You’ll hear companies tout the number of Facebook fans, Twitter followers or email subscribers they have, but those numbers don’t mean much.  Sure, everything else being equal, you would rather have more fans than fewer.  What is really important, however, is how engaged those fans, followers, and subscribers are.

My wife has an address book that she has kept for as long as I can remember.  She has hundreds of names, but many of the people listed are ones whom we have lost touch with.  We don’t know what is going on in their lives and we wouldn’t be invited to a birthday party, wedding, or graduation party they hosted.  In fact, a large percentage of addresses and phone numbers probably aren’t valid anymore.  We certainly can’t count everyone listed in that book as a friend, even if their information is still current.

The same holds true with your online marketing lists.  People may have signed-up because of a contest, by mistake, or were once interested in your product.  The reality is a significant portion of many companies’ customer lists are disengaged.  It happens – people lose interest, move on.

So instead of focusing on how big your list is, focus on how many people you can really get engaged with your company, brand, service, or product.  That is the number that really matters.

Online marketers often focus so much energy on driving new visitors to their website that they often overlook the activities on their website that are most critical to converting and growing loyal visitors and customers.  Consider internal site search – According to a Google report on internal site search, 90 percent of companies report that search is the No. 1 means of navigation on their site and 82 percent of visitors use site search to find the information they need.  Given that 80 percent of visitors will reportedly abandon a site if search functionality is poor, enhanced internal site search functionality may be your highest return investment opportunity.

The ROI Can Be Compelling

As we noted in a previous entry, Website Redesigns Gone Good, we helped a client to implement enhanced search capability that resulted in a 35% decline in the volume of search abandonment.  For our client that represented over 100,000 consumers each year who were far more likely to make a purchase and who left the website experience more satisfied and more likely to return – also helping to drive a 20 percent increase in web site driven revenues.  eFollett.com, who provides access to over 1,400 online bookstores across the United States and Canada, installed a new site search engine and grew web sales by 23%.

So where to start?

STEP 1: Analyze how visitors to your site use your current site search

No surprise here – given our emphasis on analytics and understanding site behavior.  If configured properly, any reputable analytics solution should provide extremely valuable information.

• Pay particular attention to bounce rates, exit rates, and conversion rates by keyword.
• On the highest volume keywords, what results are presented, in which order, and to which pages did visitors navigate.
• A high volume of search activity on particular categories of keywords can reflect important deficiencies in the navigation of your site.
• Segment your audience and develop an understanding of how different types of users use site search.
• It’s important to remember that in most cases the majority of traffic to your site does not start on the home page.  This can change the context for why someone may do a search.
• This step is often necessary to build the business case for any investment in enhanced internal site search capabilities.

In addition to helping you to identify where your current search and site navigation is falling short, analyzing your search traffic can also help you develop a better understanding of your website visitors.

STEP 2: Research best practice internal site search features

Competitor websites or the websites for market leaders in related industries can often be very helpful in this regard.  Some of the most common enhanced features include:

• Search filtering (e.g. price, product/content type, brand, color, etc) – Over 88% of the top 500 online retailers offer search filtering – those that don’t are primarily due to narrow product offering.
• Search Relevancy/Prioritization – Advanced search tools provide powerful methods for altering the order in which search results are returned.  For example, you may want to give higher priority to high conversion or high margin products.
• Redirects – When you have created a page that has been optimized to address a particular topic or product category, you can have a visitor automatically redirected to that page when they search on a related keyword.
• Keyword Specific Promotions – Much like redirects, specific promotions can be displayed for specific keyword searches.  If, for example, someone did a search on “green golf bag”, the search results page might contain a promotion related to golf items.
• Spelling Correction and Synonyms – Nothing will deter a visitor more than getting a “No items found” search result (and this feature is particularly helpful for a poor speller like me).  A search at Officemax.com on “Digital Overhead Projecter” returns “Presentation Equipment & Supplies” and “Projectors & Accessories” as category options.
• Sorting Options (e.g. price, product rating) – Just providing useful sorting options on search results can increase search effectiveness considerably.

