Nice one, CompUSA
http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=20651
I can’t even believe that CompUSA is touting this 15-minute pickup thing. Check my previous CompUSA post for the truth about their in-store pickup.
SEO and Big Search - PubCon 2006
This was a really interesting session discussing how large search engines handle SEO for themselves. I never thought about AOL having an in-house SEO manager (though I probably should have since I have seen Yahoo renting links for a few different properties). I realized during this session just how geeky people from Google really are. Adam Lasnik is one of the nerdiest people I have ever seen speak. At one point he used the phrase “can’t touch this.” He actually followed that up by saying - “not to dis on the Hammer at all.” I mean nerdy. He gave a ton of really good information, though.
Melanie Mitchell - AOL
She talked a lot about AOL’s reinvention as a media company. They have consistent SEO policies that are implemented company-wide and it must be quite a job with all of the different properties they are managing these days.
Dave Roth - Yahoo
Dave is a very comfortable, charasmatic speaker. Needless to say he is quite a contrast to his counterpart at Google. Apparently Yahoo focuses on PPC, SEO and affiliate marketing for all different channels. The most interesting thing I picked up from Dave’s talk is that Yahoo bribes different divisions to implement SEO techniques with their PPC budget. It seems like a more effective way to champion SEO best practices would be to convey the long-term benefits to the different decisions, but that’s just my opinion. Oh, by the way, Dave Roth is hiring SEO’s if anyone is interested. Sorry I don’t have his contact information but it can’t be too hard to find online.
Adam Lasnik - Google
This was a bit different than the other two talks because Google doesn’t actually SEO their properties. He said they do use best practices, but they don’t have a central department enforcing compliance with certain practices. I guess you don’t have to worry too much about PageRank when you determine it.
Here are my notes from his talk:
SNACC attack for SEO
Speed - throughput and latency are important to the engine (especially latency) - ie, how long after you click on something does it take for something to actually happen
Navigation - no 2 links on a page should go to the same destination; easy to find where to go, how to get there and how to get back
Accessibility - reasonable URL’s, useful alt tags, accessible search and audio CAPTCHA’s (I’m still not sure what this means)
Clarity - links are clearly links - blue and underlined is the preference
Comfort - easy to read, no jumpy pages; avoid italics; assign the height & width on all images (not doing so can make the page appear to jump when images load)
Adam also strongly suggested using one central domain rather than a bunch of different domains. He points to Google’s success (all properties are subdomains of google.com rather than different domains). He concluded that all in all the best SEO is finding new ways to make your customers happy and the engines will eventually catch on to these things and give you higher rankings.
Guy Kawasaki Keynote - PubCon 2006
I think that this was the first chance I have ever had to hear Guy Kawasaki speak (an obligatory link to help his quest for the technorati top-10). He was very entertaining to listen to and, unlike many keynote speakers, very humble. At the end of talk he warned people to disregard “bozo statements” - he gave some examples (such as the CEO of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, predicting that the world market for computers was about 5). He also included a bozo statement that he made - he was offered an opportunity to interview for a job in the 90’s and told the recruiter that it was too far away (he lived in San Francisco, the job was in San Jose), and he didn’t think the business would go anywhere. The company was Yahoo and he estimates that decision cost him $2B.
He talked about innovators and what makes a good innovator. He explained that the hard part of being an innovator is that in the beginning you have to have a vision and basically not listen to everybody telling you that you’re crazy, but after you invent a new product or service you have to start listening to these same people to refine your invention and create more value for the end-user. This transition can be difficult and some people never successfully make it.
The other thing he talked about that really stuck with me was the concept of “going for the next curve.” He explained that a lot of people are content with making marginal improvements to their business or product. What people like Guy Kawasaki look for, however, is something that is going to raise customer’s expectations exponentially rather than just marginally. His example was that Western Union should have become what PayPal is today, but they were just marginally improving their business rather than looking for industry-changing events. To their credit it is really difficult to anticipate these changes, but the best companies seem to do it.
