Introduced in 2003 by management consulting firm Bain & Company, NPS stands for Net Promoter Score — a method for measuring the loyalty of each individual customer and gathering valuable feedback. If you are struggling to find a simple method for measuring the overall happiness and loyalty of your customers, the NPS may be just what you’re looking for. The ultimate sign of a customer who loves what you do is one who doesn’t hesitate to recommend you to friends, family or a business associate. But prior to the introduction of the NPS data, companies were left with the prospect of creating complex customer surveys that were often left open to interpretation or worse yet, never filled out. Survey Monkey presents some interesting statistics: 20% of people claim to fill out less than half of an average survey Almost 30% of people only answer a few questions 45% of people are willing to spend less than 5 minutes filling out a survey These types of statistics demonstrate the value of relying on a simple approach like that of NPS. While there are certainly times when gathering more complex data may be required, NPS can provide valuable insight into one of the most important metrics — overall customer satisfaction. How to Capture and Calculate NPS Data What makes NPS so popular and so useful is that it relies on a response to two simple questions: How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend? What is the most important reason for your score? Because NPS relies on just two simple questions, the data is easy to capture, has a high response rate and most importantly, is relevant and actionable. Most commonly, NPS data is captured from within a web application or via email. Many companies ask immediately following a customer interaction; for example, upon closing a support ticket, completing a purchase or interacting with a web application. However, other companies choose to send out NPS surveys on a regular schedule — once per quarter to all customers or even a small percentage (<2%) each day. A shorter feedback loop can provide more consistent and real-time data that can also be acted upon much faster. There are a variety of ways in which you can collect NPS data. Promoter.io and AskNice.ly are two SaaS examples that offer a complete NPS service from initial emails to segmented campaigns to full-analytics. Alternatively, if you use InfusionSoft or another CRM, there are often pre-built campaigns available (or you could also develop your own) that will allow you to dive deeper into the minds of your customers. How to Calculate Your Net Promoter Score NPS relies on a scale that ranges from -100 to +100. A positive NPS score means your customer base is a net promoter and a negative score means that your customer base is net detractors. Each customer is assigned a score (chosen by them) that ranges from 0-10: 0-6 are detractors 7-8 are considered passives 9-10 are considered promoters To calculate your actual NPS score, you’ll need 3 numbers: The total number of respondents The total number of detractors The total number of promoters Customers who answered 7 or 8, while positive overall, are not included in the calculation. Once you have these three numbers, simply subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters to arrive at the net score — the higher the number the better. How to Utilize NPS Data While collecting data is an important first step, what’s more important is how you act upon that data. Net Promoter Score is a great indicator of overall customer loyalty but you’re still left with the challenge of interpreting the data and figuring out how to improve your score over time. This is what makes the second part of the NPS question so valuable. Companies like Zapier, Groove and Kissmetrics rely heavily on post-NPS follow-up to engage customers. But more importantly, they use the feedback to develop their roadmaps. For example, Kissmetrics records every suggestion they receive via the NPS survey and tracks the total requests/comments. They then use that data as a key contributor when developing their company roadmap. Looking beyond the actual Net Promoter Score and longer term analytics, one of the most valuable aspects of the NPS is the opportunity it presents to build stronger relationships with customers. Companies who take the time to reach out to customers, whether they’re promoters, passives or detractors, are more likely to experience beneficial results. NPS is an Opportunity Not a Number Simplicity. It’s what makes NPS both popular and effective. However, it’s just a number. Unless you take action based on the data gathered, you are unlikely to see any benefits. Your final Net Promoter Score is more of a barometer than anything else. It provides an ongoing indication of how well you are meeting the needs of your customers and responding to their feedback. If you do nothing with the feedback, you’re likely to see your NPS decline. When customers take the time to respond to your request for feedback, one of the best things you can do is use that opportunity to engage them further. Send a personal thank-you email to passive customers and promoters; thank detractors for their time and confirm your commitment to improving or offer them a few trial after you make some internal changes. If you are currently using NPS to measure customer satisfaction, how do you feel it has benefited your company? Image Credit: Pixabay
The lights may be out, but that shouldn’t mean no one is home. Website downtime can be truly frustrating for both your business and customers. It can break a line of communication, leave both parties in the dark and has the potential to impact your brand and your business in a variety of ways. If you’re unsure of the true cost of website downtime, we published an interesting post last year that discussed some of the various risks associated with a website that goes offline and downtime in general. Included in this list of potential risks are opportunity cost, lost productivity, damage to brand perception and negative impact on your SEO. So the question remains: How can you configure your website for zero downtime? Is it even possible? Even with high-availability features of load-balancing and failover, it’s never possible to assure 100% uptime. Miscommunication happens- a problematic plugin sneaks past QA, someone writes a bad query in a custom theme—stuff happens. But even when errors occur there are still things you can do to keep lines of communication open and give your visitors an alternate means for accomplishing what they set out to do in visiting your site. Business must go on to the greatest extent possible. In this post, we’re going to cover a few simple but often overlooked ideas that can help you configure your website and your business in a way that helps you get as close to zero downtime as possible. Plan For Downtime One of the biggest problems that companies run into when it comes to minimizing the negative effects of downtime is failing to plan ahead. If it’s impossible to achieve “true” 100% uptime, the question becomes how can you plan to keep the lines of communication open when your site goes down? If you maintain multiple hosting accounts — one for a marketing website and one for your web application — then obviously communication via the site that is still functioning is an option. Alternatively, you should have a plan in place to communicate issues via social media. If customers rely on your application being live, you can even look at maintaining a dedicated social channel for support related updates and inquiries. The only thing worse than downtime is downtime that goes unacknowledged or even unnoticed. Wherever possible, it’s important to make sure that even though your site may be down, your visitors and customers are still able to achieve their objective. Use Uptime Monitoring Depending on your current hosting company, uptime monitoring may or may not be necessary. Services like Uptime Robot and StatusCake are capable of monitoring website uptime at false-positive