Marketing Logic

This is one of the prophetic visions of Neil Postman.  In his book, Entertaining Ourselves to Death, which I had to read in college, he provided a clear warning about the diminishing quality of broadcast news, as the line between entertainment and actual news was disappearing rapidly.  I’ve read most of Postman’s books, and I highly recommend them to anyone who has anything to do with media and technology.

Well, Professor Postman must be spinning in his grave, as a recent CNBC reporter talking about Pirates of the Caribbean compared the box office receipts to Aquaman, which beat out Spiderman.  (WHAT?!?)  You have to check out the video clip in the link to believe it.

For those that may be in the dark on this story;  Aquaman is a fictional movie in the HBO show Entourage, where the main character is the star of the movie, and James Cameron, who directs the fictional movie, plays himself – probably adding to the confusion.

What a profound day to witness when a show about reality is suddenly reported as reality.

In what has become one of my favorite blogs to read, Creating Passionate Users has to be one of the best blogs about taking care of your customers. Kathy Sierra recently posted an interesting picture about how important graphics are to communicating ideas. This graphic, a sign posted at a trailhead, was the example:

Unfortunately, this picture may be worth a thousand words, but those words would be in confusion, not clarity. I suppose only purebreds are allowed? No Muts? Maybe only German Shepherds and Sheepdogs are allowed? The clarity of this sign leaves people confused. Not one of my friends or associates could identify the meaning of this sign.

Too many times, I have seen navigation on a website take this type of turn. Or as my mother has said, “It’s not what you say; its how you say it.” It is not to much our message that is incorrect, but how we communicate that message.

Too many times, a web site’s homepage has either distracting or irrelevant graphics, or the information structure has been lazily put together. Whenever I see “products” and “services” as the main menu options, I get agitated. Here is a perfectly god chance to classify your business in a major part of the website, and it was blown on a generic term that doesn’t properly explain what makes your business unique. This is the principle of Taxonomy – properly classifying data into groups that makes sense to your users (my amended definition).

My personal favorite of websites that confuse the user is a now defunct company called Valorum. The page had three elements of confusion;

1. Confusing Navigation: While not relying on the standard “products and services” they opted for the even more cryptic, “value added services” and value added network” as main navigation headings.
2. Obligatory Confusing Graphic: Usually, a graphic helps a user unconsciously understand the concepts being described on the page. However when joined with non-descriptive text and navigation, the graphic takes confusion to another level. It’s not a dartboard supply company; it is a “solution provider.”
3. No Clear Message: Upon visiting this site, there is no clear message. Nothing that quickly describes this site for the user. Only a few paragraphs about “value added” and “strategic business decisions”, but nothing that offered a definitive – “This is who we are” message.

Click the image for the full-size view

The lesson here is to review your site for confusion or conflicting information. You may need an independent opinion, as we can be too close to our sites make these types of judgment calls.

• Do your navigation, images and content all work together to provide a descriptive experience for your visitor?
• Do your images relate to the message?
• Is there a clear message that a visitor will see and understand within seconds of loading the page?
• Is your main navigation a clearly organized and well-named organization of your web-site?
• Are you using keyword research to better classify the navigation on your website?

If the answer is no to any of these questions, you may be confusing your visitors.

Reading Avinash Kaushik’s blog has become an anticipated event in my day. Today was no exception. Avinash interviews Dr. Steven Turner, CTO at ClickTracks. Anyone who has heard me speak at a conference or training seminar knows of my love (is that too strong of a feeling?) for ClickTracks, so this was a very special treat.

It was very interesting to hear what one of the main creators of the ClickTracks product views as the most important component, or the most overlooked. It is a great interview, and this “10 Minutes With . . .” series by Avinash should be in your bookmarks.

The best question/answer that struck me was this exchange:

12. What is the one thing about the future of web analytics that none of us know, but you do?
However much the web changes, people who can understand both business and data will still make the best analysts. Or maybe you did know that already.

This is the concept that is lost on most businesses and analysts. Unless a proper understanding of the business and sales model is understood by the analyst, there will be no usable information generated by either the software or the analyst. Before building a case for improvement of a website, the analyst MUST understand the business model, and what is important to the site owner, which actions lead to important business goals, and how those affect the overall bottom line of the business.

Simply going at analytics with a “more sales is the goal” attitude leaves a lot of valuable information out of the equation for building a better web site. That type of attitude becomes a blinder to potentially relevant information that will be overlooked or simply not found. The fundamental operations of a business must be part of the learning process for any analyst.

The next comment from Dr. Turner is one that I have also preached many times, so it is amazing to hear someone with many more letters after their name say it too. “segmentation is what enables you to ask and answer questions about your site.”

Awesome – it’s all about asking questions. If you are simply printing out reports from your analytics program, you are missing everything. The only way to get real data is to ask questions – to get inside the head of the visitor.

In what is becoming an annual pilgrimage to the land of silicon, Search Engine Strategies is gearing for next month’s visit to San Jose.  I have to say of all of the SES events, San Jose seems to be a hands-down favorite of everyone.

The New York SES is bigger every year, but it’s in early Spring.  Yes, Times Square is in walking distance, but something about the summer in downtown San Jose makes it even more fun.  Last year the San Jose Jazz Festival was the same week as the SES, but we won’t be so lucky this year.

