What's New in Marketing - Issue 46, March 2006
Using deep-linking and landing pages to convert more site visitors
There are two main reasons why many site visits don’t begin on the home page. The first is down to the search engines. The robots sent out by search engines index as many of the pages on your site that they can access or handle. When searchers search, if there is a relevant match between the page and the search term entered, the search engine will often list the page deep within the site in its natural listings and users will click on that link and arrive on that page.
The second reason is down to marketers. Many marketers have found that when we advertise either online or offline, our campaigns will be more effective if they direct the response straight to a page deep within the site. This is called deep-linking. That way the site visitor has context – it is relevant to the messages that have responded and the page can be designed in a focused way to help convert more visitors to the outcome needed, whether it is a lead or a sale. We can also measure the number of visitors arriving on these pages to assess our campaign effectiveness.
Not everyone knows this jargon and actually, there's no simple answer. My definition is that landing page or microsites are:
"Specific page(s) on a website created for visitors referred from marketing campaigns which are designed to achieve a marketing outcome".
So, anything referred to as a landing page is intended to maximise conversion of visitors to this page or series of pages to a particular marketing outcome - sale, lead or change in brand metrics. Most typically, the outcome is conversion to action, typically data capture where a site visitor fills in an online form to generate a marketing lead.
Landing pages can be a series of related pages within an existing site structure as with this example of Online Travel Insurance or they can be a microsite, which is specifically setup for a campaign, typically with its own campaign URL or ‘CURL’ – an example is Norwich Union www.quotemehappy.com
Defining landing page objectives
It might be thought the objectives are simple – to convert to lead or sale. But this ignores the majority who don’t respond. Typical marketing communications objectives in order of importance are:
· Achieve registration typically to generate a lead (such as a quote for insurance in our example) which leads ultimately to sale
· Profile and qualify the site visitor in order to deliver more relevant follow-up marketing communications
· Explain the value proposition offered by the company to differentiate from other sites the visitor may visit during the buying process i.e. Answer the visitors questions
· Communicate the brand values of the organisation running the campaign
· If the visitor doesn't want to disclose their details right now, provide contact details for traditional sales channels such as a phone number, or give the visitor reasons to return to the site or engage them through other relevant content or offers
It is important to run through these objectives since sometimes it is just the two primary objectives related to data capture that mainly determine landing page design and not the secondary objectives which are also important. The majority of the visitors to the landing page won't actually convert, so it is important to give them a favourable experience of your brand also.
Measuring landing page effectiveness
Most capable web analytics systems will report on site conversion rates and page bounce rates. What is also required for a rigorous approach to improving performance, is breakdown of these metrics for different keyphrases and whether they were referred by SEO, PPC and which search engine was the source.
Conversion efficiency is a challenge, because we see on many websites that conversion rates are low (typically less than 10% for new site visitors).[1] We also see that bounce rates are often high for individual pages > 50% indicating that page content, site proposition or the product offering isn’t suitable for the visitor, or that the visitor is in the wrong place, it is poorly targeted traffic.
As a minimum, with your web analytics system you should readily be able to view data on bounce rates (the proportion of visitors who leave the page without visiting more pages) and conversion rates (the proportion of visitors who complete the intended outcome) for different referral sources (e.g. paid vs natural search vs online ads). Ideally, it should also enable you to complete A/B testing where different visitors are served different pages so differences in bounce and conversion rates can be assessed.
The zero defect approach to improving landing pages
Aiming to achieve zero defects is an established approach in manufacturing and is used in different improvement methodologies such as Total Quality Management, Kaizen and more recently Six Sigma. Technically Six Sigma means 3.4 defects per million opportunities (opportunities for failure, DPMO). Most marketers who look at this figure seem to throw up their hands in horror and say ‘that’s totally inappropriate, we’re communicating with customers with a wide range of behaviours, not widgets coming off a production line’.
But we believe that although we may never be able to reach Six Sigma in marketing, the analytical approach applies well to online marketing – it enables us to pinpoint where our communications are failing. This is particularly challenging with the scale of online marketing where we may be advertising against tens of thousands of different keyphrases and driving visitors to tens of thousands of landing pages in a catalogue. Sam Decker of Dell (http://decker.typepad.com/) is one marketer who has seen the Six Sigma light and evangelises about it.
The approach prevalent in most web analytics software is inappropriate for analysing defects because it typically involves a report of 50 or 100 pages based on a single metric such as page views, entry pages, exit pages, referrers, etc.
A more analytical approach would enable us to identify page defects by reporting at a product page level, on metrics including: bounce rates and exit rates by external and internal referrer type, conversion rate to outcome, and volume compared to other categories. Through such a multi-variate analysis of website pages, we can find the pages with the highest defect rates and greatest potential for improving results so we can focus on them.
Different types of landing page
We have to bear in mind that there are different types of landing pages that work best depending on the campaign objectives and whether it is a short-term or long-term campaign. There are two basic choices. The first is a landing page integrated into the sites structure and consistent with standard page templates and navigation for the site. The second is a landing page specifically created for the campaign with a different look and feel. Here are some of the pros and cons.
A. Landing page(s) integrated into site architecture and style
It is most efficient in terms of effort in content creation to make landing pages part of the main site information architecture. The downside is that they may not work so well in terms of converting both direct referrers and browsers navigating from elsewhere on the site. They also need to be search optimised, which may add to costs of the campaign. This is an example of integrated pages for annual travel insurance (http://www.norwichunion.com/ travel-insurance/ annual-travel-insurance).
Such landing pages in particular category or product pages use what is known as deep linking.
