Author: Atlantic BT

Creating a Haiku Deck (love this tool) yesterday about how stories are the new e-commerce currency the need to share tips on HOW to write great ecom copy was clear. There is a new sheriff in town after Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, a new sheriff with new laws. The “SEO Optimized” era is dying hard. Look at this example from an online e-commerce powerhouse of the old “content as SEO” days:

REI Backpack Example

Solid feature copy with hints of major REI themes by using words such as:

• Cleverly Converts.
• Customizable (actually misspelled on REI’s page).
• Efficient.
• Single Tug.
• Secures.

Solid product feature copy. Now let’s look at words customers use in reviews of REI’s exclusive daypack:

• Favorite daypack.
• Love.
• Great.
• Water resistant (but not water proof).
• Pleased.
• Compact.
• Easy.
• Like colors.

Customers naturally tell stories. Here is my favorite customer story from this REI daypack:

Love using this pack for day trips. It was great for storing layers after and early morning ride turned into a warm afternoon. Also, large enough to hold a few items from the farmers market. The thin straps were great for my small frame when biking – larger packs and straps are heavy and can cause chaffing in the heat. Even better the pack easily adjusted so my boyfriend could wear it another day. The only con is that there are no exterior pockets like the larger version of this pack has so you have to open the drawstring to get any items. Note: my boyfriend like the mini version so much he bought one for his daughter and the larger with top pocket flap for himself. After just a few weeks of use I’m looking forward to using this on summer hikes with the water bladder insert very soon! Highly recommend this versatile bag.

By Rachelle
from Washington, DC
About Me Casual/ Recreational

Ecommerce Copywriting Tip #1: Mine Customer Reviews

REI.com rules SEO with their “Daypack Selector” content, but their copy is missing a chance for engagement. Here are ways REI’s copy could be more engaging:

• Include Staff notes in reviews (several reviews noted a desire for exterior pockets, so good idea to recognize the trend with a note).
• Lift examples from reviews.
• Use same words as reviews.
• Quote from reviews (with permission and attribution).

REI.com is a favorite ecommerce website. I’m using one of the best online e-retailers to illustrate an important point – Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates changed everything. Google’s insistence on ever improving social shares and page heuristics (time on site / page, pages viewed and lower bounce rates) mean even GREAT ecom merchants need to rethink things.

Ecommerce Copywriting Tip #2: RETHINK & Curate Content

Google’s algorithm changes haven’t worked their way into HOW online merchants approach creating their “store”. Most ecommerce merchants have social share widgets throughout their site. Social shares aren’t enough. Social shares, those ubiquitous Facebook and Twitter widgets, are a good start, but social shares without becoming a social business is a mistake.

Think of social shares are a pledge to become a “social business”.  Social businesses LISTEN more than they PITCH or PREACH.

REI.com missed an opportunity when several customers made suggestions for pockets on their REI daypack. When customers note an improvement and there is no Staff Note silence erodes hard won “social shares” legitimacy. Are they LISTENING or not is the question every customer who The day when putting a social widget on a product page was sufficient is over. When a customer makes a suggestion say THANK YOU.

Ecommerce merchants must RETHINK their content.

Not all content is equally engaging and TOTAL ENGAGEMENT is not the goal since a website without pause is a lie. The goal is to know where the rich veins of User Generated Content (UGC) exist and to support, encourage and mine them. Since not all content is equally engaging, ecommerce merchants should curate and create content. Curating  UGC may be the most valuable non-merchandising / merchandising any ecom merchants does.

Rethink & Curate Many Types of Ecommerce Content

• Videos (promotes long time on page and videos are easily shared).
• Copy – need more than technical SEO now.
• Reviews and User Generated Content (if you don’t have UGC aplenty good luck with that).
• Gamification – UGC and social shares are so critical now you MUST reward, value and appreciate customers who share.
• The Ask – If you are NOT asking for User Generated Content, comments, videos, surveys, polls and shares you are nuts.
• Review the Reviewer – the more your ecommerce website becomes OUR website the more money it will make.

