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How to Optimize Your Website to Improve Conversions

by ~ June 30th, 2009

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Have you ever wondered if you are doing enough updates to your website, or what those updates should be?  Before you look at making changes to your site it is really essential to understand what your goals are and how they are converting.  A conversion happens when a visitor to your website performs an intended action.  Your conversion rate is the ratio of the number of visitors to your website that complete the desired action compared to the total number of visitors to your website.  It is important that you define your conversions so that they are consistent with your broader business objectives.  For example, your business goals might involve maximizing your profits, increasing sales, generating leads, and improving customer communication.  Therefore you may measure a conversion as a customer purchasing something from your website, completing your contact form, subscribing to your newsletter or registering to become a member of your website.  In order to optimize your website to improve conversions you need a tool that can measure how changes to your website affect the way visitors convert on your desired actions.  Google Website Optimizer is a free tool that allows you to setup tests to confirm that changes you make to your website are having a positive impact.

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Smartphones: Expanding Mobile Search Opportunities

by ~ June 25th, 2009

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Over the past couple weeks there has been a bit of excitement around the new iPhone and the resurgence of Palm with the release of the Palm Pre.

The Palm Pre is being looked at by some as Palm’s savior as it’s their first device equipped to compete with the heavyweights of today since the days of the Treo 600 & 700 models.  The Pre boasts a full HTML browser, email access, GPS, WIFI access, music, video and a host of other features on Palm’s new Linux derived operating system.  Analysts are forecasting about 100,000 units were sold in the first weekend of its launch.

The new iPhone 3GS is a an expansion of the previous model (iPhone 3G) with some new features such as video recording/editing, voice control, larger storage, and an upgrade to the processor making it two times faster than the previous model.  Apple has reported a million plus sales of the new phone since its launch this past weekend.  The new 3GS is available for $199 and the 3G model is now being offered for $99.

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Microsoft (David) vs. Click Fraud (Goliath), Let’s Go MSFT!

by ~ June 23rd, 2009

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I know from the title alone that people are scratching their heads and wondering how the heck I could apply the title of “David” to a behemoth of a company like Microsoft.  I can because Microsoft last week announced a civil suit that they have filed against three individuals that they accuse of participating in click fraud on the MSN ad platform.  Microsoft is the “David” because Click Fraud (now turned into an entity by this post) is huge in the search industry, and though we deal with it, sweep it under the rug, pretend it is not there, etc. it is the “Goliath”.  The civil suit that Microsoft filed is less than one million dollars (as you read, know that I am touching my pinky finger to the corner of my mouth and looking evil), but will reap much, much more.  The PR alone, when we are all evangelizing about Bing, is enough to keep the momentum going for Microsoft.

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Where Have All The Blue Links Gone?

by ~ June 18th, 2009

searchme-image1Are the days of blue links gone? Are the days of traditional SERP pages history? These are the first two questions that I asked myself when I entered my first search query into Searchme. Immediately, I was presented a blend of multimedia search results that consisted of full size web pages that I could flip through, similar to flipping through a magazine. Searchme is the first search engine that allows searchers to see what they are searching for by providing images of actual web pages, which helps consumers know what they are getting before they click on an ad; searchers get to try before they buy. Another great feature about Searchme is their one-click Twitter button and the ability to post search results on Facebook, as well as other social networks, which makes sharing your search results with your friends that much easier.

What does this mean for search marketers? The Searchme Ad Platform allows key-word based ads to be placed within search results. This means that ads are presented as visual views. For search marketers, it allows the inclusion of more design concepts into their campaigns. What does this mean for search marketers? First, it means more qualified clicks, as searchers are able to see the web page before clicking on it. Secondly, it means that there is an increased chance of a conversion.

You can learn more about Searchme and hear what GroupM Search’s, Chris Westmeyer, has to say about the search engine in Search Engine Watch’s article here.

Stay tuned, as Chris will be sharing a Searchme Q&A session that he had with Searchme CEO and Founder, Randy Adams.

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Seriously, Work-Life Balance?

by ~ June 16th, 2009

istock_000006154215large1June 21st, along with being Father’s Day, will be the longest day of 2009. I am well aware that all days are 24 hours long, and as such, are all the same length, but as measured by the amount of time from sunrise to sunset, June 21st will be the longest day of the year. Of course, since this is a smart crowd, you knew that already since that is the first day of summer, otherwise known as the Summer Solstice. With Memorial Day as the official start of summer, and the technical start of summer coming up on Sunday, that turns the mind to vacation. Oops, maybe not! A recent CareerBuilder article about the results from their annual vacation survey stated that 35 percent of the 4,400+ respondents said they would not be taking a vacation in 2009. What might be worse than that is the bullet that says that employers will expect 50 percent of the people who take a vacation to check in while they are away!

I think we can all agree that this is no longer your father’s workplace. Technology has taken us to a totally different place. FedEx and UPS made it possible to send information overnight, fax machines got it to us faster if you could pass it through the machine, and then came e-mail – instantaneous delivery with attachment capabilities. A big leap forward, but still pretty much only deliverable to a home or office based desktop computer at the time. Now with the proliferation of laptops, wireless internet access, PDA’s, Smartphones, iPhones, and the like, we are accessible wherever and whenever if we choose. So I ask you the question, what does work-life balance mean in today’s environment? Continue reading >>

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Cui Bono?

by ~ June 10th, 2009

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On April 3 2009 the FDA, in a very surprising move, posted 14 untitled-letters on their web page that covers Division of Drug Marketing and Communications (DDMAC) and Headquarters Warning Letters. These letters covered 48 different products and were related to situations where the FDA felt that the advertisers had failed in supplying sufficient risk information.

