Archive for December, 2005

I saw this on Seth Godin’s blog today and really enjoyed it. It’s a terrific example of how fast you can react in today’s advertising world. It doesn’t require that you bring America’s largest city to a standstill, many smaller events and news items warrant adjustment of your Adwords campaign. You just have to think ahead a bit.

Whew! Wow what a lead up to the holidays this year! Now I’ve had a few days to catch a breath and will take some time off to recover. I always feel refreshed after the Christmas week. Those clients of mine that were so incredibly patient while I put out all the retail fires are so appreciated. These are my priority now… everyone who had to wait for me to deal with retail are my focus for the coming couple of weeks. Then, hopefully equilibrium can be found again.

I finally put out my 2006 predictions article (should be published any day) in Business Lexington. My Googlebase article didn’t seem to resonate with as many people as usual - was it written too technically? Was it simply inapplicable? Let me know. Sometimes the things that I find to be profoundly important just aren’t on the minds of businesses yet. Hopefully folks will file these ideas away and they’ll come up again.

I write for Business Lexington and am starting to think about my 2006 articles. Much will be written about Search, but I’m also interested in other SMB web techniques and ideas out there, especially from firms in Kentucky. If you have interest in this, send me a short idea list and we’ll chat. The site has a readership of around 20,000, and a growing web and podcast audience.

With the release of Windows Live Local, we all need to start thinking about how our businesses appear from the air.

1. Text, Fonts, and Character Counts. With bold, florescent colors, businesses can draw customers to their busineses with phrases like “Good Pizza” or “”Divorce $199.” But with the size required (around 8×10′) you’ll have even more limitations than Google Adwords. We are reviewing what kinds of birds-eye ad copy works best.

2. Local Live Birds’ Eye Crawl Warnings. Microsoft will be updating us all whenever they send the satellite. Always be sure to clean up your parking lot and get that junk off the rooftop before they come by. Be sure the pigeons haven’t mussed up your letter arrangements.

3. Local Live Birds’ Eye Sandbox? There is some evidence that new buildings and properties are not immediately showing up. This “sandbox effect” has been seen in other search engines. You may wish to put up a small building while your larger one is being built to attract the crawlers and date your property.

4. Local Live Birds’ Eye Bombing? If you plan to put up a giant “Idiot–>” on the building next to your competitor’s, be sure that it will show up well in birdseye angles. Don’t rent the rooftop of a building that will be obscured during the photo. This is considered slightly black-hat.

5. Local Live Birds’ Eye Analytics? Currently, the only way to do analytics on the rooftop marketing is by asking customers to say what they saw on your roof. So if you want, you can put an icon for, say, a chicken, and then have customers tell you what’s on their roof. If they buy from you, be sure to note it down.

6. Property Shape. Round properties tend to do better in Birds’ Eye view. Putting a bright line of paint or stones around the edges can increase viewings of the property by 20%. Don’t put a big smiley face on the round property, as this is considered Birds-eye spam and MSN might come by and muss it up because everyone is doing it and it’s silly.

7. Landscaping. Pear trees are very good for birds eye views, as they grow fast and have a decent sized canopy. There is some evidence that there is a slight preference for white and yellow flowers arranged in zig-zag form. Please don’t create pornographic shapes with your plantings in order to get attention, as this is considered sky spamming.

8. Junk Piles. Some businesses are experimenting with junk piles. This is considered a black-hat technique and surely the effect will go away after a while. We don’t recommend that you rent dumpsters and fill them with florescent paper to get attention. One client rented 25 school busses to spell out “Yum!” near their restaurant which worked pretty well.

9. Animals. We’ve noticed that businesses with animals on the property are getting a slight edge. One of our clients has a pond with a large turtle that seems to be attracting some eyeballs. One of our larger clients is looking into a hippo for their lot. It remains to be seen how this will factor in.

10. Bad Neighborhoods If your company is in a bad neighborhood, you may have trouble getting results from birds-eye. Well lit, clean streets are critical to performance of your birds-eye marketing.

