Rules for a Web Presence That Wins Blog

Seven Contrarian Resolutions for a Web Presence That Wins

Published on January 16, 2012 in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Analytics, Web Strategy and Web Usability. 0 Comments

Last week, I issued a press release suggesting that business and nonprofit owners and executives could benefit from some contrarian thinking when creating their web and social media strategies for 2012. My “contrarian” stance was prompted by Vint Cerf’s wonderful comment on my recent book:

“Some of the anecdotes are counter-intuitive . . .”

I took that as a great compliment!

Here are my counter-intuitive suggestions for your 2012 web strategy, based on some of my favorite rules:

Avoid Industry Best Practices: unless you’re sure that you’re using valid comparisons, these can give you a false impression of your specific situation.
Read more in Rule 4: Beware of Benchmarking and Best Practices
Counter the Competition: many businesses are wary of giving away their “secrets” online – but not showing your expertise and track record can hamper your growth.
Read more in Rule 12: Consider the Competition (available in full in the free sampler)
Stop Taking “One Size Fits All” Advice: many “experts” hype their online marketing results – yet there are few really effective short cuts. Make sure that their tactics apply to your online markets and goals.
Read more in Rule 15: One Size Does Not Fit All
Ignore your Search Engine Rankings: – until you’ve figured out which of your keywords really pay off in leads and quality traffic, and then focus on those.
Read more in Rule 22: Rankings Don’t Matter
Attract Invisible Buyers: think about your behind-the-scenes influencers and decision makers, and create copy that engages them too.
Read more in Rule 28: Talk to the Buyer Behind the Buyer (available in full in the free sampler)
Beware of “Feel-Good” Numbers: “dashboard” summaries of web analytics reports are convenient for busy managers, but rarely tell the whole story – and can be quite misleading.
Read more in Rule 35: Drill Below the Dashboard
Feed the HiPPO: sometimes the “Highest Paid Person’s Opinion” (which can be both wrong and strongly held) should be overcome with proven web metrics data.
Read more in Rule 37: Numbers and Testing Trump Politics (available in full in the free sampler)

Since it’s now halfway through January, these are probably the last set of resolutions that you’ll consider adopting. But do give them some thought – after all, last is not necessarily least!

Should We Be Worried about Privacy Trends in Web Analytics?

Published on December 2, 2011 in Web Analytics. 2 Comments

Big changes are afoot in the availability of web analytics data. Some are already happening, and some are on the horizon:

Google has stopped providing organic search term keywords for visitors who are logged into their Google account while browsing (these now show as “not provided” in your reports).

Although when this was announced, Google predicted that this would affect only about 10% of site visitors, I’m already seeing over 30% of incoming keyword searches blocked, both on my website and those of my clients. Not knowing the keywords that attract our visitors has major implications for our ability to evaluate how well we’re meeting users’ needs and expectations.

Avinash Kaushik provides some great advice, and some workarounds in a recent blog post. Yet even he talks about “impossible analysis . . . in the complete absence of data ” And his suggestions are wonderful for web analytics gurus, but I’m concerned that many small business owners simply won’t have the time or the mindspace to dive into custom reports at the level that he’s talking about.
In Europe, the European Commission cookie directive requiring that all sites allow users to opt out of cookies completely is being implemented. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office website includes a link to the Google page where people can opt out of being tracked by any Google Analytics implementation. If this is widely adopted, many site owners will no longer be able to obtain accurate visitor numbers, making it very difficult to evaluate the return on their online investment.

Both of these measures are ostensibly being driven by privacy concerns, although it’s not clear to me how much of the expressed fear is legitimate, and how much is largely driven by hype.

Obviously, since we’ve come to expect good and useful analytics information, some alternatives and other solutions will need to be created. Perhaps in Google’s case that will require business owners to pay for data that was previously free to them. Perhaps we’ll find some way to distinguish unique visitors that is more acceptable than cookies.

