eCommerce and

Recently a fellow coworker sent me a blog about multi channel selling which was basically a "pro niche" piece.

"A highly effective strategy in ecommerce is multiple channel selling. This involves having several niche websites targeting different demographics, displaying specific product ranges. This allows you to create completely focused websites with a high sales conversion rate."

While I understand the niche v. mega site argument (and I also may have my mind set on which I like best both from a customer and retailer perspective) I thought this was an interesting article which highlighted all of the great things about niche websites and none of the bad. I know people say they are great because of the niche SEO value, the ability to really hone in on your marketing campaigns and the ability to focus on a particular product niche. And I agree, those are some great reasons to sell via niche websites. However, I see even more reasons to avoid buying or selling via a niche website. Developing niche SEO campaigns and polishing marketing strategies can be done on a large scale, in a similar fashion to that of niche retailers, by focusing on categories and product types.

I would even go so far as to say that I think that SEO, in particular, can go much further for larger sites.  I say this because a larger site can draw more links, have more authority within an industry and create a community built around an entire market instead of a niche. My next step in the conversation or thought process then usually turns to the ability to cross sell, up sell and convert repeat buyers which is much harder and far less effective on a niche website.  Think about it, how much harder would it be to convince a consumer to buy just one more barstool on a website that only sells barstools, as opposed to a website that sells outdoor furniture who can then up sell on the matching tables, chairs, accessories, and more?

The next thing that goes through my mind, or the next thing I would bring up in a conversation regarding niche v. vertical is operating costs.  Depending on the retailer's level of technological prowess, I also like to bring up the level of overhead with operating several websites v. one. Don't let me convince you, though; several retailers are moving away from niche websites. The Gap recently combined their web properties so that shoppers can simply visit the gap website and shop at all of their stores by means of one shopping cart. There are also several mega sites like, Amazon, QVC, etc. which continue to do well. So, while I lean on the anti-niche selling side of the fence, I believe it can be done in a scalable and profitable fashion. However, both as a buyer and seller, I prefer the larger non-niche sites.

This also brings up a nomenclature issue. I would consider "multi-channel selling" to be either selling through different means (i.e. as a physical store, catalog and online) or through different marketing channels such as shopping engines, marketplaces, and search engine marketing. So the verbiage of the article is also confusing in and of itself. I might consider the means through which products are listed and categorized on a site a "selling channel", but I would probably classify niche websites as a "selling strategy" based upon how the business has decided to sell online.

• Expectation management
• What to test
• How to test
• What to do after the test is completed

• Improving conversion rates
• Targeting segments to take this farther
• Eliminating massive redesign projects
• Ending subjective arguments about creative
• Developing confidence
• Don't test little things
• Be patient; expect a lot of 0 results between two versions
• Testing misses lifetime value issues, null results might be a victory
  • To elaborate on what he explained was lifetime value issues he explained that a customer may have a poor experience but because they were able to make it far enough in to the checkout process they may complete the sale.  Having said that the customer that had the poor experience on your website will probably remember their poor experience and not return to the site again.

• Scalability of testing:
• How important is the campaign?
• What can I learn and can it be used across other departments or areas?
• How easy can I get the actionable data?
• Am I empowered to react on the results of the test, if so do I have the resources to take action?

• Test against what you can control to get improved conversion rate.
• Define the business objectives ahead of time.

• Headlines
• Images, e.g. People v. Product, Solo v. Lifestyle
• Copy
• Copy Length

This year is flying by.  Happy Independence Day America!  I was talking with one of my fellow eCommerce pals this week and he reminded me that this would be his first 4th of July celebration since he moved here from Canada.  I thought that was interesting.  Kevin I hope you have a very Happy 4th!  Ok let’s get down to business.

