Fake news has been a hot topic with the recent US presidential elections and several European elections coming up. It’s the perfect example of how clickbait is used to drive traffic. But what’s in it for the users? Fairly little actually. Best case scenario? They waste their time clicking on a link that wasn’t worth visiting. The worst case scenario is that they assume the story is true and share it with their friends. But what’s in it for the publisher? A bit more, given that the click drives traffic to their landing page, generating money for their advertisers and perhaps shifting public opinion as well.

In a time where we all the focus is on a customer-centric approach, this won’t hold up. Personally, I think it’s a trend that has gained a lot of attention in a season ruled by elections, but it’s not something new. And I believe this is where the power of social media will come in, where your social circle will start correcting you on fake news. Since there is no clear benefit for the user, the public will turn against it and develop ways to easily uncover these stories. There have already been several leaders in Tech who announced they will be fighting the fake news epidemic.

But at the same time, it’s a good example of a tactic that will never work for a consumer brand. But why exactly? What makes this so interesting? Through marketing, we’re all trying to influence the public opinion, but only by offering clear value for the consumer. The average customer journey is longer than this example, and stands or falls by the value the customer gains from each interaction. These ‘touchpoints’ will define the final outcome of the journey. If you fail to manage the customer’s expectations, your potential customer will drop-off and the journey ends.

The perfect journey

So, what does the perfect customer journey look like? Even though the length of the journey varies between B2C and B2B, it’s all based on managing expectations. The success of each touchpoint you have with your potential customer will be defined by how you fulfill their expectations. A happy consumer is a potential customer, but the trick is to tilt their expectations so that a potential customer will interact with your brand again.

Many brands try pulling in potential customers with clickbait. It’s not a bad tactic to have people click on your content and visit your site. But that sexy headline and hot picture will create a certain expectation with your visitor. If your content does not meet those expectations, you’ll be served with a bounce. And it’s not just a bounce: it’s a poor interaction with your brand that can continue to haunt you.

Balance, balance, balance..

What most brands don’t realize is that they are actually the ones who set the expectation. By balancing the expectation to the extent that you are able to meet it, you’re in control of the touchpoint and able to steer this journey towards the next one. Do this for every touchpoint and it will lead you to the perfect customer journey. This, of course, rises or falls with the power of the product or service you’re offering.

By balancing the expectation to the extent that you are able to meet it, you’re in control of the touchpoint and able to steer this journey towards the next one. Do this for every touchpoint and it will lead you to the perfect customer journey.

Not entirely unimportant are the many touchpoints that follow the sale, which continue to be based on both expectation and relationship management. So, keep on setting and managing those expectations to create the perfect customer journey.

By Ralph on Ralph van der Pauw.

I was just running the app updates on my smartphone, minding my own business, and suddenly there it was.. This new, weird looking icon was looking at me and I didn’t recognise. Do I panic!?

-99% of the consumers

With every radical brand revamp there’s a majority of people struggling with the change. Adjusting to change is difficult, I know. But where does a redesign like this come from? Obviously a logo is not just an app icon you tap everyday, it reflects the identity of a brand and in extent the company.

A brand will always try to remain authentic and close to its core values and pillars that it has been built on. But time and environments change. What if the brand image no longer reflects what the company has envisioned as their identity.

Instagram

In all fairness Instagram’s hipster logo was a good one, it resembles the early-adopters, your average tech hipster who had that retro polaroid camera on his bookshelf next to a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers and a Casio watch.

But Instagram has gone mainstream. Its now the biggest photo-sharing network and all those small adjustments to the logo are no longer sufficient to have it resemble this identity. The brand, continuously innovating and a superstar in tech wants to show that it’s your photo app now and in the future.

On top of that Instagram has expanded their suite of apps and the brand image needs a new unique style that can be relayed to the sister apps and make the brand identity recognisable in the whole app suite. A specific style that makes consumers say “hmm that must be Instagram’s”.