free intervals that range from every second to every 5-minutes. By using uptime monitoring you’ll be able to resolve two potential issues: First, although your hosting company will probably already be aware of any server issues, by being proactive, you’ll be able to address the issue with them sooner and possibly resolve the situation in less time. Second, as important as it is to plan for downtime, your plan will do no good in the event that you don’t know when your site goes down. Uptime monitoring gives you the ability to implement a course of action quickly and to take a more proactive, customer-centric approach. Nothing is more embarrassing than being notified by a customer that your site isn’t working properly. Configure Custom 404 and 503 Pages While your visitors may be sympathetic to the fact that you are experiencing downtime, that doesn’t negate their need to complete the desired task. There are many things you can do with the different error pages that a visitor might experience. A few examples might include: If a visitor is unable to place an order online, you could provide a phone directory for relevant sales staff. When services are offline, provide a link to social media account where updates or assistance are available. If customers are temporarily inconvenienced, provide a coupon code or discount as compensation and to encourage them to return when things are back to normal There are various WordPress plugins you can use with Pagely to serve custom 404 errors that enable the above scenarios. For 500 errors you would need to intercept those at the level of the web server. If you’re on a Pagely VPS we can configure those to redirect to a static HTML page on your instance to accomplish the above. The net result is a scaffolding of error handling pages that don’t leave your visitors high and dry in the event of a traffic spike or server issue that takes your site down. Turn Downtime into a Positive Experience By now you probably realize that zero downtime is an unrealistic goal. No matter how hard you try, events beyond your control are going to occur. The good news is that customers and visitors can be relatively forgiving of occasional downtime. Most people understand that technology can be unpredictable. As long as you make it possible to provide an alternate means of completing an objective (albeit in a more manual fashion), the number of unhappy visitors and customers can be minimized. The most important part of the whole process of to plan ahead. Trying to manage or compensate for website downtime after the fact is rarely and effective strategy. How does your company manage website downtime and how have your customers reacted to your strategy?
Google’s obsession with speed should come as no surprise. All the way back in 2010 they put everyone on notice that site speed was going to become an important ranking signal in Google’s algorithm. Since then, we’ve all been looking for little ways to improve how quickly our website loads in an attempt to keep the search giant and ultimately our visitors happy. On October 7, 2015, Google announced the AMP Project — short for accelerated mobile pages. If your search rankings are important to you, it’d be a good idea to get up to speed and make sure you’re well-versed on how AMP works. If you are producing content on a regular basis, AMP offers benefits not only in the SERPs but also for your visitors and advertisers. Why Accelerated Mobile Pages? Accelerated Mobile Pages are Google’s answer to a web that has become more mobile friendly in terms of display yet increasingly slow when it comes to rendering. It’s an experience we’ve all had at some point in time when using a mobile device. One approach to this problem has been the introduction of ad-blockers. However, critics hailed that as a disguised attempt at disrupting Google’s ad revenues. Browsers have even stepped into the mix with solutions like Reader View stripping away all but the bare essentials from a web page with a single click. This is a solution that often works but at the same time, can make the browsing experience somewhat drab. Google’s solution to the common problem of a poor mobile experience is AMP. Instead of stripping out everything but content, it seems they’ve done a great job of finding a balance between speed, user experience and monetization. To replace a plain-vanilla, content-only experience, Google has retained many features that are most important to website owners and advertisers. At last count, AMP offered support for 20 ad networks along with support for tracking pixels, video and more. Although not a perfect solution, AMP solves a problem that many website owners are faced with: Optimizing for speed. The cost of optimization in an attempt to improve page speed can quickly become a never-ending pursuit. For interest sake, a great example of a fast loading site (possibly the only non-AMP site that loads faster than AMP sites according to Google) is theguardian.com. The Basics of AMP Accelerated Mobile Pages are essentially regular HTML pages that must adhere to a strict set of criteria. The result is a page that according to Google, loads on average, 4 times faster and uses 10 times less data — something your mobile data bill will also appreciate. Creating AMP pages requires some specific markup that is non-negotiable. Beyond that, there is actually plenty of flexibility as far as what can be included in an AMP page. Images, video, ads, third-party content, tracking pixels and iFrames are all possible, as well as external scripts, as long as they are asynchronous. Many elements require the use of an AMP-specific tag such as amp-img, amp-iframe and amp-video. It’s also important to note that external stylesheets are a no-go and inline CSS is limited to 50kb — an amount that Google determined was more than enough to create a great looking web page. Along with the unique requirements, there are plenty of things which are disallowed in AMP. For a detailed list, you can check out the AMP HTML Spec page. Accelerated Mobile Pages for WordPress In addition to the unique requirements for creating AMP pages, there are also several important things to know: Accelerated mobile pages for WordPress are created and published on your site as you normally would. Those pages that meet the strict AMP requirements are then cached and served by Google. Although it appears the use of Google’s CDN will be optional, most content publishers will likely take Google up of their free CDN offer. As a result, links to your AMP content will actually be linked to Google’s cached version. AMP pages can still link out to non-AMP content so it’s still possible to link readers back to your original site. Because AMP content will receive priority on mobile devices, I’d expect to see plenty of AMP pages trying to drive traffic back to a non-AMP website where users can once again be bombarded with popups and other unfriendly practices. At this stage, AMP has received widespread support from major publishers. And while small publishers may lack the capacity to develop AMP-specific content, WordPress has solved that issue with the release of an AMP Plugin. The plugin currently creates an AMP version of all posts on your site — pages and archives are not yet supported. AMP Results in a Better Mobile Experience for Your Visitors Not surprisingly, there has been some grumbling about AMP. The need to create and publish two separate version of content can certainly be cause for concern. However, as AMP becomes more popular, the process will probably become frictionless. With AMP, Google is tackling what has become a major problem. There are far too many websites that while mobile friendly, are basically a scaled down and bloated desktop version. Despite a few small drawbacks, AMP should provide a vastly improved browsing experience that keeps site owners, advertisers and readers happy. If you’ve recently implemented Accelerated Mobile Pages for WordPress, we’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below.
