Press Record - Breaking Audience Barriers with Video

Posted by keirsun on December 30, 2005 at 10:21 AM

Why don't more online companies utilize television advertising? It can be a great method for generating buzz and placing product in front of a targeted market. Oh yeah, cost. Video production bills ad up quick, whether you hire a private production company or your local TV station. And if your ad needs to be formatted in High Definition Video, you better make sure your credit card has extra headroom. Even with television networks floundering for ad revenue, the best bargains can still be pricey. A 30 second spot, plus airtime during the local 6:00 PM News, could wipe out a small, online company's annual ad budget.

So, forget television. But wait. It's almost the New Year. Let's look forward for a moment, with my new friend Bambi Francisco of MarketWatch. In her 2006 Prediction List, Bambi forecasts the rise of free agents in regards to online video production: "Amateur or user-generated video will emerge as entertaining content to be used in commercials." Bambi also predicts that amateurs "will be signed up to do commercials for a major consumer brand".

And why not? Digital camcorder prices have fallen to the $300 mark. Companies like VideoEgg are making it easier than ever to publish video content online. Google Video is already in the process of creating online television stars. And with the AOL-Google merger (think of all those juicy video resources owned by AOL's parent company, Time Warner), there's no script for where video production is headed.

Barriers are being broken, people. The glass that separated your business from a viewing audience is cracked and leaking advertising everywhere. Why shouldn't companies have their own video production department, no matter how small? You pooled enough creative forces to put together a worthwile website, why not do the same for video advertising? It's an ages-old rule: the more visible the product, the more likely it is to sell. Across the internet, content-delivery portals are being generated, the likes of which have never been seen before, that are ready to accept your personalized brand of pre-recorded advertising. And the best part is, it's not spoon-fed television. Video content can be as unique and creative as the people behind the production. Remember BMW's online film campaign? How long before someone drives traffic to a website with a spine-tingling series of video podcasts (better known as Vodcasts)? Broadcasting has evolved.

So go ahead, press record, inspire me to watch, and then I'll tell everyone what I saw.

Prepare Now for Yahoo! Paid Listing Changes

Posted by on December 29, 2005 at 12:55 PM

When it comes to the recent news of the new look coming to Yahoo! Search Marketing, heed the words of the ancient proverb: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. For those of you who haven't yet heard about the upcoming changes scheduled to go live January 18th, Yahoo! plans to display shorter descriptions for the Sponsored Search listings, 70 characters to be exact. How Googlesque.

At least for the time being Yahoo! is stating that the listings will be shortened to 70 characters, but according to a post from YahooSarah at the SearchEngineWatch forum, "Over time, we will fine tune the exact character count that we believe works best for advertisers and search users". Of course the changes (according to Yahoo!) are benefiting all those involved. Searchers will see ads that are easier to read; advertisers can expect to see an increase in clicks while still maintaining conversion rates. Wow, thanks Yahoo!!

I urge all who advertise with Yahoo! to take the necessary precautions before the crisis (I mean changes) takes place January 18th. Yahoo! is telling advertisers that changes to sponsored listings do not need to be made as the sponsored listings will be automatically truncated to meet the new character limitations. What?! Automatically truncated? I can see it now, sponsored listings that contain half a sentence, or better yet sponsored listings that stop in the middle of a word.

Don't fall victim to Yahoo! technology. Optimize your sponsored listings now. Be certain that your description is only 70 characters long and is highly relevant to your search term. Remember to focus on the most important information, as you will not have the character availability for great detail in your listing. And, one final note, get your listings updated and through the editorial review process prior to January 18th. I have a feeling that the editorial review process will take longer during this time and prove to be more frustrating than ever. The sooner you can implement your changes the better your listings will likely be during this transitional time at Yahoo!

No Static at All: SES Wrap-up on WebmasterRadio.fm

Posted by on December 22, 2005 at 09:21 AM

Be sure to tune into WebmasterRadio.fm today at 10:00am EST for a live special on the recent Search Engine Strategies conference held in Chicago. The special will be hosted by SES chair and organizer Danny Sullivan and WebmasterRadio co-founder Daron Babin. Guests include Bruce Clay, Dan Boberg of Yahoo! Search Marketing, Detlev Johnson of PositionTech and Oneupweb's very own Tim Kauffold.

The special will provide an inside look at the event and help attendees get the most out of the SES experience. It will also be available via podcast immediately after the live show.

Got a SSL Certificate? Show Me!

Posted by keirsun on December 21, 2005 at 01:42 PM

So you want me to buy something? Well, I'm already in the door and browsing down the aisles of your online store. You have some interesting products that are easy to find and your page design looks professional enough. And.. hello, what's this? Oh, I gotta have one of these. You even have the right color and size in stock, and if I buy now I get free shipping. How can I leave without it? Actually, I don't even care what it costs. It's perfect!

Now all I have to do is give you my name, address, and credit card info. Hey, wait a minute! How do I know this page is secure? My Status Bar is hidden (if I even know what a Status Bar is) so I don't see the little padlock icon that pops up a window with your site's SSL Certificate information. Aside from the URL changing from HTTP to HTTPS (which I am completely unaware of) there is nothing on this page that makes me feel secure about your payment processing. Oh well. I'm sure Big.com will help me find one just like it somewhere else. Somewhere that I feel secure. If you're lucky, I bookmark your site, just in case.

