At a search engine marketing conference, several of us gave a session on website usability topics ranging from usability and SEO to site architecture and requirements gathering. Afterward, there was time for questions by the audience. Someone asked, “Why don’t we all just copy Amazon.com?” I replied, “Never, ever copy what Amazon does.” The audience responded with surprise, thinking I was not a fan of Amazon.

Not true. The reason you don’t want to copy a successful site like Amazon is that their website requirements are not likely to be the same as your site requirements. Their users may have different characteristics than your site visitors. Their customers’ needs may be completely different. You don’t have the user, traffic analysis and usability testing data they’ve collected over the years that they use as a base for their user interface, information architecture and content delivery.

Your website is unique

Today, with blog templates or content management system software being the design foundation for many sites, web page layouts are fairly consistent and come with no surprises. We’ll find two or three columns, a header, footer, sidebar navigation and a picture or two. The logo typically goes into the top upper left corner. It would be unusual to find a page beginning with a copyright year, privacy policy and company address. Arriving to a solo column page with no header would be odd.

One wonders what creativity we’ve lost out on because we’re afraid to change the status quo. Usability folks like to promote consistency and user habits for design considerations. This is because anytime we are forced to re-learn where items are customarily placed, it slows us down. There is a risk of user confusion. We’re told that it takes only a few seconds to lose your visitor, so why take any chances?

Many web designers have been creating product navigation menus the way Amazon has been doing it, believing that if Amazon’s way is making them a profit, it ought to do the same for their sites too. Why wouldn’t this work?

Understanding mental models

Amazon has expert knowledge of their customers’ mental model. This means they know how their visitors search and browse their site. They know what their users want to find, or learn, before they add an item to the cart. They know how what words are chosen most often to locate certain products, so their information architects can then create their entire information architecture based on user language, keyword choices, and traffic patterns.

When someone says they will make your website easier to use, ask them what mental model they are referring to. Are they going to make it easier for search engines to crawl and rank it? This is a searcher mental model and one an SEO is more likely to be focused on. An information architect wants to know the mental model of your target users. What are your customer needs? What types of behaviors can you expect from them? Many websites have different user paths on one website.

For example, colleges provide different types of information for students, parents, alumni, staff and teachers. Each type of person has a different mental model, with their own needs and expectations. A common mistake is to design identical user paths for everyone, ignoring the specific financial, emotional and practical needs of each user group. Remember that your website is unique. The better you understand what motivates and interests your site visitors, the more competitive your site will be.

Findability and manageability

Information architecture supports findability and usability. It can also support organic SEO practices related to on-page content and word usage. One area that Amazon has helped to pioneer is user management of information. Their customers are recognized by the use of cookies and purchase history. There are different user types for them to track. Some people are affiliates. Some arrive for the first time because they received a gift certificate. Others are regular customers, so Amazon has a chance to study the kinds of products they like. Amazon users can manage their own wish lists, accounts, leave book reviews, send gifts and follow author blogs. Do you know your site visitors this well?

Information architects use terms such as taxonomies and semantics to help describe what they do. Simply put, they organize categories of information into something that makes logical sense. A usability oriented person is interested in the same thing because words can create momentum or promote frustration.

For example, which one of these category links is the best choice to find online specials?

• Closeout Sale
• Gift Ideas
• International
• New Releases
• Top Sellers
• Today’s Sales

What if your customer wants to find sales or new releases by product category? Can they tell, by looking at these links, if they can sort by price? What types of products does this site offer? There are no clues offered in these link labels. By “today”, when is the cut-off time? What does “international” mean?

Interestingly, the website that uses these category links has all of its customer service information at the very bottom of the homepage, lumped into a box as if an afterthought. What message does this send to customers? Was any user testing performed? Apparently not. However, there was attention put on the searcher mental model as far as search engine queries go. Unfortunately, the site owner learned that search results did not equal conversions. In their case, they required both a rebuilt information architecture as well as usability adjustments to increase and support conversions.

A 360 degree team effort

Your website is and should be the manifestation of your own vision. Sure, it’s fun and helpful to study other websites. But those sites should inspire you to try new ideas or even have the courage to think outside the box. Surround yourself with those who have the technical skills to implement your vision. These people will be your project managers, search engine marketers, social media marketers, information architects, usability and user experience consultants, web designers and developers. Ask them questions about where they acquire their inspiration. Test site designs on people. Research, with and without search engines, the language and terms your site visitors use to find your products or services. Be sure to write out your specific site requirements and business goals. Write guidelines to be sure everyone on your team sticks to the game plan.

And know that nobody understands your customers better than you do. Not even Amazon.

–Kim Krause Berg

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I was going to sit down and write a post with my usual brand of geekiness. You know, some more eye-watering patent or IR paper analysis that the search world uses to get to sleep at night?  Then I thought of something worth getting off my chest that seems not to get enough attention out there…Since this is a ‘Search Biz’ article, right?

You see, I recently co-hosted a chat session (in zee Dojo) with the lovely Dana Lookadoo on ‘the Business of SEO’ which the gang seemed to be quite keen on. It is interesting that we don’t talk more about it. As we were musing (about a wide variety of topics from proposals to contracts), I touched on what I lovingly term; Task ROI. And it seems to often be an alien concept…or at least one not openly discussed.