One of the most challenging aspects of choosing a managed WordPress hosting company can be culling through all the different conflicting reviews out there and trying to make sense of all the tests and claims. There are a number of sites out there that are purely in the game of driving traffic via SEO tricks, signing on as affiliates to one or two providers and then inflating reviews of those affiliates who pay commission. Not all Pagely reviews are created equal. We’ve conducted an all-out expedition to track down the more legitimate and substantive reviews impartial by affiliate bias which accurately portray Pagely and our competitors and give you a true representation of the landscape. We have done this work for you and aggregated the reviews below to simplify your homework process. You’ll find that not all of these tout Pagely as being the optimal solution. We freely admit there are scenarios in which you will be better served by going with another provider for your WordPress hosting needs and in those cases, we’re happy to steer folks to these alternatives when they’re better served elsewhere. So without further ado, here is a safari of select managed WordPress hosting reviews from around the web along with our supplementary commentary, clarification and TLDR; “cliffs’ notes” for those who’d rather just skim the table of contents: WP-Site Care The best kinds of reviews are those completed by actual customers who have worked with a number of platforms in the space. Back in July of 2015 Ryan Sullivan of WP Site Care wrote an in-depth WordPress hosting review that covered the pros and cons of hosting his website with Pagely. This review comes after almost a full year of working with Pagely, so it’s a legitimate real-world case study with some solid experience to back it up. Things WP Site Care liked included the ease of setup as well as the fact that initial benchmark tests (before making any changes) saw their website turning in a performance increase of over 200%. These results held true on two different installs, in a staging environment as well as on a live site. They also compared uptime from their previous host, which came in at a respectable 99.69% over 6-months — that translates to approx 14 hours of downtime. Over a 6-month period with Pagely their uptime was 100%. Maybe not typical, but pretty darn close. Ryan had a few points of contention that he is hoping we will address. Among those concerns (and wishes) are the introduction of a staging system, easier file access for VPS users and of course pricing. Although he did note that pricing is justified by the performance and uptime numbers. WPMUDEV WPMUDEV are well known for writing managed WordPress hosting reviews that are deadpan honest. What’s more, you won’t find affiliate links on their website so you can rest assured that they aren’t looking to generate commissions. Posted in February of 2016, this review is one of the most detailed examples we were able to find. Let’s start by covering some of Daniel’s concerns. Daniel is dead-on that Pagely is not a commodity low-end hosting provider. If you want to host a number of low-traffic, low-ramification-if-performance-or-uptime-is-bad sites then there are admittedly far cheaper alternatives. We’ve been on a march towards serving higher-traffic, higher-criticality sites for the past few years. The logo marquee on our homepage evidences our progress on this front. We concede that there will be far more affordable options when it comes to hosting your cousin’s little league site (not to disparage the criticality of a little league site being up but you get the picture). The dig on our communication was a bit unclear from his post. It was a bullet point but not substantiated anywhere in his review. We strive for fast, on-point support and most of what’s written about us out there is a testament to this. At Pagely there is no concept of a Level I and Level II technician read this post explaining our support philosophy so you’re only ever dealing with core support engineers who can actually resolve your issues. Daniel pointed out that our value starts to really shine on the higher-end, load-balanced plans especially with database access, version control and the cache/DNS/CDN trifecta, a combo tough to find anywhere else. He also noted the ease of use and a simple but effective dashboard that was “packed with important information.” Also on the list of things that Daniel liked were security (including two-factor authentication) and of course, speed. Review Signal This is a massive 2015 WordPress hosting performance review that is sponsored by LoadStorm. In this edition, there is a total of 19 well-known WordPress hosting companies reviewed. Each company donates an account for testing purposes and all the tests are performed on accounts specifically designed for WordPress installations. Review Signal uses two metrics to measure performance: Peak performance and consistency — both measured using a variety of tools some of which are redundant to ensure accurate results This is a very detailed review that’s worth reading. As far as Pagely is concerned, of the 19 hosting companies tested, we were one of 7 companies to be rated as top-tier. Kevin Ohashi’s only negative comment in regards to Pagely were our pricing and he summed it up like this: Is the extra money worth it? Only if you value perfection. Pagely came through again with an amazing set of results. The original managed WordPress company continues to put on dominant performance results. The bottom line is that these tests played into our primary strength — reliability under load. In the Blitz test which scales from 1-2000 users over a 60-second time-frame, we managed to score pretty darn near perfect results. Chris Lema Chris Lema wrote a brief post on how to select your WordPress host. While not much in the way of a review, he manages to provide a very logical way of picking a host based upon your requirements, which is why we’ve included it here. His post covers five options that include GoDaddy, SiteGround, WP Engine, Flywheel and Pagely. Each of these hosting companies is then dropped into a matrix that takes into consideration the following: Support-centric Cost-centric Scale-centric Developer-centric Obviously, a hosting company like GoDaddy offers a cost and support centric solution. But were not competing with them because at the other end of the chart is the scale-centric and developer-centric. This is where Pagely sits and Chris had these comments to add: If you care about high tech and scalability, you want to talk to Pagely. **NOTE: Chris has an affiliate relationship with all the providers he reviewed in the above article. We don’t have insight into the economics of other affiliate programs but can only assume the symmetry of affiliate relationships here makes it a wash re: no asymmetric financial motive for steering readers to one particular service. Elegant Themes This WordPress hosting review at Elegant Themes is a little dated but provides a great feature comparison of several popular hosting companies including: Pagely Synthesis WP Engine Flywheel Pressable This review provides a great feature comparison across a variety of hosts however, it isn’t necessarily comparing apples to apples. Not all of the hosting providers covered specialize in WordPress and a few of the lower end hosts include features like Cpanel access. This is a great example of a review that demonstrates the need for a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the different hosting companies. Design Bombs In the search for the best WordPress hosting, Design Bombs reviewed five well-known hosting companies including: WP Engine Site Ground Bluehost Pagely Flywheel This is review post written by Tom Ewer that provides a more detailed look at some of the performance stats posted by well-known hosting companies. Even though Pagely faired well in this post, we felt it was important to touch on some of the data used in the analysis. Many reviews use a service like Load Impact to perform their testing. However, it’s also common for some of these reviews to rely on the free testing provided by these services (instead of their more intensive paid services). But what are they really testing? Taking a closer look at what Load Impact offers for free, you’ll find they load 25 virtual users over a 5-minute time frame. Now, compare that to the testing performed by Review Signal. Their blitz test went from 1-2000 users in just 60 seconds — an infinitely more demanding test which provides a better indication of true scalability. Thomas Griffin Written in July of 2015, this WordPress Hosting review