Lead gen pages are often misunderstood as standalone, single-page designs. There’s a science behind A/B testing and optimizing lead gen pages, but there’s also a component of creative user experience that should not be overlooked as you drill deeply into what drives your users through your conversion funnel.

Some user behaviors make clear sense, while others can confound your expectations. Overall, however, designing a complete experience around a conversion page is best understood taking these 3 “Ss” into consideration:

1. Somewhere—Users get to conversion pages from somewhere, so go there first!
2. Superficial—Good looks matter. Users respond to a particular aesthetic, so try different designs!
3. So Much More—Users engage deeper through community, so get them connected to you and each other! (FYI a Facebook Fan Page is a great ecosystem & it’s free)

Okay, so few weeks ago I posted about a redesign I’m working on for a lead generation page. That project began with a single page, but preliminary outcomes further demonstrated that we needed to step backwards and design for an entire experience, which is where Somewhere, Superficial, and So Much More came into play.

I’ll explain!

First, our initial A/B test is over:

• Good news—we didn’t break the existing conversion rate.
• Better news—we raised the conversion rate a little bit ;-)
• Great news—we blew up our Facebook Fan page by designing a thoughtful “Thank You”! (*We increased fan acquisition from 3 fans per day to 30+ fans per day)

Second, we’re embarking on Phase 2. of our test plan, so let me share what that plan looks like, because A/B testing can be delivered in a number of ways. Here is the 3-phase method I recommend and that we’re currently using:

Phase 1.) Update, Don’t Break

(This phase is optional, in the project I’m working on we did need to update an older design before we could effectively move forward with testing.)

• Update the design to a higher standard that better expresses the brand
• Don’t break existing conversion (50 v. 50 split test, confirmed by a 5 v. 95 follow-up)
• Phase original design out completely

(Current design in the wild, original design)

Phase 2.) Design Different Concepts

• Create 2 more well-informed aesthetically different designs
• Conduct user testing (DIY-style works well!)
• Release new designs into testing cycle in increments (10 v. 90% to start)

(Potential design to test)

Phase 3.) Optimize One

• Select the “winning” design from the 3 that have been tested
• Optimize the winning design with A/B testing of the smaller elements on page (copy, image, steps, etc)

(Potential design to test)

Third, as we prepare for our next test, which will involve 3 very different designs, here are things we considered about the current experience to make sure we covered “Somewhere, Superficial, and So Much More”:

Traffic Sources—

It’s important to learn about where your users are coming from; this is the first step to take in order to reduce your bounce rate.

Are your users coming to your site after clicking an ad? Are users coming to your site to learn something, or have they accidentally gotten there, is the message seductive, on target?

User Testing—

User testing doesn’t have to be expensive, drawn out, or complicated. Do informal (or formal if you can) user testing to gather feedback on the different designs before you release them into the wild.

Form Friction—

At the heart of every conversion page is a form. Determine what variables can be tested, and what variable make sense to test. Some form friction is good!

Let me share an example, for us, it seems like “phone number” is an easy variable to test out. But, it turns out it’s not! While we might get more conversions by taking that element out of the form, we would also open ourselves up to less qualified leads, which we don’t want and also aren’t equipped to scale for. (*Consider your community support team, if you put their phone number on your conversion page can they handle the incoming calls?)

The Thank You—

Never underestimate the opportunity for a second level of conversion that your “Thank You” messaging provides for you to create and facilitate community and further engagement.

Our Thank You experience in our first round of testing, totally changed our approach to how we were looking at this conversion page.

To wrap it all up, throughout this process of redesigning and optimizing a single conversion page (we’ve planned on about 3 months of testing), we’ve really come to understand that the best and most effective lead gen page designs involve an entire experience that goes well beyond a single page. Suddenly, our little conversion page isn’t so lonely or so little.

Take a look at your app’s conversion page, rally your team, and consider the impact of Somewhere, Superficial, and So Much More.

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Social Assets (Facebook Fan Page, Twitter, YouTube Channel, etc.) are marketing channels that help you get your organization’s message and content out to your audience.

Facebook and Twitter alone won’t get you contributions!

Facebook and Twitter are awesome web 2.0 supplements to your fundraising strategy to:

• Raise awareness
• Connect with your constituents
• Drive traffic to your organization’s website (the site with the big “donate” button)
• Get feedback
• Announce events
• Share “Thank You” & “Congratulations” messaging publicly
• Promote action for your organization’s cause or other causes that your organization supports

These assets mean that your organization no longer has just a website, instead your organization has a distributed web presence (each asset is like its own mini-site).