PubCon 2006 - Las Vegas
Well, I am in the hallway right now waiting for PubCon to start. This is my first time coming to PubCon, but the schedule looks pretty similar to Search Engine Strategies, which I have been to. The pricetag for PubCon is much lower - you will pay about $500 to get in wheras SES costs $1500 or so. Since I’m seeing a ton of the same speakers from SES I’m starting to wonder why anybody goes to the other show?
I’m going to try to be good about sharing information that I pick up here. Apparently the show has free Wifi, which is awesome, but if that fails me I’ll just use my phone as a modem.
Lisensa copyright management for bloggers
Lisensa is a new service that lets you manage copyright licenses for proprietary content. It also provides another form of monetization for unique content - basically you can create a copyright license for your content and then charge publishers a certain amount to reprint your content. Lisensa takes a 10% cut of all license fees paid.
via ProBlogger
Why I no longer fear brick and mortars
I really used to fear brick and mortar retailers - you know, CompUSA, Best Buy, Staples, Office Max, etc. I figured that with their distribution network (all of the retail stores they have scattered across the US) they can satisfy users by offering an online store with an in-store pickup (resulting in more sales to consumers looking for instant gratification).
So today our tech support department bought a HDTV (for testing) from CompUSA. I went to pickup the order (since it was placed on my credit card) two hours after the order was placed. When we placed the order online it said our order would be ready for pickup within 15 minutes - I was pretty blown away.
So I get to the store - they haven’t done anything with our order and I don’t know what they did with the online order we placed (they said that they just throw all that information away and you have to buy the order again in the store). So I had to wait for about 10 minutes for one of their guys to go physically pick my TV up (which I easily could have done) and then go through the whole in-store purchasing process as if I didn’t do anything online.
Then, not missing an opportunity to actually make some money on the sale, they send a sales rep to pressure me into the ridiculously-priced extended warranty. I politely declined. He pushed. I declined again and told him it was for a business and we weren’t interested. He got upset and tried to explain why extended warranties are so important for businesses and finally I just turned around and gave my credit card to the cashier. Eventually the pushy salesmen went away.
So maybe I shouldn’t be so excited - maybe brick and mortars will never figure out the beauty of ecommerce and they’ll keep trying to treat customers like it’s 1980 and making claims that printers don’t really work unless you have a $90 gold-plated printer cable… let’s hope…
4% of site search keywords account for 50% of searches
http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=18886
My advice to any internet retailer is to focus on “the tail” (obscure, infrequent search terms) for SEO because it’s the best way to go toe-to-toe with the huge retailers, but to focus on this 4% first when working with site search. The only reason I usually don’t suggest going after head terms is because they can be prohibitively expensive for small retailers and usually going after a handful of vertical terms allows you to eventually get some head terms (which never convert as well anyway).
Cut your credit card fees this holiday season
https://checkout.google.com/sell?promo=sbhp
Google checkout (in what Henry Blodget considers a sign of weakness) has decided to make the service free through the end of 2006. Apparently they only have a few hundred merchants signed up - not too good.
I have talked to a couple of people who have used Google Checkout, however, and they both agreed that it was well streamlined and they prefered it to paypal - I can’t think of an advantage that google checkout would have but that was the feedback.
Either way it is worth offering to the few customers who might use it since you’ll be saving a transaction cost. Someday I would like to see a study showing what the average transaction fee for a merchant is and what their average net profits are - I have a feeling that many companies are making their credit card processors more money than they are making themselves!
Retail Email Blog
http://retailemail.blogspot.com/
I ran across this blog this morning while browsing some articles on Internet Retailer. It seems like a great resource for anybody doing email campaigns in the retail space with a laser focus and interesting information. It also has some general internet retail information which I found helpful.
Overstock Update
http://investors.overstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=131091&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=926774&highlight=
Here are Overstock’s latest numbers (Q3) with CEO Patrick Byrne’s assessment of Overstock’s performance and outlook.
As a side note, I had a chance to meet Patrick Byrne last week at a breakfast. He was a very nice, charismatic guy. I was impressed with his generosity toward a worthy cause. That being said I still would not invest in Overstock. Apparently they have made some improvements in their operations, but the future still looks bleak.