To better serve our clients SEO Prodigy staff periodically attends web marketing conferences to stay abreast with newest developments and strategies in the ultra radical online marketing industry.

On August 14th SEO Prodigy marketing director Chad Klingensmith along with future SEM manager Rachael James ventured to the Online Marketing Summit to learn about the newest Advanced Online Marketing tactics. The summit was hosted by online marketing bravado Aaron Kahlow who is currently a managing partner of Business Online. Kahlow humorously commented that this isn’t “your daddy’s conference” since most of the topic convered the newest developments in online media including social networking and video marketing.

While many good ideas were discussed at this conference, there was one prevailing concept; website usability. Unfortunately many webmasters invest tremendous amounts of time, money and effort promoting their website but make careless oversites that could seriously inhibit the performance.

Fact of the matter is that the industry website conversion rate is 2%. Simply put for every 100 visitors, 2 of them are either filling out a lead form, making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter/membership. Obviously this number fluctuates depending on the industries and whether the conversion is hard (spending money) or soft (providing information i.e. signups/leads).

However there is any entire analytical science behind about how visitors behave while visiting a website. Webmasters who are aware of this can acheive improved conversion rates. Here are a few quick tips.

1. People are attracted to people.

Studies have shown that visitors first look at images of people on their site while scrolling over websites…then they at the text. So if you are selling a service such as health insurance it may be a good idea to have the images of the smiling family redirecting to the quote page.

2. Move it to the right

Make sure the call to action button is strategically place UP and TO THE RIGHT of your website.

3. Use those curves

The human eye is attracted to an oval. Make sure that your call to action icon, images or letter are very big and well rounded

4. Remove the clutter

Make sure that on your sales/checkout page that you have absolutely no distractions/outgoing links that may confuse the visitor. We suggesting having one link back to the home page. That’s it.

5. Use contrast

Make sure that your call to action link/banner has a darker contrast (with light background). This is also makes it easy for seniors to read what you are trying to promote.
Those were just few small tips from the conference. Stay tuned; Rachael and Chad will likely share with us.