specifically targets Pagely and is another real-world example. Thomas Griffin hosts his own sites with Pagely and although his review contains affiliate links, he’s quick to disclose that he’s actually a customer, not just someone looking to influence your opinion. Thomas outlines four primary reasons for relying on Pagely that include: Speed and performance in a highly scalable platform Automating tasks like backups, updates and security Technical support The ability to sleep at night without worrying about downtime or getting hacked One of the notable aspects of this review is that Thomas raves about our technical and customer support. Both in terms of overall improvement and consistency we strive to make all customers to feel the same way about our support team as Thomas does. Managed WordPress Hosting Reviews Summary All combined, the above reviews represent a decent cross-section of the results and opinions that present a relatively unbiased summary. We’ve taken steps to improve aspects of our service when we see a pattern of feedback. But ultimately the WordPress ecosystem is a large one and we’re of the opinion that “you don’t fault a Ferrari for poor gas mileage, nor a Honda Civic for its speed off the line. They’re two different cars with two different use cases.” Typically reviews including multiple web hosts finish with a ‘ranking’ of some sort. Except for those like Review Signal’s that order/rank specifically on performance metrics, by in large these rankings are sorted by who is paying the highest affiliate commission to the author. Sad, but true. From a technical perspective, the opinion and data above confirm we’re excelling in the areas that matter where we’ve focused most effort. And that is, providing you the most scalable WordPress hosting platform on the planet. If you have a favorite review that you feel should have been included here or an opinion of your own, please share in the comments below.
Chances are, your website has a clearly defined objective — attracting new customers, selling a service or maybe growing your email list. If that’s the case, it makes sense that you’d want to achieve the best results possible, right? What if someone told you that by making a few changes to your website could increase your conversion rates .5% and in the process boost revenue by 25%? Would you be interested in learning more? A/B testing tools provide a way to achieve these results and even better. Although it’s certainly not a magical solution — successful AB testing requires hard work — it’s possible to experience a dramatic lift in sales and revenue by simply being open to experimentation. Luckily, there are several AB testing tools for WordPress that can make the process relatively pain free. We’re going to share a few of those tools today. Nelio A/B Testing Nelio A/B Testing provides a complete A/B testing solution designed specifically for WordPress users. That means virtually everything you need to keep track of your different A/B tests and results can be found within the WordPress dashboard. If you’ve ever used any AB testing tools that required you to jump back and forth between your site and an external app, you’ll understand the appeal of this approach. While Nelio takes a native WordPress approach, that doesn’t mean your server will bear the brunt of the load. Nelio’s servers handle all the calculations and data related to your testing. As far as the different types of tests available, Nelio allows you to create experiments for almost any element on your website including: Landing pages, posts, pages and headlines WooCommerce products Menus, widgets and themes Heatmaps & clickmaps CSS elements Because Nelio is native to WordPress, testing elements of other WordPress plugins are simple. Form plugins are of particular importance and Nelio is compatible with both Gravity Forms and Contact Form 7. Another benefit of Nelio A/B Testing is that they’ve made the data easy to understand and implementing the winning result comes down to a single-click. Nelio A/B Testing has packages that range from $288/year for 5000 page views, all the way up to $2568/year for 200k page views, making the service affordable for a wide variety of customers. AB Press Optimizer AB Press Optimizer is another WordPress plugin that makes it possible to conduct a wide variety of split test. This plugin is also native to WordPress with one major difference compared to Nelio A/B Testing: calculations are performed and data is stored on your server. While this provides some advantage, such as control over your data and no page view or visitor limits, it also has the potential to increase the load on your server. As far as features, AB Press Optimizer offers plenty of options although not as many as its competitors. You’ll be able to test posts, pages, images, content blocks, headlines and forms. Other key features of note include: The ability to schedule tests Embed you test directly into your theme with PHP functions Test entire pages or single elements across multiple pages Easy to use shortcodes Three price points are offered from $49 for a single site license to $199 for unlimited sites. Each renewable license includes 12 months of support and updates. If you’re looking for a basic and inexpensive way to get started with AB testing, this plugin might meet your needs. Just keep in mind, you might outgrow it rather quickly. Visual Website Optimizer Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) is one of the better known AB Testing Tools on the market. Unlike our first two plugins, VWO uses their own servers in conjunction with an asynchronous code snippet to help you manage your testing and analysis. If you’ve ever had to wait for a script to load on one of your favorite websites, this might be cause for concern. VWO uses an asynchronous code which means your site loads parallel to the VWO code. As a failsafe, they also provide a way to configure timeout parameters which can trigger the loading of your original website. VWO relies on an easy to use point and click editor that minimizes the need for technical knowledge. However, make no mistake, if you plan to take full advantage of all the features, VWO definitely requires a learning curve. A few features of note include: The ability to create A/B, Multivariate and URL split tests Build campaigns with an easy to use visual editor In-depth reporting, analysis and revenue tracking Heatmaps and Clickmaps Target specific users with specific content Being a higher-end service, VWO is a little more expensive. Two standard plans are available: A startup plan is the most basic at $49/month (billed annually) and is good for 10,000 visitors. Next up is a business plan that can be configured to your requirements. 30,000 visitors is priced at $129/month. Optimizely Optimizely provides an easy to use premium platform that allows you to easily run A/B and multivariate tests. Optimizely relies on a simple code snippet that’s placed in the <head> tag of any page you want to test. That’s about as technical as you’ll need to get since experiments are created using a visual editor platform. Simply create, save and implement as desired. Once experiments are set up, you’ll be able to create customer profiles (including the use of 3rd party data) which can then be targeted based on geography, browser, device and behavior. With experiments running, Optimizely will provide real-time analytics that allows you to make marketing decisions based on reliable data. Additional features include: Custom reports that can be annotated API Access Test websites & Apps Integrate with Google Analytics Target visitors using any of 15 variables Optimizely makes it easy to get started with their service by offering a free plan. Although the free plan lacks a lot of the features (such as change history and custom segmentation), it’s still a great way to get started. If you decide that Optimizely is the right service for you or that you want more features or pricing details, you have to give them a call. AB Testing Tools Make it Easy To Get Started We covered 4 popular AB testing tools in this post that range from basic to full-featured. There is something for every price point and experience level. When it comes to implementing A/B testing for your website, the barriers are low enough that there’s really no reason to avoid getting started. If you haven’t already, trial one of the platforms covered in this post and implement a few simple experiments — it just might be the easiest money you’ve make all month. Do you have a favorite A/B testing tool that we missed? Let us know in the comments below which one you prefer and why.