An example of this approach for a branding campaign is that for the BP Carbon Footprint campaign.
B. Bespoke landing pages that are not part of the main site structure or style
These are used where a more "stripped down"page than standard content is required which focuses on converting visitors from an online ad campaign. Alternatively, if it is a short-term branding campaign then it may be more straightforward to create a microsite separate from the main site with a different look and feel. This often happens where resource cannot be found to create a microsite within the main site, or it is felt that the existing site look and feel cannot deliver the brand impact required.
So this approach is used since it can potentially produce higher conversion rates or produce a microsite more consistent with the campaign goals and style. The disadvantages are that this approach requires more effort and maintenance and often result in a poorer user experience since the page will look and work differently to elsewhere in the site.
If it is a completely separate site with a separate domain, a big disadvantage of this approach is that due to the Google sandbox effect, it is not likely to be included in the search results for several months. Given this it is really essential that the site is incorporated within the same domain - for example http://www.quotemehappy.com/ redirects to the main Norwich Union site.
So, companies need to work out whether the cost of producing this type of page is offset by the potentially higher conversion rates and better campaign results. Although this approach is surpisingly quite common, I think the approach is often taken for convenience even though it is more expensive in the longer term. I know of one E-commerce manager for a multi-national technology vendor who tries to educate their hundreds of web and traditional marketing specialists to not use the bespoke landing page approach, but to always try to integrate into existing site structure.
Often though, there is not one right or wrong approach and a hybrid approach can be used, i.e. you create tailored landing pages only for high volume/high expenditure generic Adwords pages or for major offline ad campaigns.
The home page can be a landing page. Note that a landing page could potentially be the home page although this is not typically best practice. But, if a company has a limited range of products or the main campaign objective is to generate awareness rather than response. For example, online CRM vendor Salesforce.com directs visitors from Google Adwords to a country home page since it thinks this is more likely to meet its objectives.
You may have more than one ‘home page’. For many companies with diverse product category pages which may have different audiences and are promoted through offline category URLs, it’s often useful to think of each product category page as the home page.
Different referrer types
To make the landing page effective, we also need to think through the full range of places the visitor may originate. There are three main origins we need to design a landing page to accommodate:
- Online media placement. Visitors can be referred by clickthrough from any online referrer such as a search engine, online ad, affiliate site or e-mail campaign. There are two main types of landing page for these placements:
- Offline media placement. Offline ads or direct mail may have a specific campaign URL (CURL) such as www.quotemehappy.com This is the landing page for these offline referrers.
- Visitors that navigate from elsewhere on the site. Such visitors are not using the page(s) as a "landing page", but still need to be accommodated if you are using a deep linking strategy.
Ten Landing page success factors
To be effective, landing pages need to combine the following to improve the user experience and so increase conversion rates:
· Usability
· Accessibility
· Persuasion
· Develop trust in the brand
Coverage of these concepts is beyond the scope of this report and warrant their own best-practice guides. However, it is possible to distil best practice from these disciplines into the heuristics which form our guidelines - experienced search engine marketers apply these concepts all the time. Before we run through our best practice guidelines, a particular constraint related to accessibility is the platform used to access the landing page. The guidelines that follow are dependent on the users typical viewable area of screen. While many still design for a minimum of 800 by 600, the latest data on screen resolutions shows that 1024 by 768 is now most popular. However, if browsers open a new window, for example from search results page, the new window may be smaller than full-screen. It also important test for different browsers such as Mozilla Firefox which now commands 10% of site visits.
Guideline ONE. Deliver RELEVANCE.
Relevance is key to successful marketing communications in all media, but especially online where we decide how relevant a website is to us in the blink of an eye (or in 50 milliseconds to be precise, if you believe the research referenced in Nature recently on website interactions)[2].
Where the communication is not relevant we ignore it or filter it out, whether it is a result in the natural search listings or Google Adwords, the way the value proposition on a website is communicated or a simple call to action.
So we need to not only measure visitor volumes and conversion rates but to really understand where and why we are failing to deliver relevance. That is indicated by low clickthrough rates on an Adwords ad, high bounce rates from a site landing page or high abandonment rates from the shopping basket funnel.
Unlike casual visits by browsers, visitors arrive on a landing page with a directed goal or intention in mind. So the first thing you have to do is instantly show relevance to help visitors achieve that goal.
A clear headline should show relevance and also engage the visitor to scan down the page. You need to show the visitor they have selected the right place to find the brand, product, deal, information or experience they are looking for, so the headline must clearly indicate this.
Other key "relevance messages"should be readily scannable through choosing the right headlines and with different panels drawing the eye to the different areas. Tests tend to show that larger fonts give better response.
Since hitting the landing page is often the first experience of a company, we have to answer basic questions that the customer has about the company such as "Who are you?", "What do you do?", "Where are you based?""Do I trust you?"You may do these on the home page, but does the navigation on the landing page allow these questions to be answered. Standard menu options such as "About Us"or "Contact Us"can achieve these.
Guideline TWO. INTEGRATE with referral source(s).
The customer journey to your website started elsewhere. To deliver relevance also requires consistency with what they have already read elsewhere and the content must meet the expectation raised by other communications.
So in terms of message, branding and creative, the landing page needs to deliver an integrated communication. This applies particularly to offline ads, interactive ads and e-mails.
The key message on the landing page needs to be consistent with the key message of the referral source. So again, you need to show the visitor they have selected the right place to find the brand, product, deal, information or experience they are looking for, so the headline must clearly indicate this.
Guideline THREE. Provide sufficient DETAIL to support the response decision.
