An analysis of the Scottrade conversion path and why they get two thumbs up from Liberty Interactive Marketing.

Their process goes something like this:
1. Searched “scottrade” in Google, they are running PPC for their branded term. Smart. Also, they show up #1 for their own company term. They’ve been awarded sitelinks from Google, those are the links below their listing in the organic – login, branch office locator, etc.

2. Login and open a new account are NOT hard to find! Thank you.

3. One criticism is when you hit “open an account” the form is a popup instead of just opening in a new window or taking you off the page.  Also, there are no question mark links (?) to help you select what type of account you want.  This is where I stopped, but the smart thing is that Scottrade asked for just some brief information about me prior to getting into the details of the account preferences and selection.  Why is this smart? Because this is a friction point. I stopped because I didn’t have the answer.  The next day I received a phone call from Joel, the Branch Manager hoping to help me out with completing my account setup.  I figured out the answer so I didn’t need to call him back.  Two days later I still hadn’t completed my account set up, but in the mail I received a PERSONALIZED booklet from Scottrade offering an offline way to complete my account setup! Wow, A) thanks for reminding me and B) thanks for helping me out if I didn’t feel comfortable completing it online.

4. The next week I finally completed my account setup online, what can I say I was busy.  The only portion I was unable to complete was linking my bank account.  Friction point.  Low and behold, I received another phone call from Joel, the Branch Manager (not a different person, the same person!!).  His voicemail offered to provide me with options for helping me set up my account for funding and  when I didn’t return his call, I received a paritally filled out form so help me along the process WITH A SELF-ADDRESSED POSTAGE APPLIED ENVELOPE! Thank you. It’s like my soccer coach always said “You can’t have control of the ball if you just stand around waiting for it to come to you, you must go to the ball to make things happen.”  Scottrade was bringing the proverbial “soccer ball” to them and it worked.

Why do I feel good about this persistence aka customer service? Because Scottrade found the right mix of online and offlline initiatives. They didn’t bug me until I was blue in the face and turned off from the process.  Their methodology and flow was more like reading my mind because they were aware of the friction points within their conversion process.

How you can get there?
1. Start with your Web site, ask friends, family, strangers to use your site and ask them to complete your desired goal for them, if you are serious about investing in your online customer experience, contact us or  Red Flag Consulting

2. Determine friction points throughout your conversion funnel/process, are they something that can be fixed online or do they require offline operations/interference to get customers to the end goal? Determine solutions, time and effort. Rethink your process if necessary, just because it isn’t broken doesn’t mean it can’t be improved! Raising conversions even .5% can have a serious impact on business.

3. Talk to your customers, listen to your customers, find out what went wrong, what worked, etc. Make changes and test!

4. Keep testing, if you find that your conversion process is half online and half offline find the right mix of phone calls, emails, direct mail.  You’re bound to tick some people off but at least you will learn if you are willing to listen.

4. Implement online marketing strategies, test landing pages and your process from all lead sources.

5. Listen, learn, test, repeat.

6. Feel comfortable with not being able to please everyone; please the majority, the right majority and you will remain on the right track.

Congrats to Scottrade for an excellent example of how to get customers through your conversion funnel, understanding that there were friction points along the way and knowing how to solve those to get customers to complete their desired task, as well as yours.

This is just a quick post in response to Rand Fishkin’s post about the difference in SEO and PPC spending by companies which can be found here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-disconnect-in-ppc-vs-seo-spending

Basically, Rand finds that companies spend only a fraction of the amount on SEO as they do on PPC.  Specifically:

SEO: $1.3 billion (11%)
- Source: SEMPO data via Massimo Burgio, SMX Madrid 2008

Not surprisingly, search advertising should continue to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013.
- Source: C|Net News, June 30, 2008

Now, there are a lot of good comments on this post talking about how the major reason companies spend this inordinate amount of money on PPC is because it is immediate, measurable, and controllable.  These are all things that HiPPOs like.  One of the inherent problems with SEO is that it requires companies to have patience in seeing the results.  All SEO projects take at least three months of commitment, with the majority requiring six months or longer.

While this is all well and good, I think one of the bigger issues with PPC vs SEO spending is the fact that they are targeting two different types of searchers.  I know that when I am in consumer mode, I will specifically look at the PPC ads, because I know they are offering me something I might want to buy.  More often than not, I consider organic listings to be information oriented, which isn’t a bad thing!  It just means that targeting PPC means you are targeting people who are in ‘buy mode’.  SEO is more of a presence oriented machine that will ultimately increase sales through credibility and relevance.  This is proven by a recent study that showed PPC converts 50% more than organic.

A major problem in the future, I think, will be that SEO will become the base standard of good operating companies and that their relevancy in the organic listings will force purely commercial companies out of the top rankings.  Instead of “God made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal”, you might say “Tim Berners-Lee made websites, but PPC made them equal”.