The news

For those who are 'watching me', the news is that we did sign-up for Thomas Register again. I let management make the final call on this one. Of course we cut way back from last year, but we paid more than we wanted. Is it worth it? I'll continue to watch and see what is going on. This will be a pivotal year for TR. They will make the decision for us next year.

In related news, I got a copy of GlobalSpec's white paper on ROI. It makes some interesting points comparing quality of leads (which they feel is their strength) versus others. They do make a couple leaps of faith. They rank "branding" effectiveness of their website for your brand over a trade show. I think they do the opposite, reducing your products to commodities being compared just by specifications. Their ROI calculation form is basic, but, like all marketing, still requires multiple assumptions. And the ROI doesn't then get compared to the program's cost. If you calculate ROI as $100,000, but costs $13,000 to run, then you better make sure you can justify a 13% promotion cost and also assume that you would have never reached these people anyway (in which case the promotion is loses its value).

Of course who am I to criticize ways of calculating ROI, when we didn't even use such a method for the TR decision. I guess that is the point, we weren't paying for ROI, we were paying for image, positioning, competitive posturing, then ROI.

Bad B2B sites

I've been tempeted to run a separate blog like Flander's Web Pages That Suck just for B2B sites. This one may just get me started:

OEM Technology

It tries to be a sourcing site for electronics, based on their tabloid-type publication. More than that it tries to be a "Industrial Quick Search" type keyword service. But take a look at their site, not to hard or your eyes might hurt.

Once you've seen enough there, try using one of their category urls. I tried www.environmentalstressscreening.com because that is where my products would fall. It bounces you back to their main sites directory page with blinking stars at the correct listing item. I can't believe this junk is being used to sell listings. They claim 5,000 top keywords and 80,000 visitors a month.

This is a geeky web design article about locating your site's features and where the user would expect them to be. Left-side navigation is the basic rule. Of course my site has top navigation. Maybe I need to rethink that idea.
Usability News - 3.1 - 2001 -- Developing Schemas for the Location of Common Web Objects

Great downloads

I'm downloading and trying these new website analysis tools. I'll report on them if I think they're worthwhile:

ClickTracks overlays the stats from your site's log files directly over the web pages, so you can see the interest users have and what they click on. The full version is $450. I wouldn't use it every month, but it looks like a great site evaluation tool in place of usability studies. This might be a worthwhile tool to show your managers that what they want put on your website isn't working.

Google Monitor is a free tool that allows you to evaluate how your website's target keyword phrases are doing on Google. I'm starting to evaluate my website for only Google using WebPosition Gold (my old standby), so maybe this is an effective shortcut for those just starting out. I imagine it will cost money sooner or later, though.

Click Fraud - Are You A Victim?

Here is an article reviewing the risks of pay-per-click advertising--your scummy competitors clicking on your ads repreatedly. Not a big risk, but you kind of wonder what could happen!

Study: 37% of Fortune 100 companies disregard Web inquiries

Thanks to B2B Online's newsletter for this one:
Technology consultancy International Ventures Research will release a 430-page study this Friday on how Fortune 100 Web sites stack up in their treatment of customers. The CustomerRespect.com study found that 37% of Fortune 100 companies offered no reply to a general inquiry submitted to their Web site, despite offering either an online form or e-mail contact details for inquiries. Forty-five percent of sites force customers to opt out if they don't wish to receive unsolicited e-mails from the site. Fifteen percent of sites sell customer data without seeking permission to do so. Eighty-three percent of sites offer no auto-response function to notify customers that their communication has been received and will be acted upon. According to IVR, its Customer Respect Index (CRI) is a "qualitative and quantitative, in-depth analysis and independent measure of a customer's online experience when interacting with companies via the Internet." The index tracks 25 different Web site attributes that contribute to the online customer experience. Customer Respect

Looks like you have to pay for the full report, but us small timers should be able to learn enough from the above information.

more dumb email

Email marketing is so easy to do, but so easy to screw up. Email gurus like Sherpa harp on the fine details, but gross errors are still being made. Check this one out:

Subject line 5 Critical Success facors to consider when considering different ERP systems. The key term "ERP" i couldn't actually read in the header of my email preview pane.

Body: If you would like to join a free online product demonstration or would like to receive more information please call 1-800-XXX.
Sincerely, XXX, Company XXX That is just poor copy writing, plain and simple!

I've always harped on people of this skill level who send Word attachments because no one wants to open a Word document that may have a virus. The sender was smart to make a PDF file. Unfortunately her 2 page PDF file was 450K, so she made a zip file. I'm guessing that I'm the only person who got this that took the time to open it! Once I opened it, I saved in "optimize" mode and got it down to 360K. If she knew what she was doing when she made the Acrobat file, it could have been a lot smaller.

Analyzing web traffic

Here is the way I analyze the stats on my website. I think a lot of smaller b2b sites like mine don't get their stats looked at, so I am writing this as a bit of a primer. The first problem is to find out where the "log" files are and how to get them. Call your ISP if you don't know. My ISP actually analyzes the data for me, but it is rudimentary at best. What I like to do is report hits on all my webpages, then track month-to-month to look for trends.

The best, most inexpensive tool to do this is FastStats. I started with WebTrends way back when, but it is a bloated, overpriced product. And doing it this way beats on-line services like Hitbox because you don't need to add code to every page in your site. Get FastStats...this link will get you a 10% discount if you use "b2blog" promotional code when ordering. Get the Gold version for $200 less 10%, or download a trial.

