Posting will be light as I spend time with family and friends. I hope you enjoy the holidays as well.
Thanks for reading!
Dec
13
2007
B2B Website Usability – Does It Work? Update
It’s now been 2.5 months since the redesign of our flagship publication website. In B2B Website Usability – Does It Work? I reported:
The average weekly visits have increased 34%, average weekly page views have increased 23% and average weekly visitors have increased 36%.
Traffic has been continuing to grow every week since the launch. The publication staff posts a new issue every week, plus web-only content in blogs, video and web-exclusive articles. Since launch there has been a 80% increase in weekly visits, 40% increase in weekly page views, and 90% increase in weekly visitors. The numbers for monthly stats are very similar: 75% increase in visits, 45% increase in page views, and 85% increase in visitors. The publication is continuing to promote their new online content, and we’ve started running Google AdSense ads to promote specific parts of the site.
Technorati Tags: customer-centric sites, usability, design, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting
Dec
11
2007
B2B Hot Content – Video
Following the B2C world, video is now the hot content in the B2B world. With the popularity of YouTube, iTunes and watching tv over the web, B2B audiences are ready to watch video on your website. Take the opportunity to show how your products, services or processes can help your customers. Post regular video updates on your website about what your company is doing instead of just written press releases. Post these same videos on B2B industry sites with links to your own website to entice your customers (remember to use a unique landing page with a call-to-action).
Video does not have to be high quality on the web. Using just a home video camera and some inexpensive or free video editing software, you can create short videos of interest to your customers. If you have a Mac, try out iMovie which comes with the computer (if you purchased it in the past couple of years) or QuickTime Pro, which runs about $30 (and also runs on Windows). For Windows users, take a look at Windows Movie Maker which comes on most new computers, Ulead (about $60), or Adobe Premiere Elements ($100).
Dec
06
2007
B2B Business Networking
Read/Write Web: 2008 Will Be The Year of Business Networking – Business Networking models and services will evolve and there will be a lot of room for innovation. Reducing the cost of B2B business development is a really, really big deal. Today’s services are only scratching the surface of the potential. Niche feature-specific start-ups will be acquired by the big networks.
Look for more B2B websites to add community aspects and networking features in 2008. With their niche audiences, this is the perfect place for specific professionals to connect. This is a perfect opportunity to promote your own firm – both by adding your own company information into their network and to advertise or sponsor within that section of the website.
Technorati Tags: B2B business networking, advertising, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting
Dec
04
2007
B2B Advertising – Measuring Success
You’re promoting your B2B website through Google AdWords, contextual ads, display ads and print ads. The phone seems to be ringing more often and you’ve been getting more emails for RFP (request for proposal). Which ads are working? What is worth continuing?
Similar to statistics for a website, advertising has its own set of analytics. The online advertising measurement basics are:
- Impressions: The number of times the ad is shown on the web. This may include everywhere the ad is shown if it is on different sites or sections or it may be broken down by ad spots (which are specific places it was shown).
- Clicks: The number of times the ad was clicked on. Online ads usually include a call-to-action or a phrase enticing people to click on the ad. Once they click on the ad, they are taken to your website.
- CTR (Click-Through-Rate): The number of clicks divided by the number of impressions – usually displayed as a percentage.
How many impressions your ad gets depends on the website you are advertising on – huge sites can get millions of impressions per day. Smaller sites only get tens of thousands impressions per month. The cost of advertising is usually calculated based on CPM (cost per thousand impressions). Obviously the larger sites have larger audiences so it will be more expensive to advertise on them.
Clicks will also depend on the size of the website you are advertising on and how many impressions your ads get. CTR will tell you how effective your ad is at getting people to click. However, this also varies quite a bit depending on the industry, size of the ad, where it is placed on the site and whether it is rich media (interactive).
The best way to measure which particular ad is working is to have a unique landing page for each ad (basics of creating unique landing pages) to measure how many people are actually getting to your site. Using your website analytics, you should be able to track on each landing page how many visitors actually make a purchase or email for more information (have these calls-to-action right on the landing page).
Technorati Tags: advertising, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting
Nov
29
2007
B2B Website Promotion – Types of Ads
Once you’ve decided to promote your website through online advertising, there is a wide array of options available: tile ads, banner ads, skyscraper ads, page-peel ads, rich media ads, video ads, etc. How do you know what all these are and which to use?
The Interactive Advertising Bureau is a wonderful resource on all the basics of online advertising, including examples and guidelines for different types of ads. They also conduct research into what type of online advertising works and in what situation.
If you are just starting out in advertising online, then I suggest a banner or skyscraper ad on websites which are important to your audience. Good places to look are association or publications for your particular industry – remember to look for what your customers read, not necessarily what you read. In order to properly track the effectiveness of the ads, I suggest creating a unique landing page on your website for each ad you have. This will allow you to track from your analytics program how many people click on the ad and make it to your website.
