Accession Media

Back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, every marketer wanted a website for their company/product/service. The website would be the silver bullet that would kick-start their marketing and open their business up to massive international markets. They built their sites and ignored them. Mission accomplished!

By the mid-1990’s some of them were noticing that their websites were static and useless cost centers - unless they were going to put in the time and effort to get some honest to goodness consumer friendly content onto them on a regular basis. That thinking is now taken for granted.

In the past 3 to 5 years the revelation that if your site can’t be found in the major search engines it could have a massive impact on your business has also come to fore of the average marketers mind. Now when sites are built or rebuilt, the fact that they need to be “search engine optimized” has ALMOST reached the point of being taken for granted. Most developers and agencies have finally realized what a critical piece of the pie SEO is and it is included in projects as a matter of course…for the most part.

Next up was blogging. Every marketer keeping up with the latest buzz words knew they wanted a blog, but they weren’t sure why. Now every news site worth its weight has a blog, and several blog-only “media networks” have sprung up and are experiencing some success with advertisers.

So what’s next? Social media of course! This WebProNews article (thanks TJF) by Matt Bailey encapsulates the current thinking on social media like no other I’ve read to date. Every time the new buzzword comes about, marketers see it as an “easy” way to get traffic, get recognized, etc. Nothing is easy - just new/different. Just as blogging well takes time, effort and work - participating well in online social sites takes time and effort too.

The key here is that in order to benefit from social sites you actually have to PARTICIPATE, and not just attempt to play your TV or radio spot in the social environment. It’s not a broadcast medium (just like the rest of the web). You actually have to take the time to become part of a community and give more to it than you actually take. I’m just not sure marketers will ever truly get this concept. Come to think of it - doesn’t this lack of understanding finally make marketing as a “department” or “function” within a company pretty much obsolete? Is it time for a new “department” or “function” to be the voice of the product/service inside of the corporation? Or is that the point really - the voice of the customer is the only one that matters and the voice of the product/service have just been talking to itself for quite some time now…

Regardless - why, it has been many years since the Cluetrain Manifesto was written, yet most marketers STILL don’t get it?

We are always getting asked lots of questions that are both tactical and detailed regarding our client’s and prospect’s internet marketing efforts.

“Should we use HTML or plain text email?”

“Should I advertise on Google or Yahoo with my pay per click dollars?”

“How can I get page XYZ to come up in Google for the search phrase ‘ABC’?”

“I want a Flash animation on my home page, is that bad for usability?”

While these all may be great questions that justify detailed responses and explanations - the way we go about getting to what we believe is the best answer is to back up…way up.

Web marketing is just an extension of your overall marketing/advertising/selling tactics. We think it is critical that when our clients go about making web marketing decisions, those decisions are made with their customer’s demands in mind. It’s about getting back to basics and asking the simple questions:

• Where does my customer shop?
• What about my product/service satisfies their needs better than my competition?
• What about my product/service makes them happy…and willing part with their hard earned dollars?

The inspiration for this musing is an online (FREE) marketing 101 lecture I just reviewed from my teacher and friend Dr. Neil Hair, a Professor of Marketing at my alma matter the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Saunders College of Business. If you are currently confused, lost, stuck, or befuddled by what your next move should be in your marketplace, let Dr. Hair get you back to basics and clear your head.

Excellent job Professor!

For those of you that know that I just moved into a new house, and that Accession Media moved into a new office-this posting isn’t about either of those. Though some more planning on our house move would have saved a ton of aggravation…

No, this posting is about moving your website - or rather, redesigning it. If you have an existing website that you are planning on rebuilding or redesigning, make sure you consider what your regular sources of traffic are. Especially if your site is larger (10’s to hundreds of pages) and depends on advertising revenue! Ask yourself these questions as you prepare to launch a new version of your website:

1. Is one of your major sources of traffic the search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc)? What percentage of your monthly traffic comes from these sources? (Hint: check your web analytics referring traffic or acquisition reports to find out.)
2. When you launch the new version of the website, will the URLs of some or all of your sites pages change? Meaning will this http://www.yoursite.com/olddirectory/oldpage.html change to http://www.yoursite.com/newdirectory/newpage.aspx?

If the answer to #2 is “yes” and the answer to #1 is “a lot” or “about 40-50%” then you need to be sure to take a few steps to mitigate a looming problem after you launch your shiny new website.

What problem you ask?

The old assumption was that a new website launch would increase traffic. The shear beauty and usability off the revised site would inspire more visitors to stay longer. The press releases around the rebuild would drive far more traffic than was already coming on a daily basis. However, this was before the skyrocketing use of search engines in the past 7 or 8 years (I’m looking at you Google).