So, if you will spare a few moments, allow me to share…

What is Task ROI?

Search engine optimization is never in a void. It is never a best case scenario. As long as there are budgets (clients, in-house, agency) there are going to be limitations to any SEO program. If you read the blog-o-sphere, took some courses, no matter how you keep on top of things, it is generally the whole ball of wax approach. This can be a flawed business model.

What I mean by that is if you did every possible SEO tactic that we hear about; would it really be an effective use of time? When we do business in this thing of ours, we must always be cognisant of the budgets in play and try to get the most bang from the buck.

Consider:

• Sure, you could spend all day tweaking semantic phrase relations on some third tier pages or you could be working on new content to attract links on core target terms. Which are you going to do?
• You could re-write the entire content management system to get a some slightly better architecture or URL structure. But is it worth the cost?
• We could spend weeks crafting crap hat link wheels or spend that time working content strategy and doing outreach for links instead?

Getting the idea here? And even those situations are not always straight forward. With different sites of different ages, different sizes, will require different answers. What you should always bear in mind is that each activity will have a cost (in time and resources) and efficacy.

Know your site: Know your SERPs

Now that we have the concept, it is time to implement it in the most effective way. This is where SEO becomes more of an art. You will need to be intimate with the site you are working on to know where the strengths and weaknesses are. Each and every site is unique. There is no catch-all solution nor tactic that is going to be best suited to every situation.

I cannot do that for you…. This is where experience comes into play.

You need to assess each situation inclusive of budgetary limitations and create a program that gets the most for the least. Some elements worth considering include;

1. Implementation schedule – how easily can the change be made?
2. Value of activity – what are the expected (SEO) outcomes from the activity?
3. Conversion potential – will it increase primary or secondary conversions?
4. Cost v reward – what portion of the budget for what results?
5. Future proofing– does the activity stand up over time? (more here)

This can be particularly important these days with the increase in local/universal search as well as the spectre of social search. Where does one invest their time in these? What content strategies are needed to make use of them and how will we get the investment back? Personally real-time/social search hasn’t made the kind of inroads that would support specific targeting unless there were active PR/social programs already in place.

This helps to highlight the concepts to be considered for each action taken.

Provide a service of value

And so the next time you are reading about some SEO theory… considering implementing a given strategy, stop for a moment. You need to weigh the resources at hand and the potential benefit from any optimization tactic. You simply cannot operate from the void and start being an SEO sheeple and doing everything some blog said was ‘good SEO’. That simply isn’t realistic.

You might also want to stop and consider the advice given in the SEO world without qualification. Your situation is unique… thus your programming must be as well. When deciding which tactics to use, which changes to implement; always think Task ROI. It cannot be stressed enough that many times the success of a given SEO program (from a investment standpoint) is going to be dependent on the decisions you make along the way.

–David Harry

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While I don’t have a crystal ball, here are some developments that I think are worthy of our attention and will affect how we do things in the social mediasphere over the next few years. Many of the things on this list will not be news to the very well-informed social media consultant types who live and breathe this stuff. But for the rest of us, there are seeds of opportunity here that should not be missed.

