Web Metrics | Search Marketing | Site Strategy

The Value of Paid Search in B2B (or anywhere)

2010-02-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

Recently it seems like more people are asking what the value of paid search is, especially in the B2B markets. What once seemed like a great opportunity to reach huge audiences isn't seeming so great anymore. Lead quality is the number one complaint. Sales departments are giving a lot of feedback that paid search creates a lots of low quality leads that suck time away from pursuing more qualified referral leads. The legend that search programs deliver better quality leads just by the very nature of the search process is being questioned.

When I look at the larger clients I work with, I can sympathize with what sales is saying. Sales conversion rates from paid search are lower than other human generated referrals. When you combine this with higher volumes of leads, the perception is that PPC is a time suck. Also, sales from web leads tend to skew toward the least expensive product or the free trial. Overall, web leads from paid search are seen as cheap and inefficient. To a sales manager, that is a double-whammy of crap. This perception is easy to perpetuate because it is easy to believe. Especially when the only evidence you have is anecdotal or incomplete data.

The Average Lifetime Value of a Sale
One thing that many large companies who sell services have problems with is determining the Average Lifetime Value of a sale. This seems like a simple question, but it is not simply because the answer is fraught with political considerations. Average Lifetime Value is something that is not clearly defined, especially when you start considering factors such as seasonality, attrition rates, customer upgrades and downgrades, account transfers, customers with multiple accounts, and account re-activations from previous customers coming back onto service. There is such a whirlwind of modifiers that everyone gets confused sooner or later and everyone has a different opinion about what is the "real" number. Even so, one of the best things any service based organization can do for itself (and its marketing team) is to sit down and agree on how to determine what the Average Lifetime Value of a customer is. This will become a key factor in determining what the value of your paid search actually is.

The Conversion Funnel
Another thing that many organizations struggle with is the "conversion funnel". This is especially true if a sales team gets involved and the sales cycle is longer than one transaction. For marketing, understanding the conversion funnel has two primary purposes:

1. It helps you see attrition in the sales cycle so you can optimize the process and get better results.

2. It gives you the data you need to accurately figure out what your acceptable Cost Per Sale is.

This second reason is really important because it is a strategic" calculation, whereas the first is a tactical calculation. (See my post on the differences between strategic metrics and tactical metrics). Strategic calculations are more useful for allocating budget resources. Since paid search is dependent on budget, this becomes very important.

Note: I know it is controversial to attribute a sale to an ad, but the simple fact is that budget allocation requires it and there is no way around it. ROI and revenue drive marketing funding. It is possible to argue all day over this, but at the end of the day there is an MBA who is gonna approve or not the funding you need to run your ads. And s/he needs a numeric reason to make that approval.

The Value of PPC
From here, the value of PPC becomes obvious.

One client finally came to internal agreement on an Average Lifetime Value number. Once this was established, we found that contrary to the general perception that PPC was a drag, it was proven that it is actually providing a 15:1 return on investment. When I brought this to the attention of the VP of Marketing, her response was simple. "You know what this means," she said. "We're gonna be spending more on PPC," I replied. She just smiled.

Another client is still in the process of working out their sales funnel conversion rates. However, initial indicators show that PPC leads are 80% less expensive than traditional media. If these numbers hold through the entire sales cycle, we may be restructuring their entire marketing plan for 2010.

Additionally, the consistency of PPC is very helpful.

The Value of Adwords Local Paid Search

2010-02-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

I have consulted with many small businesses about their local search needs. These are businesses who live off the local market--attorneys, tradesmen and other service providers that cannot sell their services nationally. They want to use the internet to help them. They are building or upgrading their websites. They are interested in some local advertising and they are thinking about local paid search. We talk. I find out about their business, where they want to go, how they want to use search, and then I get back to them with some estimates and some hard realities.

The truth is that I have not found a local, small business that would get any real value out of Adwords local. Depending on their industry other services might work--CitySearch, Angie's List, etc. But because Google is synonymous with search, Adwords is invariably what they are looking for. After using the Google tools, we may set up a test account with a reasonable budget for a reasonable time. At the end we review the results. 90% of the time the answer is the same: "You can use Adwords Local if you want. It won't cost you much. But it won't deliver the volume of business you are looking for either." In the end, it becomes a question of do they want to put the time into managing it when they may only get a handful of leads every month. It almost never makes financial sense for me to manage it for them, and I tell them that right up front. The low volume keeps click costs down, but management time and energy are costs that need to be considered too.

We also have a conversation about bridging the online-offline gap for lead tracking. Local businesses almost always do better when someone calls them, rather than fill out a form on their website. How do you measure this? They may have anecdotal information about the number of calls they get that come from their website, but that is not really good enough for ROI calculations. When we get into topics like unique phone numbers and call tracking (most of which a small business does not have in place already), then the burden becomes greater.

There is a lot of promise in local search and many people forecasting it to be the future of search. This also means it may be the future of search marketing dollars. However, I can't in good conscious sit down with a 2 person law office and sell them the benefits of local paid search without also being realistic about the insignificant impact it will most likely have on their business.

Like I said, other services like CitySearch or SuperPages may be a better fit for them. Unfortunately, half the time these businesses have already tried this and been turned off by the costs and poor results.

So, when is paid local search a good value?

1. Get the tracking in place to measure it correctly.
2. Have almost no expectations around the volume of business it will produce.
3. Be willing to try some short term testing campaigns with a reasonable budget.
4. Be willing to learn to manage it for yourself.

If this sounds okay, then Adwords Local may be just right for you!

Social Media and SEO Webinar by Webmarketing123

2010-02-03T17:46:00.000-08:00

Here are my notes from this webinar I attended today. Overall, I gave the webinar a 3 out of 5 but there were some key problems with it.

SEO Benefits
1. Very high ROI (1st page = free marketing)
2. No direct cost for unqualified clicks (a big worry in PPC)
3. Stability--good sites that rank well stay ranking well.
4. A Google serp listing is essentially a trusted 3rd party endorsement.

My comment
The key here is " no direct cost". SEO normally is an indirect cost. One of my clients is spending a ton of money on a new website and one of the primary motivators is to get more benefit from SEO. That is certainly a cost, but what kind of cost? And how do you measure ROI for it? In fact, it is almost impossible to truely measure ROI for an SEO effort. The points about stability and endorsement are good ones. The issue of cost is a complicated one that is being over simplified and maybe a little mis-stated by Webmarketing123.

Social Benefits
1. Humanizes your business, creates relationships and dialogs
2. Encourages loyalty and brand trust
3. Provides a way to be responsive to concerns

Website Optimization
1. Onsite Factors:

Keywords in the title,
Keywords in the URL
Keywords in the visible page content. Keyword density is not as important as creating a keyword theme across several pages.
Keywords in your internal links.

2. Offsite Factors:

Keywords in the anchor text of links coming from credible websites.

My comments
This is all pretty basic SEO stuff. One thing I think they were soft on was the value of the keywords in the URL. The examples for this were of users reading the URL and understanding where the link went. Considering this section of the presentation was about SEO and algorithm influencers, using a human example was not relevant. Sure, it's nice that people will understand the URL, but how do the bots understand the URL? That is the SEO factor.

How to Twitter -- Social Media Example 1
They used Zappos as an example.

1. Use @ replies
2. Re-tweeting content is flattering to the original tweeter.
3. Include casual tweets along with your business tweets. This adds personality and makes your tweeting more interesting.
4. You don't always have to include links in your tweets, but use a lot over all.

How to Facebook -- Social Media Example 2
They used Betty Crocker as the example.

1. Wall posts engage your fans.
2. "likes" are viral because they get reposted.
3. Comments become viral because they get reposted.
4. @name references become viral because they get reposted.
5. Pictures, vids and events are more engaging and appealing than just text posts.

For B2B, Facebook offers higher qualified leads, but not high quantity like B2C might. This is a key differentiator B2B users should understand.

My Comments
Calling the Facebook spam-house "viral" seems like a stretch to me. It can be viral if it is propagated by other users, but I wouldn't say it's viral by default.

How to Linked In Groups -- Social Media Example 3
1. Discussions get the most activity
2. The News tab has updates
3. You get more comments if you make more updates.

There was a question from the audience about how to reach "C" level people (CEO, CIO, etc.) with social media. The answer was that even though these people are doing social media, you probably won't be able to reach them (what!?). Who you should shoot for are the "gate keepers" and decision influencers who can take your message to the "C" level decision makers. I really didn't find this answer helpful at all.