Uber

I’ve taken Instagram, but the same goes for Uber as well. And any other company that has seen a crucial change in their identity either by growth or pivoting their business. Uber is of course drastically expanding its services, no longer focussing on the transportation of people but also food and goods. They too were forced to explore a new brand image with again a unique style to relay to their new services.

Some companies choose to gradually transition to a new brand-image, not wanting to create too many noise. But I applaud the gutsy moves to go straight to the final results. It shows true character and shows that the brand is not afraid to disrupt. If the business fits the brand identity and the identity fits the brand image, than why would the consumer know better?

Aesthetics vs. Acceptance

There are several ways to introduce a new brand image without gradually adjusting the logo. One way is to get the consumers buy-in up front by involving your community in the design direction. This might be a bit too much control for some companies, but it’s effective. Another way is to introduce the new rollout with a campaign in which again, the consumers are involved.

But should you really invest so much time and money into smoothening this process? It’s aesthetics anyway, and it will take two weeks of complaints until everyone has adjusted to the new look and forgot about the old one. I for one applaud these ballsy moves – keep on disrupting, keep thinking different!

By Ralph on Ralph van der Pauw.

Working in a large corporation puts things in perspective in terms of processes, procedures and governance. Where are the days of working in ‘startup-mode’, doing cool things on the fly at the cusp of agility? I like to compare it with my love for flying and aviation. Would I have made some different choices before going to study, I might have blogged about a crosswind approach at the runway of Madeira.

Former aspirations aside, the startup/lean way of realising an initiative is something I like to compare with flying a light sport aircraft, being easily manoeuvrable but ineffective for the short distances. The large corporations would resemble a big airbus that’s heavy, less manoeuvrable but effective on long distance and with big impact. Everyone prefers it’s own style and environment of working, but to operate and lift up such a big machine from the ground is pretty cool.

Unfortunately in this big airplane a pilot has to deal with processes, procedures and governance. How does this compare to launching a digital initiative in a large corporation? Can you still be agile? Or are you fighting the sluggish corporation?

The key is to assess the feasibility by looking ahead and estimate the expected lifespan in a complex environment.

1. Is it scalable?

Any digital initiative should be tested for its scalability. The initiative can be groundbreaking, but if there are now ways to scale it to a large organisation, it will end up being a worthless investment that is bound to get stuck along the way. The amount of opportunities the digital world has brought, has enabled a lot of creative people to play around with some very interesting ideas. Unfortunately I’ve seen too many of them end up stranded a long the way as there were too many constraints for a large rollout.

2. Is there governance?

We could also define it as question ‘1a’, as it’s ties in very close with the scalability of an initiative. Are you sure the initiative can be managed throughout hundreds, or thousands of people? Is governance clearly defined, making sure everyone is working on the same objective and knows the risks? A digital initiative can so easily strand because not everyone is on the same bandwagon and people wander off doing their own thing or work on their own little island without seeing the bigger picture. This stands or falls with good change management and a precise adoption plan.

3. What will be the lifespan?

Your typical business case question, will it be worth the investment looking at the projected life span. Especially in large organisations a roll-out can take months, years even. So what will be the projected lifespan of your initiative and will it be worth the investment?

Having all three questions answered with an optimistic projection, your initiative should be feasible to realise in a large organisation. Now you can get in the cockpit to establish processes and procedures to lift that airbus off the ground.

By Ralph on Ralph van der Pauw.

I doubt I have to brief you on the disrupting changes that have not only affect most company’s business models, but their marketing strategy as well. Digital has become a key priority for all top consultancy firms and I had the opportunity to help some of my clients discover its power.

Being as disruptive as it is, there is a fair share of change management involved as well. Managers and employees are forced to shift their way of thinking, away from traditional marketing activities. What used to work, might not work anymore and this requires a lot of people to take a significant step outside of their comfort zone.

First steps

First and foremost, it will be essential for an organization to attract expertise in this specific domain. The only way to innovate current marketing activities is to include digital natives in the organization and positioning digital at the heart of the marketing activities.

