MarketingSherpa Blog

First, the good news: 46% of the 4,203 MarketingSherpa readers who answered our survey this September say their landing page conversions are up. Another 14% say conversions are holding steady, despite increased Web clutter and competition. (See link below for more study information.)

Bravo, guys! You may consider yourselves the elite.

Now here’s a stark list of the Top 10 Worst Landing Page Stats I never wanted to see in print:

#1. 48% – Can’t do any A/B testing at all
#2. 44% – Can’t measure landing page test results properly
#3. 42% – Ask more questions than needed on registration forms
#4. 40% – Only test landing pages at launch and then leave forever
#5. 35% – Send foreign-language ad clicks to English landing pages
#6. 35% – Use a single landing page for many traffic sources
#7. 25% – Don’t reflect big offline promos on their homepage
#8. 24% – Give affiliates zero landing page content or aid
#9. 21% – Require landing pages to match regular site layout 100%
#10. 16% – Don’t share landing page test results with their agency

Plus, here’s a bonus tremendously bad stat:

18% of surveyed marketers told Sherpa, “No one [in the department] knows our landing page results.”

These marketers are neither nobodies nor newbies. They work for often well-known brands, including B-to-B, ecommerce and consumer advertising. They have significant online budgets. And, typically their brands have seven or more landing pages live for campaigns at any one time.

Nearly all of them –- yes, including that 18% whose entire departments had no idea how their landing pages were doing — invest significantly in pay-per-click search marketing.

I don’t know. I feel like we should call for a moment of silence or something. Let us bow our heads for all that wasted budget, wasted clicks, wasted potential conversions.

I was brought up in New England where you save bits of string too short to be tied. Because waste not, want not … you know?

Squandering hard-won traffic on a non-tested, non-measured, non-optimized landing page seems to me to be almost an immoral thing.

However, I know it’s not your fault. Perhaps you are badly understaffed. Or IT can’t provide the analytics or Web support you need. Or maybe your CEO doesn’t believe in testing.

Whatever the reason, good luck in resolving things. I would dearly love to see all of these bad stats turn into thin little shadows of their former selves.

Related link:
The second edition of MarketingSherpa’s Landing Page Handbook, which contains the stats mentioned above, plus instructions on how to optimize landing pages for up to 40% conversion improvement is now available at:
http://www.sherpastore.com/RevisedLandingPageHB.html

Last month, I was honored to be invited by my alma mater, Connecticut College, to speak on a panel about Internet-related careers.

If you have a young adult in your family or circle, they may find this advice useful, too.

-> Jobs for Math Lovers

Heavens! Internet marketing departments want you, need you, yearn for you. According to new MarketingSherpa data, search marketing campaign analysts are 63% harder to hire than other skilled employees.

Plus, just look at how many jobs are posted on the boards at the Web Analytics Association. Acres of opportunity and for great companies, too. If you enjoy analyzing the reasons behind stats, you’re in clover.

Best link:
http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/jobs/search.asp

-> Jobs for Good Writers

Loads of opportunity here, too. If you enjoy figuring out what makes other people tick (perhaps you studied psychology or acting) and you can write concisely, weighing every word, definitely consider a copywriting career.

MarketingSherpa research indicates copy testing is one of the top three most powerful ways to improve results for email marketing, search marketing and Web-based campaigns. The Internet may be powered by technology, but marketing success is still largely powered by words.

However, if you’re more of a super-intelligent research nut with a little ADD (you like to figure out new things, explain them to other people and then move on to the next topic), you should consider becoming a white paper specialist. Most business technology and many business services companies publish a steady stream of new white papers all year long to educate the marketplace, impress via thought leadership and garner business leads.

A typical white paper is four to seven pages long (no big deal for the right researcher/writer, but daunting for the poor B-to-B marketer who has no time.) You can freelance or work full time.

Lastly, if you dreamed of being a journalist who writes brilliant articles but worries the print magazine and newspaper world is on the wane, never fear. Nearly every company publishes an email newsletter (and often a blog) these days, and they all need writers and editors. Business is booming.

Top two links for online writing careers:

Media Bistro – for copywriters and email newsletter writers:
http://www.mediabistro.com

Journalism Jobs – for white paper and online journalism jobs:
http://www.journalismjobs.com

-> Jobs for Marketing Managers

Were you the middle child or, perhaps, an instinctive diplomat between warring parties? Are you highly organized and able to keep a dozen plates spinning in the air at once? Those skills put together can equal the perfect talent for Internet marketing management.