Ecommerce Copywriting Tip #3: How Your Site Becomes A Trusted Source

Ecommerce merchants must embrace the CONVERSATION. REI.com, as good as they are and they are among the best, is looking dated. REI.com is content rich, but social poor. They have an amazing amount of social content, but REI’s social content (the content from its users) isn’t seamless inside of their store. Trust goes up when YOUR website becomes OUR site.

Tips On Making YOUR Website Our Trusted Source

• Curate as much content from customers as you create (sends the WE LISTEN signal).
• Reward great customer suggestions (free daypacks for the customers who suggested the pockets).
• Add a crowdfunding option (ask for Quirky-like product suggestions and fund a few).
• Weave User Generated Content (UGC) into every aspect of your website (don’t force into a corner).
• Mine social web to pull great comments, suggestions or ideas INTO your website (with permission and attribution).
• Gamify reviews, comments and suggestions.
• Create “Like Me” tribes (link is to ScentTrail Marketing post).

Another way of saying this tip is the LESS you create and the MORE “THEY” contribute the better the new ecommerce life gets. Do any three of these ideas and your website is well on its way to being a “social business” not simply a “social share”.

Ecommerce Copywriting Tip #4: Tease Don’t Smother

Think about the last conversation you had with a close friend. Did you talk all the time? No, you listened as much as you spoke. Same is true for your ecommerce website. Ecom sites “listen” by acting on suggestions (adding those exterior pockets on REI.com’s daypack for one example), being easy to reach, being present and responsive on social nets and teasing not something clicks.

A common error is to OVERSELL a click. Never use more words, images or navigation than is needed to promote the conversation you want. Problem is you and your customers may want different conversations at different places. You may want to convert to dollars off your video page while your customers want to share. Align your marketing with their use to create trust.

When you treat customers like sentient beings able to figure things you create respect. Remember John Lennon’s advice – you get the love you make. Think of your customers as smart people who love you and they are more likely to do just that. Speak of your customers as stupid idiots who don’t understand your greatness (even in offhanded conversations with staff) and those negative beliefs will show in your marketing. The webs is nothing if not a huge lie detecting amplifier, so tease your links don’t smother them, be appreciative and thankful for any and every communication (no matter how “negative” it appears).

Ecommerce Copywriting Tip #5: Tell The Never Ending Story

Google has been more consistent than most are willing to admit. It was clear as far back as 2003 Google wanted merchants to create great content. Many merchants such as REI did just that. In the old pre-Panda and Penguin algorithm change days “great content” was optimized within an inch of its keyword life often sacrificing engagement and customer experience.

This is a new day and STORIES are bred in our bone. We crave great stories. In Rachel’s example above she couldn’t HELP but tell a story about her use of REI’s daypack. Stories are the anchors that prevent our brains from spinning off into ADD space. Stories provide relevance, inclusion and calm. Your ecommerce website should start telling your story on your ABOUT page.

Themes developed in ABOUT should be repeated and reinforced throughout your website. This tip may feel familiar since it echoes advice shared in Storytelling Is The New SEO:

Storytelling Is The NEW SEO struck a chord as more than 15,000 people have viewed the Slideshare deck. While many seem curious few are changing their ecommerce approach. Those who step in, make their ecom websites social, connected, engaging and responsive will win hearts and minds faster. Some ecommerce merchants just caught up to social shares.

This post advises skipping right over the “social shares benefit SEO” stage and concentrating on improving engagement. If your Key Performance Indicators don’t evaluate speed and quality of inbound links and social shares, conversion efficiency across a number of Calls To Action and how your online reputation is growing or declining then please come compete with us (lol).

Times are DIFFERENT. There is a new E-commerce about in the land. I picked on one of the better online merchants in this post so others wouldn’t feel like they’ve missed the “new ecom train”. What worked yesterday is gone. Your ecommerce website must write great, engaging and inclusive copy this holiday selling season. Copy that appears beautiful no matter what kind of devices is being used and copy that promotes the brand advocacy your site must create to thrive.

