The CLM Blog

Screen Resolution: Should You Give a Damn?

2008-06-23T17:42:26Z

Screen resolution.

No, I’m not talking about how Hi-Def your HDTV is. (Although I’m sure you’d be happy to tell me.)

Yes, I’m talking about your online audience’s display resolution. While the subject sounds much more stale than your HDTV, it just might help afford you an upgrade.

Don’t Design Outside of the Box

Many designers seem to design without giving any thought to the visible width and height of the end users’ display. Having dabbled in design myself, I have also been guilty as charged, many times over.

As technology advances, enabling screen resolutions to grow and costs to drop, the problem of designing sites too large to fit users’ screens seems to have lessened, but it is still a problem. As your users’ screens get larger, guess what? So does your designer’s, and probably at an even greater rate.

In fact, right now I am staring at a screen that takes up half of my desktop and has a resolution of 1920 x 1200. I’m pretty confident that mine is bigger than yours, and unfortunately there’s a decent chance my design will reflect that.

Of course if you are a true purist you will say that one should always design using a fluid layout, like Jakob Nielson points out. While I completely agree in theory, in practice, designers are too meticulous about their layouts to let them be stretched, squashed, poked and prodded at.

What Screen Resolution Should I Design For?

Note: The following statistics were taken from W3CSchools.

Display Resolution Statistics:

Yes, many more people are using high resolution monitors, but the majority of people are viewing web sites at 1024 x 768 resolution.

So, design for 1024 x 768, and remember the browser window takes up a lot of that real estate.

Personally I try to use 960 for the width. I attended a few Cameron Moll sessions last year at WDW Seattle, and his argument for using 960 was a good one. It’s divisible by 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, and 16 which means your grid options are endless, and of course it fits within the most popular 1024 width.

That’s all fine and good, and isn’t too shocking, but what is unfortunate is how many designers ignore the arguably even more important height dimension.

If you need to keep content above the fold, I would use 525 as your line of demarcation. This is especially important for landing pages where the call-to-action needs to be ‘in your face.’

Yes, You Should Give a Damn About Screen Resolution

Look at this example.

Using 1024 x 768 for my display resolution, I performed a search on Google for ‘kids toys’ and clicked on this recognizable brand in the Sponsored Links. This is what I saw above the fold:

No, the giant in-your-face area is not clickable.

If you were to scroll down you’d see a couple of smaller call-to-action areas that are, but you’ve already lost me.

First of all, that whole area should be clickable, but minimally the primary call-to-action NEEDS to be above the fold. If the designer had tested this on the most common screen resolution, I think they would have made some different decisions.

In contrast I did a search for Luxury Cars and every one I checked out worked well on my screen:

I would change a few things on this landing page, but the point is the designer got all of the pertinent information above the fold.

I will concede that it’s much safer now to design web pages and landing pages bigger, but look at the statistics, decide where your target audience most likely falls, and then be sure to test your designs before launch.

In Your Face, Angelina Jolie!

2008-06-12T22:26:27Z

OK, a little background: Sandra and I did a webinar for Aquent last month, and had over 2000 people register to attend. We thought that was pretty great. They also mentioned they were going to also put our slides up on SlideShare, but we didn’t think too much about that at the time.

In a follow-up post from the Aquent blog, Matt Grant noted that SlideShare had featured our presentation on the home page at one point, and that over 8000 people had viewed it so far. Wow. As Sandra said, we’d have spent more time on those slides if we knew they were going to get that kind of play. Anyhow, I went over to SlideShare to check it out and halfheartedly thought “I wonder if we’re on the Most Viewed list.” But we weren’t… Wait, that only shows the current day’s most viewed. What if I click This Week? Bingo:

That’s 8595 views for our presentation vs. 7354 views for Ms. Jolie.

As it’s taken me two weeks to complete this post due to a blog platform issue, my fifteen minutes of fame are long gone now. But still… to have our presentation get more views than something titled “Angelina Jolie Pictures” feels like a pretty major accomplishment. Especially with such unalluring title slide.

And now we’re the 6th Most Viewed for the month, still just ahead of Angelina. See it for yourself, before we roll off.

Maybe there’s a market for this whole Web Design for ROI thing after all…

Lance’s Interview with Shopify/Jaded Pixel

2008-05-01T20:06:57Z

While at SXSW in March, I ran into Shannon McKarney from Jaded Pixel, the company behind the popular Shopify hosted e-commerce platform. Shannon asked if she could interview me for the Jaded Pixel blog and I agreed. I’m cross-posting the interview below. The original is here.

What inspired you to write the book?
We were struck by how many of the sites we worked with suffered from the same design and usability problems. But that was really a symptom of the way people think about and manage their sites. So in addition to providing some concrete design guidelines, we wanted to try to change the way people think about web design. Personally, I wanted more people to see the money they’re leaving on the table by not designing their sites well.

How the Book Was Born
I had just finished a presentation on Designing for Conversion at Web Design World in Seattle in July 2006 and was answering some audience questions in front of the stage afterward when a kind but serious-looking gentleman handed me his card and said “I really enjoyed your presentation. How’d you like to write a book about it?” A quick glance at his card identified him as Michael Nolan, Sr. Acquisitions Editor at Peachpit Press/New Riders. After a stunned silence while my mind fixated on the long-held perception that ‘I don’t write so good’, I smiled crookedly at him and said with all the gravitas and certainty I could muster “Ummmmm… Sure?”

