The final day of the Search Engine Strategies Conference begins with a morning keynote by Dan Heath, author of “Made to Stick”. I’m then off to my first session of the day, which is going to be Site Clinic, an interactive session examining volunteers’ websites live to provide help to gain more traffic from search engines.
The second session of the day will be Creating a Cohesive Search Strategy Across Multiple Business Units. David Roth, Director of Search Marketing for Yahoo! will explain how Yahoo defines, measures and manages online marketing success across a variety of business models. Eduardo Llach, Chief Marketing Officer and Co-founder of SearchRev will present search strategies and campaign optimization techniques that brands use to meet their online marketing objectives.
Session number three is Post-Click Marketing: Converting Search Engine Traffic. This session will cover: keyword research, organization and structure of a site to facilitate click-paths, creating content that pleases each segment of a visitor, testing content to determine what works and what doesn’t, and making sure you’re showing each segment of users the content that is most likely to entice them to convert.
The final session of the conference I will be attending is Search Advertising Tools. This will focus on both free and paid offerings for search advertising tools. A panel of experts including the co-founder of Clickable and and the VP/Director of Search of SMG Search will be there to to teach us about the latest tools.
Finally, I will be heading home on the red-eye back to Charlotte. Keep an eye out for my live blogs from SES as well as some thoughts from when I return. I look forward to hearing your feedback..
Here’s what I am planning on day 3 of the Search Engine Strategies Conference:
First, the Keynote Roundtable: Why Does Search Get the Credit for Everything? This session focuses on gaining a better understanding of how, when and where to attribute revenue gains.
The second session of the day for me will be either SEO Through Blogs and Feeds, which falls under the Organic Track and focuses on advantages blogs offer to SEO efforts or I will attend Social Media Marketing: What is it and What is it Good For? falling under the Social Media Track. This is the first year SES is offering the Social Media Track, which looks like it will be offering some strong sessions.
The next session I’m looking to attend also falls under the Social Media Track : Successful Tactics for Social Media Optimization (SMO). Here, I will learn how to tap into social media services.
Next, I will be attending yet another session in the Social Media Track. This one is entitled Social Media Analysis and Tracking and focuses on how social search can be used to drive traffic, conversions and increases ROI.
The last session of the day will be another Social Media Track offering, Facebook, Feeds and Micro-Blogging. This session is all about how social software and feeds are shaping the world we live in and changing the online user experience.
The day ends with yet another party! The Search Bash is hosted by WebmasterRadio.FM. I’ll try to post pics from this party as well as all of the others…stay tuned for Day 4..
It has just come to my attention that the Internet Marketer’s Charity Event will be held Aug 18th in San Jose, in conjunction with the Search Engine Strategies Conference. I’m definitely excited to be attending what’s sure to be a awesome party while contributing to some great causes. This year, the IM Charity Party is benefiting The Children’s Hospital of Aurora, CO and The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
400 people are expected to party in San Jose at this event, so it should be a great opportunity to mingle with other online marketers. You can check out the Internet Marketer’s Charity Party Facebook page for more information and to see who else is attending.
Online Communities - A Strategic Marketing Channel: Learn how leading companies like Nike, CNN and Intel are building online communities and strategically leveraging the latest web 2.0 technologies to proactively engage their customers, drive product innovation and build loyalty across their customer base and partner networks.
Barry Tallis, Solutions Consulting Director, Jive Software
A topic that is very popular with The OMS crowd. Standing room only. Barry tells us that this will not be about the technologies, but he will focus on strategy and tactics. The big question is how to get started? Step 1: Start listening to what people are saying about you, on twitter for example. Once you figure out what these conversations are, then you can come up with a strategy.
The marketing aspect of online communities.
Most marketing money is being spent on awareness. The optimal target is telling somebody something once and then they tell all their friends. We tend to believe friends when it comes to advise. Blogs, micro blogs, rss all flow into the first part of the marketing funnel (awareness). An online marketing community actually can flow to all categories in the marketing funnel.