Tracking Social with Google Analytics
Pros -- You can see which websites refer traffic.
Cons -- Can't see what they do when they get to your website. Can't see who they are or what they are saying.

My comment
What?!? They went so fast through this section that I doubt these people have ever used Google Analytics. This analysis is completely wrong. So wrong, in fact, I'm wondering if I misunderstood what they said. I tried to go back and listen to the webinar on their website, but the link was broken. 123-Fail.

Brand Monitoring
Measuring sentiment is extremely important. Use tools to measure volume of positive and negative comments. Make sure to double check what the tool says, because tools can't recognize sarcasm.

The only tool they mentioned was www.socialmention.com, even through they were emphatic about the need to measure and monitor comments.

My comment
This section on measurement was full of emotion and emphasis but had very little substance. Also, tools don't recognize sarcasm thereby requiring you to double check their findings, how useful is that tool?

Social Helps SEO
Blogs were the main reason that social helps SEO by optimizing inbound links to your main site.

If you start your own blog, there are two ways to do it and they each have a different benefit.

blog.yourdomain.com. Using a sub-domain helps create inbound links to your main website.

yourdomain.com/blog. Using a sub-folder helps with content development.

Use social listings and your main site to own the whole 1st page for your keywords.

Real Time Search is coming and catapults social commenting into prime SERP position.

My Comment
This is a valuable thing to point out because most companies that want to start blogs have no idea about the different kinds of value a blog can represent.

My Overall Summary
This webinar was good for beginners, but lacked any real substance for people who work in this industry. The section on measurement was particularly weak to the point of being misleading. The section on SEO costs was incorrectly stated. They did make a few good points though, and provided some good (very general) guidelines for how to use social media. In general, the relationship between social and SEO was pretty superficially stated. I rated it a 3 for basic info about social and SEO. As someone who has a special interest in measurement, it would score lower.

Web Metrics Are Not Right for Everyone

2009-12-30T11:35:00.000-08:00

In reporting, there is a constant tension between giving too much data and not giving enough. To tell the story, we pull numbers from all over the place. Because, as analytists, we need to know all of it, sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that everyone else needs to know all of it too. This is simply not the case.

One of the most important functions of an analyst is to be a filter. Knowing who needs to know what is very important. Not everything is salient to every person. In Stephen Few's book, he identifies this distinction by identifying different types of dashboards--executive, analyst, and operational. Even if you are not building dashboards, it is critical to know which peices of the data puzzle to show to whom. To this end, the most important distinction to recognize is that there is tactical information and there is strategic information.

Strategic information is what you show at a business review. Strategic information is what you show to the VP. Strategic information is the support for the direction you want to take. Strategic information answers the question "I gave you $100, why did you spend it that way?"

Strategic information helps you answer the question "If I gave you another $100, where would you spend it?"

Tactical information is how to get the most out of your $100.

Tactical information is useful for optimizing a campaign, not the justification for creating a campaign. Weekly performance reviews are full of tactical information. This is where web metrics is strongest.

Web metrics are almost always tactical metrics.

Click through rate has no strategic value, but it is tremendously useful for optimizing a campaign.

Time on site is only a means to an end.

Ranking #1 in Google may drive traffic, but won't guarantee sales.

These are the metrics that often get confused for strategic information. Then they get reported up the food chain. Next thing you know, the VP is editing ad text and dictating landing page design. This is not a good situation! These situations can be helped by realizing who needs to know what. Let's admit it--senior managers can get a bit control-freaky. There is nothing most MBAs like better than to sink their teeth into a big bite of data and figure it out. Because of the amount and complexity of tactical data, this stuff is like a big juicy peach to them. If you show it, they will grab on with both hands.

Analysts must have a backbone

This brings me to my last critical function for an analyst. Analysts must have a backbone. I have sat through too many meetings (and have occasionally been guilty of this myself) where someone is called on to present some findings and they show a whole stack of charts and tables, disescting the information from all sorts of views. It is all very confusing, so a senior person makes some requests of what to see next time. This sends the analyst off to do more research and at the next meeting they are back with a whole stack of different slides that are all very confusing. So a senior person makes more requests, and it goes around and around. This kind of tail chasing can be stopped by the analyst, if they only had some backbone.

Here is what backbone gets you:

A concise story to tell that is not full of tangental information--decide what is important and leave the rest out.
Meetings that are on time and fulfilling--cut down on confusion and cut down on questions and cut down on time.
More room to do your work--if you present with confidence and knowledge, you gain respect and people don't muddle around in your stuff as much.

If you have backbone and you understand the difference between tactical and strategic information, your job as an analyst will get a lot easier.

A SEO Content Development Framework for Every Company

2009-11-15T14:30:00.000-08:00

I want to put a few observations out there:

Observation #1: Everyone is looking for organic search engine rankings. Is it the down economy? Is it the hype created by SEO firms? Is it the odd marketing report with an ambiguous "organic" lead source category and outrageous conversion rates? Probably all these things. Maybe other things. Regardless, at the start of the day, everyone is asking "How can I get my website to #1 in Google?"

Observation #2: Everyone says they understand the importance of written content. "Content is King!" is plastered into reports and presentations. Businesses are blogging and posting newsletters on Facebook and tweeting updates. Everyone is turning to their copywriters and asking for more.

Observation #3: It is common knowledge that search engines use keywords to categorize and rank their content. Everyone knows it. Everyone agrees with it. Very few businesses understand it. So they hire SEO firms to come in, recommend keywords, tell them what edits to make, and they get billed over and over again for something they don't understand and don't know how to measure.

The truth is, more and more I am finding a fundamental lack of strategic thinking which is being perpetuated by SEO firms which keep their clients in the dark about how to develop content in a search friendly way that is designed to meet business critical needs. This perpetuates a broken system designed to create dependence on SEO firms.

So many times I sit down with a company because they want to rank well in Google organic listings, and they think there is some black box of secret knowledge around keywords and how to use them. Why? Because that's what the last guy who was collecting a monthly paycheck from them led them to believe. The client has no idea where the keywords came from or why they were recommended. It's all just "SEO", and they are not the experts. So they pay out lots of money every month to someone to tell them what to do for reasons that are never well explained and results that are usually poorly measured.

It's time to break the cycle.

SEO firms have to start educating their clients on how to strategically develop content that is designed to rank well in search engines. It is not hard to do. It is not secret knowledge. It is something any company can manage. They just need a little education. They just need to shift their thinking small amounts. They just need a slightly different way of seeing. Any SEO firm out there knows what this looks like. But so few SEO clients do.

Every company with a website should have a strategic content development plan that includes keyword relevance. I starts with this:

What does your company do?
What do you want to be known as an authority on?
How do your customers talk about (and search) for your products?
How does your voice in the market place relate to the above three questions?

If a company can answer these 4 questions, then all they need is some discipline in the form of a Strategic Content Development Workflow for Search Engine Performance.

SEO firms should stop charging their clients for monthly keyword updates and help them get a solid content creation workflow in place. This is the difference between being a keyword vendor and a strategic partner. It makes good sense for the business and it makes good sense for the SEO firm.

SEO firms, it is far better to be a valued partner who is an important contributor to helping businesses grow rather than simply being a human keyword look up tool.

Businesses, you will be much better served by having a content plan that is rooted in your strengths and cognizant of your audience's voice rather than sprinkling some keywords here and there because your SEO firm told you to.

Web Analytics Strategy Part 3

2009-08-31T20:56:00.000-07:00

Another post for the folks at Amplify Interactive.

Here is an except:

Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) are two of the best examples of how to use Web analytics to improve your website's and your business's performance. Search engine marketing (SEM) and Web analytics are made for each other. Once you understand how search marketing metrics work, you will have insight into almost every key measurement aspect of any online marketing program...

Beyond the Basics: Goals and Conversions
"Goals and conversions" should be included in the basic metrics for every marketing campaign. Determining how many people become a lead or customer as a result of a marketing program is critical to knowing if your they are successful. However, I did not put "goals and conversions" in the basics group for two reasons:

It's surprising how many organizations do not have clearly defined goals and conversion points identified in their websites,
and if they do, Many times the Web analytics platform is not configured correctly to capture this information.

Understanding your conversion paths and setting up your Web analytics platform to capture the important information about your visitors as they travel your conversion paths is a key benefit of using an analytics specialist. When goals and segments are defined and combined, you can find a wealth of information about how to make your website more valuable and profitable. It is absolutely worth your time and effort to properly implement goal & conversion tracking.