One of the most obvious aspects of landing pages, and one that is often not right, is that there isn't enough detailed information on which the visitor can decide to signup. Huggies do this well over several pages. At the same time, we don’t want to make the page too cluttered. Getting this balance right is the key to successful landing page design.
To help determine the right-level of information, best practice is to use design personas to identify typical information required and the gap relative to what you deliver. Also think about the level of "domain knowledge"the user has - do your technical product descriptions make sense. Also think about "tool knowledge"- where your landing page requires using additional tools what knowledge is required to use them effectively and are you providing the right explanations.
More generally as well as providing detail, the whole experience needs to be right to generate response, which brings us to…
Guideline FOUR. Start the user on their JOURNEY.
The design should make the next step clear and minimise the number of clicks required for response since every extra click required in response will generally reduce response by 10%. It is best practice to include the initial data capture on the first page, so encourage engagement as in this example of annual travel insurance (http://www.norwichunion.com/travel-insurance/annual-travel-insurance).
If the response mechanism is on another page use multiple calls-to action to gain response since some visitors will respond to images and some text hyperlinks. Make all images clearly clickable, for example by making them look like buttons.
This Marketing Sherpa case of E-Loan suggests these form-related approaches to improve the journey:
· Limiting the options on each page is an effective technique
· Grabbing attention in first 30 seconds through a headline and lead that reflects ad copy and "isn't too clever", i.e. be direct
· If it is a multi-page form, then draw users in with easier initial questions
· Allow the form to be saved part way through the quotation
· Use dynamic headlines related to referrer including search keyphrase to help deliver relevance
· Use focus groups to decide what to test - marketers who are too close to the problem may disregard factors that are important to customers
The words used to form calls-to-action are critical to create a scent trail that users of the site follow. An effective scent is delivered where the words match what the user is thinking – or what they want to know or achieve.
Guideline FIVE. Use the right PAGE LENGTH.
This is a difficult one to give guidelines on. The right copy / page length is one that minimises the knowledge gap between what the user want to know and what you tell them.
Some designers would suggest that content must fit on one page that doesn't require scrolling at 800 by 600 resolution. But short copy is often inconsistent with Guideline 1. Also tests have shown that page can be scrollable - users will scroll if they appear scrollable. However, it is best if key information include response mechanism are above the fold.
To summarise, we would say, make it short (for impulsive readers) AND long (for readers who want to read more).
Of course, the only way to get the length right is to test. This Marketing Experiments test suggested that long-copy outperformed when driving visitors to a product page from Google Adwords.
Guideline SIX. Use MEANINGFUL graphics.
Graphics must be consistent with the campaign and generate empathy for the audience. Don't understimate the importance of quality graphics - stock graphics rarely work. It is difficult to assess how graphics influence conversion rate, so the implication is test.
Guideline SEVEN. REMOVE menu options
Another guideline tends to cause disagreement. Removing menu options will often increase conversion rate since less choice of where to click is offered, but for those who don't respond will give a poor experience and prevent them browsing other parts of the site. Often a compromise is best with a reduction in menu options to top-level options only.
Guideline EIGHT. Consider using a ‘flowable’ or liquid LAYOUT design
This maximises real estate at a given resolution - Amazon do this, Orange don't.
Although this can work well for a retailer to show more products above the fold in a category, this is achieved with a loss of control of design. For landing pages, a controlled, fixed design will often work best and is most common.
Guideline NINE. Remember SEARCH marketing
There are two aspects of this. First, an offline campaign will lead to people searching on your brand or the campaign strapline. So, make sure you are using paid search to direct visitors to the relevant pages particularly during the campaign.
Second, if the page is integrated into the website and will be used in the long-term, optimise it for relevant search keyphrases using the SEO techniques covered earlier in this report.
Guideline TEN. REMEMBER the non-responders
Provide a choice for those who don't respond despite your carefully crafted landing pages. Provide a reasonably prominent (trackable) phone number or perhaps a call-back/live chat option. Also provide some options for them to browse or search elsewhere on the site.
Guideline ELEVEN. TIMITI!
TIMITI is a term coined by Jim Sterne, author of Web Metrics. It stands for Try It! Measure It! Tweak It! i.e. online content effectiveness should be reviewed and improved continuously rather than as a periodic or ad-hoc process. Because the web is a new medium and the access platforms, user behaviours and competitor approach all change continuously, what works at the start of the year will certainly not work as well by the end of the year.
Although ‘TIMITI’ may suggest ad-hoc testing and that is certainly better than no testing, structured testing is better still. The only way to be sure of what works for your audience and your market is to conduct structured tests such as usability studies, A/B testing or multivariate testing. Having the right web analytics tool is vital to this. If you are managing a large site, more sophisticated testing tools may be required. Offermatica and Optimost are two of the best known tools. At the top-end you may want to use automated real-time content targeting as provided by tools such as Touch Clarity. These display the best message and offer for the audience within a panel in real-time.
Guideline TWELVE. Consider LANDING page longevity
Landing pages are often used for short-term campaigns. If so, you need to carefully manage when they and links to them from within the navigation are expired. Risks include out-of-date offers and visitors typing in URLs which are no longer valid. Use of a custom 404 Error page is essential to manage these problems gracefully.
About the author
Dr Dave Chaffey is workshop leader for a range of one-day e-marketing training workshops from CIM:
- E-mail Marketing (www.cim.co.uk/0766)
- Running Effective E-marketing Campaigns (www.cim.co.uk/0767)
- Improving Your Results from Digital Marketing (www.cim.co.uk/1138)
Go to http://www.cimtraining.com/ for course details and online booking.