After that inauspicious start I managed to write a book proposal, get it approved by the editorial team at New Riders, and built out a schedule and outline. I was on my way. Then it hit me: “Writing a book is hard. There’s no way I’m going to be able to write a book while managing a business, keeping clients satisfied enough to continue paying me, and being a decent husband and father to my 2-year old son. And I’m certainly not going to get it done on my own before my twin-pregnant wife delivers seven months from now.” Fortunately, the obvious solution to my problem was sitting in the next office.

I’ve been fortunate to have Sandra Niehaus, our VP User Experience and Creative Director here at Closed Loop Marketing, as a friend and colleague for the last three years. In that time, she’s bailed me out of more jams than I can count. And when I proposed the idea of coauthoring this book together, she did it yet again. In retrospect, I can’t imagine trying to write a book like this without Sandra. She brings a designer’s eye and real-world Web design and programming experience that is crucial to conveying so many of the concepts in this book. She also art-directed the whole thing, no small thing for a graphic-rich book about design. In a nutshell, anything good in this book was probably Sandra’s idea. I take full responsibility for everything else.

You have a great approach in the book - you talk about what you’ve seen; you say what will help people with these issues; then you say “stop reading and try this!” and give examples to really bring it home to the reader. Where did this approach come from and what’s the feedback been on it?
I wish I could say our approach was the result of a grand vision we had from the start. But the reality is that we iterated on it for months. We wanted the book to reflect the design philosophy we advocate, so it seemed appropriate to have a strong call to action component. In trying to come up with a name for that section, one of us said “The effect we’re going for this is to have people stop reading and try whatever it is we’re recommending.” So that’s how we came up with that heading. Incidentally, the hardest part of writing the book was figuring out how to structure the content – just like designing a good site.

What were some of the biggest website design “fails” that you’ve seen in your career? (naming no names, of course)
My favorite one is when we were reviewing a client’s shopping cart and got to step 3 of their 4-step checkout process only to find no way to get to step 4. They’d inadvertently commented out the ‘Continue’ button a few days earlier, so it was impossible for someone to actually buy anything on the site. And they wondered why sales were down…

You’ve had a very diverse background before you got to the web space. How do you think that influences the way you look at web design?
I’m not a designer or a programmer, so I don’t see the same things that most Web professionals see when I look at a site; I only experience the interface itself. In that way I think I’m more representative of most Web users. But my background in economics compels me to think through the implications that the user experience has on the web metrics and the business metrics of the organization behind the site I’m reviewing. So I sort of reverse engineer the business model of every site I see and think of ways to tweak the site to help them improve their metrics.

What’s next on the horizon for you?
I’m most focused now on growing my company. We do a lot of Search Engine Marketing and Conversion Optimization work, which is a lot of fun and fulfills our goal of helping organizations get more business benefit out of their sites. On the publishing front, we’re starting to play with video. My sense is that some well-produced multimedia videos would do an even better job at conveying the principles we recommend than 2-D static book format. I’m also speaking at various conferences, which I really enjoy.

Have you seen any Shopify stores that exemplify good design?
I just bought a T-shirt from the Tesla Motors site because I can’t afford one of their cars just yet. There was one unique element of the checkout process that really stood out as a best practice. When I was entering in my payment information there, a nice green check image that said something like “OK” dynamically appeared when I entered the last digit of my credit card number. I thought that was a brilliant way to minimize the risk of typos and reassure people that they at least had entered the right number of characters into that field. I hadn’t seen that before, but it was a really nice touch that I think reinforces credibility at a critical point in the checkout process.

Is it better to have a PPC ad link to a landing page or a product page? Or does it really matter?
I hate to sound like a consultant, but it depends. I’ve seen situations where product pages worked best, cases where custom landing pages worked best and instances when there’s been only a negligible difference between the two. There are too many variables involved for there to be a hard and fast answer that applies to everyone. But it absolutely matters, because the potential gain in conversion and revenue can be substantial.

The only way to know is to test. Fortunately, the PPC engines make it extremely easy to test. Just run two identical ads in the same Ad Group, link each of them to different landing pages you want to test and see which page converts better. Note that you may need to change your Campaign settings to have each ad rotate equally. After you’ve run your test for a while, you can use this tool to make sure you’ve captured enough data to achieve statistical significance:
http://www.usereffect.com/split-test-calculator

Regardless of where you’re sending your traffic, there are almost always some things you can do to increase your conversion rates.

Do you think the choice of payment partner (PayPal, Protx, Google Checkout etc) affects users willingness to purchase?
Assuming you have a reliable provider, I don’t think it makes much difference who your payment partner is, so long as the checkout functionality a) works, and b) works the way people expect. The problem I see with some sites is that they play up their payment partner too much, assuming that doing so buys them some credibility. But I think that does more harm than good in most cases, as it risks of introducing doubts for users they wouldn’t otherwise have. So a user’s inner monologue might go something like this:

“This site seems otherwise professional and credible, but why do they feel the need to tell me who processes their payments? I’ve never really thought about that before. Should I care about it? And I don’t recognize the name of that processing company. Who’s the company behind this site again? Maybe I should shop somewhere else.”