Social assets also do a number of things for your organization:

• Increase traffic to your organization’s website
• Assist with search engine optimization (how Google finds your website)
• Enable two-way discussions with members and prospects
• Provide a way for you & your users to upload photos, video, etc.

Together each one of those points drives traffic to your website, where you should have a clear, well-designed, and trustworthy donation pathway.

Social Marketing Assets

Twitter:

Twitter is a single-page representation of your organization’s brand on the “real-time” web.

If you open a Twitter account, you’ll want to make sure that you have the time, team, and bandwidth to maintain it, and become a part of the discussion.

Tips on Twitter Page development:

• Make a great Twitter background & avatar like @teachingjobsportal
• Craft a great 140 character bio
• Link back to your organization’s website
• Use an external Twitter management tool
• Leverage #hashtags

Read more: Learn to Twitter, A Primer by @kuhn & @tenaciouscb

Facebook Fan Page:

A Facebook Fan Page is a single-page listing in Facebook that can be used to promote your website.

Tips on Fan Page development:

• Set up your page, and invite your Facebook friends to become fans
• Connect your blog to your Facebook Page (via. “notes” function)
• Post your videos and photos to your Facebook Fan Page
• List your events on your Facebook Fan Page
• Connect your Twitter to your Facebook Fan Page
• Put a Facebook icon on your website that links to your Facebook Fan Page

Read more: Set Up a Fabulous Fan Page in 10 minutes, A Primer by Chrissie Brodigan (Coming soon!)

YouTube:

Set up a YouTube channel for 2 reasons:

• Post your organization’s videos (if they’re awesome)
• Favorite other organizations’ videos (if they’re awesome)

Note: I will post more information shortly on the following topics:

• Donation Pathway, Creating Amazing User Experiences
• CRM 101, Choosing Constituency Relationship Management software
• DMS 101, Choosing Donor Management Software
• Email Marketing 101, Sending emails to your members
• Mobile 101, How Mobile Works for Outreach & Fundraising, Haiti’s story

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A few weeks ago, I wrote up a case study around the perplexing case of designing user experiences for lead generation pages. I’m going to cover the results of our test shortly, but in the meantime I wanted to share part of the conversion funnel that has forever changed the way I’m going to design for sign-ups.

Designers do a lot of work engineering the experience of creating compelling sign-up forms for a variety of reasons (joining communities, requesting more information, age-gating verification, etc.). I’d like to take a closer look at how the Thank You page of the conversion flow can be leveraged more effectively for experiences that aren’t necessarily tied to joining a social network.

That said, social networking sites are full of awesome examples where the Thank You jumpstarts the user’s uptake, if you’re:

• Tumblr, you have your user create her first blog post
• Twitter, you have your user find cool people to follow
• LinkedIn, you connect with your email address book
• Meetup, you have your user join a group

But, let’s say you’re a more traditional (perception = less fun) business like a university, can you do more than guide your user towards more descriptive content about the program or services offered (where bounce rate will be high)? How can you make the most of that transaction? How can you parlay the validation “Thank You” into action that can be both inspiring and measurable?

Thank You messaging is not supposed to feel like the awkward end of a first date “Do I kiss him?” moment.

The user has shared her information with you, triggering a response and follow up campaign. She’s staring at the Thank You page, confirming she submitted her information correctly. This is a powerful moment to turn your Thank You into more than:

• a data verification step
• a reiteration of your brand’s identity and tagline
• a jumping off into content (where the bound rate will be high and not super effective in terms of engagement, relationship development, etc.)

Social marketing channels have helped turn Thank You pages into opportunities for secondary levels of conversion where you can experiment with Facebook Fan Page and/or Twitter acquisition.

This brings me back to the use case at hand, while our lead gen page had a number of design constraints, we found that we had a lot of artistic leeway in creating a Thank You page, so we decided to make the number one goal of the page to excite the user to join our Facebook Fan page.

First, let’s look at the original Thank You page, which did include Facebook & Twitter opportunities:

(Note: I apologize for striking through the brand name, my client is a major university and getting approval to share the brand is a bit of a juggernaut.)