Dave Chaffey is an Internet marketing trainer and consultant for Marketing Insights Limited (http://www.marketing-insights.co.uk/). He is a prolific e-business author whose books include ‘Total E-mail Marketing’, ‘Internet marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice’ and E-business and E-commerce Management.
Read Dave Chaffey’s blog (http://www.davechaffey.com/) for E-marketing Essentials – the five “must-read” articles about Internet marketing from the hundreds Dave reads each month.
[1] http://www.davechaffey.com/Internet-Marketing/C7-Service-Quality/Conversion-rates-E-commerce
[2] http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060109/full/060109-13.html
Get the wow factor to make sure your PowerPoint is a key selling point
As a presenter, you have less than two minutes to convince your audience that you are worth watching and listening to, so you need to make sure that your presentation conveys the message and image you want to put across.
When someone makes a business presentation, their audience judges them on a lot more than simply what they are saying: how they look, how they sound, how they act – these elements are all in the mix and all need to be best-in-show to make the positive impression that wins the business.
And that is really bad news for the millions of people who every day pitch their wares on the basis of a tired old PowerPoint presentation, the bland wallpaper of everyday commerce with its bullet points and pie charts and laborious click transitions.
As audience members doze off or check their e-mail, the hapless presenter is learning one of the brutal facts of making a pitch: a dull presentation makes you look dull and it makes your product look dull.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Most people who use PowerPoint barely scratch the surface of its potential and are unaware of just what a powerful and innovative marketing and promotional tool it can be.
Forget static screen shots: in the right hands a PowerPoint presentation can bring together state-of-the-art 3D animation, embedded video clips and co-ordinated sound tracks to produce dynamic, entertaining and effective displays which grab the audience’s attention right from the start.
By freeing PowerPoint from its straight jacket of bullet points and click transitions, the power of visual presentations can come through. In presenting information on complex technical or scientific subjects - such as medical equipment - using 3D animation to actually show the procedure in operation carries the message more simply and forcefully than bullet points could hope to.
But while these techniques can produce a presentation that looks like the product of a Hollywood film studio, they are as simple to use as a standard PowerPoint and can be created on the slimmest of budgets.
An enhanced Power Point presentation that includes these kinds of features will have what I call the “Wow factor”, and in today’s competitive marketplace that is what businesses need if they are to differentiate themselves and distinguish themselves as top performers and presenters, presenting top products.
If several companies are making a pitch, it is the one that stands out that will win the business.
Although the animation and audio-visual features which can be used in PowerPoint are visually arresting, the business benefits they offer extend beyond their striking appearance. An interactive presentation will grab and hold the audience’s attention, which frees the presenter to truly market the product.
PowerPoint should be the structure on which you hang your presentation, not something that is read verbatim. If there is really interesting information, presented in a dynamic and exciting way, it really absorbs the audience. It allows the presenter to be passionate about what they are presenting.
Think how much more effective, interesting and entertaining it is to be speaking while the animation and imagery of the PowerPoint reinforces and represents what you are saying. This approach is taking the strengths of PowerPoint and then maximising them.
And why stop there? An enhanced PowerPoint presentation can be fully integrated into a company’s overall visual communication strategy. Such a strategy should cover every aspect of how a company presents itself, from its logo and business cards through to marketing materials. Even a company’s mobile phones can be incorporated, to include 3D animation and movies on mobile phones to allow impromptu one-on-one business presentations.
The presentation can also be burnt onto a CD Rom/DVD and used as a handout, bringing high impact and high user appeal. If you’ve got a good PowerPoint, make sure you get the full benefit of it by using it in every possible fashion.
About the author
Gillian O’Neil is Managing Director of KGinteractive, the business presentation specialist
What's the Next Question?
It started with, "How many hits?"Nobody knew what a hit was, but it sounded cool. It was the Internet and on the Internet, all things were cool. We all assumed it had something to do with how many people looked at our website.
But soon, people asked just what we were talking about and the truth came out. Each graphic on a page registers it's own hit to the server log, making the measuring of hits something utterly useless. We're still trying to find the individual to credit for turning hits into an acronym for How Idiots Track Success. We needed another measuring stick.
Page views were the best gauge available for determining popularity, or consumption, or success of a website. Obviously, the more page views the better. But, of course, page views are fickle. Was that a thousand people looking at one page or one person looking at a thousand pages?
So, naturally, people wanted to know how many people were coming to the site on a given day or month or hour. A bit tricky that, given the problems with people deleting their cookies at varying rates. Nonetheless, unique visitors became the question de jour.
Finally, "conversion"was on everybody's lips. What percentage of browsers could be turned into buyers? Some companies that were unclear on the concept tied quarterly bonuses to conversion rate improvement. They ignored "all other things being equal"and set about to boost the ratio. Turns out the best way to boost conversion is to stop advertising. Only happy, loyal customers bother to show up at your site, vastly improving the number of buyers compared to browsers. Conversion improves, bonus paid, website spirals out of existence.
So what comes next? What's the next, the proper question?
Oh, we know the standard questions to ask: Why did we get a spike in traffic to this section of the site for a solid week? Why are people who click through from search engines dropping out in page three of a five-page process? How much impact can we have on their success if we tweak this page? Where does our advertising spend start to experience diminishing returns? If I shorten the copy on a page by 20% does that increase customer satisfaction? DO they buy more? How much less clutter can I publish and still wrack up sales? What changes in process completion should have alarms and what should the threshold be?