Many clients took this step, but failed to learn and evolve. Instead of innovating their marketing activities, a divide was created between the traditional marketers and the digital natives. The traditional marketers were not able to learn while at the same time digital natives did not feel understood. Does this mean a traditional marketing organization can’t function with digital natives?

Open leadership

No, not at all really. It’s an indication of poor change management, where one or more of the requirements for digital disruption were not met. Positioning digital at the heart of your operations does not make you a digital organization. First it will require support from all management levels. Directors and managers have to recognize the change. Keeping the ropes tight with a strict and defensive leadership style, really is the worst way to embrace innovation. Possibly they’re no digital natives themselves, but this is not required. What makes them good leaders is to recognize the importance of the change, to keep an open-mind allowing new ideas disrupt operations and to rely on the vision of their experts to move forward. Giving digital natives the space and flexibility to be creative will keep them close to the organization and allow them to digitally transform your business.

Close the gap

At the same time, it is up to the digital natives to close the gap. It’s for them to help the business understand why certain activities aren’t working anymore and what could be good alternatives. Leveraging data can be a great way to support decisions and recommendations. Providing factual data will help convince the business to shift their focus. With the space and flexibility that they get, it’s essential they focus on taking traditional marketers on the bandwagon and make them part of their digital innovations and ideas.

So can traditional marketing work hand in hand with digital natives? Absolutely! But managing the change within the organization is key. Its success is defined by an open and trusted leadership style on one hand and the effort to close the gap with expertise on the other. It’s important to accept that you need people to think differently. Embrace this quality by giving them the space and flexibility to transform your business.

By Ralph on Ralph van der Pauw.

Customers want to get in touch with you brand, faster and on a more personal level – for whatever reason. Either it’s a bank’s customer service about your card, or a local restaurant to reserve a table for tonight. Often they still pick up the phone to get it done quickly, but what could be a suitable alternative?

Online Customer Service

Some company’s took live customer service to their website by offering live-chat functionality. It’s an effective way to quickly get in touch with customer service and my experiences have been fairly positive. Apart from one company who advised me to call their customer service because my question was too complex.

With social media entering the customer service landscape we’ve seen businesses professionalize social customer service (‘or webcare’) into the company. These businesses put in the works to respond in a timely fashion on the platform the consumer prefers. What I love about social customer service isn’t even the service itself, but the realization companies have had that they have to be present on the channels where their customers are. This is an revolutionary change for traditional companies. In most cases this customer-centric approach still needs some work, but the essence is there.

Now that the Facebook’s and Google’s have been fighting over a share in Instant Messaging (IM), there are also a handful of companies who have taken the step to offer Customer Service through IM apps. For instance Essent, a Dutch energy company, which started a pilot with customer service on Whatsapp.

IM Apps fall behind

Unfortunately IM apps need to catch up. For instance Whatsapp needs to facilitate verified accounts and a desktop application. Rumour has it that the last one is in the making. There’s also Facebook Messenger with one of the largest amounts of users. Unfortunately FB Messenger doesn’t allow you to text to Facebook Pages (yet). Another alternative could be iMessage, which already has a desktop application. There’s no support for businesses in the platform, but functionally, I think it could work.

And then there’s PathTalk. The application by Path doesn’t have the same user-base Whatsapp has, but it has recognised a future need for businesses to adopt IM. The guys at Path created ‘Place Messaging’ which is a feature for users to get in touch with local businesses through IM. I’ve already seen a few examples where someone reserved a table at a restaurant with two quick texts. There’s no desktop application for PathTalk yet, which makes large and scalable customer service difficult. But considering their focus on businesses I expect more about this soon.

There are definitely a lot of opportunities for both businesses and IM apps. I do feel there is one risk worth mentioning. Both parties should be very careful how to facilitate the communication. When businesses start using it as a channel to push commercial content to users, it will fail. It should be a pull strategy where IM apps make sure that the user is protected, in control and can easily manage its texts and contacts. Having these risks companies can take the next step in digital customer service by positioning their brands on Instant Messaging platforms.

By Ralph on Ralph van der Pauw.

