Websites That Work

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Your marketing campaigns are planned, your tracking is in place, and you've got a great product that people NEED to have—so what's stopping you from achieving greatness? Look to your site for the answer.

If your website and landing pages don't resonate with your visitors and don't have clear calls to action on every single page (whether for engagement, lead gen, or sales) then you're leaving money on the table. In short—your website needs to deliver a great customer experience.

That's why we created Websites That Work, an 11-class course designed by course advisors Scott Brinker and Sandra Niehaus that will help you plan, (re)design, measure, optimize, and track your landing page and website activities with one goal in mind: delivering that meaningful customer experience.

Taught by experts like Naomi Niles, Adam Greco, Mark O'Brien, Roberta Rosenberg, Philippa Gamse, Brian Massey, Kelly Goto, Shelly Kramer, Chris Goward, and Joanna Lord, you'll be given easy-to-implement tools and techniques to get your site converting more efficiently. They'll also answer your questions and network with you in our exclusive Websites That Work Facebook group. Register now!

Each class can be viewed on demand, so you may watch (and re-watch) at your convenience. In addition to the recorded class (streaming), the course materials for each class include the class slides (PDF), audio track from the class (MP3) (so you can listen to the lectures on other devices), the class transcript (PDF), and a Cheat Sheet for the class (PDF). Once you view all of the classes, you can download a Certificate of Completion (PDF). As part of the course, you'll also get access to our course-exclusive Facebook group to network and share your own questions and insight with MPU students, staff, and instructors.

Websites That Work includes these 11 classes (each 60 or 90 minutes long):

1. STRATEGY: Creating a Winning Web Presence
2. PERSONAS: Advanced Studies in Visitor Personas
3. REDESIGN: Planning a Killer B2B Lead Gen Website
4. MOBILE: Creating a Mobile Website
5. ESSENTIALS: Landing Page Essentials—The READY Framework
6. OPTIMIZATION: Improving Your Conversion Strategy
7. DESIGN: Landing Page Deep Dive
8. COPY: Writing Effective Headlines and Calls to Action
9. SOCIAL: The ROI of Social Landing Pages
10. TESTING: Research with Results
11. ANALYTICS: Demystifying Personas, Design, and Landing Pages

Plus, you'll get these 3 bonus classes from our 2011 program. You can access the recordings as soon as you register.

1. E-COMMERCE: 10 Essential Strategies for E-Commerce Success
2. SEO: Optimizing Your Site for Search
3. TECH: Web Technology for Non-Techies

Creating a Winning Web Presence

Speaker:
Philippa Gamse—Web Strategist, Websites That Win

Nearly 95% of all websites leave money on the table—either through missed opportunities for sales and leads or through resources expended fruitlessly. Effective websites require well-thought-out and well-executed strategies and tactics. This class will help you to ensure that you're investing wisely, making the most of all opportunities, and maximizing your ROI.

You will learn:

• How to design and implement integrated Web and social media tactics
• Ways to ensure you're assigning the right people to handle web-governance issues
• How to create emotionally compelling content that appeals to a diverse audience

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Advanced Studies in Visitor Personas

Speaker:
Brian Massey—Conversion Scientist, Conversion Sciences

Your Web team is managing your site based on their perceived image of your visitors. Often, these perceptions can be misleading, causing website decisions to be made that your visitors don't like. In this class, we'll show you how to use personas to properly target and engage your site visitors, resulting in increased leads and more sales.

You will learn:

• How misconceptions about your visitors are derailing your online marketing efforts
• Why visitor personas are more useful and accurate than demographics
• The 12 ways that personas help you get more leads and improve online sales

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Planning a Killer B2B Lead Gen Website

Speaker:
Mark O'Brien—President, Newfangled

Far too many B2B website development projects are begun without taking the proper initial planning steps, which ultimately leads to an ineffective website. During this class we'll walk through a nine-step planning process you can use to ensure that the next version of your website will attract the right visitors, capture high-quality leads, and aid in conversions.

You will learn:

• How to plan your next website redesign and launch
• How reinforcing your firm's reputation and expertise can help generate website sales
• How personas, content strategy, SEO, and lead generation affect your site design strategy

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Creating a Mobile Website

Speaker:
Shelly Kramer—Founder and CEO, V3 Integrated Marketing

The number of mobile device users continues to skyrocket and there's no end in sight. This means that understanding the mobile space is integral to business success. This class will look at the evolution of mobile and describe what you can do to make your site and your business more accessible to the mobile audience.

You will learn:

• That converting your current website to a mobile-friendly version is both cost-effective and easier than you think
• How creating mobile-enabled landing pages can reduce conversion cycle time
• How to maximize SEO with a mobile site

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Landing Page Essentials—The READY Framework

Speaker:
Scott Brinker—Co-Founder and CTO, ion interactive

Landing pages are incredibly diverse and, when it comes to creating them, there are as many exceptions as there are rules. This class will provide you with a firm foundation on which to conceive, implement, and evaluate a wide range of state-of-the-art landing page experiences.