Read the whole web analytics strategy article.

Web Analytics Strategy 2

2009-08-21T13:26:00.000-07:00

The nice folks at Amplify Interactive have posted another short article from me about web analytics. Here is an abstract from it:

Analyzing marketing results takes time, more time than most people anticipate. Creating a regular schedule and setting aside time specifically for reviewing & analyzing results will help you manage that time better. If possible, get a marketing analyst to help you with this. You’ll have more time to think through the results and make more thoughtful plans.

You can read the entire web analytics post on the Amplify blog.

Eight Search Metrics You Should Always Look At

2009-08-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

Lots of businesses have paid search and organic programs, but not everyone knows how to measure them and how they are different. Because these two types of marketing are so different in many ways, it's good to know what key performance indicators are specific to each.

There are some generic metrics that are important for both Organic and Paid search. Metrics such as keyword conversion rate, bounce rate, time on site, pages per visit, form abandonment, etc. Most of these look more at user behavior patterns associated with a specific traffic driver than the program itself. But when we are looking to evaluate the performance of a particular initiative, there are some additional and unique key performance indicators to keep in mind.

Organic Search Metrics
Organic search is traditionally what people want when they think of search engines. Referrals from organic search are perceived to be higher value and the medium is perceived to be free. But it could take months before you realize the benefits of your organic optimization efforts, which are normally ongoing. Because of this, determining if your organic search initiatives are a success requires looking for metrics that speak more to the idea that your website is gaining awareness. Here are four unique performance indicators to look for in your analytics:

Total visitors from organic search. If the total volume of organic search visits is increasing, then your organic optimization efforts are probably working.

Percent of traffic from organic search. Combine this with the first item and if you are getting a greater percent of your traffic from search engines after doing an optimization effort, that is a good sign your efforts worked.

Percent of organic search traffic from topical phrases. Organic optimization normally focuses on increasing a website's presence on phrases that are topical, rather than brand specific. When you look through your referring keyword report, how many of them do not contain your brand or specific product name in them? This is your topical traffic. One rare example of when this is not the case is if you work for a company with an extraordinarily well-known name. In that case, you may be competing for your own brand!

Bounce Rates for Organic topical search vs. Organic branded search. This one is subtle, but important. Visitors who know your company name or the name of your product are generally considered to be higher value. They also tend to have better engagement (lower bounce rates, longer time on site) and higher conversion rates. If you do a good job at topical optimization for your website, you can increase the engagement of visitors who come to your website and know nothing about you. A good first indicator of this is the bounce rate. If your topical bounce rate starts moving toward your branded bounce rate, that is a very good sign. It's a great sign if it does even better!

Paid Search Metics
Unlike Organic search, Paid search is primarily an ad buy. Because of this, there are several performance indicators that are bottom line key numbers to evaluate. One thing to note is that most Paid search key performance indicators require a goal to compare to. Working with a marketing analyst to establish the goals of the campaign is an important first step to having a successful paid search program. Here are four metrics to keep an eye on:

Cost per conversion. Conversion will mean different things to different people. In general, I am talking about conversion as the most important action item a visitor can do on a website. I am not talking about the final sale that happens in an office somewhere off line; I'm talking about the web lead that got the person into the office in the first place. Knowing how much each lead/online sale is costing you and if that number is too high is key to knowing if your Paid search campaign is a going great.

Total leads generated. A paid search campaign is an investment with expectations. These expectations normally revolve around a desire to generate a particular amount of business. How well your paid search campaign is tracking to meet this end goal is key to determining its success. Failure here could cast doubt on the efficacy of paid search in general for you, your team, and/or your organization.

Conversion rate (conversions / visits). This is a generic number, but I'm calling it out here because paid search campaigns normally have custom landing pages that they drive traffic to. Having an analyst evaluate this number can be key to optimizing a core part of the paid search visitor experience. A landing page that turns people off can kill your effort.

Percent of budget spent, either daily or weekly. Not a metric people think of first, but how much of the budget is being utilized periodically is important to knowing if your paid search campaign is maximizing its potential. 100% utilization may indicate your ads are turning off earlier than you think, your keyword selection is too broad, your ad text is too generic, or the market demand is stronger than you anticipated. Less than 100% could indicate weak ad text or that the market is not as robust as anticipated. Percent of daily budget spent is one of those numbers that keeps you on your toes and can really help you right-size your program. If budget is fixed, shoot for 90%-95% utilization. If you can grow the budget and your other numbers look good, go for 100%!

Search Metrics in Summary
All online marketing programs share some metrics that are very helpful in determining what is working and what isn't. However, if you are trying to optimize your website for organic search and also running paid search ads, it's important to know what metrics are helpful to understanding each of these efforts. Organic metrics that look at how prevalent your website is becoming to search audiences are very important. Paid metrics that measure your program against predetermined goals are also very important. Having a marketing analyst work through these numbers with you can give you great insight into the health of your campaigns. It can even help you chart a course for your next campaign!

Web Analytics Step 1

2009-08-06T09:03:00.000-07:00

Some friends over at Amplify are expanding their service offering and asked me to write a piece on using web analytics for their blog. Here's an abstract:

Building a Web Analytics Strategy
This situation can be avoided, and the first step is to step away from your website analytics tool. Instead, sit down with yourself and the other business decision makers and decide what information is key for you to make a good decision. The services of an analytics consultant can be very helpful in facilitating this conversation. Some people will need the same information, some people will need completely different information, and some people will need similar but not quite the same information...Once you know what the key pieces of information are that you need to make well informed decisions, your analytics consultant can take those generic analytics reports and turn them into very valuable, actionable chunks of information.

>>Read the whole article

Information Dashboard Design Conclusion and Summary

2009-06-24T13:55:00.000-07:00

The final chapter Steven Few's Information Dashboard Design is really just a wrap up and final thoughts for dashboards. It is a short chapter and much lighter than the pervious ones. It mostly consists of him giving both good and bad examples of dashboards. I'm skipping his dashboard critiques, simply because I'd have to scan in all the images.

Chapter Eight

Come up with a lsit of questions about how the dashboard should function and ask the user what s/he thinks.

Sparklines show trends when just up or down is good enough.

Bullet bars show aggregate performance to goal.

Text shows actual value and is used to call out particulars.

Line graphs show more detailed info over time when time is especially important.

"To design dashboards that really work, you must focus on the fundamental goal: communication." (p. 201)

Information Dashboard Design Part 3

2009-06-10T15:34:00.000-07:00

Chapters six and seven of Information Dashboard Design talk about various considerations when putting a dashboard together--how the elements are percieved, what the best uses are for each, and how they work together to convey information.

Chapter Six

Display data based on the nature of the information, the nature of the message, and the needs and preferences of the audience.

Language is always understood serially--one word at a time.

The strength of written words and numbers is their precision. Numbers draw attention to individual numbers, but don't work good for comparisons of multiples and "bigger pictures".

Tables are good for looking up data.

Text is for values.

Graphs are for patterns.

Effective dashboards combine text and graphics to support meaning:

What the viewer needs
How the data is to be used
What the message is

All of these are effected by:

What is the best display
What will fit in a small space

Six types of display--graphs, images, icons, objects, text, organizers.

Graphes are:

bullet graphs--comparitive to goal
bar graphs--start at goal, used for descrete instances, are better than pie charts for showing parts of a whole
stacked bar graphs--effectively similar to small multiples, best to show contribution to a whole.
combination graphs
line graphs--used with intervals, emphasize continuity and progression, patters and change instead of values, do not need to start at zero.
sparklines--for historical context only, not values.
box plots--show high, medium, low
scatter plots--show correlations
tree maps--comparisons within hierarchies

Icons have three uses: to alert, to show up or down, to show on or off.

Ogranizers are tables, maps, and small multiples.

Chapter Seven

Dashboards must be easy to use and visually appealing.

Group items by business function and use.

Minimal boarders
Keep groups together
Support meaningful comparisons
Discourage meaningless comparisons

"When organizing data on a dashboard, start by learning precisely how the information will be used and how the pieces ought to be arranged to best serve these uses." (p. 164)

"Measures of performance come alive only when you compare them to other measures." (p. 165)

Encourage comparisons by:

combining items in a single table or graph
placing items close to one another
linking items with color
use comparitive values (ratios, percents, etc.)

