Conversion Rate Optimization Services Critical to Business Website Success

Sales Conversion rate optimization is the most critical aspect of any business website marketing strategy, or at least it should be. Conversion Rate Optimization services will transform your website into a funnel delivering the highest percentage of website traffic that arrives on any landing page of your website to the desired destination page. In most cases a thank you page after they have completed a sale, lead generation or subscription of you're a companies products or services is the desired visitor destination page.
Vast majorities of the business websites online today allow the fate of their online survival to be determined by their website designer or marketing team's guess work. Conversion rate optimization will remove any assumptions and will scientifically guarantee the highest percentage of visitors will seamlessly be delivered through a website from the landing page right through to their end goal, thus creating a conversion. Thanks to conversion rate optimization services the days of leaving the success of a business up to chance or blind luck are behind us.
The conversion optimization process is achieved by allowing previous website visitors to reveal to us how to design the landing pages of a website based on their actions. Basically, every decision and action that is performed by all website visitors is documented and then analyzed in order to formulate the optimal path from the landing page to the sales thank you page.
The means in which a random potential customer interacts with a website is the most valuable website marketing tool available. Based on the results of vigorous combinations of testing we are able to decipher each individual ingredient essential for creating the recipe for the highest conversion rate attainable.
The data collected from the behavior of visitors to a website is the key to ensuring that a website is increasingly successful and lives up to its full potential. Landing page conversion rate optimization will ensure a website is free of leeks where any website visitors may prematurely slip through a crack and exit the website before reaching their final goal, a conversion.
Every single aspect of a website from beginning to end should be tested, tested some more and then tested once again. You will determine the exact location for product images that encourage the most sales. You will learn the precise headlines or descriptions that are most effective to encourage a potential customer to buy your product or enlist in your services. Your link navigation structure will subliminally and effortlessly usher website users through the sales funnel and along the path towards their goal. Coupon variations, monthly promotions, store specials all can be executed with confidence knowing you have built the advertisement based on proven behavioral facts.
Any online business owner must still utilize alternative website marketing services to help drive traffic to their website. There are many different forms of online marketing that can deliver website visitors, just a few of those options include.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)
Social Media Optimization (SMO)
The various forms of marketing used to attain visitors will vary based on each businesses unique characteristics and needs. Whatever type or size of company and however visitors are delivered to a website, conversion rate optimization services will ensure that every single visitor that arrives on a landing page of a website will have the highest chance possible of completing their goal and transforming from visitor to customer.
To summarize conversion rate optimization services should be a mandatory requirement for any business wishing to attain increasing levels of success and ensure the online survival for their company. Landing page conversion rate optimization can provide you with peace of mind knowing that you are not acting on a hunch or playing a guessing game but are applying proven scientific procedures that create the optimal outcome

Regulator acts on Lehman products

The order from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) comes after an investigation into the sale of the so-called structured products.
About 5,600 people in the UK are thought to have lost about £107m
The value of the complex policies depended on a now worthless guarantee from Lehman Brothers.
The policies, typically sold via independent financial advisors, claimed to be "guaranteed" or "100% secure".
But the FSA said these were often mis-sold.
"The FSA found significant advice failings on Lehman-backed products in most of the financial advice firms sampled, as well as serious deficiencies in the marketing literature provided by a number of the plan managers selling these products," the regulator said in a statement.
Enforcement action
Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, one of the pivotal events in the international banking crisis.
WHAT ARE STRUCTURED PRODUCTS?
They are complicated investment policies.
They were typically sold to members of the public by financial advisors
They last for a set period of time eg five years.
They usually have two elements.
The first is a bond from a bank, which is supposed to protect the original amount invested.
This may also pay interest, and may repay all or some of the original capital when the policy matures.
The second part is a derivative - a bet on a financial market - which is supposed to generate a return for the investor when the policy matures.
Investors usually receive only part of any increase in the value of the derivative which occurs during the term of the investment.
The regulator has been investigating the problem of the structured products for several months and three of the four firms that devised the policies have already declared themselves insolvent in the past month.
This has paved the way for 4,000 or so customers who bought the Lehman-backed policies to make claims for compensation under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
The FSA said it was writing to all the remaining people who bought the investments, encouraging them to complain if they think they were misled or did not receive proper advice.
The firms that sold the policies in question have been told how the regulator expects them to deal with such complaints.
Some of them have already been scrutinised and have been told to be proactive and review the way they sold the investments, paying compensation "where appropriate".
Three of these financial advice firms are now being investigated under the FSA's enforcement powers.
Poor advice
About 570 financial advice firms, ranging from one-man independent advisors to big High Street banks, have been found to have sold the policies.
In the FSA's view, their misdemeanours went further than simply relying on the misleading marketing literature provided by the plan managers.
It found instances where advisors suggested that investors put all their money into the policies, or where they were not asked if they were happy with the level of risk involved.
About 95% of the people who bought the investments did so as a result of being given advice rather than buying the investments directly from the plan managers.
"This is a hugely complex area given the number of different firms involved, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution for these investors," said Dan Waters, an FSA director.
"However, given the failings we have come across in the marketing and selling of these products, we are setting out a package of robust measures to help those who have lost money."

