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The lottery has a slogan, "You have to play to win." In business, you have to be considered to win. The more often you are considered the more chances you have to win. If you want to increase your odds of being considered, and even more importantly, increase your odds of winning, then you need to engage consumers as early as possible in the buying cycle. Consumers go through the following progression when deciding to buy something: 1.Problem recognition 2.Information search 3.Evaluate alternatives 4.Purchase decision 5.Buy Before a consumer decides they need to buy something, they need to recognize they have a problem. •My jeans don't fit. •My computer is too slow. •I need to lose weight. •I don't know which of my ads are working. •My roof is leaking. •I'm going to propose to my girlfriend and need to buy a ring. •I can't read a magazine while keeping my blanket on me. •I'm not going to be able to retire. In many cases a consumer doesn

In the closing moments of conference season this year, it occurred to me that search engines are desperately trying to appeal to the masses on several different levels, especially of late. Google and Bing have both made significant investments to improve user experience including: •Measuring speed at which results and landing pages are served to users. •Improving the quality of short and long search query results. •Injecting as much local content into search results pages as possible. •Factoring in social media influence and reach from various platforms. •Optimizing experience on each and every user screen. Take note of each of these developments because optimizing for conversion starts with fulfilling each engine's promise of great user experience -- regardless of device. How do you optimize conversion and improve user experience? Here's a list of free, inexpensive, and premium tools to get you started in collecting qualitative feedback and objective data on f