You’ll spend half your time handling internal politics between the marketing department and everyone else (especially IT, sales, legal and the CFO.) The rest of the time you’ll be in a whirlwind of activity, coordinating the countless details to launch campaigns. Everything, of course, on Internet time! (I hope you like to caffeinate.)

Best link for marketing management jobs (online and off):
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/career_jobs.html

… and, finally, two key tips:

Tip #1. Get your Web face in order

As hopefully your college career counselor has warned you, Internet marketing-related employers will expect you to have a Web presence of your own. Perhaps it’s a blog, a MySpace account, an expanded Facebook profile or even some YouTube videos.

The key is that you’ve already acted visibly on your interest in the field.

Be aware, however, that those same employers will absolutely review your Web presence when they make a decision about hiring (or even interviewing) you. If you have wild photos from the last beer blast posted there, or anything else that might be considered improper for a professional, consider deleting that stuff pronto.

Tip #2. Use online networking

The real world is not a perfect meritocracy. Personal connections matter, especially when you are starting your career and don’t have much of a proven track record. If you know someone who knows someone, it gets your foot in the door.

Even if your parents or older siblings may not be in the field of your choice, you never know who their connections may know. Best advice — ask them to join a free professional networking site, such as LinkedIn, as soon as possible and work it for you. That whole Kevin Bacon factor can be incredibly powerful.

Also, search sites like LinkedIn and Facebook using your college name — are there any alumni in the companies where you want to work? For example, Google Vice President Tim Armstrong, who was also on the panel, said he has hired plenty of fellow alums from our college. My company, MarketingSherpa, is also always happy to consider a Conn College alum for our own constantly-growing list of openings.

The funny thing is, very few alumni ever reach out to either of us. It’s an underused network.

So go for it and good luck!

Search pay per click (PPC) URLs are fairly short because of the nature of the beast. You are not given much room to type in a long URL.

So, the hot search PPC testing tactic is specific wording and capitalizations. Example: Should your text ad say www.ClickHere.com, or will you get better response with www.ClickHERE.com, or perhaps www.ClickHereFREE.com?

As all experienced search marketers know, organic search results get the lion’s share of traffic instead of PPC ads.

Naturally, your first concern must be to make sure your site or blog gets high organic rankings for critical keywords in your marketplace. For seven years now, in fact, when marketers debated SEO-tactics, practically all anyone talked about was rankings, rankings, rankings.

But once you get high rankings, what’s next?

Are you even tracking your click rate for those SEO ranks?

And, once you’ve measured your organic click rates, are you running any tests to optimize them? Most marketers aren’t.

I think that’s partly because marketers perceive SEO-driven traffic as “free” so why invest in it? Also, testing SEO listings involves some risk; if you tweak inexpertly, you might damage your ranking. And, lastly, testing SEO listings often means involving your IT and Web departments, which means get in line and take a number.

If you are one of the super-lucky marketers who can measure and run tests to optimize SEO-driven traffic, however, the payoff could be enormous. Just look at how much traffic you get from organic search today and do the math — how much more would you get if your tests raised clicks 50%?

A 50% lift in organic traffic sounds insane, doesn’t it? But it’s based in new lab tests. Here’s how:

MarketingSherpa ran lab tests this year for our newest Search Marketing Benchmark Guide asking real-life business professionals to conduct Google searches. Among other results, we discovered that executives are 250% (yes 250%!) more likely to click on an organic listing if it:

(a) had a fairly short URL and
(b) appeared directly below a listing with a long URL.

So, in SEO, keeping your URLs as short as possible can be an enormous competitive advantage.

Why not search for your company or brand online right now by a super-competitive keyword? Look at how long your organic listing URLs are compared to the URLs of your competitors on the page. How does your URL stack up?

If your company is considering a new microsite, blog, Web content management system or revamped site for SEO purposes in 2008, please add to your specs list: “Must make short page URLs.” I bet you it’s a factor your IT department won’t think of. Marketing has to bring this type of knowledge to the meeting.

