Web Development

The New York Times yesterday reported how contextual search advertising is beating out more expensive display advertising on the web, a reality that’s yet more bad news for traditional media sources that are aggressively selling display inventory to try and replace lost revenue from flagging subscription sales.

While cautioning about losses and mixed-results among major web portals such as AOL, Yahoo, and the NYT themselves, the good news is that overall the market looks promising as agencies move budget from traditional media to online media in general. Even more promising is the outlook for Google, who continues to see revenue from search ads skyrocket.

Why do pay per click ads beat out display ads?

It’s all about relevance. Typically, display ads on sites are only generally related to the content on the page, and often can be really off base (in the case of many newspapers which sell inventory based on demographic rather than content of the area of the site). This practice may be profitable for the site in question, but misses a fundamental truth of the internet — people tend to already know what they’re looking for when they go to the web.

True, there are plenty of straight-up web surfers out there, but even they tend to surf based on topics or themes, on sites they are already familiar with, and only check out ads when they seem laser-targeted with their interests in mind.

There’s big money in getting to know what’s in that searchers mind (as the Facebook deal is testament to). But until display advertising gets there, expect to see more lackluster statistics and growing skepticism.

Long live organic search, eh?

Internet Retailer.com recently revealed a list of the Top 10 online retailers with the highest conversion rates in March. The research was conducted amongst online retailers with at least 500,000 unique visitors. Office Depot, QVC, VistaPrint, Roamans & Lands End made the Top 5 with conversion rates over 15%.

Disclaimer: The user conversion on one of these sites is so compelling, it prompted me to purchase an item, as I was typing up this post. Read on to find out which retailer’s user conversion struck my fancy.

The full list includes:

Office Depot - 20.9% QVC - 19% VistaPrint - 18.3% Roamans - 18.1% Lands’ End - 16.2% eBay - 15.7% 1-800-Flowers.com - 15.5% eBags.com - 15.3% L.L. Bean - 14.6% Pottery Barn Kids - 14.2%

A quick visit to these sites reveals several common user conversion strategies:

Time sensitive Specials: (Examples: 10% Until 5/28 on Office Depot, 4 Hours Only Sale on QVC.Com)

Offering time sensitive specials to your visitors encourage them to buy..and buy quickly. If they feel they are getting a good deal for buying now, that may be all the incentive they need to click “Purchase”.

Give something away for free: (Example: Free Business Cards @ Vista Print.com)

Believe it or not, you CAN get 250 free business cards with Vista Print. While many shady online retailers use the “Free” catch phrase in a bait and switch move, Vista Print actually delivers on their promise, which builds trust in the company. Consumers who receive the free business cards are more likely to return to buy future office goods, because they already know what they are getting with VistaPrint.

Clear Navigation: (Example: 1800flowers.com and PotteryBarnkids.com)

1800flowers delivers a user-friendly text based navigation. Whether you are shopping by occasion or specific flower, it is all ready navigable from the home page, no need to navigate through dozens of categories. Pottery Barn Kids also does this well, their homepage is segmented by the types of rooms to be decorated: girl rooms, boy rooms, baby rooms and play rooms.

Engage the audience (Example: LLBean.com)

LL Bean features a compelling video of family and friends enjoying the outdoors in LL Bean gear. The video is soo cute, I just purchased the french sailor’s quarter zip pullover for my son, yes I really did!

User conversion theory is not an exact science, it is more of a consumer experiment. As a website owner, it is essential to continually try new methods of conversion, measure your return on those strategies and tweak as needed.

I’ve been a long time fan of Twitter, mostly to keep up on breaking news and find out what my friends are doing, however, this morning I read a great article which made me realize how powerful of a tool Twitter actually is. James Buck, a UC Berkely student, was arrested in Egypt. Instead of a phone call, Buck used his phone to post a message to his Twitter account: Short and simple, it read, “Arrested.” Within 24 hours, Buck’s Twitter followers had managed to involve UC Berkely, the US Embassy and get him freed. Another young life spared, thanks to modern conveniences of Social Media.

Twitter, ironically enough,isn’t just for busting yourself out of the clink. It can also help you save the life of your business. Twitter is a microblogging platform which allows users to post 140 character ‘tweets’ to hundreds of their closest friends…or whoever chooses to follow them. More and more companies are using Twitter to monitor their online reputation. Using Twitter tools like TweetScan you can set up alerts to email or text you if and when your business name is mentioned on Twitter.

American Airlines suffered a PR nightmare last week when it cancelled over 3000 flights. You can just imagine the amount of negative twitters which were tweeted during the whole debacle. The negative press and online complaints forced American to shift into reputation management mode. They quickly reacted by starting a blog, addressing customer concerns and issues.

By monitoring what people are saying about your business online, you can be pro-active in your reputation management, fending off naysayers as the arise.

Alright, so many many people are out their saying it. But we won’t. Nuh-uh. Not the “R” word.

But, say, hypothetically speaking of course, that such an unnameable thing WAS happening to the economy. How would this affect your web strategy?

If you’re smart, you’d say not at all. Even better, you’d say, I’d put more money towards my web campaigns.

Why’s that? Because dollar-for-dollar, web marketing is far more cost effective than traditional advertising. You can look at analytics, site data, SERPs and your bottom line and see tangible benefit for top organic search rankings, good social media exposure and effective paid search campaigns.

SEO is also a low cost-of-entry service. We’re just one of thousands of SEO and marketing blogs out there providing tips on how to make your site work for you. We certainly don’t advocate going at it alone (reading a book on mechanics doesn’t mean you’re ready to rebuild an engine) but your good understanding with our seasoned experience combines for brutally effective marketing strategies for your business, even during tough times.

It also provides the ability to adapt quickly, identify opportunity, and go with what works while shucking what doesn’t. A television or radio campaign may cost thousands to set up, and changing the message mid-stream is nearly impossible. Changing your Google AdWords keywords, ad, landing page, target market and spend takes seconds. Far-reaching sweeps in organic rankings take more time, but keeping any eye on Analytics allows for a hawk-eye view of the future.

Let’s face it. Even if spending money is short, the internet’s not going anywhere. Of all the places to invest in your business, making sure you’ve got a solid future on the internet — from its organic face to its reputation via links and social networks — is the most effective way to stay stable even if the ground should wash out.