User Behavior: Control the Balance Not the User

To date, my main focus regarding website optimization has been to increase the conversion rate on the landing page, through the conversion funnel, and at the point of sale.  I have performed test after test in pursuit of this goal in multiple sites, and I have seen the kind of lift you write home about (or at least write on your resume).  You see, it’s (relatively) easy to improve the conversion rate or the average order value with some testing – test and test and test and watch your performance metrics inch higher and higher.  Along the way, you learn lots about your user and that helps you make even better decisions and create more successful tests.

One such learning came during a redesign that I have been working on over the past year (and will continue to work on until the end of time?).  The main goal of the site was to increase leads and sales (of course), but one of the other goals was to reduce the number of calls to the call center.  The product is complicated (insurance, need I say more?), and the better we can do our job on the website, the more likely we can let it do our selling for free.  During the first phase (which involved all pages outside of the purchase flow), our thought was to simply remove the number from the main pages where the customer would be likely to call it instead of use the internet tools at their disposal.  We moved the phone number from the main content area of the homepage to the footer.  Same with the contact us page, where we would rather them submit a request for help online.  The contracted design confirmed and encouraged this idea, and who were we to argue with a company that had designed thousands of websites.  We added content that explained various aspects of our product including FAQs.  We’ve all been to sites like this.  And let’s face it, we’ve probably all been annoyed by sites like this.  But for some reason, we thought we could control the user’s behavior and force them to use the means given to them.  If they absolutely had to call, they could search and find a phone number in the footer.  Seemed simple.

A couple weeks after the first phase launched, I received an email that had been forwarded multiple times from an office out in Louisiana.  In the email, she explained that she had been getting several calls from people wanting to receive a quote or needing help with their policy across the country, and that they had all found the number on the locations page of the website.  That office’s function was to serve one small jurisdiction in Louisiana, but now they were having to carefully handle and redirect sales calls so as not to disengage interested buyers.  As it turns out, when people were unable to find the phone number on our site (though it was in the footer), they searched high and low until they found something (anything!) on the ‘locations’ page.  The first number on that page happened to be a number to that office in Louisiana.

A quick Omniture path analysis confirmed the most common paths to the locations page were from the homepage, about us page, and the contact us page following the about us page.  Our solution was to add the phone number to the top of the contact us and location pages.  We chose not to add it to the homepage, because we’re not going to make it that easy but if a user would much rather call, the phone number can now be easily found in a logical location.  Louisiana is back to focusing on what they do best, our sales center is doing what they do best, while our main landing page still reduces calls by not providing users with multiple options to achieve their goals.

Don’t Click It

I came upon a website today whose goal was to create an interface with no clicking required. It tests and measures the activity of users as they attempt to navigate the site without clicking anything. My experience with the site was mixed. The user experience itself could use some improvement: I found that things were opening before I was ready for them to, and/or without my even wanting them to simply because I hovered over them. I tend to follow what I’m reading with my cursor which proved to be troublesome for this task.  Apparently, most visitors to the site did not miss the click, but I think some improvement to the interface is necessary before I give into this idea.

On the other hand, I thought that the idea was pretty interesting. It really kind of gets you thinking about whether or not buttons are needed in certain aspects of the web. Of course, they are needed, but could you make a user experience better by simplifying what users are made to click on?

Click it: Don’t click it.

Increased Conversion in your FACE!

For whatever reason, people tend to be drawn to the human face, and we are even prone to seeing it in inanimate objects such as plugs or clouds.  Thus, it should be no surprise that when Paras Chopra recently conducted two A/B studies on the subject, results led to the conclusion that a page with a human face increased conversion compared to a page without.  This theory is highly applicable to many companies, and I am looking forward to testing it on a site I am currently working on!  Since we are in the middle of a huge site redesign, it will be some time until I can implement on that particular site, but I will update with the results of this test then

Facebook Drives More Traffic Than Google

I don’t have time for a long article, but I was excited about the implications of this article so I thought I should share.  As has always been the case with offline marketing, this shows that a recommendation from a trusted friend online is becoming more powerful than the unreliable results of a search engine:  “According to Web measurement firm Compete Inc., Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites.”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/14/BUU51C0AMN.DTL

Google Buzz: Sprouting Social Success

This week, Google unveiled it’s latest foray into the world of social media, Google Buzz, and I am going to be bold and say: it has the potential to be Google’s most successful venture in the social space yet.