STEP 3:  Identify Opportunities for Specialized Searches

Look for opportunities to develop specialized search capabilities for important product lines or content types.  This necessitates really understanding how visitors search for specific types of products or content.  For example, one of our clients who offers artificial Christmas trees, dramatically increased conversion by providing a more structured search that allows visitors to easily select attributes like the size, color, and lighting of the different trees offered.  OfficeMax offers an entirely different method for searching for printer ink that allows the visitor to select the brand and model of your printer.  You can also significantly reduce customer support costs by providing customer support content via search.

STEP 4: Evaluate SaaS (“Software as a Service”) Internal Site Search Offerings

The SaaS model allows websites to provide powerful search capabilities to your visitors without visitors ever knowing that a 3rd party is providing the functionality.  The SaaS model can provide several benefits, including:

• Reliable and scalable infrastructure
• Lower cost of ownership
• Easier upgrades
• Faster time to market
• Experienced support staff
• Derive benefits of collective development on an ongoing basis

There are dozens vendors in this space, but the following are some of the leaders in the space:
•    Endeca
•    Omniture SiteSearch (Mercado)
•    SLI
•    Celebros
•    EasyAsk

Not surprisingly, each of these vendors (and the others not listed here) has strengths and weaknesses and should be evaluated in the context of the information you gather in Steps 1 through 3.

Follow the steps outlined above and you may see returns beyond your expectations.  Good luck and please contact us if you have any questions.  Also, we would be interested in any examples of high profile websites that you think have especially strong or weak internal search capabilities (let us know in a comment below)?

Image: Danilo Rizzuti

Math was one of my favorite subjects in school and my undergraduate degree was in Finance with a minor in Accounting, so needless to say, I like numbers and data. That is one of the reasons why I enjoy immersing myself in tools like Omniture SiteCatalyst and Google Analytics, which are great at capturing the ‘what’ – what happened on your website, what content was clicked-on in your email campaign, etc. As a marketer, however, the ‘why’ interests me a whole lot more than the ‘what’.

Most web analytics, email, search and social marketing reporting tools provide vast amounts of data, but those applications are really more of a means to an end. Knowing that my traffic increased, my email click-thru rate improved, or a Facebook fan page generated significant engagement is useful, but what is immensely more valuable to me is understanding why those things happened. Obviously, if you know the cause of your success, you are much more likely to be able to repeat it. The better you can understand your target audience, the better you can market to them.

Most reporting tools can’t tell you the ‘why’. Humans are still best at that task – turning lots of data into meaningful and actionable insights. The problem is that many companies either don’t have staff with the right type of experience to do it or the staff doesn’t have enough time.  Often, organizations don’t know the right questions to ask.  As a result, decisions aren’t fully informed and opportunity is lost.

If you haven’t yet, make 2010 the year that you dedicate the necessary resources to being able to answer the ‘why’.

Image: Francesco Marino

As we approach the end of the year and the close the of decade, a number of people and organizations are rolling-out retrospectives on 2009 and the last ten years. If you didn’t do it as part of your budget process (you definitely should have), now is a great time to conduct your own online marketing program ‘year in review’ by looking at what worked and what didn’t.  Remember, you ‘pull yourself out of trees’ so you can see the forest.  In other words, don’t just look at numbers but really give some thought about why some activities worked and why some didn’t.

In looking forward to 2010, consider questions such as the following:

• Have your business objectives changed?
• Have your customers changed – what they want, how they shop, who influences them, what they prioritize, etc.?
• What critical factors are influencing your business?  For example, the economy, social media, mobile, changing values, etc.

In answering those questions, make sure you talk to other departments – sales, customer service, product development, etc, looking at what your competitors are doing and looking at innovators outside of your industry.  Also, don’t forget to challenge current assumptions and policies.  It never fails to amaze me when I ask why something is done, how many people answer, ‘I don’t know.  We have always done it that way’.

Ultimately, every initiative you undertake and ever dollar you spend should be justifiable and correlate directly to a business and marketing objective.  You should be able to explain why you are focusing on one tactic versus another (i.e. alignment with business goals and expected return compared to alternatives).   If you can do that, your chances of having a successful 2010 are greatly improved.  If you can’t, don’t worry –  it’s not too late.

