By: Cameron Hendrick of Endai Worldwide

Our friends at AdRoll have been kind enough to offer us a guest blogging spot, so we’re going to spend some time talking about what’s on the other side of that display ad: site optimization for conversion.

Website conversion optimization is a topic that has been thrown around a lot lately, and for good reason. Blaze.io mentioned on their blog recently that 64% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with their site visit will go somewhere else to shop next time.

Why is conversion optimization so important?

Most companies are working with a limited marketing budget, so getting the most return on every dollar they spend becomes a top priority. Utilizing a retargeting campaign produces a much higher ROI than a dollar spent on traditional display advertising in many cases, because of the ability to zero in on potential customers who have already visited your website and shown interest in your products or services.

However, to really squeeze every ounce of potential out of that ad spend, you need to consider where that ad is leading your customers because the higher your conversion rate and the lower your cost per action, the higher the final ROI you’ll get on your campaign. And that’s where website conversion optimization comes in - making sure that every visitor that lands on your site has the highest possible chance of turning into a paying customer.

As website analytics guys, we’ve got some quick, actionable ideas on getting the most ad-bang for your ad-buck.

Here’s a quick run-down, in order of least difficult to most difficult to implement:

1) Direct their attention. Do you have a clear direction towards a conversion point? A lot of companies, in an attempt to seem subtle and less pushy, make their conversion unobtrusive and difficult to find. Don’t. Create a call to action that is not only highly visible, but that draws attention to itself and uses plenty of cues to lead customers there. The internet is not a subtle medium.

2) Eliminate roadblocks. Internet users are picky. If your site loads too slowly, they’ll leave. If your conversion process is too long, they’ll leave. If something is broken and they have to refresh multiple times, you bet they’ll leave. Use behavioral analytics (Google’s new “Visitor Flow” section in GA is great for this) to identify where visitors are leaving and run tests to see how you can improve their experience.

3) Build a Landing Page. Visitors who come to your site through display ads have different needs and wants, and are in a different part of the sales cycle than organic visits. Treat them as a unique segment and make sure that when they land on your site, they land on a page that is built just for them. Initially, a single landing page for all non-direct/non-organic traffic will do, but eventually you’ll want to move on to something that’s more personalized.

4) Get personal. In a perfect world, every visitor to your website would immediately be greeted by a friendly salesperson and taken by the hand to exactly the information they were looking for. Since that’s not how the internet works, the next best thing is to grow your landing pages to meet the needs of targeted segments.

Start by focusing on channels, with separate pages for display, organic, paid search, and social. Then as you collect information you can begin breaking these segments down further. The more you can analyze your visitors’ behavior, the more you’ll know about what they want. The more you know about what they want, the more likely you are to turn them into a customer.

With advertising campaigns becoming more and more competitive, converting as many website visitors as possible into paying customers is going to become a primary goal for many companies. These tips can help you get a jump on the competition and begin taking advantage of the traffic influx that results from a well implemented retargeting campaign.

Cameron Hendrick is an industry expert in Google Analytics and Enterprise Email Marketing. His company, Endai Worldwide helps brands like Spiegel, Newport News, E-Trade and Ruth's Chris Steak House generate millions of dollars of additional revenue through smart analytics and targeted email strategy. Endai is the only Google Analytics Certified Partner in the world that also owns an Email Service Provider.

                                               

                                                             

                                                                                                            

ShangRolla is a special place. Yes we’ve got tons of free candy, video games and a ping pong table, but it’s the people that truly make AdRoll a fun place to work. With that said, we thought it’d be fun to continue introducing you to members of the AdRoll gang through short videos and Q&As on our blog.

In this post, we’re putting the spotlight on J. Ryan Williams -- one of the original AdRollers and a Quiznos superstar.

AdRoll: Hey, J. Ryan. So tell us, what brought you to AdRoll and what’s your role here?

