on November 30, 2010.

It usually goes something like this…

Me: Let’s launch a “Christmas in July” campaign. Our goal will be to help online merchants realize that the investments they make now could make or break their holiday season…

Dan: And they will be far along in their conversion test plan!

The best laid plans…

And each year, without fail, we start getting very busy in July before even having a chance to launch our “Christmas in July” campaign. We have yet to launch a proper Christmas in July marketing campaign in our 13 years in business, although we ARE currently planning a “Christmas in August” campaign this year!

I suppose it’s a good thing though… that so many of our clients (old and new) already prepare for their peak seasons well in advance. These merchants undestand that the early-bird often gets the worm, and we get to spend 100% of our time helping our clients to grow, rather than developing clever gimmicks.

For those of you who either don’t get the importance of preparing early for the fourth quarter (like… now), and/or for those of you who don’t think you have the time (like… everyone)…

Here are 5 “Should Haves” you might tell yourself when UPS and FedEx pick-up your last holiday shipment later this year:

1) I should have had my email marketing act together…

Competitor X really nailed it this year. Good thing I shopped their stores, I now know they customize their promotions to make them relevant and timely to their customers. I bet they got multiple orders from a lot of folks. Oh well, maybe i’ll do that next year.

2) I should have focussed on improving long-tail search results after the “May Day” update…

Thanks to the big-box stores and all of these niche shopping portals, Google barely pays any attention to my product pages. My traffic (and sales) from long-tail search terms have plummited. This is costing me money! I wish I addressed my site’s spiderability and content problems earlier.

3) I should have upgraded to revenue-based pay per click marketing management…

I can’t figure my competitors out. Competitor Y is all over the place with their bids. Sometimes they outbid me by 75%, and other keywords they seem to have missed completely. Either they have their heads in the sand, or they know something that I don’t. Too bad all I know is the cost-per-conversion of my keywords. What if they have more data? What if they manage their campaigns based on REAL Return On Ad Spend?

4) I should have gotten more customers to “like” us on FaceBook

Competitor Z has 50,000 fans on FaceBook and man, those fans are spreading the word like crazy… they love Competitor Z! It almost seems unfair. Everytime Competitor Z wants to promote a sale or recomend a product they have an audience that’s ready to engage. Next year i’m going to promote my FaceBook page to everyone… on the order confirmation page, in a follow-up email, and more!

5) I should have spent all of 2010 focussed on increasing my Conversion Rate!

WOW! I had 900,000 visitors to my site in the fourth quarter. But my conversion rate was only .75%, and 75% of shoppers who pressed my “add to cart” button left before completing the order. If only I had spend 2010 trying to get my conversion rate up, and reducing my cart abandonment, I could have increased sales without increasing my marketing budget. Maybe i’ll do some conversion testing next year.

My advice: Don’t make 2010 another “I should have…” year. It is not too late! Invest time over the next few weeks evaluating the various ways you can increase your revenue, your profit, and your ability to scale – and then prioritize those opportunities accordingly.

And while you are at it – become a fan of Exclusive Concepts on Facebook today!

P.S. We would love to hear the “Should Haves” that you would like to avoid this year! Please email them to Kelly (krose@exclusiveconcepts.com) and we’ll share the best ones on our blog. If you would like us to keep your name and store confidential just tell us in your email. If not, you may just get a link!

1) There are people who actually ENJOY browsing email promotions!

“Jill” told me that she carves out time almost every day to sort through the 20 or so promotional e-mails that she receives from online retailers to “see what’s new,” and “to see what’s on sale.”

2) “Price” shoppers can be very savvy

“Bill” makes many of his online purchases over a several week period, and rarely buys something spontaneously. Once he knows what he wants to buy he will open a spread sheet, and will browse dozens of e-commerce sites. He records the price that each store sells the products for and he signs up to their newsletters. After several weeks he browses his inbox for promotional offers from those stores, updates his spread sheet, factors in the cost of shipping, and buys from the store who gave him the best deal.

3) When buying from “unknown” companies, shoppers may Google the name of the company in search of “red flags”

“Jackie” is not afraid to buy from online retailers she has never heard of before, and in fact she prefers to buy from specialty stores rather than “big box” stores. Over the years, however, she has made it a practice to open a new window before she completes a purchase to run a Google search of the name of the online retailer she is about to make a purchase from. She doesn’t spend a lot of time “investigating” the company, but she does skim the first page of results to see if any “red flags” jump out at her. One big red flag is when she searches for the name of the company, and only a few relevant results come out. She said, “I assume that means they are very new and have no track record,” or that “they are not savvy enough to care about their reputation.”