Good luck and I will be glad to review your copy and share reactions, thoughts and ideas. Ecommerce is HARD and I don’t see EASY around the bend. If this post creates a sense of overwhelming dread take deep breaths and start small. Start with copy for the 20% of your products that generate 80% of your sales. Look at how YOU write about the product, blend in how your customers talk about your product and research how others describe the experience and feeling of the products you sell.

Marty

Related Haiku Deck: Stories Are The New Ecom

Pivot Social Media Study

If you missed last year’s Pivot study it is worth a visit before firming up social media marketing plans for 4Q. Brian Solis just wrote an excellent mid-year post about the study: STUDY: Social Business Strategy – Vision, Purpose and Value drive a new era of digital engagement.  Both the study and Brian Solis’  midyear thoughts are worth careful reads.

Here are 3 Tips from the Pivot Team’s Social Media Study:

Tip #1: Content More Important Than Deals

Internet marketers understand their customers want more than the never ending SALE. The Pivot team saw “Exclusive Content” win the race moving “Customer Service” into the third position. Online marketers understand a basic web marketing truth – don’t engage when visitors are on your website and customer service is moot. “Exclusive content” is engaging.

We would add “exclusive User Generated Content (UGC)” too because a website’s willingness to ask for and reward user comments, reviews, votes and interaction provide clear reinforcement. “This business cares what I think,” is a signal websites want to send (B2B or B2C). Ubiquitous social share widgets, comment areas, curated user content and regular features created from UGC help send the “inclusive” message.

There is more to becoming a “social business” than great exclusive UGC. Make sure your website responds to emails and @yourtwittter inclusions, links and references. Fully half of your online strategy must respect the conversation your marketing is creating. Here are five ways to respect your social conversations:

Five Ways To Respect Social Conversations

• Public Thank You or Favorite Those Who @Include Your Marketing.
• Look to repay the mention by linking to something from the @mention soon.
•  @Reply Thanks (remember to be specific since they may get many thanks in a day).
• Note what @Mention care about & share related content when you see it.
• Insight & Content More Important Than Deals Chart

Tip #2: Sales Matter, But Engagement Matters More

Engagement is key now, but we need new Key Performance Indicators to understand how engagement contributes to the bottom line. I touched on the kind of new KPIs needed to understand engagement in 5 New Content Marketing KPIs on ScentTrail Marketing. KPIs can vary by business segment, but each “social business” needs something more than Google’s engagement metrics (time on site, pages viewed, bounce rate, return visitors).

Tip 3: Learn To Surf Social Media Marketing

One of the most interesting charts in the Pivot Team deck was the one showing fewer Internet marketers understand their social customer than last year. It is as if the more social marketing we create the less we understand our customers. One immediate fix is to ASK our social customers what they want. Social businesses learn to include customers in their decisions.

Every business process from what you buy or make to customer service improve with more customer feedback. Social media requires Internet marketers to KNOW less, do more and listen better (to eventually do less). The web’s feedback is immediate (if you know how to listen). Learning to create with open flexible programs, respond in real time to feedback and pivot on a dime defines our social, connected and FAST real time marketing times.

This holiday season try to KNOW less and LISTEN more. Here are some tips for learning to surf social media marketing:

Tips For Surfing Social Media Marketing

• Listen more than you talk.
• Curate User Generated Content on a regular schedule.
• Ask for and reward feedback in multiple places and in a variety of ways.
• Create a special group of customers and advocates, a “buzz team” to help create content, programs and offers.
• Create MORE unique content than Sales.
• Have the right conversation in the right place.

The last bullet can be tricky. There is no RIGHT answer for where you should have the many different kinds of customer conversations social media marketing creates such as:

• Q&A.
• Feedback.
• Reviews.
• How to support you on social.
• Helpful ideas (expansion of existing content).
• Customer Service problems / opportunities.
• Partnership requests.
• Press inquiries.
• How to talk with a human.
• Where to mail a package.
• Where to send a fax.
• Who to email for what.