Attracting new visitors to your website is never an easy process. Whether you’re creating and promoting content in search or running paid ad campaigns for qualified leads — it’s a lot of work. It only makes sense that when a visitor lands on your website, you want to do everything in your power to convert them into a customer or client. But there is one problem: Not every visitor who lands on your website is ready to buy. Some are in the process of performing research and others are just window shopping. Yet once they leave, there is a good chance they’ll never return (we posted an article about the buyer’s journey and lifecycle marketing not too long ago). The challenge lies in making sure you’re able to stay top-of-mind once a visitor leaves your site. Left to their own devices, you’re facing an uphill battle. But thanks to retargeting (also known as remarketing), you stand a good chance of being able to draw a visitor back to your site once they’re closer to making a purchasing decision. Introduction to Retargeting Retargeting is the process of advertising specifically to visitors and customers who have expressed an interest in your product, service or brand. Here are the basic steps which can vary slightly depending upon your platform and chosen retargeting method: A visitor arrives on your site and begins browsing. Using JavaScript, a cookie is placed in a visitor’s browser. That visitor leaves your site and continues browsing the web. Eventually, they land on a website that serves ads to visitors. The cookie in your visitor’s browser will enable your ads to be displayed based on your preconfigured settings. Whether you realize it or not, this process has probably happened to you. You visit an eCommerce site, browse a few products, maybe even load up your shopping cart. But then you get distracted and end up leaving. Over the next month or so, you notice the website or even the actual products you viewed popping up in various ads across the web. Why You Should Use Retargeting Retargeting benefits both consumers and businesses. There has been some discussion in past years where consumers have expressed concern that they are being followed and specifically targeted but attitudes have changed. In a 2013 study, eMarketer found that 30% of respondents felt positive and 59% felt neutral about retargeting ads. From the perspective of a business, there are several advantages to retargeting that are worth considering: Retargeting allows you to remain “top of mind.” If a visitor to your site is still in the early phases of the buying process, they aren’t ready to make a decision. By presenting your ad at various intervals over the next 30+ days, they are more likely to remember you when it’s time to make a purchase. The average landing page across a broad spectrum of industries converts at a mere 2.35%. Retargeting has been shown to boost ad response by up to 400% — even a small increase in conversion rates can result in a huge jump in sales. Retargeting is a great way to promote a special offer to existing customers and increase brand awareness at the same time. When to Use Retargeting Effective retargeting requires a balancing act. You want to be in front of customers and prospects but you don’t want to appear to be following them around. If your ad shows up on every website they visit, interest quickly turns to annoyance. For this reason, it’s important to balance placement, frequency and segmentation — targeting the people who are most likely to convert — the ease of which varies depending on your ad platform of choice. Deciding when and where to implement retargeting can quickly become a complicated topic which is beyond the scope of this article. However, it’s still important to understand the general types of retargeting that you might consider implementing. Site Retargeting By far the most common form of retargeting is site retargeting. Site retargeting focuses on placing ads in front people who have visited your website. This is an easy retargeting method to use and abuse. Just because someone visits your website does not mean they are qualified or interested in seeing you ads across the web. They may not have liked your value proposition or they may have already decided to purchase from a competitor. This is very different than someone who filled and abandoned their shopping cart. Give careful consideration to where on your website you want to initiate tracking. CRM Retargeting CRM Retargeting allows you to target your mailing lists which, if well segmented, can prove to be very effective. Most platforms, such as AdRoll and ReTargeter provide an easy way to implement CRM retargeting. Simply upload your email list to their database and they’ll match up the individual online users with the respective email address and serve the appropriate ads. Dynamic Retargeting People’s needs and interests change and dynamic retargeting allows you to adjust your ads based on a visitors most recent interests. For example, if a customer browses an eCommerce store that sells cell phone cases, your advertiser could then present Facebook ads that featured the specific cell phone case that they showed interest in. Dynamic retargeting allows you to adapt your ad creatives to the needs of each individual user. Facebook Retargeting If your customers are online, there is a good chance you’ll find many of them on Facebook. Conveniently, Facebook provides a variety of ways to retarget your customers and visitors including email lists, website visitors and Facebook fans. Facebook’s ad platform can be accessed through Facebook itself as well a via third-party platforms like AdRoll. Final Thoughts Retargeting is a simple concept: Market to the people who have already expressed an interest in your product or service. Keep in mind we’ve only touched on the absolute basics in this post — there’s still a lot to learn. Running an ad is easy. But the real value of retargeting lies in the ability to segment and target the right people at the right time and in the right place. A “spray and pray” approach might work, but it will be nowhere near as effective as a well-structured and coordinated remarketing campaign. Hopefully this introduction to retargeting basics has given you a foothold from which to further explore this powerful approach to recapturing your most valuable visitors. If you have implemented remarketing for your business or have a favorite platform you’d like to share, please share in the comments below. Image Credit: Pixabay