In closing: The next time you’re at a weekend party, consider doing some research of your own. Ask people what they like to buy online, and ask them to share their experiences doing so. Not only is this good fodder for a casual conversation, it serves to remind you that shoppers are more than numbers that show up in your analytics program. They are individuals with very unique needs and behaviors.

As many of you know, we at Exclusive Concepts take the concept of testing very seriously. Testing is the basis for all of our core service offerings. Whether we’re testing new advanced SEO strategies, or we’re performing conversion tests on Yahoo Stores to increase conversion rates, we believe stongly in relying on data to make smart decisions.

The funny thing about conversion testing is that we can only be confident that most of what we learn will be applicable for the site that we’re actually doing the test on. But once in a while our tests yield such consistent results across such a diversity of e-commerce sites that we think to ourselves: everyone ought to be doing this. And that’s why we started Conversions On Demand.

Every product offered through Conversions On Demand (www.ConversionsOnDemand.com) has indeed been tested and proven to increase conversions on not just one Yahoo Store, but on many Yahoo Stores. For every product we make available on Conversions On Demand there are many that may have felt right and had cool features, but that just didn’t perform.

While we believe that offering products that are tested and proven to increase conversions will be critical to the success of Conversions On Demand, we don’t stop there. Each Conversions On Demand product also comes with these benefits:

• Easy Control Panel: This user interface provides our clients with the control to easily and quickly configure enhancements, track results, and more
• Hosted Software: Applications run on our servers and are supported, maintained and upgraded by our staff
• Plug and Play: Copy and paste code into your website and begin increasing conversions immediately
• Pricing Model: Our fee structure is designed so that you only pay for what you use, as you use it

Conversions On Demand currently has 3 products, with many more on the way:

• Daily Deal Bar: Your Promotions. In Your Time
• Peel Away Ads: Interactive Promotions
• The Cart Closer: A Second Chance to Close the Deal

Visit www.ConversionsOnDemand.com today to view our Free 30-Day Trial offer!

The rapid change in the Social Media space has made it difficult for many business leaders to understand the dynamics of Social Media, let alone develop a strategy to integrate it into their marketing mix. Part of the challenge that i’ve observed is that while business executives have been trained to “pay attention to the hype,” they are often weary about diverting attention to opportunities that have not been proven to stand the test of time. Who can blame them?

Indeed, while there are many examples of how businesses have harnessed Social Media to achieve business goals, Social Media is still very new. In fact, I’m confident that the percentage of businesses who have found a “winning” formula for the use of Social Media to grow their revenues is very small compared to more established online marketing methods.

Given that my experience in search engine marketing pre-dates Google, I know a thing or two about what it takes for business executives to successfully adopt their marketing strategies to new and highly conceptual forms of marketing. If you are one of the many business leaders who have no idea how to leverage Social Media to grow your business, read on! I’ll suggest 5 simple steps you can take to increase your understanding of Social Media and to begin formulating a plan to put Social Media to work for your business.

Really Simple Social Media in 5 Steps

Step 1: Understand the concept of Social Media

Because it’s a relatively new buzz word/phrase, the concept of “Social Media” may seem overly complex, but it’s really very simple. In the context of the Internet, media often refers to content. Content might include articles, videos, pictures, etc. To the extent that the people who access this content can interact with others to communicate about or change this content, it becomes social.

Twitter and Facebook are examples of Social Media because individuals use them to interact with each other and to communicate ideas, preferences, likes, and dislikes. In this case, most of the content that is interacted with is supplied by users, and so the content is primarily “user generated” (another buzz word to remember).

Blogs are often examples of Social Media too because users can comment, share, and interact with the content and with others who access the blog.

And even traditional websites or pages on a website (like a product page) can be turned into Social Media by giving users the ability to interact with the content rather than simply read it.

Step 2: Understand why Social Media is popular

Social Media is popular because it caters to base instincts of man: to be social. Until recently, however, the Internet did not cater to these instincts in a very effective way. Web Pages were static and the human beings who visited them could not interact with others in order to grow their knowledge. Social Media solves those problems and its footprint expands every day.

Social Media has taken off so quickly simply because there was huge demand for increased “socializing” on the web, and Social Media technology satisfied that demand. Once the very simple Social Media technology was created, norms were established, and people started learning how to use this new technology very quickly. While technology will evolve and new websites will become popular, I expect that Social Media itself will continue to be very popular in one form or another for as long as the Internet exists.

Step 3: Participate

You could go to your favorite book store right now and find hundreds of books that will teach you how to use Social Media, but if you really want to understand it so that you can apply it to your business, you must first jump in and start using it.