Want documentation? Here’s a free PDF link to the Search Benchmark Guide’s Executive Summary, which includes color heatmaps of the lab tests I just mentioned:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/exs/Search08Excerpt.pdf

A single theme emerged from last week’s MarketingSherpa B-to-B Summit in Boston — marketing rather desperately needs their own dedicated IT personnel.

Few people actually said it out loud. But, having heard the biggest marketing challenge of 29 speakers and 233 delegates, I can tell you it nearly all boiled down to adequate IT support.

I am NOT knocking your IT department as it stands now.

IT are very intelligent. They work very hard and could probably use more budget and staff of their own just to get their main jobs done. We all support IT, because where would we be without them?

Marketing used to be more creatively focused — strategizing a big campaign, approving graphic design, coming up with snappy headlines, selecting media buys. …

That’s changed profoundly in the past decade, especially for lead generation and other direct response marketers.

Now, we manage campaigns across far more channels — offline plus search, email, social media, etc. We are expected to measure each channel’s performance with far more detailed data than ever before or risk losing our jobs. And, we are expected to nurture, educate and quantify prospects until they’re on the cusp of conversion (a job that sales used to do).

All of that requires loads more technology: campaign management software, prospect database, CRM and SFA software, email service provider technology, blogging and podcasting tech, content management software, search marketing software, telemarketing management software, PURL systems … plus, of course, integration systems to tie it all together.

Who knew a marketing Summit could turn into a software convention?

The fact is, many marketers are more technology-managers than anything else. But they don’t themselves have the time or ability to manage all these complex software systems. Nor should they. Marketing and IT tend to have very different brains.

Unfortunately at most companies, marketing has to “get in line” with every other department and wait their turn for IT help. Without a dedicated IT staffer to serve marketing needs first and foremost, the entire marketing department can quite easily become hamstrung. (For many reasons, this is often especially true in technology companies; which is a bit ironic.)

I started asking folks at the Summit how they handled the IT problem. Most shook their heads. One, however, told me he had heard of a company where an IT staffer had been permanently assigned to report to marketing.

Marketers gasped all around us. Really? Wow. It sounded an awful lot like Camelot.

When you think about it, it’s not an impossible thing. If you can get your CTO on board by agreeing to pay for that salary out of marketing’s budget and also giving IT final approval on major new tech decisions, why not hire your own IT staffer?

Of course, that way lays anarchy — because if marketing gets their own IT person, then you know every other department will be demanding their own one next. (Shhh, don’t tell anyone.)

By the way, if you would like to join the discussion, we’ll be holding the exact same B-to-B Summit next week in San Francisco. I think there are 11 tickets left. (Sorry, after we, inevitably, sell out, tickets are not available at the door.)

I will be there, along with MarketingSherpa Research Director Stefan Tornquist, as well as leaders from our editorial team, including B-to-B Senior Reporter Sean Donahue and Editorial Director Tad Clarke.

Please introduce yourself and let us know what you’d like us to be researching and writing for you in 2008. Do you want more Case Studies on marketing … or perhaps advice on marketing-related technology? We’re all ears.

See you in San Francisco!

Useful links related to this article

MarketingSherpa’s Boston Summit Wrap-Up Report: B-to-B Marketers Reveal Strategies on How to Lift Lead Generation + New Data, Viral & Web 2.0:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30171

Attention: If you know a grad student looking for a thesis topic, cross-cultural blogging differences might be a good one.

As part of my ongoing move to my new home in Serbia, I�ve volunteered as a guest blogger for a major media site, giving the American perspective on Serbian life in my spare time. (Don�t look for it; I use a pen name because I don�t want anyone expecting marketing advice or anything.)

I�ve been blogging in the US for Sherpa since 2001, so I thought I knew a thing or two about it. I was wrong. Turns out, as with any other social interaction, blogging in other countries can be a completely different experience. In the case of Serbia, you get way, way more comments. In the US, a highly engaging blog might get one comment per hundred readers. Maybe. On a good day.

In Serbia, 100 typical readers may post 70 or more comments!

Plus, the Serbs have definitely let me know they think it�s very impolite for the blogger not to be actively engaged, in nearly real-time, in the ensuing conversation among the commenting audience. When I did respond, very tentatively at first, to comments posted on my blog posts, the reaction was unanimous: �Wow, you�re not like the other Americans! Why do other Americans never respond? They are so rude.�

I can absolutely bet that not one of the other Americans who have on occasion posted to this media site�s blog realized they were being rude. They were simply blogging the American way. You say what you have to say and then you stand back and let the commenters have at it.

