So, you want to optimize your website to create the perfect customer experience?  Well, that is a reasonable expectation if you have a million years to achieve it.  The trick word is “perfect,” right?  Right.

Optimizing a site assumes there is an “optimal,” not a perfect existence.  This is mainly due to conflicting needs.  Last time I wrote about writing for the right crowd, which is complicated when you have several target markets.  Today, I am saying you have to pick the optimal existence, is your site 80% focused on sales and 20% focused on servicing current clients?  Or, is there some other mix?  An optimal mix will support your web strategy and business goals.

Many folks get discouraged when they focus on conversion rates and traffic volumes go down, or they focus on getting paid search impressions and bounce rate goes up.  Your goals, like your audiences, will often conflict, particularly when you have limited resources.  So what should you do?  Pick a strategy mix and test it out.

If your goal is increase your brand recognition, you can bet your website’s overall profitability (ROI) will go down.  It is a fact of life.  Now, in the long term we may expect to reap rewards from our efforts today, which is what branding is all about.  So, with the conflicting goals at hand you just have to pick a mix that you are comfortable with and GO. (more…)

There is much debate in our industry about usability, findability, functionality, and a hundred other ilities.  The debates typically stem from looking at the same problem from a different perspective, and the things we love to argue about are usually easily settled.  There is a solution, and I will share it with you here!

Identify WHO the site is for.

This is the first critical step, whether you come from marketing, IT, development, design, data analysis, management, etc. In every discipline you need a clear picture of who the site is for. I recommend defining your audience, getting a picture of someone in that specific audience and hanging by your computer screen (not even joking).

One of the local boise “findability” companies (Cendesic) bases their value proposition on helping Jane Thompson meet you.  It is a novel concept and ultimately, assuming you have a reasonable business model, should be a primary goal of your company’s marketing efforts (not just web).  If you aren’t convinced yet, take a look at Web Trends’ website.  Same principle of knowing your market, but in this case Web Trends is saying:  You are found, now get to know Claire. (more…)

Here as an obvious statement — The web data you pay attention to should link to business strategies.  While the statement is obvious the application can actually be quite challenging.  I intend to explore the entire process (yes, it is a cyclical process, not a single event) of linking data to strategies and vice versa through this blog — but not today.  Today I just want to hit a few of the assumptions required before you can do ANYTHING with this simple concept.

First, you have need to know your business strategies.  That should be obvious, but quite honestly, it is the most overlooked step in the entire process.  Lots of people jump into web analytics excited about knowing where their visitors come from and how long they are on the site with no thought about whether it even matters to their business. (more…)

Web analytics in a vacuum is not effective.  I would even go so far as saying that “analyzing” your data without some sort of context is actually harmful to your ability to make good business decisions.

One of the problems I see beginners (and even novices)  have is basing success on some nebulous concept of personal fulfillment.  It smacks of the feel-good approach people take to ad design — the highest paid person likes it, and therefore it is good.  I am being a bit over the top, but the reality is:  making decisions without context is dangerous.

So, here are three suggestions for getting some context on your data.

1- Compare Recent Data to Prior Data

This is sort of a no-brainer, but that’s why it is the first one; it is the easiest too.  Some web analytics packages don’t allow you to easily compare two time periods (if you have one, nuke it and get Google Analytics or ClickTracks Appetizer).  If you had 8,000 visits this month one way to tell if that is good is to compare it to prior months. (more…)

Well, I had a fantastic chat with Barry Teppola from the Legend Company today (he is one of the most progressive home builders in the Treasure Valley, IMHO), and I left with a big smile.  Why?  Because he gets it.  He gets web analytics.

We helped Barry get rolling with web analytics a few months ago, and followed up with him today to see how things were going.  As he explained how they were using the data the analytics provided warmed my soul (no kidding).  You see, the decision makers in the company meet once a week to review the data, and use it to shape their forward progress.   (more…)

I am relieved to be done with the very constrictive set of posts giving a waterfront view of website optimization. Now, we can get into the good stuff. What is the good stuff you might ask.

Well, my first stab at the good stuff is with regard to “getting a new website.” I am anxiously anticipating the upcoming posts by an acquaintance of mine at our local grassroots marketing firm. Turns out Sam Swenson, the Blueline web guy, is writing some great stuff about pricing new websites. It is fun and very insightful to get a developer’s view on the industry.

The part that is not surprising, but still frustrating is his absolutely correct answer to the question, “how much should a new website cost?” The answer we all expect and hate — It DEPENDS. Oh, those web developers are just trying to get as much as they can from us right? Wrong. It really does depend. Sam is going into a fair amount of detail about why it depends, and giving you a bit of an idea of what to expect when you go looking.

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Well, here is the last piece of my website optimization positioning posts. If you feel like all of the posts were kind of squishy and non-specific, you’re right. Over time all of the ideas touched on will be developed in more detail, so I guess I am saying be patient.