The proportion of income put aside as savings has remained relatively static despite the changing economic picture in the UK, a survey has found.

People have put away about 6% of their take-home income this year - a similar level to 2005, according to National Savings and Investments (NS&I).
It said uncertainty in the downturn and low interest rates failed to change people's habits with savings accounts.
Bank of England statistics showed a trend of people paying off debts.
Emergency fund
The NS&I findings, part of its Savings Survey, found that regular savers tended to save twice the average saver's proportion of their take-home income.
There has been a shift in the motivation for savings, according to the survey.
It said that the most common savings objective was now to set money aside for an emergency, ahead of saving for retirement or for holidays and special occasions.
There has been a general trend of people paying off debts, rather than saving or spending more in the downturn.
Bank of England figures published earlier in the week showed that borrowing on credit cards rose by £134m in October compared with September, but was more than offset by the record fall of £713m in other forms of consumer credit such as bank loans, loans for cars and hire purchase agreements

Monsanto Reconfirms 2010 Guidance and 2012 Financial Commitments on Strength of Larger Expected Launches for Blockbuster Products

The positive mix lift expected as farmers choose to upgrade to next-generation technologies allows Monsanto Company (NYSE: MON) to reconfirm its commitment to double its 2007 gross profit in 2012, Monsanto President and CEO Hugh Grant will tell investors today. Speaking at the company's biennial investor day, Grant will indicate that accelerated launches for its Genuity™ SmartStax™ corn and Genuity™ Roundup Ready 2 Yield® soybean products, along with accelerated trait penetration in Latin America, create the opportunity and set the priorities as the company's management outlines the operational plans to meet its 2012 financial and commercial targets.
Monsanto's management team will also indicate the company remains on track to meet its fiscal-year 2010 guidance targets.
"Our growth strategy from 2010 through 2012 boils down to three operational imperatives: the conversion to Genuity SmartStax in U.S. corn, the farmer choice of upgrading to the Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield platform in U.S. soybeans, and the opportunity as Latin America increases its technology adoption," said Grant. "We are positioned as an agricultural technology company that can consistently deliver innovation on farm every year, and our R&D prowess makes it possible for us to deliver the positive mix lift across our product offerings. This creates real value for farmer customers that will in turn strengthen their businesses."
As part of the event, Grant and Monsanto's executive team will outline the operational plans and expectations for these three key factors. Specifically, the company expects:
A larger-than-expected launch of Genuity SmartStax, with initial commercial opportunity of more than 4 million acres in 2010, an increase over the previously announced 3 million to 4 million acre range. Genuity SmartStax supply is expected to be unconstrained by 2012, enabling the company to meet market demand a year earlier than originally expected. As part of the accelerated adoption of Genuity SmartStax, the company unveiled a new portfolio of product upgrades for key U.S. corn segments, making it the only company in the industry offering three differentiated corn traits with reduced-refuge options. In addition to Genuity SmartStax, the company offers Genuity™ VT Double PRO™ traits package, the first-of-its-kind double-stack corn offering a reduced refuge of 5 percent in the corn belt and Genuity™ VT Triple PRO™, the only triple-stack with reduced refuge of 20 percent available in the South. Monsanto expects that approximately 2 million acres of Genuity VT Triple PRO will be available in 2010. Additionally, the company announced its intention to work with collaborator Dow AgroSciences LLC to submit the regulatory package by the end of the 2009 calendar year to support a 5 percent Refuge-in-a-Bag (RIB) option for Genuity SmartStax.
A more rapid conversion to the Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield® platform. The company unveiled early-season yield-trial data that indicates Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield is consistently delivering a step-change yield improvement over competitive varieties. With a three-year rolling average yield benefit of more than 7 percent across almost 25,000 comparisons, Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield has delivered even stronger yield benefits in the largest soybean-growing states. The company increased its launch-year expectation for 2010 to 8 million to 10 million acres, compared with its previous projection of 7 million to 8 million acres.
The ascension of the Latin American corn market as Argentina and Brazil are gaining momentum in the adoption of biotech traits. Both Argentina and Brazil have granted breakthrough approvals for core corn traits and are on the front-edge of adoption curves for these traits. In the last few months, Brazilian regulatory authority CTNBio granted approval for Monsanto's second-generation corn-borer trait product and the first simple corn stack product, allowing for potential availability in 2011, a year earlier than originally planned.
"If the last few years have been about demonstrating the value of our stacked trait platform, the task of the next two years is about expanding the opportunity for growers to experience that platform," Grant said. "That means we have to offer a technology touch to every farmer, and today we have in our toolkit more differentiated tools to do that than ever before."
Beyond 2012: The Industry's Best R&D Pipeline
Beyond 2012, Monsanto's opportunity reflects its industry-leading R&D pipeline. Chief Technology Officer Robb Fraley and senior technology leaders will unveil a number of significant advances in the company's R&D pipeline, highlighting the following:
After an early assessment of the company's R&D results for 2009, the company expects nine projects in the biotechnology pipeline to advance phases when it reports its R&D results in January 2010. These early assessments do not yet include evaluations of the company's yield-and-stress pipeline, yet they would be close to matching Monsanto's record of 10 phase advancements in a single year.
Monsanto has confirmed the value of its biotechnology pipeline, and by 2020 expects it will create more than $4 billion in gross sales at the farmgate - beyond the launches of Genuity SmartStax and Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield. The company also unveiled valuations for its germplasm pipeline, where it expects investments in breeding and breeding technology to create more than $3.5 billion in 2020 gross sales at the farmgate. Additionally, the company unveiled the industry's first disease-focused breeding platform for germplasm.
Taken together, the company estimates its R&D pipeline can deliver more than $8 billion in gross sales at the farmgate through biotechnology and breeding in 2020, with upside opportunity through product and geographic expansions.

