Follow the Money Trail to Turn a Web Site Profit

FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL

If you own a website, you own much more than some sell pages and a check-out. You own digital content in the form of articles, news forums, graphics, pictures, your logo – virtually every piece of your web site is digitized and programmed for display on a variety of browsers, from IE to Chrome.

You paid a lot of money for those digital assets but are they paying you back? Are you seeing a nice return on your marketing development dollars? Probably not, but given time…

Digital Advertising
Tom Wheeler, managing Director at Core Capital Partners, recently forecast that by the year 2011, digital, mobile advertising will hit $14.4 billion dollars. Currently. $1.5 billion is being spent on advertising via mobile computers, PDAs, cell phones, iPods, iPhones – and the list of gadgets just keeps on growing.

So, if your site marketing plan is limited to traditional promotional activities, i.e. PPC, paid links, hosted content and other marketing tactics that worked well last year, chances are you won’t be in business next year.

The Changing Paradigm
Paradigm is an odious word. People toss it around without a clue what it means. It’s one of those buzzwords that every SEO and CEO throws around like verbal confetti. But in the case of digital advertising, we have actually found a legitimate use for the words “changing paradigm.”

A paradigm is nothing more than an “outstandingly clear example,” what, in the day, was called an archetype. So you start researching how digital advertising is going to change things for web-based businesses and you keep running into “changing paradigm,” which doesn’t mean anything more than a changing example. Now, indeed, if we’re spending 1.4 billion on digital advertising today and the projected figure just a few years hence is $14.4, there is clearly something afoot. But it ain’t no paradigm.

The content will be the same. The messages won’t change and the human emotional buttons will still be there. In fact, the only thing that’ll change is the way this content is delivered to the listener or viewer.

Digital Content is Digital Content.
Once a document, a song, a picture or an image of the accountant’s butt is digitized on the copier at the office party, it can be used in lots of ways – ways that you can use to expand your site’s reach (except the accountant butt image. Toss it, PLEASE!) Even more importantly, you can reach that sweet, care-free-money-in-the-pocket-demographic of 15-25 year olds who have lots discretionary income and a cell or PDA.

If your future advertising is land-locked (as in you don’t plan on using digitized content for other promotional uses), you might as well be working in Mesopotamia with a mud table and a stylus. You are sooooo four millennia ago.

Once digitized, content can be quickly, easily and inexpensively adapted to other formats that are picked up by other communications devices. For example, let’s say you put together a weekly podcast for the illumination of your audience. If that podcast is only available on your website, do you have any idea how many opportunities you’re missing?

That same podcast can be formatted to XML scripting and sent via RSS feed to thousands, millions of sites. Or, it could be reformatted for pick up by cell or PDA. This way, even if your number one fan is on the bus, he can still hear your podcast through his cell – if you’re set up to do that. Even hearing aid technology has gone wireless, enabling those with hearing loss to take advantage of all these digital goings-on.

With ad revenues from traditional media dropping (thanks to the inventor of the remote control and the fine art of channel surfing, among other reasons), advertisers are scrambling to find new ways to keep the product or service in front of the buying public. You can’t see a movie without strategic product placement. The main character is eating Fruit Loops for a reason. Kellogg’s paid for that product placement.

What other avenues are growing – fast, especially for smaller online businesses? Cell phone downloads are coming on strong. You often get a 15-second ad for acne cream before your actually content appears on screen. Just cost a few pennies, but you saw it. And the more you see it the more likely you are to buy it.

Spreading Content Development Costs
Good copywriters don’t come cheap. And the ones who also understand SEM can be downright expensive. So, if you’ve paid pesos grandé for content development, you want to use that content in as many ways as you can. It’s an asset, but if it’s parked on your website and not making the digital rounds, you’ve paid more than you have to for a single piece of site text.

Use that expensive (but beautifully written) copy, your own song, your own pictures – whatever digital content you have to create a more expansive presence on the web. It won’t cost you more in development costs and, at least at this time, the costs of digital advertising outlets aren’t enough to break the bank – even if you’re fishing your marketing budget from between the car seats, i.e. it’s cost effective.

So amortize your content development costs and prepare yourself for a 10-fold increase in digital ad revenues. Do you want a piece of that pie?

Start now to stay ahead of the curve.

Moving Data To A New Computer: Slow and Steady

“My new laptop came but I lost my files in a data transfer. BUMMER“

Your computer hard drive is solid gold. At least it contains solid gold information. Sure you have a lot of data stored on your web host’s computer, but if you’re sharp, you’ve got everything backed up six ways from Sunday because it’s just so valuable.

In addition, after years of faithful service, your computer has, no doubt, adopted a bit of your personality with all of your favorite places, settings, preferences, contacts and other information that’s 100% you. But, you’ve been eyeballing the ubiquitous adverts for the fastest, sleekest computer ever built and thinking about turning “Ol’ Betsy” into a doorstop. Such is life in the computer age. Your computer is the center of your work life one day and a giant paper weight the next.

Your New Computer
It’s important, if you’re running any kind of on-line enterprise to keep one step ahead of the glitches that are bound to occur as technological hardware ages and if you notice a few puffs of smoke and a new chugging noise that wasn’t there last week, time to switch to an upgrade. And if you’ve had your computer for more than two years, you’ll be amazed at just how much has changed in such a short time.

Computers double storage capacity approximately every 24 months. CPU processing increases at the speed of a nanosecond and there are plenty of new bells and whistles coming along virtually everyday so, what you bought last year is already out of date, sorry to say.

When shopping for a new system for your on-line business, go with a brand name, the fastest CPU you can afford and a hard drive large enough to store the entire Library of Congress. Believe it, you can get all of this for less than $500 these days – and they’ll even throw in a flat screen monitor so you can finally toss the old CRT.

When Your New Computer Arrives
Important note coming up: do NOT disconnect your old system and set it out on the sidewalk for tomorrow’s pick up until you’ve installed your new system and determined that it works. It may sound obvious but you’d be amazed at how often e-business owners have to retrieve data from the old system so keep it nearby for a while, even if it is only a door stop.

Remove the new system from its packing and carefully review the installation instructions. Then set it up to see that slot A does in fact accommodate cable B. Bench test it for at least 36 hours.