Payment processing is a utility function, like electricity. So I’d talk about it as much as I talk about my local utility with guests to my house (not at all). I’d argue that your customers shouldn’t even be aware of who your payment partner is, because most people just don’t care.

Can you please talk about websites bounce rate and what to do to avoid this common problem? Could you give some tips on how to deal with this issue in Blogs?
Great question. High bounce rates drive me crazy, because they’re usually easy to improve once you understand why they’re happening. But doing so involves putting yourself in the shoes of your customers. And most of us aren’t wired to be able to see things through other peoples’ eyes very easily.

At a high level, a high bounce rate is usually indicative of a user making a snap decision upon landing at a new site that the site doesn’t have what they’re looking for. The problem is that people make these judgments almost instantly, based on visual cues and the presence or absence of trigger words (the words they expect to see that indicate “Aha! That’s what I’m looking for.”).

So how do you reduce bounce rates? There are countless ways, but I’ll discuss two important ones. First, we recommend simplifying the design as much as possible. Too much busy-ness and visual noise easily overwhelms people and requires them to think, which is bad. See my favorite book on web usability: “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. It may seem counterintuitive, but fewer more obvious navigation options and use of white space can reassure people that this site is easy to use. So resist the temptation to cram as much as possible on to your pages and cut out the clutter.

Second, think about creating a visual hierarchy and flow to your content that reflects the relative importance of each content element to the customer. This requires prioritizing your design and content elements so a user can quickly tell which information is most important without having to read everything on the page. Think about how the content is prioritized on the front page of a newspaper, with a few large headlines, more smaller headlines and subheads, and then story copy. Try to achieve that level of easy scannability with your web pages. Because like it or not, very few people actually read everything on your pages. And in many cases, they won’t even try unless you make it easy for them.

What is considered to be a ‘good’ bounce rate for a hard-goods e-commerce site?
That’s impossible to say (that too many variables thing again). Also different analytics systems report the number differently, so a 50% bounce rate on Google Analytics might be reflected as a 60% bounce rate on HitBox, for example. I try not to focus on a fixed goal for an acceptable bounce rate. My goal is always to improve from where we are using whatever analytics we have available. The absolute number is less important than having a benchmark against which to measure progress.

What are your 5 top tips for designing a website to be more ROI friendly? What’s the 1 thing that everyone should take the time to do?
Read Chapter 3 of my book…?

I’ve provided a few tips above. The one thing everyone should do is sit down and write a web site strategy. That simple act of getting your goals, strategies, target audiences, tactics, key success metrics, etc. down on paper is extremely powerful. To make it super easy, we’ve created a web site strategy template for you to use, available here.

There are also some sample chapters of the book on that site, if you want to get some more design tips.

How Important is Google PageRank for shopping websites and what is the best strategy to up ones page rank?
If you’re trying to attract organic search traffic, then getting your pages indexed by Google is definitely key, as is gaining link popularity (inbound links) to your site as a whole and to key pages in particular. But I don’t obsess about the PageRank score that the Google Toolbar provides, as Google has stated it is not accurate and the score it provides is based on data from roughly six months ago. Better to track your rankings for your most important keywords and keep an eye on your link popularity overall. There are some free tools at www.MarketLeap.com that can help.

What is the best way to turn people who need a website into clients? We know a lot of people need sites, but they are hesitant to have one built.
I don’t have as much experience with that, as we only work with clients who have sites already. In fact, my company’s unofficial tagline is “We don’t make web sites, we make web sites better.” Which I think is a ripoff of an old BASF commercial…

If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m a contrarian. So my natural tendency is to avoid selling to people generally. There is so much business to be had that I’d rather focus on tapping into the huge and growing demand that already exists for help moving online rather than try to persuade the recalcitrant few who need to be convinced of the obvious. On those occasions where I do have to convince people why they need to have an online presence, I demonstrate how their competitors are eating their lunch. For whatever reason, that’s a much bigger motivator than all the charts, industry data and general business case. And if I really believe they need to be online and there’s a decent revenue opportunity, I’m not afraid to work on a pay-for-performance/revenue share basis. A willingness to put some skin in the game to reduce the level of risk for a client can be pretty compelling as well. But that gets risky pretty fast, so we’re very selective about when we offer to work on a P4P basis.

Now that we have services such as Shopify, which make delivering a simple e-shop to market so quick, how important is market research is in this context?
The cost of trying and failing is certainly a lot lower than it’s ever been, which is good in that it encourages some risk-taking. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do your homework ahead of time. Know the market, the pricing, the competition, and so on. That research is pretty easy to do. You can do most, if not all, of it yourself for free. But beyond the basics, the biggest way to differentiate yourself online is via the user experience. And to deliver a truly compelling user experience requires you to understand your customers intimately. In my experience, the best way to do that is to conduct live usability testing, a form of research that doesn’t get nearly the attention it should. The simple act of watching someone use your site while thinking out loud can be profound. The insights you can gain from testing as few as five people can make the difference between a site that does well and a site that leads its category. If there’s one common factor between the sites we’ve worked on that have done the best online, it’s that they’ve all done some form of user testing.