There are different kinds of holidays and trips. There’s the all-inclusive Bahamas holiday where you travel to a nice sunny place and get some peace and quiet in an all inclusive beach resort. These holidays can be perfect to relieve stress and get away from the hectic world we work and live in.

Then there is also the kind of holiday where you grab a backpack and travel to a faraway part of the world. About one year ago I took the plunge and booked a return ticket to Asia to start a solo backpacking adventure. Probably the best decision I had made in quite a while. It brought me many valuable lessons, friends and experiences. Without hesitating I grabbed my backpack again last September and left for South-America.

The reason I feel the need to share this, is because it has also added a great amount of value in my work, specifically in marketing. Why would there be a parallel between traveling and marketing?

Embracing new environments

Most marketing roles are externally focused, which require someone to work with very dynamic environments. Consumer demand and behaviour changes, and forces you to be agile to adapt. Traveling on your own to a new and unknown place also requires a high level of agility. It puts you on the spot and forces you to embrace a new environment along with its culture. Because of this it’s a valuable way to learn how you as a person deal with change. After several trips you actually start to feel trained and confident in adapting new environments. It’s something your work can only benefit from once you’re back home.

Escaping your comfort zone

When traveling solo in an unknown country, you encounter different situations where you’ll have to think fast to make a decision. Some might not always be the most enjoyable situations which you want to get yourself out. But – you are outside your comfort zone and you get challenged to be creative and think in solutions. I believe this is exactly how a marketer goes about his day. Every day challenges require a high-degree of creativity and a solution-focused mind-set. Stepping out of your comfort zone is the perfect way to improve these skills and learn fast.

Socially Connected

Everyday marketing operations can get you stuck behind a desk, crunching numbers to improve minor margins. The risk here is you are losing touch with consumers. Especially in a more-and-more customer centric time, this can be very dangerous. I’d advise any marketeer to regularly get away from a desk and put him or herself back in a more socially demanding environment. With that I mean a place where you are forced to network, communicate and be socially active. I my line of work I’m lucky to be in a such position almost daily. But travelling on your own, from place to place, has always been the most valuable experience. You continue to meet new people, create an amazing network of travel friends and you’ll be amongst different personalities and cultures. You’ll learn how different people think and respond. This is something I can take back to work every day.

Back to Basic

I can’t deny I am digitally connected. My work requires me to be, but sometimes I feel it’s a bit too much. On your backpack trip it will take about one or two days until you’ll experience a liberating feeling of being unconnected. I feel ashamed saying this, but being unconnected opens up your eyes to many ‘offline’ things you tend to take for granted. Before I left to South America I had been struggling with a marketing issue, trying to integrate off and online channels in a new way. After one month unconnected I could really get my hands on the offline channels which enabled me to come up with a solution.

The biggest hurdle to take is making the decision to travel alone for the first time. You basically have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. Being alone in an unknown place is not something most people have on their to-do list. That’s completely understandable; I struggled with the first step as well. Let me be the one to tell you, traveling solo you’ll never be alone. A trip like this will not only make you a better marketeer, but it will also teach you some valuable lessons in life. It’s an amazing and worthwhile experience nobody will ever take away from you.

By Ralph on Ralph van der Pauw.

We’re heading towards Christmas, which is (for most) people associated with joyful memories of snow, presents, family diners and eggnog. Unfortunately not for marketers, for us it’s all about the Q4 activities. Think of campaigns to reach End-of-Year targets, optimizations for Christmas shopping and finalizing the campaign plan for next year. While it’s a busy period I will try to offer some support in looking at digital marketing for 2014 as to what I expect will be the areas to focus on for next year.

Cross channel marketing

We’ve determined that combining campaigns and customer engagement through different channels can add significant value to the outcome. We have even seen several pioneers pull it off. But at this moment the vast majority is still struggling in effectively setting up a cross channel strategy. So what hurdles have to be overcome?

Business challenge: Cross channel marketing requires a certain level of understanding as to what different customer interactions across multiple channels mean. Each channel is interpreted in a different way and it is impossible to copy a campaign from one channel to the other. Without understanding what a specific channel means to the customer and how he wishes to be approached on it, it is pointless to set up a cross-channel strategy.

