joi, 9 septembrie 2010

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog


Priceless CRO Advice for $224

Posted: 08 Sep 2010 11:28 AM PDT

Posted by Dr. Pete

The past few years have seen an explosion of usability and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) tools hit the market. There have been many good roundup posts about these tools, but I want to focus today on a more in-depth approach to putting just 3 of these tools to work: (1) Five Second Test, (2) Crazy Egg, and (3) UserTesting.com. Total cost to do one round of testing: $224.

(1) Five Second Test ($20)

Five Second Test ScreenThe premise behind Five Second Test is incredibly simple – show a visitor your site for 5 seconds and see what they remember (or, alternatively, where they click). This is a great starting point for getting some starter observations about your visitors.

How It Works
Setup is easy – just submit a screenshot of your web page or prototype (great for design comparisons) and the replies start coming in. You can view them individually or grouped by concepts. Five Second Test is actually free, but the $20/month package means you'll get a larger response rate. It's worth the extra cash, IMO. You can also earn credits ("karma") by taking other people's tests – it's kind of fun and can be informative.

What to Test
Think about the kind of things you want your visitors to know about in 5 seconds: The big questions: Who, What, Why. Here are a few uses I recommend:

  • Do visitors recognize your brand?
  • Do people get what you do?
  • Is your tagline descriptive and effective?
  • Is your page too visually noisy?
  • Is Concept B better than Concept A?
  • Can people find your call to action?

If people are remembering things like "blue", "blonde girl", and "ugly site", you know you've got some work to do (those aren't far from real examples of what I've seen).

(2) Crazy Egg ($9)

Crazy Egg ScreenHeat-mapping tools like Crazy Egg take user activity and translate it into visual maps, helping you to easily visualize how people interact with your site. Crazy Egg was founded by SEO wonder kid Neil Patel, and is an amazing bargain at $9/month. If you can't bother to spend $9 on improving your website, feel free to stop reading this post. I'm serious – go buy a Venti Iced Mocha and a cookie instead of spending money on your business.

How It Works
This one's a little bit trickier – you'll have to install a JavaScript snippet similar to Google Analytics and other tools. Then, Crazy Egg starts tracking clicks on your specified page (try to stick to one page, as jumping pages can produce odd results).

What to Test
Crazy Egg not only allows you create to visual heat maps, but also has a "confetti" mode that lets you visualize clicks by segments, such as referring sources and new vs. returning visitors. Here are a few questions a heat-mapping tool can help you answer:

  • Are people clicking where you want them to click?
  • Is your navigation effective?
  • Do you have too many choices?
  • Do search visitors behave differently?
  • Is your call to action getting clicks?

Although some heat-mapping tools can get bogged down in the visuals, I think that Crazy Egg has a very simple, elegant reporting approach that can give you solid insights quickly. Once you've gathered some initial impressions from Five Second Test and Crazy Egg, it's time to do some real user testing...

(3) UserTesting.com ($195)

UserTesting.com ScreenIt used to be that user testing required a lab, expensive equipment, and a difficult recruiting process. Now, you can use remote testing services like UserTesting.com to get quick, inexpensive user feedback. While I won't say it compares apples-to-apples to laboratory testing, I often find that the insights from even a handful of remote testing subjects can be incredibly useful.

How It Works
Setup is pretty straightforward, but doing it right can take a little bit of time. Technically, you just need to submit your URL and a few instructions to visitors. You pay $39 per visitor and receive both written feedback and an online video of the user walking through your site (with voice-over). Although this is a topic of some debate in the usability community, 5 users is a good number for uncovering core insights and getting solid bang for your buck.

What to Test
Take some time setting up your questions. Traditional usability tests are task-oriented – you tell someone to try to complete a task in a fairly open-ended fashion and watch them go to work. Be specific about the task and ask follow-up questions, like "Would you trust this site enough to make a purchase?" (I generally ask 3-4 follow-ups). A few questions this kind of qualitative testing can help you answer:

  • Can people complete the task?
  • How long does task completion take?
  • Do users experience common stumbling blocks?
  • What are visitors thinking out loud about?
  • Does your search/navigation work as expected?
  • Are you missing features people might be looking for?
  • Do visitors get frustrated using your site?