We hear a lot about semantic XHTML, W3C standards, tableless designs etc. How important do you think these ideas? Will the underlying XHTML, CSS and Javascript affect conversions or is it just the visual appearance of the site that is important?
As with the choice of payment processor, the technology behind a site is less important from a conversion standpoint than whether it works and how well it helps users achieve their goals. What bothers me is when I see the gratuitous use of an advanced technology when it isn’t really required and doesn’t contribute to the site owner or users’ goals. For example, a major technology client of ours implemented AJAX expand/hide controls on long blocks of text on a few pages of their site. When we asked why, they hemmed and hawed for a while before finally admitting they just wanted to use AJAX because it was Web 2.0 (I’m still not sure what that really means). But in doing so they broke a decades-old convention in human computer interaction (scrolling) and likely confused the heck out of most of their visitors.

Lest you think I’m against using the latest technologies, here’s an excellent use of AJAX on Amazon.

Thanks to Shannon and the whole Shopify crew for a fun interview and for helping to promote the book. More about the book at www.wd4roi.com.

Interview of Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus at SXSW

2008-04-03T22:29:09Z

While at the SXSW Interactive Festival last month, Lance and I were interviewed about our book, Web Design for ROI. The interview has been posted to YouTube, but in case you’d like to save yourself a few clicks here it is, in two parts. Our interviewer is fellow New Riders author Charles Wyke-Smith.

Part 1:

Part 2:

More New Riders Author Interviews

For more interviews of New Riders authors on web design and other web-related topics, please visit their YouTube Channel:

New Riders YouTube Channel >

Closed Loop Marketing Partners with Widemile Inc. on New Multivariate Testing Solution

2008-03-18T23:07:02Z

I’m very pleased to announce Closed Loop Marketing’s partnership with Widemile, Inc. Closed Loop Marketing is one of thirteen leading agencies invited to use the beta-release of Widemile’s new multivariate optimization platform.

Designed and developed with partners in mind, Widemile’s new optimization solution will allow Closed Loop Marketing to offer our clients a robust, enterprise-level multivariate testing platform that integrates smoothly with our Paid Search, Conversion Optimization, and SEO services.

As long-time advocates of site testing and optimization, we’ve helped a wide variety of clients improve the effectiveness of their landing pages, sales funnels, and other key site areas. When we combine testing with SEM campaign optimization, the result is a dramatic, end-to-end improvement in quality traffic, conversions, and ROI for our clients.

About Widemile

Based in Seattle, Washington, Widemile is a leading provider of site testing and optimization technologies. Widemile’s third-generation software-as-a-service (SaaS) multivariate optimization system is based on open standards, includes proprietary testing and analytic techniques, and is designed to exceed mission-critical enterprise standards for security, stability, scalability and performance.

And I can also say, having worked with them in the past, that the Widemile team is a group of super-smart, high-quality people. We at CLM are excited to participate in this beta-release, and look forward to a long and rewarding partnership with Widemile.

More information:

SXSW Interactive Festival - THE Place to Be.

2008-03-17T17:35:48Z

Some quick stats from the SXSW Interactive Festival, to give you some idea what it was like:

Verbal NDA’s given, between Lance and myself: 6
Movie stars seen: at least 5 that we know of
Tradeshow schwag items gathered, each: about 500,000
Tradeshow schwag items that were actually cool: 3
Best - but least effective - tradeshow schwag item: magnetic buzzing balls handed out by a company whose name I can’t remember
Internet-related company founders, coders, financers, and top executives seen: hundreds
Best sessions: Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, talking openly about how the company reached the success it has; Jared Spool, illustrating with magic tricks the importance of illusion and magic in meeting users’ needs; Guy Kawasaki, moderating a panel discussion on social media.
Lance’s top memories: meeting Guy Kawasaki; dinner at Vespaio; screening “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”.
My top memories: Seeing Helen Hunt speak; watching the Zappos.com team appear out of nowhere to hand out hundreds of rain ponchos when the weather turned bad
Minutes of boredom: 0

Many people have heard of the SXSW (South by Southwest) Music Festival, which is where many bands have been discovered and gone on to fame. Newer and somewhat less well-known are the SXSW Film and SXSW Interactive Festivals. Lance and I were lucky enough to attend both the Film and Interactive festivals last week, due to having our pitch to present on our book, Web Design for ROI, accepted.

SXSW Interactive is a festival of doers. This is where programmers, designers, entrepreneurs, executives, and financiers all gather to meet, exchange ideas, and have a great time together. It’s a gathering of people who make things happen, and the energy is intoxicating.

An example: During Jared Spool’s talk, he showed a screenshot from a large, well-known site of an interactive solution he especially admired. From the back of the room came an excited shout — “I wrote that!” and Jared had the young man stand for applause.

Another example: During a frustrating round-table discussion on how to measure the success of social media/Web 2.o marketing efforts, one of the participants burst out, “Isn’t this what we’re here to do? Isn’t this what we come to SXSW for? To get together and come up with a solution?” Heads nodded in agreement.

Some images from SXSW

Lance and I presented on our book Saturday morning at the Adobe Day Stage. Here we’re waiting for the moderator to introduce us. (Photo credit: veesees, on Flickr).

Austin’s 6th Street, which is lined with eating, drinking, and live-music-listening establishments. You can see a crowd of people waiting to get into a theater to screen one of the Festival films.