1. MySpace: CEO Leaves; MySpace will die. Last year, I was telling my clients “We are cautiously optimistic that MySpace (GigaOM Pro company profile) will make a comeback because their new CEO is aFacebook co-founder.” Scratch that. I think MySpace is about to go the way of Friendster,although it is still a player in the entertainment space. Because Facebook doesn’t allow flexbility and customization, I’m going to miss MySpace. But now I wonder: Who is going to be the next MySpace? Virb? Bebo? (And don’t underestimate LinkedIn.)
2. Virtual Goods: Insane, but insanely popular. The creation and selling of virtual goods and gifts makes absolutely no sense to people who just use the Internet as a basic communications tool. Try telling someone who isn’t really into Facebook that they could buy a virtual bouquet of flowers for 99 cents and send them to a friend — they’d look at you like you were mad. But with virtual goods as an industry already raking in the billions of dollars worldwide and over a billion in the U.S. alone (source: “Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market, 2009 – 2010?), how can anyone ignore them? I’m not saying everyone needs to make and use virtual goods, but there is opportunity here for both marketing and revenue. Have you even thought about how you might be able to leverage virtual goods? Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): How the Next Zynga Could Reinvent Social Gaming
3. Gaming: Not just for kids anymore. I think the very fact that the largest player base of passive online games is women flies in the face of the typical view that games are for kids. According to Nielsen Entertainment in August 2009, of the 117 million active gamers in the U.S., 56 percent play games online and 64 percent of those online gamers are female. And the revenues generated from online games is enormous and growing. Do not underestimate the power of games and gaming — and not just the marketing and revenue opportunities, but also the learning opportunities as well in the form of fun quizzes and polls. Have you used gaming yet in a social media marketing campaign?
4. Twitter: Still transforming communications. Back in 2008, I wrote about Twitter’s impact on the fundamental ways we communicate and the way new tools and applications are being developed, but it continues to grow and evolve. How has Twitter helped you lately?
5. Niche networks: A marketer’s secret weapon. Whether you choose Ning.com orKickApps or any of the other “white label” customizable social network-building platforms, the concept of creating a “gated”online community that is narrow in focus is smart and potentially powerful. The concept isn’t really that far removed from hosting an online messaging board in the early days of the web. If you held the keys to the gate of a more private, closed or niche community, you had everything from an instant focus group to a band of passionate buzz agents on your hands — if you knew how to properly leverage the community participation. Fast forward to today and the tools ca now give your members integrated communications, networking, publishing and social tools — brilliant.What niche networks are you participating in or do you run?
6. Augmented reality. Sounds sci-fi, but it’s really here. I’m having a hard time describing Augmented Reality to people who haven’t seen it (if you haven’t seen it in action, these infographics from GigaOM might help). The reaction isn’t just “what in the world?” but “who cares about that stuff?” AR uses simply boggle the mind, and I plan to explore more of that in this column soon. I do wish we had a better term for it, though (like “data overlay” or “overscreen view”) so it didn’t have such a sci-fi feel to it. What potential uses for AR are getting you fired up? Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.):Augmented Reality: Lots of Promise, Lots of Hurdles.
7. Google Buzz: Pay attention, even if you don’t care. I am one of the gazillion people who currently do not care about Google Buzz, apart from the fact that just because Google did this it means something in terms of the tools we’ll be using in the coming years. Right now, I feel like Google has the means to just throw tech spaghetti on the virtual walls of our work and lives to see what sticks. Anything it does has major significance and impact, even if it fails. So pay attention as you scratch your head. How is Google Buzz changing the way you communicate, or is it? Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Google Buzz’s True Home Is in the Enterprise
8. Mobile: Be there. I don’t know about you, but I consider my iPhone to be a mini computer and Wi-Fi device first and phone a distant second. I’m never normally an early early adopter because I’m too busy to keep up most of the time, but I will be one of the first to buy the iPad, because it looks to me like a bigger iPhone, and I rely on my iPhone in ways I have never relied on my computer or my regular cell phone. My entire concept of connectivity and my access to everything has changed so dramatically since I got a smartphone that I know I can never go back to the old ways. What forays into mobile marketing are on your radar for 2010? Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits Right Notes

–Aliza Sherman

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Two significant and closely related trends in enterprise computing this year are the growth of Software-as-a-service (SaaS) and social computing. By most accounts, both are gaining ground quite rapidly while still not being used for core business functions or mission critical applications in most large firms, at least not yet.

The reality is that broader social and cloud computing trends continue to evolve faster than most enterprises are able to absorb. It may be years before many organizations are comfortable with and ready to adopt either of these technologies strategically despite apparent benefits.

However, that doesn’t mean that it’s not important for organizations to closely track both of these leading computing trends (both have solid double digit industry growth) and understand the emergi

ng technologies that are likely to shape their use in key business functions in the near future. In fact, quite the contrary, particularly when it comes to Enterprise 2.0.

The potential overall impact of enterprise social computing (aka Enterprise 2.0) is significant for most organizations, at least in the medium term. The business functions that are likely to be affected and transformed by these new social business models (and its associated delivery model, SaaS) includes general purpose communication and collaboration, product development, customer relationship management,marketing, operations, and business productivity solutions. And certainly, ad hoc use and early adopters have already being doing this for years, but as we’ll see, many Enterprise 2.0 technologies are only now becoming a reality. What then, are the areas to watch and build competency in this year?

Keeping social technology in perspective

In terms of innovation, 2010 is shaping up to be another important one in the early development of social technologies in general. To get a sense of this, you can read my recent exploration of what’s happening this year with the latest consumer-oriented Social Web technologies and standards. Though the enterprise aspects of these are often far behind, that hasn’t stopped the industry from moving quickly ahead in terms of creating actual products and new business-ready solutions based on the latest lessons learned.

For organizations looking to keep current, both good timing and judicious application of new Enterprise 2.0 technologies will be needed as organizations increasingly look at their future in terms of a social computing driven knowledge economy. To do this though, we have to put them in the context of the big picture.

When I encounter a successful E2.0 project, it’s one where the process of managing the changes entailed are equally balanced with the savvy application of technology. It’s the concepts behind social computing and their application to economic activity, aka social business, that are the ultimately driver of success with Enterprise 2.0. A full solution is achieved when these ideas combine well with the technology — which is an enabler and not an end in itself — though it is important not to forget that technology does strongly shape and define the art of the possible when it comes to social computing, both in the consumer space and the enterprise.

However I still encounter tool myopia in many discussions of social computing and Enterprise 2.0. It’s sometimes too easy to focus on the specifics, like social tools and their technologies, instead of more difficult and less tangible concerns like driving usage or measuring ROI. Fortunately, this seems less pronounced than a year ago and the “soft” issues surrounding adoption and long-term success, such as community management and other important practices are now getting their due on equal footing with the often flashier and attention-grabbing social tools and technologies themselves.

Now, on to the latest developments…

Ten strategic technologies for enterprise social computing

Below are ten social computing technologies that I believe will be actively developing or maturing this year and either worth exploring or otherwise watching closely for 2010 and beyond. Note that many of these technologies are not based on standards or for which standards often don’t exist, which will be problematic for some organizations. Many of the technologies listed here are primarily embodied in new product categories and for now are represented primarily by commercial products. It likely won’t be long, however, before open source and open standards enter and play an instrumental role in many of these spaces.