Qualitative testing can be a great precursor to quantitative (A/B and multivariate) testing. Don't throw design changes at the wall and see what sticks – put user testing to work to uncover hidden issues on your site. We all need a fresh pair (or 5 pairs) of eyes from time to time.

Here's to $224 Well Spent

I'm an entrepreneur and a Bohemian – I understand that parting with money isn't easy. The insights you'll gain from just over $200, though, will, in my experience, easily yield 10X or even 100X back in online sales improvement. Solid qualitative data collection will also prevent you from making costly mistakes and will better inform how you look at your analytics and quantitative testing. There are plenty of good tools out there – choose a couple of them, and really put the effort into understanding how they work. You'll be well rewarded.

Update: We just published a YOUmoz post about Crazy Egg that should be an interesting read for anyone who enjoyed this article. David gives some nice examples and a case study of how heat-mapping got one of his clients an 87% conversion boost.


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Michael Gray - Graywolf's SEO Blog

Michael Gray - Graywolf's SEO Blog


What I Read and How I Read It

Posted: 09 Sep 2010 07:33 AM PDT

Post image for What I Read and How I Read It

While I may be on the leading edge of consumption trends (translation: I’m a spoiled geek who likes new shiny gadgets), I think it’s important to understand how things work and how they might look to the public at large in a few years.

RSS

While I admit rss is not a technology that is ever going to be adopted by the mainstream (see the big fat rss lie), it’s still something I use almost daily. For my projects, client projects, and search related industry news (and the occasional bit of humor), I use Google reader. I skim through the the posts first thing in the morning. Unless it’s urgent, I send it off to instapaper (more on that below) to read later. The Google rss converter has made this really efficient for sites that don’t publish rss directly. Since I started using an iPad, I use the mobile rss app that syncs up with Google reader. The cloud based synchronization is key for me and I feel will be for others in the future. I used to use newsrack, but the recent update made it unusable. Pulse is a good app, but the font is too small for my liking and the lack of instapaper integration made it a deal breaker for me. The mobile rss app also lets me send things to instapaper right from the app, which is another key feature. Check the end of this post for a client sanitized list of feeds I read.

Netvibeso

For sites that I run and Twitter accounts I run for myself or clients, I need things to write about, link to, or tweet about. Netvibes is the tool I use to get things done. I set up one tab per industry and quickly parse through it every day or two. I use easytweets to schedule my tweets in the future so I can get things done, have a life, and go on vacation without losing momentum (see my easytweets review).

iPad News apps

I mentioned before that the iPad has changed how I consume media and interact with social media sites. I’ll read stuff, tweet out links that are interesting, send them to instapaper, or email them to myself to remind me to schedule them later with easytweets.

Instapaper

Instapaper is one of my favorite apps. It saves me a tremendous amount of time. I’m also glad to say I’m a paying pro supporter of the service. Instapaper allows me to read content in a stripped down, text only version, and it allows me to do it offline–useful for times when I’m on a plane, on vacation someplace that doesn’t have wifi, or in another country that my 3G plan doesn’t cover. The most important aspect is cloud based synchronization. So I can send items to instapaper from my computer, then I can read them while I’m on a treadmill at the gym (using my iPhone) or on a plane (using the iPad). Once I am back on the grid, a quick refresh brings everything back in sync. Another cool aspect: I can forward a tweet or link to instapaper and it is smart enough to follow the trail and extract the content. The stripped down and extracted content has two important aspects. First, partial feeds don’t work with instapaper so, if you publish partial feeds, you suck and should rethink that practice. Second, learning how to push  out content and ads where the ads don’t get stripped out will become more important in the coming years (see advertising and usability)

Flipboard

Flipboard is a cool new iPad app that takes content from your Twitter, Facebook, and other news sources, extracts it, and presents it in magazine format. Legally, it is on questionable ground, but it’s really cool, easy, and just a plain fun way to get your news and content.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The thing Flipboard underscored for me is that you need to moderate who can put things in your streams if you want it to be useful, effective, interesting, and not polluted with spam. (see the SEO community friends and scorpions).