There may be another 50 “communication” needs your website must define quickly. Most “contact us” pages include an address and a phone number. What about social media? What if I have a particular kind of communication? The more clear your “contact us” page is the more bonus points your website receives for being EASY, FAST and KIND.

Most important idea in the two charts below is when in doubt ASK. Social business is about having a conversation instead of a lecture, so when in doubt ASK:

Tip #4: Listen More Than You Talk On Social Media

Saved the hardest tip for Type A Internet marketers for last. Insure you LISTEN more than you TALK on social media. When someone @Replies you respond. When someone includes your online marketing in their recommendations say thanks. Build LISTENING into your marketing. Create regular features from User Generated Content (UGC). Publish a schedule for “Comment of the Month” or “Best Visitor Idea of the Week” because doing so communicates how much you care about and depend on feedback.

Pull content from gurus or avid brand advocates into your mix and push that link across your social properties. Share without a sense of consideration or share because content is GREAT and you aren’t worried about making sure you get your “just rewards” and your marketing is acting like an “Authority”. Authorities are Google’s magical hall monitors. Authorities earn more trust and receive more links. You want your website and Google Plus page to become authorities.

Think about the Commons and act for the greater good and your efforts will be rewarded. This is a big TRUST ME we realize, but what alternative is there? Continue to speak to yourself about yourself and your marketing will be on an island alone. Open up, listen and curate and you will become an authority. Becoming an authority on some content important to your brand should be on every Internet marketer’s To Do list. The fist step to become an authority is making sure your Internet marketing listens more than it talks.

Join and Follow Atlantic BT

Follow @Atlanticbt on Twitter.

Like Atlantic Business Technologies on Facebook.

Follow @Scenttrail (Marty) on Twitter.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Is Changing

Read the frenzy of blog posts after Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm changes and an Internet marketer may think the world as they’ve known it is coming to an end. The perception isn’t wrong as much as overblown. Google is consistent in some things inconsistent in others. Google’s insistence on great content is not new.

That your great content must compete in a “red ocean” of content marketing is new. This post is about how to create new Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to help play well with Google’s new SEO ecosystem. I’ve discussed the importance of The Commons and collaborative competition in The Commons Revolution. This post is about how to think about your online business as part of a “Commons” or an “ecosystem” where your role is to curate and create great content, establish authority and win visitor hearts and minds.

What Is A SEO Ecosystem

Google isn’t interested in your website by itself. Google is interested in how your website and web content fits in and contributes to the “conversation” happening in your business. If you are a web development company such as Atlantic BT Google is interested in how your content helps develop web sites and software. Atlantic BT is part of a local (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, North Carolina), regional (Southeast) and national web design ecosystem.

Ecosystems are fascinating. I’ve reviewed a number of businesses from carpet cleaning to high end government research during my Director of Marketing tenure at Atlantic BT. Each business group has competitors that learn where openings exist creating a balanced “ecosystem”.

It is rare to see two great Facebook competitors squared off and fight for each like and share. When I reviewed the advanced sports ecosystem Patagonia was a better blogger than North Face who was amazing on Facebook and Oakley was great on Twitter. Each competitor found tools to fit their brand not already mastered by a major competitor.

SEO Ecosystems understand a business vertical or group of businesses AS A WHOLE observing the push and pull of Internet marketing as it develops within the system (think of this as the “Google View” because this is how Google views your ecosystem too). An “ecosystem” can be made up of as few as two websites, but the view is always across a common set of metrics including:

• PageRank (use Page Rank Checker).
• Inbound Links (use Alexa.com).
• PageSpread (use Google site:www.website.com and try without www use larger of two numbers).
• Social (Go to social nets and note followers).

PageRank
Google ranks every webpage (eventually) from 0 to 10 (higher is better). PageRank is a great aggregate number letting you know the strength / weakness of your website within its business ecosystem. A PageRank of 6 is good unless all of your competitors are PR9s (then having a PR6 is way behind).  PageRank is made up of many metrics, but number and quality of inbound links is one of the most important.