There is no web analytics magic here. The standard questions are good ones and they help with incremental, continuous improvement. That's all well and good. But the best question is the next question. It's all about intuition, correlation and curiosity.
A large retailer in the US found only a small percentage of their site visitors were Macintosh users. It seemed silly to devote the necessary resources to re-develop the website for the express use of a group that made up less than 10% of visitors. As the discussion progressed about ceasing dual development to accommodate this small group, one of the technologists asked the next question: What percentage of Mac users are buyers and how does that compare to Windows users?
The answer was surprising. While Windows visitors exhibited a conversion rate around two percent, Mac users' ratio was up around 20%. That represented a healthy chunk of overall revenue. The next question had been asked and the dual development continued.
Online gaming success story William Hill noticed that only a small percentage of site visitors were viewing special, additional content. This content was expensive to create and to maintain and was on the chopping block for the new website roll out. Then somebody asked the next question: Was there something special about those visitors?
Yes there was - they were responsible for an unusually high percent of site revenue. They placed more and larger bets. Rather that bin the content, William Hill emailed the rest of their customers about the value of that content. The result was increased revenue, higher customer satisfaction, and no measurable increase in costs.
A web analytics tool does not provide a wealth of answers. Instead, it is an unending source of questions. Every good analyst uses the tools to sift through the data, searching for patterns and asking the next question. I’ll be addressing these issues at the Emetrics Summit in London in May 2006, see http://www.emetrics.org/. We’ll also be looking at what is the next question for your site.
Stay curious.
Jim Sterne is an internationally known consultant and speaker who focuses on measuring the value of the web as a medium for creating and strengthening customer relationships. Sterne has written eight books on using the Internet for marketing, produces the Emetrics Summit (London 3-5 May 06) http://www.emetrics.org/ and is a Founding Director of the Web Analytics Association.
How Does Search Engine Optimisation Work?
Search marketing is now widely recognised as a highly effective way of reaching customers online. Last year, over £2 Billion was spent globally in online marketing and the figures are set to soar. More companies with an online presence are turning to search marketing to reach prospective customers, generate traffic to their site and convert them into sales. So, how does it all work? If you’re considering investing a percentage of your hard earned marketing budget on search marketing you should have a basic understanding of where it’s going and how it works. Most search marketing companies talk about improved website and page ranking but what exactly does that mean? What you want is to increase traffic to your site, improve sales and raise the brand. How does that happen?
We always think of “ranking” on crawling search engines as just one of four steps in generating traffic and conversions in the process of successful Search Engine Optimisation. Your site, like every other site, needs not only to be ranked by search engines but found, read, indexed and then ranked by crawling search engines.
Don’t be afraid of crawling search engines, spiders and robots
Notice I talk about crawling search engines. What on earth are these? Actually you’ll have heard of most of them, there really aren’t that many and certainly the only ones you need to worry about, as far as traffic is concerned, are Google, Yahoo, MSN, (Ask Jeeves) Teoma and Mirago. Each search engine generally has a portal component which is the bit consumers visit to conduct their searches and a crawling component called the robot or spider. So each of the search engines I mentioned above has its own robot, each uniquely named Googlebot, Slurp, MSNbot, Teoma and Henry respectively.
So how does your site get found?
Well, robots work by following links. So getting a link from an established site to your site is vital. You can also see if search engines know about your site already by using the command site:www.yoursite.co.uk in the search box at Google for example. This asks the search engine to retrieve all the pages it has in its database (or index) from your domain. This allows you to see which pages the search engines know about. If you are not listed you need to establish links – ask friends, colleagues and business associates and submit your site at DMOZ and the Yahoo directories (note this is different to the Yahoo search engine) . You can also submit your site for crawling at most search engines, but be aware; submitting for crawling is not as good and being found for crawling!
So, how about being read and indexed?
Well, again the command site:www.mysite.co.uk on Google and on other search engines can really serve you well. Have a look at what text the search engines are indexing and the see if the links work. This can tell you a lot about how well read and understood your site is. One of the most important things you can do to improve your search engine readability is to use a unique, descriptive HTML Title on every page of your website. Also use a Description and Abstract Meta Tag (information inserted into the "head"area of your web pages) and remember that Title and Meta tags have two purposes. The first purpose is to compel users to click through from a search page to your website. Such Titles and Meta Tags are often displayed to users using search engines and so using promotional text such as “Free Delivery” or real unique selling points entice users to click through. The second purpose is ranking – so use keywords in the Title and Meta tags that have potential to generate the right kind of traffic to your site, but match the content of each page.
So what’s the key to good ranking?
The key to ranking is a great site with great content and an enviable back linking structure that has been established organically because other site owners have felt it important and useful to link to your site. Search engines really look for sites that are part of a thematic community and sites that rank the best are those that demonstrate authority over their subject matter with important, fresh, content, referenced by other websites active in the same community.
About the author
Matt Trimmer is the Managing Director of ivantage.co.uk. ivantage.co.uk helps
clients improve their online profitability through traffic generation, traffic
analysis, traffic conversion and traffic protection. Ivantage.co.uk specialises
in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, PfP campaign management,
PfI Trusted Feed management as well as Web Analytics, website conversion improvement
and online brand protection.
Managing Public
Sector Customers and Stakeholders
Public sector organisations have as large an impact on customers’ lives as private sector companies. In the UK, with not far off half national income going on public sector expenditure, this means – as a rule of thumb – that about half of what we “buy” is from the public sector, though we may not do it that willingly.
Whilst working on a public sector project, the kind of questions we’re being asked to answer are these:
· What are the lessons from the private sector? Has the private sector itself learnt from its own lessons?