Now, let’s look at the redesign of the Thank You page, which puts primary focus on Facebook Fan acquisition v. promoting both Twitter and Facebook equally:

The design:

• Inspired by the idea of the excitement around an “acceptance letter”
• Focused on the fun of university life and community
• Featured access to current students, faculty, and admissions through Facebook

The results:

• Increased Fan Page uptake from 28 fans per week (a consistent rate for one year) to 300+ fans per week (2+ weeks of ongoing data)
• Increased the quality of interactions on the Fan Page, where we were encouraged to see prospects asking questions that were fielded by students, admissions, and faculty
• Increased interaction with blog content, driving traffic to the parent site and making better use of all editorial collateral

As You Design Conversion Experiences Thank You Messaging is:

• Integral—A necessary part of the conversion experience, it’s no longer just a simple hello/goodbye world
• Instantly Gratifying—If you’re testing a conversion experience the results are ongoing and take time. Adding a secondary conversion exercise like Facebook Fan acquisition is an immediate way to leverage (in real time) effects of your messaging
• Social—Leverages warm fuzzies in innovative ways and gets users connecting with one another
• Sticky—The last thing the user will remember about your brand, and can have the added possibility of taking the conversation even deeper into her personal network

Perhaps, the biggest takeaway from designing a great Thank You experience is that the more you can leverage the Thank You, they more you can get your users to connect with your app and with each other the less money you’ll need to spend on post conversion campaigns, marketing, and more.

Thank you!

*Design by my brilliant partners at jjomedia.com

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* Collaborative document co-founded & curated by Eric Kuhn & Chrissie Brodigan

What is Twitter?

Known as a “micro blog,” Twitter originally was designed to be a social network to help people keep in touch with friends by transmitting instant brief updates.

However, marketers cleverly made Twitter into a new distribution channel for sharing information about a company, a company’s product lines, a company’s newsstream, and customer support interaction.

Updates can be seen on the Twitter website, by instant message, Gmail Messenger, mobile text (SMS) or a desktop client.

Each update can be no longer than a 140 characters.  Twitter allows one to follow quick updates from various other members who have signed up to see an account.  In addition, updates can be sent straight to a phone via SMS.

Cost of Twitter:

Twitter is a free service.  (Standard text message fees apply when using Twitter through SMS on a phone).

Situation Analysis:

In a world where people like to receive information where (location and digital platform) and when (all the time) they want it, it is important that your company deliver their content in all areas of media, which include Twitter.

Terminology:

“Tweet“

• Noun: An individual post on Twitter
• Verb: To post a message to Twitter

“Followers” are people following you.  This means that anyone who is a “Follower” will receive what you tweets.

“Following” are people you are following.  Your company should follow people for two reasons.  First to become part of the community and it shows people that care about what they are saying.  The second reason is when we follow people, they receive a notice that you are following them and will (hopefully) follow us back.

“Lists” are an easy way to cultivate tweets on a specific subject. It helps to create a list on a topic where you follow specific tweeters. To create a new list, click “New List” in the sidebar on the account. Then add other accounts to a list by using the “Lists” drop down on a profile page. Your account can also follow other account’s lists.

“HashTag” (#) These are ways to keep everything being said on Twitter together and easy to search.  www.hashtags.org keeps track of #s.  It says, “Hashtags was designed to accommodate the real-time news community. We provide analytic reports and indexing features to allow users to track what’s happening now. Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets.”

You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

To understand more about how to use hashtags effectively in your marketing, watch “Web 2.0 Expo NY 09: Baratunde Thurston, ‘There’s a #Hashtag for That’”

Growth
The best way to grow an account on Twitter is “organically.”  This means becoming part of the conversation.  People can write to you and you should respond appropriately, even with a quick “thanks for writing.” Every time someone on Twitter writes to us, their message (and then ours) gets broadcasted to all of their friends, which helps the network grow.

Permission Marketing
People will sign up to get your company’s tweets.  Thus we are indirectly marketing to people who actually want to hear what we are saying.  Our “advertising” is not another unwanted spam e-mail, but permission marketing (always better) to people who want to listen.  (Source: Seth Godin)

Customizable Design
Twitter allows users to customize the design of their page.  You have control over the background color/image, text color, name color, link color, sidebar fill color, and sidebar border color. The user’s profile picture can also be changed. The profile picture is a small 48 by 48 pixel icon that’s used to identify the Twitter user – make sure it stands out!

Advertising
There are NO advertisements on the Twitter page.

Cross-Platform Synchronization
Once a Twitter feed is set up, updates can be easily synced with Facebook, a blog and other web sites / social networks.

Access Twitter on mobile devices
(Note: Google these names to find the latest version)

• TwitterMail – allows you to e-mail your tweet (only one way)
• TwitterFon – allows access to Twitter on your iPhone
• Tiny Twitter – allows access to Twitter on your Blackberry (better than Twitterberry)
• TwitterBerry – another tool that allows access to Twitter on your BlackBerry
• TweetDeck – allows access to Twitter on your Desktop

What makes the more popular companies on Twitter successful?

