Category: Web Effectiveness

My interview with Lance Loveday of Closed-Loop Marketing

As a consumer, if a banner ad, or a search ad, catches my eye, why wouldn’t I click on it? The key is that in either case just getting me to click isn’t a win. It’s a two part process: 1) Get my attention, 2) Sell to me.

I’ve recently noticed Chrome’s “Destination Search” doesn’t work for sites with unconventional search-form HTML. Perhaps there’s a broader lesson there.

“An entire generation of web analytics experts are being trained by Google to analyze business exactly the way Google wants your business to be analyzed.”

In the next few days, Google will release an open source browser named Chrome.

A big public “Thank You!” to all our clients who made our Client Summit a smashing success!

The Rimm-Kaufman Group, a Charlottesville-based search marketing agency, has been named to Inc. Magazine’s list of the Top 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America.

This year’s gathering is being held September 15-17 in Las Vegas. RKG will be leading roundtables and providing 1:1 Website Critiques. Hope to see you there.

While savvy shoppers probably recognize “voucher” as a synonym for “coupon”, “voucher” may avoid the flow-destroying, avoid-being-a-sucker obligatory google coupon search. Nobody wants the nagging doubt they may overpaid.

Some thoughts on a recent Shop.org thread: should online retailers pitch their channel as a money-saving response to that increasingly costly drive to the mall?

Site search is a conversation, a chance to listen to your customer and respond. Tune it up, and it has the potential to be one of the most ROI-positive investments you’ll make in your site. Is your site search providing maximum return?

Ever wondered how Google decides questions ranging from how many results to serve on a page, to the amount of whitespace with which to pad the logo and the most effective color with which to tint the sponsored link box at the top of the page?

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

Two thumbs up for the Amazon Kindle. Excellent UI.

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?

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.

Two in-the-cloud apps I find really useful are TripIt and HighRise. What both apps have in common how cleverly they use email for input.

Providing searchers what they really want also gets retailers what they really want: more sales.

Good FastCompany article on the downfall of the House Of AOL. Worth a read.

Be unique in your merchandising and value proposition, not on where you put your site search box. Testing and usability labs show that conversion suffers when users can’t find site elements where they expect them to be.

I recorded my NEMOA presentation and posted video.

I’ll be speaking at the Shop.org Marketing Workshop in Scottsdale, April 7 — 9.

The graph proves it conclusively: just about nobody is satisfied with their web site.

Is your site clueless about relationships? Take a look at your sign-up processes and embrace drip irrigation marketing.

It’s taken a few more days than expected, but I’m just about dug out from the Internet Retailer Web Design ‘08 show. The most interesting takeaway from this trip: retailers aren’t yet testing their sites.