My feed list

I debated publishing this list for a while but decided to do it. You may find some well known marquee name SEO and marketing feeds aren’t on the list. To be honest the quality on a lot of SEO blogs is hit or miss nowadays, and I don’t have time to wade through the posts. When one of them does make a noteworthy post it will get retweeted by enough people and will find me anyway, so I don’t worry about “missing” the news as much as I used to. The second is I don’t have time for multiple-posts-per-day blogs. I know there are a lot of SEO news blogs that do this and they are high quality, but I just don’t have the time to read 3-6 posts per day. Sorry.

Creative Commons License photo credit: henribergius

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

What I Read and How I Read It

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Daily Snapshot: "The America I Believe In"

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, September 9, 2010
 

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day - September 7, 2010

First Lady Michelle Obama participates in a "Let's Move!" launch event with members of the National Football League at Woldenberg Park in New Orleans, La., Sept. 8, 2010. At right are former NFL coach Tony Dungy and former Tennessee Titans running back Eddie George (27). (Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton)

 View more photos.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Daylight Time

10:00 AM: The President and the Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing

10:30 AM: The President meets with senior advisors

1:00 PM: Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs WhiteHouse.gov/live

1:30 PM: The President meets with Secretary of the Treasury Geithner

2:30 PM: Listos Para Sus Preguntas: CuidadoDeSalud.gov (Open for Questions: HealthCare.gov in Spanish)  WhiteHouse.gov/live

WhiteHouse.gov/live  Indicates Events that will be livestreamed on WhiteHouse.gov/live.

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog

President Obama on the Economy in Cleveland: "The America I Believe In"
The President laid out a stark contrast between policies that help the economy work for the middle class and the policies that allowed special interests to run amok -- and to run our economy into a ditch.

Fighting Foreclosures and Strengthening Neighborhoods
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan writes about the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

Boehner's Budget Gimmicks: Another Attempt to Hold Middle Class Tax Cuts Hostage
Deputy Communications Director Jen Psaki looks at how Republicans are trying to mask the cost of their tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans as they threaten to block middle class tax cuts to get their way.

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SEOptimise

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New Digg Review: Is Digg V4 the Next Twitter?

Posted: 08 Sep 2010 08:37 AM PDT

Typical Digg comment thread.

Last week the new Digg version 4 has been released and I have tested it ever since. Back in the days I was a staunch opponent of Digg and an avid supporter of competing services like StumbleUpon and Mixx. That was years ago though. Both Mixx and SU have stagnated over time. So I decided to take a look at the new Digg. Maybe it has been fixed now?

Most business people have been either expelled from the first wave of social sites like StumbleUpon, Digg and Mixx or moved on of their own accord to more mature sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn that don’t discriminate against business users and are not full of NSFW images.

Digg has deteriorated over the years to become a cesspool full of sexism and a battle ground for teenage boy’s flame wars.

It’s not as bad as competitor Reddit which ended up being the place for hate-mongers and rants though.

With version four Kevin Rose, known for his misguided antipathy against the SEO industry, tries to save what’s left of an originally good idea: social news. Can he beat Twitter and Facebook and most importantly his own community that has made Digg the hellhole it was until now?

Following

Digg seems to aim at both Twitter and StumbleUpon. It’s very similar to both services. You have to follow users or publications and see their activity.

Similar to Twitter main stream “blogs” like TechCrunch or Mashable have an overwhelming advantage this way. They have already tens of thousands of followers who vote anything up they see. Understandably many people don’t like this feature as some major publishers can dominate the frontpage this way.

On the other hand the follow feature revives “old” and not yet popular stories on Digg. Until now only front page stories could get substantial traffic from Digg. Most of these visitors were terribly untargeted though and left in an instant so that you got a huge server load while not getting much in return. Unless of course you got links. Thus Digg has been used by many for link building for years.

Once a story has hit the fp it could garner a substantial number of links. This is still true to some extent but with Facebook and Twitter getting more popular you don’t get as many links these days anymore.

I got notified about someone following me. That’s why I joined the new Digg in the first place. Sadly most follwoers do not see your submissions it seems. Everything you do gets shown to them so that submissions get overlooked when you digg other people’s submissions and comment.

Comments

The most dreaded and for some people entertaining (in a freak show kind of way) part of Digg was the comment section. As Digg adds no other value beyond the selection of stories and commenting many people read those. Unfortunately especially women and business people were appalled but the blatant sexism, aggressive NSFW battleground that comment section was. In V4 of Digg the site attempts to clean up the comment section.

