Category: Web Marketing

New ways to create and measure sites so they improve their ability to bring your best customers closer and attact other individuals just like them

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Boost web conversions by greeting search engine visitors with unique content

How often do you come across an account of the same new, breakthrough idea from two different sources within 24 hours? That happened to me this weekend, and even if I had just seen it once I would have found the idea extraordinary. First, I read how Offermatica provides a content management solution that helps with multivariate testing of offers and copy. From what is learned, customized content can be delivered in real-time, based on behaviors. Offermatica CEO Matt Roche describes a novel application of this tool in a MediaPost blog interview:

[With the client site, MusicFriend.com] when someone comes to the home page [from a search engine] we know nothing about them, so they get the home page. What if we repeat the keyword that they searched on to get there, just show similar information? That increased the conversions. We repeat your keyword so you have a connection. Then we install affinity targeting that says when you go to the drums section and come back to the home page it will show you more drum offers. It increased the conversion rate in double digits on all the categories where we did category affinity.

The emphasis was my own. Double digit conversions?!? What a great trick.

Then I read Todd Friesen’s piece describing the same technique, in the July, 2007, print edition of Online Media, Marketing and Advertising (OMMA — and yes, it’s also a MediaPost publication). Phrased a different way, it suggests the same brilliant strategy:

… Did you ever notice how most brand traffic lands on your home page? Even product terms that contain branded verbiage often get a home page ranking ahead of a product page. Most home pages are pretty generic and usually run creative speaking to a straight brand message or weekly deal. How do you refine that on the fly to positively impact conversion? With a good multivariate tool, it’s relatively simple.

Some tools have the ability to recognize a search engine referral and identify the search term to define the creative displayed in the marketing modules on the home page. SEO managers then populate the “hero image” with a product related to the search and then load the complimentary products into the secondary marketing modules.

It is standard practice to do something like this with pay-per-click ads. We create customized landing pages that repeat the keyword phrase used in the search. This idea extends that landing page mentality to organic search results.

There is conjecture that the radio was invented in several places around the world at the same time. I suspect there will be similar arguments as to whom originated this simple and elegant way to improve the user experience for people arriving from search engines. All I can say is, I’ll glad I learned about it at all, so I can begin testing it with some of my clients.

Any readers who are already using this technique?

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Widgets are catching on for two good reasons

When marketers first realized that user-generated content was a major force to be reckoned with, the next logical question was hard to answer: How? Widgets have emerged as a serviceable start in our attempt at benefiting from this phenomenon.

Widgets allow people who have online social network profiles (such as MySpace or Facebook) — or who blog — to insert something useful that happens to be pulled from someone else’s site. Probably the most ubiquitous widget is the YouTube video player you see embedded in so many web pages. Another example is from the freshly minted widgets at BuyCostumes.com:

Spooky, boys and girls.

Widgets are catching on for two reasons:

  1. They make a home-grown page more interesting — and more useful
  2. They allow those displaying them to help enhance their own image through the use of the brand

That latter point is important. If you have a strong brand, it is strong because people feel good about using it, and probably feel like their own image is enhanced by its use. Whether it’s as simple as the difference between a Coke person versus a Pepsi person (versus a Red Bull person!), a brand tells the world more about the person who consumes it.

The widget above probably doesn’t say much, except that I enjoy the Halloween holiday (and I do) and wanted to show that in an interesting way. But I can imagine BuyCostume’s “Sexy Costume of the Day” widget gracing many profile pages, and saying something fun and provocative in the process.

From a marketer’s standpoint, widgets are a simple and measurable way to grab a small corner of the user generated content juggernaut. Most click through to a brand’s landing page, but others can conduct transactions (at least leading up to a sale) right within the site.

The future will see these widgets becoming far more useful and flexible. I’m also predicting an entirely new set of metrics will arise to measure their branding and sales effectiveness. In the meantime, they are definitely making the web a more interesting place, for both consumers and marketers.

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New web metric puts the I in AIDA and helps optimize content

The first marketing class I ever had in college taught me the AIDA model of advertising. It’s still used today, lo these many years later. The AIDA model goes like this: Once you attract Attention, you must generate Interest, create Desire, and enable your market to take Action. Do all of those things and you’re golden.