Image: Johanna Hobbs

In the digital world change is constant and there seems to be an unending supply of new buzzwords and the latest and greatest strategies and tactics.  For most executives whose primary role is not to scour through digital media trade publications, research, blogs, rss feeds and e-mail newsletters, the flow of new information can be overwhelming.  Often, executives respond to this by either ignoring it or dismissing much of it as fads and clutter distracting them from the primary functions of their business.  Frequently, this is reinforced by the fact that, when it comes to digital trends, they believe that more often than not their “I told you so” assessments have occurred far more often than their “we missed that boat” concessions.

But here is the problem: if an executive is wrong and she missed that enormous opportunity for her business, the “we missed that boat” realization rarely ever occurs.  The reality is that most missed opportunities go unnoticed while the “I told you so’s” almost never do.   This becomes even more valid in a tough economic climate when every dollar of spending is being scrutinized.

Even the most senior executives should make it their challenge to better understand the digital world.  The digital realm is outside the area of expertise for most senior executives in most businesses and they should not be afraid to say, “Explain it to me as if I were a child.”  Likewise, executives should not go into these discussions thinking “I doubt it, prove it to me.”  They need to be thinking “there may be an opportunity, how can I motivate my team to stretch and think creatively to exploit new opportunities.”  We’ve witnessed great ideas coming from the most unlikely sources when leadership kept its mind open to creative thinking.

When executives make time to be educated about digital (and truly listen) and take the time to convey the needs and goals of the business, opportunities can be uncovered through collaboration and creative thinking and great results can be achieved.

Likewise, it’s critical that executives have individuals who they can trust who will educate them and are familiar with digital strategies, tactics, trends, available research, industry benchmarks, competitive analysis, and methods for testing and surveying customer and prospects.  Just as important, however, executives need to feel as though their digital strategists will listen and understand the keys to their business, their goals, their strategies, and their customers and prospects.  If you are an executive or owner who is ultimately responsible for your digital strategy and you do not have this trusted resource, make this a priority or you may be missing significant opportunities to grow the profitability of your business.

Ultimately, you should choose which digital initiatives to pursue based on the merit of the business cases used to support them and evaluate them on the measurable results they produce.  But if you do not commit the time and energy to better understanding digital, then the true cost may be the significant opportunities you don’t even know you have missed.

Too often there is a discussion about which is the ‘best’ online marketing tactic or channel (e.g. Facebook vs. Twitter or social vs. email) as if we can only choose one.  As marketers, we need to focus on having conversations with our consumers how they want and where they want.  For some, that is still email and for others it might be Twitter, Facebook, or something entirely different.  The more places we can be providing relevant content and useful information, the more successful we will be.

We recently conducted a number of online surveys for one of our clients in order to get a better sense of the audience overlap among their Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and email newsletter subscribers. What we found was interesting:

• 40% of Twitter followers didn’t subscribe to the email newsletter and 60% weren’t Facebook fans
• 50% of Facebook fans didn’t subscribe to the email newsletter and only 5% were Twitter followers

While there is some overlap, our client is getting a much greater reach by embracing all three channels than if they were only using any single one.

So instead of focusing on the ‘or’ (e.g. is Twitter or Facebook better), think about the ‘and’ – how we can best use all of channels and tactics like Facebook AND Twitter AND email AND video AND ….

I can’t count the number of Website redesigns that I have been involved with over the years, but I find them to be a little like renovations to a house: the process can be painful but when you are done, the results can be spectacular.

We just passed the one year anniversary of the launch of new website for one of our clients, Wilton.  Wilton is a leader in cake and dessert decorating, cookie making and celebrations, and throughout its 80-year-history, one of Wilton’s primary goals has been to educate and inspire dessert decorators of all skill levels.  The company’s Web site, Wilton.com, has played an important role by offering a vast collection of decorating ideas, recipes and techniques.

This website redesign had a number of challenges (thousands of pages of content that needed to be reorganized, integrating new functionality, etc.) but the redesign was critical to the success of the online marketing plan we developed for Wilton.

