The two questions every webmaster should ask

I'm working on web usability studies for two clients right now, and here's what I've learned: it all comes down to asking two questions about every page on your site:

• What one thing do you want the visitor to do on this page?
• How do you facilitate that action in as few steps as possible?

Maybe you want them to make a purchase. Maybe fill out a form. Maybe send you an e-mail. Whatever it is, everything else on the page should be designed to encourage that action.

Why only one action? Well, consider these stats from usability guru Jakob Nielsen: when visiting a new site, users spend an average of only 30 seconds on the homepage and less than 2 minutes on the entire site before leaving. For sites they return to, their stay isn’t much longer—just 4 minutes on average. That means you need to give people the chance to get on, get done, and move on. The easier you make that, the more likely it is that they'll return.

BlueTie banking on "featuretisements"

Can your calendar or your e-mail predict what products and services you're thinking of buying? BlueTie.com thinks so--and the company believes it can do so more effectively than Gmail.

BlueTie's product is called the "featuretisement," and a story in this week's Forbes details company founder David Koretz's plans for growth:

"[F]eaturetisements," match an event someone types into his calendar or e-mail (such as a trip to Chicago) with, say, a possibly useful ad detailing flights that day.

[...]

So far [Koretz] has 26 brands, including Orbitz, ftd, Research In Motion's BlackBerry and Amazon, advertising to clusters of his 3 million e-mail customers. BlueTie gets paid only if someone books a ticket or buys flowers. Koretz says 2% are doing just that, while the average rate for merely clicking through on the Web is 0.5%.

He has spent the past few months trying to sell BlueTie's featuretisement technology to Facebook, Microsoft and MySpace...

[...]

He thought of featuretisements one night after a meeting with managers of Google's Gmail service, which was already placing targeted ads alongside messages. "They told me not to go into application advertising, because they were going to own the space. I was frustrated and spent six hours brainstorming with a colleague," he says. The two realized that Gmail is often on the wrong end of a communication. "If I send you a message about my Kilimanjaro climb, you'll see ads for treks in Africa. But you never signaled you had any interest in going there. That got us thinking about what people do signal."

One thing's certain: Koretz understand the pitfalls of advertising on social networks, so his plan is to develop interactive solutions, not just passive ads:

Koretz and others say social network members want to share messages and photos with their friends, not click on ads. A few of the scenarios he has talked up to Facebook and MySpace: a click-to-print capability (via a service like Kodak's) for all those photos, an option to buy movie tickets based on an instant message exchange and gift-buying buttons that flash alongside birthday notifications. Says Koretz: "You have to see intent, and then not annoy the hell out of people."

I don't know if BlueTie's idea will fly. But Koretz's last quote--"You have to see intent, and then not annoy the hell out of people"--is the best description I've seen in while of what it takes to be a successful 21st-century marketer. Whether you're advertising on TV, in the paper, or on the web, keep those words in mind.

Two great presentations from The Secret Diary of a Bonafide Marketing Genius

How do you become a bonafide marketing genius? You create great, irreverent, comprehensive presentations like “What the F**K is Social Media?”

| View | Upload your own

And what else do bonafide marketing geniuses do? Every now and then, they share great, irreverent, comprehensive presentations from other marketing geniuses, like Paul Isakson's "What's Next in Marketing & Advertising?"

| View | Upload your own

Hat tip: PR Squared

"Slap me in the face and call me had"

This 2-minute video from Current.com is great even if you don't watch Man vs. Wild. But if you've heard Bear Grylls talk, it's even better.

Hat tip: AdFreak

Ian Lurie Justifies Internet Marketing

I've been pretty critical of some Internet marketing strategies recently. And while I stand by everything I've said, I think this post from Ian Lurie's Conversation Marketing is dead on.

Cuban on YouTube vs. Hulu

I'm a big Hulu fan, so it's no surprise that I liked Mark Cuban's latest post. The whole thing is worth a read, but here's a decent summary:

[B]y next year, not only will Hulu have more monetizable traffic than Youtube, but it will have more total revenues than Youtube as well. It wouldn't suprise me if they are already at a higher annual run rate than Youtube.