Either way, 2012 is going to be interesting to watch for developments in web analytics, both in data developments and in regulatory trends. I’ll be interested to see what the analytics world looks like this time next year.

Three Key Drivers of Web Marketing Strategy

Published on October 31, 2011 in Web Strategy. 0 Comments

David Aaker, Vice Chairman of Prophet, wrote an interesting post last week for the Harvard Business Review Blog Network.

The piece was titled Five Challenges Facing Marketing. Aakers suggests that marketing should own three key drivers of strategy:

The brand strategy which should both inform and enable the business strategy.
Customer insights
The firm’s value proposition

I found this very interesting because I’ve been thinking along similar lines with regards to an organization’s web presence. In fact, each of Aakers’ drivers is directly reflected in one of the rules in my recently published book 42 Rules for a Web Presence That Wins:

Rule 2: Appoint your Web Ambassador – this should be an executive level position so that this person is directly involved in creating strategy and advising on implications for and leverage of the web presence
Rule 18: Personify your Visitors – an in-depth understanding of customers’ needs and emotions is crucial to online success
Rule 29: Blow Your Own Trumpet – Differently! – well defined positioning and differentiation can significantly impact visitor engagement and outcomes.

Sadly in my experience, most organizations are still not effectively implementing these drivers. But it’s great to see proven ways to rectify this being discussed.

Twitter Unfollow Tools – Does Automation Work?

Published on August 10, 2011 in Miscellaneous Musings and Social Media. 0 Comments

Last year, I wrote a post called Social Media Mentions – Do Negative Seeming Words Harm You? In it, I argued that automated tools which calculate your online reputation can produce very misleading results.

Recently, a colleague with a major Twitter following told me that she’s used Twit Cleaner to purge her account. She thought it was very useful.

So, I decided to try it, and ran a report on my followers.

Apparently, 46% of the 703 Tweeps that I’m currently following are “potentially garbage.” Yikes!!

So, who are these people? Turns out that they include:

@GuyKawasaki – named because he mainly posts links, does very few retweets, and mentions very few others.
@CorbinBall (noted expert in the meetings technology field), for link spamming 55% of the time
@TerryBrock and @PFripp (both great and popular speakers), because they don’t interact with any of their followers
@SCSentinel (the Santa Cruz Sentinel – my local paper) because it’s largely an RSS feed
@BentleyGTCSpeed (Alan Weiss, my consulting mentor) because he doesn’t follow anyone back

Twitclean will unfollow all these “dodgy” Tweeps for me automatically, at the press of a button.

Now in fairness, there’s a host of other far less famous Tweeps in these, and more, categories. I’d probably never notice that I’d stopped following them.

But in the cases that I’ve highlighted, there are either some good reasons for their actions, or I don’t see the problem.

Guy Kawasaki (who in full disclosure has just given me a great endorsement for my upcoming book) uses Twitter to share all the online content that he and his associates curate. Alan Weiss has always been clear that he has no intention of following people back, but is a great source of ongoing pithy advice. Of course a newspaper is going to produce a news feed . . .

Automated tools can be very helpful up to a point – but they have to be programmed with certain criteria, and they’re not good at nuance. So by all means use them, but add your own review and judgement – otherwise you might miss out on some valuable resources.

20% of Daily Google Searches Never Done Before?

Published on July 12, 2011 in Miscellaneous Musings, Search Engine Optimization and Small Business Marketing. 2 Comments

Yesterday, Hubspot put out a new whitepaper called “How to Spot Bad SEO Services”. It’s free, as is much of Hubspot’s great information.

However, in the promo for it that I received in my email was the claim that “Each day, 20% of Google searches consist of terms that have never been searched before!“

Really? That seems like a huge number to me, and I wondered where it came from.

I checked in Hubspot’s paper, but couldn’t find a source for this assertion. So, I turned to Google, where I found a similar statistic cited in a UK conference back in April, 2007. I also found lots of other posts repeating the Hubspot claim, but no other information.

