TRIED AND TESTED CONVERSION TOOLS AND RESOURCES
When it comes to web tools there’s more options than you can count - free apps, paid for software, books, how-to-guides, the list is endless! Picking what’s right for your needs and what will work best can be an endless task and an impossible decision without making lots of wrong choices. Here we discuss tried and tested tools to help you select the best and sidestep the rest.
A/B testing and multivariate testing tools are an absolute must have for website owners, there are lots of options out there to pick from including extremely advance to complete novice programs. Of the three we’d recommend is Visual Website Optimizer, which is very easy to use and will cater for all your A/B testing needs and you don’t need a degree in web management to utilise its capabilities. This also comes with Plugins for WordPress and Magento sites, making it a very popular choice.
Other options are Optimizely and Convert.com, both of which are leaders in the pack. Optimizely was the choice for the Obama and Romney camps during the presidential campaigns and Starbucks, MTV and Fox also turn to Optimizely. Convert.com is a newcomer to the A/B testing world but is becoming quite a trailblazer.
Visual Website Optimizer - http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/
Optimizely - https://www.optimizely.com/
Convert.com - http://www.convert.com/
Owning and making the best out of a site means you need to know everything about your users habits, where they go on the site, how far they scroll, where do they click and it’s vital to know what they notice and what gets ignored. Three great choices for your Heatmap and Scrollmap tracking are Clicktale, Mouseflow and Inspectlet.
Clicktale is a favourite of organisations like O2, Groupon and Hallmark, it’s not a budget option but comes with heavyweight support. Mouseflow is a great resource to track the activity on your site including visitors, keystrokes and form fills and isn’t as pricy as Clicktale. Finally Inspectlet is the tool to fit all budgets but it doesn’t lack any punch for the SMBs.
Clicktale - http://www.clicktale.com/
Mouseflow - http://mouseflow.com/
Inspectlet - http://www.inspectlet.com/
Another key fact finding expedition all websites need to journey on is usability testing to find out how easy it is to navigate the site, how simple it is to find the information the visitor needs, how pleasing to the eye it is etc. If you’re lacking in this area it could result in poor conversions so we recommend trying out UserTesting.com, Open Hallway, TryMyUI or Ethnio. All these sites give you access to real people to test out your site and give you honest, open and direct answers.
Depending on how much testing you intend on doing will determine your choice. Open Hallway for example gives you unlimited testing for a month’s subscription and TryMyUI gives you the opportunity to get endless testers to check out your site. Want to pick your own testers to recruit? The Ethnio would be the choice for you.
Usertesting.com - http://www.usertesting.com/
Open Hallway - http://www.openhallway.com/
TryMyUI - http://www.trymyui.com/
Ethnio - http://ethn.io/
By now I think it’s obvious that knowledge is power and analytic tools give you a whole arsenal of weapons to tackle your website’s progression. The obvious choice is Google Analytics, which everyone will turn to first and for good reason, but we recommend also taking a look at KISSmetrics to learn more about your customers and if you’re techy minded then the most advanced tool out there has to be MixPanel. MixPanel does need to be configured yourself so possibly not for the faint hearted.
Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics/
KISSmetrics - https://www.kissmetrics.com/
MixPanel - https://mixpanel.com/
Email Marketing is a tool every company uses, or certainly should be using. Choose from the below sites to ensure you’re using your digital marketing wisely. We recommend two options here that we’ve tried and tested: GetResponse and Aweber, both are hugely popular with corporations such as Hilton Hotels, GSK and Men’s Health turning to GetResponse and Aweber is a highly rated and highly affordable option.
GetResponse - http://www.getresponse.com/
Aweber - http://www.getresponse.com/
If you run an ecommerce site then one of your biggest problems is probably shopping cart abandonment and how to prevent this lost sale becoming permanent. There are tools out there to help with shopping cart recovery and the three we recommend are Vero, Rejoiner and SeeWhy. These have the capability to send emails to your website visitors based on their behaviour, track shopping cart abandonment in real time, create optimised emails and much more in a bid to recover sales with cart remarketing.
Vero – http://www.getvero.com/
Rejoiner - http://rejoiner.com/
SeeWhy - http://seewhy.com/
Landing pages can be a great way to promote on-off deals, competitions and seasonal goods or to simple advertise a new product. Whether you want to tackle its creation yourself (turn to something like UBounce) or you’d like to hand it over to the experts (head to Landing Page Makeover), there will be a great option out there for you.
Landing Page Makeover – http://landingpagemakeover.com/
Unbounce – http://unbounce.com/
Lander - http://www.landerapp.com/
We’re only going to offer one option that we absolutely love for Screencasts and that’s Camtasia Studio. You’re able to edit and customise professional quality videos, all without formatting and it’s easy, which is why we can’t recommend this enough.
Camtasia Studio – http://www.techsmith.com/download/camtasia/
In an age where every customer wants things immediately, having a website that’s not working quickly enough can cost businesses sales. We’ve narrowed the choice down to five, which will keep your site working at its optimum.
WP Engine is fantastic for Wordpress sites and has great support, LiquidWeb has a range of hosting options, Storm On Demands is one of the most affordable cloud hosting options and Cloudflare’s CDS and security systems are a great choice for anyone.
There’s also Inscapula, which is like Cloudflare but gives a premium level of security and protection and last but not least, Google Mod Page that can be installed as a module onto your Apache web server but your web host.
WP Engine – http://wpengine.com/
LiquidWeb – http://www.liquidweb.com/
Storm on Demand – http://www.stormondemand.com
Cloudflare – http://www.cloudflare.com/
Inscapsula – http://www.incapsula.com
Google Mod Pagespeed -https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/mod
If this article has spurred your desire for knowledge and you want to learn even more about conversion optimisation and all sorts of other great tools to become a Digital Marketer that’s ahead of the pack we recommend checking out MECLABS online courses. A fantastic resource for online courses in everything you may want to learn more about and you can do in your spare time. Another option is MarketMotive Conversion Optimisation Training where you’ll get the chance to train with Brian Eisenberg.
MECLABS Online Courses - http://meclabs.com/training/online-course
MarketMotive Conversion Optimisation Training – http://www.marketmotive.com/
Recommended Books
How to Build Websites by Peep Laja
Your Customer Creation Equation by Brian Massey
You Should Test That by Chris Goward
The Lean Start Up by Eric Ries