When did the web site design process become a roadblock to launching a site, rather than helping it along?

When did the details of site design and function become a site owner obsession, more important than becoming visible, more compelling than getting a business online, spreading the word and making money?

And yes, before you say anything, we’re fully on board with the concept of details making a difference. We even wrote a book about it (Web Design for ROI). But there’s a point at which the details paralyze the process, preventing real action and forestalling any benefits.

Seth Godin wrote a post along these lines entitled “How to Create a Good Enough Web Site” in which he describes a simple””some web designers would even say heretical””process for quickly developing and launching a new site. Start with a design that’s “good enough,” Seth says, and focus on what’s important. By doing things in a practical order, not over-thinking the design, and getting signoffs at the right junctures, a web site can go from concept to launch in much less time and with much less trauma than usual. That’s the agile development approach.

From there, we’d add, it’s time to begin iterating and improving your site based on feedback and metrics. By making and testing small changes to design, copy, supportive advertising, and so forth, you can create an exceptional site that has incorporated valuable input””real, live, authentic input you had no access to during development. And you’ll be online a lot longer than otherwise.

What inputs matter?

To complement an agile web site launch, we recommend tracking and responding to your selected key metrics. That is, measurements that actually matter to your business goals. But most businesses are swamped with stats and measurements. Which ones matter, which metrics are “key?”

Here are a few to start with:

• Your ‘landing page’ conversion rate. This is the page or pages where you send marketing traffic, whether paid search, natural search, email blast, or offline advertising. Track and watch how effective this landing experience is for you over time. Consider doing A/B or multivariate testing to narrow down what works for your site, company, and audience.
• Your shopping cart completion rate (for e-commerce sites). It’s really not OK to have more than half your customers drop out of your checkout process, despite most sites averaging 60% dropoff. Check your analytics for trouble spots in your checkout, to pinpoint which steps are the worst offenders.
• Your RFQ / Registration process completion rate (for lead generation sites). As with a checkout process, there may be multiple steps, and a few of those steps may be bad apples as far as your prospective customers are concerned. Focus your update attention on those steps with the worst issues, and keep a constant, detailed eye on your stats.
• Your home page abandonment rate. If your home page is visible and receives traffic, then track how effective your home page is at drawing visitors deeper into your site. If your ‘bounce’ rates are very high, this may mean you need to clarify your identity, what you do, or improve your visual credibility. Or it may mean you’re using an advertising source that drives low-quality traffic. Either way, it’s important to know.
• Your end stats. By this we mean sales, contract signings, membership agreements, and so forth. Where things get real, in other words. Can you track your traffic, downloads, and lead through to what really matters? If not, you’re missing the full picture. You won’t know what traffic source is your most valuable, where to focus your iterative site improvements, or what’s actually delivering the best ROI for you, you’re working blind.

If you’ve found these tips valuable or at least intriguing, it’s not too late to register for the Voices that Matter conference in San Francisco (Oct 22-25) where Lance Loveday and I are lucky enough to be speaking alongside web greats such as Dan Brown, Jacob Nielsen, Kelly Goto, and many others. Hope to see you there!

There’s nothing I like better than when Google AdWords decides to make our lives as search marketers just a bit easier. If you’re interested in working smarter and improving campaign results, be sure to check out two of the more recent reporting roll-outs - Google’s new Placement Performance Reports and Search Query Reports.

Google Placement Performance Reports – Finally… We now have visibility and CONTROL over where our ads display in the Content Network given Google AdWords’ relatively new Placement Performance Reports.

For the sake of providing some historical context, there definitely has been an evolution in terms of Google’s Content Network offerings. We were granted some control years back when Google decided to let us set separate bids for Content v. Search (and by the way, if you aren’t bidding separately for the Content and Search Networks, you really need to make this change – these really should be viewed and managed separately, as they are entirely different beasts).

The ability to bid separately for Content and Search was definitely a big step towards more control.

Then, another not-so-small victory came about when Google decided to let us exclude sites – nice feature, and another step towards more control. But given that most account managers don’t take the time to dive into their log files, this didn’t help much for those who were clueless as to the source of their traffic in the first place.

