Summary: Turn Clicks into Customers

Review and Analysis of Forrester's Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Publisher: Must Read Summaries
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9782511022320
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Advertising
• Index: Business

The must-read summary of Duane Forrester's book: `Turn Clicks into Customers: Proven Marketing Techniques for Converting Online Traffic into Revenue`.

This complete summary of the ideas from Duane Forrester's book `Turn Clicks into Customers` shows how monetising a website takes planning and work. In his book, the author explains that you need to have two different activities happening at all times: clicks and customers. This summary explains these activities in detail and how you can set up your website to maximise your revenues and the amount of business you generate.

Added-value of this summary:
• Save time
• Understand key concepts
• Expand your knowledge

To learn more, read `Turn Clicks into Customers` and discover the key to getting your customers to click that all-important `Purchase` button.

Summary of Turn Clicks Into Customers (Duane Forrester)

1. Strategy #1

For many sites, search engines account for 75 percent or more of total inbound traffic – so getting search engine optimization right can have a profound impact on overall revenues. The keys to strategy #1 are:

• Know the essentials of how to set up your site.
• Organize an editorial plan for your content.
• Base your conversion process on the five pillars of trust.
• Simplify the path through the sales process.
• Narrow your scope and think local.

There are three basic ways you can use search engines to generate traffic for your Web site and each needs to be handled differently in order to maximize your revenues:

• Organic search results are where you appear in the results when people search for a term. To enhance the amount of traffic you receive from organic searches, you can and should build your site around the concepts of search engine optimization (SEO). Organic search campaigns have lower costs and tend to yield better long-term results but take longer to get up and running.
• Paid search campaigns are where you buy traffic from the search engines. The price you pay varies according to your priority placement but the direct costs involved mean you’re generally trying to drive more immediate sales.
• Local search marketing is where you try to link your search results to a selected city or community. You’re trying to make your physical location and phone number an integral part of what is seen and found.

A sales funnel approach tends to be used in all three search engines strategies which looks something like this:

• Early in the process, people are researching out their options and seeing what’s available. Organic search is at the forefront here. When people come to your Web site, you want them to get the impression you have lots of material available for them to access.
• Weighing options is where visitors do some comparison research. They compare what you offer to what your competitors offer. Only those who are thinking about purchasing will do this.
• When people have decided to purchase, they then start evaluating your checkout system to see whether it is clean and clear-cut. Paid search marketing tends to deliver people who are already motivated to buy and you should have action-oriented landing pages available to facilitate this.

There are five basic keys to making search engine marketing (organic, paid and local) work effectively for you in turning clicks into customers:

1. Know the essentials of site set up

You have to start by figuring out which keywords people are most likely to use when they look for what you have to offer and then design your site to cater to those intentions. Tools available which can help you do this include:

• www.wordtracker.com
• www.keyworddiscovery.com
• www.hittail.com

• Try and get a short and memorable domain name which aligns with whichever keywords which are most applicable.
• Keep your site structure simple. Burying key content five layers deep makes it appear less important to search engine crawlers.
• Have descriptive and accurate page titles, meta descriptions, meta keywords, H tags and image ALT tags. (Google any of those terms for more technical details.)
• Spread your content out over multiple pages so your site has stickability. At least 100 unique pages is important to look authoritative. About 250 words to a page is best for search engines.

2. Organize an editorial plan for content

Your Web site will rank better and convert better if you have a well-thought-out editorial plan rather than a random collection of stuff. A good editorial plan will help you provide visitors with a deep and rich experience. It will also drive search engines to visit your site more frequently and to index it more deeply which is exactly what you want to happen.

Plan your site logically to work towards what your overall aim is. Link your editorial plan with a corresponding calendar which sets out when you will be updating your site with fresh content. If you’re consistent in posting new material on your Web site, you will keep users and search engines coming back for return visits more frequently.

It’s even worth investing the time to rewrite the descriptions of your products periodically. If you have repetitive product descriptions which are found all over the Web, you’ll be less successful than if you have unique descriptions which are richer and more detailed. Watch how users are in...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Book Presentation
• Summary of Turn Clicks Into Customers (Duane Forrester)
• About the Summary Publisher
• Copyright