A top-down view of the popular Interactive Playpen Area, full of legos and other building materials. Every day would see new towers and other strange creations rise and fall.

Guy Kawasaki moderates a panel on social media. In addition to being an all-around cool guy with books and companies to his name, he’s also super-funny. “I believe a presentation should first be entertaining, then informative,” he grinned as he introduced the panel. “So you may not learn a lot, but you’ll sure have a good time.”

Helen Hunt answers questions about her new film, which she directed and stars in, “Then She Found Me.” Classy lady, and awesome movie.

In a brilliant demonstration of how Zappos.com is “a customer service company that happens to sell shoes,” when the weather turned into a nasty rainstorm, dozens of Zappos.com employees, including CEO Tony Hsieh (pictured here), appeared out of nowhere to hand out hundreds of branded rain ponchos. Within minutes, the Zappos.com brand was everywhere you looked, covering dry and happy people.

Jared Spool’s popular session included several magic tricks. Here, Jared works with members of the audience to demonstrate the power of illusion.

Sunday afternoon Lance and I were interviewed by our publisher, New Riders Press, for a video podcast - now available free (what else?) in two places: iTunes and Peachpit.com (tip: iTunes is a much faster download).

We were interviewed by a fellow New Riders author, the irrepressible Charles Wyke-Smith, author of Stylin’ with CSS and Codin’ for the Web

SXSW 2009: Here We Come

For those of you who missed SXSW Interactive this year, here are some SXSW Interactive Podcasts. We’re already seriously entertaining the idea of making SXSW our annual Closed Loop Marketing company party. Of course, as our ever-vigilant John Evans pointed out, that might mean no Christmas/New Year’s party for us this year, right? Hmmm. Might be worth it.

SMX West - Search Marketing, But Hot

2008-03-16T22:26:29Z

Now that we’ve had a chance to catch our collective breath at CLM, here’s a quick look back at SMX West, the hot new search marketing conference and expo co-chaired by Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman.

SMX West was held Feb. 26-28, and despite the early calendar date was heavily and enthusiastically attended. News had evidently spread about the success of the inaugural SMX conference, SMX Advanced, which was held in Seattle last summer (and is scheduled for June 3-4, 2008).

Day 1: Danny kicked off the event with a rousing and inspiring keynote address on the future of search titled “Web 3.0, 4.0 and Beyond”, followed by breakout sessions. The sessions are generally a combination of short presentations (5 - 15 minutes each presenter) followed by a question & answer / panel discussion period. In the afternoon, our very own Amy Konefal presented on the topic of Avoiding PPC Pitfalls on a panel with Addie Connor from Course Advisor, Inc. and David Szetela from Clix Marketing, moderated by Matt Van Wagner.

Day 2: I missed the morning keynote prepping for my turn to present. I presented “Getting More from Multivariate Testing” on a “Wonder Twins” panel about MVT and landing pages. The session was moderated by Gord Hotchkiss, with co-panelists Jonathan Mendez, formerly of Omniture Offermatica, newly from RAMP Digital; Seth Rosenblatt of Interwoven; Jon Diorio from Google Website Optimizer; and Gregg Makuch from Widemile. It took me a few minutes to realize I was the only panelist NOT from an MVT platform company. Cool.

More great sessions and hallway discussions, followed by the Google Groove party, which disappointingly closed down promptly at 10pm before any of us could get up the nerve to do Karaoke. Fun time, though, and we came away with some of the famous Google glow-in-the-dark cups.

Day 3: The keynote this day was a panel discussion moderated by Chris Sherman and Gord Hotchkiss. The panel included one of my own personal heros, Peter Norvig (and how is it that Google’s snapping up so many of the scientists I admire?) who I was honored to meet briefly after the keynote session. Also on the panel were Brad Goldberg from Microsoft and Dr. Larry Heck from Yahoo! In the afternoon Lance Loveday presented with co-panelist Shari Thurow, author of Search Engine Visibility, in two sessions - one on “Search and Usability - They Can (and Should) Coexist”, the other a “Usability Checkup” session examining live sites.

All in all, SMX West was a top-notch search conference. Well-run and organized, with an overall high session quality. If you get a chance to go next time, do it.

Are You Missing Out on “Low Hanging Links”?

2008-03-12T16:37:33Z

When we help organizations optimize their websites for organic search, one of the first things we do is look for “low-hanging fruit”. Is there a technology or architectural decision that’s inhibiting the search engines’ access to content? Are the website’s page titles adequately descriptive and do they include targeted keywords? Quite simply, we start with the basics.

The same approach is often the case with link building. For all the recent hype and arguments regarding the various methods for acquiring links (which I will gladly stay out of), we typically find opportunities for acquiring new inbound links or optimizing existing links staring us in the face. A favorite source of these “low hanging links” comes from partner sites. I’m not talking about traffic partners. I’m talking about strategic partners, distribution partners, business service providers, etc.|

Existing Links are “Low Hanging Links”
Case in point: I recently worked with a software company on initiating a link building effort. Checking their existing inbound links, I found there were already a number of links from high-quality, authoritative sites, many of them partner sites. But in almost every case, the partner link was a hyperlinked logo from the “Partners” page to my client’s homepage. If there was clickable text, it was always my client’s brand. If there was other accompanying text it was, without fail, product babble about synergistic, scalable solutions. In short, there was not a targeted keyword in sight – which is bad news for building relevant link popularity.