"Anything that means the same thing or functions the same way ought to look the same...aesthetically pleasing dashboards are more enjoyable, which makes them more relaxing, which prepares the viewer for greater insight and creative response...aesthetics, when not in conflict with a product's usability, possesses intrinsic qualities that also contribute to usability." (p. 168)

Keep bright colors to a minimum, except when highlighting
Use less satuated colors, except when highlighting
Use pale background colors
Use legible text fonts
Use consistent action items.

Only the user can judge if the design is effective.

Information Dashboard Design Part 2

2008-10-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

Chapters 4 and 5 of Steven Few's book deal with the research on how people percieve information, how memory works, and how that can be used by information designers to most effectively show the data. I was hoping to chunk the book up into, say, 3 pieces, but because there is so much information in these chapters, I want to deal with them as their own post. Here are my notes on chapters 4 and 5 of Information Dashboard Design.

Chapter 4

2 greatest challenges:

Make the most important information stand out.
Arrange everything so it makes sense and gives meaning.

Three stages of memory:

iconic = visual based. "preattentive processing".
short term = temporary, partially visual, limited capacity
long term

"Preattentive processing" is things that we don't think about, we just recognize immediately. Categories are color, form, spatial position, motion.

Short term memory can hold 3 to 9 chunks of information at a time. Because of this, dashboards should seek "optimal chunking" of information. Chunks are "big visual gulps". Short term memory is out of sight = out of mind. Because of this, limit fragmenting data on multiple screens or scrolling.

How to use these concepts in dashboard design:

Note: the brain can only recognize 5 distinct expressions of any item (except length and 2D location).

Based on iconic memory, these are the things to work with for maximum absorption in a minimum of time. These can be used to highlight or group information. Use sparingly for maximum effect:

Color: Hue and intensity. Max of 9 hues can be understood at once by short term memory.
Position: 2D location
Form: orientation (italics/tilted), length, width (line weight), size, shape. added marks (simple icons like astricks), enclosure
Motion: flicker.

Use size to show ranking or importance.

Use shapes to differentiate data sets.

Use width for highlighting, like bolding.

Use enclosure to group information.

Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception

How we group visual information.

Proximity. Group based on location can be used to direct eye movement by organizing (i.e. rows or columns).
Similarity. Things that look the same. Can be used to draw connections between info in different groups.
Enclosure. any type of visual border will cause that info to be perceived as connected.
Closure. People will always try to connect loose ends or close open objects. This allows people to understand distinct regions even if borders are not completely defined (x and y axis as opposed to full borders). Allows for less non-data ink.
Continuity. Things that are alligned are understood as part of the same group--i.e. indentation, number columns, etc.
Connection. Things that are visually connected are understood as part of the same group. Only enclosure is a stronger grouping mechanism.

Chapter 5

The guiding principle of dashboard design is simplicity.

"The fundamental challenge of dashboard design is to effectively display a great deal of often disparate data in a small amount of space." (p.97)

Include only absolutely necessary info and display in easy to understand ways.

Necessary means an overview that can be quickly understood but doesn't give all the in depth info.

Quickly understood means the dashboard makes you aware of problems for further investigation.

Summaries & Exceptions. Summaries are usually sums and averages. Exceptions are unusual data that leads to problems and opportunities.

Customizable--communicate in the audience's vocabulary and the right granularity.

Group info into two types (creates multi-focal displays):

1. Info that is always important (static emphasis).

2. Info that is only important now (dynamic emphasis).

Visual emphasis:

Top left and center = most important.
Bottom right = least important.

Two principles of choosing media (chart types):

Best display of the data.
Must still make sense when shrunk down.

Aesthetics of Charts:

Remove extra lines, images, decorations, gradients, dimensions.
Standardize what is left and de-emphasize.
Navigation and instructions go way to the side (out of the way).

What is NWSEM About?

2008-10-07T14:45:00.000-07:00

So, I found this website called Wordle where you can feed it information and it will do a nice word cloud of whatever you give it. People put in their music libraries, email accounts, all kinds of stuff. I thought I'd put in NWSEM. I think I know what I write about on this blog, and I can see what Google Webmaster Tools thinks of my site, but what does Wordle think? Well, here it is:

Pretty cool. I had no idea navigation was such a hot topic on my own blog!

Notes on Information Dashboard Design

2008-09-19T16:09:00.000-07:00

Previously, I'd written about Tufte's great book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. While Tufte is the master of how to visualize information, what I needed was a way to put together several pieces of information to communicate business progress. To do this, I had to go past the chart and into the dashboard territory.

Dashboards are essentially short collections of key information presented visually for maximum absorption with minimal effort. One of my favorite books on the topic of dashboard design is Steven Few's Information Dashboard Design. Here are my notes on Few's book for anyone who is interested.

Note: I'm going to break my notes up into several blog posts because the book covers a lot of ground and I don't want to make one ginormous post that covers everything.

Information Dashboard Design Notes 1--introduction to dashboards

Chapter 1

"A dashboard's success as a medium of communication is a product of design" (p. 4).

Dashboard definition: "A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives, consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance." (p.34)

Main points of the definition:

Visual = emphasis on graphics
Specific info for one or more objectives = KPIs (primarily)
Single computer screen or view = easy to digest all at once
Monitor at a glance = abbreviated

Supporting points:

Small, intuitive display
Customized to meet the objective

Chapter 2

Roles of Dashboards:

Strategic	Analytical	Operational
The "executive dashboard"	Comparative	Real-time required
Performance at high level	Richly historical	Shows activities and events
Forecasting is good	Real-time not required	Simple display for quick response
Extremely simple display (not subtle)	Drill-down interaction very good	Connect to detailed info
Real-time data not required	Show Causes
Interaction not required	Rich Display

Showing Info on Dashboards:

Show info as:

Totals*** Most important
Averages
Distribution
Correlation

Common time frames:

Year to date
Week to date
Quarter to date
Yesterday
Month to date
Today

Trends are comparisons

By time (sales now vs. sales in the past)
By objective (sales vs. goals)
By prediction (sales vs. forecast)
By average / norm (sales vs. average sales)
By comparison (sales A vs. sales B)
By related metrics (sales vs. leads)

Evaluations are important. Flag the good and the bad somehow. Use colors or mark up.

Including other info is sometimes useful--"Top Issues", schedules, upcoming tasks, etc. These can add a context for the info.

Chapter 3

13 types of mistakes

Too big / off-screen data
Not enough context
Excessive detail
Wrong type of measurement (i.e. counts instead of percentage)
Wrong type of display (bars vs. trend lines) "The truth is, I never recommend the use of pie charts." (p.59)
Meaningless variety
Poor chart design (see Tufte)
Inaccurate or misleading measures (scales)
Poor arrangement (important things need to be prominent)
Poor or lack of highlighting
Useless decoration
Color problems (red = bad)
Just plain ugly

After Chapter 3, Few gets into the research on visual perception of information and how much data you can stuff into an eyeball. So, until next time...

A PPC Landing Page Success Story

2008-09-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

One of my primary focuses at my work is to manage the PPC spend as well as the website, in general. Well, as anyone who does PPC knows, there are a whole bunch of different ideas about what is the best way to get good results. So many, in fact, that I frankly have stopped trying to keep up with it. So many examples are industry and website specific, that it makes it hard to tell what is actually working in general, and what is just working for the example.

So, the method we were using for our PPC was very similar to our technique for organic search--create high relevancy topical and category pages and point search engines at them. For PPC, this meant using them as landing pages. For organic, this meant keyword optimization and time. Visitors would land on a category page, for instance, then click into a product from there and request info or read product support documents if they wanted to learn more.

Overall the results were not stunning. The first half of the year averaged somewhere under 4% overall conversion rate for PPC pointing at the site in general on pretty strong volume. This conversion rate improved slightly over the months, moving up from about 2% to just under 4%. Normally, I would not think this is too bad. However, it was very expensive and the ROI models were hard to prove.

How one PPC landing page changed everything

So, we took another tack. We came up with a specific promotion that was guaranteed to catch attention and built a dedicated landing page with the request info form right there. We also limited any links to things that were absolutely necessary thereby limiting the opportunities for visitors to jump off.

We pointed all our PPC at this page and the results were outstanding. We instantly went to a 15% conversion rate on our spend in the first week and got it up to almost 17% by the end of the campaign (8 weeks later). The ROI models came back down to earth and the sales team got the activity they were looking for.

