Question: What do web users and professional athletes have in common?

Answer: They both make fast decisions about their next action based on limited information in the blink of an eye.

This thought occurred to me as I was reading How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. It’s quite an amazing book. I say that because it’s a book about brain science and psychology (ooh, gotta get me some of that) and yet it’s really fun to read. Seriously.

The thrust of the book is that the traditional model of how human beings make decisions based on either a rational or emotional basis is flat wrong. Instead, the author’s position is that we make decisions using both our rational and emotional minds simultaneously.

Pretty heady stuff, to be sure. But Lehrer weaves in such compelling and well-written stories that otherwise dry subject matter really comes to life. I was reading a passage about New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s decision-making ability on the field when the similarities between his thought process and that of a new user arriving at a site for the first time hit me.

Here are the lessons I took away from the first part of the book:

Read the full article on Search Engine Land >

One of the big “a-ha” moments many of our SEO clients experience occurs when we talk about how websites, serving as virtual stores, differ from their brick and mortar cousins.

The simplest and most basic difference comes from the fact that brick and mortar stores generally have one “official” entrance while websites, through the virtue of search engine indexation, can be “entered” at almost any point.

Say a searcher is looking for, let’s just go out on a limb here, “sour cream”. (Known here in the UK as “soured cream” – a fact I recently discovered.)

In the online world, a searcher would simply type the query into Google for example, and Voila!, millions of web pages (4.08 MM to be exact)  having something to do with “sour cream” would show up.

In the “real world”, however, the pattern is different. A shopper would generally enter through a store’s main entrance and begin the “search”. In my case it was Tesco, here in Swansea last Sunday, when I was shopping for “sour cream” (we were craving chicken fajitas).

With brick and mortar stores, people are familiar with the concept of browsing, knowing that while most stores have a similar organizational pattern (e.g. products requiring refrigeration are generally located together, as are breads, vegetables, wine), it can still take a while to “learn” that organization when one is a new shopper at that store.

For example, my “sour cream” experience at Tesco on Sunday took more than 45 minutes. At first I browsed for the “soured cream” myself, then I asked for help from an employee who took me to the “salad cream” section (salad cream appears to be a mild mayonnaise people put on their salads), then I browsed some more on my own, then I asked another employee who helpfully said it was in the “milk” section. Once there (again), I frantically examined each shelf on the “milk” aisle until I found the sour cream. All this took place whilst also hearing the countdown to the store closing time and fearing our chicken fajitas would not, in fact, include the critical ingredient.

In short, there’s an element of patience and perusal associated with brick and mortar shopping – until, that is, you learn exactly where the sour cream is and can make a beeline for that aisle the next time you need it.

Online shoppers are not that patient.

(Read the full article…)

View related topics: client-expectations, search-engine-rankings, SEO, seo-success, Web Usability

This post is part of a series examining some oft-neglected online customer touch points and exploring ways to optimize them.  Today, I’ll look at a type of page very similar to thank you pages - the logout confirmation, or logout thank you page.

As appealing as a loading dock?

Logout thank you pages are utilitarian, and often overlooked. Similar to an e-commerce confirmation page, a logout page appears after a completed transaction, so it’s outside the sales or conversion funnel.  Also similar to other types of thank you pages, logout pages are typically starved for design and marketing attention. All that creative attention is focused on the site’s interior - the cool account management tools, real-time information, or whatever else is provided in the logged-in area.

It shouldn’t be this way. Logout thank you pages can be a prime opportunity to support your brand and offer more ways for your current customers to engage with you.

It’s where and when you say it

I recently re-read Paco Underhill’s great book “Why We Buy” and was struck by how his discussion of store signage and zones could apply to web sites. According to Paco, it’s important to take every opportunity to communicate with customers, but communication alone is not enough.

The message must suit its environment.

Store owners, in Paco’s example, should understand what shoppers are doing in each area, or zone, of a store before placing signage there. What actions are customers taking in that zone? Are they walking quickly past, or are they waiting in line? What else is in that zone to look at, what might customers be thinking? As he puts it,

“Each zone is right for one kind of message and wrong for all others. Putting a sign that requires 12 seconds to read in a place where customers spend 4 seconds is just slightly more effective than putting it in your garage.”