Inbound Links & Social Signals
Google’s engine is built on the democracy of “link love”. Google had to strike hard against “link fraud” or the underpinning of its algorithm was at risk. If websites with high PageRank sell their SEO power Google’s link based democracy is threatened.  Correctly anchored inbound links are HARD to get. Likes and shares are easier to get, so Google made room to check their algorithms recommendations by using “social signals”, the ubiquitous LIKE, LINK and SHARE on social networks.

In fact, Google saw so much fraud in the “correctly anchored” links too many of them (links with the same keywords as anchors) can create an “over optimized” problem now. If you inbound links don’t feel random and created out of love Google will simply NOT give you credit for them or worse penalize your site for having them.

PageSpread & Inbound Link Efficiency Index
Pagespread is how many pages your website has “in” Google’s. Use the command Site: website.com (with and without www) to find your website’s pagespread. Having millions of pages isn’t helpful IF those pages aren’t being linked to, so we developed a new metric called LEI or Link Efficiency Index  to judge how FAST your website is developing inbound links vs. your competitors.

Social Following
Facebook LIKES and Twitter followers aren’t important in and of themselves, but they are important confirming signals. If you have low pagespread but high social shares your website may have a high PageRank. If you have low social follows, low inbound links and low pagespread your website will have a low pagerank.

Web Design Raleigh Ecosystem

For today’s post we will examine an important phrase for Atlantic BT and our web development competitors: “web design raleigh”.  To know your website’s position on a keyword or phrase use Mike’s free Keyword Checker tool (since the Google float will obscure the absolute reference). Her are five rankings’s from Mike’s:

1. AtlanticBT.com  (located in Raleigh, almost 70 employees).

2. TheeDesign.com   (located in Raleigh, 10 – 15 employees).

3. Weareo3.com (located in Raleigh, 2 employees).

4. Fragmentlabs.com/(located in Wake Forest, (5 – 10 employees).

9. Onwired.com  (located in Raleigh, 10 – 15 employees).

Size of the company may or may not be important to your decision about who should create your website. Performance is usually related to size online. Hard to become bigger if your work isn’t great. Next thing to do when looking at an ecosystem is to create an apples to apples comparison across the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) listed above:

How the ecosystem for “web design raleigh” charts:

Understanding The Web Design Raleigh Ecosystem

We’ve created an “ecosystem” view of the Google keyword phrase “web design Raleigh”. Each competitor has strengths and weaknesses evident in this analysis. Atlantic BT could improve link creation efficiency and its Google Plus profile. Competitors on this list could improve other aspects of their Internet marketing from pagespread to social likes and shares.

Each company has great people working hard to develop awesome websites.

Despite Atlantic BT’s lead in “web design in Raleigh” the business vertical is far from “rolled up” or dominated exclusively by one firm. “Web design raleigh” may never be”rolled up”. Just because Google and the web prefers an authority doesn’t mean authority is always established. The more “out in the tail” we go the less Google cares if a set of keywords finds dominant authority. “Web design Raleigh” receives about 2,900 broad match searches a month, so it is pretty far out in the “tail” of long tail SEO.

The “Web design raleigh” ecosystem we’ve looked at may distribute views something like this:

Hope this post helps you know how to create a SEO Ecosystem view. Could you create a view like this on each of your top 10 keywords? Yes. Creating an “ecosystem view” is a good idea since there is something about creating an Apples to Apples comparison that helps identify strengths and weaknesses for YOUR website and for your competitors. We would NEVER suggest making a buying decision based on ecosystem results alone.

Use your ecosystem analysis to create informed questions, evaluate strengths and weaknesses of different websites on different keywords and learn how you can disrupt a business vertical. One consistent “disruption” is become a Google Plus authority since use of G+ is usually not very crowded (the tool is still difficult and not as friendly as other social nets so jump in now to disrupt).  The more you understand your new SEO Ecosystem the better your Internet marketing will do.