1. Community management tools. One of the signature realizations of the Enterprise 2.0 community in the last year and a half has been theimportance of community management in driving the success of the endeavor. Now, you don’t necessarily need tools to successfully manage an online community, but it can genuinely helps in terms of acquiring good practices as well as automating and scaling the many routine tasks that already harried and frequently overworked community managers are faced with today. The latter is because many enterprises are still learning about social computing requirements and are frequently under-budgeting this essential role. Commercial software is the norm in this space and some of the top solutions include Rollstream, eModeration, Tempero, and Essentia.
2. Open identity. There are many issues swirling around enterprise identity and consumer Web identity at the moment. I’ve postulated in the past that OpenID will actually become a viable vehicle for enterprises to create a single sign-on across the Web for their workers, giving them centralized administration and control of worker identity on the Web and social media (as appropriate), especially in B2B scenarios. But is this actually starting to happen despite folks from large software companies like SAP making the business case? No, not yet, and enterprises are as much as fault as anyone for not demanding better identity integration. Instead, off-premises SaaS and cloud computing offerings are offering basic synchronization with LDAP and other corporate identity repositories. Also becoming more and more important is identity authenticity (which Twitter tried to address with Verified Accounts). Watch for a raft of social identity issues to accumulate and for new enterprise open identity solutions to attempt to address them as our identities on the Social Web increasingly compete and conflict with our enterprise identities.
3. Microblogging. While wikis have been one of the more common Enterprise 2.0 tools, more popular than blogs by quite a bit from my experience, microblogs are now seen as potentially achieving a higher level of overall traction than both their heavier-weight brethren. There’s a lot to like about microblogs in business settings, along with the valuable activity streams that they generate. Gartner went on record recently saying that they believe integrated microblogging will be in 50% of enterprises in two years, though they are much less sanguine about individual, standalone microblogs. I did a detailed round-up of the space a little while back and came away with the finding that microblogs do make enterprise social media both time efficient and focused while still preserving most or all of what makes Enterprise 2.0 special.
4. Social CRM. Applying social computing approaches to customer relationship management is getting quite a bit of attention these days. Services such as GetSatisfaction, Helpstream, Lithium, and many others are aimed at helping enterprises engage with their customers using social tools in new and innovative ways that can reduce support costs and improve customer satisfaction. Along the way Social CRM is also changing the very nature of the relationship that businesses have with their customers and the marketplace, from customer support or contact management processes like they exist today, to one that is more like a long-term partnership of contributing equals. Like so many Enterprise 2.0 subject areas, the big vendors haven’t really arrived in force in this domain and many firms are just opting to use tools like Twitter and Facebook for now to engage with customers while the technologies and products mature. But make no mistake, this space is approaching prime time after a couple of strong years of development and growth.
5. Enterprise platforms gaining a social layer. As we’re seeing withMicrosoft SharePoint and with Salesforce Chatter, enterprise software vendors are starting to incorporate social computing features within their products at the platform level. This has a number of advantages including providing a consistent, integrated social experience in and across existing apps, unifying security and identity, and so on. For many scenarios, close integration can be more useful than standaloneEnterprise 2.0 products which might not be as connected to actual business activities. However there are disadvantages too, in that there’s often little choice in such models in terms of picking and choosing best-of-breed social capabilities. But the stage is set and social features are increasingly perceived as standard fare in modern software. Expect most large software vendors to have Enterprise 2.0 features of some kind across their products lines in the next year or two at most, which will lead to a discussion of the advent of social operating systems. For now, open source is not a real player in this space, but will likely be in the future.
6. Activity streams. The output of most online social interactions is a reverse chronological list of activity, such as status updates, posted photos or videos, or shared links. The result is called an activity stream. It’s what you see when you look at a Twitter feeds, your Facebook news feed, or what your co-workers are doing on your enterprise social network home page. There are now standards developing around activity streams, and this will help the business tap into the value they offer. This includes capturing them, archiving them, and using them to further business objectives using a wide variety of practices including social analytics, community management, and compliance monitoring. Look for activity streams to become increasingly popular in enterprises as communication, learning, and situational awareness tools. I expect that standards support to make them interoperable will be of growing importance. Unfortunately, like so many Social Web developments, there are no specific standards for enterprise activity streams yet, though I do believe they will be created at some point in the near future.
7. Social search, analytics, and filtering. As Enterprise 2.0 makes a much larger volume of actionable information available within organizations, there will be the growing challenge of keeping track of it and finding what you need. While we don’t want to stop this flow of information, we do need to make it manageable and useful. Unfortunately, search, analysis, and filtering tools for social computing environments are still in their infancy and few strong technical solutions exist. But as enterprises realize that employees are going to potentially spend even more time to find the information they need to do their work, some will begin seeking out and applying solutions. For social search, companies such as Coveo and Baynote are starting to offer useful enterprise products. Enterprise social analytics is finally coming in its own and some of the leading offerings include Ingage Networks, Connotate’s Enterprise 2.0 BI and IBM’s new Smart Analytics Cloud.
8. Enterprise social media workflow. Those that use social media know that there’s a general workflow to the activities, from preparing content and publishing it, then promoting it, tracking the results, and participating in all the conversation that ensues. With multiple channels it can become burdensome to do all of this manually, and while consumer social media have had basic workflow automation tools for some time now, such as Ping.fm and tarpipe, only now are we seeing enterprise-class versions of these same tools. These are often getting added to existing content management workflow tools such as those from HP and the workflow and social networking capabilities of Microsoft SharePoint 2010.
9. Automated compliance monitoring. One of the less discussed but more important (and often unstated) objections to Enterprise 2.0, especially for public companies and regulated industries, is ensuring that their use is compliant with all local and foreign laws, rules, and regulations. When any worker can easily disseminate information across an entire organization, or even across the world, some organizations want to be aware of problematic situations before they occur. While social media policy for workers has evolved steadily to provide upfront guidance, many companies still want to ensure they can detect compliance violations as quickly as possible before they become an actual problem. Unfortunately, it’s all too common for FRCP, Sarbanes-Oxley, European Union Privacy Laws, HIPAA, eDiscovery, etc. to be somewhat neglected in E2.0 discussions, where most of the focus initially is on benefit and not potential risk. The good news is that even though most large firms using social media today don’t actively police their users (IBM is a good example of this), I do find that most firms that already have automated compliance tools like CompliantPro are usually covered. However, expect that compliance will become an increasingly important feature of Enterprise 2.0 platforms, and firms like Blogtronix actively advertise their E2.0 apps are compliance-friendly for individual industries, like finance.
10. Next-generation unified communication. Just when enterprise communication was about to get truly unified, social media showed up and fragmented it again. While instant messaging and even SMS is now usually integrated in many enterprises, microblogging, wikis, social networks, and other channels are mostly not, even from leading vendors that get social computing, like Cisco. IBM remains one of the few large vendors that has addressed this and currently supports some Enterprise 2.0 channels in its Lotus SameTime product. Relatively soon, I expect to see a new wave of enterprise unified communication products that include Enterprise 2.0 as a first class citizen. I believe that when this happens, these next-generation unified communications products may actually become a powerful driver of social computing adoption in the enterprise.

