Michael Bissell
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Get some return on that web traffic

2008-12-19 07:47:31

3 click or 3 minutes We're busy people; we don't have time to figure things out. If we can't find what we're looking for in a few easy clicks, or a few quick minutes, we'll move on and try to find it someplace else.

Remember, if your visitor doesn't figure it out, you've wasted an opportunity, and if you paid good money to drive that person to your site, you wasted your money. Just because they showed up means nothing unless you're making money.

Sites that make it really clear what you're supposed to do are the most effective. A big 'Start Here' and a simple 1, 2, 3 series of forms that don't confuse and don't frustrate are obviously preferable to a website that some programmer said, 'They'll figure it out…'

And that's because most people won't figure it out.

A quick primer on web ad models There are three basic advertising models on the web:

  • Cost Per Impression: You pay every time someone sees your ad
  • Cost Per Click: You pay when someone clicks on your ad
  • Cost Per Action: You pay when someone completes an action on your website

    You are ultimately looking at your final cost per action which means you need to know what that action is. If your website makes money from selling a product or service, that action is a purchase. If you're selling advertising on your site, then you need to get that visitor to look at as many pages as possible and, preferably, click on those ads.

    The trick is to balance the model you're paying for traffic against your acceptable cost. So, if one advertising source has a really high conversion rate (everyone who clicks buys) you might want to pay on a per click model. Alternatively, if you get really high click through, maybe pay on an impression model.

    But you have to watch and learn and adapt as you implement your plan. You need to modify your advertising to drive more qualified traffic and you need to modify your site to maximize the return on that traffic.