· Are the lessons from the private sector relevant? If so, which are most relevant?
· Which models of customer management in the private sector are most relevant to different public sector operations? Does the answer to this question depend on the size of the public sector operation, or whether it is central, regional or local? Does it depend upon the objectives of the particular public sector operation, in particular on whether it offers customers full or partial options about whether they are to be managed (e.g. law enforcement, criminal custody, tax payment, versus higher education, employment or information services)?
· What does comparison with the private sector reveal about the main opportunities for improving levels of service while containing cost, or for saving cost while maintaining levels of service?
· Does the change towards more customer-focused ways of doing things have to be handled differently in the public sector, whether because of the political dimension, because of unclear, conflicting or rapidly changing objectives, because of the dominance of cost as an issue, or for any other reason?
· How can progress in the chosen direction be maintained, perhaps accelerated?
In answering these questions, we need to recognise the sheer diversity of the public sector. The term “public sector” conceals an enormous variety of activities, such as:
· Security and related topics; defence, law and order, foreign affairs, control over airspace, airwaves
· Industrial – whether as a direct government activity, as a regulator or provider of support services
· Revenue raising e.g. taxation, or providing income e.g. pensions, social benefits
· Transport and communications, whether infrastructure, surveillance, regulation, or direct provision of services
· Health, welfare and education provision, inspection and auditing
The functions of public sector organisations include:
· Servicing clients - identifying need, attuning service, delivering service, quality check and developing service capacity e.g. physical facilities, teams, systems and data, knowledge
· Raising finance e.g. taxation, fines, borrowing
· Control processes e.g. laws, regulations and codes, governance, boards of trustees, political members etc., entitlement/exemption validation or withdrawal, issuing identification documentation, enforcement
· Organisation and human resources e.g. recruitment, selection, allocation, motivation, qualification, quality control
Just as in the private sector, interaction between customers can be classified as case processing, involving in depth diagnosis of need/qualification and possibly protracted interaction, or as transaction processing, involving relatively quick interaction with a very large number of standard cases – in practice many situations are some mixture of these two. However, the two have very different processes, human resources, systems and data needs. Examples of case processing include child protection, legal aid, tax returns, hospitalisation, treatment of chronic disease, prosecution for serious offences, security/accident incident management, housing provision, planning authorisation, complex inspecting and testing for compliance and licensing, entitlement validation to education/loans and complex complaints and queries. Examples of transaction processing include benefit payment, routine inoculation, simple inoculation, consumer license allocation, automated tax collection and routine complaints and queries.
In many countries, central and local governments and other public bodies are focusing on open government, improving citizen access and enhancing the quality of the services provided, while retaining the strong traditional focus of government on cost-effectiveness. These new foci manifest themselves in various initiatives from central and local government and other public agencies. They include:
· Provision of electronic access
· Improvement in citizen service provision and management
· Ensuring that social exclusion does not occur when new initiatives are implemented, and that those in need of help or service actually receive it, rather than those who take most quickly to new channels of access
The challenges this new direction poses to governments are:
· Engaging the external environment after years of inward focus
· Determining what the current situation actually is, before formulating new initiatives
· Establishing the current level of citizen service provision, including the development of acceptable measures and measuring tools
· Identifying where the gaps exist in the service provision
· Directing resources in the most cost effective/prioritised way to improve the service
Meeting these challenges is made more complex by a number of other factors, including:
· Increasing customer expectations, caused by the performance (and perhaps sometimes only the promise) of the private sector
· The rising numbers of lobby, and other pressure groups
· Increased confidence of customers in using the media to put pressure on government for better treatment
· The need to use new channels of communication and distribution to reach customers who have had problems accessing government services through traditional channels, while ensuring that these new channels can work in an integrated manner with older channels
· The need to observe the government sometimes very tough general requirements affecting how customers are managed in either sector e.g. data protection law
· The need to manage new relationships with the private sector service providers who are involved in some way in this change, usually as agents
In addition, many special issues that affect the inter-sector translation of good practice. These include:
· The existence of differential/unequal information between providers and clients in service delivery, particularly where provider is more expert than customer/citizen can ever hope to be, either because of life-stage (education), knowledge (e.g. health), or because of costs of information access. Some examples are health, law and education. This often applies to the costs/difficulties of applying general information to specific cases
· Many activities are associated with dealing with problem/extreme rather than average cases (law, welfare, education, health), and the aim of government is to prevent people needing the services, when they do need them to ensure that they get served quickly and efficiently, then to minimise the need for service to be used again. Government bodies can focus heavily on prevention and lose sight of the fact that some people will not respond and then need support and help. If they over-generalise people can fall through the net completely and form part of an under class who are unserviced and outcast
· Externalities exist i.e. the act of providing/receiving service affects others than the recipient of the service. Road congestion is the obvious example, but the same applies to any queue for a scarce service. However, social interdependence in the act of service consumption therefore causes greater social benefits than private benefits to suppliers, and can cause much greater social costs to citizens than private costs to suppliers
· There is concern about the influence of distribution of income and assets on ability of individuals to take-up or benefit from services, so the “value of the customer” is measured by other criteria than money e.g. “need”, “social priority”. In some life stages money ceases to become the benefit it is in others as it becomes impossible to buy the level of care that is required by the individual
· Customers often cannot exit, so they need to be given voice e.g. representation There is also concern about the provision of access, choice and redress
· Many governments see the role of the public sector as providing socially important interdependent, non-marketable services for social optimality, particularly where market tends to produce non-optimal results
· Often there is a relationship of trust and agency between provider and client. The idea is that the citizen trusts a professional supplier to do what is right. However, this has been called into question, and the question applies to both correctness of service and quality of service
· In many public sector operations (e.g. health services), service is delivered by professionals, with their own interests and agenda
· There is some tendency of the professional to mystify the customer so that the customer cannot independently judge the quality of service, particularly where the customer has no choice or right to data showing the quality of the service delivered
· Many public sector organisations are considered by government as its agent in helping it meet its objectives for the citizen. However, the agency may develop its own set of objectives that conflict with the government’s. In other cases, the provider is supposed to be the agent supposedly acting on behalf of the citizen, but again may develop its own objectives
· Quality of service is an issue, and particularly where there is no competition, independent bodies are needed to monitor quality. This leads to the question of who vets the vetters without the vetting becoming an onerous amount of red tape to the providers. There has to be room for trust in a system that is becoming heavily geared towards policing
· Consultation as to what services should be delivered is often highly biased, with activists influencing the nature of service provision
· Lack of proper research means that customers’ needs and experiences are rarely properly understood
· The process by which the public sector allocates its benefits is often by rationing and queues as a substitute for the price mechanism, rather than by some socially optimal selection process. In cases where central government provides resources and frameworks and local agencies deliver, there is a process break between who does the analysis and planning, and then decision making, and who implements, or delivers. This can lead to delivery failure.