The campaign was such a success, we converted it over to a perennial offer, reworked the keywords and ads, built new landing pages, and sent it back out as our default PPC campaign. After making a few small tweaks based on things we learned, our onsite conversion rates are now hovering around 20% with some important keywords converting at 30%-35%!

Of course, I can't give specific information, but you'll just have to trust me on this. The whole program has turned into one of the most successful marketing efforts we've run in the last couple years at least.

What we learned

How did we make the jump from fump to lead pump? Here are some key learnings:

Targetted, single purpose landing pages are way, way better at converting campaign traffic than multi-purpose interior website pages. This may seem like a no brainer, but I learned it the hard way. Plus, landing pages typically don't have the same content review process that product pages do which makes it easier to be flexible and effective.
Limit navigation on the form to almost nothing. If the purpose of the campaign is to generate leads, then absolutly everything on that page has to be geared toward getting leads. This is not the time to be expansive. This is the place to be very targetted and direct.
If there are high bounce rates and low conversion rates, then test messaging to figure out what visitors are looking for. Provide a PDF download. Offer one link to more information. Very limited message testing is a good idea as long as it is very limited.
Put the action item on the page above the fold. Not the call to action, but the action item itself. Embed the form above the fold and make it seem like the best thing any visitor can do. Make the PDF sing. Make conversion a very simple, one step process.
Make your forms short. 4 fields, not an interview. Let sales do the interviewing.
Put some sort of segmentation indicator on the form. An annual revenue drop down list. A number of offices drop down list. Industry focus checkboxes. Whatever your key segmentation is, put a simple interactive item on your landing page so you can tell the difference between different types of visitors. Then look at the behavior of these segements.
Benefits are more important than features.
People like to get things for free more than they like to get discounts. If you are giving 20% off a product or service, find a feature of that product that is worth the value of a 20% discount and call it "Free". People will pay more attention.

Overall, we've rewritten almost every benchmark for successful performance of a marketing campaign. As we continue to tune up the PPC campaign, I'm looking forward to even better successes as we continue to optimize.

One Year

2008-08-28T16:09:00.001-07:00

A year ago today I posted my first real work blog post (I know there is one from 2006, but that one I don't really count).

I started posting to a blog because I wanted to be more thoughtful about the work that I spend my days doing, rather than just working, working, working and never really taking the time to wonder about things beyond my particular deliverables. So, this blog has been a good place for me to get out some thoughts, even if just for myself.

I looked at my analytics account the other day and this blog gets about 1 visitor per day. That visitor is me on some days. I'm my most regular reader!

So, happy one year to me! And in the unlikely event that someone else actually stops by to read my mental wanderings, thanks for stopping by!

Maybe I'll make another year.

Ribbon Navigation: A New Kind of Website Navigation?

2008-08-28T16:06:00.000-07:00

Ribbon navigation is something cool. I first found out about it when I was looking around for different ways to solve a local navigation problem on a corporate website that I work on.

For those who don't know, ribbon navigation is the big change in the Office 2007 interface. Adaptive Path as a great interview with Jensen Harris about how Microsoft developed the ribbon interface. Although James Kalbach sees ribbon navigation online as mainly a variation on tabbed site maps, I wasn't so sure. It seems to me that what is new and distinct with ribbon navigation is the visual elements that are included.

Harris calls the ribbon a product of "results orientated design" and goes on to explain that people want to see what they are going to get before they get it, rather than just ask for something and hope it's right. Because of this, the ribbon seeks to give space to more graphics and visualizations, not just text lists. Component Art has an outstanding ribbon navigation component for this very reason.

One difference between navigation in a rich application like Word 2007 and a website is that you are doing a lot less editing and styling when reading a website than you are when you create a Word document. In fact, the two applications have very little in common other than the fact that people interact with both.

However, there is a deeper premise at work here that brings them together. It's the same thing that Xerox capitalized on way back in the 70s--people find visual interaction way easier than command line interaction. Modern computing would never have become as popular as it is today had the graphical user interface not been discovered. And this is what web implementations of ribbon navigation do--they essentially take text information and reorganize it to give more room for graphical elements that make a lot of sense to people. Not a lot new, but it is cooler.

Previously, I'd described 5 types of website navigation. The question to me was, does ribbon navigation constitute a sixth type of navigation? After thinking about it for a while, I have to say that no it doesn't. Ribbon navigation is simply an upgrade variation of directory style navigation. Ribbons don't take things out of a hierarchical context. They don't adaptively learn or dynamically organize. They are static representations of logical content organization. But what it does bring into the mix is an emphasis on the visual and a higher level of aesthetics that are often sorely neglected in directory style navigation.

Notes on Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

2008-08-07T10:30:00.000-07:00

A while ago I attended one of Tufte's all day seminars and got copies of all his books. Although they are all very interesting and full of great stuff, I like the first book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, the best. The other books seem to build on the concepts that are started in this book rather than really present new concepts, in my estimation. While I was reading, I took some notes just as a reminder to myself about what he has to say about what makes visual data good and bad. I thought I'd put it on here incase anyone else is curious.

In General, graphical displays should:

Show data
Induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than about the methodology, design or technique of the production
Avoid distortion
Present many numbers in a small space
Make large data sets coherent
encourage the eye to compare different peices of data
reveal data at several levels--from broad to fine
serve a clear purpose--describe,explore, tabulation or decoration
be closely integrated with verbal/writen descriptions

"Graphics reveal data." p.13

Graphical excellence is the efficient communcation of complex quantitative ideas. p15

"Time-series displays are at their best for big dat sets with real variability. Why waste the power of data graphcs on simple linear changes, which can be better summarized with one or two numbers? Instead, graphics should be reserved for the richer, more complex, more difficult statistical material." p 30

"...small, non-comparitive, highly labeled data sets usually belong in tables." p 33

The Small Multiple: a closely spaced group of graphs that use the same design technique to show changes in data. p42

"The relational graphic...is the greatest of all graphical designs." p47

Principals of Graphical Excellence:

Graphical excellence isthe well-designed presentation of interesting data--a matter of substance, of statistics, and of design.
graphical excellence consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, percision and effieciency
graphical excellence is that which gives the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space.
graphical excellence is almost always multivariate
graphical excellence requires telling the truth about data. p51

"Tables usually outperform graphics in reporting on small data sets of 20 numbers or less. The special power of graphics comes in the display of large data sets." p56

Lie Factor = (size of effect shown in graphic) / (size of effect in data) p57

6 Principals of Graphical Integrity:

The representation of numbers, as physically measured on the surface of the graph itself should be directly proportional to the numerical quantities represented
clear detailed and thorough labeling should be used to defeat graphical distortion and ambiguity. write out explainations of the data on the graphic itself. albel important events in the data.
Show data variation, not design variation.
in time-series displays of money, deflated and standardized unites of monetary measurements are nearly always better than nominal units.
the number of information-carrying (variable) dimensions depicted should not exceed the number of dimensions in the data.
Graphjics must not quote data out of context.

5 Principals in the Theory of Data Graphics:

Above all else, show the data.
Maximize the data-ink ratio.
Erase non-data-ink.
Erase redundant data-ink.
Revise and edit.

"Graphics can be designed to have at least 3 viewing depths: 1. what is seen from a distance, an overall structure usually aggregated from an underlying microstucture; 2. what is seen up close and in detail, the fine structure of the data; and 3. what is seen implicetly, underlying the graphic--that which is behind the graphic." p155

"Different visual angles for different aspects of th data also organize graphical information. Each separate line of sight should remain unchanged (perferably horizontal or verical) as the eye watches for data variation off the flat of the line of sight. For multivariate work, several clear lines can be created." p 155

Small Multiples:

inevitably comparative
deftly multivariate
shrunken, high-density graphics
usually based on a large data matrix
drawn almost entirely with data-ink
efficient in interpretation
often narrative in content, showing shifts in the relationship between variables as the index variable changes (thereby revealing interaction or multiplicative effects).p175

"Maximize data density and the size of the data matrix, within reason." p168

"Graphical elegance is often found in simplicity of design and complexity of data." p177

"Visually attractive graphics also gather their power from content and interpretations beyond the immediate display of some numbers. The best graphics are about the useful and important, about life and death, about the universe. Beautiful graphics do not traffic with the trivial." p 177

Attractive displays of statistical information:

have a properly chosen format and design
use words, numbers and drawing together
reflect balance, a proportion, a sense of relevant scale
displayu an accessible complexity of detail
often have a narrative quality, a story to tell about the data,
are drawn in a professional manner, with the technical details of production done with care,
avoid content-free decoration, including chart-junk. p177