Note: left “raleigh” un-capitalized above because that is how Google views it in Adwords Keyword tool.

Let’s pretend we run a B2B website where management is not certain about the Return On Investment (ROI) from Internet marketing. One way to protect your company’s investment and build support for your marketing is create daily Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Instead of explaining Daily KPIs step by laborious step I’m going to toss us into the deep end of the pool and explain how to swim.

Here is the deep end of the pool:

You may want to Zoom in since I couldn’t make the type larger and not have the page take forever to load (an SEO sin). Daily KPI numbers are divided into:

• Building Blocks – Base numbers such as unique visitors and visits that feed other important calculations.
  .
• Stickiness – Measures critical website “heuristic” measures, or how the site is being used and liked (or not).
  .
• Conversion – Is the website doing what you want it to do. Note I assigned a $2,400 value to each conversion based on internal numbers. The value of your conversion may very.
  . 

Daily KPIs: Building Blocks

Date & Day
When comparing Yesterday to the Same Day Last Year including date and day helps. Most B2B websites go to sleep over the weekend. Knowing what day your comparison is comparing against is valuable. In the example above we would expect Monday’s numbers to beat a Saturday.

Uniques
Unique traffic to your website created by planting a “cookie” (little piece of code on a visitors computer). A person can only be “unique” once. There is a “cookie erase” controversy. People who erase cookies can appear as a “unique” visitor twice. Don’t sweat a detail that fine BECAUSE it is true across your model.

Web analytics are NOT a search for absolute mathematical truth. Web analytics are a search for marketing truth. We create models to find Internet marketing truth. In our Internet marketing models consistency trumps absolute accuracy. Don’t trip over million dollar bills to pick up nickels.

% – The % gain or loss vs same day last year.

Visits – How many visits were made to the website. Visits will always exceed uniques because some visitors visit more than once.

Pageviews – Aggregate of pages served for the period (in this case for a single day).

Daily KPIs: Stickiness

Stickiness is how well your website engages visitors. Stickiness metrics are sometimes called “heuristic” measurements. Heuristic measures are beyond important after Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm changes. Google’s changes place high value on engagement. Website engagement is measured by heuristics.

Visits per Visitor – Calculation: total visits / uniques.
Sometimes called “repeat visits” or “repeat visitors” this metrics tells you how often visitors return to your website. You want this number to go UP and it will do so very slowly over time if your engagement metrics improve. In our example Visits per Visitor is down slightly from 1.14 last year to 1.10. Not down so much that I would panic, but worth watching as we expand out to weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly numbers.

Pages Per Unique Visitor – Calculation: Pageviews / Uniques.
Pages divided by unique traffic provides a sense of if each unique visitor is engaged MORE or LESS. You want this number to go UP. This is a “nice to have” metric that confirms other metrics, so I don’t calculate a % to see a trend here. I can get the trend from other more important metrics such as Visits per Visitor, Pages and Time.

Pages
Comes from Google analytics on the Audience – Overview page. Number is pages viewed per average visitor with repeat pages counted. This means if a visitor travels down a menu and returns to the homepage the homepage is counted twice. There is a ratio between pages and time. Average pages per visit in the 3 to 6 range is good. Anything above 6, remember these are AVERAGES, is astronomical. This metric moves SLOWLY. You want to watch its trend over time and hope that your number is moving UP.

%YoY – Since Pages is a major “trending” heuristic it is a good idea to divide current by past to see how you are doing.

Time (seconds)
I convert Google’s minutes on our website to seconds for ease of math purposes. This is another major trending metric especially after Panda and Penguin, so divide current by past.

Bounce Rate
Google wants your website to be sticky, so you want bounce rate to trend DOWN. Bounce rates in the sixties are not uncommon. A bounce rate below 50% may mean your don’t have enough traffic visiting your website. Bounce rate exposes the two sides of web metrics. You want your metrics to IMPROVE, but improve too much and something is WRONG (lol). Welcome to Internet marketing.