J. Ryan: I'm originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but have roots in the Midwest. After graduate school at University of Chicago, I moved to the Bay Area and have never looked back at the days of shoveling snow filled driveways.  

I started at AdRoll 2.5 years ago as employee 12. I’m the senior director of sales development, which means I devote most of my time and energy to supporting our rapidly growing sales team, facilitating training, and managing a team of 15 of our newest sales folks. I also continue to work on major accounts like Microsoft and Hipmunk.

AdRoll: So it’s safe to say AdRoll has taken you on quite the adventure?

J. Ryan: I've seen all 50 states and could tell you a story about being in every single one. I even have a cameo in this Quiznos commercial about a sandwich that visits all 50 states. Don't tell Quiznos, but my favorite chain restaurant is actually Waffle House. I've also met four heads of state, including former US presidents Carter and Bush.

AdRoll: Wow, we’ve got a star among us. Nice. So let’s get to the important stuff. What’s up with the ‘J’ before your name?

J. Ryan: My real first name is James. I'm actually the webmaster for http://ryanparty.com/, an organization for people named Ryan. Ironic, I know, but good times nonetheless.

AdRoll: Besides kissing fish and keeping tabs on people named Ryan, what keeps you busy outside of work?

J. Ryan: When not AdRolling, I'm hanging with my newborn Emma and wife Jenny. I’m also a photographer hobbyist and enjoy the outdoors, travel, and long walks on the beach.

Intrigued? You can find out more by following J. Ryan @jryanwilliams in the Twittersphere.

Retargeting is a particularly great fit for entertainment marketing, given the longer event-based marketing cycle for entertainment promotion. For example, when a potential customer views a movie trailer six months or a year in advance of a movie's release, retargeting can help bring that potential customer back to the movie site, keep them engaged via additional teasers and content releases, and eventually convert them into a customer via ticket purchase.

AdRoll’s Adam Berke will be talking about the benefits of retargeting for the entertainment industry on Monday, April 30 at 1 p.m at the Conference. He’ll be participating in a panel called, ‘Hypertargeting: Ad Networks, Ad Serving and Ad Targeting’ with fellow industry experts, including Jeffrey Hochberg from AOL, Phil Stocker from Microsoft and more. If you’re at Digital Hollywood on Monday, head over to AdvUP-2 Ballroom Terrace to check it out.

                            

Last night our own Suresh Khanna, VP of sales at AdRoll, participated in a panel discussion at RocketSpace on ‘Innovation: From Product to Monetization’, put on by the folks over at Betts Recruiting and the Founders Network. Suresh was joined by a number of other sales leaders and founders, including Kevin Zellmer, VP of biz dev at Hearsay, Jerry Clarno, VP of major accounts at Box, Erik Kostlenik, VP of sales at Identified.com, and many more. The panel was moderated by TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha, who has written about AdRoll on a number of occasions.

The discussion was a rich one and focused on how to develop a sales and hiring strategy that drives real revenue. The panelists shared lots of insights. Here are some popular sound bites from the discussion:

‘Product and sales should have blowout battles... then get a beer. They need to be best friends.”
-- Kevin Zellmer of Hearsay

‘Before making your first sales hire, you need to make sure your structure is sound.”
-- Erik Kostlenik of Identified

“When deciding to hire someone or not, culture fit is important first and foremost.”
-- Suresh Khanna of AdRoll

The event had a great turnout, with over 250 attendees. Thanks to everyone who came out to help make the panel a success!

                               

                                              

The Personalization Summit is a one-day forum, put on by Rapleaf, here in San Francisco. The Summit brings together 200 of the top execs, experts and influencers with a vested interest in ‘personalizing’ today’s world. Through a series of panels and interactive conversations, they’ll be exploring new implications and innovations that are currently trending on the topic.