"A table is almost always better than a dumb pie chart...Given their low data density and failure to order numbers along a visual dimension, pie charts should never be used." p178

"Tables also work well when the data presentation requires many localized comparisons...one supertable is far better than a hundred little bar charts." p179

The principle of data/text integration is: Date graphics are paragraphs about data and should be treated as such. p181

"Tables and graphics should be run into the text whenever possible." p181

"Words should tell the viewer how to read the design and not what to read in terms of content." p182

The Friendly Data Graphic:

words are spelled out , mysteries and elaborate encoding avoided
words run from left to right, the usual direction for reading occidental languages
little messages help explain data
elaborately encoded shadings, cross-hatching, and colors are avoided; instead labels are placed on the grapihc itself;no legend is required
graphic attracts viewer, provokes curiosity
colors if used, are chosed so that the color-deficient and color-blind can make sense of the graphic
type is clear, precise, modest; lettering may be done by hand
type is upper-and-lower case, with serifs

Unfriendly data graphics:

abbreviations abound, requiring the viewer to sort throuigh text to dcode abbreviations
words run vertically, particularly along the Y-axis; words run in serveral different directions
graphics is cryptic, requires repeated references to scattered text
obscure codings require going back and forth between legend and graphic
graphic is repellent, filled with chart-junk
design insensitive to color-deficient viewers; red adn green used for essential contrasts
type is clotted, overbearing
type is all capitals, sans serif p183

"Graphics should tend toward the horizontal, greater in length than in height" p186

The "Golden Rectangle" is 1:1.618 or a/b = b/(a+b) p189

General rules:

If the nature of the data suggests the shape of the graphic, follow that suggestion
otherwise, move toward horizontal graphics about 50 percent wider than tall. p190

Analyzing PPC with Tableau, Part 2

2008-07-22T19:01:00.000-07:00

A big part of knowing if the phrases you are buying are a good value or not is knowing how much they cost per click. While this seems like a no-brainer, it is not always. Rank is an important influencer on cost per click. While Google has added all sorts of variables to how cost per click is figured out, rank and CPC are still roughly related (it is possible to less for higher positions if you have a very high quality score, unlike the pure pay for placement model that other services, such as business.com, use).

One part of running a PPC campaign is to determine how much you can spend per click, on average. A simple way to do this is to do the math backwards based on the average value of a sale and your website PPC conversion rate. In this example, if you sell pillows and have an average online sale of $50, you can normally spend up to $2.50 per visitor (assuming visitors:clicks = 1:1, which they never are). So, you need to set spending caps on your PPC keywords to keep your campaign profitable.

Average Sale Value	$50
Sales	1
Conversion Rate	5%
Visitors Needed	20
Max CPC	$2.50

This is a very broad and simple way of looking at costs. In reality, your CPC is going to be all over the place and it's not good enough just to let it run and think everything is fine. Periodically (every 2 to 4 weeks) you should review your CPC and placements to look for ways to bring costs down and increase profits. One way that I like to look at the information, is to use Tableau to compare Cost by Rank. In this way, I can see what placments are more or less expensive, then I can investigate the expensive ones to see if their conversion rates justify their expense.

By using size and color, I can very quickly spot where the budget is going and if anything is far out of bounds. You can also eyeball what is "normal". The closer those big red spots get to the 95 percentile mark, the more attention they need. If you know your Max CPC, you can add that as a reference line also. All in all, this is one way to get a sense of where your PPC campaign is at. It offers a quick way to see where trouble may be brewing and can give you some direction on where to start investigating your campaign performance for optimization.

Analyzing PPC with Tableau

2008-06-27T13:45:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite tools is Tableau. It makes data analysis very easy. So easy, in fact, I hardly ever even look at spreadsheets anymore. I just drag them into a Tableau window and get on with it.

One of the things I do a lot of is manage PPC spend. There are a lot of ways to manage PPC, and everyone has their own little tricks and tools they like. But, overall, PPC is a numbers game--trying to find the most efficient use of client dollars to get the most valuable traffic flowing into a website. To do this, we look at a number of different metrics--bounce rates, conversion rates, CPC, total cost, etc. In fact, there are so many different metrics to look at, it can be difficult to know where to start!

Where I like to start is with Tableau and a month's worth of PPC keyword data. First, I export a keyword report from Google. Then I delete some junk in the spreadsheet, and plop it into tableau (well, actually, I point my pre-existing Tableau PPC workbook at the new spreadsheet) and instantly the new data populates the charts and dashboards with the current information.

Now, from here you can create all sorts of different views into the performance of your keywords. When I mean all sorts, I mean ALL SORTS. I've spent days and days creating new and ever more fancy iterations of keyword data only to reformat it all the next month and come up with something else. But over time, I've found that there are a couple of views that really help, and those are the ones I go back to every time. If you are trying to control costs, or look for ways to cut out fat, or are just looking for where to start, a great chart to create is a Click-Cost Scatter Chart. When you apply linear averaging and 95 Percentile reference lines, you get an instant view of which individual keywords are budget hogs and if that spend is justified. This is mostly useful for trimming back on costs by finding trouble spots and increasing efficiency, not for expanding campaigns.

In this example, just look for anything above the expectation line (red dashed line--linear average), anything dark green, and anything in the upper right quadrant (set for 95 Percentile). If it meets those 3 criteria, investigate it. That keyword had better be producing conversions (or contributing to some sort of business goal) to justify it's expense. If it isn't, it may be time to cap spending on that keyword or even pause it. In any case, it takes about 5 seconds to spot trouble.

In Tableau, when you mouse over the circle, it gives you the details of the keyword, including, what keyword it is, which I have hidden for this example. This is just a starting point for analyzing PPC. It's a good way to save time and find the fat in a consistent, repeatable way.

Evaluating Your Current Website

2008-05-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

What has your website done for your lately?
One of the most important and overlooked parts of a website rebuild is figuring out the value of what you currently have. Most of the time, when someone wants to rebuild a website, it is because they don't like the current website or feel like it is not serving them well. Maybe the design is a couple years old. Maybe the articles are disorganized and hard to find. There are lots of motivations for wanting to redo/overhaul a website, most of which are usually subjective and emotional.

Even though almost any reason to revisit a website is worthwhile, one part that a lot of people forget during the discovery process is to figure out exactly what your current website actually is contributing. This will become the performance baseline to measure the new website by. Many people skip this step in their excitement to get on to the fun, creative parts. But skipping can very well lead to trading one type of disappointment for another. Then, after the fact, you could find yourself with the huge headache of trying to reconcile apples with oranges to justify the expense and show improvement.

Determining the current status of your website.
These are the things that I have found to be valuable in trying to figure out what the status of the current website is. The best time to look at this information is during the discovery phase of the project, when nothing is planned yet and options are open.

The Value.

What makes our website unique? If you are offering exactly the same thing as your competitors, then what is differentiating you from them and why should customers come to your website? Going beyond simple information offerings like product data sheets is a good idea here. Tools and interactive widgets are always a draw and give you a chance to learn more about your web visitors.

What value does our website represent to:

Our customers? This is closely related to the question above. but looks more to repeat visitors and websites with customer login-type features. This retention aspect is really important because any new work should not alienate or confuse existing users. Infact, it should make things better for existing customers.

Our company? Is the website just there for lead generation or something more? Is the website a source of pride for the organization? Or is the website a resource drain and an eye-sore? Figuring this out--the internal value of the website--is critical to getting stakeholder buy-in and approval.

An added benefit to learning about the percieved value of a website, is that in the process you are very likely to hear about all the things people think are wrong with the website. This sense of missing value or missed opportunity can be very instructive. Reading between the lines here, you can get a true sense of what people are really looking for and what their expectations are, and expectations cannot be ignored.

Once value is figured out (and expectations, indirectly), then ideas of what the vision for the project may look like should start floating around in your head. But before we get there, it is important to take a look at who your website audience is.

The Audience.

What are the traffic sources? When looking at search traffic, make sure to include keywords and keyword families, including branded search. Review the referring website to see if there are any themes that can give some insight into who the people are that come across. Look at the types of websites too--are they review websites, social networks, industry websites, competitor websites? Look for increases in direct traffic immediately following email sends and off-line marketing.

What are the traffic patterns on the website? Look for bounce rates, conversion rates, and pages that correllate with desirable outcomes--these may be having a positive influence. Look for pages with high exit rates--these may have problems. Look for form abandonment rates. Look to see if people are doing things that you want to them to do.