John Bercow, the new Commons Speaker, has warned MPs

As we covered in an earlier post, there is growing disgust at the UK Parliamentary system with rumours of unrest amongst MPs who stand to have their expenses system curtailed. John Bercow, the new Commons Speaker, has warned MPs that it would be a "catastrophic mistake" to water down the recommendations from Sir Christopher Kelly at a time when the UK public is looking for closure on the issue rather than more controversy.Sir Ian Kennedy, the chairman of the independent Parliamentary standards authority, has also come under attack as he is under pressure from MPs to dismiss many of the proposals from Sir Christopher Kelly. Indeed, weekend press comment suggested that Sir Ian Kennedy was actually on the brink of resigning his role due to the extreme pressure on his public and his private life. It seems that some MPs are prepared to do whatever it takes to retain their expenses system and increase their income.While there is no legal obligation for the UK government or the Parliamentary authorities to take on board any of Sir Christopher Kelly's suggestions, there is a feeling that if they are tampered with any further there will be a serious backlash against the likes of Labour and the Conservative party at the next general election. As we covered in an earlier post, there is growing disgust at the UK Parliamentary system with rumours of unrest amongst MPs who stand to have their expenses system curtailed. John Bercow, the new Commons Speaker, has warned MPs that it would be a "catastrophic mistake" to water down the recommendations from Sir Christopher Kelly at a time when the UK public is looking for closure on the issue rather than more controversy.Sir Ian Kennedy, the chairman of the independent Parliamentary standards authority, has also come under attack as he is under pressure from MPs to dismiss many of the proposals from Sir Christopher Kelly. Indeed, weekend press comment suggested that Sir Ian Kennedy was actually on the brink of resigning his role due to the extreme pressure on his public and his private life. It seems that some MPs are prepared to do whatever it takes to retain their expenses system and increase their income.While there is no legal obligation for the UK government or the Parliamentary authorities to take on board any of Sir Christopher Kelly's suggestions, there is a feeling that if they are tampered with any further there will be a serious backlash against the likes of Labour and the Conservative party at the next general election.

Tobin tax back on the agenda

In a rather surprising development the infamous "Tobin tax", which Gordon Brown has been pushing so heavily over the last few days is gaining support in the city of London. Well-known, and often controversial, financier Terry Smith, Sir Philip Hampton (the chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland) and the new Lord Mayor of London are said to be in favour of a "contract with society".As we have mentioned on numerous occasions, the Tobin tax is levied on the banking system, the proceeds from which will be reinvested into more needy areas of the worldwide economy reducing poverty and the effect of other social issues. Despite the fact that the US government, and other leading governments around the world, have effectively killed the issue dead on a worldwide basis, it looks as though the UK government is looking to push ahead in the UK. But is this really viable?More and more people believe this is nothing but a publicity stunt by the UK government as it looks to "be seen doing the right thing" with regards to the UK population. While there are now three prominent figures potentially supporting issue, there are many more prominent figures that are dead set against the introduction of the Tobin tax.