FastStats is set-up by default to report only the 100 most popular pages, so you will need to find the settings and change this (its a little buried, so hunt for it) if your site is bigger. The latest version requires the Gold version to export the "popular pages" to Excel, but that's what you'll need to do. I then copy and paste the data to a table by month. This takes some work to make sure that the data corresponds to what is on the table, as some pages may not be listed every month due to inactivity or other problems. By categorizing the pages, I can then create graphs showing month-to-month activity on, lets say, our different product pages (I use PivotTables to do this, which is cool once you figure out how to make them work in Excel). It's pretty cool to be able to see which products get the most looks. I would venture to guess that if you don't see a lot of variation, then people are hopping from page to page trying to find what they want because your site isn't clear enough about the distinction between the products.

There are a many other reasons to do this every month (search engine referrals, 404 errors). But mostly, it keeps you in touch with your users and your site.

TR activity

I got two "hits" from Thomas Register yesterday.

First, I got a call from a salesman from the Thomas International Directory. He was introduced as from Thomas Publishing in New York, so I thought it might be something new shaking down. I was able to dismiss him with our lack of focus on international market.

Second, I got a mailing from TR promoting its usability for B2B searches. It joked about what a search for "tubing" would result on a standard search engine. An effective message, but they missed a key fact: who is dumb enough to use a single keyword when doing a search, especially for a term with multiple meanings?

BTW: In one of my MBA classes this week, our speaker recommended using Kompass as a way to find dealers,distributers, and other contacts in foriegn countries for our business projects. I want to sell products if I am listed with Kompass (and not get a lot of dealer inquiries), but I thought it was interesting that it was even brought up.

Yahoo?

I made a comment in an email today that Yahoo is looking less worthwhile. Then I got this news from SitePoint's newsletter:

Yahoo! is becoming less and less relevant by the day... Quote from http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/ysearch-22.html :

"You may have noticed that the Yahoo! Search results look a little different.

As part of our ongoing efforts to offer you the easiest and most rewarding search experience, by default we now list results ranked by relevancy that combine Web page matches from both third parties and the Yahoo! Directory.

Previously, by default we listed search results from the Yahoo! Directory and third-party search engine providers separately. Directory listings can still be viewed separately by clicking on the "Directory Site Matches" option in the navigation bar located below the search box."

Most primary results now come through Google, and if a site is listed in Yahoo it is marked with a red icon. This means that Google is more important than ever, and the $299/year commercial listings in Yahoo! are now almost worthless.

TR - the saga continues

Well, rather than try to close the sale, the TR reps went back to evaluate what categories we should have ads in in order to get the most traffic on/from their site. Looks like that was a lot of what they were selling--web traffic. So it is interesting that we weren't the only ones with this cynical thought that I got via email today:

"Read your blog on TR's latest activity on keyword / search engine positioning...with less than 40% of TR's clients currently renewed - the question I have for them is - will they continue to pay for those prominent rankings after their renewal period or are they just paying through the nose until 10/31 - and then let the rankings disappear??? Hmmm....shell out a bunch of money now to get money - and then cut back the spending and leave the suppliers with no recourse as they've already committed to a year......:

Of course business deals are based on a certain amount of trust, but I think the writer is probably right that TR is trying so many new things right now and bookings are so low that you at least have to wonder. But since the writer is from GlobalSpec, he certainly has a bias.

Funny thing is, I heard from TR, GlobalSpec (a rep left a message), and Mr. IndustrialQuickSearch all today. I'm feeling a bit naked again. Should have made this blog a bit more mysterious. Of course the writer may have found himself equally naked as I know where he works even though he used his Yahoo account. So at least I know everyone is either talking to me or seeing this blog, the interest in what happens has to be peaking between them. Kind of like The Bachelor!

Thomas Register - will we or won't we?

We've been delaying a decision on renewing our advertising with the "Green Books" for 2003. I need to kowtow to management on this, which essentially takes the decision out of my hands. Today we are meet with the TR reps. No idea what is going to happen.

Let me tell you that last time I met with them, I learned about their new keyword promotion on Google and Yahoo. They are essentially buying the top listing for all the business categories in their books. "Click here for 102 industrial boiler vendors - free" or similar come-on. This program alters the way I should target advertising in TR. We need to look at the most popular categories we are listed in (which the rep had a list of), to make sure we come to the top by adjusting our print advertising program.

Then I discussed this program with Mr. IndustrialQuickSearch about how that compares to his program, which is strictly keyword-optimization driven. As he and his staff are former TR reps, he has plenty of bad news to tell about TR. He told me (which the TR rep did, too) that the Thomas Register is being combined with the Thomas Regional in 2004. He also told me that he heard that the Regional reps will be taking over the sales program. There is additional rumors/information which he has posted on the web, if you are interested.

I think we probably have benefited from waiting this long, as the situation has continued to evolve. What happens next? Stay tuned.

Thanks to Mean Dean for this article on website usability. My new site commits one of these crimes by offering a pop-up menu. At least the button that spawns it acts as a link.

developerWorks: Usability : Seven tricks that Web users don't know

Another directory

Got my second call from the eCommerceRegister directory service. Only $300 gets me a membership. Seems the primary benefit of being a member is being able to send email alerts (spam?) to other members based on location and SIC codes. I can't imagine someone finding us by searching here as the SIC codes aren't current or keyword driven.

As a way of promotion to other businesses, it might be worth it, but the possibility of reaching the right person for my market is remote--the alerts will end up going to other marketers I suppose. Also, I suppose that I may find myself deluged with spam alerts so that I will just ignore it.

eCommerceRegister - B2B Online Community/Industry Business Listings