If you haven’t already read Part I and Part II of this series. The third step in our content marketing process is arguably the most important. It’s one thing to create content, but without a systematic process to distribute, promote it and attract readers, it’s a “tree falls in the woods” scenario. If you’re looking for a simple strategy to promote your content and analyze its effectiveness, we’re going to share our entire process in this post. You can find part one & two here: The Pagely Content Marketing Process Part One: Organization, Ideation & Research The Pagely Content Marketing Process Part Two: Writing, Editing & Optimizing for Search Admittedly. the promotion process frequently comes up against time constraints and is not implemented to the fullest extent possible. However, it’s still important to have a framework in place in order to maintain consistency. Publishing The Post Last week we covered a large portion of the process that leads up to a post being ready to publish. Our focus was making sure the on-page SEO was in order. Just before hitting publish we do a final check to make sure the URL contains our primary keyword, ALT tags are in place and we’ve got a meta description in place. If everything lines up, it’s ready to go. You might think that now is a good time to breathe a sigh of relief — that the hard work is done — but in reality, we’re only 50% of the way there. Next up comes our promotion process. Promoting the Post Besides writing, promotion is the second most time-consuming process. We’ve laid out a basic framework that outlines the different phases of promotion. Even if you fail to check every single item off the list, it’s still important to have a system in place. Otherwise, your process will lack consistency and you’ll never know what’s working well and what’s a waste of time. The Importance of Tracking The first step in the promotion process is to make sure we can track the results from each individual channel. To accomplish this, we’ve created a Google Spreadsheet that allows us to easily create UTMs. That way, we’ll be able to see in our analytics where each click originated. We can’t over-emphasize the importance of this step. Even if you don’t plan on analyzing your data right away, at least make sure you tag everything so that when needed, it’s available for review. Google has a handy URL builder that simplifies the process of creating UTMs. We’ve gone one step further and created a Google Spreadsheet (which you can find here) that makes the process even easier. Simply duplicate rows as needed and enter your campaign information. Pushing Content To Channels Once the post URL is tagged with the appropriate UTM, we distribute it via Hootsuite to the following channels: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn We also schedule a second round of promotion for each channel that references the post via a statistic, quote or benefits statement. The initial steps described above should be considered a bare minimum as far as promotion goes. With round one of promotion sent and round two scheduled, it’s time to get a little more in-depth. For the steps that follow, you might decide to pick and choose depending on the content. Either way, you can use this as a general guideline. Again, use UTMs wherever possible so you can attribute properly. Approach companies and individuals mentioned in the post and ask if they are willing to distribute via their channels. This can include both social and email. Look for trending posts or similar topics using Buzzsumo, Topsy or Twitter search. Wherever possible, look for a way to contribute to and join the conversation. Promote the post to influencers who have similar content. If a post has enough value or has decent traction at this stage, consider boosting promotion with paid ads. UTMs are critical here to measure effectiveness. Look for conversations where you can contribute and link back to the article. Start with Quora, LinkedIn, Yahoo Answers, and relevant blogs. If applicable, consider submitting to Hacker News and Growth.org Is there potential to expand on the topic or answer questions via YouTube, Hangouts, Blabb or another similar channel? Post to SlideShare. It would be rare to complete all of these steps for every piece of content. Not only is it time-consuming, but not every post warrants the same degree of promotion. This is why it’s important to track your results. If you notice that a particular post is resonating well with your audience, it might be time to step on the gas pedal and see how far you can run it. On the flip-side, if a post is performing poorly right out of the gate, despite your efforts, let it go and move on. Analyzing Your Results This is where your tracking and promotion efforts begin to pay dividends. If you’ve taken the time to properly tag each URL prior to distributing, you’ll be able to see which channels are performing well and which might require less attention. We primarily refer to three sources when reviewing how well each post is performing: First is Google Analytics. You can come up with your own set of metrics but here is what we look at on a post by post basis: How many pageviews did the post receive? How many goal completions occurred as a result of each post? Which channels produced the best results? The second source of information comes from Authority Labs. We want to know how well a particular post if performing in terms of backlinks and mentions as well as and how we’re ranking in the SERPs. Having logged the target keyword for each post in AuthorityLabs (Part II) we’ll periodically monitor SERP standing. If a post is on the cusp of breaking through into page #1 search results we’ll use the SERP info to selectively invest that extra effort to gain strategic backlinks via the above methods and to nudge the ones that are positioned to breakthrough. Finally, we take a look at our Hootsuite analytics: Which content is performing well across which channel? What impact has a post had on our social following? Which influencers or brands might have noticed or shared a post? As a general rule, we find that 2 weeks out from the post date is the best time to get an accurate feel for performance. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be monitoring before and after that time frame. Final Thoughts Over the past 3 posts, we’ve covered each individual step of our content marketing process. If we had to finish with one key point that stands above everything else, it’s this: Our content marketing process, and ultimately yours too, is comprised of many individual pieces. But none of them can stand alone. Good content, SEO, outreach, promotion and analysis are equally important. Effective content marketing depends on having each one of those elements in place. If one is missing, it can derail the entire process. Have some feedback you’d like to share? If you’re running your content marketing a little differently we’d love to hear what works or doesn’t work for you.