While there are certainly other interesting Enterprise 2.0 technologies, in my opinion these seem to be some of the most interesting and/or under-appreciated areas that are worth paying close attention for the near future. While I still find that so much actual Enterprise 2.0 adoption is surprisingly grassroots or otherwise local, the fact that many of these technologies above are just starting to emerge from infancy is also a major reason that social tools are taking longer to appear in the workplace than in the consumer world. Consequently, I do think most of these technologies will genuinely begin to address this disparity.

–Dion Hinchcliffe

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From instant price comparisons, to first hand consumer reviews, to video demonstrations, shoppers have a plethora of information about any product only a click away.  And indeed, consumers are taking advantage of this wealth of information.   For instance, every month, over 80 million consumers use shopping comparison sites; some sites, like Cnet, Bizrate, and Yahoo! Shopping each attract over 20 million shoppers.  In fact, only 6% of consumers surveyed as part of the Online Shopper Intelligence™ study indicated that they conducted no research prior to their last online purchase.  So, among the myriads of online resources available, which do shoppers use most often?

Overwhelmingly, consumers depend on one resource more than others to help them shop online—search engines.   3 out of 5 shoppers said that they always or often use search engines when shopping online.  More consumers use search engines than they do coupon sites, retailer emails, consumer reviews, or shopping comparison sites.

More interesting than what sources consumers use in general is the variability of use across industry.  For instance, sales assistants, both in store and on web chat, are utilized by online shoe shoppers more than any other shoppers.  Online kitchenware & household appliance purchasers are among the most reliant on in store product displays.   The differences in consumer behavior across various industries have vast implications for retailers within each sector.

Take the apparel industry for example.  Apparel shoppers are the least likely to use search engines.  Only 1 out of 10 apparel shoppers stated that they used a search engine for their last online purchase.  Instead, apparel shoppers rely on retailer emails and catalogs to learn about products.  That means consumers are more likely to purchase from apparel retailers they have purchased from in the past and are less likely to discover new retailers.   Retailers looking to acquire new customers have to work harder to find and woo consumers.

Electronic shoppers, on the other hand, actively seek out new products and manufactures.  Search engines, professional reviews, social generated reviews, and recommendations from family and friends were among the top 5 resources used.  Electronic manufactures can, therefore, reach and influence these consumers more easily and though a variety of mediums.

It is essential for retailers to understand how consumers in their space shop online in order to effectively retain and acquire customers.  Instead of trying to utilize all available outlets, retailers should understand their particular customer niche and develop strategies unique to them.  In an environment with tight consumer wallets and even tighter marketing budgets, retailers can’t afford to invest their money in resources their customers don’t use.

–Debra Miller

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Right now, somewhere, a potential customer is searching for your products. But, who will they find first – your company or your competitors? Search engine marketing is all about getting in front of prospects at the moment they are searching for your capabilities on Google.

But how do you take full advantage of search engine marketing and outshine your competition? The following tips will put you on the path to search engine marketing success.