Quite honestly, the results surpassed our expectations – we have seen significant improvements in almost every key metric that we track, including the following:

• 190 percent increase in the volume of projects and recipes viewed by Wilton consumers
• 35 percent increase in total number of Web site visits
• 50 percent growth in returning visitors
• 20 percent improvement in product views
• 32 percent increase in the number of new visitors
• 82 percent growth in the number of searches for local Wilton Method classes
• 35 percent decrease in search results page abandonment
• 20 percent increase in estimated Web site driven revenue

One of the reasons why I think we achieved the results we did is that everything was tied to an online marketing goal or objective and those were connected to the overall business strategy.  In other words, we justified everything we did by showing how it was going to positively impact the bottom line.  I can’t say that all web redesigns will provide the results that Wilton’s did, but it does serve as yet one more example of how well a new website can pay-off.

Twitter is growing like gangbusters (45 million visitors in June according to comScore), but there are a number of people who believe Twitter is a fad and are relatively dismissive of it.  I don’t have a crystal ball, and I have no way of knowing whether Twitter will become the next Second Life.  However, I do know that given the number of people currently using Twitter and the results I see from our clients and other companies, every marketer needs to seriously consider what role technologies like Twitter play in the mix. 

The reality is that there are probably people tweeting (a twitter post) about your company, your products, and your categories and you need to, at a minimum, be listening to those conversations.  Beyond monitoring, it may not make sense for your company to be engaged in Twitter but more thought needs to be given to that decision than just dismissing it because someone just doesn’t get Twitter.

Photo: StarrGazr

One of the greatest advantages of online marketing is the marketers’ ability to quickly adjust and respond to the data they can obtain directly from their interactions with their market.  However, each organization is at a different stage in terms of their online measurement sophistication and each faces barriers to becoming more effective at optimizing their web marketing.

Avinash Kaushik recently posted a good blog entry on Barriers To An Effective Web Measurement Strategy.  In the blog, he recommends some first steps in overcoming the following 11 barriers to an effective online measurement strategy that were cited in Econsultancy’s Online Measurement and Strategy Report.

1.  Lack of budget/resources (45%)
2.  Lack of strategy (31%)
3.  Siloed organization (29%)
4.  Lack of understanding (25%)
5.  Too much data (18%)
6.  Lack of senior management buy-in (18%)
7.  Difficulty reconciling data (17%)
8.  IT blockages (17%)
9.  Lack of trust in analytics (16%)
10. Finding staff (12%)
11. Poor technology (9%)

While I did find Avinash’s insights on each of the barriers valuable, I think the list of barriers is flawed in that it confuses the symptoms with the actual barriers.  Could you imagine, for example, if a baseball manager explained that the reason his team was losing was because he was getting “too much data” from his statistician (point 5 from the barrier list).  If he did, he would not be manager for long.  It’s the manager’s job to determine which stats are important and will make a difference in his game strategy.  While I’m sure there are many executives and analysts who feel that they do have to sift through too much data, the true barrier is the lack of a good strategy that focuses the organization on a few core metrics that get to the heart of what you are trying to accomplish.

Given our experience in helping many organizations with their data driven optimization, I think the 11 point barrier list could be refined down to the following 4 core barriers.

1.  Strategy
It all starts with a good strategy.  It’s necessary for obtaining management buy-in and for ultimately attaining the ROI on any investments made in optimization initiatives.  It is critical that the strategy identify a small set of critical metrics that are meaningful to management and drive any ROI business case.

It’s also important to recognize that the web optimization strategy needs to evolve as the web optimization capabilities of the organization evolve.  The strategy is about pinpointing the most important constraints that you need to overcome and focusing your time and resources on making that happen.  Often this may require small steps first to gain credibility and management buy-in.

2.  Management Buy-in
Not surprisingly, once you obtain management buy-in, many of the symptoms begin to disappear.  Certainly lack of budget/resources and IT blockages begin to dissipate if you have the support of senior management.  While it is likely the most important barrier to overcome, this can often be the most difficult.  It’s also important to recognize that until management is willing to make some level of investment in analytics and optimization, then they have not really bought-in.