If there�s a major question or confusion, you might dive in, but usually not.

What implications does this have for US marketers? If your company or brand is global, be aware that blogging, online community tactics and even email outreach need to be adjusted by culture. You can�t just post a translated version of the CEO�s blog and expect it to work.

Ask your local staff and take a look at local blogs (even if you can�t read them) so you see the nature of the interaction. Don�t be an Ugly American by mistake like I almost was.

If you have had experience on this front in other countries, please comment here to let the rest of us know of other international blog rules or differences we should know about. I know I�ve only touched the tip of the iceberg.

Abby Stephenson, who manages Delta.com’s Web usability team, gave a great speech at an optimization conference I attended in San Francisco last week. Their tests over the past year have resulted in nearly an additional $20 million in estimated online-driven revenue.

Important note: Delta’s site didn’t suck before. In fact, ceaseless testing and optimization only improved key page conversions by an average of 4%-5%. But, as Abby notes, when you’re a multibillion-dollar site, 4%-5% is a LOT of revenue. (BTW: In my experience, if your site is an average-to-bad one, a thorough round of testing and optimization generally helps lift conversions 30%-40%.)

Delta.com’s top recent lessons learned:

o Cut instructions

Obviously, don’t cut instructions that people really need to figure things out. But, if you have a page with really self-evident instructions to the order of “Lather, rinse, repeat,” test taking them off the page.

o Turn statement headlines into action headlines

Instead of telling people what page they are on, (i.e., Order Form) try telling them what action they should take on the page (i.e., Order Here.) I’ve seen lots of headline tests from other marketers who confirm this.

o Strip off “Welcome”

Even though “Welcome to our site” headers look so very, very 1998, many of us still use them. Why? Abby thinks it’s because you feel like you should put something there to be polite. However, when her team tested removing an innocuous Welcome line from the tops of landing page templates used by Delta.com affiliates, conversions increased.

o Test copy next to “Submit” buttons

Just as submit button tests can move the needle, testing copy in the vicinity of the submit button can also make a difference. For example, next to its “Continue” button Delta.com tested “Almost done” versus “Go to Last Step.” The latter handily won.

o Graphics test results mixed

Abby noted that only 25% of the tests Delta.com now runs result in significant results worthy of making site changes. (Again, this is mainly because the site is already very optimized. Most sites would see a higher rate.) She uses tests for two factors — either to test a Best Practice her team has heard worked for other sites, or to test something internal people are heavily debating.

(Nothing ends an energy-and-time draining debate more quickly and non-acrimoniously than “Let’s test it.”)

As in other organizations, many of Delta’s debates are about graphics, colors and images online. And, as with other organizations, very seldom do graphics, images and color tests really move the conversion needle. (Copy, offer, submit button and number of form fields requested nearly always move the needle.)

However, Abby noted a few exceptions to the graphics-don’t-matter-as-much rule:

o “Lightening” a page overall by removing extraneous colors and graphics (including shaded rows in charts) and making dark colors lighter can significantly improve results.

o Removing extraneous directional graphics, such as navigation bars normally on your site template, can improve conversions.

o Adding credit card logo images to a page can *depress* results, sometimes significantly, maybe because they’re seen as eye clutter.

Finally, Abby’s biggest advice for all site test teams, “Only test what you can implement. Many great ideas are impossible to implement.” This means that you absolutely have to invite a Web techie to your testing team meetings, with the request to “Please shoot down all our great, but impossible to roll out, suggestions.”

By the way, if you would like a copy of Abby’s slides, the folks at Optimost who ran the conference said they might make them available on request. Contact info at http://www.optimost.com

We have a bunch of new reporters and researchers joining Sherpa this fall, so I spent a day last week writing up a formal mini-handbook on how to conduct marketer interviews for them.

Rules include:

#1. Always ask the marketer for his or her job title, even if their PR contact gave it to you. PR *always* gets the marketer’s job title wrong.

#2. If a marketer gives you data that’s a nice round figure — such as, “We got a 50% response rate,” assume it’s not an altogether accurate number and dig deeper. In real life, data rarely comes in rounded numbers.

#3. Ask for the names of all agencies and vendors who helped with the campaign. Assume the marketer will not remember correctly, so you’ll have to double-check with the actual agency.