Choose the Best Keyword Phrases
The most critical step in search engine marketing is selecting the most important keyword phrases for your company. If you do not perform this step properly, your search engine marketing campaign is destined for failure.

When choosing the best keywords, it is critical to choose phrases that are relevant to your business and searched most often by your customers. Begin by getting inside the heads of your customers and brainstorm about potential terms your customers use when thinking about your products. Ask your salespeople, customer service people and best customers what phrases they think are most important. Then, turn to keyword research tools like Wordtracker or Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool to create a list of highly searched terms that will drive targeted traffic to your Web site.

Make Your Web site Attractive to Google
Now that we know your most important keywords, let’s put them to work. You need to make sure your Web site content and coding is optimized to take advantage of these phrases. Begin with your Web site copy – the information people can read on your site. Make sure you skillfully write your copy to effectively market your company, while using your important keywords in a relevant fashion.

Next, focus on your Web site structure – the code under the hood of your Web site that search engines see when they visit. Use your keyword phrases in page title tags, heading tags, director names, file names, alt tags and meta tags. Please note: while the ‘keywords’ meta tag is no longer relevant, the ‘description’ meta tag is very important. This description will show up in the search results below your link, providing a great opportunity to entice the searcher to visit your Web site.

Attract Quality Links to Your Web site
Link building involves gaining links to your Web site from other relevant and popular Web sites. The more quality inbound links you have, the more popular your Web site is in the eyes of Google. And, these links can have a dramatic effect on your search ranking.

A good place to start is to make your Web site content link-worthy. Good content attracts links, so fill your Web site with enlightening content such as best practices articles or a blog about trends in your industry. Next, get your Web site listed in online directories. Look first to important directories within your industry. Then, focus on general purpose directories like Business.com. You can also garner links from vendors, business partners and trade associations. Finally, leverage online public relations and distribute press releases and articles online. By consistently applying these link building strategies, you will dramatically boost your link popularity and your ranking on Google.

Run a Results-focus Paid Search Campaign
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) in the sponsored links section of the search results offers a compelling ROI-driven marketing opportunity. Unlike traditional advertising, where you ‘pay for exposure’ regardless of the results, with PPC you are not paying to be listed in the search results. You only pay if someone clicks on your ad and visits your Web site, providing a compelling ‘pay for performance’ mode of advertising. To manage an ROI-driven PPC campaign, first, bid on the most relevant keywords. Don’t pick terms based on popularity. Make sure your offering will be of interest to the searcher. Second, tie your bidding strategy to results. Think cost-per-lead and cost-per-sale, instead of just cost-per-click. Finally, include a compelling ‘call to action’ in the ad and send traffic to a relevant landing page tied to the ad. A compelling and relevant offer will help lift response and boost your ROI.

Measure Your Search Engine Marketing Success
As with all marketing activities, you must measure success to judge your past performance, as well as identify strategies to improve your results in the future. Since search engine marketing is all about attracting targeted traffic, begin by leveraging Web analytics to monitor traffic increases from search, as well as the phrases peoples are using to visit your Web site.

To make sure the volume of visitors continues to increase, you should also monitor your ranking in the search results. On a regular basis, check your position in the search engines for your keyword phrases to see that you are trending toward a top 10 ranking. Finally, to measure success of your PPC advertising efforts, harness the measurable nature of the Web to track the cost-per-visit, cost-per-lead, and cost-per-sale for your PPC ads.

–Bob DeStefano

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Building a loyal, satisfied customer base is paramount to any Web site owner or company. Every business owner wants to know what his or her customers are thinking and why they make certain decisions. Most understand that the most effective way to listen to customers is to collect their feedback. But even so, challenges remain: How should they collect the feedback? Where does it all go? What should they do with all the information collected? And most importantly, how do you show your customers that you are acting on their feedback, and in real-time?

Customer satisfaction and loyalty start with listening. Listening and engaging directly with your customers is critical to service, support and brand loyalty. Chances are your customers want to engage with you, but on their own time. Companies can offer multiple forms of contact, live chat and public support forums, but often it can be difficult to respond directly to each customer in a personalized way. You can provide a deeper level of customer service by opening up the channels of communication online.

Eliciting feedback lets businesses tap directly into the minds of customers to improve their Web sites, products or offerings. There are feedback tools and Web analytics platforms that provide you with the “who, what, when and where,” but you are still left guessing about the “why.” Understanding the elusive “why” behind customer behavior is only the first step. The most important step is what you do once you learn why, and how you engage and respond with your customers in real-time.

Before you implement a customer feedback initiative, your first step should be to evaluate your own goals and understand what it is you want to do with your customers. How will you acquire and act on customer feedback? What feedback will you receive? What will you do with the feedback? Once you establish your feedback goals, you can determine how to integrate customer feedback into your daily processes.

Choosing the right tool to organize and manage your feedback is dependent on these goals. Customer feedback can help you increase satisfaction, loyalty, retention and conversion rates so Web site owners should not overlook or invest in improper feedback tools. What tools are available and for whom are they best suited? You may have shopped around, or even experimented with a feedback tool or survey.

With many companies’ longstanding reliance on traditional outreach tools, it’s tempting to gravitate towards those surveys and polls, or even refer to each of these unique approaches as “surveys.” Yet, each accomplishes a different end. Understanding these nuanced differences allows owners the flexibility to implement a tool that produces the feedback they need.