Back then the only way you could actually measure any of these (except for the last A, which was making a sale) was by employing expensive and time-consuming research. The web changed all that. It allows us to measure each of these steps — except for that pesky thing called Interest.

Until now, the interest that people exhibit in a site’s content has been impossible to accurately measure through current techniques. What has changed? I and my team have come up with a workable solution — a simple way to plug the hole in that famous AIDA acronym.

We’ve found a way to reliably measure web visitor interest.

That’s a bold statement, but here’s why I make that assertion. After analyzing a critical mass of data from the site of one of our largest clients, I can say with confidence that we have a metric that is the rarest of creatures. It is a measurement that arms content managers with real, actionable feedback about the changes they’ve made to web content over which they have responsibility.Of all the content changes year-to-date, those in page #2 were most effective, as measured by CIIThe metric is called CII: Content Interest Index. I’ve been wrong more than once in my career. Sometimes I’ve been wrong in spectacular ways. But I firmly believe from what I’ve witnessed that this is a unique and valuable tool for managers of many types of sites.

The CII is most valuable for those who manage large amounts of product and service information, delivered over a site with a content management system (CMS) handling a ton of impressions. Volume is really key. The biggest constraint of this metric is it requires high levels of traffic to the pages being measured.

The graphic above is a sample from an analysis for a client — who will remain anonymous — who manages that critical mass of traffic I was referring to, and has provided two year’s worth of data to analyze. In the graphic, the CII illustrates to a single content manager how five product pages are doing, this year compared to last. Specifically, it shows that for two of the pages, CII has dropped in real numbers, while in all five cases page views have risen.

These CII comparisons help a content manager optimize pages using real feedback provided directly by the user (through the measurement of two behaviors, as described below). In the hands of the right content manager, CIIs for the pages managed should progressively climb, as a positive feedback loop continues to reward well-targeted content. It’s the equivalent of a public speaker talking to real audiences, and getting real applause (and real yawns), as opposed to merely guessing at what people want to hear by speaking to an empty room.

How is CII Calculated?

As this white paper (a PDF file) on the CII explains, this is a simple metric that can be built into just about any web site. Here is how it is described there:

The CII counts instances of a page’s “Printer Friendly Format” or “Email a Colleague” icon receiving a click. This observes what are arguably the two most common ways that visitors save or share information – either through printing or emailing content. To factor out a page’s level of overall readership, the sum of clicks is divided by page views.

Page views still come into the equation of analyzing CII, and they are excellent measures of the first A of a site’s AIDA. In other words, the number of people who view a page can be a proxy for the amount of attention you have to play with for that page.

As the white paper explains, the D of AIDA can also be measured using existing web metrics, because desire is exhibited as prospects circle your product or service more closely — and more often — investigating things like delivery options, pricing variables and means of payment. And, as with the “real” world, the online marketplace has always measured the A — as in action, well. This is a transaction.

That leaves interest as something without a good yardstick. Until now.

Check out my white paper and feel free to adopt the system on your own site.

I’d like to extend a special thank you to all of my marketing and technology friends and colleagues who have helped by commenting on drafts of this white paper. Your help has been invaluable.

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Is Second Life real estate another bubble ready to burst?

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, recently posted his reservations about the commercial potential of Linden Lab’s metaverse, Second Life. (Check out the many comments, by the way. I praise him for his willingness to stir a hornet’s nest.) The main reason for Anderson’s pessimism: Lack of traffic to the virtual storefronts and office spaces. Chris Anderson’s Avatar on Second LifeDoes this mean we should all forget the Second Life “land rush” ever happened? I don’t think so.

Yesterday I heard Steve Ennen, VP, Digital Business Strategies at American Business Media, speak at an online marketing summit. He pointed out that we should look at the potential for marketers in a “Third Life, Fourth Life or even Fifth Life.” I would agree. Especially if the next platform can be one that doesn’t require special plug-ins or players. Online, experiential marketing is here to stay. And a whole generation is growing up having spent a significant portion of their young lives on gaming platforms very similar to Second Life.

In the future, favorite online communities may well become these consumers’ first lives.

You’ll find more information on Second Life in this and associated entries.