Google Buzz Integrates with G-mail

It’s true that Google Buzz is not without flaws, and several of the online industry experts are quick to point that out.  A lack of integration with other platforms and services and privacy issues seem to be at the top of the list of concerns.  Buzz is not yet integrated with facebook or even some of it’s own entities like youtube.  This results in a newsfeed that is not as integrated in comparison to it’s competitors facebook and twitter.  Furthermore, as with their introduction of ads within G-mail, consumers are concerned with their privacy and do not want Google reading their personal e-mails in order to give us more relevant ads.  Sure, relevant ads are great, and in theory, they are certainly more effective from a marketing standpoint.  However, if I wrote a long personal e-mail to a close friend asking for relationship advice, Google’s offer of a romantic date near me might make me squirm.  Of course, I know that Google doesn’t ‘read e-mails’ so much as they work off of keywords randomly and non-obtrusively, but you can imagine what someone who is not a search engine marketing guru (yes, I said it… ) might think.

That being said, I think it’s important to remember that this is Google’s first release of their new product, so of course it will have opportunities for improvement.  Social networking communities seem to struggle with privacy boundaries, and I think Google will find it’s balance and assurance with users as time goes on.  Furthermore, Google knows that it will have to bite the bullet like it’s predecessors in this space and offer solutions that work with other social networking sites in order to satisfy an increasingly linked social society.  I think they will evolve in order to satisfy their user-base, as well as provide even greater solutions that Google is known for.

Let’s talk about the reasons that Google Buzz is already poised to succeed.  For one, their feed offers the option to be either public (like twitter) or private (like facebook).  This is an innovation users have been waiting for, and Google is in the unique position to provide it without impeding on it’s core mission as would be the case with it’s two major competitors.  Additionally, it integrated this feed with  G-mail which is already a successful communication vehicle and immensely popular with users in part because of it’s pioneer G-chat feature.  This feature leads to a user-base that is even more connected to it’s e-mail than most other e-mail providers, who have only added it in retrospect.  Right off of the bat, they have a large and engaged audience to trial their product, provide feedback, and hopefully embrace it as it evolves into something that they want.  Another reason Buzz will be successful is because the world has embraced social networking from a personal and business perspective.  Once computer-phobic grandmas are  now OMGing over the cuteness their children’s latest baby pictures on facebook.  And what company doesn’t have a twitter even if they have no idea what to do with it?  While it took years for people to warm up to potential business opportunities on facebook and twitter, companies had already jumped on the Google Buzz Bandwagon within hours of Google Buzz’s launch.  They may not have a firm grasp on how to deliver ROI with these sites yet, but in response to mass consumer acceptance, companies have put a lot more focus on their social media campaigns and have dedicated people to keep up with the trends in this industry.  As a result, Google Buzz is being greeted by a willing commercial audience, and I predict that personal users will warm up to it as the tool evolves.  I certainly plan to keep an eye on it’s progression as well as the exciting evolution of social networking!

Press Release Optimization for Writers

A well-written press release with a clear, concise message is a key element to effectively communicating your intended message to your target audience (reader, search engine, or otherwise). Writing for search engines should not take away from the credibility of the news piece or the enjoyable experience of those reading it. In fact, an awkwardly worded article might produce high bounce-back rates which will actually decrease your pages’ rank on search engines. On the contrary, it should make it easier for your target audience to find your work by making it easy for the search engines to understand as well. The below guide provides some guidelines for a writer who is interested in optimizing articles for search engines.

Choose Target Audience: When you write a press release for online distribution, keep three “end users” in mind: readers, search engines, and other media outlets (print/journalists/bloggers, etc). Obviously, the most important user is the reader and this is who you will focus on when optimizing search engine efforts. First, assess the premise of the article and determine that target audience.

Keyword selection: What is the premise of the article? Choose one or two main keywords that your target audience would search for. The keyword(s) you select should be checked for keyword popularity. Google has several tools that can help you with this, such as those listed below; I tend to trust their data the most since they have the most traffic.