Which left me wondering whether it’s still true today that 20% of Google search terms every day have never been searched before. I know that there are a lot of people searching, but 20% is a large proportion, and to have that number of completely new and unique terms every day at this point in the usage of the Internet seems unlikely to me.

Of course, as Hubspot points out, if it’s true, there are still huge opportunities for anyone who can figure out the right keywords to be at the forefront of the results when someone finally searches for them

I’m not saying that Hubspot are wrong, just that I’d love to find out where they got the numbers from. Does anyone know?

Google vs. Zappos Customer Service – Who Wins?

Published on July 11, 2011 in Customer Service and Miscellaneous Musings. 0 Comments

In preparation for my forthcoming book, I had the honor of interviewing Rob Siefker, Director of the Customer Loyalty Team for Zappos. Rob told me a lot about Zappos values, and how those define their customer service model. It was a really fascinating conversation.

In mid-June, I decided to use a $75 promotion coupon from Google Adwords. I haven’t used Adwords for myself for a long time, and I’m frankly not convinced that it’s worth the spend for professional service companies (which I also discuss in the book). But since they’d sent me some free money, I thought I’d give it another try.

Not so fast! The experience that I had was so appalling, and such a polar opposite from what I’d heard from Rob, that I decided to write a compare and contrast piece.

What did I experience?

I had an Adwords account linked to the one that I use for my Google Analytics, but it is blocked with the helpful message “Before you can access AdWords, the person who invited you needs to make sure the right person received and accepted the invitation.” I have no idea what this is about, so I called the new account support number to make it go away.
No go. The account representative told me that I had no alternative to opening a new account just for Adwords. She agreed that this is frustrating, and mentioned that she’d just finished helping someone with an equally annoying problem, which she also couldn’t do anything about.
So I asked her: “Can you at least give someone over there feedback about these issues so that your services can be improved?” She laughed ruefully . . .
Rob told me that Zappos always wants to know about their customers’ needs and expectations. They never want to be seen as having the attitude that people will buy from them anyway.
Having created the new account, I attempted to enter my credit card details, which were declined 3 times. Meanwhile, it was close to 5pm when service closes, so the rep said: “I have to go now, but I will call you in the morning.”
I contacted my credit card company, which is thankfully still willing to speak to me after 5pm. They could see 3 authorization attempts from Google, each of which was accepted. There was nothing wrong with my card. I emailed the Google rep to let her know and asked her to call me in the morning as promised.
Zappos has 24/7 phone support. I asked Rob if people really do call at 3am, and he said: “A few do, and we want to be available.”
Next day, Adwords was still reporting that my card was declined, so I called Support again, to be told that I could only deal with the rep who had been “helping” me. Four days later, I’ve had no response to voice mail or email to this person.
Rob told me that Zappos don’t give out phone extensions or email addresses for their team, because they want everyone to be able to help any customer, precisely so that the customer isn’t tied to one rep who might be unavailable.

I haven’t used my coupon, or spent any more money with Adwords because I can’t – and I can’t get anyone at Google to help me. Meanwhile, I’m still talking about my interview with Rob, and how he says that Zappos wants to “wow every customer in every situation.” I hear that Google’s share price and the spending on Adwords is dropping – perhaps they should study the Zappos model!

Update: On June 27th, I received a call from the Adwords rep. She wanted to help me select appropriate keywords. I told her that my credit card was still declined, and that I had given up on using the account. She had no access to my billing details, but promised to contact Customer Service, and to get back to me the next day.

As of July 10th, two weeks later, I have yet to hear from her again. Anyone surprised??

Recognizing Event Wifi Sponsors – What’s the Best Way?

Published on June 15, 2011 in Emotional connections and Web Strategy. 0 Comments Tags: ROI, Web Strategy.

There’s an interesting discussion taking place on the Meetings and Expositions listserv of the American Society of Association Executives.

Someone asked: “How can we best recognize our sponsor for wireless internet during the meeting?”