(Read the full article…)

Are you ignoring an engagement opportunity?

The way an organization handles a simple email unsubscribe transaction can leave a lasting impression on the audience. It’s a customer engagement opportunity to increase goodwill - and even make a sale.  Think of it as another marketing channel.

[Note: This post is part of my "Every Touch Point Matters" series. See my previous posts on Optimizing Error Messages and Optimizing the Thank You Page.]

“You don’t love me no more…”

Rejection! One of your email newsletter subscribers decides she wants a cleaner, lighter inbox - and that your newsletter is dead weight. Last year, I was that subscriber.

Looking at my email In box, it appeared every online interaction I’ve had since 1995 came with an annoying little brother of a newsletter that has followed me around ever since, waving his hands and yelling, “Watch me! watch me!” Since a swift kick was out of the question, I’ve dealt with the situation by applying filters (as if putting an email in my “To Read” folder made it any more likely that I’d read it) and by hitting the Delete button. And then one day, a particularly irrelevant email triggered an avalanche of stored-up irritation. After calming down, I resolved then and there to tackle the problem at its source:

I would UNSUBSCRIBE.

I unsubscribed from over twenty email newsletters before I ran out of endurance, patience, and caffeine. As you’ll see in the examples below my experiences varied widely.

Why does this matter to companies?

Why does such a minor interaction, far from the glamor and dazzle of the mighty landing page, even deserve a blog post? Why do email unsubscribes matter to companies? There is a one-word answer to this:

Goodwill.

Whatever your subscriber’s motivation for unsubscribing, how you handle this simple request can affect their perception of your company from that moment on. You can either build goodwill or you can burn it.

And another one-word answer:

Opportunity.

Again, whatever the reason for the unsubscribe, the visitor is now ON YOUR SITE (minimally, they’re on your email subscription platform). That’s an opportunity to engage, communicate, and present your brand in a good light. It could even be an opportunity to change their minds or redirect their interest to a different offering.

So!  Let’s look at some guidelines, and then a few examples.

(Read the full article…)

I’m one of four authors now writing the Just Behave weekly column on Search Engine Land. In a sure sign that I really suck at this whole social media thing, it only now occurred to me to cross-post that on my own company’s blog. Better late than never, though. So here’s a quick summary of the two columns I’ve written so far, with links over to Search Engine Land for the full articles. As always, all constructive criticism is welcomed.

Wagging the Long-Tailed Dog: Search Behavior & The Economy

As the head of a search agency, I admit that I was somewhat bemused at first by this whole financial crisis we’re having. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t like seeing people suffer, and it hurts to see the impact that a slowing economy is having on many of my friends and neighbors. But as a longtime critic of traditional media and promoter of Search, I couldn’t resist feeling a little smug knowing that traditional ad budgets were about to be cut and the move to online media accelerated as advertisers started focusing more heavily on ROI. Given that Search accounts for almost half of online media spending, that trend would be a good thing for Search and, selfishly, my company – right…? The big picture search trends aren’t going to change dramatically. More people will continue to search more often no matter what, so what could possibly go wrong?

Full Article…

Two Little Things That Make A Big Difference

A lot of the focus in the search marketing world—both paid and organic—is on the technical and quantitative side. And that’s understandable, given the technical background of many of the practitioners and the perception that those elements are relatively easy to control. But many search marketers do themselves and their clients a disservice by not taking a more balanced view, arming themselves with the tools that a solid understanding of the search user experience (SUE) can provide.

With all the talk about how to achieve high rankings, the right growth curve to target for inbound link counts, PageRank shaping (which always makes me think of Suzanne Sommers, like she’ll be pimping the PageRank Shaper as the next Thigh Master), eking out higher Quality Score, and the like, it’s easy to lose sight of the role that actual users play in determining the success of our search campaigns. But user experience considerations often play as large a role as any of the other topics that search marketers regularly discuss. The trick is figuring out where to focus your attention.

To provide a shortcut, here are two quick tips on SUE issues that don’t get a lot of attention yet have a big impact on results. The first tip focuses on how to increase organic traffic by achieving a higher CTR on your organic search listings. The second discusses how to reduce the bounce rate on your site by ensuring a good first impression.

Full Article…