The One Thing You Need to Know About Conversion Rates

Lead conversion is defined as that point when your marketing efforts successfully result in your targeted consumers performing a desired action, whether it’s subscribing or contacting you. The frequency of that happening compared to the number of visits you get on your website is called the conversion rate.

Marketers recognize conversion rate as one of the must-track success metrics for a business, but its significance has also become a subject for debate. Many articles online tell you why you should ignore the average conversion rate at face value, with reasons ranging from it being a skewed percentage, to it being unreliable.

There is actually just one thing to do so that analyzing your conversion rate would be more helpful and meaningful to you and your company: BREAK IT DOWN.

Okay, so how to I "break it down?"

Smart Insights suggests breaking your conversion rate down by channel, by visitor type (is he a new or a returning visitor?), and by task (e.g. sales, customer support). This way, you’ll be given a clearer picture of the nature of your conversion rate instead of just benchmarking it to the industry average or just looking at it at face value. You should also ask “Why?” instead of just declaring “That’s Great!” whenever you see the percentage.

By breaking the information down, you’ll know what specific areas to optimize so that your business’ rate makes more sense.

Still doesn’t seem all that clear to you? Contact 9DotStrategies now and consult with us! To every question, we’ll offer a solution.

Why your business needs CRM in 2016

We've been taught that our business is only as good as the customers who patronize our brand. It's true. Without people buying, using or subscribing to our service, we'll be out of business before long.

That said, you obviously need to utilize all the tools we can use to boost customer engagement,

Without the right tools to nurture your customers, you're in danger of missed engagement and lost sales opportunity.

You don't want that.

What your business needs is an all-in-one management software that features marketing automation, sales and project management.


What's the deal with CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the process of storing, tracking, and analyzing all of the interactions you have with your prospects and customers. A CRM tool helps you simplify, centralize, secure and scale your customer engagement.


Explain it to me softly

Let's say that you need to give gifts to 5 of your nephews this Christmas. Now, instead of just knowing their favorite toy, you also know their hobbies and favorite color, you also know the exact model they want at the exact store they saw it. With this information, you'd be able to give them personal gifts that they'll truly cherish.

Luckily, we have things like address books and calendars to remember important details. But what if you have 100 nephews (as if 5 isn't enough headache). This is when everything becomes a burden. Favorites are forgotten, presents and cards become less thoughtful, relationships become strained the once uncle-worshipping nephews has placed you into the black netherworld of forgotten people.

Now imagine this in your business. See what I mean?

I'm interested in this CRM, how does it benefit me?

While CRM can be a big investment, it's understandable that you want  to be absolutely sure that it's something that your business really needs.

Here are the 10 signs that you need a CRM System.

1. There’s no clear-cut way to see how your sales team is communicating with your leads and clients.
2. You need to go around and ask your sales who they’re contacting and how calls are going to get an idea of how each person is performing and if they’re meeting benchmarks.
3. There’s limited insight into what kind of conversations are converting leads to customers and what kind of conversations are costing you leads.
4. When you lose someone from your sales team, you also find that you lose some of your leads, too.
5. There isn’t an established way to nurture or track leads, so each sales rep just tracks what they personally deem important.
6. You want to save some of your contacts’ data in specific formats that aren’t supported by your main contact management database, so you end up saving some in different programs and then make a note of that in your primary database with a connection to the other documents. This results in data for one lead in at least two different locations.
7. There isn’t an established way to learn what worked well for nurturing a lead and what didn’t.
8. When a contact’s record is updated, often times the wrong information is changed (and this is realized after the file has been saved).
9. Because data are kept on office hard drives, in emails, and in random documents or files, data is lost frequently.
10. Your hard drive has crashed twice, taking all your data with it. Bummer!

Any of these situations ring a bell? Unfortunately, many companies still function this way... but yours doesn't need to be that way.

STOP THE MADNESS!!!

Sign-up for a free CRM demo today and see how this new technology can boost your business's productivity and sales.

THE MOBILE GENERATION SEO

Attention Webmasters! No more will the mobile phones suffer being just a tiny little dinkus when it comes to search engine results consideration! With Google’s new algorithmic policy, SEO strategists around the world will now have to widen their horizon and embrace the so called “Mobilegeddon”.

You probably know by now that Google is on the top of the world as the largest mobile platform provider, mobile search provider, and recently - the largest mobile app store. If that doesn’t give them the say when it comes to the future of mobile phones, we don’t know what will.

The catch phrase here is: ARE YOU READY TO ADAPT?
GOOGLE SEARCH ALGORITHM WILL NOW FAVOR MOBILE-FRIENDLY SITES

So what does it mean to be a mobile-friendly site? Simply run your website through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test page and you’ll find out on the spot.

However, the tool is not faultless as Google made it a point to display a disclaimer feedback on the results page for potential issues on the results. Nonetheless, for an online mobile-friendly assessment tool, the test is still nothing short of amazing.

Alternatively, you can just use your mobile phone and check to see if your website has a “mobile friendly” label on the left side before the summary. If you found one, then congratulations! You will receive extra cookie points from Google.

If you are using Google Webmaster Tools, then you should also try running your site with Google’s Mobile Usability Report where you can see important recommendations that will improve mobile use.

Here’s where it all goes down.

Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.

This is exactly what Google said. If you’re reading this right now for the first time, then be wary as the changes will take place in a few days’ time.

THERE WILL BE A “SIGNIFICANT” CHANGE

You probably have a clue right now as to how much this update will affect the internet sphere, but to give you a bigger shoe to fill, consider this statement from Google:

This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact on our search results.

