Date Archive: May 2008

Like glancing at page one headlines of the newspaper, Addictomatic gives a one page summary for your specific search term, right now, across 18 leading sites.

Online retailers seeking more agility in their web development should give “Getting Real” by 37Signals a thoughtful read.

I’m giving a 2 - 2.5 presentation on PPC Marketing next Thursday 6/5 at noon EST. Join us!

Embracing design and usability conventions is absolutely foundational — but just 1 critical dimension of sites that sell effectively. What else matters?

Scott Silverman of Shop.org talks about internet privacy, interstate collection of sales tax and other issues facing online retailers.

USPS direct mail usually leaves me befuddled, and the environmailist [sic] mailing doesn’t disappoint.

The first installment in a series on critical technology and know-how associated with bid management in 2008.

Interesting news items from SEL, TechCrunch, and SearchEngineJournal: screenshots of internal Google pricing metrics slipping out onto public SERPs. Stale news, perhaps fake, but interesting!

The only marketing channels immune from devolving into the entropic goo of spam are those which require payment (for example, paid seach) and those which are “pull” media (for example, RSS).

NYT reports online display advertising having a tougher time than paid search in weak economy. “The new advertisers are more cautious about requiring some sort of proof or evidence that something is working,” reports GM of WeatherChannel.

More thoughts on Microsoft Jellyfish CashBack.

Microsoft will offer cash back to users who make purchases after using Live search. IMHO, you can’t buy user loyalty.

Two thumbs up for the Amazon Kindle. Excellent UI.

Will defaulting automatic match to “on” help or hurt the bulk of Google advertisers?

For the first time, Google nudges Yahoo out of the top spot as most popular US site.

Focus your efforts on merchandising the first twenty pages of your catalog, your website home page, and website top-level product category pages with order starters.

Your current nav and prodcat categories make good sense to you. Have you considered if a different categorization might make more sense to your users?

Bidding by margin rather than sales has many benefits, particularly for retailers with a diverse mixture of products.

Wondering if your site visitors are satisfied and how you can help them? We’re fans of Avinash’s 3 question primary purpose survey. A new free tool makes it easier to ask these questions on your own site.

Heading to ACCM Orlando in a couple of weeks? Give us a holler if you’d like to meet up to talk paid search or website effectiveness. We look forward to leading several sessions at the show and connecting with old and new friends.

Ryan will be presenting some key tactics for managing an effective paid search program.

Looking at Q1 numbers for our client base, Google continues to gain paid search market share.

A small mathematical model to help understand the relationship between never-mails and the bottom line.