Computers and other technology have a “bathtub-shaped” failure rate graph with the most failures taking place at the beginning and end of the system’s life, with the fewest problems during the interim. That means that if you’re going to discover a computer problem, it’s going to be in the first few days, so before you put your old system out to pasture make sure the new system works completely and reliably.

Data Transfer
If all you’re moving is files, you can burn what you need to a CD and transfer that data to the new system. But what about all of the personalized stuff you have stored on the old system. How do you transfer the 150 favorite sites you’ve got stored in your browser, or the 200 contact names, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.

And what about all of that software you’ve paid for over the years? Is there any way to transfer that to the new system? The answer is ‘yes,’ with the right tools.

Personal Computer Movers
PC Movers are software packages that transfer everything except operating systems from one computer to another. The reason you can’t transfer the OS is because of copyright laws. So, you have to buy a new OS or, more likely, your new system will come with the OS already installed so you won’t have any problems.

One popular data transfer package is called Laplink PC Mover. It’s so simple to use you’ll love it. Simply install the software on the old system and the new system, connect the two systems via standard USB ports and let the software do the rest. And just what will this and other PC Movers transfer?

Programs and applications including Microsoft Office, Outlook, Photoshop, your favorite computer games and other important (and not-so-important) tools currently stored on your old system.

How about files and folders? Absolutely, regardless of format. So, that means you can transfer Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, videos, photos, all of that music you’ve paid for and downloaded – all transfer to the new system.

And what about the personal side of your system – the parts that show your personality? You bet. Desktop settings, icons and other shortcuts you’ve created to save time, browser settings, world wide web bookmarks and your complete favorites file – even your favorite smiley icons are transferred from old system to new.

Minimize Your Down Time
If you’re running a business on-line, down time is not good time. You’re out of business. But with data transfer software, you can have your new system set up just like your old one in just a matter of hours depending on how much data you have stored. And a downtime of a couple of hours is a lot better than being out of business for two days or more while you try to transfer and reconfigure your old data to your new system.

PC Data Transfer Features
So what should you look for in terms of features when shopping around for data transfer software. Here’s a checklist to help you pick the right software for your needs:

• Complete data migration (except your OS which is copyrighted and can’t be transferred)

• Transparent transfers which means nothing on the new system or the old system is overwritten. Everything stays as it was, as it should be.

• Transfer options is another feature to look for, especially if your current computer is so old that it doesn’t have a standard USB 2.0 link. Many transfer packages provide the less zippy USB 1.1 free with the software but consider the upgrade to USB 2.0 for the sake of speed.

• CD-R and DVD-R capabilities are also useful, though nowhere near as fast as a USB port.

• Look for an easy-to-use and understand interface so you know precisely what you’re doing at all times. There’s a great deal of comfort in that, especially when you’re moving sensitive files.

• Make sure the software includes an undo feature. This is essential if you run into any kind of compatibility issues or other problems because it can take you back to square one until you figure out what the problem is. (There really shouldn’t be any problems but you never know and this is a nice feature to have.)

• If more than one user has access to the old system, look for software that enables you to move data, settings, files and preferences of multiple users with one pass. Some migration software requires a separate migration for each user which can be a real time waster if 10 people all use the same system to record and process orders.

• Make sure the software you select allows you to perform data transfers in advance. This way, you can transfer critical data to a CD-R and upload to your new computer whenever it’s convenient.

• You also want the ability to transfer from an older OS to a newer one. If you’re currently using Win95 and you’re new system comes with Windows XP, you want all transferred data to fit snuggly into that newer operating system. (A note, here: though there is no good reason to do so, most migration software will not allow you to transfer from a newer operating system to an older one, i.e. transferring data from Windows XP to Win 95. But why would anyone want to?)

• Transfer from a PC to a Mac running a Windows operating system – a must have for the dedicated legions of Mac users.

• Look for customization features that enable you to transfer certain data and software while leaving other data on the older system. This saves room on the hard drive of the new system without having to delete out-of-date programs from your old or new system. Another convenience.

• Finally, make sure the software manufacturer offers tech support, preferably 24/7 tech support. These PC data movers work wonders but if you do run into a problem you want to be able to pick up the phone for an immediate solution.

A downloadable version of data transfer software should cost between $40 and $60 bucks – well worth the price in time savings and peace of mind. When transferring data off of more than one computer (from a network, for instance) you’ll have to spend more for a broader license – still worth the bucks.

So, before you move your on-line business from computer A to computer B, do some research to find the data mover that fits your specific needs. There are lots of choices so do some comparison shopping before plunking down your hard earned money.

Transferring data from an old to a new system can be frightening when your on-line business is at stake. Any good web host will offer 24/7, American-based tech support to help in making the transfer a little less frightening. So, call you web host’s help line before making that software purchase, just to make yourself feel a bit more comfortable.

Once you’ve cleared the transfer through your web hosting service, you’re good to go. And you’re going to love the way your new computer functions faster and smoother, while still keeping your system unique with all of your personalized features – emoticons included.

Check it out and bring your system up to date with a little research and a little help from your web host. You’ll be real glad you did.

Black Hat or White?: Manipulating Search Engines

 

BLACK HAT OR WHITE: BEAT THE BEAST

Bad guys have been finding ways to beat search engine spiders since Yahoo launched the first SE in 1994. Called “black hats,” their goal is to undermine, subvert or circumvent SE rating factors and indexing protocols.

 

A site is spidered. Keywords are counted up, title tags are scanned, links qualified and, using a formula, called an algorithm, sites are assessed for purpose and ranked according to queries made by search engine users. Simple, right?

So, if a consumer Google’s “snow globes,” links to sites that sell snow globes appear on the search engine results pages (SERPs) based on each site’s relevance to that user’s query words, called keywords in the parlance of ecommerce.

The problem is, SE spiders are dumber than dirt. They can only read letter strings without “understanding” whether that body of text is legit or a black hat ploy.

Black Hat Tactics

There are lots of them. For example, invisible text. If you place a block of white text against a white background, it becomes “invisible” to human eyeballs, but bots (another name for spiders) “see” it, scan it and index it back at the home base – the search engine database, sometimes called the SE index.

Using this tactic, black hats can mislead a bot into “thinking” that a site is selling ABC when, in fact, it’s selling XYZ.