Surveys come in a variety of formats, including e-mail surveys, online pop-ups, survey landing pages and more. Surveys and polls provide a high-level understanding of what is happening on your site, and are based on pre-set questions with a statistical review of answers. You receive answers to the questions you create.

You can use surveys and polls to ask ‘site-level’ questions such as: ”Where did you hear about our site?” “What are you looking for?” “Who are you?” The answers to these questions can help you to know your users better, but they will not provide quantitative information on why your customers behave they way they do on your Web site. In addition, your survey and polling data is ultimately reviewed from a statistical analysis view, which may cause the solution to be relevant mainly to large Web sites with a lot of traffic or to a specific group of your customers. This means that not all types of businesses can benefit equally from these tools.

What is important to remember is that you are trying to elicit honest, timely and unique user feedback. Providing an online customer feedback mechanism is one way to open up a managed channel of communications. A feedback button should be visible all the time on each of the site elements you would like to monitor. This will provide you with process-level and Web-site-level high-quality (i.e., specific comments) and actionable data, allowing you to read and manage feedback, as well as respond to users. When visitors or customers come across an issue, they simply click on the feedback icon. Customers then rate their overall impression of your site from a selection of emoticons; select their issue category from a graphical menu; and provide a brief synopsis, giving you insight into their behavior in that instance.

Providing the online feedback channel in critical areas of your site also helps offer a less intrusive user experience and greatly increases the chances a user will give you his or her opinion. When you place a customized feedback form in a certain process in your Web site, such as a shopping cart or checkout area, you can gain critical information about why your users are leaving these areas. Once users provide feedback, you can personally respond and let them know your company cares about their experiences and is available to help. As the feedback form is customized to the specific Web site process, users will be more open to talk with you as you are directly responding to the thoughts they had when they left feedback on your Web site.

Using an online feedback mechanism lets you prioritize your collection efforts so you can choose to actively ask your users to submit feedback in the locations in which you need it the most, using a pop-up mechanism (you might want to use this option in your site’s shopping carts process, for instance, or on your product information process). The ability to choose the location as well as the frequency of this pop-up makes this a non-intrusive approach.

You can manage and analyze your user feedback based on your site preferences, Web analytics or CRM data, to provide a more complete view of your customers. In addition, you can control the look and feel of the feedback form to match your brand and further encourage users to engage with you at this feedback level. After you receive the feedback, you can choose to respond directly to your customers and talk with them about their feedback. This helps to put a human face to your business, as often your customers are skeptical about customer service. Using this approach not only lets you personally respond to a large number of users, but you also can improve your operations and back-office processes based on the trending feedback responses.

Regardless of what you use, the most important aspect of customer engagement is to first listen – really listen –and second, to respond and interact with customers in a timely manner. Too often, companies implement a survey or provide opportunities for customers to offer praise, criticism and feedback, and then the engagement ends. Nothing can hurt your company more than asking your customers for their opinion and then going silent. It’s what you do with the feedback that will show your customers how serious you are about real engagement.

–Ariel Finkelstein

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No one needs a new survey, study or pundit to tell them how important mobile devices have become to consumers. Just look down the street where everyone from teens to corner-office suits appears sidetracked by communication on the go—texting, talking, thumbs jumping across tiny keyboards in a hurried attempt to reply-all.

This is the audience of the future. And 2010 may just be the year for advertisers to tip the scale in reaching it. The technology powerhouses (i.e. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and Apple) are finally diving into mobile advertising in a huge way, recognizing the

approach of critical mass.

None of this is new. The market has been predicting that mobile will explode for years. Somehow, it hasn’t. Not yet, anyway. But that is all about to change—partly because of the dissolution of advertising in traditional media, but mostly because consumers are beginning to demand it.

The “smart” in smart phones is finally proving itself. And the businesses that have the most to gain from this newfound demand will be local, small business advertisers offering what consumers want to buy right now. In our experience, restaurant takeout, florists or home/consumer services such as carpet cleaning, self storage or auto repair are good examples of business categories that are particularly well suited for mobile campaigns.

An improving economy is bringing about a resurgence of small businesses—make that local businesses. Businesses with traditionally shallow advertising pockets, but all the more need for exposure.

High conversion rates, low cost and the ability to target highly local audiences will push mobile advertising into the spotlight this year. We have experimented with a number of mobile ad offerings and while we can’t give out all the secrets, we can say that we’ve had significant success with mobile search and increasing click-to-call ratios with mobile landing page optimization. Some best practices around succeeding with mobile include building campaign architectures and keywords specifically for the mobile user. This may include shorter keyword phrases, acronyms and even slang terms. Marketers should also consider the landing page for mobile campaigns – while iPhones and Droid phones are able to view full HTML pages, at least 85 percent of the market (according to a 2009 comScore study) still use other types of phones where mobile-friendly landing pages are a must for effective viewing.

A recent New York Times article made similar points, noting a prediction from Juniper Research that mobile ad spending worldwide will more than quadruple, to $6 billion, by 2014. Analyst Windsor Holden goes on to say that, while everyone has been hoping for the past five years that mobile advertising will take off, this will actually be the year it finally gets significant traction.