Hulu's kind of new, so this is a bold statement. But I'm willing to bet that Cuban is exactly right.

Philly.com says fake online campaign kicks butt

Philly.com has a message for people like me who are a little skeptical about the effectiveness of online advertising: "kiss my derrière."

Last week, Philadelphia Media Holdings ran ads on the web and in the Inquirer and the Daily News for Derrie-Air, "the world's only carbon-neutral luxury airline." The ads clicked through to a landing page that described Derrie-Air's unique pricing strategy:

The magic comes from our one of a kind "Sliding Scale"—the more you weigh, the more you'll pay. After all, it takes more fuel—more energy—to get more weight from point A to point B. So we will charge passengers based on how much mass they add to the plane. The heavier you and your luggage are, the more trees we'll plant to make up for the trouble of flying you from place to place.

Prices were listed by the pound--$1.40/lb. from Philadelphia to Chicago, for example--and customers were offered amentities ranging from "spacious private washrooms outfitted with porcelain fixtures and gilded faucets" to "loofah scrubs." For anyone who still didn't get the joke, this disclaimer appeared at the bottom of the page:

The Derrie-Air campaign is a fictitious advertising campaign created by Philadelphia Media Holdings to test the results of advertising in our print and online products and to stimulate discussion on a timely environmental topic of interest to all citizens. All names, identities, characters, persons, whether living or dead, companies, situations, offers, products, services, and other information appearing in this campaign and the associated website are fictitious. Any resemblance to real or fictitious names, identities, characters, persons, whether living or dead, companies, situations, offers, products, services, or other information, is purely coincidental and unintentional. In other words, smile, we're pulling your leg.

So what were the results of the "test"? According to SmartBrief.com, the campaign garnered a 1.25% click rate, "well above the U.S. industry average 0.05%*."

Now, I don't want to seem like the fun police, and I give Philly.com credit for having a sense of humor. But I also think the campaign outperformed most online ads mainly due to referrals from:

• People who got the joke and wanted to share it
• People who were curious and wanted to check things out more closely (in other words, people who were tricked into clicking)
• People in the ad industry who heard about the campaign
• People at Philly.com who were proud of their own work

So was the Derrie-Air campaign representative of how online advertising truly performs? No. But it does reveal something that's true of all advertising efforts: create a remarkable product that seems too good to be true, and you'll get attention. Of course, that attention only matters if your product really exists.

*A rep recently gave me an industry average of 0.02%. Sounds like Derrie-Air's pricing isn't the only thing with a "sliding scale."

Why I'm losing confidence in online advertising

Yes, my faith in mass media marketing has been slipping for a long time. But I don't think online ads are much better. Why? Well, first there are these stats from a recent campaign we did for a client:

Page views purchased: 90,000 views

Page views delivered: 117,003 views

Clicks to website 96 clicks

Yield: 0.08%*

*According to a rep from this same portal, the national average yield is 0.02%

So we did 4 times better than the national average...and still got less than 100 click throughs out of more than 100,000 impressions.

All of this is great reminder that online advertising has all of the same challenges as traditional media advertising. One of the only advantages online offers, in fact, is the ability to measure results. So if you do a online ad campaign, be sure to ask for the numbers after your campaign runs. It's a good reality check on what you're getting for your money.

Is Taco Bell sportin' a Woody?

According to a recent post on Serious Eats, the new Taco Bell "Why Pay Mo'" campaign was inspired by Fort Wayne native Joe Woody's "Fast Food Freestyle" viral video. Well, if you ask some people, "inspired" is probably a little too generous. Does anyone know if Taco Bell gave Joe some dinero, or did they cross the border into plagarism?

Hat tip: A friend who is earnest even when it comes to food blogs

What do you watch, listen to, and read?

This morning, one of the first things I did was walk outside and grab the Sunday paper. It's an old habit dating back to when I was a kid living just outside of Boston. Every Sunday, with few other things competing for my attention, I'd study the Red Sox box score in the Globe and read the weekly Peter Gammons column. This usually served as a gateway read, exposing me to issues and ideas throughout the rest of the paper that I might not have heard about otherwise. This was a good thing for a kid whose thoughts usually only ranged from Hank Aaron to Paul Zuvella.