If you haven’t already, read part I of this series. Managing a team of in-house writers in combination with relevant guest posts requires many different things — flexibility, an eye for detail and patience. Writing is a creative endeavor and it’s the area where our content marketing process offers the greatest flexibility despite being well-structured. If you’re managing a small team of writers for your website, we’ll share some insight into our content and SEO process that should help to improve both your efficiency and results. The Writing Process For the most part, writers are a creative bunch and we find that giving them the freedom to write in their own style usually produces a better final product. In part one of this series, we talked about our editorial process. Before getting started on a post, we hash out the general details and sometimes even a rough outline. From there it’s handed over to the writer to produce an initial draft. Although our writers are given a lot of freedom around the writing process, there are still five key elements that we try to include in each post: For most of our content, we usually look to solve a problem, share a process or provide an insight. Try to provide actionable information or resources to apply what they have learned. We do our best to hook readers early in the article by providing a key benefit sentence in the first 1-2 paragraphs. This way a reader can decide whether the post is right for them. Hooks help us pull a reader in, but they also show respect to the reader — we’re not here to waste your time with fluff and you should be able to tell whether an article will provide value early on. Link to other relevant articles on the Pagely Blog. End each article by asking our readers for feedback. Once a writer completes their post, they are responsible for the following tasks: Posting and formatting a draft in WordPress Creating a meta description Creating a feature image Adding any required post images or screen shots Paste the preview URL into the appropriate Trello card, moving it into the “ready for review” list and pinging Sean in the card comments. Once those steps are done, it’s up to Sean to review the post and either suggest revisions or make a few quick edits himself. Optimizing for Search Admittedly, this process might seem a little backward. Most of the time you’ll see keyword research happening much earlier in the process. We do it this way in part because of time constraints but also because it works well for us. Keyword Research Many writers begin the writing process with keyword research. At Pagely, even though we have a general idea of the topic and key points to be included, we don’t necessarily sort out the keyword research until the final phase. In essence, we retrofit keywords and phrases in the post after it’s written — providing it can be done in a natural way. As a general rule, we try to refer to The Four Golden Rules of Keyword Research. This means looking for keywords that demonstrate the following characteristics: Are relevant Generate adequate traffic Are not overly competitive Express a degree of commerciality The trickiest part of this process is finding keywords that provide the right balance between traffic and competition. To facilitate this process, our current choice for tools is a combination of Market Samurai and the Google Keyword Planner. The Importance of On-Page SEO in our Content Marketing Process When it comes to on-page SEO, we generally try to stick to best practices. That means using the Yoast SEO plugin and making sure we cover as many of the important elements as possible including: A relevant title that includes the keyword A search friendly URL A detailed meta description Reader-friendly use of the appropriate keywords with the post Images with alt tags that include top keywords Keeping these elements in mind, Sean will tweak each post as required. From there it is ready to be published or scheduled. The Importance of Tracking Results We are going to cover this topic in more detail in our next post, but it’s important to cover briefly here as well. As soon as we hit publish on a post, we want to make sure we are tracking our results for the targeted keywords and any other metrics we might want to monitor. There are two reasons for doing this: It’s tough to get an idea of how well a particular post performs if you don’t monitor results right out of the gate. Even if we’re not using this information right away, it’s important to track it from day one — that way, the data will be there when it’s needed. For our purposes, this process involves tracking keywords with Authority Labs and using UTM parameters for each distribution channel. What We’ll Cover in Part Three As you work to create your own content marketing process, remember the importance of simplicity. Our process may not be the best or most efficient, but it works well for us and we continue to improve it over time. You can easily take the necessary parts, apply them to your situation and adapt them to your specific needs. In part three of this series we’ll discuss three important phases of our process — publishing a post, promotion and analyzing our results. We’d love to hear some feedback about how this process has helped you or even how you think we could improve. Just add your comments below and we’ll see you next week.
In theory, maintaining a corporate blog seems like it would be a straightforward proposition. To the uninitiated, writing and publishing a few posts per month does not seem out of reach. It’s not as easy as it looks though. If you’re struggling to create, publish and promote content on a consistent basis, it’s likely because you lack a structured content marketing process. Our Content Marketing Process Explained The motivation behind the desire to produce content is often spurred by success stories of companies like Groove, WPCurve, and Zapier. All three of which have created blogs that are responsible for driving an incredible amount of traffic and new business. Creating content is a time-consuming process, but it’s only half the battle. Behind every successful content marketing campaign is an editorial and management process that often goes unseen. It’s this unseen process that’s responsible for either the success or failure of your campaign. We thought it would be helpful to share the content and editorial process that we use here at Pagely. As with any process, it’s continually evolving and what works for us may or may not work for you. But if you’re struggling to improve any one particular aspect of your content marketing — be it research, writing, editorial or promotion — we think you may be able to extract some value from our process and apply it to your efforts. We’ll be dividing this topic into a series of three posts that fall into to following categories: Organization, Ideation & Research Writing & Optimizing for SEO Publishing, Promotion & Analyzing Organizing Our Content Calendar There are a wide variety of tools available to help you manage your content marketing efforts. Google Drive, TeamWork, Asana, and Trello are four popular tools that come to mind. One of the most important aspects of managing any successful process is to maintain simplicity. At Pagely, we find Trello works extremely well for managing our content marketing workflow. It’s easy to use, requires little or no ramp-up when bringing new people on board, and it’s inexpensive (or even free). If you’re familiar with Trello you’ll know that everything is separated into a hierarchy that consists of Boards, Lists, and Cards. We maintain a single Board called the Pagely Editorial Hub. Here, each member of our content team has access to our entire pipeline. The content marketing process is overseen, primarily, by one person. Having everything flow through an editor (who also happens to be the director of sales and marketing) allows for control and consistency. Our Trello board contains lists that are separated into the different stages of our workflow. These include the following: Guest posters to be invited Guest posts on other blogs Proposed topics Approved topics Assigned / Researching / Writing Ready for review SEO’d and images ready Published Promoted Added to Authority Labs Each List or Category is self-explanatory and cards can be moved through the appropriate workflow as needed. Ideation We maintain a fairly liberal ideation policy here at Pagely. As long as a proposed topics fit with our overall objective of serving our customers and, of course, generating leads, it’s fair game. Writers are free to propose topics of their own and can do so by simply adding a card to the proposed topics list. Most if the time we ask for a brief outline or summary that touches on the main points to be covered. This helps to ensure that the end result is in-line with our objectives and expectations. It also helps the writer to stay on track and not head down an unforeseen rabbit hole. Topics are often generated as a result of a the writer’s personal expertise (we do a lot of this with our guest posts). Alternatively, we also maintain a list of search queries taken directly from our Google Analytics account. While the queries don’t produce great article titles, they give a good indication of the search terms that are generating impressions and leave room for improving click-through rates. Sean Tierney, who is responsible for managing the editorial process can also create and assign topics as needed. One of the areas we’ve put an increased focus on over the past few months is inviting guests posts from customers or relevant industry experts. Researching & Submitting Post Ideas Once a topic is posted on the proposed list it’s reviewed by the editor and one of three things happens: The topic is approved as is. Further clarification or more detail is requested. The topic is rejected. Researching posts is usually the responsibility of the writer although there is often some editorial input — either in the form of keyword research or points that need to be included. In most situations we select topics based on what our readers will find useful. We then look for keywords that can be integrated into the article in a way that makes sense. We think this results in articles that are more educational and helpful, instead of being written simply for SEO purposes. Neil Patel makes a strong case (and counter) for this approach in his post on combining SEO with content marketing. Once the details of the post are hammered out, it’s assigned a due date and shifted over to the Assigned-Researching-Writing list. From there, it’s up to the writer to produce an initial draft. Coming up Next What we’ve covered today provides an accurate summary of how we handle our organization, ideation and research phases here at Pagely. In our next post, we’ll go into more detail about the actual process we encourage our writers to follow when creating content. We’ll also talk about how we optimize our posts for SEO and track our keyword results using Authority Labs. In the meantime, if you have any questions about our content marketing process, or would like to share some of your own, please add your comments below.
