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the Free CMSWire NewsletterHadley Reynolds of IDC moderated a wide-ranging discussion of strategies to enhance "findability" on corporate websites at this week's Gilbane Conference in in San Francisco. The discussion bypassed the most commonly-discussed topics such as improving ranking in Google or methods to increase click-through rates. Instead, the focus was on how to insure the people companies most want to reach — potential customers — can reach the right information and be converted from visitors to customers, both on the wider web as well as within the corporate website. Here are the key take aways.
The speakers for the discussion were Richard Zwicky of Eightfold Logic, Ed Hoffmman from SLI Systems and Sam Mefford from Avalon Consulting.
We Aren't Listening to Customers
Richard Zwicky of Eightfold Logic kicked things off delivering an admonition, a book recommendation and a roadmap for connecting with future customers. The admonition from Vanessa Fox's book "Marketing in the Age of Google" (which Zwicky recommended everyone buy) was simple:
Millions of customers are telling us what they want, but we aren't listening.
Zwicky noted that in the online world we have lots of information about visitors which is something that offline, traditional marketing doesn't have and can't leverage. This information should be, and can be used to improve the online marketing effort. Some of his key points:
- Marketing is getting people talking about your products, being found where the customers are looking — not necessarily where you want them to look, and only telling them what they need to know.
- Get the customer to just the information they need, don't waste time telling them things they don't need to know. It's key to make a positive impression with 3rd party locations and get people to validate a purchase decision in ways independent of the corporate website.
62% of people consult online communities before making a purchase, only 27% go directly to a retailer.
Who Cares About Cost Per Click?
Zwicky decried the focus on cost per click. Getting the sale is the important thing, he said. Once you have the sale, you can then look at the data and work back to the cost.
He also discussed SEO and the relationship of paid to organic traffic. 88% of traffic is organic, the focus should be on that, not on the small fraction that is paid. Also, SEO isn't just about customer acquisition, it's also key to optimization of the conversion process, effective internal site navigation, and branding, among other things.
Where Will Customers be Tomorrow?
He wrapped up with a discussion of the value of prediction. He said too much focus is on figuring out where users have been or what they have looked at in the past — that's not what all this data is for.
The key is what your customer will be looking for tomorrow.
If you can get your focus and message on where customers are going next, before they go there, that's where you need to be. To do this, organizations need to constantly listen to the buzz, and see what people are taking about. Measure everything you can because you can't manage what you can't measure and in the end it's not about how many people visit your site, it's finding the right users and making them your customers.
Two Aspects to Findability
Ed Hoffman kicked off a talk focused primarily on search as it's used within corporate sites. He asserted that there are two aspects to users finding a companies products:
- How your site gets found in the first place, from external sources like Google.
- Once they are on your site, how do users get to what they are looking for.
These two aspects are connected because people use the same behavior searching within a site as they do from outside the site.
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