I also asked our client about other partners. Turns out they have an army of additional partners (primarily resellers) that can (and should) be linking to them. Another missed opportunity.

With all this low-hanging fruit available, why do so many companies work (or pay) to acquire new links when they haven’t optimized the links they’ve already got? Why start down the time-consuming path of requesting links from third-party sites? These take multiple rounds of communication and will often have a lower success rate. Bottom line: it’s almost always easier to get someone to modify a link than add a new one.

Why Are Low Hanging Links Often Missed?
Low-hanging links are typically missed for the same reason simple on-page optimization opportunities are missed: SEO is not ingrained throughout the organization. SEO (and link building) remains something that is “handled” by the marketing team, web team, or technology team. That team sprinkles their magic SEO dust around the server room and the site miraculously shoots to the top (its rightful place, mind you).

In the case of partner links, responsibility for acquiring these links often lies with those who know little to nothing about SEO and are certainly not held accountable for SEO results. Partner links are often acquired by Managers of Strategic Partnerships or sales staff. It’s just something that is done in an automatic and template-driven fashion. Thinking it through and getting the right link to the right place with the right text is both confusing and time-consuming. They don’t have time for it and frankly, may not care.

Why doesn’t the SEO team step in and optimize these links? Maybe it’s a turf issue. Maybe there’s a lack of knowledge about the existence of these links by those responsible for SEO. Maybe it’s part of the larger confusion regarding where “link building” as a whole really belongs. Is it PR? Is it web communications?

Whatever the specific reason, reality requires that you step in and do something about it.

How To Capture Low Hanging Links

First, you need to identify your partner link opportunities. Review the existing links from your partners and identify partners not yet linking to your site. While this may be a bit easier for those in the business-to-business space, there are plenty of opportunities in the business-to-consumer world as well. If you’re lacking links from a selection of strategic partners, identify your resellers, suppliers, service providers (e.g. legal firm, accounting firm, etc.), etc. as potential candidates.
Get support. Educate those responsible for getting links on why this is important and how to do it properly. Make the case. Flatter them with the power “their links” will have. Do what it takes to get buy in. You may even need to offer to work directly with the partner on the link execution. Sales managers may have no interest in doing extra work for something that doesn’t impact their commissions, but they’re likely to let you do it.
If possible, put a link requirement into partner contracts. Require your partner to implement a link with a mutually agreeable implementation. Try to avoid reciprocal linking requirements. While a reciprocal link with an authoritative site is better than nothing, its impact is much less than the one-way link.
Get your links out from behind the results of a “partner search” tool. This is particularly common on larger sites with a plethora of partners. Your link being served through a database-driven tool that requires users to submit a request equals no link at all.
Ensure these links have targeted keyword-rich anchor text as well as relevant copy surrounding the link. If all your inbound links are anchored with the text “visit our partner at www.yourcompanyurl.com”, you are helping to ensure you rank #1 for your brand – which is likely already the case.
Use page targeting. Don’t just get links that point to the homepage. Obtain links to the page you are targeting to rank for each particular keyword.

What Next?
As you begin, please keep in mind how you got all those “low hanging links” in the first place. Be aware there might be some issues your organization will need to overcome in order to establish an effective SEO program and build relevant link popularity.

At the end of the day, SEO is everyone’s responsibility. It is a long-term effort that requires nearly the entire organization’s participation and support. Use the low hanging link guidelines above as both an opportunity to get additional links and to discuss why SEO needs more visibility and consideration throughout your organization.

Now jump in and get to it.

Dear Google, May I Help You Fix Your 404 Error Page?

2008-03-03T16:02:37Z

SEO practitioners and search engines have had an uneasy relationship at times. One might even say the discourse has occasionally been strained.

And why not? Search engines do so much for us who work in the search industry, and how often do we do anything for them in return? Other than facilitating the entry of high-quality sites into their indexes and routing millions of dollars in revenue through their ad platforms, practically nothing.

Until now.

At last, I’ve found a way to thank Google for all the years of employment and high-quality search results. I’m going to help Google fix its 404 error page.

Here it is, and yes, it needs help:

I ran across it on March 1st while helping a friend list her new business in Google Local Search. I’d found the page she needed, the Google Local Business Center, at this URL: http://www.google.com/local/add/lookup?hl=en-US&gl=US, and being the inquisitive geek I am I had to strip down the URL and see if there was anything at http://www.google.com/local. Evidently there wasn’t. All of those URL conniptions aren’t really necessary, of course - you can get the same error page with any bad url, including http://www.google.com/badurl.

Improving Google’s 404 Error Page

As you can see, there are quite a few problems with this page, both from a search engine optimization and a user experience perspective.

SEO Recommendations for 404 Error Pages:
A search engine robot may encounter a 404 error page by following an outdated link from a third-party site. Providing a clear, keyword-strewn path into your site helps ensure robots aren’t turned away at the door.