Who are the target audiences/markets? Find out what kinds of profiles are available for website visitors. Marketing may have personas developed. Combine this with what information you can put together from traffic sources and on-site behaviour.

What feedback has been given by website visitors? Emails that people have written can be very insightful. But remember that that one email is the view of just one person. And that one person may be expressing a view held by many.

Once you have a good idea of the audience for your website and what the value of the website is, you should have a pretty good idea of what the web project needs to do. There is only one more part--learning about the current strategy. Some of this is answered in the "value" section above. But knowing explicetly what the strategy that the current website is based on can be very informative and help you avoid sticking points that others before you have suffered through.

The Strategy.

What is the current strategy? Pretty straight forward. There may not have been a cohesive strategy--just a collection of business goals loosely tied together with some HTML. Talking to the people who build the current website will be helpful here. The general idea is to find out what they were trying to do, then look at the information collected so far to determine if they met their goals.

Specific aspects of the strategy that are worth drilling down on are:

What were the original measures of success? This is key not only to determining if the current site met its goals, but it also tell you by how much it met its goals or not (which will help with setting new goals). Also, you can learn about how values in the organization have changed when you get around to setting the new goals.

How much was visitor "engagement" a factor (beyond simple lead gen and/or sales) and how was it handled? This is key if there are social and/or return visitor goals.

What is the content development plan? This is key if search optimization is to be part of the strategy.

What is the review and update process? This is key if analytics and active management are in the picture.

What does the competition do online? How was that factored into the strategy? Some of this may be covered in the process of determining the unique value of the website.

What does the competition seem to be doing right? Copy-catting is lame. Learning from success is awesome.

In the end, you should have a pretty good picture of the current state of the website, and where it came from. You know the value of the current website, both to visitors/customers and internal stakeholders. You know who the people are that are visiting your website and what those people are going at your website. And you know what the strategy of the website is, how it compares to competitors, and whether or not that strategy worked out. All the homework is done. Now you are ready to make good plans that build on the strengths of what worked, retains current customers, and attracts new ones.

The Vision Statement

2008-05-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about vision statements a lot lately. I'm in the middle of outlining a large web project with different stakeholders from different business units, each with different agendas and ideas about how the website should fit into the company and what it should do. Each of them are really nice people with honest and good intentions. However, they each are working from their own business perspective. Profits, losses, goals and sales tactics are on their mind--the details of growing their respective businesses. Trying to get them to come together around a common vision is a challenge, and something that may not come naturally. But it is important if this web project is going to be coordinated, serve the common good, and not need to be overhauled in six months.

I absolutely believe the most important first step of any project (after the stakeholders have been identified) is to create a common vision of what the end result should be. Encapsulating it in a Vision Statement that sits right at the front of the project document is key. But, a vision statement can go awry and become divisive if care is not taken.

Aspects of a vision statement

A vision statement is not requirements. If the words "should" or "must" show up in your vision statement, you're off track and into requirements land. This is not the time to start sketching features and usability. Keep the requirements and requirement language out.

A vision statement does not drag people along. If you write your vision statement and then grit your teeth at the prospect of showing it to the other stakeholders, press delete, not send.

A vision statement is not long. If you are doing a lot of explaining in your vision statement, then you need to put aside the laptop and do some more thinking about what it is you are actually envisioning. It does not need to be too short, but it should be an efficient use of language, as my college poetry teacher used to say.

A vision statement is simple. Don't over complicate it, even big projects can have simple descriptions. It's the "elevator pitch"--your 10 second explanation of what you are setting out to do. If the vision is too complicated, consider a phased approach or break the project up into smaller bites. Take Google's mission statement as an example: "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Wow. A bit grandiose, but you have to give them points for keeping it short and simple.

A vision statement is subjective. It can even be, dare I say it, fluffy. It can be abstract and emotional. It's the kind of thing that makes you say, "Yeah, that's right on!". It has nothing to do with check lists.

A vision statement is the final gut check for a project. When the whole thing is built and tested and you are on your last sanity-check before launch, sit down, take a cleansing breath and revisit your vision statement. Does it ring true or not? If so, your vision is realized. If not, well...figure out quickly what happened before the phone starts ringing.

A vision statement is uniting. This is the single most important aspect. If your team of stakeholders cannot agree on a common vision, your project will fail.

5 Kinds of Website Navigation

2008-03-31T10:53:00.000-07:00

Planning websites takes a lot of thinking about where content will live and how people are going to find it. It is easy to think of content organized in logical groupings, because that seems to be the way our brains organize things we know about. But visitors to your website don't know about all your content, so how do you make what you have obvious and easy to find for them? This is the job of an information architect and the whole purpose of navigation. Considering navigation and offering multiple methods is a key step in planning an effective website.

Index Navigation

Index navigation is pretty old fashioned and most websites nowadays don't use it. The clearest example of this is the index at the back of a book. Items are listed in alphabetical order without special groupings. There are some clear benefits to this type of navigation. The biggest benefit is that there no learning curve at all. There is no risk that you may have confused or made it difficult for your visitors to find your products/content by placing them in the wrong category. Alphabetical organization is obvious and everyone understands how it works without even thinking about it. It's about as pre-cognitive as you can get a navigation system to be.

The draw back to index style navigation is when you have a lot of products/content, it makes for an overwhelming experience. Pages either become very text-dense and hard to read or the become very long and require much scrolling or paginating.

Either way, a site index normally has a pretty small foot print, can be tucked somewhere convenient and out of the way, and is handy for search engines. The ubiquitous "site map" is a variation of an index page, but normally these contain some sort of category grouping on-page also. This makes it a hybrid of an index page and a directory organization system. Sort of like a 2D version of your directory based website.

Directory Navigation

There are a million many different kinds of directory navigation. The traditional drop down list is very popular and something everyone knows. Directory navigation it the dominant navigation type of navigation on almost every website.

Directory style navigation is what we are thinking of when we group content logically. This is a very popular way to organize a website and almost every website has an information architecture based on this sort of logical model. For instance, if you have New York Yankee base ball caps on your website, you might create a top level category for Hats, then a second level category for Baseball Hats and list the hat there. Or you may create a top level category for Baseball Apparel, then a second level category for New York Yankees then list the hat there. There are many ways to create logical navigation to your products and/or content. Deciding what is the best grouping is difficult and depends on what you think your audience is looking for.

Hats » Baseball Hats » Yankees Baseball Hat

-or- Baseball Apparell » New York Yankees » Yankess Baseball Hat

This concept of trying to understand how your audience thinks is very important. It may not be intuitive to your visitors if you organize your website based simply on how you understand your products and/or content. As a website "insider", you know your website's content very well. But all your visitors are "outsiders" and will need the content organized in a way that makes sense to them.

So, with directory navigation, trying to understand who your target market is and what they are looking for is the best way to start. Thus is you know your target market for Yankees hats is already very familiar with baseball and is looking specifically for baseball apparell, you may create a top level category for American League, then a second level category for Yankees, then place the Yankees baseball hat there.

American League » Yankees » Baseball Hat

It is possible to create many, many levels of navigation using directory navigation, especially if you have a wide range of products and/or content. It is best to keep the navigation as shallow as possible. While creating 7 levels of detailed categories makes sense to you, remember that your visitors are "outsiders" and just want to find what they are looking for as fast as possible without getting lost. Adding too many extra clicks to the process will turn them off. One major drawback of directory navigation is that it is very static. Once content is in place and everything is cross-linked, it takes a lot of work to re-organize your website. Thus, a lot of thought and weight needs to go into coming up with the just right directory structure.

Search Navigation

Search navigation is very popular and perhaps the most effective way to make content accessible to your visitors. The dominance of search engines over the past few years has transformed the way we imagine content retrieval. Instead of (sometimes) complex logical directory structures and extensive index pages, putting everything into one big bucket and using an automated tool to fetch things for us seems to work really well and more people are thinking in this interactive way than ever before when they are looking for things.

Additionally, search navigation tells us a lot about what visitors to your website are thinking and looking for. If you have Yankees Baseball Hats, but you are selling to an east coast market, should you call the Baseball Caps? Search navigation can tell you what your target market calls them. If you know 80% of you visitors are typing "Yankees Cap" into your on-site search box and are not finding your "Yankees Hat", then maybe you should rename the product to "Yankees Cap" so they can find it easier. This type of learning is invaluable for a website owner and is only really possible with interactive tools that have unrestricted input options, such as search navigation.