When Google says it's significant, you can bet your Grandma that it actually is. The update will irreversibly change the way every conscious web user uses the internet. Google considers mobile so significant that they are willing to change entire algorithm patterns for it, so we should watch out for changes in the way that mobile search function works.

For obvious reasons, the change will render non-optimized pages crippled with low page rank and potential desktop rankings. Any page that isn't mobile responsive will cease to rank on the top page. Total chaos for those unprepared, if you ask me.

THE ALGORITH CHANGE RANKS EACH PAGE INDIVIDUALLY
The algorithm change will analyze mobile compatibility on a page-by-page basis, rather than a website-wide basis. So what does this mean to all of us? If your site has some optimized pages, and some non-optimized ones, then Google will analyze them separately and promote the page that is optimized.

If your website is responsive (adapts to any screen) and well-designed, then it shouldn’t really be an issue. It is understandable that a website will have some optimized pages and others that aren’t.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY
If you suddenly find yourself scrambling just to get your website to be mobile-friendly and are unable to decide between a responsive design and a dedicated mobile - hey, you don’t have to do it on your own! Simply visit a web development company like 9DotStrategies who specializes in web design and development (among other things) and we’ll transform your website into a mobile friendly one in no time.

CUSTOMIZATION
Developing a separate mobile website lets you optimize it for mobile users. Mobile sites have lesser content, a different navigation system, and other unique mobile-only options. The work is started by the web designer and followed through by the web developer and programmer for implementation.

However, it’s not cost effective to design for different resolutions so creating a responsive website instead can be better in handling any resolution with changes in CSS files. Any platform, whether computer or mobile device will display the website in the best possible way.

THE BOTTOM LINE
It’s the new age! If you’re website is to compete with others out there, then you need to have it redesigned either as a mobile-friendly interface or redeveloped altogether as responsive website. Your pick! But make it fast! It’s only a couple of days before the change begins.

Visit www.9dotstrategies.com today and you can glide through the Mobilegeddon unscathed and at the top.

Search Engine Optimization and Link Building for 2015

For search engines that crawl the vast expanse of the web, links serve as the roads between pages. Today, it seems like they lost their significance as a successful page-ranking highway.

Google’s webmaster trends analyst John Mueller dropped a bomb when he answered the question: “Is link building in any way good?” declaring that “In general, I’d try to avoid that”. *Silence*

Link building has long been a pillar of effective and successful SEO process, so Mueller’s answer is utterly shocking for link builders and web owners alike. He went on to say that while Google does take links into consideration when ranking, it shouldn’t be the only thing relied on. According to him, the aim should be to make your content strong enough to be able to “stand on its own”, allowing users to share it to their own websites and blogs.

He explained that aside from links, Google evaluates many other factors in its ranking consideration, he even goes on to say that building links can even cause your website to rank lower in search engines.


LINK BUILDING PITFALLS

Links aren’t actually good guys turning to the dark side, although they linger in silver lining as Google actually view link building as a form of soft link manipulation. Its persona (harmful or not) depends on how it’s utilized by SEO specialists.

In any given minute, Google scours the internet, finding the most relevant pages based on a user query and ranking them according to quality and authority. All inorganically gained signals of authority/quality like links can disrupt the accuracy of the results and ultimately harm your ranking. Mueller may be coming from this position when he stated his claim.

When Google launched the Penguin Update in April 2012, an update started assessing low-quality or spammy links. Too many links, or the same kind of links as well as low-quality or irrelevant links can cause your website to catch algorithmic or manual penalty. This is the case with Mueller saying that link building can harm your website ranking.

If that’s the case, then it’s all about the right use of links. If an SEO specialist utilizes link building legitimately, with complete understanding of the factors leading to success, then you shouldn’t be worried about any penalties stemming from illegitimate use.

Most SEO professionals know that links are one of the most significant factors when building web ranking and utilizing ranking algorithm, so not applying their use potentially decreases the chance of your website’s ranking higher in search engines. Your competitors are building their own links anyway, why lose the chance?


THE RIGHT WAY OF BUILDING LINKS

image from www.jacobking.com

Going back to what Mueller said, he described that “good content” is the key. The better the content, the more people will read it and eventually link to their own websites. Honest and legitimate links from reputable sources is the surefire way to build high rank in search engines.

However, this method takes extra time and money - two things that web owners have, but don’t want to expend.

And they wonder why they have low page rank.

Trust, credibility and authority. These are the top factors that Google considers most valuable in its ranking algorithm. When a website has multiple links, it means that it generally contain valuable information, and that makes it more valuable by proxy.

You may use links to mimic this status, but it won’t convey real credibility because it’s just you doing random link building to boost your website’s status - this is something that Google can detect and eventually use to penalize your website, causing low ranking.


GREAT (NOT GOOD) CONTENT IS THE KEY FOR SEO

Contrary to popular belief, everybody actually wants to read. People like to read meaningful content that benefit their interest. When you browse through the internet, you will notice blocks of texts and headlines that gets you irritated or good ones that jumps right at you and makes you want to share with your friends.

This is the best way to legitimately boost the page ranking of your website.

If only writing great content is that easy.

Blog posts, infographics, and videos are some of the most shared content. You need to plan carefully and invest extra money in hiring professional creative/marketing writers to compose your web content. The higher your content quality, the more people will read it and link to their own pages. This will get you natural links that will boost your page ranking.

Use social media to spread your content and allow people to easily locate it and share with their networks and link to you - if you have outstanding content, it will be enough to gain thousands of new links on its own without risking a penalty. You need to produce original, informative and entertaining material every time in order to execute this scheme, but in the long run you will be perceived as a higher authority in your industry.