Add keyword-rich links that point to important areas of Google.com you’d like search engines to find. In the case of Google.com, the main Search page would be a natural choice.
Include some brief descriptive text and your company name. A tip - don’t spell it out a letter at a time like this:

User Experience Recommendations for 404 Error Pages:
Google Webmaster Guidelines clearly emphasize the importance of the user experience. “Make pages for users, not for search engines,” is a classic quote. Why is this important for 404 error pages? Because this page may be the first experience a visitor has of your site and your company. It’s a crucial moment to make a good impression.

Brand your page with your current company logo and site design
Include some clear, apologetic text that explains what just happened and suggests some possible solutions.
Include some brief promotional text in case the visitor is not familiar with your company.
Provide a search function, so visitors can try locating the item they’re seeking in this manner
Provide links to site pages that visitors would find helpful
Include a “Help” or “Contact” link in case all other options fail

A Great Example - Yahoo!’s 404 Error Page
Ever curious, I wondered how Yahoo! handled 404 errors. I typed in http://www.yahoo.com/badurl, and with some small amount of ironic glee, discovered it is a near-perfect example of a 404 error page:

Nicely branded, clear and apologetic, with helpful instructions and links to the Yahoo! home page and main Services page. A search box is placed front and center. And as if all of that isn’t considerate enough, after about 10 seconds the page refreshes, taking visitors to the main Yahoo home page.

Thanks for all the fish!
It takes time and effort to create a 404 error page that’s friendly to both search engines and visitors, but it’s well worth the trouble. Google, I hope these guidelines and example are helpful for you. I’ve really appreciated the opportunity to be of assistance.

Closed Loop Marketing team members to speak at SMX West and Dscoop

2008-02-20T23:06:33Z

February is a busy month for our team of speakers at Closed Loop Marketing. The 2008 Digital solutions Cooperative or Dscoop conference, where Lance Loveday will be speaking, takes place February 21st through February 23rd in San Diego, California. The 2008 Search Marketing Expo or SMX West is February 26th through the 28th in Santa Clara, California and will feature Lance Loveday, Sandra Niehaus and Amy Konefal, speaking on different topics within the search marketing field.

2008 Dscoop Conference

Lance Loveday will be on a panel discussing Internet Trends: What You Need to Know to Drive Your Business. At Dscoop, Lance Loveday , joined by other industry specialists, will discuss in a 90-minute session what one needs to know about internet trends. To be successful, knowledge of current and emerging Internet trends including search, blogs, forums and printing communities is essential. This session will include a how-to workshop with insights from leading interactive agencies to expand one’s business.

2008 SMX West

Amy Konefal will speak about Avoiding PPC Pitfalls. She will be joined by Addie Connor of Course Advisor Inc. When done right, pay-per-click (PPC) search ads can be a company’s most valuable marketing channel. But there are common pitfalls that can mean the difference between a campaign that bombs and one that makes a person the rock star of his or her marketing program. Fortunately, many of these are easy to fix, once people know what to look out for. This session will cover danger areas such as match types, content network ads, ego bidding, failure to track properly and more. Work shop attendees will learn how to increase their ROI on paid search.

Sandra Niehaus will co-present a session on Landing Pages & Multivariate Testing. Joining Sandra for this panel are Tom Leung of Google Website Optimize, Jonathan Mendez of OTTO Digital and Seth Rosenblatt of Optimost solutions at Interwoven. Known as the Wonder Twins Track, Landing Pages & Multivariate Testing is a session about what happens when one combines landing pages with multivariate testing tools; tools that change various elements of the page dynamically to see which tests better with people.

Lance Loveday will be joined by Shari Thurow of Omni Marketing Interactive to present SEO & Usability: They can (And Should) Coexist. In this session, within the Analytics and Usability Track, they will discuss how search engine friendly design does NOT mean human unfriendly design. In fact, done right, improving the usability of a site for visitors can also improve the SEO. This session looks at how both help each other.

Both conferences promise to be packed with vital information spanning the Search Marketing and Digital Solutions arenas.

Optimize and Promote Your Blog

2008-02-01T19:30:08Z

Agendas. Outlines. Checklists.

Seems like we’re always putting together some sort of list to make our lives easier and help keep us on track.

Here’s yet another ‘list of useful lists’ to help you optimize and promote your blog. Enjoy….

Blog Search Engine Optimization

Marketing Your Blog

Business Benefits

Now go forth and find success!

Incorporating usability tests into design

2008-01-31T19:11:15Z

What if you could inject usability test results directly into your design process - and do it quickly and easily?

Web and interface designers are in a unique and powerful position to serve as user advocates. By incorporating usability and conversion principles into design from the beginning of the process, designers can help ensure the user-friendliness and effectiveness of the end product.

Sounds great, right? But how (you may ask) can designers do this? Classes and reading are one way, of course – having a solid understanding of usability best practices and research will naturally influence design decisions. But getting from the theoretical to the applied can be a challenge, and best practices are not, in my experience, always sufficient. Ideally, each unique design is tested with representative users to validate whether it really accomplishes what’s expected.

Upcoming Articles on Usability Tests for Designers

Which brings me to a series of upcoming articles I’m writing for Notes on Design, the vibrant design community blog for the Sessions School of Design. Entitled “Quick & Easy Usability Tests for Designers,” this series will cover a number of quick, easy usability tests that designers can do in very little time and at low or no cost. The end result? Designers end up with validated designs, better end results and a growing understanding of the complex, powerful relationship between usability and design.