Daily KPIs: Conversion

I can’t know your “conversion” points, but they are always “triggered” events. You want visitors to take some action such as: subscribe to your email list, fill out a form, request a call. These actions are “conversions” and can be tracked in Google Analytics as “Goals”. Goto  the Conversions – Goals – Overview tab. This will show a summary of the goals you’ve created off of triggered events (clicks = a “triggered event”).

Goal 1 – 3 – These are goals we’ve defined.

Total – Summary of the defined goals.

Conversion Rate – Calculation: Total Conversion / Visits. Use visits not unique because every visit can produce a conversion.

Value
Value of a conversion * total conversions (a simple way to create “value” is take gross sales last year and divide by conversions). I realize such a fuzzy metric will make some financial types nervous. Value COULD BE ANYTHING. Since we don’t care as much about accuracy as consistency, the TREND of value is more important to Internet marketing than its “dollars to the bank” accuracy. Yes some websites will have the financial acumen to figure the model to 10 digits of Pi. I could care less and would argue such absurd uses of time end up costing money instead of making it. Slap a value on your conversions and then trend it over time. You can debate the CFO on how accurate you are later.

Daily KPIs Example Conclusions (the green and red boxes)

A single day evaluated by itself doesn’t say much. The discipline of looking at KPIs daily is what creates insight. On balance May 6th looks good. Uniques were up, Visits Per Visitor was down and that deserve a “watch”, more people visiting looked at more pages and spent a lot more TIME so we didn’t sacrifice heuristics to bring in more traffic.

We are comparing a Monday to a Saturday and such a comparison is almost useless in a B2B website.  I would connect to weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly KPIs to know if the “watch” on Visits Per Visitor is an alarm or an anomaly.  Since I brought up connecting to weekly KPIs let’s dive a little deeper into our KPI pool and look at Weekly KPIs:

Week over Week Analysis

Does our “watch” on Visits Per Visitor need a “deep dive” to figure out what is going on? Probably not based on comparing a week in April / May to the same week last year. We see an average of 1.12 for Visits Per Visitor and we know this metric moves SLOWLY and in tiny increments, so our single day 1.10 isn’t so dramatic as to call for a deep dive.

In the weekly data our unique traffic is down by 17%. I know the source of the difference. We had a promotion last year we didn’t repeat this year. I don’t panic about unique traffic UNLESS other numbers are trending down too. Use numbers like Pages Per Unique Visitor to know if your website’s engagement is UP even as its traffic is DOWN.

The other reason I wouldn’t panic is this year we converted at 2.42% vs. 1.40% last year banking $163,000 to $16,800, a 871% improvement. That number is TOO GOOD, but again I know the source. I added a goal that wasn’t in last year, so if I wanted a strict apples to apples comparison I would model OUT the difference.

Keep good Notes

I am the WORST person to tell you to keep good notes (lol). If I get hit by a car there will be no note about our Curation Contest or my addition of goals. Since metrics extend over time keeping good notes about daily anomalies or special circumstances will prove helpful when you look back and forget what you or what happened last year. If your site goes down for more than a burp, NOTE IT or you may spend days trying to discover why your daily KPIs are so messed up.

Spreadsheets & Discipline

Wish there was some way to create a daily KPI log OTHER than Excel. If there is one I don’t know it. If you know of a better, less manual way please share in a comment. When I managed $6M in annual e-commerce revenue I checked daily KPIs first thing in the morning. 99% of the time daily KPIs are IN LINE with your modeled expectations. When your KPIs are in line go about your job.

1% of the time your KPIs will trend way out of line with your modeled expectations.

NEVER ignore those days. In a modeled world like the web any variation beyond a half a point of standard deviation (give or take your metrics) deserves a quick review. When you see a full point or two of standard deviation difference then you should close your door and say, “DIVE, DIVE, DIVE” because something bad is happening.

Your website is ON FIRE and it is your job to put it out.

One scary story to sink the point. One October my team found a full 3 point POSITIVE visitor number. We modeled at X and the number we got was 3 full percentage points higher WITHOUT a corresponding increase in the number of conversions. We had substantially more traffic acting like substantially LESS traffic.