If you are not already signed up to Facebook and Twitter, sign-up and get started. If you’re not interested in networking with long-lost high school classmates you don’t have to. Start by searching for pages related to the brands that you’re a fan of and connect with them to share your experiences and ideas. Then, start by searching for individuals who have subject matter expertise that is interesting to you on either a personal or professional level, and take part in their online conversation.

Explore the world of Social Media with an open mind before trying to hone in on the business angle. It’s important that you truly “participate” if you are to see things from the perspective of your customers and stakeholders.

Step 4: Test Social Media for your business and iterate to success

When you are ready to begin testing Social Media for your business, depending on the size and footprint of your business, it would make sense to create a short-term “testing” strategy.

Start by creating a Facebook Fan Page or a Twitter account, and identify specific metrics that you want to monitor (such as the number of visits referred to your website from your Social Media page or the number of people you are “connected” to). Then start finding ways to interact with people who are talking about your brand or the types of products and services you are selling. One quick way to do this is to go to http://search.twitter.com and type in keywords that are related to your business.

For example, if you sell office furniture, do a search for office furniture to see what people are saying. You might see posts like: Buying office furniture is the most frustrating thing i’ve ever done! This is an opportunity to engage not only a potential customer, but to gain valuable market insight.

Then, start posing questions, and posting updates, related to your business. Your posts might highlight the fact that you just received a shipment of the most comfortable office chairs you’ve ever sat in. Or you might ask the world to tell YOU what the most comfortable chairs they have ever sat in are.

Step 5: Adopt a Vision and Scale

Once you’ve run some small scale tests it’s time to start planning a longer term Social Media strategy, and to think about scaling your Social Media presence by marketing it to existing customers and evangelists. You will want to think about how you will measure the return on investment that you get from your participation in Social Media, what tone and voice will guide your interactions, what your messaging and branding strategy will be, etc. Depending on your business and the nature of the opportunity, it might make sense to engage a Social Media expert to solidify your strategy and execution plan.

Don’t forget that Social Media concepts are not limited to Facebook and Twitter. You can begin integrating your website’s pages with Social Media, and you can even turn your pages into Social Media pages by giving visitors the flexibility to interact with one-another.

Wrapping Up

If you really want to make Social Media work for you you’ll have to work at it. The execution is not as simple as the title of this post suggest, although Social Media itself is very simple and easy to use. It’s simplicity contributes to its strength and many more businesses have the opportunity to harness that strength in order to meet their corporate goals and to improve the experience of their customers and stakeholders at the same time.

I hope you’ve found my Really Simple Social Media formula to be helpful. If so, please sure it with friends and colleagues on your Social Media sites!

In the face of the doom and gloom periods that have come and gone throughout the history of the world, entrepreneurial thinkers and doers have pushed us forward by creating new services, developing new products, and by inventing new technologies.

These innovations are necessary in order for economies to grow over the long-term, and for many of the quality-of-life improvements we have seen and will continue to see.

That’s why yesterday’s announcement by Google is so exciting.

Google announced an experiment: They are building a new broadband network. Their goal is to deliver Internet speeds to users “more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections” (according to the Google Blog). Their initial experiment will involve 50,000 to 500,000 people. If the experiment works and Google decides to scale this, it could have a major impact on the quality of our lives and on our economy.

You may be thinking… this is just an experiment. Why is it exciting?

My answer is three-fold:

1) The Potential: I believe that Google has the resources it will need to significantly increase the speed of the Internet. Ultra high speed Internet will enable a new wave of disruptive technological innovations that will positively impact many aspects of our lives.

2) The Economy: A new wave of technological innovations will provide more long-term stimulus to the economy than any government could hope to provide.

3) They’re trying: Google may or may not succeed in increasing the speed of the Internet, but at least they’re taking on big challenges. In the face of a recession it is common for individuals and companies alike to look around and wait for a rising tide to lift them up. But when businesses, large and small, demonstrate the commitment to experiment with ideas that are “big” relative to the resources they have access to, you can be sure that good things will come.

Google is just one more example (albeit a big example) of a business trying to grow by tapping into the power of the entrepreneurial mind. All companies should be challenging themselves to do the same, especially during periods of economic decline. To do otherwise would be to cede the future of your business to chance – a very dangerous thought.

Here at Exclusive Concepts we are constantly pushing ourselves to think big and to learn through carefully planned and targeted experiments. On one hand we want to be visionaries as we try to predict trends in order to position our clients for success. On the other hand, we want to leverage our knowledge in order to innovate, so that we can position our clients as the LEADERS in their market.

As this year progresses I encourage you to think about your own business, and to think about where it’s going. What will your business need to do to keep up with emerging trends in your industry? And how can your business create new trends that enable you to: 1) stand out from your competitors 2) broaden existing and new revenue streams 3) create new jobs and 4) improve the lives of your customers?