Another black hat tactic? Redirects. You query a search engine for “cruise information” and get back a million hits on the SERPs. So you click on a promising link offering cruise information and you’re immediately bounced to a time share site out of Istanbul. You’ve been redirected based on the fact that if you’ve got money for a cruise, you’ve got money for a week in Turkey every summer.

Spiders As Private Eyes

As black hat tactics spread, search engine results became less and less relevant and, therefore, less useful to users. So, SE algorithms we’re made more complex, enabling spiders to not only index sites, but to also serve as private eyes in sniffing out black hat tactics. Yet, for every new algo, black hats develop nefarious, evil means to subvert the new system. It’s an on-going battle between search engine programmers and ecommerce outlaws

Google Makes The Rules

Google is by far the most popular search engine. Lose its power to drive visitors to your site and it’s time for an unintended career change.

When a Google spider detects something fishy, alarm bells go off back at Google HQ. Black hat tactics simply aren’t acceptable and sites that are even suspected of digital shenanigans lose page rank, risk being partially or mis-indexed and even banned (called graybarred) from the Google SE. You might as well close the shutters and put out the closed sign. Graybarred, and you’ve heard the death knell for your site.

Gray Hat Tactics: Illicit or Just Smart Coding?

If what you’re doing is intended to fool visiting bots, it’s illicit (black hat) and may well end your ebiz in the blink of a bot’s eye.

But what about tactics that are harmless, yet not in total compliance with the rules Google has established to protect the integrity of its SERPs? Gray hat tactics. Do we, as site owners and designers, have a responsibility to play it straighter than Google requires (or is able to detect)?

Here’s an example. SE bots follow pages that are linked within a site like an ant follows a crumb trail. Experienced site designers and SEOs know this and, consequently, they link lots of pages to keep the bots attention for as long as possible. Why? Sites are rarely spidered in their entirety and the longer a site is spidered the more of its pages are indexed (stored) in the SE database.

However, these “text links,” which we’ve all come to identify by their blue color, don’t appear as links to the human reader. The text is the same color as the text surrounding it. The reason for this is because the links aren’t intended for human use. They’re hidden links, for bots only.

Does this diminish the user’s experience in any way? Does it subvert Google’s efforts to deliver the most relevant SERPs? Or, is it just smart coding, pointing spiders down a specific path without distracting the reader with what are, in effect, fake page links – there for the benefit of bots not eyeballs.

Ultimately, it’s Google’s call and again, bots aren’t bright.

Safe SEO Practices

As a new or experienced site owner, the question of safe SEO practices should be an important consideration in the design and administration of your on-line enterprise. Search engine optimization (SEO) is important to the success of your new business. That’s true.

However, if your site is gray-barred, you’re gone. Therefore, the prudent designer will not engage in anything that might remotely be deemed suspicious by a Google bot. Indeed, you may not see the visitor traffic you would see using ethically ambiguous tactics like those described above. And your conversion rate might not be quite as high.

But the bottom line all comes down to your bottom line. Just because Google bots can’t or don’t detect it doesn’t make it licit – even if the intent is relatively benign like the hidden links example above.

There are lots of perfectly acceptable white hat SEO strategies – licit and safe. And new ones come along almost every day, in part because SE algos are tweaked regularly. Sure, black or gray hat tactics may generate additional foot traffic. For awhile. But eventually, these subversions of the SE’s prime directive to assess and index web sites will be detected. Eventually. So ask yourself, when developing your SE optimization strategy, if it’s worth risking your on-line business. Because that’s what’s at stake.

The conclusion? Site owners should hold themselves to the highest SEO standards in the design and optimization of their sites. Not only is it the right thing to do, given the sanctions imposed by Google, it’s the smart thing to do.

Always wear a white hat and the Google gods will always smile kindly on your site.

Google Gadgets: Learn From The 800-Lb. Gorilla

GOOGLE: THE 800-LB. GORILLA

You want Google to love your website. This search engine alone accounts for 46% of all searches so when you consider that there are virtually thousands of search engines (granted, many topic specific), controlling a 46% share of all search engine users makes you “the cat that everybody’s rapping ‘bout.” And they are.

The webmaster community and Google don’t always get along and that’s understandable. For most webmasters, Google is a prime source of site traffic but if there are too many obstacles to Google success, of course there’s going to be feuding between search engine and those professionals who rely on search engines for their livelihoods. Every time Google tweaks an algorithm, some sites gain, some lose ground – and the reasons are rarely clear.

So, Google put together Webmaster Central, a blog for site owners to post gripes, offer suggestions, identify glitches and otherwise interact with the people behind the search engine. (We can only assume there are people behind Google. Verifiable proof is slow in coming. The entire company could be bot-run for all we know.)

The Google Webmaster Blog and You
Google knows it must keep site owners happy and who or whatever is running the company recognizes the need to interact with professional SEOs, SEMs, coders, designers, graphic artists and every new technology that takes a giant leap forward such as remote site syndication (RSS) that changed the way information was distributed over a weekend.

So, this is where you go to ask questions and get answers from other site owners. Google answers. From regular users like you – the owner of a small, once active site that has mysteriously disappeared from Google SERPs overnight. What happened? And how are you going to pay the rent if your e-store has disappeared from Google’s ever-expanding index?

Posting to the Webmaster Central Blog is a good place to go for quick answers from real people. And that usually means you’ll get an answer you can actually understand rather than an earful of techno-babble from some chip head.

This is also the place where Google introduces new features for webmasters. Just a while back. Google let loose improvements to iGoogle Gadgets for Webmaster Tools.

Here’s how the Googlistas explain it: “After our initial release, we saw clear interest in the gadgets, and plenty of suggestions for improvement. So we’ve spent the past several weeks working on various areas. The biggest improvements are probably for those of you with more than one site: when you add a new tab of gadgets, your gadgets will now default to the site you were viewing when you added them to your iGoogle page. Additionally, gadgets now retain settings as a group, so if you change the site for any gadget in a group, the next time you refresh that page, all the gadgets will show data for that site. And gadgets now resize dynamically, so they take up less room.”

Functionality has also been improved with the addition of Top Search Queries for your site, very helpful in refining a keyword list. “The data from the Top Search Queries allows you to quickly pinpoint what searches your site appears for and which of those searches are resulting in clicks,” according to Google.