I’m pretty darn sure that Rule #3 above will come as a shock to agencies.

The horrible truth is, most of your clients don’t know your company name. Sometimes they just don’t know at all; somebody else in the organization set up the relationship. Sometimes they knew, but they forgot. And, most often, they remember a bit of it (“It’s Neo or Novo something, and they’re in Chicago …”) but not all.

MarketingSherpa reporters don’t bother asking clients for agency or vendor URLs because 99% of the time the answer is wrong or “don’t know.” And all too often, if you stick a “dot-com” on the end of an agency name, it leads you to the wrong agency’s Web site because so many names are similar.

These two facts are more evidence of the agency-client disconnect that was beautifully revealed in August’s study by Rainmaker Consulting (who, by the way, are not RainMakerConsulting.com; that’s a different agency, of course.)

That’s why if you work for an agency or marketing-related vendor, I urge you to reconsider the holiday gift plans you’re probably making right now for clients and key prospects. Instead of something ephemeral, such as a card or ecard, or an edible crowd-pleaser, such as chocolate, consider giving a promotional product with your logo, brand name and URL boldly embossed on it.

Something like an oversized coffee mug, that sits on your client’s desk, is best. I know that sounds all too boring for your exciting, cutting edge, ultra-creative brand. Get over it.

Your current clients are your most valuable marketing channel. Referrals are critical to your successful growth. Knowing, as I do, how few clients can properly name the agencies that work for them, I’m stunned there are any referrals at all in this business.

Anyway, here are some related links:

Past Sherpa article: Research on the $16.9 Billion Promo Products Industry: Why T-Shirts & Pens Can Outdo TV & Internet:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=24177

Rainmaker Consulting:
http://www.rainmakerlive.com

OK, color me obsessed with Facebook.

LinkedIn is fine, especially for headhunting, but a bit stiff for daily networking. It feels like Facebook with a starched suit on.

MySpace is great if you are a kid, but just way too cluttered for my taste. My dog, Betty Boop, has a MySpace account; I don’t.

But there’s just something about Facebook. It’s more fun, more friendly, more reach-out-and-touch (or rather “poke”) and way more useful on a daily basis. Even though I work in Serbia, thousands of miles away from most Sherpa readers and staff, I still feel connected to my colleagues and friends.

So, inspired by brands such as Microsoft, I decided to launch a MarketingSherpa Facebook Group today. To join, just go to Facebook and type in the word “MarketingSherpa” (no space in the middle).

Anyone who is a reader, researcher or staff member can join. If you don’t already have a Facebook account, you’ll need one first. It’s complimentary as long as you have a valid email address.

Then, over the next few months, we’ll explore what it means to be in a Facebook group together. How does communicating via Facebook differ from interacting via other channels? How can we stretch the boundaries of Group-dom and create useful new apps together?

My hope is, together, MarketingSherpa readers and researchers can become even more of an integrated team than ever before. After all, we all share a common purpose: to discover what works in marketing and what doesn’t.

Also, while you’re on Facebook signing up, take a moment to consider what your brand as well as the VIP names of your company should or could be doing via Facebook. For example, Martha Stewart and Bill Gates both have personal Facebook accounts. (Martha has more than 1,500 friends while Bill has only 125 pals, so all celebrity is not equal.)

Another example, David Letterman has 179 Facebook Groups dedicated to him. Some are passionate fan clubs; others are … not. (What are they saying about your brand in various groups?)

Plus, several ecommerce sites such as Amazon are benefitting from the vastly burgeoning world of Facebook applications, such as the Amazing Giftbox. (In fact, Facebook apps are so hot now that several financial backers have announced cash rewards for inventing good new ones.)

Lastly, Facebook’s Marketplace is rapidly becoming the Craig’s List for the 21st century …

How are you marketing via Facebook? Join MarketingSherpa’s group there and let me know!

Useful Links Related to This Article:

MarketingSherpa Readers, Speakers & Researchers Group
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7051207106&ref=nf

I was giving a speech at a PR association meeting in New Jersey in early 2001 about how the Internet was affecting PR tactics, when a group of older-looking grumpy attendees just sat there like lumps and left as soon as possible afterward. “What’s up with them? Was my speech that awful?” I asked the organizer.