They provide frequent updates and fresh content to share with their followers.  The company allows followers (consumers) a snapshot into what is current and newsworthy with the brands (and in the our case teams and players) they love.

High-Level Twitter Strategy:

• Don’t push the company’s message all the time.
• Focus on conversations by inviting, engaging, cheering and helping users/customers.
• Listen for the relevant conversations and then try to be helpful.
• Speak in your own voice and personality.
• Multiple twitter accounts, usually a corporate account but also individual accounts.
• Be known for being responsive (e.g. Tony from Zappos).

Best examples!  Find, follow & read:

@NBA (or @WNBA)
@MCHammer
@Google
@NewMediaJim
@The_Real_Shaq
@Starbucks
@twittermoms
@ColonelTribune
@JimmyFallon
@JetBlue
@TodayShow
@Baratunde
@Discovery (or @TLC_PR)
@Maddow
@WholeFoods
@JoeTrippi
@Zappos
@RickSanchezCNN
@SavvyAuntie
@KarlRove
@RachelSklar
@CNN

The top 100 people and companies on Twitter: www.twittercounter.com/pages/100

The top rated brands, media, television, celebrities and electronic artists: trackingtwitter.com/brands

First steps to a new account

After setting up your account, making a background, finding a profile picture and following the above examples, add yourself to the appropriate categories in http://wefollow.com.

Then send out a tweet saying you are excited to join twitter and what you will provide someone if they follow you.

Example from @CaseDaily: I’ve gone to the dark side and started tweeting. I’ll be ranting about all the stuff that annoys/amuses me. Hope u’ll follow along

Now make sure to update anywhere from 2 – 10 times a day!

Social Monitoring Apps:

Feed/Email Services

• Collecta
• GigaAlert (limited free service)
• Google Alerts
• PubSub
• Regator
• Swamii (email only, no RSS)
• Topikality
• Trackle (email only, no RSS)
• Woofeed (email or mobile, no RSS; it also provides a publishing service for bloggers)
• Yahoo Pipes
• Yotify (email only)

Destination Services:

• Cascaad
• Ensembli (offers email digests)
• Guzzle.it
• LazyFeed
• My6Sense
• Technorati
• YourVersion

Social Filter:

• Delicious feeds
• Google Trends
• MashLogic
• Searchtastic (“smart Twitter search”)
• Trendistic (“see trends in Twitter”)
• Twazzup (Twitter search)
• Twitscoop (Twitter search)
• Twitter search (e.g. for hashtags)

Market Intelligence (Expensive):

• Filtrbox
• PeopleBrowsr
• Trendrr

Top Tools for Tracking Topics: www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_topic_trackers_updated.php

More Resources

TwitPic allows you to upload pictures to your tweet, twitpic.com

Bit.Ly shortens URLs, but also share and track who clicks on them from your Twitter feed bit.ly/

Tweet Stats tells you when, where and how you are Tweeting, tweetstats.com

ReTweetist tells you who, and what, is being re-tweeted, retweetist.com

Twitter Karma allows you to easily see who is following you and who you are following, dossy.org/twitter/karma/

TwitterFall is best used when Tweeting a live event where you need to monitor what is happening on certain accounts, twitterfall.com/

Tweet Meme tracks and displays re-tweets in a threaded style, www.tweetmeme.com

TwittUrly displays hottest memes in a Digg-like style (where Tweets = Votes), twitturly.com

Twit Scoop shows “what’s hot right now” in the form of a tag cloud and the “Hot trends” list. The tool also shows the list of discussions when hovered over, www.twitscoop.com

SiteVolume compares up to 5 terms buzz over at Twitter (and also Digg, Myspace, Youtube and Flickr) – the results are pulled from Google [site:] search, www.sitevolume.com

ParaTweet allows you to display all tweets about an event on a live screen during a conference or event, ParaTweet.com

Hootsuite allows you to manage multiple accounts so you can easily jump back and forth from your personal account to the brand support account.  Also schedule tweets in advance, hootsuite.com

TwitterFeed allows an RSS feed to be directed to a Twitter account, twitterfeed.com

Splitweet is another multiple twitter account manager that also allows you to monitor your brand mentions and has a mac desktop client, splitweet.com

Tweet2Tweet allows you to put two twitter names in and see the full discussion between the two much like Facebooks’ “wall to wall.” This can help understand a thread of messages, tweet2tweet.appspot.com

CoTweet is built for the company or brand that wants to both serve and engage new prospects. Used by organizations that need to have multiple people responding on the same account, but for now in private beta so you’ll have to request invite, cotweet.com

Yammer and GroupTweet allows you send a tweet to a group of people you designate.

https://www.yammer.com and http://grouptweet.com

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I use both Flash and jQuery when designing interactions for data visualization projects. A great opportunity came along to experiment with ways jQuery could be used to develop an interactive map. Before I go further, I admit that mistakes were made, but no pandas were harmed at any point and our team learned a lot, so it ended up a win-win (for us and the pandas).