Other new features that improve site performance analysis include a smart, geo-targeting function. This enables you to create several site skins for regions around the world if you choose. This geo-targeting gadget also produces a map overlay of where your visitors are coming from – right down to street level if you’re only seeking local business or referrals. Your site may be hot in Australia but bombing in the UK. There’s got to be a reason. This Google gadget helps isolate what’s working where, by region, with incredible specificity.

And if you’d like Google’s opinion of your numbers and your conclusions, click on Analytics Help Center for a ton of Google-centric info. All good in determining what Google likes and dislikes about your site.

Another tool from Google is the URL Remover. You log on to your administrator’s console over coffee and scan through your stats for the overnight, and you discover that your “Content by Title” section – a back office only function – has been inadvertently Googled, indexed and displayed on Google SERPs, giving anyone (including competitors) more than a quick peek at your business. They can read everything because it’s been spidered and indexed.

Using the new URL Removal Tool, you can quickly remove those private pages from Google’s index and tell spiders that this information is off limits as in DO NOT SPIDER.

Google Webmaster Help
This is one very cool tool. One that is certainly bookmark-worthy.

Google Webmaster Help provides tips and suggestions for improving your site in the eyes of what Google calls “benevolent Googlebots.” Hey Boys, those bots ain’t so benevolent if they mis-index my site because of your messed up classification taxonomy. Even so, when you have as much influence over online success as Google does, you get to call your bots “benevolent” even if they are mindless snippets of programs that chew through letter strings.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of good, useful information here from the people who make the algos. So, it’s worth a visit just to see what’s new, what’s working and what you should do about your precipitous loss of PR when you changed the home page text. Something Happened. And this is the place to find out what.

The Google Webmaster Help section also has a very robust, informed community able to answer FAQs from other site owners. You don’t have to wait for Google to get back to you. Ask an SEO or other web professional using the Webmaster blog for fast facts fast.

Today, there are 107,738 messages, questions and answers on crawling, indexing and ranking; 14,019 posts on the new Google gadgets listed above, so you see that these help pages see a lot of activity and should be a part of your daily web scan.

Go To the Source
Google sets the rules and no matter how strongly these rules are debated among site designers, SEOs and other web professionals, the rules are the rules. One way to stay current is by joining the regular online discussions that Google offers. You can check the schedule of upcoming discussions and mark them so you don’t forget. It’s a great way to meet the Googlistas and your counterparts who are trying to figure out how to perform better in the search engine sweepstakes.

Visit webmaster blogs like the one you’re reading now, especially targeted at those just venturing into ecommerce. Some webmaster blogs are highly technical (more for coders than site owners, actually) while other webmaster blogs provide information on everything from digital selling to site design tips.

But if you want the skinny – the unvarnished truth – go to the source. Go to Google and become a member of the Google webmaster community. Download the free Google analytics and join in with companion site owners to let Google know when a problem arises.

With Google controlling almost half of all searches, it’s good business practice to learn what Google wants.

The Case for Outsourcing

Outsourcing is a four-letter word in the current U.S. business climate. Jobs being exported to distant and not-so-distant countries, depriving American workers jobs on assembly lines and in office cubicles answering customer care telephone calls.

 

ARE YOUR KIDDING ME? OUTSOURCE IT!

The fact is that many outsources are U.S.-based. I am. I live in Connecticut. But people and businesses call me every day looking to outsource everything from content development (copywriting) to business development consultation. Over the years, as I’ve learned more I’ve been able to expand my service offerings – a sure-fire way to stay ahead of the bill collector, especially in slow times in an inert business climate.

 

But business marches on. And outsourcing is a great tool for business owners large and small. And, you can outsource anything. ANYTHING!

Why increase your staff?
If you run a small, boutique ad agency catering to local merchants and associations, why hire a copywriter when you can outsource the work? When you outsource to a quality provider you only pay for work delivered.

An employee actually costs a business owner 20% over and above that employee’s salary, so an editor earning $50 a year actually costs the company $60K with health benefits, sick days, vacations, maternity leave and other employee bennies.

Outsources pay their own insurance and when they take vacations it’s on their time, not yours. Bottom line: you only pay for performance – by the page or by the word or a fixed price for the entire project.

That’s another benefit, often overlooked by buyers of outsourced services. You can set a fixed price for a project. Keep it fair to maintain the provider’s attention but, by establishing a fixed price, you know to the penny just how much something is going to cost, whether it’s web site text or bookkeeping services.

From a pure productivity POV, outsources deliver greater value than staff employees.

No long-term commitment
Another plus. Once the job is finished, your relationship with the service provider is over unless you want to keep it going. It’s your call.

If you hire someone and they don’t work out, you’re stuck. Hire an outsource you don’t like and just move on to the next one until you find the provider who delivers the highest level of quality at the lowest price.

You can negotiate
You can with an outsource. Many will take a lower fee for regular work. It’s a good gig because the provider doesn’t have to beat the bushes for the next assignment so the trade-off between regular work and per hour rate evens out.

Can’t do that with an employee.

Create a virtual office.
There are big companies that employ virtual offices. Workers log in from home, see their assignments, notes from supervisors, reports to be read – everything they’d find in their in-boxes at work.

This software equips you to oversee all employee or outsourced activity in real time. This saves a ton of money on office space, furniture, equipment and donuts in the morning. It’s just like having an office but your outsources telecommute.

And you can track all business activity from an administrator’s console, making it easy to see pinch points and other problems before they become serious problems.

You get real world experience
Outsource workers have a long list of referrals and recommendations from happy clients. That may not be the case of the interviewee who has three recommendations from her communications professors. You want hard-nosed, no-nonsense recommendations from people just like you. A good outsource collects these referrals as a business building tool.

So you know what you’re getting.

You don’t need no “stinkin’” office. You don’t need a staff of 10. All you need is a well-fed Rolodex and a central clearing house – a virtual office – to keep projects moving forward.

So, whether it’s order fulfillment, marketing, accounting or even legal services, you can find highly-qualified men and women on sites like Elance, odesk and rentacoder.

Don’t hire and add 20% to your company’s operating expenses. Outsource in the U.S. and get more value for your shrinking dollar. And though it may sound harsh, if the company is going under for the third time, consider cutting costs by cutting full and part-time staff and outsourcing your bookkeeping and contract negotiations instead of paying for time spent chatting around the water cooler.