In that time search engines went from being a novelty that didn’t work so well to being the place to start your online session when you are looking for anything from new pressure gauges, to info on Multiple Sclerosis, to a local Indian restaurant, to a new car. This was in no small part due to the rise in the amount of content on the web, and the ever increasing ability and efficiency of the big search engines to index it all and present users with relevant results for their queries.

So where does this leave us today? Most websites (especially ones that have been around for a few years) that don’t have registration or for-pay login functionality will find that traffic from the search engines make up a big portion of their monthly traffic - usually anywhere from 40-80%! Once you launch that pretty new website you have officially broken all of the links that Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others have in their indices. When users perform relevant searches and your old pages come up, people will click on them and most likely get a 404 (”Page Not Found”) error. In short order the old pages will fall out of the index, but it may take a while for the new pages to get indexed and rank as well as your old ones did. The result can often be a significant dip in traffic post-launch.

So what can be done to mitigate this? Three critical things:

1. Make sure you look at your stats and see which pages are bringing in traffic from the search engines. Make a list of those URLs - say the top 100 - then 301 redirect (301 is important!) those old pages to the URL of the same or similar pages on the new site.
2. Look at backlinks in the search engines. Which of your site pages have attracted lots of links from other sites online? Make sure those pages are also 301 redirected to appropriate new site pages if they weren’t caught in step 1. Then attempt to contact the webmasters of the sites that link to your pages and get them to update their links. This can be arduous, but depending on the value of those incoming links may just be worth the work.
3. Make sure your new site’s 404 page is friendly and helpful. There will probably still be pages of your old site that weren’t caught in steps 1 and 2 above, and 404 pages are a fact of life online. However, if you make sure your 404 error page offers users options, you can help keep that traffic on the site. Example: “The page you are looking for couldn’t be found - use our search box above or click here to go to our site’s home page.” This is a basic example, but you can take this even further with 404 page functionality that senses the referring keyword of users hitting that page from search engines, etc. (You may find this book helpful in this area)

While these three techniques seem like basic, common sense “webmastering,” I’m constantly seeing many site owners forget about these basics in the flurry of activity that leads up to a new site launch deadline. These items are often left at the bottom of the project plan as a “nice to have,” but if not addressed before the launch can come back to bite you.

While there are no guarantees that these mitigation techniques will get your new pages ranking well very quickly (this is still going to depend on the other traditional SEO factors), they will help stave off a big post-launch traffic dip for sites that owe much of their traffic to the major search engines.

If you have any questions about this posting, or would like help analyzing your site traffic in preparation for a new site launch, we are always happy to help.

With everyone setting corporate and personal goals for the coming new year, we figured we would perhaps help out with three key things we would recommend you get on top of (if you aren’t already) in 2007 to help move your business forward:

1. Start tracking something. Anything. Analytics is free now; everyone should be using it to some degree or another. Think about what the measure of success for your website is or should be. Is it the number of page views? Unique visitors? Online sales? Do you know how you did in any of those areas last month? In the last three months? This month last year? If not you should make use of the free, and/or not-so-free but excellent tools that are out there in the coming year. You have no idea where you are going, or how long it’s going to take to get there, if you have no idea where you are starting from.
2. Discover and keep track of how well you rank (or don’t rank) in the major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) for the keywords that your customers are using to find your product/service/information, etc. Do you come up at all? Do you want to come up higher? Aside from doing spot check searches, the analytics mentioned above can help tremendously with this. A majority of web users start their surfing sessions on search engines. Whether you use search engine optimization to rank well in the natural search results, or use pay-per-click marketing to buy your way to the top, or some combination of the two (which is what we usually recommend) - there is no better marketing mechanism than putting you offering in front of the people who are seeking it when they are seeking it! Sounds so simple - but it’s really quite revolutionary - refer to Google’s stock price for proof.
3. Implement and/or optimize “pull” content and technologies instead of only focusing on “pushing” visitors to your site and hoping they do what you want them to. Start blogging on a regular basis, and make sure it includes an RSS feed and a Google Sitemap. Start a regular email newsletter. Include genuine helpful content in these publications with no strings attached. These tools can help create or put a fresh spin on your brand and create an audience and readership where there was none previously. Imagine an ecommerce site that sold only three products that the customers didn’t need but once a year - at best. If that site included a blog or newsletter that kept the customer in touch and interested in the brand and the company between those long purchase cycles - what are the chances that they would buy again in 1 year’s time? Much better we have found! Like Godin says: “Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers“

Those are some of our basic thoughts - admittedly high level. We’d love to hear some of the goals and plans that some of you out there have for 2007. Use the comments field below. And as always, contact us if you want to discuss your needs or if we can help you out in any way.

Happy New Year!