A little fun for the weekend! We’ll see how it goes….

Scott

See also:
http://googlesightseeing.com/2005/08/14/target-stores/

Well, my posts have become a little rarer as I have had my head down mostly for retail clients needing last minute help on Pay per click and other site issues. It’s great to hear people say sales are up 30% or more this season, but it gets pretty challenging to keep the support queue flushed. Luckily I have the best clients in the world and they understand.

Yahoo Small Business has published our phone number on their bills that and I’m trying to track down more info so I can let Yahoo know about it. I’ve always had a “press 0 to leave a message anytime” function so clients don’t have to listen to my greeting, but I’m going to have to disable it. Why? Nobody is listening to my “I’m not yahoo!” plea… They call, bang on the 0 key, and start talking without hearing it.

I’m continuing to mull over changes for 2006 in the firm, inclucing a possible name change to reflect the emphasis on search marketing and usability work. We’ll see.

As the holidays hit full gear, I’ll be spending a lot at Sams Club (party supplies, mostly) and so I hit their site about this time each year to check what they have. While there, I find this design oops for the ole file.

The issue here is catalog design. The prices are too far from the products, and to the casual shopper, they appear with the item BELOW. In a few cases it’s rather obvious, but in others it isn’t.

It’s reasonable to think that a Dell desktop might be $273.82, causing you to hit Sams club in your sock feet and jammies, but in fact, it’s $599.00… thie price UNDER the computer.

The suggestion here? Well, a light gray grid around the products would do the trick, or simply ask your commerce software to post the prices after the product names (a single space will do.)

You know how food critics never show their faces in their articles? Well, imagine every blogger a critic. I just saw this article, and I think it’s just the beginning of a new wave of shake ups in crappy businesses - and it’s a good thing. Let’s just hope that those with good experiences sing praises sometimes, too.

AFTER A HEATED PHONE EXCHANGE with an unsatisfied customer who happened to be a blogger, PriceRitePhoto.com, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based camera e-retailer, recently found that blogosphere justice can be swift, but is rarely merciful….. [read on]

Lesson: Don’t piss off an influencial maven. And no, you don’t know who they are.

Wow, been doing 14 hours a day lately. Writing, researching, SEOing, designing, reporting, analyzing, critiquing, marketing, emailing, blogging, RSSing, podcasting. Whew!

It was nice to learn that Matt Cutts, Google Celeb is from my home state of Kentucky. That’s kinda cool. Sometimes it’s hard to hook up with other SEO/Web Marketing folks who grew up around here.

We got a little snow today and it’s darn cold. No accumulation, but the falling stuff looked pretty. December 1st. That will get the shoppers in the mood!

My voice mail box is full, full, full. And the reason? Well, it’s lots of client calls (sorry guys, I’m trying, pleeeze use email) but Yahoo! decided to give out my toll-free number on their bills. So, I am getting dozens of calls from grumpy Overture/Yahoo Search Marketing customers giving me an earful about how they didn’t know they were spending $12500 last month on the keyword “small business”. So that’s what the “non stop traffic” button is for!

I sure wish I could go to Search Engine Strategies this weekend. I’d like to get to know the SEO community better and chat with some folks. I am somewhat isolated here at times. But they are holding it at one of the businest times of the year (holiday Retail) and I’m just slammed. Well, they’re doing it again in Feb, but in NY, NY - making it a very expensive journey.

I’m continuing to ponder the name change for the firm to better suit the Search Marketing focus, but have no time to really put my mind to it.

Little ALT tags (those little text pop ups you get when you roll your mouse over graphics on well designed sites) can save the day, you know. Take Amazon’s change card info page:

Midway through the checkout process on amazon, I try to change my card to use for payment…and a big WTF. I cannot get back to checking out EXCEPT by clicking on the link for Amazon’s credit card offer. Thinking there might be a missing graphic, I refreshed. Surely there is supposed to be a button here, but there are no ALT tags, no clues, so I’m stuck.

Another case of “what next” ambiguity. Web designs, even Amazon, must make it clear how to flow through, especially in check out processes.