I’m an outsource and I’m proud of it.

Turning Metrics Into On-Line Sales Momentum

Does Your Sales Chart Look Like This?

When you build a website, the next step is to market that site and to do that, you need numbers – hard data that shows what’s working and what isn’t.

There are plenty of metrics software packs that provide piles of hard data – but what do all of those numbers mean in terms of site performance? If your pay-per-click rate is $1.86, is that good or bad and how do you know?

What’s the significance of the most common metrics and how can you better use these facts and figures to sell your site?

Metrics in General
First, a quick tour of what site metrics are in general and an explanation of why these numbers can do more harm than good.

First, site metrics tell you what has already happened – how many visitors you site saw yesterday, how many click-throughs you got last week, how long visitors stayed on site and other “yesterday’s news.” Keep this in mind when employing these numbers. On the world wide web your site may appear on page one of Google’s SERPs on Tuesday and page 23 on Thursday even though you didn’t change a thing on the site! Now you have to figure out why and fix the problem fast.

Second, site metrics are raw data, raw data that can be interpreted in any number of ways. In fact, interpretation is one of the biggest mis-uses of site metrics. Example: You conduct an A/B test using two AdWords. One pulls significantly more than the other. So you assume that the more productive blue block of text (60 characters total including the site URL) is the better choice.

That’s an assumption that may well be your undoing. There are any number of reasons one PPC ad pulls more than another including add placement on relevant site pages, cost per click (based on keywords), presentation parameters you set (I only want this AdWords to appear in Canada.) and so on. So, warning sign on the road ahead: remember that metrics are wide open to interpretation and your interpretation of this data could be 180 degrees off.

But, you can learn what metrics are commonly used and why. Take a look.

1. PPC – Simple. Pay per click. You only pay when someone clicks on your PPC ad. The more clicks, the more it costs you whether the visitor makes a purchase or not.

A good number of click-throughs is an excellent indicator that you’ve written a good PPC ad and that it’s being placed on good SERPs (based on your bid for laser keywords). PPC can also be compared to other raw data like CPM (see below) and conversion rate – the number of visitors who actually buy something or perform some other action like make a donation or opt-in for a monthly newsletter.

2. CPM – Stands for cost-per-thousand (M) of impressions. An impression is just that. The ad appeared on a web page or SERP but no action was taken on the part of the visitor. The PPC ad, potentially, was seen (made an impression) but you have no way of determining that from raw data alone.

So what good is CPM data? It provides a ratio of the number of impressions compared to the actual number of click throughs that were generated by the viewed ad. The more click-throughs per impressions the better. If only one visitor is clicking through even though 5,238 impressions were made overnight, you have a pretty sad click-through rate – an indication that the text of your PPC might not be pulling as much as you’d like.

3. Reach is a broad term the describes how well your marketing plan is working overall. If you’re getting lots of click-throughs and lots of sales from people all over the world (assuming that was your plan) your PPCs have a wide reach. Conversely, if you’re getting tons of impressions but no one is clicking, check and re-check your PPCs for the problem. It could be something as simple as a spelling error or something as complicated as the keyword headers you’ve selected.

4. Frequency is an indicator of how often visitors return to your site, and this depends on site stickiness. Is there a reason to return? The daily horoscope, the site blog or forum, the sale of the hour? All of these create site stickiness, important because the more times a visitor stops by your site, the more likely s/he is going to make a purchase, sign up for your newsletter or perform some other action you’d like to see.

5. Click depth is often used to determine a site’s bounce rate. A bounce is a visitor who lands on your site (homepage or interior page) and immediately bounces to another site. Click depth indicates (1) how deep the visitor went into your site and (2) did those interior pages lead to a sale, opt-in or some other desired action?

If you find that your click depth numbers are low, it indicates that visitors aren’t sticking around long enough to perform an action, like make a purchase. And this is where many new site owners start leaping to conclusions – the wrong conclusions: we chose the wrong domain name, the color scheme isn’t right, the typeface is all wrong and so on.

Click depth tells you whether your site is keeping the attention of the visitor. It doesn’t tell you why that interest is maintained. However, if click depth is low on your site, the bounce rate is high and that’s going to require some tweaking.

6. Calls-to action is a good metric to measure the quality of your site text from granite-solid hard sell to the soft sell required of certain products or services. (When was the last time you saw a funeral home announcing its ANNUAL FEBRUARY CASKET CLEARANCE SALE.)

The measurement of calls-to-action indicate the number of times visitors add something to their shopping carts, whether product, service, newsletter opt-in or some other desired action like a request for a price quote. It may not be a sale but it is a contact and an email opt-in that you can back sell, so it’s a good metric to track.

7. $$$ per transaction indicates how much each paying customer spent on your site. Absolutely critical information when placed in the proper context. If you’re selling party favors online and your dollars per transaction are running $20 a piece, that’s pretty good for party hats and birthday napkins.

On the other hand, if you’re selling high-end wrist watches with a couple of cheapies thrown in to expand buyer appeal, and your dollars per transaction are still $20, umm, you might want to consider dropping the cheap watches – unless your margins are really sweet and you pick up another 5% on shipping and handling.

Again, dollars per transaction, all by itself, is a useless number. Placed in some larger context, it becomes a useful (and reliable) metric.

8. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is the actual dollar amount spent to generate a sale and, to develop a true CPA, you must calculate the costs of building your site plus the cost of the PPC, or other sponsored advert. Plus monthly hosting costs.

CPA does NOT include the cost of goods (which are fixed by your wholesaler), postage or your time to process and ship the order – even though your time does have a dollar value, it shouldn’t be figured into your monthly CPA figures.

9. Site referrals is a great way to measure the usefulness of your site. This form of viral marketing is 100% word of mouth. BTW, if your site doesn’t have a “Refer a Friend” feature, you’re missing out on a great opportunity.

10. Net is the amount your web site generated after all expenses have been paid except for your time which, as the site owner, isn’t necessarily calculated as part of the site’s net profit. Net profit is, in fact, your salary if you want to take it. Or, you can reinvest that net into more advertising outlets like hosted content, links buying and other traction-building promotional efforts.