Today, of course, things are different. The Journal Gazette is part of my Sunday morning ritual, but I spend significantly less time with the paper than I used to. That is somewhat a result of having less time, but it's also a reflection of my changing media habits. And I'd bet your habits are changing, too. All of us have more choices, which usually means less time spent with traditional media--newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio--in favor of new media.

All of this got me thinking about how it's much more difficult for advertisers to reach me these days, and much less likely that I'll be exposed to "unfiltered" information from outside my range of interests, for better or for worse. Here's a snapshot of how much time I spend with ad-supported media. How much opportunity does anyone have to reach me with an unsolicited message?

- The Internet is the big kahuna of my media consumption time. I spend at least an hour a night on the web, and as much as three hours some nights during the week. That doesn't count the time I spend on the web while at work, or the hours I'm online on the weekend, which vary from a couple to a couple dozen. However, I believe banner blindness is very real, and I can think of only about three times when I've clicked on a web ad. However, I know word of mouth (through e-mail, blogs, customer reviews, etc.) has a big effect on me, as does PR/earned media. In short, if you want to reach me, the web is where you'll find me. But it's unlikely you'll reach me with an ad.

- TV is where I most clearly divert from the norm. The only TV in my house is the one my wife has had since college (and she graduated in 1990). There is no such thing as "must see" TV in my world, and it's rare that I turn it on for anything other than occasional background noise. And while I'd like to attribute my rejection of TV to some Zen state of being or a preference for more high-brow activities, I'll steal a quote from Lev Grossman*: "I can get away with not having a TV partly because my personal life is so amazingly rich and satisfying but mostly because I have a computer." In fact, instead of upgrading my TV, I'm thinking of getting rid of it altogether.

- Radio is also a low-impact medium for me. When I'm in the car, I usually listen to a CD or I'm on the phone. I listen to a decent amount of NPR stuff on WBOI/98.1, but other than that, radio is a nonentity. And WBOI is, of course, "commercial free." So unless you're a public radio underwriter (sidenote: I don't think there's much of a distinction between advertising and underwriting), you won't get my attention.

- Newspapers and me, as mentioned above, go way back. But that's not to say that my newspaper reading habits haven't changed. In addition to Sunday, I read the paper on Saturday since its delivered as part of the ever-expanding Journal Gazette "weekend" subscription (which I think now includes everything but the third Tuesday of the month). Other than that, though, I almost never read a printed copy of the JG, and I read other papers only rarely, except when a blog post or a friend directs me to a story online. I used to go to the Fort Wayne Newspapers website just about every day, but now I have the sections I'm interested in--Local, Business, and Opinion--"delivered" to me via RSS feeds. And when Google Reader is your morning paper, guess how many ads you see? (Well, at least until next week.)

- Magazines still get some of my discretionary time. I subscribe to a few, and because they're aligned with my interests I'm sure the ads I see have some impact on me. The ones I read regularly include Runner's World and Men's Health (although I'm almost certain to cancel my subscription soon since all they write about is food, sex, and abs exercises...I'm not sure why I subscribed to begin with), and local publications like the Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly, Business People, and Fort Wayne Monthly. But overall, my time spent with magazines is declining. A great example is Time, which I subscribed to for more than 10 years before canceling a couple years ago. It just seemed like most of its content was old news by the time it hit my mailbox. This is where local magazines have an advantage, because it's hard to find the same information on the web and the content is potentially more relevant to my information needs.

- Outdoor is the one medium that seems to be least impacted by new media. But it's also among the media most likely to be executed in a way that makes it totally ineffective. Creating a billboard is deceptively difficult, but if you follow the rules of good design, I'll listen to what you have to say. But only for about three seconds.

As someone in marketing, I continue to use myself as a reality check when considering how to connect an audience and a message. It's not easy today, and it's not going to get any easier as technology continues to give us more choices.

How about you? What do you watch, listen to, and read? How have your media consumption habits changed during the past few years?