IT challenge: With the shift to personalised marketing, customer engagement has become more and more complex. Trying to integrate with different marketing channels will definitely not make a campaign setup any easier. This has made marketers become more IT-reliant and requires them to have a platform that enables effective campaign engagement, optimization and tracking within the complex environment.

Conversion Attribution

Imagine an organization, in a mature stage of using digital analytics, which is allocating the 2014 budgets for campaigns and channels. One of the key questions that keeps popping up is: How much did a campaign or channel attribute to a conversion?

A customer-journey usually consists of different touchpoints to get to a sale. We can no longer attribute the value of the sale to the final touchpoint. Especially with campaigns in display advertisement that might not instantly convert a customer but add great value in the journey towards the sale.

The biggest challenge in conversion attribution is tracking, specifically offline campaigns. For a digital marketer it has become quite easy to track and attribute value by using cookies, campaign id’s etc. The real challenge lies in making attribution work with offline channels such as Radio, TV, Offline-display and (even more important) the offline stores. I feel we have gone past solutions such as QR-codes (seriously?) and shortend URL’s. We need to be looking at more innovative ways such as NFC, loyalty apps, etc.

Social Search

One of the most dynamic landscapes in marketing is search marketing. Penguin updates, Panda updates, search marketers need an agile skill set to cope with each new challenge a search engine throws at them. We’ve seen the traditional search engines adopting social media in their algorithm for the past few years, but recently Facebook has upped the ante by introducing Graph Search.

We’ve been seeing social networks expand their search capabilities for a while now which has created a lucrative marketing gap. People are already using graph search, but companies have yet to start fighting for positions in the (seemingly organic) search results. There are no real hurdles in this prediction, it only requires a business to recognise this opportunity and start using it to their advantage. (source: Marc Blinder )

Content marketing

Distributing and standing out with your content has become increasingly difficult. Social media have become both a filter and distribution channel for a lot of content, which puts more emphasis on the quality of a content piece. Although content marketing is (nor should be) no new topic it will become even more important to focus on in 2014.

For the quality it will be essential to asses if the content will fit the need of your audience. Media such as video and images will be adding more authenticity to your content, eventually improving the expected outcome.  Do associate the different types of content with the right distribution channels. The way a customer prefers to be approached on a specific channel can differ from what you’d expect. Especially on social media these considerations can make or break a content campaign.

By the looks of it we are heading towards a year where a lot of existing topics will be playing a bigger role in the marketing strategy of a company. Campaigns and specifically propositions will have to become more customer-centric. Accompanied by the ability to track the contribution of each campaign and the challenge to combine offline channels with digital. It will definitely put more emphasis on the supporting role IT is playing within the marketing strategy.

I hope this will give you some more insights on what to focus on for 2014. Will this be the same for your company? Do share your thoughts in the comments!

In the meantime all the best in finishing up Q4 with a success!

By Ralph on Ralph van der Pauw.

At the Adobe Summit I attended an inspiring session by John Watton, who had wrapped his session on behavioral targeting around a story of Bob the local wine salesman. Bob is a retailer who is very acquainted with his customers, which enables him to offer them the best service. The story immediately spoke to me, because it is one of those local shops you just love to visit because you know you will end up leaving with great products recommended to you by someone who knows what you like.

The point John tried to make during this session, is that we all know in what way we would like retailers to offer us their products. But in the current digital era, we are far from putting this vision into action.

Back to John’s example of Bob, he compared a visit to Bob with a visit to any popular online winery. These websites offer their visitors different types of wine, red/white/sparkling, while most visitors are looking for something specific and do not want to be bothered by irrelevant offerings. Every irrelevant offer turns into a feeling of being misunderstood.

Customer Type

So how does one go about targeting this individual? Let me grab this example and explain the opportunities I see in optimizing the online customer experience here. First off, let’s identify two types of potential customers.

