Efficient Website Redesigns: 6 Tactics to Guide Your Process

I was interviewed for the MarketingSherpa article: Efficient Website Redesigns: 6 Tactics to Guide Your Process a few weeks back and the article came out very well.

Please read down to the bottom of the article for some great resources for your website redesign efforts.

Here are the 6 Tactics:

1. Get user feedback from online surveys
2. Analyze click-stream data
3. Work from a well-defined brand strategy
4. Assign at least one (Full-Time) in-house person to oversee the project
5. Focus redesign on improving common problems
6. Aim to satisfy the majority of visitors

2008 Year End World Internet Population - 1.574 Billion

The 2008 Year End World Internet Population statistics are out and we have now reached 1.574 billion people globally using the internet. North America has the highest penetration rate with 73.1%. Asia has the highest internet population with over 650 million. Overall the internet population penetration rate is now at 23.5% and the two fastest growing regions are the Middle East and Africa. To see all the statistics, go to Internet World Stats, Usage and Population Statistics.

Free Web Metrics Services & Insights

I have moved my explorations from social media back to interactive marketing and website metrics. I wanted to call out a couple of free services and sources of insightful information I have been using lately.

I believe your first stop for learning web analytics, industry best practices should be one of my favorite blogger and website metrics gurus: Avinash Kaushik. I have had the opportunity to hear him speak in person twice and I love his irreverent writing and presenting style. He has a humorous approach to the explanation of website metrics. Also very logical and practical. His most recent post on metrics averages and ratios is outstanding: Actively Avoid Insights: 4 Useful KPI Measurement Techniques. He has also written a book on website metrics: Web Analytics: An Hour A Day. Or you can just read his blog: Occam's Razor, which has all the content of the book for free. He always talks about how the content is free and you do not have to buy the book, just read the blog. There are also some excellent videos on YouTube. Here is a nice short one, but there are some 1 hour presentations as well:

Google Analytics - Non-Ecommerce Sites: Beyond Averages



A couple services I highly recommend for obtaining web metrics on your branded site, as well as your competitors, are Compete and Quantcast. Quantcast provides some qualitative information as well that includes estimated demographics. Remember that both services use estimates and can be off by as much as 20%. These are nice services to use in addition to your internal web metrics tools. You should also check out Google Trends for additional, online insights into your brand, competitors and industry.

Fastest Growing Internet Demographic User Group Is ... The Over 70 Year Old Crowd

Per the Pew Research Center, the fastest growing Internet User demographic is the 70 year old and up crowd. This is both amazing and fantastic and shows the true power, compelling nature and ubiquity of the Internet. Here is an eMarketer report that summarizes the finding: The Online Generation Gap Narrows.

This report also points out that when you are developing your social media and interactive marketing plans you must consider all demographics, not just the 25-45 year olds.

Also, through simple observation of my 90 year old grandmother as she emailed her friends and performed online banking and financial services management, I knew this had to be the case.

Social Media - Yes; Interactive Marketing - More Yes!!

It has been a while since I published anything of consequence on my blog, so I plan on making up for it this evening.

I spent a wonderful holiday season staying home and hanging out with the family. We found a beautiful, 14 month old, female Labrador that came home with us a week and a half ago. We are both getting used to each other, but she is an absolute love and is fabulous with the kids.

We also spent a fantastic week in Steamboat Springs, CO skiing. I love Steamboat and want nothing more in life than to become a ski bum, no, a resort ambassador, providing tours, telling stories and skiing all day long with tourists and locals. It is a beautiful place with a fun, small town atmosphere, hidden away (with a big airport runway) in northwest Colorado. If Steamboat ever needs a big time, Interactive Marketer Ski Bum/Resort Ambassador - Call Me!!

Now back to my topic - Social Media - Yes; Interactive Marketing - More Yes!!

While I am an advocate and proponent for social media marketing strategies and tactics, we must not forget the importance of interactive marketing and all it encompasses. Social Media is a great way to interact with consumers, but a company or brand must still have a solid, high performing website where consumers can learn about products and services. Most corporate blogs and social media services (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FriendFeed, and others) still only receive a subset (of brand specific interest, visits and/or clickthroughs) of the consumers that visit a typical, manufacturers branded web presence.

We must also remember that the branded website is one of the last places where the company or brand still controls the majority (if not all) the content and messaging.