Generalising from private sector experience must take into account the many differences that exist between public and private sectors. In practice, great differences in customer management requirements and practices exist within the private sector, limiting the transferability of experience. In either case, overlooking these differences can prove very expensive, sometimes to the extent of leading to complete programme failure. These differences relate to:
· The type of service/need, ranging from large commercial organisations gaining permissions from public authorities to private individuals applying for and then receiving a state benefit. A simpler distinction is between revenue-raising and expenditure
· The nature of transactions/cases – ranging from a one-off transaction (e.g. request to inspect land registration), to bursts of many transactions (e.g. that take place when a relative dies), series (e.g. submission of regular tax returns) and continuous (e.g. receipt of education, intense medical care). In some cases, individuals’ occasional transactions are translated into continuous relationships by the use of a specialist private sector agent, who handles the needs of many individuals e.g. the accountant handling tax returns, the lawyer requesting land registration or planning information
· The degree of variance in cost to serve between individuals with the same requirement – this in turn often relates to their education level, previous experience, whether they use an expert agent and other factors. For example, an experienced customer may “know the ropes” and how to get served quickly, or on the other hand how to defer an unwanted public intervention by a series of interventions which cause public sector re-work
· How the service is delivered - for example whether it is local, regional or national, whether it must (for various reasons) be delivered fact to face or can be delivered using other channels such as the telephone, mail or the web
· Whether the service is effectively part of a series of interactions performed by several agencies for a customer with a given need (e.g. the involvement of medical and care authorities in helping the elderly), how these agencies may interact with each other (including whether there are legal limitations to their doing so)
· The relative importance of the interaction to both parties
· The degree of customer involvement in the delivery of the service that is possible and/or permissible
· The extent to which the interaction is initiated by the customer or by the public supplier
· The extent to which legal/enforcement issues are involved
· The risk to the individual and/or to the public sector of mismanagement of the situation – which can include anything from threatening the customer’s well-being to causing a politician to look ridiculous
Despite these problems, we believe that some classic private sector techniques can be used to reduce the difficulties of managing customers. For example, although there is immense variety in the types of situations managed, the private sector uses the technique of segmenting (classifying customers into groups which share certain characteristics) and managing them appropriately. Although in the private sector this approach carries risks of stereotyping and misclassification, there is no doubt that it has made it much easier for large companies to meet the many and varied needs of customers – even if the classification is quite crude. Some examples of the variables used to segment include:
High, medium and low value customers, with the risk of misclassifying possibly dealt with by identifying customers likely to move between categories – value may be defined commercially, for revenue raising operations, or by need for expenditure operations
High versus low cost to serve, including perhaps the operational management required to meet the need
Volumes of transactions/interactions - overall and by category of contact
Fundamental nature of the customer. This might be by general psychological characteristics (e.g. confident vs. subservient), or by characteristics related to the service in question e.g. level of previous education or IQ for a school, health record for a medical service
It is often forgotten that segmentation is a creative process – in the end the public sector, like the private sector, is faced with a large number of people who are individual customers. Segmentation is designed to make things easier to manage, for customer and/or supplier. Thus, segmentation might be used just to understand the variety of customers and their needs, even if the service provided to all customers is the same i.e. it is used perhaps to determine what the services features should be, or how many customers are over- or under-served. It might be used for tactical management of customers e.g. to determine why the immediate needs of a particular group of customers are not being met. Or it might be strategic – to show that the way the service is organised is not meeting the needs of a priority group of customers, and how service delivery should be redesigned.
About the authors
Professor Merlin Stone and Neil Woodcock are directors of WCL Consultancy. WCL helps large companies and public sector organisations plan and implement change. To learn more about WCL please email info@w-c-l.com or call +44 (0)207 7593 5760
Fighting the Demons of Marketing Measurement
Over the past few years, most large marketing organisations have made substantial progress in shedding light on the relationship between their marketing investments and the company’s bottom line. Mix models, ROI tracking, experimental designs, and research into brand profitability drivers are all contributing to better insights into what’s working to drive incremental cash flow and/or nurture critical brand and customer franchise assets.