1. Either the customer knows what he is looking for
2. Or he doesn’t..

Both types are valuable but require a different approach. For instance the first type of customer will visit the website and most likely find the wine he is looking for by using standard navigation. Or possibly the search-box on the website (let me remind you retailers, onsite search = money). This type of customer might seem to require less attention because he is determined to find a specific wine. It’s an easy sale, but mind you he will leave your website when it’s taking him too long to find the product. His behavior on your website has two requirements: speed and ease.

On the other hand there’s the type of customer who simply has not yet decided which product he is going to buy. This customer might be throwing a diner party for some good friends and is searching for a wine that goes well with his main course. One of the first things the local retailer would find out is what is going to be on that menu. – So why wouldn’t you? Your digital platform should not withhold you from starting a conversation with your customer. The gap between the customer and the retailer is already larger on a digital platform, compared to an offline sale (you are 1-0 behind). Think of ways to identify the needs by digitally approaching your customer and asking him, in a simple and playful way, about occasions/menus/preferences. There are so many ways to personalizing this, giving you the ability to narrow the gap. This customer’s behavior has one specific requirement: service.

Finally, after you managed to gather all this data from the customer and point him to the right product, it might feel like a mission accomplished. You think you’re done? Fortunately that’s not the case, the fun has only started!

Up and Cross-sell

Think about Up/Cross-selling your products based on the customer’s interests. Did he search for a specific Sauvignon Blanc? Try to cross-sell one of your cheeses that suits the wine perfectly, or try to up-sell by offering a discount when he buys a full case. We’re now recommending products based on the customer’s product choice. Basic e-commerce, right? Being an online retailer, you should know that by now.

But the biggest win lies in taking the up/cross-sell strategy to the next level. Start combining the already available data of your customer and make recommendations based on his behavior.

• [Returning behavior] Was this his first visit? Was this his first purchase on my website? What did he buy last time and how did he rate that wine on my website? Make sure your website recognizes a returing visitor, and simply ask him how he liked his last purchase.
• [Referrer behavior]  Something I personally like to analyse is: where did my customer come from? Was it that popular wine-comparison website? Because I have some bottles that were rated really well on that website and I’m sure it would fit his interest.
• [Undeceive behavior] Why is the customer periodically looking at a specific product? Why hasn’t he bought it yet? Is he waiting for an incentive?
• [Other types of behavior] ..

The near future..

The possibilities are endless and can be compared to the questions Bob the salesman would be asking you when you visit his local wine-shop from the example. He has been gathering as much data as he could to offer you the best service possible. Some companies who have already started to gather and structure all this data have done a great job so far. I would like to applaud them for taking the first step in the right direction. Unfortunately the near future of e-commerce requires a whole new level of innovation.

Now it is time to start putting your insights into practice and build new ways to become that digital retailer who proves to know his customers, one by one.

By Ralph on Ralph van der Pauw.

Analytics rock stars: Roll with the pros to rock your analysis:
The first breakout session at the EMEA Summit I attended was about tips and tricks for working with Adobe Analytics & Discover. Brent Dykes who led the session, started with breaking up the analytics profession into two different areas. There’s ‘Setup-land’ which focuses on translating business goals to analytics requirements, tagging the website and building reports. The other area he defined was ‘Action-land’, this is where you focus on the optimizing – which is usually the fun part, getting value from your insights.

So the session initially started with some really basic tips on using Sitecatalyst, dashboard and such. I was still looking for the ‘Rockstar’ part, but about half way through the session it got more interesting and advanced. I ended up leaving with two key take-aways from this session that I wanted to share with you:

Standardizing Dashboads
One of the experts on the panel, Willem Corbijn (Philips), showed us how they had standardized dashboards within their organization. Most of you must be thinking – every dashboard serves a different business goal, how do I go about standardizing them?
But the way Philips had standardized the dashboards, they still left room for the necessary customizations.
The biggest advantage by standardizing most components in the dashboard is that it makes it easier for the business to understand and compare the data. This way fewer questions arise, which leaves you with more time in ‘Action-land’. Apart from that it can also be a huge time-saver on producing these dashboards, which again leaves the expert with more time creating actual value for the business.

