Whenever I talk about good website design, I inevitably bring up sites like Craigslist and the Drudge Report. This is generally followed with gasps, a roll of the eyes, and complaints that the designs of those sites haven’t been updated in years. How can I use them as a good example of design?

Despite their “outdated” looks, both websites are one of the most popular online destinations in the world. The reason? Both websites make information easy to find. Enticed by well-written headlines, visitors are only a click away from reading a news story at the Drudge Report. With Craigslist, visitors are just a click or two away from finding and apartment to rent, a job, or selling something for free.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not suggested you mimic the look and feel of those sites. For the services those websites offer, the look and feel works for them. Your website design needs to speak to your target audience too. What I am suggesting is that you go over your website and see how easy it is for visitors find information about your products or services, enter your sales pipeline, and contact your company. Can they find what their looking for in one or two clicks or is it a hassle for them to find what they’re looking for?

The easier it is for people to find what they’re looking for, the higher your conversion rates will be.

There’s a great article in the January 18 issue of The New Yorker on how entrepreneurs like Ted Turner, John Paulson, and others made their fortunes. Instead of being the risk takers, successful entrepreneurs are risk adverse. Instead of throwing stuff to the wall to see what sticks, they see a problem, do their homework, solve the problem, and make a boatload of money in the process. (Note: A free, online version of the article is unavailable. You can read a summary of it here.)

Paulson, for example, made a fortune in the housing bubble collapse by buying credit-default swaps. But he didn’t just run out there and blindly buy credit-default swaps. Instead, he had someone do research that showed that a bubble was about to burst and made his investments accordingly. The result? His company made $15 billion in profits.

So what does this have to do with filling your sales pipeline with high quality leads?

To get the most from your marketing efforts, you need the right information about your visitors and an easy way on your website for them to enter your sales pipeline. The more you know about their behavior and the more ways you have of turning them into leads, you can better target your online marketing efforts.

Instead of wasting your marketing dollars throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks, learn everything you can about your current marketing efforts and what kind of people their bringing to your website. A good conversion analytics program can give you this insight.

You may not earn $15 billion in profits, but you will see more results from your marketing efforts and a fatter bottom line.

In the latest issue of Website magazine, Peter Prestipino has a great article on the role of analytics and increasing your bottom line-something Sapha’s preached for years. Prestipino writes:

It might be the least sex of all Web Responsibilities, but analysis is arguable the most important to an online business’ success. Unfortunately, it is an area where most enterprises fail to focus their attention.

Let’s face it. If you can’t measure it, you have no way to improve what you’re doing or see if your wasting your time and money. There’s a reason Sapha packages our site-wide Fusion analytics with each HookTour we sell. Yes, we want to show you how they turn visitor into leads at an average rate of 15%, but we also want you to learn more about visitors’ behavior on your entire website. We want your sales team to have the prospect’s behavioral information (How did they arrive at your site? What did they do once there? How did they enter your sales pipeline?) before they even contact a client.

But don’t take my word for it. If you want to understand the importance of web analytics along with video analytics, social analytics, and CRM analytics read Prestipino’s article here and see for yourself how having the right information can increase your online conversion rates.

Is persuasion more of an art or a science? Author Noah Goldstein argues that it’s a little bit of both. The video below highlights some successful persuasion techniques as well as common mistakes to avoid.

The video’s a must see for anyone interested in increasing their lead generation rates.

Marketing and sales professionals are realizing that PPC ads, SEO, and other methods of online advertising and promotion are worthless unless you’re able to calculate the ROI from your investment. Though it’s easy to track how many visitors came to your site from different marketing campaigns, it’s difficult to know whether or not these visitors enter your sales pipeline and what factors contributed to their conversion.

On January 26 Sapha is launching a conversion-centric analytics platform. One of its many features is a dashboard where you can see at a glance not only how Sapha tools are converting, but also the conversion rate of your entire website. By understanding your site’s conversion metrics, you can make better decisions regarding marketing efforts and see how website updates affect conversion rates – allowing you to get the most bang for your marketing and website dollars.

More than just a conversion overview, our conversion-centric analytics provides granular reporting so you can learn from the behavior of each visitor that comes to your site. What path did they take before becoming a lead? What information and documents have they gathered from your site? How did they interact with your HookTour? The answers to these questions will soon be available!

If you think it sounds cool, just wait until you see it reporting data from your website.

In 13 days, you can.

If you were to ask the head of your organization’s marketing department what your company’s website lead generation rate was for 2008, would he or she be able to answer you? 

More than likely you’d get a roundabout response or maybe an “I’ll have to get back to you” answer.