“You were fine!” she reassured me. “These are the guys who are pretty close to retirement, and they hoped the Internet thing would not get so huge, so quickly that they would have to learn it. They just want to coast for a few more years until they can retire.”

I snorted, full of the superiority of a natural-born enthusiast. I felt sorry for them — they were missing out on what could be the most exciting time of their careers.

Living in Serbia and Croatia these past few weeks, I have been reminded of that moment time and time again. Not because these people are mired in the past — to the contrary, most are straining with every fiber toward a better, brighter future. Nope, that grumpy old person who does not really want to learn a whole new marketing tactic has turned out to be me.

I, who embraced the Internet so wholeheartedly, have grown old. Do I really, really have to do it all over with mobile phones?

Well, the answer is absolutely yes. I knew it for a few years now but buried my head in the sand until now living in this land. Depending on which source you research, the amount of Serbs who are online ranges from 16% to 27%, including students at school and white-collar workers. However, 90% of the population have cell phones.

If the Internet is going to take off here, and, boy, is it ever poised to take off in a big way, it is not going to be when everyone has a computer plus a high-speed connection because that is not going to happen in our lifetime. Instead, it will happen through mobile phones.

The new generation of Europeans, Asians and, increasingly, our own American kids, too, think of PC-based communications as old school. An Internet tied to a PC is such a 20th-century thing. Get with the program, Grandmother, mobile is everything!

The new generation worldwide update their Facebook accounts with their phones. They blog with their phones. They tell everyone where the coolest party is tonight with text messaging. They make YouTube movies with their phones. They trust their phones. They love their phones. They carry their phones everywhere. The “third screen” is the first screen of their hearts and everyday lives.

And it is our job in the marketing community to figure out what, for most of us, is an entirely new platform. Does your marketing department even “own” an official iPhone? Do you routinely play around with a mobile phone just to see what can be done with it now? If you do not watch TV, you cannot design great campaigns for it. Ditto for mobile.

So, I am inviting you to join me in my personal “homework” for the next year. I am going to buy a sample of each of the latest type of mobile phone, and I am going to use them! Please join me. First step, learn how to update my Facebook via mobile. OK, this may take a while …

Oh, blech. I promised my new bosses at Sherpa when they let me move from the US head office to work virtually from a home office in Serbia that there would be no problems.

“You won’t even know I’m gone. I’ll have a great Internet connection, and I’ll work away writing new Handbooks for Sherpa busy as a bee,” I swore. Which was completely true, except for the Internet connection. Turns out in our little town you can’t buy bandwidth faster than about 235 kilobits per second, a speed that testing site BandwdithPlace.com told me is “mediocre.”

This isn’t a problem when I’m writing a Handbook, which is what I spend 90% of my workday doing. However, when it came time to put an official MarketingSherpa Questionnaire online for you guys to take to give your own input on the topic of Landing Pages … I just couldn’t face doing it myself.

It would have taken 10 hours. So, I took the lazy woman’s way out. I emailed my draft questionnaire to the new guy (i.e., the only one with a little open time) in our New York research department and fell on his mercy. Thankfully, he helped out.

Then, he asked me to test the questionnaire before we launched it to find any problems, because the last thing you want to do when sending a questionnaire to 237,000 of your closest readers is to send something that’s broken. OK, now you can guess the depths of my underachievement during the testing process.

All I can say is the bandwidth drove me temporarily nuts.

Now I have two favors to ask you:

Favor #1. Please come and take the questionnaire now if you didn’t get a chance before. The problems are all fixed, thanks to our New York research team. Yes, we’ll send you all a copy of the Executive Summary with new charts in a few weeks:
http://s-r3cij-14367.sgizmo.com
(Closes Thursday, September 13th, because that’s such a lucky date.)

Favor #2. Please *forgive* me for my pre-testing delinquency if you tried to take the questionnaire last week. I will not ever, ever make that same mistake again. Yes, we do have your answers on file if you submitted, even if you got a weird loop instead of a nice “Thank you” page.

Oh, and one last thing:

Please, please take a look at your own site’s load speed with the comp analyzer you can get at WebSiteOptimization.com. Turns out that although 93.99% of US workers have high bandwidth, only 53% of US consumers do. The rest are feeling the exact same pain I do whenever I visit your site. Actually, it turns out that nearly one out of five Americans online feel a lot more pain because they’re still on 56k dial-up. Ouch!

Thank you.