HONEST SEDUCTION

A trio of digital-marketing experts explains the huge gap between the number of people who visit websites in response to online campaigns and the number who become customers–and offers a well-tested approach to achieve better results.

Early Internet entrepreneurs counted "eyeballs" to determine whether their offerings were successful. Soon, however, online marketers realized that visitors viewing their banner ads and paid search listings were only part of the story–and a minor one at that. Then came the ascendance of "click-throughs" as the benchmark for effective Internet marketing. More recently, however, digital marketing has moved beyond merely counting clicks on display ads or hyperlinks in e-mail campaigns. Today, marketers worry about converting those prospects into sales leads or actual customers. That’s where post-click marketing comes in and where this informative how-to provides the answers. The authors, all veteran online marketing consultants, focus on methods for improving the dismal conversion rate–estimated at a paltry three percent–of people who click through to the average online marketer’s landing page. Their core technique relies on selling paths or conversion paths, which are three- to five-page series of screens that attempt to guide more clickers to become buyers. The difference between a conversion path and a conventional landing page is that, unlike a typical landing page where a web surfer can go in almost any direction, the conversion path presents the visitor with a set of carefully selected options. By offering visitors quicker, simpler, cheaper–or even free–choices, the post-click marketer personalizes and improves the online-selling process. The book consists largely of previously written blog posts, articles and other documents the authors produced over the last decade. While the material could theoretically seem rehashed, the inclusion instead adds genuine-feeling context. This intriguing title is divided into short segments–improving readability–and includes visual aids. Novices and marketing pros will likely find the authors’ approach convincing.

An efficient guide to improving the effectiveness of any online marketing effort.