For those who are more adventurous or willing to spend more money, rich media ads (ads with audio, video or interaction) can be extremely effective in capturing your audience’s attention. There is a wide variety of rich media ads – the IAB has some rich media guidelines to help. You’ll need a Flash or Rich Media Developer to create the ad – make sure they follow the specs for the website on which the ad will be posted (rich media ads with their added interaction can become quite large in file size and time for visitors to download. Try to keep your message to the point).
I’ll cover more about measuring advertising and specific ad examples in future posts.
Technorati Tags: advertising, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting
Nov
27
2007
B2B Media Usage
B2B numbers from 2006 (latest info I could find – July, Sept, Nov):
From Knowledge Storm and Universal McCann:
- 80% read blogs
- 31% use RSS
- 63% use online video
- 23% use social networks
- 86% use wikis, only 6% contribute
- 66% use podcasts
Sources:
- KnowledgeStorm – Podcast – Emerging Media Series: Online Video, Social Networks and Wikis
- KnowledgeStorm – Emerging Media Series: How Blogs & Real Simple Syndication (RSS) Impact B2B Technology Purchase Decisions
- KnowledgeStorm – Emerging Media Series: Online Video, Social Networks and Wikis
Nov
21
2007
Happy Thanksgiving!
Spending the week with family and friends.
Have a great Thanksgiving and enjoy whatever gives your life meaning.
I’ll be back next week with normal posting.
Nov
15
2007
B2B Website Promotion
You have your website optimized for usability, customer-centric design and search engines. What else can you do to promote your website and get more traffic? Advertise. There are a lot of options now. What makes sense for your business?
Cheap Methods of Promotion
- One of the best ways to promote your website is just to include the link to your website in any communications you send out: emails, enewsletters, quotes, RFPs, brochures, etc.
- Trade links with association websites and partner websites. Make sure you place links on your site in a place that makes sense for your visitors. Avoid link exchanges which place non-relevant ads on your site.
- Contextual advertising such as Google Adwords can be very affordable since you can set spending limits and place several different ads to target specific segments of your audience.
Brand Awareness
Once you have some traffic coming to your site, you might like to increase your brand awareness. You want your customers to think of you when they have a need you can fulfill. Here are some types of advertising to increase your brand awareness:
- Ads in newspapers, magazines, or other print periodicals. Properly designed, this type of ad can not only make your company more top-of-mind, they can also drive traffic to your website when people remember your name during a purchasing cycle.
- Ads on industry websites: trade magazine sites, association sites, etc. These can be especially effective because professionals typically turn to the web for research and news. Many websites are also very affordable for limited runs and smaller ad sizes.
- Sponsorships. Sponsor a round of golf, a charity event, a local event, etc. These can be great publicity plus a tax write-off. Your company will be seen as generous and in-touch with issues and/or the community.
Targeted Campaigns
You may have specific products or services you want to promote or a corporate event you want your customers to know about. This type of marketing requires a bit more targeting.
- Targeted ads on industry websites. Look for sections or features which target your customers and find out about advertising or sponsorship opportunities. You’ll get more impact from bigger ad sizes (skyscraper, medium box, leaderboard).
- Contextual ads. Find out if your industry’s websites use contextual ads to target your audience.
Don’t be shy about trying out a few different advertising methods. Sometimes it takes a little trial and error to figure out what works best for your specific customers.
Technorati Tags: customer-centric sites, advertising, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting
Nov
13
2007
B2B Analytics Basics
We’ve discussed some of this before, but just as a refresher:
There are three types of basic information for a website:
- Page views are the number of web pages viewed on your website.
- Visits are the number times people visit the website. They can view multiple pages (page views) each visit.
- Unique visitors are the number of people who visit the website (usually as near as possible to ascertain).
What other information should you look for in your analytics package to find out if your site is usable and designed with your customer in mind?
- pages/visit: how many pages (on average) do people look at when they come to your website. Obviously, the higher the better. Some of this will depend on if your traffic comes mostly from search engines or from direct traffic. Visitors from search engines are less likely to browse around once they’ve found their answer (or if they didn’t find their answer).
- average time on site: how long (on average) do people spend on your site. Again, the longer the better. If this is a very small number (under a minute), your visitors aren’t bothering to read much of what is on the page.
- bounce rate: is the percentage of visits where the visitor only viewed a single page and then left. This often means the page where the visitor entered was not relevant to what they were coming to the site for (although it could also mean that they found their answer and left). This stat is extremely important for eCommerce sites which don’t want visitors to leave until they’ve purchased something.
- % of new visits: how many of your visits are from new visitors. This will tell you how loyal your audience is. If your site is engaging, your visitors will come back from time-to-time for more information and updates.
Technorati Tags: analytics, web analytics, web statistics, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting
Digital Marketing & Strategy){kind=link}
){kind=link}
Connect with Sazbean