Here's the link to the blog entry:
Magic Words for Search Engine Optimization: Latent Semantic Indexing DemystifiedThis blog entry also includes some links to cool keyword analysis tools that are free.
Friday, September 22, 2006
The Power of Supporting Words for SEO
Came across a great blog entry on an SEO technique that you geeks will get excited about if you don't already use it. It even has a name that appeals to my inner geek on so many levels: "Latent Semantic Indexing". The blog author prefers to call it "Supporting Words", but any time I can slip a phrase like "Latent Semantic Indexing" into casual conversation, my day is pretty much made.
Here's the link to the blog entry:
Here's the link to the blog entry:
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Getting Emotional
It's tough to get a consumer excited about a product when you aren't talking to them directly. This is why a brick and mortar furniture store typically converts 30% of foot traffic to buyers, and a typical online furniture store typically converts about 1% or less of site visitors.
Words, images and design must stand in for the salesperson on a website. If your copy consists of what the manufacturer (or more likely the rep) wrote about the product, people aren't going to be persuaded very often.
It's a lot like dealing with a warehouse worker brought up front to fill in because the salespeople are out golfing. He can probably recite some facts about the product he schleps all day, but he's not going to have any clue about what the customer is really interested in. In other words, she will learn about features, but not necessarily about the benefits that make those features valuable to her.
Anybody who's sold knows you want the customer to feel like she's "got to have it", which requires that she is emotionally committed to owning the product. So how do you get her to feel that way when you can't probe for motivations in person? Here's a great quote from a great book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? by Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg:
So how DO you help your customers make a buying decision by appealing to their emotions? You focus on benefits to the consumer, not the features of the product. Benefits allow the consumer to relate to product features in ways that matter to her, and help her imagine her life with this new product in it. Here's a tip--if you can't think of a benefit to pair with a product feature in your copy, then don't mention the feature at all.
Words, images and design must stand in for the salesperson on a website. If your copy consists of what the manufacturer (or more likely the rep) wrote about the product, people aren't going to be persuaded very often.
It's a lot like dealing with a warehouse worker brought up front to fill in because the salespeople are out golfing. He can probably recite some facts about the product he schleps all day, but he's not going to have any clue about what the customer is really interested in. In other words, she will learn about features, but not necessarily about the benefits that make those features valuable to her.
Anybody who's sold knows you want the customer to feel like she's "got to have it", which requires that she is emotionally committed to owning the product. So how do you get her to feel that way when you can't probe for motivations in person? Here's a great quote from a great book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? by Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg:
Identifying and speaking to the emotional needs in your audience has very little to do with being emotive. It's not really about extravagant, flowery writing. It's not really about your ability to get your audience laughing or crying alongside you. Engaging people's emotions is not about escalating flamboyance.
So how DO you help your customers make a buying decision by appealing to their emotions? You focus on benefits to the consumer, not the features of the product. Benefits allow the consumer to relate to product features in ways that matter to her, and help her imagine her life with this new product in it. Here's a tip--if you can't think of a benefit to pair with a product feature in your copy, then don't mention the feature at all.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Websites Accessible to Blind Users?
Interesting news article today in Advertising Age titled "Blind Advocate's Suit Against Target Allowed to Proceed". The article focused on the potential financial impact to companies with large, complex websites who may be forced to re-build their websites to make them accessible to text readers used by the blind.
I admit to indulging in a bit of schadenfreude on this topic. No, I'm not a selfless advocate of the visually handicapped, but I am an advocate of ecommerce site design that is easy to use, fast-loading, and easily searchable. That usually means a site rendered in html with little or no reliance on plugins like Flash for anything important.
I've not read the full complaint, but AdAge referred to the main knocks against Target being the lack of image alt tags and the inability to use the site with only a keyboard (as opposed to a mouse). These are basic, unsexy features of plain html. As long as html is the way we display pages on the internet, including things like descriptive image alt tags should be a complete no-brainer.
Designing your site to be effective at selling both sighted and blind customers should help you stay focused on things that search engines like to see as well, like descriptive links and good copy. It will likewise keep you from straying into unproductive activities like commissioning a Flash entry page to your site. Ugh.
I realize I sound like a Luddite steeped in the stern usability strictures of people like Jakob Nielsen, but only because they work. Technology will march on, making gee-whiz stuff easier to do, more stable, and more accessible. Just remember that gee-whiz for its own sake never sells more product.
I admit to indulging in a bit of schadenfreude on this topic. No, I'm not a selfless advocate of the visually handicapped, but I am an advocate of ecommerce site design that is easy to use, fast-loading, and easily searchable. That usually means a site rendered in html with little or no reliance on plugins like Flash for anything important.
I've not read the full complaint, but AdAge referred to the main knocks against Target being the lack of image alt tags and the inability to use the site with only a keyboard (as opposed to a mouse). These are basic, unsexy features of plain html. As long as html is the way we display pages on the internet, including things like descriptive image alt tags should be a complete no-brainer.
Designing your site to be effective at selling both sighted and blind customers should help you stay focused on things that search engines like to see as well, like descriptive links and good copy. It will likewise keep you from straying into unproductive activities like commissioning a Flash entry page to your site. Ugh.
I realize I sound like a Luddite steeped in the stern usability strictures of people like Jakob Nielsen, but only because they work. Technology will march on, making gee-whiz stuff easier to do, more stable, and more accessible. Just remember that gee-whiz for its own sake never sells more product.
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