This little exercise was designed to show just how easy it is to lose an online shopper because you don't showcase your site's digital SSL certificate. Shoppers like to feel secure. I don't even like getting handed a sales receipt with my entire credit card number printed out. Give me a long row of xxxx's in front of the final 4 digits and I'm happy. Making me feel secure is that easy. And it's the same with your website.

Handing your online shoppers proof that your store is secure is simple. If you already have a SSL Certificate (and you better), chances are your provider offers graphical proof of your secure payment processing. SSL encryption providers such as Digicert tout the importance of displaying their Secure Site Seal which "allows customers to check your identity, and Confirm Your Integrity". As an online shopper, confirming your online retail integrity is important to me. If I trust you, I'll come back for more.

Search Engines, Teens, and the Southern Oracle

Posted by on December 19, 2005 at 11:28 AM

In a study that is both interesting and destined to get more attention than it should, A Couple of Chicks Marketing has published the findings of a 125-student survey on search engine use and online travel brands. That's not a knock on the study itself, but rather an observation of how het up we all tend to get when research about teen online behavior comes out - as 'twere we gazing upon the marketing equivalent of the Southern Oracle.

We've built up this archetype of The Online Teen: He was born with a silver mouse in his hand and can program a 17-in-1 remote control with his mind while hapless adults quake in fear. His reward? The keys to the SUV. A perfect storm of disposable income and existential crisis compels him to solidify his tribal membership by spending an exorbitant amount of money on ringtones and other such in-group identifiers. His tastes are fickle and faddish, but if you, gentle marketer, can stay less behind the curve than your competitors, the rewards are great.

This is largely nonsense. Teens are actually a lot like adults. Some are smarter and savvier than others. Some are richer, some are poorer. Some are artists, athletes, scholars, techies, couch potatoes, scientists - or all of the above. But there is one crucial difference: Today's American teens have been marketed to like no other generation before.

Which brings me back to the aforementioned study. According to the authors, teens are both tenacious and cynical when it comes to using search engines (and a whopping 85 percent prefer Google over Yahoo and MSN - though there was no mention of ubiquitous teen portal MySpace.com). Fifty-three percent say they go through as many search results as they need to find what they're looking for, with only 18 percent staying on the first page of results only. That low number of first-page devotees may have something to do with another interesting finding: 46 percent of the teens surveyed believe the first pages of search results (both paid and natural) are advertisements.

In this, teens show a higher awareness and sensitivity to being marketed to than adults. The good news is that teens are also more comfortable making purchases online (58 percent of the teens surveyed had already done so). So respect your teen audience, and it will respect you. At least for the next 3-6 months.

Web Usability: Why Do We Overlook the Obvious?

Posted by chip on December 09, 2005 at 04:58 PM

As the holiday season grows closer, and my shopping intensifies, I can't help but notice how many online retailers don't seem to be paying attention to the usability of their sites. With the time, money and effort put in to establishing yourself in the online marketplace, it doesn't make any sense to drive customers away from your site. Whether it is poor design, confusing navigation or any of the other annoyances that can drive potential customers away; not focusing on the user's experience within your site is going to cost money and undermine your overall marketing efforts.

There are a number of things an Internet retailer can do to increase their presence in the search engines. Accomplishing this should in turn increase the traffic to the site, which in turn should increase conversions. When this increase in traffic does not correlate with an increase in sales, one reason could be usability.

More and more, people are using the Internet as a tool for making purchasing decisions. Whether they complete their purchases online, or just use the web to compare products and prices before ultimately making their purchase in a brick and mortar store, they are integrating the Internet into their shopping habits. I don't think there are many marketing professionals that would dispute the role that the storefront plays in creating identity in the minds of consumers. Why then don't many of them seem to be translating this to a company's online storefront? The Internet is a fierce marketplace and it seems the level of competitiveness keeps growing. As anyone working in search marketing knows, just getting customers to your site is hard enough. A business can't afford to drive the customers that do find their site away.

There are many reasons why potential customers might leave a site. Many users will leave a site if they are required to download additional software, complete lengthy forms (other than at check-out) or simply due to the frustration that confusing navigation can cause. Making sure your site is user friendly on even the most basic levels can dramatically increase your customer retention. Avoiding basic annoyances like distracting pop-ups, broken links, flashing text and colors or slow page load times will also help keep potential customers on your site - and off your competitors'.

By incorporating good web usability practices, you can be on your way to establishing yourself as a dominant force in the online marketplace.

AJAX for SEO Considered Harmful

Posted by on December 08, 2005 at 10:39 AM

Here at Oneupweb, our development team has been playing around with AJAX development on some of our internal web sites.

Now, to help alleviate any confusion, in this context AJAX is different from Ajax™ the cleaning product. Here, AJAX stands for “Asyncronous Javascript And XmlHTTPRequest”, which is a somewhat young web development technology that allows the construction of highly interactive websites that can help to reduce server load.