While search navigation seems to work well for the people involved (visitors and website owners), it does not work well for the machines involved, especially other search engines. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo learn about new content by following links. They do not type words into on-site search boxes and gather the results. If your homepage has search navigation as the only option, it will become a "barrier page" instead of a doorway to your site for spiders. Thus, your website content will be very accessible to visitors of your website, but it will not be accessible to everyone else in the world. This severely limits your ability to attract anyone who does not already know who you are. So go ahead and put a search box dead-center on your home page, just make sure you have links to content somewhere else on the page so the spiders can get in too.

Keyword Navigation (tagging)

Keyword navigation is relatively new to the world of navigation and comes directly out of the blog world. Keyword navigation could be considered a type of directory navigation, but there are some real differences that are big enough that I believe it needs to be considered on its own.

Keyword navigation is most often realized as a "tag cloud". The tag cloud is build and maintained by an algorithm based. There are various ways the algorithms may weight keywords. One simple example is by the amount of content contain those keywords. If you have 5 articles on the topic of "baseball hats" and 2 articles on the topic of "baseball bats", then the first topic will be seen as more popular and get a greater weighting. When the tag cloud is rendered on a webpage, the phrase "baseball hats" will normally be bigger and bolder than "baseball bats".

There are some really great things about keyword navigation and tag clouds. They are dynamic. They update automatically. This makes them a type of navigation that can learn and grow. Also, the rules they use can be changed which offers even more possibilities. They are link based. This makes them accessible to search spiders as well as humans.

There are some drawbacks to tag clouds also, but most of these have to do with the fact that this is a new method of navigation. A lot of people don't know about or understand what a tag cloud is. Also, tag clouds seems to work best on websites with lots of content that is updated often. Websites with a fairly static product offering could use a tag cloud navigation tool, but the dynamic nature of the tag cloud would not be utilized and it would just become a funky looking static directory-type navigation system. Also, tag clouds kinda look funny and are not intuitive for a larger part of the online audience.

As time goes on and tag clouds are refined, this may become a very strong navigational tool with much wider application than it enjoys now.

Promotional Navigation

Promotional navigation is a very broad term for any sort of navigation that points to specific items and does not exist within a logical or automated structure. While that may seems like a catch-all, it sort of is. There are a lot of different kinds of promotional navigation and lots of ways to implement it on the internet.

Example 1: The homepage of your website has an ad for a 20% discount on all baseball hats and links to a page that describes the promotion in more detail.

Example 2: A blog post on a third-party clothing website has a review of the coolest fall styles and mentions Yankee baseball hats. They also link to your Yankee baseball hat as an example.

Both of these are different types of promotion navigation even though they are very different. Because there are so many possibilities, it may be helpful to create some sub-goups.

Navigation created by the site owner

On site. This includes homepage ads and internal cross-promotion for products/content that exists deeper within the site. Normally this is used to bring a very limited number of specific items to the fore, usually because the item is deemed important by someone. Off site. This includes ad placements and other types of links that have been placed by the site owner on other websites. This is online marketing and promotion in all its forms--from banner ads to comments on blogs to email.

Navigation created by third-parties

On site. This is pretty limited to comments on blogs or product reviews where a person links to another product on-site for comparison purposes, etc. Off site. Example 2 above is typical for this.

Promotional navigation can be very effective, however it is normally very resource intensive (time and/or money). It is an almost entirely manual process and by its very nature limited to a small number of items at any given time. Just like shining a spotlight on every thing at once would negate the effect of the spotlight, so too is promotional navigation most effective when it is used selectively and as a contrast.

Summary

In summary, we see that there are multiple kinds of navigation for a website. Each has its strong points and weaknesses. Understanding your target market and being able to learn from them is important and requires flexibility. Once you choose why kinds of navigation to use and think it through, it is also important to plan how to implement changes based on visitor behavior which may not have been anticipated. If your directory structure is too complex, it may be very difficult to change if your visitors are getting lost a lot. Likewise, over-simplified navigation like index lists may present visitors with too much information, leading to high bounce rates. The ability to grow, adapt, combine and refine navigation based on visitor behavior and feedback, as well as internal website goals, is just as important as setting up the initial navigation schema. And it keeps web site management fun. :)

Troubleshooting Keywords

2008-03-20T16:03:00.000-07:00

Troubleshooting Keywords -- A NWSEM Cheat Sheet.

Troubleshooting Keywords

A NWSEM cheat sheet.

Metric

High

Low

Overall Cost

(PPC Only)

There are a lot of reasons a keyword could be causing a big bill. If the overall spend on a keyword is above the 90^th percentile for the campaign, then it should be looked at more closely.

Action: Flag these keywords for further investigation. Make sure the keyword is converting to justify its high cost.

Action: Review bids, landing page relevance, and ad copy to eliminate algorithm handicaps.

Cost Per Click

(PPC Only)

If the CPC is above average for the campaign in a given rank, then the keyword is a potential budget hog.

Action: Review conversions to justify the high price.

Consider this a bargain.

Impressions

(PPC Only)

Keyword is popular.

Action: Make sure you are capitalizing on this with good CTR.

Action: Review bids, landing page relevance, and ad copy to eliminate algorithm handicaps.

Click Through Rate

(PPC Only)

Ads are resonating with searchers.

Action: Watch out for budget hogs.

Ads are not resonating with searchers.

Action: Rewrite ads.

Visits

(PPC and Organic)

For organic, this keyword is popular and high ranking (most likely).

For PPC, the keyword-ad combo is attractive to searchers.

This keyword is not popular or CTR is low.

Action:

For PPC--revisit CTR issues, look for conversions to justify high costs, consider cancelling the word in PPC to save money.

For organic—check page for optimization issues.

Keyword Bounce Rate

(PPC and Organic)

Visitors are not finding what they expect.

Action: Update content and/or re-target ads to a more relevant page.

Visitors are finding what they are expecting.

Action: Make sure you are capitalizing on this with good conversion rates.

Keyword On-Site Conversion Rates

(PPC and Organic)

Visitors are compelled to request more info.

Action: Cross-pollinate the SEM efforts with these keywords.

Visitors are not compelled to request more info.

Action: Improve calls to action. Consider cancelling PPC spend to save money.

Lead Gen is a Monster

2007-08-28T18:46:00.000-07:00

Lately, a lot of my focus has been lead generation. Lead gen is the big goal. It is the reason we re-architect the website, switch domains, have the copy rewritten, do a bunch of keyword analysis, fix the PPC accounts, and get the website generally in working order. It's all about lead gen.

And lead gen is a monster.

Lead gen effects everything. All the new search engine rankings and well organized content I have been working on for the past 6 months have no value if it doesn't turn into more leads and more sales. Lead gen is where the rubber meets the road for marketing.

Seems pretty straight forward--count how many leads come in and see if the number goes up or down over time. Overlay that with marketing activities and you have a game plan. Simple, right? Not really. There are so many different ways to count what a lead is it is astounding. And every manager/client has their own definition.

Marketing looks at every inquiry as a lead. If a person is contacting the company for information about a product they are not already buying, they are a lead. Primarily these leads come through the website and the call center. Two totally different systems to sort through and try to synchronize.

Sales is looking for "opportunities"--inquiries that have been qualified and are likely to buy in the near future. It's not good enough that a person shows interest, they have to be able to buy the product. In B2B lead gen, that is not always self evident. To buy the product, they have to be able to make a purchasing decision and they have to have the budget (we have some expensive products), among other things.

Account management is looking for revenue growth from existing customers. Retention marketing gives a whole different spin to lead gen. These are leads for up-sells and additional licenses and add-ons and platform migrations. A completely different set of goals with a completely different market interacting with completely different corporate systems. Whereas marketing goals set you on a path to sales goals, account management goals are a whole other world.

So, what are my take-aways from this situation?

Understand that every department has it's own goals. As consumers of the data, they will each be looking for something that is potentially unique to them.
Establish the definitions. A "lead" to one group may not mean the same thing to anther group. This becomes really confusing in large meetings, trust me.
Learn where the data is coming from. When looking at corporate lead gen efforts, you need to have an open mind about sources. A well executed outbound calling effort may knock the socks off your beautifully crafted multi-phase e-marketing campaign.
Try to get things to work together. Potentially they can give tremendous insight into the various phases of the customer life cycle. Hopefully this insight can be fed back into the planning for the next effort, making you smarter and improving results.