• http://www.google.com/trends – Compare a few keyword ideas to see which one is more popular. Very quick and easy.
• http://www.google.com/insights/search – This is like Google trends, but will provide more insight on the keywords in case you wanted more insights to guide your keyword debate.
• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal – This will also give you other ideas for popular variations of the keyword you are thinking about using. It’s good if you want more ideas for keywords to use.

Keyword Placement:

• Title: This is the most important place to put your keyword. Search engine algorithms typically place a lot of value on the title of a webpage. Note: As with traditional press releases, make sure it’s catchy or else no one EXCEPT the search engines will read it. A catchy title will also improve click-through rate in places where it is picked up, and decrease bounce-back rate which is great for SEO too!

• First paragraph: The closer to the beginning of the content you can place the keyword, the more relevant they appear to the search engines. Try to place the main keyword in the first paragraph once.
• Rest of article: Throughout the article, try to mention the keyword(s) 2-3 more times depending on the length. As alluded to above, you do not want to overuse keywords, as awkwardly worded articles will be unappealing to readers and possibly increase bounce-back the rate, which is bad for ranking in search engines. A good optimized article should be well-written and flow naturally as any other article would be written. Hopefully, using the keyword will come naturally, as the subject of the article should be very relevant to the keyword you have chosen.

Linking: Your own site, as well as many press release distribution companies, allows you to include keyword-rich anchor text in links. Anchor text is the visible text that links to websites when. Search engines use anchor text to determine what the link is about, as well as the link’s associated rank for that term on search engine’s. Therefore, it is important to consider what text you use to link to other sites in your article. The links should be directed to specific URLs within your Website that, ideally, have a title tag, header tag, and content that supports this same keyword phrase. Again, there’s great SEO value in having links on other Websites linking to you, using keywords that you’d like to rank for within the anchor text of the link.

Other Media: A good press release with good information will not only get picked up by your target readers, but also from relevant print and online journalists, bloggers, etc. Those interested will want to write about your release. It is in your best interest to use all possible communication channels that are available to deliver your message. Plus, online media sources will link back to you (hopefully), which is good for ranking on the search engines. So, make it easy for them! It is a good practice to include contact information, photos/logo, and other enclosures (where necessary) to help the journalists work on it faster and publish/have it printed.

Other Considerations: Distributing through reputable channels such as prnewswire is great for getting your press releases seen. Research these to make sure they are not associated with ‘spammy’ press releases. Also, make sure your meta tags, title tags, and header tags all reflect the premise of your press release. Good luck!

Save Energy as you Google: Blackle

It’s a simple yet impressive concept.  Blackle is Google… with a black background.  The idea is that an all black page uses less energy than an all white page, so if you apply this to one of the world’s most high volume websites, Google, than you save tons of energy.  The blog post that inspired it all claims that you would save 750 Mega-watt hours (roughly 75,000 dollars!) a year if you made this simple change on Google.  It’s not millions, but if everyone pitches in a little then the result would be huge.  With green products all the rage, I predict success for the search engine that saves.

When you can save the world just by doing what you normally do, everyone wins! 

SEO-starved City Surrenders to Google’s Algorithm

A city in France called Ville d’Eu is thinking about changing it’s name to rank more easily in Google’s search engine.   Queries referencing the city more commonly known as simply “EU” are drowned out by information on the European Union.  The mayor,Marie-Françoise Gaouyer, claims they are losing 1/3 of it’s potential revenue due to Google’s algorithm.

It sounds like a drastic measure, but is it necessary?

According to the article, “Google pointed out that the town is can be found easily via google.fr as Ville d’Eu comes top, followed by the European Union.”  This is likely because their website ends in ‘.fr’ and is written entirely in French, thus google’s algorithm assumes it is a French site targeted toward French people.  If Ville d’Eu wants to gain international travellers, they should start by creating a website geared toward them.  Changing their name is a drastic and unnecessary measure!  I would gladly create a SEO’d website for them for room, board and the opportunity to live overseas and learn French!

G1 Marketing: The Problem or Genius?