The question is, 60 days after the postings, cui bono, who benefits? Has anything changed for the better?

The issuance of a warning letter is well within the purview of the FDA and DDMAC and would not, in and of itself be special, except that the ads discussed were sponsored paid search ads appearing in Google or Yahoo.

Search marketing agencies and Pharma advertisers had long been aware that paid search ads were limited in the portrayal of risk information. After all, with 25-characters in the Title and 35-characters each in the subsequent three lines, there is not a lot of text for a message, much less an involved risk information statement. Thus, for many years, with lack of direction from the FDA, the marketing community adopted a self-created policy known as the One-Click Rule. That being that risk information was no more than one click away from the ad, much in the way that risk information is one turn of the page away in a magazine or newspaper. And, for years, this seemed to meet with the FDA’s, if not approval, well, lack of overt disapproval; until April 3, 2009, that is.

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Building and Maintaining Client Relationships

by ~ June 8th, 2009

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Over the months of planning and building your sand castle, you have built many different relationships.  Through communicating with various suppliers, estimating your budgets, setting and maintaining your goals and wiring the communications hub – you’ve built relationships with the dump truck driver, the financial planner and the building inspector.  These are all important relationships that you should continue to nurture, even after the initial project is complete.  Isn’t the point of building the best sand castle on the beach that other people notice it and want you to build theirs?  And it never hurts to have the reputation of organized leader who’s also a team player.

Working day to day with clients, partners and co-workers can cause you to take them for granted.  Sometimes you put off their requests or just plain forget to reply to their emails.  It’s not that you don’t value their relationship it’s just that they are not top of mind, especially as new clients come in to play.  You may feel that you’ve already built these relationships and that since they’re not going anywhere you need to focus on building the new ones, or expending all of your energy proving yourself to them.

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The Dawn of ‘Why’ Marketing

by ~ June 5th, 2009

This post was written by Chris Copeland and published in MediaPost’s Search Insider, Friday, June 5, 2009

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In my last column, I proclaimed search to be going out of business. So what comes next? The answer lies in the question “why?”

Traditional advertising has been in the business of addressing what we know about people and their tendencies. We act based on models of what people do and what that likely means about them in mass. We buy TV to target women in specific demographics with the help of research (focus groups, panels, surveys, and gut instinct) to encourage them to try a specific shampoo that will not only clean their hair, but also create near-orgasmic reactions. Because who doesn’t want a hair care product that will satisfy all needs?

With search marketing, we started to see a shift in advertising that has been well-documented. The days of being tied to push marketing based on what people watched and what those people liked were over. We had a data vault like never before; and inside the vault is the consumer’s expression of intent.

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Microsoft’s Bing.com: GroupM Search POV

by ~ June 4th, 2009

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Yesterday, Microsoft launched Bing.com, a “Decision Engine” and consumer brand to replace their current Live.com search engine.  MSN.com will remain the Microsoft portal and Bing.com will be the new destination engine.  According to our CEO of GroupM Search Chris Copeland, Bing.com brings growth potential for Microsoft, predicting the company could obtain a 12% market share by end of 2009.  Read more about Bing.com and what Chris had to say in a Dow Jones article picked up on CNNMoney.com.

Short Term Advertising Impact

Bing.com is mainly a consumer branding push, therefore, not much will change in the way of the advertising experience.  There are no immediate actions advertisers need to take.  The paid search placements on Bing.com will remain as they have in Live.com.

In an effort to provide a higher level of pertinent results, increased relevancy restrictions will be tightened with the release of Bing.com in order to help significantly reduce arbitrary sites, such as link farms, in the search results.

As Bing.com grows in popularity, it has the potential to help even-out the monopoly currently seen in the search engine industry.  What this means for advertisers is they will be less dependent on one or two engines to drive their search marketing.

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“Real-time” Search – What will they think of next?

by ~ June 1st, 2009

6-1-09-esarey-topsy-post-topsy-screenshot4Ever wanted to find out what people are talking about…right now? Now you can! Topsy is a new search engine that looks for what people are talking about in various social communities. The search engine is listening to everything posted on Twitter, capturing all your tweets. While Twitter is the only data source at the moment, I find it interesting that it indexes the reviews people write, things posted on Facebook and other social web avenues. 

The company that created the search engine, Topsy Labs Inc., began the developing in 2006. The launch of the new engine happened earlier this week causing a stir in the online world. Now, how does Twitter connect with this? Topsy is using Twitter to gauge relevance and giving the searcher “real-time” data. Research shows that the people that use Twitter tend to tweet about three hours per day. That is a lot of information getting posted everyday!

So how does Topsy look at your conversations? Basically, if you are out on Twitter, and someone else tweets something you posted (essentially repeating the comment), you get the credit for it. It is referred to as a “retweet”. In a nutshell, it looks at the number of retweets that are produced, and it also finds results based on the Twitter users with more influence as well.

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