Let’s face it. Most organizations don’t know how many of their site visitors are converting into leads or sales. Even with sophisticated analytics tools, making sense out of the data to track conversion rates is extremely difficult and time consuming, if not impossible to perform.

Thankfully in just a few weeks a new tool will be available to Sapha clients that can give then the conversion reporting that most marketers only dream about.

January 26, Sapha will launch a new conversion-centric application platform and reporting system, the Sapha Conversion Suite. This new conversion suite allows Sapha clients to see online lead generation results from our tools and their website’s overall conversion rates at a glance. Additionally, clients will be able to get granular reporting that can track the behavior of individual visitors and advertising campaigns from the time the visitor enters the site to when they leave.

Check back often as we’ll be discussing some of these features in more detail and how these reports will help you increase your overall website lead conversion rates so that you will know if you’re getting the most from your online marketing dollars.

Until our next update, go ask someone in your marketing department if they can tell you your organization’s website lead generation rate.

Benoy Tamang, Sapha’s founder and CEO, was interviewed by Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media.

The interview consists of a brief demonstration of our HookTour followed by an in-depth look of our analytics reporting tool.

You can watch the interview below or by clicking here.

What’s the worst thing you can say to a prospective customer?

One site has listed The 5 Worst Lead Generation Conversation Openers. They are:

1. How are you today?
2. I’m not selling anything
3. Do you have a few minutes?
4. I know your busy but…
5. You don’t know me but…

The reason behind their picks can be found here. What it boils down to is those phrases have become overused. They’re common enough that people know you’re trying to sell them something when you use them. In short, salespeople that use these phrases are being lazy.

Websites are no different. First impressions are critical to retaining visitors and funneling them through the process of becoming a lead. If visitors aren’t engaged of otherwise feel your site has the information they’re looking for in the first minute, they’ll be off to competitor’s site.

Fortunately there are three things you can do to ensure your website doesn’t turn off customers before they know what you’re selling.

1. Talk to your audience. Are you using key words and phrases that target audience’s wants and needs? Does your website resonate with them or does it contain common, everyday words and images that make it feel tired and worn?

2. Give them multiple ways to learn about your company, products, and services. Some people respond to the written word while others prefer something visual to watch. Unless you have a very specialized audience having multiple ways to engage them is probably ideal.

3. Give them multiple contact options. Just like people feel uncomforatble being approached by a salesperson (I’m one of those people), some people would prefer to have other ways of making initial contact. Make sure your site has email (my preference), chat, and other options that your visitors might feel more comfortable using. And then make sure they’re easy for visitors to find.

Websites are 24/7 selling machines. The key is to make your site relevant and interesting so when potential customers arrive, they don’t feel like they’re experiencing the same old thing.  

I found a useful website conversion calculator that has a more performance-based metrics than other conversion calculators. This website asks for financial inputs such as cost of goods sold and gross margin so you can determine cost per visitor, cost per action (CPA), ROI, and return on advertising spending.

As you proceed through the different steps, it also calculates your target cost per visitor, cost per click breakeven point, and allows you to perform a What-If analysis so you can see what your data would look like if your conversion rate changed.

The bottom line? Even small increases in website conversion rates can dramatically increase an organization’s revenue.

You can find the calculator here.

BtoB Magazine released its inaugural Lead Generation Guide this week. Whether you’re looking to improve lead generation response rates from e-mail, direct mail campaigns, and websites, or read about what other businesses are trying, the guide contains articles that are worth reading.

One article that particularly stood out was “Focus on facilitating demand, not generating it.” The article details that because the Internet has changed the way people make purchasing decisions, marketers need to think differently about how to turn visitors into sales or leads.

How do marketers need to think differently? The article explains it thus:

Previously, when sellers wanted to generate demand they started inundating their target audiences with messages….Today, buyers prefer to be educated, not sold. And most would rather pursue this “education” anonymously until they’ve reached a purchasing decision.

You need to make sure your Web site is more like a consultative sales call, where it’s easy for buyers to find what they need and propel themselves through the decision process. Most important, you need to build a relationship through your interactions, both direct and indirect, so they come to feel that yours is the type of organization with which they would like to do business.

All of this can be done by applying the science of Web analytics (both behavioral and attitudinal) along with the art of business intelligence to help you see which parts of your Web site move buyers in the direction you want them to go (so you can enhance those areas) and which are barriers to that goal (so you can knock them down). [Emphasis added.]

In other words you need a website that is informative, easy to navigate, and funnels people to your desired course of action. Though that may seem basic, it’s a good reminder for marketers to look at your website for the perspective of potential customers and see what you can do to improve their experience.