Last weekend, I did some research on the G1 HTC mobile phone, because I am getting a new cell phone and data plan with T-mobile through work. Upon first impression, the phone seemed slightly unattractive which had me lean toward the new blackberry curve 8900, but I keep it in the running because I know that Google’s phone must be jam-packed with features. I need to do some research to see what Android is capable of. The T-mobile rep told me that they have had a lot of trouble getting them in, but as soon as they do, they go immediately. This led me to wonder if they have trouble with supply or if it was a clever marketing scheme.

My theory is that Google is keeping supply low on purpose and launching the G1 as a beta, similar to the way they launched G-mail as ‘invite only.’ This release method was actually very successful with g-mail as a marketing technique, so they could be trying to use it here. Aside from the buzz, I also don’t remember seeing much advertising around this product when it launched which also has me curious. I imagine the low supply is creating a lot of anticipation. Furthermore, I was surprised when I heard that the G2 is ALREADY slated for release in the next couple months, but it would also make sense if they are using the G1 to perfect the G2 and build anticipation for this release. Of course, this is just speculation, but I have to say that Google constantly impresses me with it’s innovation in it’s products as well as it’s marketing

SEO for Site Migration

At some point in the evolution of your company, you may find that you have outgrown your website. Perhaps your company gets bought out or the old website becomes so convoluted that a fresh start and/or a fresh brand becomes necessary. The marketing team is excited about the prospect of developing new messaging, creating new creative and graphics, and promoting the new platform, and the IT team is excited about new, updated web capabilities and the challenge of designing new pages! The only grump happens to be a hybrid of these two groups – the SEO Specialist. The SEO guru approaches this situation with caution: they don’t want to ditch the hard earned rankings and link juice they’ve spent so long earning over the years. Understandable. The following will lay out how to save your SEO ranking when launching the new site!

The project will be broken into 5 steps:

1. Project Management/Planning

This blog serves to make this step as easy as possible. You will need to lay out the execution of the project and determine the resources needed to accomplish it within your time frame. In order to get an initial idea of how many sites you will be redirecting, you must determine how many sites are in the search engine indices. A quick “site:” search on Google and Yahoo should help you determine this. Yahoo! will likely return more results. Your resources and time constraints may limit how many sites you will be able to redirect, but the goal should be to 301 redirect as many ranking sites as possible so that you lose as little traffic as possible.

2. Analysis

First and foremost, gather benchmarking data from the original site. You will use this later to determine the success of this project! Review your data to determine the amount of traffic all of your ranked pages bring in using your weblogs, google analytics, omniture, or whatever data sources you have available. Using this in conjunction with your constraints will allow you to determine which sites you should focus on. If you have a seasonal business, you might need to go back one year to see your top sites – otherwise, a few months will do. I would recommend compiling a list as comprehensive as possible, however, the size and scope of your project will be dependent on the size of your site as well as your resource constraints.

3. Execution

Each site will have to be 301 redirected to a site most like it on the new site. A 301 redirect represents a permanent change in the eyes of the search engines and is the only redirect that can be used if you want to maintain your rank. The execution phase will likely be the bulk of the project, because each web page must be redirected to its’ equivalent web page on the new site. For time estimation purposes, expect to complete 2000 web pages a day unless you are able to find shortcuts like those I mention below. The search engines will penalize mass redirects to one site or redirects to a site that is unlike the original. This technique is often used by spammers, and therefore, must be handled with care by those using the 301 redirect honestly! This phase can be shortened by creating a script that pull out information on the web pages that give clues as to what the web page is about, such as the header or h1 tag. This is where a habit clear coding comes in handy! Certain sections might also go quickly, such as directories, if you can find patterns in the URL structures on either site!

4. Quality Assurance

I would execute sites in sections starting with less important web pages for damage control. Spot check each section before execution to make sure redirects are working and going to the ideal location. Monitor the re-rankings of these sites to make sure search engines accept your 301 redirect methodology!

5. Assessment and Resolving Issues

Once the project is complete, it will take a bit of time for the redirects to rank the pages in your new website. Monitor traffic closely to make sure there are little to no drops in traffic. Research any behavior that may indicate a problem with your 301 redirects and address if possible.

Good luck!