• Gordian Project, our parent company, got its name from the idiom “cut the Gordian knot”.  To “cut the Gordian knot” means to get to the heart of the problem and solve it efficiently.  Similar to us is another entrepreneurial company called the Rubicon Project; their name comes from the etymology of the idiom to “cross the Rubicon”, which means to make an unchangeable decision.  The founder wrote a post this week about The Fear of Success.  I enjoyed it because in some ways it reminded me about the founders of our company; not just because they have had a lot of successes at a young age, or because of other reasons mentioned in the post, instead our fearless leaders seem to balance a lot of the equation that it takes to be successful, between one another. 
• I hope you aren’t viewing anything on YouTube that you wouldn’t want your Mom to know about, or Viacom for that matter.  Andy Beal reports on the news that a New York Court Orders Google to Hand Over Your YouTube Personal Data. 
• UK based SEOer, Richard Baxter, wrote a post this week on paginated links and the ability to use Google to find duplicate content.  He used one of our websites, OutdoorPros.com as the example for explaining his thoughts.  The post has actually sparked a discussion around here, so watch for a follow up post on the subject. 
• Last week I mentioned that marketers were embarking on strategies that may earn us a term equivalent to that of ambulance chasing attorneys.  Apparently I am not alone; Seth Godin wrote a post this week in which he remarks “Marketing culture has become a culture of lawyers.”  Check out the post though, as there is still time to save our reputation. 
• Marketers know how powerful word of mouth (WOM) can be to a campaign, company, product, etc. and with the social networking revolution of the LinkedIns, Twitters, blogs and more, viral marketing is growing by leaps and bounds.  Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide analyzes a recent study about WOM and if it is more effective and done more often online or offline. 

On the heels of Google Docs giving me a 404 Error that doesn't follow Google's own guidelines and Amazon going down to the tune of a $2.3 million, the largest alternative payment method provider couldn't just sit on the sidelines.  PayPal, not to be outdone by Google and Amazon, has now joined the ranks of mega sites dealing with recent errors and outages.

This last Wednesday, I went to PayPal's homepage, paypal.com, by typing the URL directly into my browser.  The page only partially loaded, showing lots of empty whitespace, noticeably absent formatting, and little navigation.  A big, almost empty, rectangle included two links in the lower left.  The first link read "Click here to retry".  The second link ironically read "Return to the homepage".  The title of the page read "Page Not Found - PayPal".  Several refreshes didn't clear up the issue.  Neither did clearing my cookies, cache and temporary files, restarting my browser, and retyping the URL.  Several minutes later, PayPal.com loaded fine.

Here is a screen shot of PayPal's home page give me the Page Not Found error.

Man, what's in the internet water and who will drink it next?

Sometimes Google creates guidelines for webmasters that Google doesn't follow itself.  Let me elaborate.  Last night, I went to Google Docs and was pleasantly surprised with a 404 error.  It was only pleasant because it's nice to know that even Google can't always satisfy Google standards, so I'm in good company.

For our non-nerds, in general, a 404 error is what users receive when they attempt to access a non existent page on a website.  This can happen for several reasons: the user may have incorrectly typed a URL, the page may no longer exist because it has been deleted, the page may have been moved to another location, the page may have been renamed, the link they followed may be broken or outdated, or a URL redirect, such as a 301 or 302, may have problems.

Google's 404 Error Page

I triggered the error by typing in the URL www.google.com/docs which redirected to http://docs.google.com/.  By the way, don't worry mankind, one browser refresh lead me to a working Google Docs home page.  Earth's productivity as we know it will have to halt another day.

Here is a screen shot of Google's 404 error, as presented to me:

Now, although I was surprised to have seen a 404 error from Google at all, this isn't what really surprised me.  Even Google's army of data centers can't get it right all of the time.  Also, I don't know of any uptime guarantees that come with Google Docs or any of Google's free services for that matter.  Some of Google's paid products or services do offer uptime guarantees, such as Google Apps Premier Edition, which includes a 99.9% uptime guarantee for Gmail.

What really surprised me, what really "pleasantly" surprised me, was the 404 error's presentation.

