Experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by....

Trying to upgrade to a current template from Blogger. More of a nightmare than I thought. This very short page brought to you by CSS.

UPDATE:
I think I got it fixed! I'm not sure why, but the CSS-based template from Blogger didn't have a "overflow:visible" attribute for the main body of the blog. This is my first dive into CSS based layout. The code looks cleaner, but tools like FrontPage and Dreamweaver don't speak that language. I thought I could just drop bits of HTML to fix up the page to my liking, but apparently some versions of IE6 weren't impressed. It looked fine at home (on XP), but rendered only a portion of the page at work (on NT).

Now to fix the Archives list and "20 Answers" pages...

Keep your head on straight

I just flipped thru the latest BtoB Magazines's Interactive Marketing Guide. Most of the material dealt with services you can buy for your online marketing. A real snoozer.

Keep your head on straight...don't fall for the latest marketing tools for your online efforts, IMHO. Webcasting and broadcast emails are bells and whistles that will make you look like a nitwit (see below) if your core site and strategy aren't up to snuff.

Marketing nitwits

When I sometimes see an out-of-place error in a marketing piece, I look a little farther to see how many more problems they have. This one is a beauty...

I got a spam email from a exhibit design company regarding a trade show for next March. At the end of a mediocre email, was this privacy clause:

This e-mail is the property of XX Exhibits & Displays. It is intended only for the individual to which it is addressed and contains information that is privileged, confidential, or otherwise protected from disclosure. Distribution or copying of this e-mail, or the information contained herein, by anyone other than the intended is prohibited. If you receive this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by e-mail at X.com or phone XXX. Please delete and destroy any copies of this e-mail. Emphasis mine.

So I went to their website and got two 475K pictures (resized via FrontPage, but not reduced in file size) and a message that their site was under construction. Dumb, dumb, dumb!

Even better from the engineer survey

Here's the real goodies from the T&MW survey for website marketers.


What's cooking on vendor sites?

How engineers use the web

Here is a helpful article for b2b marketing to test engineers, my target demographic. Test and Measurement World surveyed 251 of their readership regarding their use of the web.

Of interest is this list of most popular 'non-vendor' websites (in this order):
Google
Yahoo
Thomas Register
Dogpile
T&MW (author of the survey)
Globalspec
Lycos
Altavista
Partminer
Chipcenter

Knowing what my stats are from Dogpile, either I am missing these users, or the list fizzles out after the Top 3.

There also is data on what the engineers are looking for on websites and other uses of the internet. Certainly encourages providing more data to attract and please engineers.

World Wide Web: Engineers' indispensable tool

Your website is important to sales

While this report regards retail shoppers, one has to assume some carry-over to B2B sales.

Retailing: Shoppers Demand Decent Design: "What's worse is that nearly 30 percent stop buying from their favorite offline store if their online experience is poor. "

My submission makes it to Father Flanders

I finally got a website I submitted (for the company Racar International) listed as The Daily Sucker on Vincent Flanders site. Finding sucky B2B websites is like shooting fish in a barrell. I dissed this company in this blog last year and still get hits because their website doesn't show up on Google when people search for their name, even when in quotes.

The problem with their site is that they have a splash page that no one has ever seen. The web page simply points to the 'designer's' hard drive to find the Flash file.

If I were to start a consulting business for B2B web marketing, finding potential clients looks extremely easy. But convincing companies to invest in their web presence looks like a very steep hill to climb when they aren't even paying attention. Perhaps the only way would be to get the owner to have his wife or child try to navigate his website while he watches.

Habits of Highly Profitable Pay-Per-Click

While I can say that search engines and PPC advertising are important to generate traffic to my company's website, this takes it to another notch. What product or service can you target specifically to searchers, taking advantage of the immediacy of a PPC ad? This article makes a roadmap, if you've got a good idea. (Man, I'm trying to think of one after reading this.)

Traffick | The Seven-or-So Habits of Highly Profitable Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Campaigns

The proliferation of hotel-reservation websites trying to capture searchers annoyed me today. I just wanted to find the official website of a hotel, but couldn't after at least three pages of results. The above article points that the niche play is the way to go. Most of these hotel websites aren't successful because of searchers like me, who want information, not reservations. If we want reservations, we're going to Expedia or another site.

Log analysis

Someone asked for more information and my opinion about log analysis, and its inaccuracy. The speaker was just warning us to know what our log-analysis software is doing. Mine tells me that about 25% of my pages served were cached. How it knows that, I'm not sure.

As far as the spider activity, the percentage is going to vary depending on your normal traffic (of course). My reps using my website adds up to a lot more traffic than any spider could, so yes, I don't really care if the spiders are included in my traffic. I can exclude certain IP addresses, but nearly all my reps are on dial-up, with dynamic IPs.

More about the seminar

I wrote out my notes from the Internet Marketing Seminar (email me for a copy) with little commentary. I've saved my comments for this blog.

Case study of EZ websites by Thomas Register
This segment didn't delve into TR's online strategy, but instead related John Gennaro's experience in rolling out AdWords advertising and EZ websites, which is why I title this a 'case study'. One could be disappionted by this, as while he has been successful and had the resources to do so, he didn't make the case or try to explain how this should be integrated with an attendee's web marketing.

The only thing he did say in this regard is that 'small/med. businesses have the advantage in pulling traffic for people searching with 4 or more keywords.' He then went on to show how TR can dominate these searches too, by combining content from multiple suppliers listed on their site.

How to make your website a success
The second segment was by web consultant Aaron Kahlow that focused on what makes a site successful--traffic. I think it was a very well tuned presentation.

Generating traffic:
No real news in what he said here. Content is king, same as John said. The more content the more likely you are to have the right keywords and the more valuable your visitors will find it.

Converting traffic
This is the part I liked the best. It was actually the biggest eye-opener for the audience. His basic point that '80% of the problems with your website is your home page' is right on. And he helped show how to fix your home page, too. Your home page should be considered a navigation page, he said, to lead your visitor into the site.

Measuring traffic
This was the eye-opener for me. I've been happy using FastStats for years, but with my site redesign, the data is less useful because of the addition of multiple navigation pages. He recommended 'client side' tracking that measured actual user activity by including a small javascript on each page. This eliminates problems with cached pages not being logged, as well as forcing you to focus on the user experience, and not just numbers. I'll let you know when I pick a tool to do this.

Internet Marketing Seminar

I went to a seminar put on by Thomas Register this morning. I'll provide a detailed report of what I learned later this week. One presentation was on what TR is doing with the web and what they have learned, and the second regarded more general web marketing info. It was interesting to look around and see the number of people writing down the word "usability", although there was plenty of material for a web-geek like me.

What's happening to B2B trade magazines

That's an easy one...they are dying. According to this article, 150 have died in the last year, and ad pages are down 30%. B2B marketing is information rich, a natural for the web. That's why I spend so much time in this blog discussing issues regarding my company's website.

Monday

Improve your site for $200

Jakob Nielsen is the guru for web usability. Finally, he writes a usability article for us small-time marketers. When all your competitors have websites that are three or more years old, you can really stand out if you spend some time fixing things up. Your users will notice. My additional advice...listen to your salespeople.
Usability For $200 (Alertbox June 2003)