There are many important ways to reach your consumers beyond social media: search marketing, email marketing, banner ads (in the right places), online sponsorships, basic natural search, and product/service and how-to videos (on your website and made available to your ecommerce partners). Also, as you develop and deploy traditional marketing strategies and tactics (TV, Radio, Print, Billboard, etc.) make sure they reference back to your branded website and preferably a landing page within the branded website that is specific to the campaign. I am not a big believer in micro-sites, as I believe the branded website needs to be the destination and needs to encompass or support micro-site features as part of the landing page within the branded website. Apple Computer uses this model and I am a strong believer. I think of how many times I was enticed to the Apple site due to a specific campaign, but ended up going to other parts of their branded website to learn about other products (latest iPod, iLife, MacBook, etc...).

Another key component to remember is metrics for both your social media and interactive marketing efforts. I personally have had very good experiences with several excellent, interactive marketing measurement tools including Omniture, WebTrends, Google Analytics and ForeSee Results. There are also many emerging tools for social media marketing and I will discuss those at another time.

There are also some excellent services that bring a true ROI to your branded website. Channel Intelligence is a great solution that helps you track your consumers from entry to your site through purchase on ecommerce partner sites. I call it an Advanced Where-to-Buy solution that all manufacturers should consider. Another service that integrates social media features into your website (Ratings & Reviews, Consumer Q&A, and Consumer Stories) is BazaarVoice. This is a great service that helps your consumers learn more about your products and services through peer reviews. It will also allow your product and service development teams learn what consumers like and do not like about your products and services. Excellent insights can be discovered quickly and with very little expense...also, by responding quickly to consumer issues, you can create brand advocates and strong word-of-mouth marketing impacts.

These are some of the topics I have been thinking about while on holiday and skiing. More to come in the future.

New Graco Baby Website Launches

Tonight we launched the next generation of our Graco Baby Website. This was a collaboration between Newell Rubbermaid and LBi. A lot of people from the Graco Brand, Corporate E-Business Team and LBi put in months of hard work to bring this new website to life. It was a huge accomplishment for the entire team.

We also launched a redesign of our Graco Baby Blog that integrated design elements from the New Graco Baby website.

We are all very excited that we were able to launch prior to the holidays.

Mobile's Role in Eighth Mass Media

This is an excellent presentation on the power of social media and the networking effect.

Mobile's Role in Eighth Mass Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: mobile media)

TAG - Technology Association of Georgia Speaking Engagement

I will be speaking at the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008 in Atlanta, GA. The topic is "Consulting 2.0 .... it's all about the customer." The discussion will focus on the following statement:

"The proliferation of Web 2.0 tools is in top gear, countless number of platforms are available out there. Early adopters of these tools are practically creating a new type of “digital divide”, those who are in Web 2.0, and those who are not."

Should be an interesting panel and conversation.

Web 2.0 Summit 2008 - Kevin Kelly Video - Web Past & Future

Kevin Kelly delivers insightful perspective on the past and future of the Internet. All data will be shared, stored in the global machine, accessible by all with sharing adding the power. A take on Charlene Li's quote of "social networking will be like air" could go "information will be like air." This is a very cool concept and opens all types of entrepreneurial, strategic, service and product opportunities. Take 15 minutes to watch this thoughtful video.

The Conversation Prism

The Conversation Prism created by Brian Solis and Jess Thomas is an excellent representation of the social media ecosystem circa 2008.

Google Finds 1 Trillion Unique URLs and Growing

On July 25, 2008 Google announced it had identified 1 Trillion Unique URLs. Here is the link to the press release "We Knew The Web Was Big."

Thomas L. Friedman - MIT Milestone Celebration, Keynote Address

The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and​ How It Can Renew America.

He is a brilliant speaker and thinker and a person I always enjoy listening too.

Will Twitter Survive?

I would like to open by saying I certainly hope so. I have found it a valuable tool for me to network with other social media and interactive marketing professionals. However, again today, its performance was extremely poor and it appeared to shutdown during the middle of the day -- UGH!!! Not much else to say but that if things do not improve, the future does not look bright for this rising star.

Twitter, friendfeed and Digg

I wish Twitter had higher performance and uptime. It is often sluggish and even Twhirl has to stopping accessing it for 5 minutes, or longer, at a time to allow it to catch up. I continue to find incredible people and publishers to follow including: Leo Laporte, John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine, New York Times, etc.... So, I am finding more value in the service every day. I just hope they can make it work better and figure out a way to make money on it, because without revenue, investment will eventually dwindle.

I have been using friendfeed a lot more lately. I finally figured out the value and have been linking my favorite services to my friendfeed profile. Like NetVibes is for my blog and publisher feeds, I like the way friendfeed has become an aggregation point for my favorite social media feeds. It also performs very well.

Finally, I have been using Digg more and more. I am finding some great articles on the internet and when I am reading some of my favorite magazines and news sources. I like that I can keep track of these articles on Digg, see what others are finding valuable or interesting, and go back to find articles I want to forward to others.