The most approved of comments get displayed on top if you select the right option in the preferences. Some flame comments by trolls are below the display threshold and can only be seen on click. You can hide comments below a certain number of votes. I strongly approve of this measure. Can you use Digg again during work hours and even without watching Fight Club first? Not really.

A comment that disagreed with my opinion started with “F**k you!” and got at least 14 votes so that no threshold could have stopped it. My comment containing no swear words has been of course buried. My sin? I expressed my sadness about homeless people protesting for cheap meals in the US while at the same time their government can afford wars and military bases throughout the world. Being from Germany I express often unpopular views for Americans so that most probably I still will be verbally attacked and abused on the new Digg it seems.

Bury button

The feature that was perhaps the other most devastating one for Digg was the so called “bury button”. Using it a self proclaimed Digg police blocked whole topics, e.g. SEO. So basically you weren’t allowed to talk about SEO. The only SEO related posts that were acceptable on Digg were SEO bashing postings. This perpetuated the ignorance on the Digg platform to the point where everything posted on an SEO publication has been boycotted.

At the same spammers have been using Digg to submit their SEO adverts all the time. The bury button led to the effective exclusion of high quality SEO resources while low quality SEO and downright spam about SEO services has been prevalent on Digg. Just search Digg for SEO and you’ll find solely crap submissions, mostly not even in English.

Digg V4 has no bury button anymore. This way resources about SEO theoretically can get popular on Digg again as there is no direct censorship anymore. I doubt though there are enough people interested in the subject. I’m optimistic though that search marketing publications can get exposure on Digg for general technology and Internet postings. Search Engine Land is already on Digg.

The removal of the bury button is an overdue measure to restore democratic voting patterns on Digg. Until now a small minority of maybe a few dozens people have effectively blocked SEO related resources.

The new Digg has a report button instead. I reported myself for instance when a story accidentally got submitted twice by the system. I also reported a submission consisting of dozens of stolen images. We’ll see whether the Digg staff will act on these.

Will I stay on the new Digg?

I don’t know yet. I’m probably not masochistic enough to let people shout at me for expressing my opinions which are quiet common sense (like anti-war) in Europe. Maybe I’ll use Digg as a combination of both Twitter and Facebook. I’ll follow my favorite users and publications and ignore the frontpage and comments altogether. Instead I will “like” their submissions by “digging” them. On the other hand I’m not convinced I need another site to follow them.

People in the SEO industry still push their infographics, lists or other linkbaits on Digg, I guess 1/3 of Digg’s content are linkbaits while the rest are mainstream blogs or publications plus funny or “awesome” images. As I don’t like most of these and SEO publications have no audience there I don’t think it makes business sense for me.

In case you’re into linkbaits, just take some almost naked female celebrity pics or something “Apple”, put it on your blog and the Digg audience will still love it. Digg even says in its meta keyword tag that it’s about “celebrity news” among others.


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Loyalty

Loyalty is what we call it when someone refuses a momentarily better option.

If your offering is always better, you don't have loyal customers, you have smart ones. Don't brag about how loyal your customers are when you're the cheapest or you have clearly dominated some key element of what the market demands. That's not loyalty. That's something else.

Loyal customers understand that there's almost always something better out there, but they're not so interested in looking.

Loyalty can be rewarded, but loyalty usually comes from within, from a story we like to tell ourselves. We're loyal to sports teams and products (and yes, to people) because being loyal makes us happy. Why else be a fan of the Cubs? Some customers like being loyal. Those are good customers to have.

Loyalty isn't forever. Sometimes, the world changes significantly and even though the loyal partner/customer likes that label, it gets so difficult to stick that he switches.

I think there's no doubt that some brands and teams and politicians and yes, people, attract a greater percentage of loyal fans than others. Not because they're bigger or better, but because they reinforce the good feeling some people get when they're being loyal. Hint: low price or supermodel good looks are not the tools of choice for attracting people who enjoy being loyal.

Rewarding loyalty for loyalty's sake--not by paying people for sticking it out so the offering ends up being more attractive--is not an obvious path, but it's a worthwhile one. Tell a story that appeals to loyalists. Treat different customers differently, and reserve your highest level of respect for those that stand by you.

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