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      The Problem with Modernization Initiatives
      Scary plugins
      The Art of Asking a Question
      The Algorithm is Training Me
      Quietly Hijacking
      Are OpenAPI and Swagger the same thing?
      Extending the OpenAPI Contract for Security
      OpenAPI contract to HTML
      This blog and this website are built on an API
      Build an API from a CSV file in 4 minutes
      Terms of Service in lieu of Legal Governance
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      Ecosystem of Breaches -- People and Social Engineering
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      Let's talk really basic websites
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      The New Facebook is Text Messaging
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      Historical Figures in Modern Clothes
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      My Next Adventure
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      Why I dropped out of Social Media
      Being Watched by TV
      Why I Can’t Support Bernie Sanders
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      PIN is a Four Letter Word
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      How the TARDIS Travels in Time And Relative Dimensions In Space
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      Resistance is futile... But it doesn't mean people won't resist...
      We're Cybernetic Creatures
      The Thing about Vegas
      Middle Earth: Post-Apocalyptic Hell Hole
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      How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All
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      Just Another Day in Portland
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      You say ADD like a bad thing
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      Mr. Monopoly sells gas
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      Death of a Salesman's Store
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      Apple's Innovation of One Control Freak
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      GroupOn -- Good for Meth Dealers, bad for Fishing Guides
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      'Join The Conversation' Yeah... Corporations are sexy
      'Did you mean?' -- Google's chiding nanny of search results
      The Next Fad: Adword Optimization
      The double standard of Mobile Web vs Mobile Apps
      Branded Technology
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      The Internet Isn't Entertaining Enough
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      It's not your bank... It's Apple's and Amazon's
      Violated by Madison Avenue
      Goodbye Murphy
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      'Narcissism' by Michael R. Bissell -- Reading myself...
      Facebook Reinvents the Meta Tag. Evolution? Or just weird mutant?
      Dude, you were looking at web stats and laughing
      If real life was like the world we see in commercials
      'We need to...' Internet Marketing Myths
      Facebook's deal with the Devil
      My cool new phone is a little too cool.
      You are never alone
      Aw, Snap!
      Promotion vs. Distribution... You'd think they'd know that one...
      Miracles and Meetings
      Facebook Causes Depression
      The I-Don't-Understand-It-So-It-Must-Be-Valuable Valuation
      Countries less valuable than Groupon
      Politics and instantaneous communication
      Live by your wits, until you get the flu
      Who owns your friends?
      Agonies of Programming for Facebook
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      Walking to Surreality
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      Facebook did not topple Egypt
      The Value of Ideas
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      Social Media Slot Machine
      Anonymous vs Me
      The Numbers Game
      The Internet and our Sedentary Society -- maybe some hope?
      News from the Twitter Follow Campaign Trail
      The Death of... Well, everything...
      The art of Indiscriminate Twitter Following
      The Cloudy Meaning of The Cloud
      My Emotional Repsonse to iAnything
      Alien Technology and Government Conspiracies
      Portlandia... Yeah... it's probably true
      A Short Rant about Los Angeles
      Time for a New Reality
      The Great Popularity Contest of the 21st Century
      The Death of Email
      Protecting Free Speech... Anonymously (and geekily)
      Farewell to Doug -- the Dali Lama has moved on
      Amazon Shouldn't Have Shut Down WikiLeaks
      Google isn't the bad guy... this time
      Thankless Jobs
      Making Money -- Or Money Making You
      Kids In Charge
      It's Okay that Roger Sterling's Book Sucks
      Sex, Seduction and Manipulation
      The Superpowers of the Hive Mind
      Big Brother is Finally Here
      Time for New Ideas
      Comcast, Netflix and the Mystery of the Modem
      Custom Tailored Crap
      The Great Technical Disconnect
      New for the Sake of New
      A Retail Store Built Like the Web
      A Quick Rant -- The New Twitter and Real People
      Disposable Personas
      When did Google Start Policing the Internet?
      Getting back to HTML basics, thanks to Apple
      Inspecting my Navel Base
      Quantum Entanglement and the Death of Radio
      A shoebox vs. an online backup
      Cave Man Distribution Networks
      Dressing for Work
      The team that hates itself -- Visionaries, Managers and Technicians
      iBooks -- Creative Epicenter or Gatekeeper?
      The Failure of Success
      The Economy is Going to Get Worse, but that's okay
      Time lost on Twitter
      Common Sense of the New Economy
      Twitter's back alleys and dark places
      Social Media is NOT Advertising
      On censorship
      Microsoft Courier
      Form (designers) versus Function (geeks)
      Bad Restroom Health Sign
      PDXBOOM -- The power of social media and the portland pipe bomb
      China and Apple -- Different organizations, same management
      The volume of screens
      Logorama
      Sleeping through miracles
      Who needs an URL anyhow?
      Transmedia
      That magical little tablet
      The complications of making coffee
      How your website can be in two places at once
      Masterpieces created by sheer volume
      Suing over lack of originality
      A Primer on Internet Fame -- dancing babies, hamsters, numa numa, and more...
      The Lawsuit Lottery
      Checking my messages
      Another Random Night of Arts in Portland
      Rules are made to be broken -- in a reasoned, systematic way
      So many accounts, so few passwords