Some of the more common uses of AJAX in websites include:

• A product search box that retrieves matching products from the webserver as the customer is still typing in the box, generally updating a list in the page, allowing the customer to navigate directly to the product page, rather than loading the search results page first.
• Retrieving customer product reviews from the server after the user clicks a link on the product page, then displaying those reviews in the same page. This saves on the bandwidth of sending all those reviews along with every request regardless of whether the user wants to read them. Then when the reviews are requested, the only data sent from the server, are the reviews themselves – the rest of the page layout doesn’t need to be retransmitted.
• Fully interactive sites, such as Google’s maps, which give large amounts of control to the user, but retrieve all their data in small chunks, and rarely require full page reloads.

If used incorrectly, AJAX techniques can actually hinder a search spider’s ability to find indexable information on web pages. AJAX’s problems lie in its powerful capability to use javascript to pull data from the server as needed.

Unlike browsers, search engine spiders don’t speak javascript. As such, if the data isn’t in the page then the spider won’t index it. This means that if you are loading your product reviews using AJAX, then even though your customers will see “cool widget” in your page, searches for “cool widget” in the engines won’t lead to your pages, and you’ll lose in the SERPs.

So, how can you use AJAX to offer your customers a more engrossing interactive experience, and not lose your vital search engine positions?

Well, just like moderation can fit chocolate cake into your diet, so too can it allow your site to use AJAX. The key here is to relegate your AJAX tools to a more of a support role. Unfortunately, this means that using AJAX to load product reviews and other data you want spiders to index should generally be avoided.

Fortunately, search spiders don’t use search boxes, and additional intelligence embedded into most product searches can provide a rewarding experience for your customers.

In Search Engines, Web Standards and Semantics Rule

Posted by on December 05, 2005 at 12:54 PM

Not adhering to web standards is like rollerskating down the freeway. You might get to where you’re going, but it’s inefficient and fraught with peril.

Over the past few years there has been a large underground movement to unleash web standards and semantics on the world by means of clean, well-formed markup. I say underground simply because unless you work in the web arena, you probably aren’t even aware that such a large movement exists. There are literally thousands of sites out there dedicated to web standards, and a line is being drawn in the sand. It’s time for web designers to earn their keep—either adopt standards and best practices for web development, or stop calling themselves web professionals.

Why the paradigm shift? Why should my corporation care what the page markup looks like? Because search engines do. They care so much that they have dedicated teams of programmers who do nothing but define meaning between elements on a page, developing algorithms to assign rank and value to each and every element of each and every page on the internet. Of course, there are other benefits to building sites with web standards—maintenance, accessibility, bandwidth reductions, etc. But the real value of web standards for businesses comes in the form of search engine results pages.

se·man·tic (adj.)

1. Of or relating to meaning, especially meaning in language.

Well-structured semantic code is critical to the online success of any business. If the search engines can’t understand your content, what chance do your customers have of even finding your site among the billions of other pages out there? Your content will not be read, your page hits will fall, and your online presence will suffer. There’s a good reason sites like AT&T.com, C|NET.com, and even Amazon.com are adopting web standards.

We’re not in 1995 anymore. Muddled, confusing, obfuscated, or jumbled markup are no longer acceptable means of hashing out a web page. Designers accustomed to building entire sites in WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver are going to be living on the street once their web publishing methods are weighed against online performance. It’s time to get in tune with reality: either get up to speed with web standards, or watch your online presence go the way of the buffalo.

It's Just Another Cyber Monday

Posted by on December 01, 2005 at 03:56 PM

Cyber Monday, I know, it's all you've been hearing about for the last week and a half. It's like Black Friday for retailers but for online retailers, we get it. It's been all over the news. But, was it all just a bunch of media hype? According to a recent article on BusinessWeekOnline, Cyber Monday is not nearly the biggest online shopping or spending day of the year.

ComScore Networks reported Cyber Monday ranks only as the 12th biggest online shopping day. A majority of online retailers had specified Nov. 22 as their "big" day. Others have noticed a strong online buying trend between Dec. 5 and 15th, later in the season.

This isn't to say Cyber Monday was a failure by any means. It was a promotional marketing tactic to rev up consumers. Even Executive Director Scott Silverman of Shop.org, the association for retailers that sell online, which coined the term and the day, says Cyber Monday, "was an opportunity to create some consumer excitement." I'm not sure if it created the kind of consumer excitement that forces one to spend money. But, many online retailers piggybacked off this promotion holding their own "Cyber Monday Blowout" sales, which many credit their sales to.

Looking at the numbers, Cyber Monday had an effect, but just not the effect we were all anticipating after the hype. Is it possible Cyber Monday is just another Monday for online retailers? Who doesn't profit a little more when there's media attention involved? Maybe the only way to continually boost online sales is to optimize your site, offer online promotions, free shipping, and permission marketing.

So, you better get ready, because Super, Super Cyber Wednesday is coming. It's interesting too, all the PPC ads coming up under Cyber Monday. You know they almost called it Green Monday, but it was too environmentalist.