Now, regarding database development. I know less about the actual implementation of this piece than any of the others, but to really get an optimized website and Internet marketing effort you need to touch this topic. Here is why — even the most expensive web analytics solutions cannot provide all of the information you will need to make data-driven decisions. A few months ago I was at a wonderful conference put on by Web Trends (one of the web analytics pioneers), and one speaker talked extensively on the 360 Degree view of the customers (here’s what my traveling companion at WestSlope Design had to say about it). Simply put, the speaker acknowledged that in order to get the 360 Degree view they will need to tap into your CRM, E-Commerce, Phone Records, Survey Results, etc.

Not every website optimization effort requires all of that, but alternate sources of data can provide you with valuable information. Ultimately, getting all of your analytics package data and other data sources in a central location and then dissecting it and analyzing it will require some serious database work.

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Well, we are winding down on our “lay of the land” topics and then we can start getting into the real fun stuff. Today’s topic is Data Analysis. This can be a really nerdy (not to be confused with geeky) topic. Let me just touch lightly on a few of the high points that you should be aware of, whether you are doing your own website optimization or have a consultant doing it for you.

Perhaps the most important point here is that if you are going to analyze data, you need sufficient amounts of data. What is sufficient? Well, it depends on your tolerance for error. More data will generally lead to more accurate decisions. In your college statistics classes the minimum sample size is 30, or something like that. In the real world 30 is very deficient. 100’s are good, 1000’s are better, and 10’s of 1000’s are great. Now that I have scared small businesses into thinking their web data is useless let me share a brief story.

I have a good friend that is a data analysis expert. He did some work for a local company regarding their media placement. He ran an online survey and within a few days had 200 results (not optimal). He did his regression analysis, and massaged the numbers in SPSS and concluded that the primary market for the client’s service was working moms and that they should advertise on three specific radio stations.

The advertising/marketing agency working for his client was quite upset because they had already determined that stay-at-home moms were the primary market. When a “discussion” ensued the ad agency argued that 200 responses was not a sufficient sample size and that because the survey was web based it was likely biased. My friend simply responded that a base of 200 customers is certainly more reliable than 4 “marketing guys” sitting around the table pulling ideas out of thin air.

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We will be posting more about paid search marketing, so I will keep this fairly brief and high-level (again, just giving an overview of the website optimization space). 

Paid search, strictly speaking, is simply paying to have text advertisements appear on search results pages.  Now, not surprisingly, there is a lot more to it than that.  For example, the major search engines have extensive “content networks,” which means your ad can show up on websites.  And, you can create image ads and video ads in addition to the classic text ads.  The key, regardless of how sophisticated you want to get with your paid campaigns, is to keep your message consistent and relevant.

Website optimization has to extend to the ads your marketing and design team puts out because if they are saying one thing and the website is saying another you could have a serious image problem.  Additionally, the search engines reward consistent themes from keywords, through ads, and on to your website.  A well structured paid search campaign will have lower cost-per-click and higher conversion rates.  Typically, with any website optimization effort you will need to extend beyond the website and look at the message in your ads and on referring sites.

You will be able to track the success of message alignment via your web analytics solution.  A measurement of single-page accesses will start to give you a feel (although it is not a perfect measurement) of the effects.  Also, the data you collect from your paid search efforts will give you a little glimpse at the “why” people visit your site, as opposed to just knowing that they do. 

Here is what I mean:  The keywords your visitors search for represent questions, or needs, they have.  You can test key terms with paid search that will give you insight to their questions, which you will not get via organic search.  Also, you will get a better feel for search volumes by looking at paid search impressions.  See, now you are starting to understand your web visitors a little better.

My philosophy is that paid search marketing, even if you are not interested in the pure advertising part of it, is a relatively inexpensive way to conduct some market research.  In terms of website optimization, the critical role of paid search marketing can totally ignore the advertising function, if it makes sense to do so.

There is a difference between search engine optimization and web site optimization. Sometimes they even conflict. For example, a page with optimal keyword density for search findability may be very clunky and annoying for your website visitors.  In many cases, getting more traffic with lower conversion rates may not be a good strategy (sometimes it is).

Now, those of you who know something about SEO are probably cringing at “keyword density,” considering it is a minor factor, but it is a factor and every little bit helps.

The technical structure of your site is the minimum bar for search optimization. In other words, if it doesn’t meet certain standards then it will automatically decrease your rankings. For example, if you have a Flash Introduction page for your web site and you have not done anything to “help” the search engines through that page it could be the only page that gets indexed. And, worse than that, there is no crawlable content on the page! The ill effects go beyond just search though, the page may not be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and you may not be creating the “user experience” you thought you were. This is not to say you shouldn’t have the fancy flash intro page; just be careful how you do it.

One other example where SEO and web optimization will intersect (or diverge) is the messaging of your campaigns. It is very important that you treat your targeted web searches as questions. If you want to rank high on Swiss Bank Accounts because it gets searched more frequently than Idaho Bank Accounts you can create keyword targeted content and for the sake of argument, lets say you do rank well. That is a fantastic SEO achievement, but will do little for website optimization.  Website optimization is for people not for search engines.

A good website optimization effort will keep things in balance. You need high search rankings, you need fancy web programming, you need a functional web site, you need a pretty web page, and web site optimization is focused on getting all of those elements in the right amounts.