One of the most popular questions I get from new clients is “can we put one of those cool animated movies of my product/service/slogan/etc. as the first thing a users sees when they come to the site…and they we’ll go to the home page?” Wanting your site to move, play music, or speak to customers rather than just display text and images is a very common desire among business owners. Many people see these features as a way to set their sites apart from the competition. Do I agree with these views? The answer, as always, is “it depends.”

Many web marketing experts loathe the use of animation (specifically the use of Flash-based animation) in website design and development for several reasons. A few of those reasons are:

• Flash intros, even the ones with “skip intro” buttons, are only cool the first time your customer seems it. Do you want repeat traffic to your site? Are you prepared to put people through that animation EVERY time they come? Does that intro animation really help you get more leads/sales/etc? Or is it just something that you are the business owner think is “cool” but really acts as another barrier between you and your sale?
• Sites that are built entirely in Flash usually (but not always) are impossible for search engine spiders to crawl and index. The result? Sites built entirely in Flash rank terribly in search engines. Usually if you search the brand name in Google the home page will come up, but that’s it. No other rankings for all the other important keywords that potential customers are using if they don’t know the name of the company.
• Usually (but no always) Flash sites put more emphasis on looking and behaving cool and cutting edge than they do on usability. Always remember your sites goals (make a sale, gather a lead, get a newsletter subscription, etc). If your sites “cutting edge” interface is so cutting edge that people can’t find the “buy now” or “click here to sign up” button, it is ultimately a very expensive waste of time.

I happen to agree with all three of the points mentioned above, but I’m not an anti-Flash zealot either. It is possible to use Flash in ways that both mitigate the problems listed above, while capitalizing on the “cool” factor that Flash offers. Creating a search engine friendly all-Flash website is possible, but it takes quite a bit of extra work. A highly practiced Flash designer can create an all-Flash site that has very good usability and makes it easy for users to achieve goals on the site. As for Flash intros…I have no excuse for them. I can’t ever think of a reason to put a roadblock between your site and your users.

All that said, it is important to consider the additional cost of “cool.” Building an all-Flash website can cost considerably more than a regular HTML site. Building an all-Flash website that works well with search engines can cost even more. The question for the web marketer on a budget then becomes – just how important is cool? Can you achieve you site goals with conventional HTML pages? Do you really need Flash animation to get your customers to engage with your site/product/service? Far more often than not I would say the honest answer is no – you don’t need a Flash site. Sacrificing some of the immediate “cool” factor of an all-Flash site for HTML can often get the job done in less time, with less expense and better long-term results.

Have questions, comments? Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment below. Need help with your site? We’re always happy to discuss.

I figured the best way to start providing useful information to the small business owner or department head responsible for a corporate web presence would be to cover some of the basics of online marketing today…the points below make up the high level questions I ask when I meet a client for the first time and am trying to get an understanding as to the level of sophistication of their website and online marketing efforts…

Do you know what users are doing on your website? Analytics is free; there are no excuses anymore for not knowing what’s happening on your website. Since Google bought Urchin and set it free as Google Analytics, anyone with a website can now get a fairly advanced level of understanding as to where site visitors come from, what they do when they get there, where they leave, and a whole lot more. If you don’t have analytics on your site yet, check out these great Google Analytics blogs to understand some of the more detailed ins and outs of how to use GA. If you would like help installing and customizing Google Analytics on your site we would be happy to help. Yes it tracks commerce revenue by campaign too!

Is ranking well in search engines important? It is important that your customers are able to find your site on the major search engines! It kills me when I speak with small business owners who say things like “I don’t really care about showing up in Google because I’ll send people to my site from my magazine ad and it’s on my business card too.” If you are looking to get more customers for your product or service, there is no larger market than the major search engines. Ignoring it could be a MASSIVE mistake.

Do people know what they are supposed to do on your site after you get them there? Have a call to action on your site. Seth Godin’s book “The Big Red Fez” puts forth the idea that every single page of your site needs to have JUST ONE goal. If you are trying to get leads, the contact form or the phone call is the goal of every page. If you are selling products online, getting that checkout process underway is the goal, along with maybe getting customers to add that one additional item to their cart on the way out the door. If you have an advertising supported content site, the goal is keeping them on the site and getting more page views. Whatever it is, make it painfully clear to site users what they are supposed to do next.

Do you have goals for your site? Yes, this is the part where I start to sound like a life coach, thus indicating that it’s time to wrap this posting, but having goals for your website is critical! How can you measure success unless you have a very well defined understanding of what success is? Make the goals for your site realistic and give them a time frame. “I need the site to sell an average of 20 widgets a month by the end of the year.” “I want to increase the number of leads I get through my website by 20% this quarter.” A metric and a time frame. That’s all you need!