Source: http://summit-emea.adobe.com/

The rule is “Standardize when possible, Customise when needed”, with 4 key questions you should ask yourself if a customization actually is required.
1) Will new reports provide more insights than standard reports?
2) Are they sustainable once adopted?
3) Are you making up for a lack of data or processes?
4) Will your customizations prevent internal benchmarking?

Scatterplot quadrant analysis
When Brent had the floor again, he showed a very powerful technique to break up data in different types of categories. He used a scatterplot for this, in which he plotted different products based on their volume versus. success. In this example he used conversion rate (y-axis) versus the product views (x-axis). By dividing the plot in four different quadrants he was able to create some powerful insights on each product.

Source: http://summit-emea.adobe.com/

For instance the products in the quadrant with a high conversion rate but low amount of pageviews were defined as the hidden gems. These products are very successful on converting but are currently getting a low volume on the website. Possible actions for this quadrant could be to feature the products on the homepage or setting up a campaign to give them more exposure.

The products in the top right quadrant, having a high success-rate and high volume are defined as the rockstars amongst the products. They convert well and at the same time receive a large volume of traffic. These are the top products for a commerce website and you’d want as many of your products to end up in this quadrant.

The bottom right quadrant was defined as the pigeons. These products get a large amount of exposure, but simply do not convert that well. To upgrade these products to the ‘rockstar’ quadrant you can consider setting up an A/B test for the product pages. You can then play around with different elements on the website, such as the images, text or pricing to increase the conversion rate.

Round up
Although the session started off a bit basic, it ended up with some great insights. If you want to check out the full session, you can do so here:

Analytics rock stars: Roll with the pros to rock your analysis (video)
Slides

By Ralph on Ralph van der Pauw.

Last week I wrote a dutch blogpost regarding the implementation of SEO in a project. I promised several English colleagues to make the content available in English on my own blog.

The decision has been made: a new website is being launched! The new website is either replacing an existing website or built from scratch for a new domain. Either way both projects share similarities during the process and have the same goal: Go Live. When the new website is finally operating bug-free, the serenity seems to be reinstated. Unfortunately not for long. As soon as the organization starts searching on Google they realize that their brand is no longer represented in the top searches. So what went wrong? Implementing a Webanalytics tool confirms earlier assumptions, organic traffic has dropped to 5% having the company lose profitable traffic.

This case is a clear example of a project where no SEO knowledge was involved. SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is the art of optimizing websites so they are indexed effectively in search engine results, targeting the best keywords. With the right approach in SEO, profit can not only be found in increasing organic traffic but also leads, conversions and eventually sales.

So where did the project go wrong? – Precisely at the point where the project was initiated and there was no proper SEO knowledge involved in the development phase. Decisions made in the architecture of the website created several obstacles for the indexation process of search engines and no requirements could be brought in during the process.

After consulting an expert the organization gained a clear picture on what went wrong, forcing them to make significant costs afterwards to fix the structural obstacles. Once repaired, it will still take a very long while before the entire website is re-indexed by search engines and all changes have been processed in the search engine results.

Two particular cases can be identified where these issues often arise and where early SEO adoption is essential in the process.

• Launching on a new domain: In this situation the website does not yet exist in the search engines and it developed from scratch. Because the architecture is developed without any reference to an existing structure, it’s essential to involve the view of a SEO during the development. The same view is also required regarding the content of the website to establish clear content guidelines. This way the website will be able develop itself towards the targeted search results and is able to establish a relevant linkprofile (number/quality links from other domains).
• Website Migration: The website is already active within the search engine results. This situation describes a website which is either being replaced or moved, where the website has already developed a linkprofile. A SEO (migration) strategy would in this situation be mandatory to avoid a break-down of the linkprofile and continue to posses the current positions within the search results.

So always make sure SEO is involved in the early stages of a web-development project. This way the performance of the website can be/remain optimized and any extra expenses afterwards can be avoided. Which opportunities do you see to adopt SEO in an early stage in the process.

By Ralph on Ralph van der Pauw.