There were several suggestions for doing this online as users connect to the internet:

Create a splash page for the sponsor that’s the first thing they see
Get users to complete a brief survey around the sponsor’s products and services
Show a brief video from the sponsor

Frankly, I think these are all terrible suggestions! Rule 33 of my new book is “Avoid Unexpected Roadblocks.” It deals with the negative emotional impact of sudden and / or annoying obstacles in the visitor’s online experience.

People accessing the Internet at a conference are doing many things at once, and generally want to get to what they need as quickly as possible. I understand the importance of sponsor recognition, but forcing people to take a survey or watch a video may backfire in that you’re taking their valuable time, and they’re not happy. This could have an ultimate negative effect on the sponsor’s image.

The least annoying of these in terms of the amount of delay is the splash page – if it loads quickly, and if there’s an obvious “get me out of here” link. But think about it – how many times have you used the wireless connection at a hotel, and been forced through the hotel’s home page? Did you stop to look at it? Of course not – you’re already staying there, and you’ve got better things to do.

Another suggestion on the listserv was to have attendees visit the sponsor’s exhibit booth to obtain the password for the wireless connection. But what if someone is really in a hurry and doesn’t have time to visit the booth? What if it’s a huge show and they spend a lot of time trying to find the booth? What if they’re trying to access the internet out of exhibit hall hours?

My preferred solution is to provide each attendee with a card or something in the program materials with the sponsor’s logo and the password for internet access. That way, participants will see the sponsor in a positive light because they’re helping them to get their needs met, and not getting in the way at the same time!

Is a Twitter Stream Essential to your Event’s Success?

Published on June 10, 2011 in Miscellaneous Musings and Social Media. 1 Comment Tags: strategy social media, Twitter.

A couple of days ago, Hubspot published a blog posting called “5 Steps to Planning an Awesome Event with Inbound Marketing”. It’s generally a great piece, and as it says: “With the use of hashtags and the practice of live-tweeting, Twitter has become a great way for attendees to share knowledge and insight during events.”

Quite so. But the next thing they said got me thinking:

“These days, an event isn’t considered very successful unless people are talking it online while it’s taking place.” In fact, it’s no longer rude to use your cellphone during sessions (I assume as long as you’re tweeting or updating your status!)

Hmm – an event “isn’t very successful” unless folks are tweeting about it? Yet this morning, eMarketer reports that although 92% of Internet users in the US have heard of Twitter, only 13% of them have a Twitter account, and only 11% access their Twitter account at least once per month.

So what gives? Are all the people who attend conferences crammed into that 11% of users, so that lack of conference-related tweets implies an unsuccessful meeting? Seems unlikely to me. Or is it possible that the highly tech-savvy intersection of the meetings industry and the online marketing world are judging everything by their own very exacting standards? What do you think?

Web Strategy Audio Guides

Published on February 22, 2011 in Small Business Marketing and Web Strategy. 0 Comments Tags: internet marketing, web development, Web Strategy, website strategy.

Finally, I’ve finished my two web strategy audio guides: “Leaky Boat Websites – and How to Prevent Them” and “Web Connections that Win.”

The guides are hour-long pre-recorded downloadable audio files (mp3 format), together with complete transcripts in Adobe Acrobat format. Suitable for both new and experienced webmasters, they will work on laptops, desktop computers, tablets, MP3 players and smart phones. Sample excerpts are available and special discount pricing is offered for purchasers of both products.

The audio guide “Leaky Boat Websites – and How to Prevent Them” will help you determine if your website is missing vital opportunities for generating revenue and sales leads. The audio guide “Web Connections that Win” helps you to evaluate if your website has emotional appeal, and if it reflects the “real world” conversations that you have with your customers. Both guides are available in my online store. I also offer an affiliate program for qualified participants.

I hope that these guides will help you – small business owners and entrepreneurs to look at their websites in a different way – and to make more money when you do!”