Example
of Customer Confusion: |
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Search
above in Google for "Car
Stereo" |
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The
page you land on... doesn't
have much about your search
result, and confuses potential
customers. |
|
Have
you ever searched for something in Google,
but couldn't find what you were looking
for when you visited a site?
Our
research has shown that this very reason
- not being able to find what they're searching
for when they come to a website - is one
of the top reason both consumers and business
users abandon a search result (and your
site), never to return.
I've
also had this experience in the past. And
I'm sure you have too. The typical
page that people land on creates cognitive
dissonance (confusion), and if
a person can't find what they're looking
for quickly and easily, they give up and
try another search result. It's
a zero-sum game (you lose, someone else
wins).
A
great example is that if you search in Google
for Car Stereos, you will likely
see the Crutchfield site toward the top
of the search results (both natural and
paid CPC advertising results). But then,
you have to hunt and peck around the site's
navigation to figure out where the information
about Car Stereos is located. Their site
isn't so bad, but it still isn't personalized
to your search results.
PHP
Can Help Generate Personalized Search Results
The
answer to increasing the conversion rate
from your website (defined as how
many people who visit your site fill out
a form, pick up the phone to call you or
use another contact method), can
be personalizing your website based on keywords
from their search engine query.
And
this is where PHP programming can come in
handy. PHP,
unlike an HTML page, can parse through inbound
information and dynamically personalize
a page, based on inbound search results.
Here's
a quick php-based demonstration:
1.
Visit this link to search in Google for
the term: Personalized
URL. This is a search term
that we appear at the top of Google, and
is for one of the services we offer for
helping people enhance their direct mail
campaigns.
Here's an example
of how the system works:
Visit
Here to search for the term, Personalized
URL,
and then visit the Customer Paradigm link.
2.
Click on the listing for Customer Paradigm
to vist our site:
When
you visit our site, you'll see the site
personalized based on your search query.
3.
When you come back to the Customer Paradigm
site, you'll see a large flash banner at
the top of the page that reads:
Personalized
Flash Banner based on Keyword Terms from
a Google Search
Have
A Real Person Contact Me Now:
It's
rare in business today that someone can
talk to a real person about a product or
service. Many companies "hide"
their contact information because it "costs"
money to have people answer the phone.
We've found, however, that giving people
an easy way to contact us (or for us to
contact them -- a lower-involvement, lower-committment
activity) makes it more likely they will
choose us vs. another company that
doesn't make it possible. Just last week
I received a phone call from one of the
largest advertising agencies in the world,
asking about our Personalized URL service
and software. She was very impressed by
the site and how easy it was to reach someone.
Please
note that this is just a very basic example
of how the site can be personalized based
on their search engine query. We have created
web-based software that we can install on
most websites that can read the inbound
queries, and display custom messages in
flash or HTML.
We
have used this system to create rules that
say that if someone is visiting the site
from a search query (for example, Personalized
URLs), then we can display a site that mostly
focuses on Personalized URLs, including
the navigation and content on the site.
This isn't something that will
trick Google into better indexing your site
-- Google and the other search engines don't
crawl and index your site the way a human
does (one search result at a time). This
is mostly designed to make the human experience
as relevant and easy as possible.
Do
you know how many people click through to
your site from a search engine, but 'bounce'
back to the Google search page because they
couldn't find the answer to what they were
looking for? While you'll never
be able to help 100% of the people that
visit your site with the answer to their
question, our dynamic search engine personalization
system may help you convert more visitors
to your site.
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