Just a couple of reminders:

Metrics tell you what has happened, not what will happen if you do such and such.

Metrics are raw data open to interpretation. A professional SEO may view metrics data positively while the next SEO predicts doom and gloom for your site.

Metrics analysis almost always requires making assumptions. This raw data are open to interpretation and many times these interpretations are dead wrong.

Use analytical software that converts this raw data into visual representations such as heat maps (the red blotch shows where people clicked; blue blotches are invisible to visitors). These analysis software packs make interpreting data easier, thus making the data more valuable.

Finally, establish a baseline for all your metrics – CPA, PPC, depth and so on. You’ll use these baselines as measuring sticks as you tweak the look of your site and your marketing efforts.

The Sales Arc: On Top of Sales

'Slinger on The Sales Arc

A sale – whether the sales of goods or services – follows an arc. An introduction, a gradual move toward the purchase (the top of the arc) and finally any backsell or after care required or desired.

 A sale on-line shouldn’t be viewed as a one-time opportunity. Are you kidding me?

 This client bought services from you – copywriting, site design, SEM – a client is a known quantity to you and you to them. You have a relationship. And that’s how you build a client base.

 Here’s a closer look at the sales arc from the POV of web-based service providers – from SEO copywriters to search engine marketeers – the good ones.

 Follow the arc and build a client base that’ll let you sleep soundly each night.

                                                                                                              Webwordslinger

Many website owners find themselves interacting with customers in a number of ways. The website, of course, is interactive to one degree or another (more interactivity is better if you haven’t been paying attention to the new Web 2.0 list of must-haves).

But you interact with customers before, during and after the sale and each of those contact points is an opportunity to sell your products, explain the quality of your service and encourage upsells – sales in which the buyer opts for a second item or a more expensive item than originally planned.

Before The Sale
Your site should designed to appeal to your ideal buyer – young mothers, corporate HR execs, kids, jocks – whatever your ideal buyer’s attributes, everything about your site should be focused on engaging those interests to generate a sale.

So, before the sale, be sure to point new visitors to daily weekly items on special and make sure they understand your iron-clad, 100% no-headache guarantee. “You don’t like it, send it back and we even pay the shipping. You risk nothing.” This kind of trust building should be evident in your site text – especially on the first page of the checkout sequence.

Restate your guarantee and provide assurance to site visitors that yours is a 100% hacker-safe site so “order with confidence.”

Provide complete product descriptions and product pictures. This is going to save you so much time and money on returns, client care and other time-consuming but essential administrative chores.

During the Sale
You must have an easy to use shopping cart system – one the user can access with a click to change quantities, add or delete items.

On some sites, the cart abandonment rate runs as high as 50% and you have to ask yourself why? Why did a visitor take the time to shop your site and even put something in the cart before clicking off to some other site? If the buyer doesn’t feel reassured and secure, s/he may simply leave so once the buyer has entered the check-out sequence, use text and icons to direct buyers through the process.

Provide the ability to back out to a previous page so buyers can make changes or just double, triple check without having to start the entire checkout sequence from start. That’s going to lose more than a few sales.

Provide steps that allow the visitor to consider and reconsider the order before finally clicking on the submit button. The visitor should be able to just click off, or back through the sequence to make changes. Make it easy to quit your site even if they’re on the final page of the checkout sequence.

Introduce additional products discreetly at the top and bottom of the first checkout page. These kinds of presentations generate impulse sales. Select products of interest to the buyer based on previous buying history. Personalize the experience of shopping on your site and your repeat buyer ratios will increase dramatically and quickly. Online buyers have shown dedication to specific sites for specific goods – until there’s the slightest problem. It doesn’t take much to throw out 10 years of good will on a shipping glitch.

Finally, keep the number of pages in the checkout to a minimum. Offer your regulars the one-click checkout option. Avoid confusing pages in the sequence. Instead, let the buyer take charge.

Change shipping method. Click here. Add gift wrapping. Click here. Send to another address. Click here. Guide the new buyer through the checkout process the first time and when they come back, the whole sequence will run smoother.

After the Sale
This is where automation should kick in and save you a lot of time on administrative chores.

Immediately send a printable invoice. Be sure to thank the buyer for the sale and suggest a ship and receipt date. Be sure to include all of the order information – address, quantities, etc. Provide the buyer with a 10-minute time window to reopen the order to make a change, fix a mistake or change shipping information.

Also use this text message to highlight other products of interest to this particular buyer, again based on a previous buying history stored in your database. It’s another point of contact and another opportunity to turn a warm buyer into a hot prospect.

Notify buyers when their orders have shipped and, again, spell out the specials of the day and be sure to provide a link back to the recipient’s account or to your site’s home page. Another contact point, another opportunity to introduce specials or products of special interest to that buyer.

Once you’re certain that the order has arrived safely (no telephone calls from angry buyers) follow up with a thank you note for “shopping with us” or “becoming a part of the Huffnagle family.” It shows the importance of customer care and, of course, provides another opportunity to introduce new products, services or the new sales rep in the buyer’s region.

Finally, after the sale, there are auto-responders. Most people expect to hear from companies from which they’ve made purchases but getting bombarded daily with your specials or your inspirational tip of the day, you’re going to get clicked over to the recycling bin faster than you can shout “But wait!”

The judicious use of auto-responders can keep previous buyers coming back if their senses and sensibilities aren’t assaulted with an automated weekly email blast trying to make another sale.

A few times a year to introduce new products and provide a business update is enough. The conversion rate on email direct marketing aren’t impressive, usually running between 2-3% so you have to send out a lot of ARs to make it worth your time. But, the fact is, happy customers may not buy for several years but if you keep in touch with helpful information (tips, recipes, advice, etc.), some of those long-absent buyers will come back – if you just give them enough time.

So, yes, keeping sending ARs to all the customers in your database but (1) don’t overdo it and (2) use these ARs as another opportunity to sell.

Each time you touch the client is an opportunity to sell your products, business, services of message. Don’t waste a single opportunity.

How To Hire A Search Engine Marketeer

Ready to Take Your Web Biz to the Next Level? Hire a Marketeer!

Search engine marketing is NOT for the faint of heart or the newbie. In fact, if you don;t know how to market a website – even the best website in the world – you’re out of business before you even open your digital doors.