The text on the error page was extraordinarily simple, stating "Not Found Error 404".  The text was black on a white background.  Similarly, the title tag read "Not Found".  Also, the Google Docs favicon appeared in the FireFox browser tab.

However, Google's 404 page was not customized to provide help to Google's users.  Now, a non helpful 404 page is no epiphany.  Plenty of sites have 404 error pages as unwelcoming and unhelpful as Google's and plenty of great, free custom 404 error page recommendations are out there just waiting to be implemented.

Based on Google's definition of a "good custom 404 page", Google does not have a good custom 404 page

The irony in this example is that Google Webmaster Help Center provides Guidelines for creating useful custom 404 pages which recommends that webmasters create a custom 404 page.  The guidelines state "If you have access to your server, we recommend that you create a custom 404 page. A good custom 404 page will help people find the information they're looking for, as well as providing other helpful content and encouraging them to explore your site further."
Google's 404 page didn't do any of these things.  It didn't help people find the information they were looking for (Google Docs), was not customized to provide other helpful content (no other content was provided) and did not encourage them to explore their site further (no exploration opportunities existed).

So, based on Google's definition of a "good custom 404 page", Google does not have a good custom 404 page.

Based on Google's definition of an "effective 404 page", Google does not have an effective 404 page

Google's guidelines go on to describe how to create an "effective 404 page".  The guidelines state:

"Because a 404 page can also be a standard HTML page, you can customize it any way you want. Here are some suggestions for creating an effective 404 page that can help keep visitors on your site and help them find the information they're looking for:"

Then, the guidelines provide a bulleted list of suggestions.  Let's see how well Google does, in implementing their suggestions:

• Tell visitors clearly that the page they're looking for can't be found. Use language that is friendly and inviting.

Well, although the text doesn't say "what" isn't found, the page certainly presents the text "Not Found" loud and clear.  Obviously, the text "Not Found Error 404" is neither friendly nor inviting.

• Make sure your 404 page uses the same look and feel (including navigation) as the rest of your site.
  

Google's 404 page doesn't use any look and feel, or navigation, let alone a look and feel that is the same as the rest of Google.

• Consider adding links to your most popular articles or posts, as well as a link to your site's home page.
  

Google's 404 page doesn't contain any links to anywhere.

• Think about providing a way for users to report a broken link.

Google's 404 page doesn't provide a way for users to report anything.

• No matter how beautiful and useful your custom 404 page, you probably don't want it to appear in Google search results. In order to prevent 404 pages from being indexed by Google and other search engines, make sure that your webserver returns an actual 404 HTTP status code when a missing page is requested."

I didn't check the HTTP status code on Google's 404 page to see if Google's webserver returned an actual 404 or not.  Currently, it doesn't look like the 404 page appears in Google search results.

So, based on Google's definition of an "effective 404 page", Google does not have an effective 404 page.

Is Google a Google-friendly site?

What's really funny, is that Google's "Guidelines for creating useful custom 404 pages" are found under Googles' "Creating a Google-friendly site", which naturally begs the (very long) question:

If Google does not have a "good custom 404" page based on Google's definition of a good custom 404 page, and if Google does not have an "effective 404 page" based on Google's definition of an effective 404 page, which means that Google does not have a "useful custom 404 page" based on Google's "Guidelines for creating useful custom 404 page", and these guidelines are an element of "Creating a Google-friendly site" then...

Is Google a Google-friendly site?

Do you remember the bet I had with fellow blogger Matt?  I mentioned it right when the playoffs were starting and the gist of it is, he owes me sushi if I win and I owe him if I lose.  Well I am happy to say that the Lakers clenched the Western Conference Championship last night and will be on there way to the finals, where they will face either Boston or Detroit.  Needless to say Matt is starting to feel like I just might win!  That was my favorite event of the week but there were some interesting happenings in the world of eCommerce as well, so here’s my update.