We were under a “spam attack” from a competitor.

Spam attacks are when competitors hire proxies to bomb your website with “bad neighborhood” links. The result of such a “spam bomb” is a momentary increase in traffic and then a Google smackdown as your website is labeled “spammer”. We saw the source and reported the links. Now you can use a “disavow” command if you know what you are doing.

The point to my scary story is know your model.

Any movement beyond your modeled expectations should be investigated. Dramatic movements mean your website is on fire and you must put it out before it burns to the ground. Will your website be attacked as the one I managed was? Attacks are increasing and from strange sources, so watch your Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly KPIs like a hawk on a wire looking for dinner and remember to “stay calm and carry on”.

Join and Follow Atlantic BT

Follow @Atlanticbt on Twitter.

Like Atlantic Business Technologies on Facebook.

Follow @Scenttrail (Marty) on Twitter.

The Lean Content Movement

I created Anatomy of Great Ecom for one of my content marketing websites a few days ago (image below). I approached the post with the Lean Content Movement in Mind. Scoop.it’s CEO Guillaume Decugis, Founder Marc Rougier and the team at Scoop.it, a curation tool I love, and their team is  pioneering the Lean Content Movement.

Show don’t tell may be a good summary of the Lean Content Movement. Marketing influenced by MOBILE is MORE visual no. If your visuals aren’t cool and arresting no one reads the words or watches the video. Emerging content marketing ideas are forming into best practices for our new Lean Content Movement.

.
Lean Content Movement Ideas
* Show don’t tell.
* Play for shares.
* Create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that make shares more likely.
* Everything promotes more or less shares, there is no neutral in content marketing.
* Content is money, but not all content is equal.
* Create movements not campaigns.

If you think a list like this would be better presented graphically you are thinking like a lean content marketer.

If I had the graphic skills necessary I would have formed the Lean Content Movement Ideas list into a graphic. My inability to do so brings up another aspect to the Lean Content Movement – it takes TIME and the right team. If you don’t have a great graphic designer on your content team, one who can work FAST, then your content marketing team isn’t ready for the Lean Content Movement.

How Anatomy of Great Ecom content aligns with Lean Content Movement:
* Led with WordPress Gallery.
* Told the story in 3 visuals FIRST.
* Wrote the content after leading by telling the story visually.
* Used “web writing” guidelines for the words (short sentences, small paragraphs, big headers and bullet points for scanners).
* Anatomy of E-commerce fits in New E-Commerce Movement.

 

Movements Not Campaigns

TIME and COMMITMENT are the differences between campaigns and movements. Create Movements To Sell Campaigns is a ScentTrail Marketing post touching on how to create an umbrella idea, a “movement” that creates cohesion binding all other ideas together in a meaningful core.  If you sell B2B and B2C web and software development as we do at Atlantic BT, you could create movements for:

• The New E-commerce.
• Mobile Revolution.
• Hyper-Local marketing.
• Visual Marketing Movement.
• Content Marketing Movement.

Presence or absence of Blue Oceans may be the tactical reason you choose one “movement” over the other.

Blue Oceans, taken from the book Blue Ocean Strategies by Kim, are pockets of new value you create to swim in an ocean not yet infested with sharks, not turned red from zero-sum competition. Cirque du Soleil is a favorite example of a Blue Ocean strategy. Cirque du Soleil redefined “circus” stripping away COSTS (animals and travel) and leaving storytelling and acrobatics. Genius Blue Ocean strategy.

Lean Content feels like a Blue Ocean.

Karen Dietz, one of my favorite storytelling tutors and founder of JustStoryIt.com, says he who tells the best story wins. I agree and would add the website that creates movements supported by lean content will WIN BIG in our emerging connected, social and mobile economy.

Join and Follow Atlantic BT

Follow @Atlanticbt on Twitter.

Like Atlantic Business Technologies on Facebook.

Follow @Scenttrail (Marty) on Twitter.