Expect to set aside at least half of your start-up stash on marketing. Without good marketing, a good site is invisible on the W3.

If you’ve seen a modicum and encouraging amount of commercial site success, you might consider hiring an SEO or SEM professional to take your site to the next level. (You can finally quit your day job!!)

But here’s the thing. Your Aunt Tilly could call herself an SEM or SEO professional. There are no credentials, no certifications or letters after the name, i.e., Dr. Jon Smith, PhD in SEM. So how do you know which of the thousands of SEO/SEM gurus is for real? Here are six things to look for.

1. On first contact, does the expert take the time to bring up your site on his or her screen and discuss it, maybe even providing a few free tips and suggestions? S/he should. As you describe your site and its perceived limitations, you want a potential expert to “be on the same page” as you are.

Conversely, if the “so-called” expert starts to bombard you with insider jargon “Well, Bob, I’ve developed interesting analytics that show your hit ratio increases when we spice up your meta data and add an opt-in.” Huh?

2. Find an SEM who walks the walk but doesn’t necessarily talk the talk.
Forget the jargon. Who cares? The fact is, experts in any field use jargon as a code language to exclude outsiders and SEM pros love to toss around terms like “keyword stuffing,” and content architecture.

Speak English! Search engine marketing is an on-going process but it’s, by no means, a difficult subject to master. It ain’t brain surgery. So, if your prospective SEM starts throwing insider gibberish in your direction, ask to have the information put in terms you can understand, whether you’re a first time e-vendor or own a hundred sites.

It’s like doctors. They tell you stuff only they understand. But, if you pin them down and ask for an explanation you understand (even if you have to resort to Crayola crayons), you finally understand options and consequences. Same with an SEO. You want to make the decisions.

That means you have to understand proposals, marketing campaigns and other SEM deliverables in terms that allow you to (1) turn the information into action and (2) contest the information if you think the SEM has missed a key demographic or some other oversight.

Otherwise, it’s all just a pile of numbers.

3. Can the SEM guru provide references you will contact?
A reference based on experience is the best reference you can get so, is there an SEM client willing to discuss the services provided by your prospect?

Now, don’t be surprised if the answer is ‘no.’ There’s a unspoken (okay spoken, here) understanding that client information is privileged and must be protected. However, many site owners give their SEMs permission to send visitors to the site to use as an example of the pro’s proficiency, Which gets us to:

4. Does the SEM provide reference sites?
This shouldn’t be a problem for any web pro with any kind of track record. Ask the SEO to provide sites that s/he has worked on. Then, go Alexa on each site’s assets.

Alexa.com delivers stats and graphs to show how the performance of a site has improved or deteriorated over time. Look for an increase in site traffic and lots of links. (See Connectivity in the post below). Look for improvements in page views and, by all means, employ Alexa’s Time Machine, a feature that enables you to see the evolution of the site and, especially how the site looked before and after the re-do by the SEM.

If you don’t see significant increases in the SEM’s reference sites, you are talking to the wrong SEM! Take your time, here. You’re about to sign a big check (SEM pros are pricey because of their highly-specialized knowledge) and you want to see quantifiable results that occur after the SEO/SEM optimizes the site.

5. Please don’t try this at home.
If your sites are performing well, you might think you can take yourself to the next level without the expense of a web marketing pro. Not recommended in the bang/buck equation.

You might pay $200 for a once-over lightly site review, or $20K on a tear-down and website rebuild, and still actually lose ground. Fewer site visitors, lower Alexa ranking, lower links popularity and so on. It happens thousands of times a day. The gnomes who inhabit Castle Google tweak the search algo and all of a sudden, a site that was on page one of Google’s SERPs has slipped to page 106.

So, if this is your money-maker, don’t shake it. Hire an SEM with a track record and see what s/he can do to boost your bottom line.

6. If you don’t like the results, jettison the web guru.
Do NOT sign a contract with an SEO/SEM agency. You don’t have to in the competitive consultation market, so go with a company that let’s you pay as you go or pay for play. You want results and you’re willing to pay for them. No positive results. “You are so outta here.”

It’s reasonable to ask a prospective guru to develop a plan for site growth. It doesn’t have to be long, but it must be informative, and once again, written in terms that make the gibberish understandable to you – the guy or gal with the checkbook. Hey, that makes you the boss even if you don’ t know an HTML title tag from a dog tag!

It isn’t recommended that you make major changes to your site – including migrating to another web host – without expert opinion and technical know-how behind you. Major changes can produce voodoo numbers in your site’s performance.

Evolution in site design makes it easier for search engines and clients, visitors or other site stakeholders, to access content and, in the case of customers or clients, place an order.

That’s why you built the site. You run the show. But let a good SEM help you grow to real profitability. If you find a professional who isn’t blowing smoke and provides a few dozen sites you can check out, you’ll see improvement in rankings and, more importantly, in site traffic.

Conversely, if you hire the first snake oil salesperson you come across in a webmaster chat room, you may be out a few grand as you watch site performance deteriorate right before your eyes.

Spend time finding the right fit and pay for quality consultation and services rendered. Consider it an investment. Just make sure you’re investing in a blue chip SEM not a penny stock loser.

The E-conomics of E-Marketing

I apologize for this rather long-winded look at marketing econonmies on the web, but the simple fact is web ad revenues are projected to increase 15%. Follow the ad revenues.

So, if you’ve been relying on the local newspaper, direct mail, auto-responders or some other marginally effective marketing as a solo, keep reading.

Time to go digital, amigos.

Advertising – Changing Course

First, share prices of advertising and marketing companies are at annual lows on the day of this writing. Investors aren’t ignorant of what’s taking place. The traditional marketing outlets…well, they’re on their way out.

Newspaper revenues have been heading south for years and magazine advertising, predicted to grow at 4.1% in ’07 according to ZenithOptimedia will actually come in at 2.5% to 3.3%. “Shrinkage,” as George Costanza would say.

Part of the reason for this has been mass advertising’s slow response to web-based advertising. Consider this: thanks to the remote, I don’t have to sit through annoying commercials. I have become adept at getting back to the show I’m watching with just seconds to spare. But I’m not watching commercials, that’s for certain.

And though I get a couple of newspapers a day, I scan the news (which is already old thanks to digital technology), glance at the sports page during baseball season and see what Mike Doonesbury is up to.