Yet few companies have progressed beyond these ad-hoc successes and developed truly integrated measurement frameworks that tell the whole story of marketing’s impact. Many have clear visibility into specific campaign effectiveness, but lack any practical means of gauging the value of brand advertising. Others have media-mix models that provide detailed insights into the trade offs between radio and outdoor advertising, but cannot assess the value of a customer or measure the impact of a channel-specific sales promotion.
There are many reasons that comprehensive measurement frameworks remain elusive - some structural, some organisational, and some cultural. The struggle to progress can also be due to the presence of one of three measurement “demons” living within the department. These influential avatars are applying their considerable skills, passion, and energy in a misguided altruism that uses their experiential filters to methodically eliminate any effort that doesn’t fit their definition of “appropriate.”
See if you recognise any of them lurking in your recent staff meetings …
The Silver Bullet Hunter
The first demon is well known for her dedicated search for the simplistic, single index to explain all aspects of marketing effectiveness. Silver Bullet Hunters endlessly search for that one magical metric – the holy grail of measurement that will explain all that’s necessary to know – rejecting along the way anything short of that as being “too complex.”
Silver Bullet Hunters rationalise their quest as a prerequisite of management understanding and commitment. They argue (quite logically) that the people they report to are very busy and lack the time or inclination to piece together parallel measures to divine the full story of marketing’s impact. Unfortunately, they eschew the responsibility for synthesis and instead conclude that any measure requiring more than a moment’s reflection to comprehend is a poor candidate.
If this demon inhabits the CMO’s office, it can be painful for the rest of the department to be dragged along on every quixotic pursuit of the latest management consulting fad that promises simple solutions to complex problems. It also hurts the team in a tangibly indirect way as credibility flags during the fits-and-starts of the hunt and other functions wonder, “What the heck are they doing and why haven’t we seen any results?”
If you find yourself dragged into the hunt for the silver bullet, try reframing the concept of “single” from the metric level to the page level. Some organisations have been very effective at developing concise one-page measurement summaries incorporating three to five key metrics and a few bullet points relating them. Perhaps you can get the Silver Bullet Hunter to begrudgingly flex her definition of simplicity to be a bit more practical.
The Analytical Anarchist
Lurking somewhere in your department may be a person responsible for building analytical models to explain past performance and/or predict the future. They tend to be quiet and shy, preferring the company of a 19” flat-screen monitor to the cacophony of group interactions. Most of these highly skilled mathematical types are ultimate pragmatists, having learned long ago that no model is perfect and uncertainties are a fact of life, let alone business.
Yet many companies have unknowingly recruited Analytical Anarchists. These are brilliant ideologues who, determined to once and for all demonstrate the power of analytics over logic, dedicate their lives to the construction of the “mother of all models.” They truly believe they are but a few data elements away from eliminating all subjective judgment in strategy or resource allocation. They make persuasive, technical arguments for why “it might just work,” which play on senior management’s deep-seated psychological desire to have the numbers decide everything so they can work less and get paid more.
Unfortunately, the “mother of all models”, like world domination, is a delusional fantasy. The number of variables involved in measuring marketing effectiveness run to dozens if not hundreds, and the relationships between them are so intertwined as to defy description on the level of human intelligence normally found among decision makers. Nonetheless, the Analytical Anarchist wastes precious time and resources taking the organisation on a rollercoaster ride, mistaking hope for judgment.
If your measurement progress is blocked by an Analytical Anarchist, suggest some “interim” solutions to help frame the right questions and clarify hypotheses about which key marketing metrics might be most insightful. Before you know it, you’ll be on your third or fourth iteration of the “interim” approach and well down the path of continuous improvement while the Anarchist toils on without result.
The Mad Scientist
The Mad Scientist uses perfection to impede progress. He is the methodological conscience of the department whose role is to point out the flaws in every possible means of measuring marketing until he has effectively undermined the CMO’s confidence in doing anything at all.
Rooted in a sense of duty (and perhaps a small desire to be recognised for his technical prowess), the Mad Scientist is very good at explaining why “it won’t work” – often in long, eloquent e-mails sent following meetings in which the team seemed to be leaning toward a particular action plan. Unfortunately, he’s not anywhere near as proficient at solving the problem as he is articulating it.
Mad Scientists don’t obstruct for the thrill of doing so, they just strongly believe that the risks are usually greater than the rewards. This tends to emanate from having a narrow framework for their assessment – not fully understanding the many costs of doing nothing – and de-emphasising the benefits of good old-fashioned trial and error when all else fails.
If there’s a Mad Scientist clogging your efforts to get a “good” measurement plan in effect, try focusing the conversation on how the various risks can be addressed over time and eventually conquered to the point of operational (if not purely scientific) confidence. You might also suggest that he assumes responsibility for measuring the cost of doing nothing. This should help elevate his appreciation for a more pragmatic and supportive application of his considerable skills and abilities.
Never Question the Motives of a Demon
Wooden stakes, garlic, and crucifixes are all useless in dealing with these nefarious creatures. And challenging their motives or expertise in broad daylight can prove fatal. Deep down, they are all good people who honestly believe they are helping the cause. But deal with them you must if you’ve any hope of closing the knowledge gaps between where you are and where you need to be.
Patience, good listening skills, and a concerted effort to reframe the problem in a way that rechannels their expertise into more productive avenues are the best nightlights to get you through the dim “ad-hoc” era and into the light of comprehensive marketing measurement.
Pat LaPointe is managing partner of MarketingNPV, a marketing measurement and dashboard consultancy firm located in Princeton, NJ, USA. He is the author of Marketing by the Dashboard Light: How to Get More Insight, Foresight, and Accountability from Your Marketing Investments.