*Recommended reading: Lev Grossman's "Getting Rid of My TV" at time.com

BBC story highlights web users' "impatience"

Great little story today from the BBC about the results of a study by "usability guru" Dr. Jakob Nielsen:

[P]eople are becoming much less patient when they go online.

Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.

Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.

I've seen some recent research showing that the average website visit lasts only 60 seconds, with an average of 3 clicks per visit. I strongly believe the growth of broadband is part of the reason web users leave pages so quickly. In the dial-up days, the comparatively high degrees of difficulty and failure associated with accessing the Internet made us a little more methodical with time spent on the web. We were less likely to move around from site to site because we knew that would mean waiting for our connection to catch up, then waiting for content to load. Today, we treat our mouse like a remove control, rapidly moving from site to site at a whim (a big reason why both Internet Explorer and Firefox added tabs so that users could toggle between multiple sites during the same session).

For marketers, this presents significant challenges since users are far less likely to see and interact with web ads and promotions. The BBC story explains:

[W]hen people go online they know what they want and how to do it, he said.

This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them.

"Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so," said Dr Nielsen.

"People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience," he said.

"I do not think sites appreciate that yet," he added. "They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them."

Web users were also getting very frustrated with all the extras, such as widgets and applications, being added to sites to make them more friendly.

Such extras are only serving to make pages take longer to load, said Dr Nielsen.

All of this is very important to remember when building your website. Be sure to use tools like Google Analytics to see what pages on your site are generating traffic so you don't invest a lot of time and money on underperforming pages. In fact, those pages probably should be cut altogether. It's easy to fall in love with your content and put everything on your site, but be sure to make the most high priority information easy to find. And skip the gimmicks.

Photo: hberends on stock.xchng

EW survey reveals interesting TV-viewing trends

Today's adage.com includes the results of a study by Entertainment Weekly about TV viewing habits. The big news is that technology isn't having as big an effect as might be expected. For example:

Just 1% of people say they "most often" view TV by downloading or streaming shows...60% percent still watch their favorite shows live, while 14% watch their favorites later that week and another 9% watch later that day.

This doesn't necessarily mean, however, that they're hankering to see commercials. About two-thirds of those surveyed stated they preferred product placement to traditional ads. But before you go throwing all your ad dollars into product placement, keep in mind that only 3% said that it works.

Perhaps the most interesting finding, however, was what happens to all those recorded shows:

Fully 31% of people with digital video recorders say they watch "none" of the shows they record, the survey found. Maybe that's an echo of the Netflix effect, in which Netflix members clog up their queues with movies they think they should watch, like "Citizen Kane," instead of movies they actually would watch, like "Bad Boys 3." Maybe everyone is Tivo-ing "John Adams" while they actually gather around "American Gladiators."

My take is that all of this is another example of how we perceive that continuing to do something inconvenient is less inconvenient than changing our behavior--even when that change would provide significant benefits. Sites like Hulu.com, for example, provide many of the same advantages as live TV, but with significantly fewer interruptions. But because they're competing against decades of learned behavior, they're going to take a while to catch on.

Small screen, big change

What's the single biggest threat to the way we use the web today? Our cell phones and PDAs, which continue to steal screen time away from our laptops and desktops. There are several reasons for this--our increasing reliance on our cell phones, an increasing shift in preference from e-mail to instant messaging, our changing web-surfing habits--but the cumulative impact is a change in the way content is being packaged and delivered. That's the larger context behind a recent Business Week article about how the mobile web means less ad inventory on Google and elsewhere:

Google can fit about 10 ads on a standard computer screen. (If you look at Google search results on a PC monitor, paid ads are the listings at the very top and along the right.) But on your cell phone, if you type in a search query at google.com you get only one or two paid ads in response.

Imagine the horror that would befall your business if a large slice of what you sell suddenly disappeared. A similar fate could befall companies that depend on online advertising, as small screens become the gateway to the Internet.

Even if you don't host ads, how well does your site translate to the mobile web environment? As more visitors to your site surf from their phones, it's worth thinking about.