• For those of you haven’t heard, there is a guy in our tight little industry who is trying to trademark the term SEO.  This guy is a real gem.  He claims that his reasons are for the betterment of the field, but his reasoning is filled with fallacy.  SEO’ers are in an uproar over this guy as you can see from the number of comments Sarah Bird, Esquire and Mozzer, have received on her recent post: “Gambert Strikes Back!! The Confidential Official Response to SEOmoz's Opposition Proceeding”.  Linkbait scheme or not, the name Jason Gambert is leaving a foul taste in the mouths of eCommercers. 
• A friend of Matt's contacted him, knowing he's in the ecommerce and seo world, and asked about what he would do to rank higher in search results for searches related to TV’s.  His friend just started his own website selling them.  We were not surprised to find out that the market is quite saturated for these products.  So the joke was that Matt told his friend “Sure no problem our Search Manager Zach will have you at the top of Google SERPs in no time.”  Anyhow right after this I came across an article written by Jessica Bowman at Search Engine Land called Why You Need To Know SEO Basics, Even If You Outsource.  I thought it would be useful to those who have been in eCommerce for a while as well as newcomers like Matt’s friend. 
• I thought this blog was great and packed with information for entrepreneurs.  It is a collection of articles about entrepreneurship.  The articles range from saving money to the business mindset. 
• eCommerce retail sites have less to fear when it comes to economic slowdown, according to eMarketer’s report: Slower But Still Steady Growth! 
• I am skeptical about the “Green” initiative and I think a lot of it is hype to make more “green”.  So when I saw the cover of the latest WIRED Magazine, I felt a sense of relief, because someone else said it and not me.  The cover says “Attention Environmentalists: Keep your SUV. Forget organics. Go nuclear. Screw the spotted owl.”  Really though, in all seriousness, this article takes a different approach, and I for one appreciated it.

Keeping a handle on who is talking about your business or linking to your website can be an awfully large task. Blog search engines are available to help in some big ways though.  Blog search engines aggregate blogs and web pages with rss feeds to index and make their content searchable in an organized fashion. For instance if I am looking for for information on search engine marketing, I can use Google as a resource to find my information or I can turn to a blog search engine to focus my search on only blogs.  I can use their refinements such as the time frame the information was published in.  I can also look for a particular post or an entire website about a certain topic. This can help the marketer or search engine optimizer keep tabs on what people are saying about a website.  This can also help them keep up on who might be linking to a particular website by using blog search engines to search for that company, or other information. Blog search engines have become more and more sophisticated, and nowadays you can do a blog search on a variety of topics.

My favorite blog search engines are Technorati, Bloglines and Google Blog Search; each of these blog search engines let me search for a website name or use a refinement to track what people are saying and who is linking to our websites. All of them also let me bookmark those searches making it easy to check out the latest buzz on each of our websites or a particular topic I am interested in.

For example you can go to Technorati, type PlumberSurplus.com into their search box and see what posts or blogs have the word PlumberSurplus.com in them. This gives me quick, up to date information on what is going on in the blogosphere for whatever I might be searching for. More blog search engines are available in this list of blog search engines.

Welcome to this week in eCommerce and Entrepreneurship.  Take a look cause the world of eCommerce is getting more interesting by the week.

• Brainstorming for keywords can be tough especially if you or your search marketer has hit their own form of writers block.  Search Engine Journal put out a list of tools to help with keyword generation. 
• “The Churchill Club of Silicon Valley just wrapped up one of its most anticipated events: the Annual Top Ten Tech Trends Debate. Five well-known and opinionated venture capitalists weighed in on what trends will take flight and what trends will fizzle out in the months ahead.” …more 
• I am not a fan of the Dallas Mavericks nor am I really a fan of Mark Cuban, not for any particular reason other than the fact that I am a Laker fan.  As a fan of the competition, one tends to feel a little sour towards the Mavericks owner.  As you may know though, he is one of us, an ecommerce nerd.  This week he pondered about how to beat Google, and what he came up with may interest you. 
• It is no secret that companies have discovered that employee health and well being cuts out on the amount of sick days used which cuts costs and increases productivity.  What about the employees that just plain play hooky?  Well a new technology has surfaced that can detect when an employee is lying over the phone.  From the article: “The technology means someone phoning in for a sickie will speak not to a sympathetic secretary but to a computer set up to check whether their voice is steady and reliable.” 
• In response to New York tax laws, Overstock.com has cancelled all relationships with affiliates in New York.

