John Klaphake,
Online Marketing Specialist and Internet Strategist

I’ve developed websites since 1997. In that time I’ve seen huge changes in the expectations of website owners. In the early days just having a website was enough in itself, it didn’t matter whether it performed or not.

Now, businesses view the Internet as a new and distinct channel in which they can market and interact with their customers and prospects. It is highly competitive, and for some its the only way in which they can conduct business and engage with their markets. A website must now earn its keep.

There are two major challenges that businesses face with the Internet:

1. How to thrive using a highly competitive medium
2. How to successfully engage with customers, clients, prospects and visitors in this environment.

I have a keen interest in online marketing, not just in generating traffic, but in understanding how online conversion takes place. What’s the point in having lots of traffic if there is no conversion? Increasing the generation of leads and sales in most cases requires: Traffic and Conversion.

Generating traffic is about understanding the channel you’re marketing to and is normally fairly straight forward. Converting traffic requires more effort. Many believe the answer to this lies in usability – making the site easy to use. But this is only part of the answer. To really understand conversion we need to realise that conversion does not take place on a webpage, but takes place in the mind of the visitor.

In 2010 I became Certified by examination in Online Testing, Email Marketing and Landing Page Optimisation by Marketing Experiments*.

* Marketing Experiments is based in Florida in the United States and was the first internet based research lab to conduct experiments in optimizing sales and marketing processes. It has developed multiple optimization indices and formulas, and has forged research partnerships with companies such as The New York Times, TheStreet.com and Johnson and Johnson.