The project we started out with was simple, we had a comp and a request to create a flash map that could display some static data. After diving in a little deeper, it became clear that the data source would change on a regular basis, so I recommended that we try to create a small ecosystem with various pieces of the project:

• spreadsheet (our data source)
• CMS (client was using WordPress)
• map of the U.S. (caveat: each U.S. location needed to be able to be displayed in 1 of 3 colors: red, yellow, green for the animation, and ultimately managed as an .SVG)

jQuery as a Substitute for Flash?

We could have accomplished everything with Flash, but we wanted to learn something new and today’s browsers (shame-free plug for Chrome!) speed up DOM manipulations, so Flash isn’t the only or best choice, and there were clear benefits:

• Easy—jQuery is already packaged into WordPress
• Styling—design can be easily restyled by almost any team member
• Integrated—everything lives integrated within the page v. living in layers
• UX first—end users never need to install a plugin
• Recession proof—we didn’t have to buy another Adobe product

Other things we kept in mind:

Smart architecture: All of the data is stored in a simple spreadsheet. jQuery, CSS, and simple variable placement determined by a PHP script takes the data and displays it both properly and in multiple places (click over to teachingjobsportal.com to see it in action).

Developer-free updates: The little ecosystem we created allowed us to use one data source to update both the map and each of the locations’ corresponding pages (51 pages for 50 states & DC) that are stored in WordPress. This keeps things simple, reduces the chance for user error, saves a ton of time because a user doesn’t have to open all the individual files, and doesn’t require involving a developer.

SEO-friendly: jQuery allowed us to represent all of the data in HTML, so Google and other search engines can gobble it up and help us make it more discoverable.

Joel Sutherland: Joel Sutherland of New Media Campaigns wrote an awesome post on building an interactive map with jQuery over Flash in January 2009, and he made me believe we could do it too (albeit on a far simpler scale).

Like I Said, Mistakes Were Made

We got too fancy

At a point while we were executing, we decided to convert the data export from the CSV into XML (this also converted the .SVG and made it dynamic). While XML was easier to work with on the developer-side, it added steps and complexities to the process

Additionally, the map’s point-by-point coordinates, complex outlines (U.S. states are not nicely designed with 90 degree angles), and dynamic states required that we use software to both build the map and manage the images in an alternate library, enter ImageMagick. Simple enough, but the problem using ImageMagick to manage the library of the various U.S. state colors we also introduced “Imagick” a truly nasty PHP extension into the mix, which caused a new set of issues.

We descended into dependency hell

Installing PHP extensions can be tough, and Imagick is a huge pain in the a$$. During installation, it requires that you be prepared to manage a large set of spaghetti-like dependencies. There’s also a small bug that we ran into, which prevented compiling, so our Debian-friendly team found ourselves in Unix-land attempting to execute YUM (which usually solves the problem of “dependency hell”), and ultimately lost the battle and had to compile ImageMagick manually (both annoying and a time-suck).

We created simple, but stubborn architecture

Our little ecosystem (the one I’ve touted as mostly simple) is quiet stubborn and set in her ways. We can make updates to the data anytime, but because we didn’t build the data source as a database, we cannot easily add new fields without having to update everything.

We overlooked Hawaii & Alaska

I threw this one in for fun, but whoa! Big oversight! We accidentally forgot to include HI and Alaska and essentially redesigned the U.S. without them.

So, to wrap it all up . . .

jQuery was a great substitute to Flash for us, making TeachingJobsPortal’s map. Furthermore, the execution was mostly simple, our client can control the map and its related pages’ content without having to hire a developer. (*I also didn’t have to learn Flash on the fly)

Though our animation designs are ongoing, we’ve created a new and much nicer hover state, we really like the way that the gauge works (it’s connected to the image library and as the states change color it automatically updates as well), and, as planned, the map smoothly changes colors when the data source is updated.

We’re considering ways we can eliminate using ImageMagick for the library, because we want to use the map on another project and lighten up the load on the CMS, so I’d love your thoughts on that as well as any other ideas you have on jQuery v. Flash!

I owe a lot to Joel Sutherland for sharing his team’s work, so we could learn from it, and for releasing a fantastic jQuery plug-in that I encourage you to use if you ever create zoomable interactive maps.

*Production by my brilliant partners at jjomedia.com

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