The first rule of business: give customers what they want when they want it. For example, a busy working mom who needs to send a bouquet can easily use her mobile device to find a florist. But her smart phone might go beyond mere directory search to display geo-targeted ads that only show results near her location, and then present a local florist’s phone number that she only has to tap or click to call.

Highly specific targeting, including leveraging aggregated consumer-related information, will also aid in the advent of mass mobile advertising. Much like paid-search ads, that local florist’s ad might appear on the working mom’s smart phone reminding her of a special occasion. Additionally, seeing the florist’s ad on a smart phone allows the working mom to easily store the business’ name and number for future reference, increasing the likelihood of repeat business.

Not only are the conversion rates generally high with mobile ads, the cost of entry is incredibly low compared to traditional local advertising. Mobile advertising campaigns are comparatively easy to set up as well. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that the time for taking full advantage of mobile ad inventory is now, while the costs are artificially low as a result of many advertisers still spending their budgets on PC ads. According to eMarketer, only 1 percent of total U.S. advertising spend is directed towards mobile. Of that 1 percent, the bulk is used for SMS advertising, which generally is harder to make work for local.

With the power of search at their fingertips, consumers have become increasingly dependent on information on the go. Advertisers can capitalize on this trend and offer their potential customers service with convenience via mobile advertising.

–Tom Leung

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Web analytics is an integral part of any business intelligence portfolio and cannot be avoided in any decision-making phase. But it is perhaps most discussed among online marketers, who require it in order to make the best sales and marketing decisions.

These are often the same users who face a decision between paying for Web analytics tools and using free ones.

Since the time long ago when the release of the free Google Analytics tool created immense noise, significant differences between paid and free tools have emerged.

The biggest advantage of paid Web analytics solutions is the extensive support offered in terms of training, consultancy, and expert advice in measuring every aspect of your Website. Also, free tools normally just show trends and a summary-based view of the data. With paid analytics, it is possible to have much more graphical information, including a summary of data by date presented in dashboards.

The choice of free or paid depends on the intensity of your business. A personal blog or a nonprofit Website might be easily integrated with free Web analytics tools, such as Google’s or those available from BBClone, FireStats, 4Q, Grape Web Statistics, JAWStats, MochiBot, Piwik,Snoop, Woopra, Yahoo! Web Analytics, to name a few.

Free tools like these may well be sufficient for small and medium-sized businesses. And even for a large enterprise, free tools can act as prototypes to showcase the power and importance of eventually opting for paid Web analytics.

A corporate or enterprise Website, in contrast, may require data that can only be furnished by a paid Web analytics solution, such as those available from Clickstream, Clicky, Coremetrics,Lyris (formerly ClickTracks), Mint, Omniture, Unica, or WebTrends, to name a few.

Paid-for Website analytics from suppliers like these will help firms answer queries like the following:

• Which keyword(s) or referral source is giving me the best sales activity?
• Which geography is giving the best clicks and sales?
• Is organic search working well for me? Or is it the inorganic search giving more leads? (Note: Organic search refers results that appear automatically for free; inorganic search results are linked directly to ads or sponsored links.)
• Which is my best online marketing campaign?
• Who are my visitors in terms of geography, age, browsers, etc.?
• What areas of my Website are visitors most interested in?

These reports aren’t the end of what can be done with Website analytics. All the Web intelligence and insights drawn from these tools fall into the area of business intelligence. To be specific, I would call it Website business intelligence.

Users can create spreadsheets and presentations to showcase Website business intelligence. But suppliers offer help here, too. IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), for example, has partnered with WebTrends to deliver Web analytics through IBM’s WebSphere Portal Software, a corporate BI management and reporting system.

Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) and SAS Institute Inc. are in the Web business intelligence area, too: Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems has added the Sun Web Analytics Solution to Oracle’s kitty. And SAS has its own Web analystics tool.

The growing popularity of Web analytics tools is a clear indication of how important it is for any businesses to extract Web intelligence to optimize the user experience on corporate sites. Only Web analytics can help optimize online marketing campaigns while contributing valuable detail to business intelligence.

–Meer Irfan Ali

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RESTON, VA, February 11, 2010 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. In January 2010, Americans conducted 15.2 billion core searches, with Google Sites accounting for 65.4 percent search market share. Microsoft Sites grabbed 11.3 percent market share, up 0.6 percentage points versus December.

January 2010 U.S. Core Search Rankings

Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in January with 65.4 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (17.0 percent), and Microsoft Sites (11.3 percent). Ask Network captured 3.8 percent of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 2.5 percent.

* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

Americans conducted 15.2 billion searches in January, up 3 percent from December. Google Sites accounted for 9.9 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.6 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.7 billion), Ask Network (574 million) and AOL LLC (375 million).

* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

January 2010 U.S. Expanded Search Rankings

In the January analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed, Google Sites led the search market with more than 14 billion search queries, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.7 billion queries and Microsoft Sites with 1.8 billion searches. Bing experienced large growth during the month with an 11-percent increase in query volume to reach more than 1.5 billion searches. Craigslist jumped one position to #6 with 636 million searches, while Facebook grew to 395 million searches, representing a 13-percent increase from the previous month.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

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