As you can tell I have been on a Google Webmaster Central kick lately. The Google Webmaster Central blog has collected some of their best and most informational posts and created the 7 must-read Webmaster Central blog posts. Seeing this collection has reminded me of some of the search engine optimization and search engine marketing hot issues, some of my favorites being...

Flash Best Practices 

While many were glad to see Google address this, flash has been something that many SEO's stay away from like the plague. While there are several acceptable methods for optimizing a flash website none are particularly easy and sometimes results are hard to glean. There were always questions as to whether the search engines would accept these optimization techniques or whether they would learn to read flash, both seem to have been addressed over time.

The Supplemental Index 

I remember several tools which could be used to see how many pages a website had in the Google supplemental index and I remember even more posts and discussions as to the use of the supplemental index and getting web pages out of it. I think many released a sigh of relief when Google disbanded its use so that website owners had one less thing to worry about. 

Duplicate Content 

The mention of duplicate content and penalties associated with it used to be a huge issue for many, especially those with larges websites which may have several overlapping pages. I was more than relieved when I learned that no penalties were actually associated with duplicate content but simply Google selecting which page to show for related searches. After many have spread the word about duplicate content this is still an issue that comes up and needs clarification. Many SEO's are still addressing duplicated content in that removing it or fixing the problem is great but getting Google to select the right version to show in searches may be more important. 

This week, "The Official Google Analytics Blog" posted an article dedicated to website optimization.  The article, authored by Laura Melahn from the Google Analytics Team and Jon Stona from the Website Optimizer Team, focuses on optimizing websites for conversion utilizing Google Website Optimizer and Google Analytics.

Early on in the post, the authors clarify the difference between website optimization and search-engine optimization by defining both terms.  In this clarification, Google defines search engine optimization as the following:

• Search-engine optimization means adjusting the content of your site so it ranks higher in the list of search results for a particular keyword or keyword phrase.

Now, it's no epiphany that Google's definition of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) focuses heavily on site content, since the user experience exiting Google is at the top of their priority list.  However, the noticeably absent elements of raw link juice, anchor text weight and domain authority is interesting.  In general, when site owners think about Search Engine Optimization, as Google mentions, their primary objective is to be sure that their site "ranks higher in the list of search results for a particular keyword or keyword phrase".  However, for the most part, the term Search Engine Optimization is utilized in association with this goal, namely ranking higher, versus in association to an attribute that contributes to this goal, such as adjusting content.  This goal can be reached by improving a healthy amount of arenas, only one of which is site content.  Although Google's definition is likely accurate from a historical perspective, if Search Engine Optimization has become more synonymous with ranking higher than with adjusting content, and ranking higher is influenced by a slew factors, some of which arguably have more or less influence than content, maybe the definition of Search Engine Optimization should be something like the following:

• Search-engine optimization means adjusting the content of doing things like W, X, Y, and  Z to your site so it ranks higher in the list of search results for a particular keyword or keyword phrase. 

Where W might be "adjusting content", X might be "building inbound links", Y might be "earning domain trust", Z might be "creating new content" and so forth.

This definition focuses on the goal and includes some of the attributes that contribute toward reaching that goal.  This approach would certainly align with industry practice.  Companies that provide Search Engine Optimization services typically provide a laundry list of ways for you to spend money.  Many firms who tout themselves as Search Engine Optimization companies provide a slew of services, including "adjusting the content of your site".  However, few firms run around touting themselves as, say,  a Link Building company, and provide search engine optimization (content adjustment) services as well.

Maybe it's just semantics...