This often creates a chicken or the egg situation where the online marketer asks, “How do I credibly demonstrate ROI on the investment prior to making the investment”?   Early on this is where the hard work and innovative thinking must occur to implement examples of how data-driven initiatives can provide the ROI necessary to develop a strong business case.  The good news is that with the use of inexpensive, often free, tools in combination with some good analysis, it is not too difficult to gain credibility by demonstrating substantive ROI.  This is often the key objective of organizations that are relatively early in their web optimization evolution.

3.  Infrastructure for Testing, Analysis, and Change
The infrastructure I am addressing here includes the website or ecommerce management technology as well as the implementation of the analytics tools.  We have come across many situations where online marketers have properly identified what are potentially significant improvements that will really move the needle on their core metrics, but the amount of work involved to test or implement the changes were believed to be too significant to justify the investment.

This can be a daunting challenge in that the investment in the current infrastructure and the staff to support it may have been significant and modifications may be difficult and expensive.  In many cases this requires working actively with someone who is technically proficient enough to implement some relatively small tests across several areas that when viewed together make a strong case for an investment in a new infrastructure or new component to that infrastructure.  In other cases, this is more of an uphill battle and the key becomes just recognizing the constraints and focusing on those areas where improvements can be made.

4.  Skills and Time for Testing, Analysis, and Change
In my opinion this is the most overlooked and most underestimated barrier that must be overcome.   Many organizations that have implemented analytics either largely ignore the analytics reports, don’t have time to analyze them, or generate reports that provide little in terms of insights that stimulate changes that improve the critical metrics and provide a high ROI.  In order for an organization to effectively implement data-driven optimization, they must have time from the personnel who know what data they should be focused on, what tests should be implemented, and what actions should be taken as a result of the analysis.  This, by the way, does not mean that an analyst should be doing all of the analysis.  In fact, quite the opposite, they need to know how to get the appropriate people throughout the organization involved in the analysis (the “Why” behind the “What” happened).   As the benefits of this time become apparent, it becomes easier to build this testing and analysis into normal work processes.

Most organizations also tend to under invest in the time required from the personnel who are necessary to effectively carry out tests.  For example, designing multiple versions of a page for A/B or multivariate testing can pay significant dividends.  Organizations need to plan accordingly for copywriting and design resources in order to make these tests successful.

By focusing in on and addressing these four key areas, the other issues on the Econsultancy list will likely be addressed in the process.  What do you think of the 11 barriers identified in the Econsultancy study?

As a society, we are very focused on first impressions:  clothes, good looks, jewelry, etc.  It’s not much different in the business world.  First impressions in business are obviously important because without a good one, you may not have a chance to make a second impression and those good impressions are needed to make a sale.  However, the value of that first impression only lasts so long and is eventually replaced by the combined value of all impressions. In fact, the benefit from the good first impression usually lessens over time and customers start determining your value based as much, if not more, on your latest impressions.  That’s why companies must focus as much attention on ensuring a positive latest impression as they do on creating a great first one. All of your company touch points – customer service, account managers, internal sales, receptionists, invoices, newsletters, participation in social networks, etc. reflect your company and the value you provide and any one of them can be an asset or a liability. I have worked with software companies that had great products and were wonderful courters during the sales process only to be ultimately undone by very poor customer support and follow-up services.  For example, how often have you met a senior executive during the sales process telling you how important your business is but once the sale is closed, you never hear from that person again? The following are ways to help ensure your latest impression is as good as it should be:

• Have a clear understanding of what your brand promise is with respect to the customer experience.  Even if you aren’t trying to be Nordstroms, there is some minimum expectation from your customer in terms of follow-up, support, etc.
• Ensure that you aren’t so focused on getting the sale that you sacrifice the post-sale experience.  For example, in b-to-b situations, salespeople are sometimes incented only to close the sale and there isn’t focus on creating long-term customers.  This can create situations in which the salespeople make promises that the implementation and support teams can’t keep.
• Review all of your touch points and decide if any are a liability.  Don’t forget to review each and every touch point and that includes the person who answers your phone and welcomes your clients, invoices, security guards, website, etc.  This is more difficult than it might appear because touch points usually span several functional areas.
• Implement metrics that help you measure your success at providing a great latest impression and review them on a consistent basis.
• Continually remind all key parties of the importance of that latest impression.

What other ways can we help ensure that we are providing a great latest impression?