The first article in the series will be published next week, with four more planned to appear (one each week) thereafter, as time and schedule permit.

Check it out, and enjoy!

The Rubber Chicken Has Landed!

2008-01-15T20:27:56Z

Yesterday a very exciting package arrived here at the Closed Loop Marketing office. It was my prize for winning the People’s Choice Rubber Chicken Award in the 2007 “Columbo” Humorous Blog Post contest!

Although technically not made of rubber, “Chuck” (as we’ve all come to call him) quickly won our hearts. As you can see in the photos below, he had quite a busy first day:

Here’s Chuck the Rubber Chicken checking out my desk.

Here’s Chuck the Rubber Chicken looking for friends online.

Here’s Chuck the Rubber Chicken locating rubber worms online to use as linkbait.

And here’s Chuck the Rubber Chicken resting from his exhausting labors.

Oh, and did I mention Chuck has a rubber-band neck? And can be propelled across a break room with extreme accuracy and high speed?

I plan not to discuss his stunted rubber chicken cousin - or is it cousine? - who arrived in the same delivery…

Thanks again to Mike Blumenthal, great fun!

Closed Loop Marketing Team Members to Speak at SMX West

2008-01-10T00:28:18Z

The Santa Clara Convention Center will be hopping with search marketing specialists February 26th through the 28th for Search Marketing Expo 2008. Among the search marketing experts will be Closed Loop Marketing’s Lance Loveday, Sandra Niehaus, and Amy Konefal. Each speaking on different topics, they will address common search challenges and how to overcome them.

The first day of the conference, Amy Konefal will speak about Avoiding PPC Pitfalls. She will be joined by Addie Connor of Course Advisor Inc.
When done right, pay-per-click (PPC) search ads can be a company’s most valuable marketing channel. But there are common pitfalls that can mean the difference between a campaign that bombs and one that makes you the rock star of your marketing program. Fortunately, many of these are easy to fix, once you know what to look out for. This session will cover danger areas such as match types, content network ads, ego bidding, failure to track properly and more. You will learn how to increase your ROI on paid search in this session.

The second day of the conference, Sandra Niehaus will co-present a session on Landing Pages & Multivariate Testing. Joining Sandra for this panel are Tom Leung of Google Website Optimize, Jonathan Mendez of OTTO Digital and Seth Rosenblatt of Optimost solutions at Interwoven.
Known as the Wonder Twins Track, Landing Pages & Multivariate Testing is a session about what happens when you combine landing pages with multivariate testing tools; tools that let you change various elements of the page dynamically to see which tests better with people.

The third day Lance Loveday will be joined by Shari Thurow of Omni Marketing Interactive to present SEO & Usability: They can (And Should) Coexist. In this session, within the Analytics and Usability Track, they will discuss how search engine friendly design does NOT mean human unfriendly design. In fact, done right, improving the usability of your site for visitors can also improve your SEO. This session looks at how both help each other.

These sessions mentioned above are just a few of the many topics offered at SMX Santa Clara. The deadline for registration is coming up soon. To reserve your spot visit the SMX early bird reservation page and receive a special discount before January 12, 2008.

“Google Interiors” Wins Prestigious Rubber Chicken Award!

2008-01-07T18:09:41Z

I’m pleased as punch to announce that one of my 2007 blog posts - Google Interiors: the Day My House Became Searchable - has been awarded the highly prized 2007 “Columbo” Humorous Blog Post Award (otherwise known as the Rubber Chicken Award). Google Interiors was the People’s Choice, and Matt McGee’s Top 21 Signs You Need a Break from SEO was the Judge’s Choice.

Congrats, Matt, and thanks a ton for a fun contest, Mike!

Now to get back to my happy chicken dance…

Google Product Results Monopolizing Prime Pay-Per-Click Real Estate?

2007-12-28T22:28:13Z

Universal Search has created quite the stir in the SEO community throughout 2007. Many companies that had enjoyed living on Page 1 of Google for quite some time began seeing their precious high rankings slip down or entirely off the page as videos, images, blog posts, news stories and the like began to take over significant parcels of organic real estate.

In this continuing quest for the ideal search results layout, it seems Google is once again experimenting with its blended results - though for once, organic listings are not taking the hit…

This time around the latest blended search tweaking and testing actually has an effect on the PPC community. Over the past month, Google Product results have randomly appeared in the right hand column where PPC Sponsored Listings normally reside. Some examples:

The impact if Google should decide to keep their Product listings in this right hand column position?

Fewer PPC ads making it onto Page 1, as they are pushed farther down to make room for Product results
Even lower click-through rates for the right hand PPC ads
More fight for PPC positions 1-3 above the organic results
Potential bid inflation due to the increased demand for less PPC real estate

So for all paid search managers out there who have secretly snickered a bit over the mad SEO scramble this year, I suppose we had better sit up and start taking note! In fact, while I have only caught the occasional Product results sneaking in there, Google Blogoscoped and ValleyWag have reported instances of video even showing up in prime PPC real estate.

Next up? Product images in PPC territory? Product reviews? Product blog posts? Whatever may be on the horizon for blended search it is certainly a topic that all search engine marketers, both on the organic and the paid side, should continue to keep a close eye on in 2008.