John Thyfault, Vice President, Search Engine and Social Media Marketing for Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., will be teaching a live online Web UX and Usability workshop for the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California.

Web UX and Usability Workshop: Maximizing Visitor ROI from Your Site

(Wednesday, February 13, 2019. 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM Pacific Standard Time)

Once you’ve driven the traffic to your site, are you maximizing the value of it for your visitors? Too many sites have been developed over the years without a good, clear plan that leads visitors to what they are looking for.

What you’ll learn:

• Understand what you want your site to accomplish and how the user’s interaction with the site is tied into this
• Understand how your content informs your site design
• How you should optimize your site for mobile
• Setting up a testing and optimization program
• Finding the right tools to aid in the testing
• Understand the advantages and challenges of user panels, eye tracking and interaction tracking
• How to improve your site usability on a low budget

Learn more

About the DMAnc (www.DMAnc.org)

The DMA of Northern California was formed to educate, inform and provide networking opportunities for Direct and Online Marketing professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We hold monthly luncheon meetings, workshops, periodic half-day seminars, and provide opportunity for the best in learning and job networking in the Northern California marketing community.

About Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. We provide services in inbound and outbound marketing including: content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. We help clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and are privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go here.

For help with your e-commerce site implementation and marketing, Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., can help! Get a free consultation.

Find case studies and white papers at https://beasleydirect.com/resources/white-papers.

The post Join John Thyfault, Vice President, Search Engine and Social Media Marketing for Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., in a Web UX and Usability Workshop for Maximizing Visitor ROI from Your Site appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Designing and writing a landing page is like setting a trap for your prospect, in a nice way. You want to entice them in, encourage them to go deeper, and once they’re inside make it virtually impossible to get out without taking the desired action.

Direct the prospect through creative design:

• Match the colors, font and other design elements of the ad that got them here so they know they’ve come to the right place. (This isn’t always relevant; for instance Google AdWords Text Ads are all text, so no formatting.)
• Use eyeflow design to pull the reader to one key image (usually a depiction of the offer) and place call to action copy next to it as soon as they reach the page.
• Repeat the call to action multiple times so it’s easy to respond when they’re ready.

Copy should be brief, but compelling:

• Be BRIEF in describing the offer, especially if they’ve already read about it in an ad or email that caused them to click through. Repeating what they already know will lull them to sleep or, more likely, bore them so they’ll click away.
• If it’s free, say so, multiple times. Repeat the selling proposition that brought them here. If you’re fulfilling Google AdWords ads, consider matching headlines to the keywords in the ad.


The Nomadic Systems landing page copies the design and color palette of the Nomadic website home page. But, omits internal links which would allow a curious prospect to click away without registering.

• Use bullets if you have room to highlight the benefits of the offer they’re about to accept. This is often done in a sidebar so it doesn’t get in the way of core selling content.
• Use benefit/reward language in buttons such as “Get my FREE report” vs just “SUBMIT”.
• Include testimonials and guarantees to reassure that there’s absolutely no negative consequence to taking the desired action.

And about that all-important OFFER:

You absolutely need an offer on your landing page because you’ve agreed to a quid pro quo. You’re going to “reward” people for their time in learning your selling proposition. Landing pages without offers are destined to be very poor conversion vehicles which don’t come close to paying for themselves.

An informational offer is usually the best way to incent people for business-to-business lead generation landing pages. These readers need information to do their jobs properly, so give it to them in the form of white papers, third party analysis, webinars, videos, fact sheets or all the above (since you never know what informational format is most appealing to a given audience). An info offer should actually be informative. Don’t promise a fact kit or industry analysis, and instead load them up with sales material.

“Freebie” offers include actual merchandise giveaways, either directly or through entrance in a sweepstakes. These are far less prevalent than they were at one time, because they tend to produce many unqualified leads (who responded for the giveaway, not because they are interested in your product). However, there are exceptions to every rule and a high-value offer, carefully targeted, will cause the right prospect to go to considerable lengths to get the reward.

Limited time offers should be used in addition to, not instead of, other offers. Especially if it’s a merchandise offer, the sense of urgency in a temporary discount or a today-only add-on item will give prospects a reason to make a decision. Even if it’s a webinar, you can let people know attendance is limited, first come, first served; if it’s an analyst paper perhaps you have authorization to distribute only a certain number and no more.

Laurie B. Beasley

Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. We are a Silicon Valley direct marketing agency that has managed search, email, online, and demand generation campaigns for nearly 100 companies. Ms. Beasley serves as President of the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. Laurie manages the eMarketing Roundtable for the BMA Northern California. She also instructs online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches for the Online Marketing Institute. Ms. Beasley frequently speaks on online marketing and demand generation topics for marketing organizations, including the DMA, BMA, AMA, Tech Council, and the Online Marketing Summit.

Our agency brings the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. The company provides services in email marketing, search engine optimization, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, website design, media planning, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. We help clients in both B2B and B2C marketing. Beasley Direct is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb, Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com or call Laurie Beasley, President, at 408-782-0046 x21 or email lbeasley@beasleydirect.com.

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By John Thyfault,Vice President of Search & Social Strategy, Beasley Direct Marketing and Instructor, Online Marketing Institute and UC Santa Cruz Extension in Silicon Valley

This is the first posting in a series about what it takes to make a website so easy to use that your audience will return again and again because the experience is simple, painless and quick.

This first posting explores what web usability means, and why it matters.

* * * *

There are a number of definitions of website usability. Dr. Peter J. Meyers, president of userreflect.com, defines it as, “… the science of making technology work for people.” What a concept—technology in service of human beings instead of the other way around! That’s exactly what a website should do: enable your visitors to access the information, service, or product they want as quickly and easily as possible. As simple as that sounds, it takes some serious thought and planning.

Before you go through the process of evaluating your current website (or planning a new one), it’s important to understand why usability is so important. In a nutshell, it impacts your bottom line. The fallout from poor website design is enormous:

• 85% abandon a site due to poor design
• 83% leave because it takes too many clicks to get what they want
• 62% gave up looking for an item while shopping online
• 40% never return to a site because the content was hard to use
• 50% of sales are lost because visitors can’t find content[i]

Remember—it’s the unhappy customers who complain the most frequently about their experiences. According to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, a dissatisfied customer will tell between 9-15 people about their experience, while around 13% of dissatisfied customers tell more than 20 people. Multiply that 20 people by the number of followers the complainers have on Facebook and Twitter—and you can see the problem.

It’s well worthwhile to plan for usability before designing a website. The cost of fixing a poorly designed website is greater than just the time and money involved in the fix. As you can see from the statistics above, by the time you get around to fixing a site, you have already lost potential business.

There’s another aspect of web usability that may not have occurred to you when thinking about website design. In 2006, the National Federation of the Blind sued Target over its website. The NFB contended that Target’s website was a “place of public accommodation,” and therefore came under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. As such, the suit claimed, the website had to be made usable by the visually impaired. Target settled out of court in 2008, setting up a $6 million fund for claims. Target also reworked the site to accommodate visitors using screen reading software and other aids. This is a serious consideration for an eCommerce site, but needs to be considered by other kinds of sites as well.

Next time: “What Makes a Website Usable?”

The post Key Principles of Website Usability Part 1: Why the Heck Should I Care? appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.