Murder, rape charges pending in Shaniya Davis case

Murder and rape charges will be filed against a North Carolina man in the death of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis, police said Thursday.
Mario Andrette McNeill had already been charged with kidnapping the Fayetteville, North Carolina, girl. She was reported missing last week, and her body was found Monday beside a road near Sanford, about 30 miles northwest of Fayetteville.
Preliminary autopsy results indicate the child was asphyxiated, Fayetteville Police Chief Tom Bergamine told reporters Thursday, but testing is still being completed and a final report has not been issued.
McNeill will be charged with first-degree murder and rape of a child, Bergamine said. The new arrest warrants were being served Thursday night.
The girl's mother, Antoinette Nicole Davis, has been charged with human trafficking and other offenses. Police have said they believe Davis was prostituting the child.
According to police, surveillance video taken November 10 from a hotel in Sanford, North Carolina, shows Shaniya in the company of McNeill.
Authorities had said Wednesday they would need to determine where Shaniya was killed before filing additional charges. Fayetteville is in Cumberland County, while Sanford is in Lee County. Bergamine said Thursday jurisdiction in the case would remain in Cumberland County. "We started it from the beginning and wanted to finish it out," he said.
riminal Investigations
Police still are not sure exactly where Shaniya was killed, Bergamine said. Police earlier had said they believe the child was alive when she left the hotel.
"Current charges on Ms. Davis are standing as they are right now," Bergamine said. But he told reporters the investigation was ongoing.
He and other officers spoke about the emotional toll the investigation has taken on them. Grief counseling has been under way for officers at the department, he said.
"It's been a tough case," said Fayetteville Police Capt. Charles Kimball, the toughest in his 14 years, he said. "Our mission was to find Shaniya and we did it."
"This case here has reached out and touched all of us," Bergamine said.
Shaniya's father, Bradley Lockhart, made a tearful appeal before reporters Tuesday afternoon, asking that "everybody makes it a point not to ignore, to look past a situation where a person, a child, or anybody might be in danger ... so that we don't have another tragedy like Shaniya."
The girl went to her mother's last month, he said Murder and rape charges will be filed against a North Carolina man in the death of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis, police said Thursday.
Mario Andrette McNeill had already been charged with kidnapping the Fayetteville, North Carolina, girl. She was reported missing last week, and her body was found Monday beside a road near Sanford, about 30 miles northwest of Fayetteville.
Preliminary autopsy results indicate the child was asphyxiated, Fayetteville Police Chief Tom Bergamine told reporters Thursday, but testing is still being completed and a final report has not been issued.
McNeill will be charged with first-degree murder and rape of a child, Bergamine said. The new arrest warrants were being served Thursday night.
The girl's mother, Antoinette Nicole Davis, has been charged with human trafficking and other offenses. Police have said they believe Davis was prostituting the child.
According to police, surveillance video taken November 10 from a hotel in Sanford, North Carolina, shows Shaniya in the company of McNeill.
Authorities had said Wednesday they would need to determine where Shaniya was killed before filing additional charges. Fayetteville is in Cumberland County, while Sanford is in Lee County. Bergamine said Thursday jurisdiction in the case would remain in Cumberland County. "We started it from the beginning and wanted to finish it out," he said.
riminal Investigations
Police still are not sure exactly where Shaniya was killed, Bergamine said. Police earlier had said they believe the child was alive when she left the hotel.
"Current charges on Ms. Davis are standing as they are right now," Bergamine said. But he told reporters the investigation was ongoing.
He and other officers spoke about the emotional toll the investigation has taken on them. Grief counseling has been under way for officers at the department, he said.
"It's been a tough case," said Fayetteville Police Capt. Charles Kimball, the toughest in his 14 years, he said. "Our mission was to find Shaniya and we did it."
"This case here has reached out and touched all of us," Bergamine said.
Shaniya's father, Bradley Lockhart, made a tearful appeal before reporters Tuesday afternoon, asking that "everybody makes it a point not to ignore, to look past a situation where a person, a child, or anybody might be in danger ... so that we don't have another tragedy like Shaniya."
The girl went to her mother's last month, he said