Category: Uncategorized

The books arrived!

Thomas Register books were delivered yesterday. Now 17 books instead of 24 (plus two Company Profiles and just one Catalog book). But don’t count the reduction in advertising on the Chambers, Environmental section. We had reduced our ad from two pages to one. I noticed a great increase in smaller “call” ads to supplement advertising spreads, no doubt done to help increase rankings online.

What was unexpected was the number of new listings in our category. These are from bit players for a specific product type–walk-ins. While I’d never see these people on-line as competitors, their money is certainly showing their interest in this market. And I’m just dying to check out their (sure to be) lousy websites.

What does your website do?

People come to your website for different reasons–you need to be prepared to address those needs. Here is an article to help you focus on this task (via marketingfix).

Two Steps to Spike Acquisition, Conversion, and Retention

Overture activity

Overture recently sent me an email telling me their minimum bid is rising to 10 cents. Not a big deal because existing bids under this will be honored, which I have a few in obscure keywords. Most of my bids are in multi-dollar keywords, though. What I found out today, is that some of the other competitors have backed down their bids. This has allowed me to reduce my bids significantly and still maintain my place. These are for 5th and 6th place bids, which aren’t that visible anyway. However, I hear that Yahoo is going to reformat their listing method to show more “sponsored links” near the top, ala Google.

What happens to PPC click-thrus in your log files

Here is a snip from a discussion I am having at ihelpyouservices.com:

I just pulled up one of my log files (my ISP saves by the day, which makes this easier) and found that the “referrers” from my PPC ads are listed as such:

The images and other parts of the page list the referrer as the request from the PPC with the tracking URL:

http://www.espec.com/digest/?source=overture

Of course WebTrends or FastStats is going to ignore those because they aren’t pages. But for the page, it is different!

For the page requested under referrer it lists the search page:

http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=temperature+chamber

But also under cs-uri-query it lists the stripped tracking URL info:

source=overture

So, to track the tracking URLs, you need to use WebTrends to somehow record the activity in this category. That would be the next step in this investigation.

Doing this opens a whole new world of analysis. If you break it down by keyword, you can compare the success of your listings versus your ads. Perhaps getting a lot of PPC on a term you aren’t ranked well will make you think that terms is doing okay, when it is actually draining your cash.

More than a toy

ClickTracks shows you how your site’s visitors behave by visually showing clickthrus, which is helpful for usability. Now they have added features that help with further analysis. Even better than my favorite FastStats. But at $495, it should be better.

For example you can track behavior of site visitors from Google AdWords or Overture (or IQS) and see if they actually spend more time at your site. (I can see if double qualifying a visitor adds value, Mike!)

ClickTracks: What’s new in 3.1

Challenge yourself

Learn a new trick or two taking these quizzes. Marketing and sales people need to be in control of their software, so I emailed this to our entire group.

Microsoft Office Quizzes

Would you want to read this?

I get a few direct mail pieces from marketing companies looking for my business every year. I study the piece for technique and effectiveness, as it is a one-piece portfolio of their capabilities. The subhead on the one I got this week says:

“From the CEO on down, this market-driven focus is our mantra. And we have implemented a proven process for customer interaction that enables us to build successful products that resonate with the market.”

This is a quote from their client, although I doubt anyone really talks this way. And thats the problem with this quote and the headline above it. They are vague and buzz-word filled. Worse than that, they give no reason to read the rest of the copy in this piece. They need to get Mark Joyner’s book.

Blog news

The Google-dance has happened to b2blog!. Two months after switching URLs, it looks like Google has fully assimilated the site. My page rank is 5 again. The archives are getting hits from the search engines, instead of to the old site. And I finally invested in Blogger Pro to make posting a little easier and to pay kudos for their services. (Also made a “Amazon donation” to Harmonica Lessons website, too. Keeping the internet economy going.)

I’ll be posting an article about site search, inspired by a recent white paper from GlobalSpec.

How do I control my URL

This article makes you feel like ownership of your URL is held together with bubble gum and string.

Where the hell is my website?

Helping a friend

Vincent Flanders asked at Web Pages That Suck what you would do if your spouse had a website that sucked? I think this applies to any family or friend who knows your are involved in web sites. Here are my thoughts: I’d do two things…

1. Give him/her a copy of Web-Usability by Jakob Neilsen. It’s more subtle than Vincent’s book.

2. I’d ask him/her to show you their best competitor’s website, then ask them what makes it the best. Maybe compare it one-for-one with their site.

Then make a list of things that they should/can add to their site to make it more like that competitor. That will help them focus and be ready to dump certain techniques.