The business case for Online community
- Gain Insights - Mine community content & identify experts
- Boost Loyalty - Members remain clients 50% longer and revisit your site 9x as often
- Drive Sales - Members purchase twice as often and 5x more than the average client
- Gain Control - Communities will form around your solution whether you choose to host them or not. Using this approach can allow user-generated content that will define the longer tail keywords. Communities also drive keywords. What are people really talking about and/or interested in? and how can I use that information in my SEO strategy?
Types of Communities
- Loyalty
- Enthusiasts
- Innovations
- Partner
- Developer
- Event
- Education
- Support
Case Studies
- Customer Engagement - Nike
- Provides a platform for users with similar interests to connect with each other
- They offer links letting users submit the content to Digg, Delicious, Facebook, etc…
- They can download their running stats to a website and setup challenges to others
- Original intent of the site was for support
- Users took control by issuing challenges
- Nike adjusted their strategy to allow this type of discussion
- Through this, they found out the arm band slips when it gets wet and product improvement ensued
- Now ownership of the site is solely user centric
- Results
- 40% of not product owners when joining the community eventually purchased the product.
- 500,000 members
Q & A
- How do you address your reputation when it comes to Social Media?
- Embrace and learn from it. There might be an uncomfortable situation at first, but properly addressing these issues will benefit you in the long run
- Thoughts on strategies for lesser known brands
- Embrace current online communities
- If no one wants to join your community what do you do?
- Best practices conversation starters
- Hire out initial content (footnoted)
- Make sure you reinforce the value on why they are there.
Complete Website Strategy: Why the User Experience has the highest impact on your brand as well as marketing ROI AND what you can do to improve it (special International Usability tips included).
Thanh Ngyuen, Senior Website Usability Consultant, BusinessOnLine
Usability is about ease of use - stop using the back button
- Having the right information
- Displaying the right information in a way that makes sense to the user
- Helping the user to find what they are looking for without annoying them too much
Why Usability?
- Reason 1 - Your Competitors
- Ease of use based on your competitors (See Charles Schwab)
- The next link on the search results - they need to find what they are looking for
- Reason 2 - The site was built with business objectives first
- Users are being left out during planning phases
- Reason 3 - Need for increased conversion
- Case study on Hard Conversions is presented
- Other reasons
- Saves time and money & increases sales
- Think usability sooner than later
Having the right information
- User Persona
- Qualitative vs. Quantitative
- Goals & Attitudes related to Behaviors
- Have more than 1 persona due to personal attitudes
- Navigation/Information Architecture
- Labels
- Organization
- We all have a mental model of where things should be
- Websites should provide information based on what they are expecting
- Universal set of behaviors is the root (ie. reading left to right in the U.S.)
- Subset is audience-specific behaviors (persona’s apply here)
- Universal cognitive behaviors
- Images rule
- We look large to small
- Irregular to regular
- Information is seen dark to light
- Scan saturated to less saturated
- Audience specific behavior study - Satisfy the persona
* International Audience
o Option to switch language
o Include a flog icon
o literal translation is not enough
* Annoy the user only when they are in a good mood
* Pull messaging
o When interaction makes sense after a user has accomplished the goal
What are some things that I can do to help my site?
- Mistake 1 - Not giving clear indicators
- Mistake 2 - Asking for something without giving something in return
- Mistake 3 - Not including a Search Box (50% split between search vs. browser users)
- Mistake 4 - Examples of a design which facilitates scanning
- Create content that facilitates this behavior (the most important information above the fold)
- Chunk information into groups for understanding
- Mistake 5 - Putting elements in the wrong place on the website
- Back button upper left corner
- Banner ad top and right
- Internal page links in top lefthand corner
- Shopping cart, support,search help all in upper righthand corner
Conclusion
- Usability is ease of use
- Why Usability
- Competitive advantage
- Site created only with business objectives
- ROI
- Foundation: Follow learned conventions and best practices
- Refine: Personas
- Creating a usable website is an art and a science
- Users first; monetize second
- Google uses this approach
Open Q & A
http://www.businessol.com/usability-blog