Then, I spend eight hours a day (sometimes more) online, conducting research for articles like this one. Right now, on screen I’ve got an ad for Forbes magazine and Adify, purveyor of ads for vertical market segments, i.e. niche markets. Here’s what Adify offers versus the local newspaper:

• Achieve greater reach and impact with unique targeting

• Choose from quality networks created and managed by leading brands and experts

• View and control exactly who (within and across networks) runs your ads

• Run IAB Standard rich media, video, display or text ads

• Target any ad format across quality branded and niche sites

This ad placement service is the direction we’re all headed – finding ways to get our company’s message in front of more eyeballs. You already see it on TV with product placements in TV shows and the “Lo-Jack Caught Stealing” replay during the sixth inning. Advertisers know we surf or skip the commercials when we TiVO so instead of shredding out the commercials, they’re interwoven into the content itself.

In fact, you can’t watch a sporting event without being bombarded by product placements and ads. All the players on certain college teams wear a certain brand of shoe. Why? Because all the players love the shoe? Of course not, the manufacturer pays big money to display their logo on athletes’ footwear.

The Death Throes of Ink
My local newspaper has been sold three times in the past 12 months. It’s a hot potato – it doesn’t have any other print competition and they still can’t turn a profit.

Search engine localization (local search) is changing the entire dynamic of advertising. Instead of spending money on a one-time insert that may or may not pay for itself, car dealers, appliance stores and even the big boxes are hopping on the web bad wagon. These big retailers know which way the wind blows. They also know why people are turning to the web rather than the local paper.

More features. Greater convenience. You can log on and conduct a search for a car in a specific price range, specific make and model – even location – and in seconds have full-color pictures of your options that day. Print advertisers aren’t going to deliver that kind of response. In most places, Saturday is car day in the papers. The last section or two are dedicated to all the different cars on sale at local dealerships. You may have noticed this because a lot of car shopping takes place on Saturday.

But the car dealers who depend solely on this arcane form of advertising are going to be blown out of the water by specialized search engines that equip the user to find the best deal to a completely-customized auto within a 35 mile radius.

Print can’t compete on that level. It lacks the ability to interact with the user in a fully dynamic way.

The Future and Your Place In It
You’re looking at it. You’re reading it.

The Director of Forecasting at ad giant Universal McCann, Bob Coen, downgraded his forecasts for ’07 from 4.5% ad revenue spending growth to 3.1%. However, Coen believes that ’08 will see a 5% growth in total ad revenues, with less and less of those revenues going to traditional promotional outlets like local cable, newspapers and regional magazines – older forms of accessing potential buyers.

The money is being spent on web advertising and you can take advantage of it as both a seller of goods and owner of a web site. Either way, you can generate more revenue than through traditional media.

Want to watch a music video on AOL? OK, “but first a 15-second message from our sponsor.” The sponsor, BTW is always targeting the young, tech-savvy user since gramps wouldn’t know a music video from another “danged” commercial.

Bank of America’s financial analysts lowered their stability rating of The New York Times from a neutral to a sell – definitely an indicator of how large, institutional investors are turning away from print and putting those ad dollars on your site – or on somebody’s site!

How to Sell Ad Space on Your Site?
The easiest way is to become an affiliate. You don’t exactly sell ad space but you collect a small piece of the sales transaction and maybe a flat fee for each successful click, for example. But you aren’t going to attract the deep pockets advertisers through an affiliate program. At least not efficiently and cost effectively. What are you going to do? Call the marketing director at Coke?

It’ll cost you to use online advertising placement services, put it may be worth it – especially as a means of generating some cash flow quickly.

There are plenty of online ad agencies that can help design a cogent marketing plan – one that places your ads in the right places on the right pages of the right sites as well as generates some cash by selling space on your site.

However, before you contact one of these digitally-based agencies, consider the following:

1. How much can I spend on marketing? If the number is small, or even less than zero, please refer to the posts on viral marketing because it’s going to take cash to see some company flash on high ranking websites.

2. The guy with the checkbook is always boss. If you’re placing ads, you can and should stay involved through the entire process working with your account executive. If a well-branded player wants to place a big banner on your home page, and the money is right for you, go for it. Give the boss what he, she or it wants.

3. Never sign a long term contract with an agency. Anybody can call themselves an online ad agency but if you aren’t seeing soaring results, you want to be able to bail ASAP and find a more productive agency.

4. Learn to listen. You may know everything there is to know about drill bits but give the ad pros a chance to soup up your bottom line. However, if you don’t start to see noticeable results in six months, move on to another agency.

Why Digital Advertising?
Digital is digital is digital.

Once a marketing piece has been created, it can be formatted quickly for use through a wide variety of media including digital computers, digital cell phones, PDAs (digital) and, of course, digital video (DV), including digital HDTV.

So, for deep pockets advertisers – the IBMs of advertising – this enables the marketing department to create content once, format it six ways from Sunday and blitz the entire media spectrum using the same content.

You want to be a part of this marketing tsunami heading your way? So, okay, maybe become an affiliate – just to try it. If it works, great. Good for you.

But, also, consider selling ad space and buying ad space on relevant sites. Use one of the hundreds of online ad agencies that are all reading from the same book. Then, monitor results.

You don’t want excuses. You want results. That’s the only way to measure the success of your agency’s marketing plan.

If you’re paying an agency and NOT seeing spectacular improvement in sales, your cost of acquisition (CPA) is soaring, your inventory is piling up in the garage and your online advertising account executive is mysteriously away from her desk whenever you call.

Ad placement should create synergies between your site and the host site or, if your’s is the host site, it should generate lots of sales for the advertiser and some dependable cash flow for you – especially during the first few months of operation when outgo far exceeds income. Placing an ad on your site for Ford or Toshiba will, indeed, generate ad revenues and the higher your PR the more $$$ you’ll earn.

Or, if you’re the advertiser (the one paying for the advertising), at least in theory, you’ll see more click-throughs, site traffic and revenues. Advertiser or host site – either way, there’s money to be made online so stop the presses and join the millions of commercial site owners who have recognized that print is NOT growing, but digital is.

Which side do you want to be on?

 

 

Sorry for the long-winded post. Peace, Out!

 

You're either on the bus or off the bus.