You will learn:

• The flexible READY framework—a method for making sure landing pages are (R)elevant, (E)ngaging, (A)uthoritative, (D)irectional, and (Y)ield-Optimal
• How to appreciate landing pages as more than headlines, images, and forms
• How to start boosting your marketing performance with landing pages

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Improving Your Conversion Strategy

Speaker:
Chris Goward—Co-Founder and CEO, WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization

If you want to improve conversions, you need to test. This class will show you how leading companies, such as Electronic Arts, SAP, Hair Club, and Google, glean powerful marketing insights from effective conversion testing ... and how you can, too!

You will learn:

• How to lift your conversion rates dramatically
• How to get more leads, sales, and revenue from the same traffic levels
• Common conversion optimization mistakes to avoid
• How to use powerful data-driven insights to enhance your marketing efforts

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Landing Page Deep Dive

Speaker:
Naomi Niles—Partner, ShiftFWD

Not all landing pages should look alike. Different conversion goals mean that each landing page must have a unique design to be effective. We'll address what you need to know to design your own landing pages, even if you have no prior design experience.

You will learn:

• The most common types of landing pages
• Which design elements typically matter and which don't
• An easy way to plan your landing page layout based on specific conversion goals

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Writing Effective Headlines and Calls to Action

Speaker:
Roberta Rosenberg—President and CEO, MGP Direct, Inc.

Some folks say it's not how you start, but how you finish. When it comes to your landing pages, it's all about how you start and how you finish. This class will explore the science and the art of creating headlines that grab visitor attention and will provide tips and techniques for writing calls to action (CTAs) that make taking the next step utterly and completely irresistible.

You will learn:

• How to write emotionally resonant headlines that target your prospects' sweet spots
• How to write CTAs that motivate prospects to click now with enthusiasm and confidence
• How to recognize and utilize the well-written headlines and CTA copy all around you

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The ROI of Social Landing Pages

Speakers:
Joanna Lord—Director of Customer Acquisition and Engagement, seoMOZ

Have you been wondering how to make your site more social while simultaneously improving conversions? This class will explore the "new" expectations for landing pages in our ever-growing social Web. We will also touch on what metrics you should be looking at to gauge the success of your landing pages.

You will learn:

• What on-site elements you should be testing to increase social conversions
• What you can do to existing landing pages to make them convert social traffic more effectively
• Easily implemented tests to better engage your traffic

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Research with Results

Speaker:
Kelly Goto—Principal and CEO, gotomedia, LLC

You know that research is essential to understanding your visitors and creating better user experiences but how do you pull it all together and create a UX strategy? This class will teach you research methods that tap into what you already know and add techniques to your UX toolbox.

You will learn:

• How to streamline your organization's research efforts
• How to create long-term research plans that reach beyond the current project
• How to set up budget-friendly research that yields actionable results

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Demystifying Personas, Design, and Landing Pages

Speaker:
Adam Greco—Senior Partner, Web Analytics Demystified

In this class, you will learn how to create visitor personas, test website designs that improve conversion, and apply tactics for optimizing landing pages. We will then demonstrate how to use analytics to measure the results of the techniques you've implemented.

You will learn:

• How your landing pages are performing
• How to view your Web analytics data by visitor persona to uncover specific behaviors
• How to interpret the impact of your site's design and spot opportunities for improvement

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Best of 2011:
10 Essential Strategies for E-Commerce Success

Speaker:
Brandon Eley—Interactive Director, Kelsey Advertising & Design

Are you looking to increase e-commerce sales without pouring more money into driving traffic to your website? Is your e-commerce website not turning visitors into customers, and you're not sure why? In this class, you'll discover design factors that make it easier for customers to purchase, what works in terms of cross-selling and up-selling, and much more. You'll walk away with usable advice to drive more sales immediately or build into your future e-commerce strategies.

You will learn:

• How to optimize your e-commerce website to increase conversions
• How to significantly reduce shopping cart abandonment
• The secret to knowing what's not working on your e-commerce site

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Best of 2011:
Optimizing Your Site for Search

Speaker:
Larry Becker—President, Larry Becker Web

You've put first things first and created compelling, relevant content for your website—but will anyone ever find it? Search engines need your content presented in a specific format in order to find it and deem it important. An effective search engine strategy requires an understanding of which elements of design and structure matter most and a tactical plan for implementing them on your own site. In this class you'll learn which aspects of on-site SEO deserve your attention, and how you can tweak them for better performance.

You will learn:

• Which site elements influence search rankings
• How to methodically adjust these elements on your own site
• How to integrate these techniques into a robust SEO and content strategy

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Best of 2011:
Web Technology for Non-Techies

Speaker:
Matthew Grant—Managing Editor, MarketingProfs

Don't know your CSS from your ASP? Feel familiar with HTML but out of your depth with XML, PHP, Java, and Ruby on Rails? The good news is that you don't have to know how to use Web technologies to understand what they can do or even what your IT folks and Web developers are talking about when they start slinging their lingo. In this class, we'll go over the basic technologies that your site relies on, the meaning of countless acronyms, and resources that you can rely on the next time you encounter mystifying technical jargon.

You will learn:

• Technical differences between the Web's "front-end" and "back-end"
• Technologies that you will encounter when looking to improve or expand your Web presence
• How to use your lack of knowledge to assess potential technical partners
• How to get informed and stay informed about Web-technology trends

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