No, it’s something more, maybe that there are 3-4 parties every night, maybe the Google party at the Googleplex, the competition between Google and Yahoo to throw the best party, it’s all a great recipie for a great week.

This year, I’ll be speaking at three sessions during the week, and the big news is that Danny has finally allowed Shari Thurow and I to present a session on Search and & Usability.  We’ve been working on him for years to offer a session on this topic, and now we have our chance.  I am really looking forward to this, as it will be a lot of fun.  I promise anyone who attends that you will learn something new that you can use to make an immediate impact on your website.  Please attend and show your support for introducing usability to the search space!
I’ll be speaking on the following topics:

Successful Site Architecture,
Aug 8th, 3:30 PM

Usability & SEO: Two Wins For The Price Of One,
Aug 9th, 3:15 PM

Site Clinic (Bring your site!),
Aug 10, 9:00 AM

If you are attending, please be sure to say “hello”, as I am more than happy to meet those that read the blog.  It’s shaping up to be a great week, so see you then!

Usability Guru, Jacob Neilson weighs into the Long Tail discussion with some incredible data from the log files of UseIt. Amazingly, it shows that the Ziph distribution (former name of The Long Tail) looks to be a constant on the Internet. Regardless of the name, the phenomenon is that the total amount of pages, referrals, terms, etc. after the top 10 will far exceed the numbers of the top 10 itself.

Using data from 10 years ago, Nielson charts the referrers, pages view and search engine queries comparing the data from 1996 to 2006. He shows an amazing statistic that the shows is that the tail is indeed longer than the head when it comes to search. I’ll let him say it in his own words:

“To find useit.com, users employed a total of 110,399 different queries across various search engines. Of these queries, 83% were used only once during the eight-week period.
The top 10 queries accounted for 10% of the total traffic, so each one of these queries is obviously more important than those that brought only one visitor. Taken together, however, the single-use queries accounted for three times as much traffic as the top 10 queries.”

The implications for this are huge, especially for search marketers. Companies that get wrapped up into the top 10 search terms will lose sight that the majority of people finding their site (current and potential) will use terms outside of those top 10 terms.

I hope that you are using your logs and analytics to track this behavior on your site, otherwise you could be missing a major part of your market and missing a lot of potential business as well.

With great anticipation, I pre-ordered Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail two months ago. I received it last week and have read it through fairly quickly. I enjoyed the book as it was much more of a social commentary than a business manual. I like this approach, as the long tail is not a “how-to”, but a “because why”. The difference is vast between those, as it is the difference between the understanding the market forces or being subject to them.
In the opening chapters of the book I had many shared experiences, growing up in the 80’s and being a fan of the British New Wave and Punk music that crept into the top 40, but wasn’t the “hit” music. Trying to find the “good music” was next to impossible unless you were able to go to a large city and find some seedy record store that was in tune enough to carry some of the hard-to-find music, like Clash and Depeche Mode imports.

I contrast that with my five-year old, who cannot grasp the concept that I cannot replay a song that we hear on the radio. Her world is CD’s and MP3 players where she can replay songs immediately (over, and over, and over). Radio is a foreign concept, as she only hears it in the car and that only once in a while.

The only hesitation to fully agree with Chris is his analysis of why radio has lost listeners. His proposition that market forces such as the growth of ClearChannel, increased FCC regulation, the iPod, Cell Phones, and the 1996 Telecom Act, all contributed to bland radio. My contention is that radio was bland before all of those things came into play. I attribute the decline of radio to three factors; first, Chris’ own explanation that radio has to play the “head” hit songs to appeal to the broadest of market segments, which naturally leaves out the niche markets. Really, who doesn’t channel surf when ads or songs you don’t like come on the radio?

Second, the accessibility of MP3 player FM broadcast ability, personal CD’s, XM radio in the car makes regular radio a week alternative. Finally, in the home and in the workplace; the availability of cable and internet radio on demand allows hundreds of niches and all are available commercial-free. Add to that the added benefit of burning an entire CD collection to a computer for your own digital library of music. All of these factors make regular commercial radio seem out of touch and agonizing to endure in comparison.

Fans of the book may also enjoy The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman and Entertaining Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Both books explore the social circumstances leading to disenchantment with mass media and the resultant globalization of production tools. Both of which lead to consumer-generated news and entertainment markets as a reaction.

Anderson breaks down the phenomenon of The Long Tail in a few ways, the most humorous was the comment that the “Long Tail is full of crap.” Which is true – the Long Tail is mostly things we don’t need or want, but someone does. The tail is everything in the world.

The tail has two important factors that make it the market force that it is today and will grow to be in the future. First, access an extensive amount of products. Past and present songs, books, movies. However, not just limited to entertainment media, we see the long tail in wine, beer, T-shirts, clothing, coffee, news, Pez dispensers, and so on. The internet has given us unprecedented ability to access products never before available so quickly and easily.

Second to access, but just as critical – is being able to filter results, or search, to find what you want. Knowing that all of your favorite niche music is available is useless unless you can find it. This is where search has become so huge for the long tail. Search, filtering and refining results are all tools to drill down to specific parts of the long tail. Add to this social media recommendations, tagging, social bookmarking, blogs, and online communities dedicated to enabling us to find those niches or niches that may interest us as well.

All of these factors combine to bring us to an amazing time in our history. I think The Long Tail as a phenomenon will only increase as products and the ability to find them become more available.