Photo: altair on stock.xchng

Improve your social (media) skills

If you're looking for a great overview of how marketing on the web is changing, look no further than the new white paper from Vancouver's smashLAB, "A Primer in Social Media." Although only eight pages long, it packs in several great examples of social media hits and misses, as well as some basic terminology and recommendations. It's a short read that's long on good information--and best of all, it's free.

Unfortunate ad placement of the week

From the LA Times, yet another example of how we don't have that whole online thing figured out quite yet.

Hat Tip: AdRants

Search for more web hits

Stuck with a bad URL? Here's a solution that might be worth trying. This is especially useful given the growing number of web users who use enter website names into search engines instead of typing URLs into the browser's address bar.

Pontiac did this in a TV spot a couple of years ago, recommending that viewers "Google Pontiac" to learn more about the G6. However, they probably were just looking to piggyback on Google's brand (especially given that Pontiac's URL is the decidedly easy to remember "pontiac.com"). Still, however, there's no harm in understanding that the way your customers are finding your site today may be different than the way they found it yesterday.

If you read nothing else, read #1

A great list from Ian Lurie's "Conversation Marketing": The Internet Marketing List: 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren't. My favorite item on Lurie's list is right there at the top:

1. If you have a Flash introduction on your web site, delete it. If you don’t agree, try this: Shove your head into a bucket of water. Stay in there, not breathing, for 10 seconds longer than is comfortable. That’s what you’re doing to your customers. Delete it, please.

Yes, Flash intros look cool. But just because you can do something cool, it doesn't mean you should. Remember, if it doesn't advance the conversation with your customers, get rid of it. Unless you're in the Flash animation development business, all a Flash intro does is get in the way.

And if you need more ammunition to make a case against Flash, here it is.

Senate candidate holds logo election

Scott Kleeb, a candidate for U.S. Senate, is letting visitors to his web site choose his new campaign logo. I like this idea for a few reasons:

• It gives people some ownership in the Kleeb brand, possibly leading to them having more ownership in his campaign as a whole
  
• It drives traffic to his website, and
  
• It's consistent with the "grass roots" campaign theme he's using to differentiate himself against his opponent

Kleeb announced his campaign in February, just three months before the primary. But with strategies like this, he's quickly making up for lost time.

Hat tip: BrandNew

GFWBW on local TV networks' web-weaving

This week's Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly includes a story about the local TV networks' web strategies, including WANE's new election portal, fortwaynepolitics.tv and the WFFT parent-group's Nexstar Green program.

I'm quoted in the piece, with a few comments about targeting and the ways traditional media can build their brand with a web presence:

Digital advertising is moving toward becoming a large-scale business. Total local online ad spending is expected to increase 48 percent this year to $12.6 billion nationally, according to estimates by Borrell Associates, a consulting firm to online publishing companies.

Ads in local searches will command the largest portion of the total, about $5 billion. Local online video will be worth about $1.3 billion, the company estimated.

Juliano said the way consumers get information is changing. TV stations still want them to watch the nightly news, but they realize they also have to promote other ways to access information, he said.

“The two work in collaboration and when done well can be extremely effective in building a media brand,” Juliano said of broadcast and digital information.

There’s a good reason why media companies are wise to extend their brands onto the web: people are spending less time with every individual medium, but about the same amount of cumulative time with all media. If you only offer one choice—a single TV network, for example—you only have one chance to get a consumer’s attention. Offering multiple choices, however, makes it more likely that consumers will spend more time with you, even though they may split that time over multiple media.

The bottom line is that twenty years ago people had far fewer choices and more discretionary time, so you could expect people to come find you if you had news and information to share. Now, the equation is reversed: people have far less discretionary time, but unlimited access to news and information. As a result, they’re quicker to switch from one medium to another, knowing they’ll eventually find a source that gives them what they want. The key for advertisers is to understand how this dynamic is changing, and to understand that they may be better off with a strategy that’s precisely targeted instead of one that simply aims for the most eyeballs or ears.

It's Friday. Prepare to chortle and/or guffaw.

I don't know if this sold any beer. But it's hard to find fault with funny.