      The Dali Lama of Hillsdale
      Who really uses Twitter? 60% of Twitter's traffic isn't on Twitter
      Riding the commute route on Saturday
      Not everyone is like you
      The Web is a Jerry Rigged Kludge
      Portland Bike Plan: Too Expensive or Playing with numbers?
      Twitter: Asleep at the Mouse Wheel
      Where regulation is good: Google Voice and Vonage
      How Facebook is (unintentionally) forcing programmers to piss off users
      The Twit Cleaner
      Perfect Secretary's pitch for @Adbroad (and the Youtube API)
      The Emotions of Text
      The Shorty Awards Scandal -- Manual Spam is still Spam
      Google Analytics, the cloud and missing numbers #fail
      Helen Klein Ross & Michael Bissell Interview at Adweek's Social Media Strategies Conference
      The Internet is the New 60's
      Getting back in the saddle (bicycle saddle, that is)
      Ranting about Portland Drivers
      Cougars from New Zealand (and I don't mean big cats)
      Adding facts together, or why you can't charge your cell phone from wifi
      Social Media and the Destruction of the World
      Rabid Fans vs Passive Viewers -- The Coco vs Leno saga
      How to tell someone to retweet (without using up your 140 characters)
      You can't buy social media
      A book unopened is but a block of paper
      Building the LOST: The Final Season Sweepstakes
      Holiday SPAM (or the lack thereof)
      Archiving Twitter
      Too Many Toolbars
      Random Censorship with Google Adwords
      Accessibility and Shopping Online
      'Upgrading' my flight
      Twisted path to customer service
      Flash: Shiny objects blinding your audience
      Twollow and other gold rush scripts
      Arthur Miller's All My Sons
      GPS in a Laptop computer
      Thinking outside the box... There was a box?
      Twitter was designed for Text Messaging
      It's not the corporations, damnit
      Entrepreneur or Dreamer?
      Adweek Social Media Twitter for Brands Presentation
      Socializing is more than Social Media
      Generational Marketing is a Myth (or Who's your Daddy?)
      Social Media is Just the Way We Use the Internet
      Twitter Followers Don't Matter (ask the porn sites)
      The Internet is Gooder than Books
      Sometimes you don't want your campaign to go viral
      Best Twitter Branding Campaign
      A Good Explosive Recipe and other found knowledge online
      Like flies to crap, Spammy Twitter Followers don't really go away
      Video Projectors for your phone
      iPhone SMS Security Hole
      How Flipmytweet works
      Cell Phones as Microscopes
      Markie's Birthday
      Digg is not the Hijacker -- You Are
      Steve Ballmer -- the walking dead?
      Twitter as an open mic poetry reading
      Automatic Social [un]Awareness
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      New Media/Old Media and the CLIO Awards
      Interview at SXSW: Mad Men Twitter And Tracking
      Saturday Yard Work
      We've got an App for that -- it's called the Web
      Made it to SXSW in Austin
      What is Conquent?
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      Wayward Words with Baggage
      Speaking at SXSW March 17th
      The fleeting Memory of the Internet
      It's okay to say 'I don't know'
      Good Morning America, now Go Fight Traffic
      More surreality in Portland
      Nike Takes Over Conquent
      Facebook owns this title
      Excuses, excuses
      A little on Social Media
      Feeding on Content
      Attack of the Bots
      Irish Music in Oregon City
      Landing on an Aircraft Carrier
      Got Curry? And some bizarre art?
      Web 1.0
      Random Music and Random Life in Portland
      To the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump
      Flight Simulator
      Cold night, hot fire, happy cat
      Net Neutrality
      Walking to work in the snow
      A window into Moreland of the Past
      Getting clever with data feeds
      Big and Little Beirut
      The Other Credit Crisis
      The Broadband Inauguration
      T-Mobile owns Magenta and Other Patent Stories
      The Risk-takers, Doers and Makers of Things
      The noise of 20,000+ Twitter Followers
      Reflections on my DC Trip
      Born Again American
      30,000 feet, 500 MPH Suburban Strip Mall
      Cellphones, toilets and the Inauguration
      The wall of pissing
      National Treasure/National Archives
      My trip to DC so far
      Everyone is insane
      Getting ready for DC
      The End of Days (of song): Microsoft Songsmith Example
      The Very Model of a Modern Major General
      Browser Bigotry
      The Death of your Soul: Microsoft Songsmith
      Creative Development or Developing Creatively?
      Race to Witch Mountain
      The Myth of Wikipedia (or the Wiki-1400)
      Online/Offline Sales -- is it really that bad?
      Is PayPal Tacky?
      Old School Web Design Still Works
      Domain Squatting
      Christmas Fire
      Green Chri$tma$
      QA 101
      Portland Snow
      Get some return on that web traffic
      I think they have a backup...
      I'd love to have that problem
      The [un]importance of statistics
      Don't be a tool of viral marketing
      CAT Scan!
      Follow up to the shoulder injury
      Emails, discussions, blogs, wiki and web content
      Ironic Injury
      On the Santa Monica Pier
      You Designed for Print First
      You let someone else register your domain name
      You figured .biz, .info, .us would work fine
      What's after the Integrated Circuit?
      Intelligent life is out there (but it's bugger all down here on earth)
      Subject Matter Experts Talking Other Subject Matter
      The Totalitarian Regime of Apple
      Oversimplifying how people work
      crowdSPRING
      Creative Services for the New World
      Reverse Anthropomorphism
      The End of Time
      Oil prices and birdsong
      Watching Starship Troopers AGAIN!
      Better Living Through Twitter
      Lessons Learned From Apple
      It's the Brand, Baby
      Business Architecture vs. Web Construction
      On Truth
      You can't build life
      Accidentally Drunk in Portland
      Al Gore the Winner
      Intelligent life is out there (but it’s bugger all down here on earth)
      Aussie Rules Football
      Trip to Nostalgia Land
      I am such an idiot
      Long day of travel
      Miami -- as far from Portland as you can go in the US
      Inverse Peter Principle
      COMPLETE GEEKOUT:MD5s as database keys
      Random Knowledge
      I'm fascinated with modern plumbing
      Leaving Seattle (or why you should keep your ticket close)
      On the Rails
      The Hive

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