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Networks are personalizing our sense of place after depersonalizing time

There was yet another piece in the New York Times last week about the disintermediation of established businesses as a result of our new, networked world. In this case, it was about how new map mash-ups are growing in popularity, to the chagrin of many professional cartographers. Here’s an excerpt:

With the help of simple tools introduced by Internet companies recently, millions of people are trying their hand at cartography, drawing on digital maps and annotating them with text, images, sound and videos.

In the process, they are reshaping the world of map-making and collectively creating a new kind of atlas that is likely to be both richer and messier than any other.

They are also turning the Web into a medium where maps will play a more central role in how information is organized and found.

Initially, I thought this article was further proof that networks automatically disintermediate. It’s just their nature. They cut out that faceless “middleman,” whether this “man” is a travel agent, a realtor, or — in the case of Wikipedia — a traditional encyclopedia editor. But then I heard a story that showed me how networks can cut both ways.

This shows a the path through the Midwest of a TravelBug (think Geocaching)

But first, a word about how place, as defined as our physical world, has always been subjective — that mash-ups are simply expressing this reality in another demonstration of The Long Tail. The above example from Google Earth is the path that a friend’s Travel Bug (lovingly named Tatoo Bug) took as it passed through Midwestern geocaches. This portion was the first leg in a worldwide, 15,951-mile trip that he and other enthusiasts continue to follow on the dedicated Geocaching site.

Just as blogging has shown what happens when you remove the high cost of entry to publishing, these new rich, personalized maps are what you get when you hand mapping tools to the masses. Think about what maps have been in recent history. And I define recent history as the time since researching and printing maps was only available to the chosen few.

When I was a child, living in the hinterlands of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (also known at “The U.P.”), I was surrounded by towns that were too small for most maps to even acknowledge.

To cartographers, they didn’t exist. The commercial effects were devastating. 

Smack in the middle of a breathtakingly beautiful part of the country, with much to offer visitors, these tiny hamlets withered on the vine because tourists drove right past. These towns were achingly close to the tourist dollars they needed to survive. In some cases they were separated from major U.P. roads by nothing more than a stand of pine trees. So close and yet so far away.

That is all changing.

I’m a rock climbing enthusiast. The last time I climbed at Devil’s Lake, a spectacular set of quartzite climbing faces, I and my fellow climbers found the right place to set our gear based on an old, dog-eared book. The book was far from current, but it was the best we had. I’m expecting, within the year, to make my selection based on one or more Google Map mash-ups, enhanced with Flickr.com photos and user-generated raves, rants and warnings. My guide book will stay on the shelf, more a relic than reference.

And who knows? Maybe, armed with more personal — and personalized — knowledge of the area around Devil’s Lake, I’ll discover an ideal place to eat. One that I didn’t even know existed. A new perspective will reveal a physical world I didn’t realize was right there all the time.

Networks Can Intermediate Too

Is it inevitable that a networked world eliminates the middleman, shifting from an objective, imposed experience to a more subjective one? I thought so.

But on the same day that I read that Times article, I heard a wonderful NPR podcast. It was one of a series of programs called RadioLab, and this episode was about time. The program reminded me that there was an era in this county when small communities like my hometown had a very personal — and personalized — view of time. Up until about 200 years ago, these places had no official “time.” Noon was simply when the sun was directly overhead. You set your watch to that moment, and that was good enough.

Back then you could walk into a room and ask for the time, and get as many different answers as there were people answering. Some would even, quite sincerely, answer with something like “It’s nearly time for me to harvest the corn.” Because what was time, after all, but something you experienced subjectively?

One day that all changed, and everyone followed the same timeclock.

And the intermediary that created this change? None other than a network: The railroad.

With much at stake for both the train and the towns along its path, someone had to agree to exactly when the 12:07 train would pull up to the stop. The network wiped away all personal “maps” of time and replaced them with one that was objective and unyielding.

All of this is a reminder to me that two of the most agree-upon truths — Time and Space — which keep us moored to this harbor called Reality, are more open to interpretation that we would care to admit.

We all know that retail’s mantra and battle cry is Location, Location, Location. But the spread of map mash-ups helps us realize that what makes a location good is in the eye of the beholder. Take it from me: If what you want is a really good smelt fry, I know a place in Rapid River, Michigan that is worth seeking out.