But now with Google’s new Placement Performance report, we’ve got quick and easy visibility coupled with control. These reports allow you to see exactly which Content sites are sending you traffic and conversions, and therefore make the right decisions to improve your campaign’s ROI from the Content Network (as opposed to throwing your hands up in the air in frustration and pausing the Content Network all together as many of us did in the past).

For those sites that are driving costly traffic yet few or no conversions, go to your Tools link and choose the Site Exclusion option to eliminate future clicks from these lower performing websites.

For those sites that show up in your Placement Performance Reports as top performers, consider maximizing your exposure by setting up a Site Targeting campaign. With a Site Targeting campaign, you can explicitly choose which sites you want to appear on and therefore maximize exposure on your most effective placements. However, note that I say ‘consider’ Site Targeting because there is one major caveat – you end up paying on a CPM basis if you do this and in my experience thus far, this is a big downgrade in ROI. I’m personally willing to give up the increased control in order to keep my coveted CPC pricing model.

The Placement Performance Reports combined with Site Exclusion is definitely a great combination for increasing ROI on the Content Network… though I have to mention one big flaw. Domain ads. You’ll notice in your Placement Performance Reports that there are line items that say ‘Domain ads’, which refer to Google ads that show up on parked domains. In our experience, these parked domains drive lots of clicks and few conversions… yet currently, Google will not allow advertisers to opt out of domain ads, as you can with individual sites.

Overall though, a thumbs up to Google for granting us this increased level of visibility.

Google Search Query Reports – If you are using Broad or Phrase Match, then Google’s new Search Query Reports will definitely be your friend. Downloading a Search Query report will allow you to pull statistics including conversion information for the specific search queries that were used by the searcher who clicked through on your ad – as opposed to seeing metrics only for the term you were explicitly bidding on in AdWords.

I definitely recommend pulling this report ASAP if you have not already. You will be quite shocked at the terms that you are phrase and broad matching to currently. Many are so completely and totally off the mark it is not even funny - which in turn is creating a whole lot of buzz and well-warranted discontent regarding Google’s Expanded Broad Match (check out Expanded Broad Match Hurting AdWords Advertisers and Up The Creek With Google AdWords Broad Match).

Here are some suggestions for taking the Search Query report data and converting it into a positive in terms of ROI.

For those terms that are driving traffic yet not converting, set up negative keywords in your campaigns and/or ad groups; thus eliminating this ineffective traffic.

For those terms that are driving effective traffic and conversions within your ROI benchmarks, yet you aren’t explicitly bidding on them (the broad or phrase matched terms), go ahead and add these terms to your campaign. Even though you’re already showing up for these terms, you can maximize exposure and control by bidding on them individually.

Learn more about Google Placement Reports:
How to Use Google’s Placement Report and Site Exclusion to Cut Your Customer Acquisition Costs by 20%
Google Content Placement Performance Report Rollout

Learn more about Google Search Query Reports:
My Newfound Love: Google AdWords Search Query Reports
Searching Beyond the Paid: Google AdWords’ Search Query Report …

Bravo to Google for giving us the tools to increase ROI from our online campaigns!

If you’ve ever presented the results of your SEO or SEM efforts to a client of yours then this scenario will be familiar:

You spend hours (or days) compiling the data. You conduct your analysis, create your graphs and package it up. It’s been a great month and you make sure to convey that in your email, though the charts speak for themselves. You send it off.

Questions like these are the ones that come back:

"What does this chart mean?"
"Why did our numbers go down here?"
"What caused this increase?"

Now, if you’re fortunate enough to have clients who actually read your reports, consider yourself lucky. An informed client is more likely to be a champion for you and your future efforts than one who never opens your attachments.

However, that also means you have a responsibility to anticipate your client’s questions and take the necessary steps to make your metrics meaningful.

How to do this? While there are many paths to the creation of meaning, below are 3 Must-Have Rules for any SEO or SEM report:

(Read the full article…)