AdRoll’s Adam Berke will be speaking on the topic of ‘Audience Building: Finding and Building Brand Advocates’ -- a topic very familiar to us retargeters -- at the Robertson Auditorium at 3:45 PT today. His fellow panel participants include Bill Flitter, CEO of dlvr.it, Russ Glass, CEO of Bizo and Tamara Gruzbarg, director of research at Gilt Groupe.

If you’re at the Summit and want to learn about building consumer excitement for your brand, check it out. You can also catch the summit live below.

                      
Live streaming by Ustream

                                     

                                               

                                                                                                             

All of our customers have one thing in common -- they’re smart marketers. On average, AdRoll customers earn $10 for every $1 spent on retargeting. That’s a marketing dollar well spent, no matter how you look at it. 

One of our favorite customers (as is apparent by the AdRollers in photo above) is Hipmunk. It’s always fun working with a company that has a fantastic product. If you aren’t familiar with them, Hipmunk is fairly new and has become the fastest-growing travel search site. Hipmunk takes a lot of the agony out of travel planning. For example, flight results are presented on a visual ‘timeline’ that allows you to select the best flight for your needs in one glance. Hotel results are shown on a map so that you can view exactly where you'll be staying relative to the attractions you want to visit. No more sifting through a thousand travel site pop-up windows or wondering if the hotel you selected is in the boonies -- hooray! 

When we began working with Hipmunk, they were looking to determine if and how much retargeting could drive conversions from potential customers. Additionally, they wanted to close their user feedback loop, maximize conversions from site visitors, and increase their site audience. 

To measure the impact of retargeting, AdRoll worked with Hipmunk to set up A/B incrementality tests that conclusively showed a significant lift in conversions. AdRoll also implemented segmented campaigns focused on Flight and Hotel products, while also adjusting the creative messaging and strategies based on cookie durations.

So, what were the key results? 

✔ A/B test data showed a significant conversion increase -- to the tune of 75% for the retargeted Search group, and an increase of 50% for the retargeted Booking group.

✔ Segmentation and cookie-duration strategies matched the right messages to the right users at the right time, yielding a 66% improvement in CPA (cost per acquisition) for the Hotel campaign. 

Most of our customers have similar results. Stay tuned to the blog for more customer spotlights!

 

                                           

            

AdAge recently ran a story on a Time Warner study that found young consumers (‘digital natives’) switch media 27 times an hour, on average.             

                                                                                                           

The study's subjects were split evenly between natives and 'digital immigrants' (consumers who grew up with old-school technologies, such as TV, radio and print, and adapted to newer ones). Immigrants switched media venues just 17 times per non-working hour. Put another way, natives switch about 35% more than immigrants.

So what exactly does this mean for advertisers trying to catch the attention of this very important digitally-savvy demographic? It could mean trouble, if you’re not adapting your advertising techniques to fit your audience.

It’s no secret that consumers are spending more and more time online, whether on a computer, smartphone or tablet. It’s the reason that online advertising has grown into a multi-billion dollar business. Ad retargeting, which works by tracking visitors to your website, then displaying your ads to them as they visit other sites online, is one of the brightest and fastest-growing sectors of the online advertising business, and the Time Warner study underscores a primary reason for this. With thousands of new sites popping up online each day, and more and more mobile devices coming to market, consumer attention spans are waning.

Here are some of the key ways ad retargeting can help you effectively advertise in a world with constant information overload:

- As attention spans become shorter and shorter, online shoppers are more likely to get distracted during the purchase process. Retargeting helps you mitigate that risk, by keeping your brand top of mind and ultimately, bringing potential customers back to convert them to actual customers.

- Generic ad messaging is no longer enough. Modern web users require engaging content that is personalized to their interests and tastes. Retargeting (in our case, LiquidAds does a great job of this) allows you to customize messaging and offers to your customers, based on the products they’ve viewed. That, combined with interactive elements and dynamic artwork, drives engagement.

Bottom line -- times are changing. Don’t get left behind with stale online advertising techniques that no longer meet the needs and align with the habits of today’s customers.