If you’re selling a product or service, landing pages should play a key role in your online strategy — there is really no better way to attract leads or effectively convey your offer. A typical landing page has a conversion rate of 2.35%, but over one-quarter convert at a rate of less than 1%. Even more astounding is that according to Search Engine Land, the top one-quarter of landing page accounts surveyed by WordStream were converting at a little over 5%. That’s a pretty big spread and it speaks strongly to the importance of split-testing. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. If your business isn’t already using landing pages to their full potential, what are you waiting for? The days where landing pages were difficult to create, test and refine are long gone. There are a wide variety of tools available — both Saas and WordPress plugins — that make the process easier to manage. Let’s run through a landing page tools comparison and look at a few. LeadPages LeadPages started as a simple landing page SaaS, but over the last few years, the service has matured and now provides what is essentially a complete lead generation platform. This includes the ability to create landing pages, pop-up forms, and text message opt-ins. LeadPages offers an intuitive landing page builder that minimizes the time it takes to launch a landing page. If a custom design isn’t your thing, there are dozens of templates available as well. When it comes to publishing your landing page, you’ll have the option to use LeadPages servers, your own server, publishing to your self-hosted WordPress site or Facebook. Lead Pages offers 3 price points: $25/month, $49/month, and $199/month (Annual Billing). If your needs are basic you might be able to get away with the least expensive version, just be aware that you won’t be able to perform A/B split testing until you move up to the middle service tier. Also, if you’re an agency that requires sub-accounts, the advanced package allows for up to 5 client accounts. Unbounce Unbounce allows you to create drag-and-drop mobile responsive landing pages that can be easily A/B tested and optimized. Your initial impression when you visit Unbounce for the first time might be that it’s a higher-end platform, and you’d be right. Although they offer an account for up to 5000 unique visitors, they place more emphasis on the professional and agency-level plans suitable for 25,000 and 100,000 visitors respectively. Both of these account types include features such as dynamic text replacement which allows for your landing pages to automatically adjust the copy based upon Google search queries and your specific AdWords campaign. Unbounce, like the other platforms, offers plenty of integrations with third-party software. You can explore the full list here. As far as publishing options go, Unbounce will allow you to use their server, self-hosted WordPress, or Facebook. Optimize Press Available as both WordPress theme and plugin, OptimizePress allows you create responsive landing pages and a whole lot more — including sales pages, membership portals, sales funnels, webinar registration pages and course pages. OptimizePress is available for a one-time fee that ranges from $97 for the Core Package to $297 for the Pro Package. All versions include 12 months of support and updates along with unlimited installs. OptimizePress offers over 30 templates that can be easily customized using a drag and drop editor. You’ll find OptimizePress to be compatible with most of the other third-party services you might be using. Whether it’s a simple email marketing platform like Aweber or something more complicated such as Infusionsoft. Optimize Press is also compatible with several of the top membership plugins including WishlistMember, MemberMouse and iMember360. Thrive Landing Pages Thrive Themes is a company whose sole purpose is to create products (themes and plugins) that are designed to help you maximize conversions. The Thrive Landing Page Plugin for WordPress allows you to create landing pages that can be easily optimized right from within your WordPress admin menu. It also works with any WordPress theme, which makes implementation even easier. Like the others, Thrive comes with a series of templates (122) that can be easily altered to match your branding. The page editor allows you to create landing pages in just a few minutes or completely customize pages with just a little bit of extra work. The page builder includes over 20 customizable content elements — lists, CTAs, forms, testimonials, countdown timers, tables, content reveal and more — you name it, it’s there. The one thing you’ll probably miss with Thrive Landing Pages is built-in A/B split testing. This means you’ll have to rely on a third party provider like VWO. Prices for this plugin range from $67 annually for a single site license to $49/month for an agency license. One thing that Thrive is consistently good at is adding new features to their products on a regular basis. We also wrote a post last month covered using their Thrive Leads Plugin to improve your lifecycle marketing approach. Final Thoughts Conversion optimized landing pages should play a key role in your attempt to attract more leads or sell more products. Whether you’re running a large agency or a small eCommerce store, we’ve covered four popular solutions that can help you achieve better results from your digital campaigns. There is no perfect landing page plugin or SaaS that works for all businesses but this landing page tools round-up gives you four popular options with a variety of features and price points. The best thing to do is carefully examine your needs and then pick the landing page tool that is most suited to your business. If you have a favorite landing page plugin that you like to use for your WordPress site, we’d love to hear your opinion about what work best for you.