InvisibleShield and Social Media
A few months ago one of my good friends, Cameron Gibbs, went to work at InvisibleShield, a company that makes scratch-proof covers for iPods, laptops, cell phones, etc.
Today he sent a link to a YouTube video that they made showing just how strong their shields are - check it out. I think this is a really good example of harnessing the power of social media - Gibbs - who would have thought? 
What I really like about it is that they found something that actually made a very boring product interesting. The last thing that anybody wants to sit and watch is some video about how a little piece of plastic keeps your cell phone from getting scratched - watching the shield keep 1k pounds of weights from crushing the phone, though, makes it a little more exciting.
While InvisibleShield isn’t an internet retailer (they do have their own web store, but I have a feeling that the majority of their sales will go through distribution channels with time), it’s an important lesson for internet retailers - just because your products are boring doesn’t mean that your marketing should be!
Pubcon 2007
Last week I had a chance to attend Pubcon, a Webmaster World marketing convention, for the 3′rd year in a row.
As always, I learned a lot from the sessions and came home with more ideas than we could ever implement to improve our website.
While I think some people can get carried away with attending conferences, if you haven’t ever attended one Pubcon would be a good way to get your feet wet. The show is less expensive, smaller and caters mostly to smaller companies. The one thing I wish Pubcon had was more advanced sessions - more than once I wondered if the information wasn’t too basic.
Overture Keyword Tool - Welcome Back
I didn’t really realize how often I use the Overture Keyword Selector Tool until I had to spend a week or so without it this past week (it’s been down).
While there are some good tools out there I haven’t found anything with enough data to give meaningful estimates on small niche keywords. I was happy to hear from Dave this morning that it’s back up and running.
Clickriver by Amazon
I really meant to write my review of Clickriver, an ad service from Amazon that allows you to bid on keywords for Amazon searches, a few days ago. I was pretty blown away with how simple it was to create new campaign and push it live. I’m glad that I procrastinated waited, though, since I have been able to really see the ad network in action.
The Good
From a usability standpoint Clickriver will most likely be the easiest place you will ever advertise. Any beginner web marketer can easily setup ad ad without getting confused or wondering what’s going on.
So far, from what I’ve seen, the conversion rates are pretty good. People searching Amazon for products are usually in a shopping mode. If you have a webstore you would be crazy not to try Clickriver out.
Your ads go live immediately and your ad stats are real time - anybody using Google with its seemingly inconsistent reporting latency will appreciate this.
The Bad
Your ads go below the Amazon products that are returned on your search query. If you are in a very competitive industry you will probably have a lot of products in front of yours and will most likely have a very low CTR. If you are in a niche category this is less of a concern (on some ads we have shown up beneath 2-3 products, which results in a lot more click-thru’s).
Clickriver doesn’t have any type of conversion tracking so you better either have some good analytics on your end or be able to make great decisions based on gut feelings - but then again, if that’s you, you’re probably into offline marketing, right?
The Confusing
Stepping back for a minute and forgetting how good Clickriver is for hardware companies like Sewell, why is Amazon doing this? I guess they really want to brand themselves as more of a technology company (internet retailers don’t trade for 123 times earnings).
I guess my bigger question is why don’t they just let more companies join the Amazon network? Every time I have applied to sell through Amazon (they use an extensive network of drop-shippers), they have told me that our category is full. Now they’re going to take lower margins to send users off their site to complete a transaction that they won’t have any upside on.
It seems to me that the best decision Amazon could make is to evaluate new applications based on the actual products the retailer sells as opposed to just the category they are in - we are getting way too much traffic for products that simply aren’t available through Amazon. But if they want to send the traffic my way, in post-bad-serve-Sewell-ping-pong lingo, “I’ll take it.”
Experts Exchange - a workaround
One of the most annoying things to me is doing a google search for a common technical problem and finding a site that purports to have the answer, but then tells me I have to sign-up to see the answer.
Experts-Exchange.com is one such site that I stumble across quite often. Yes, registration is free, but it is lame to me that Google ranks them so high on competitive keywords. I was also confused at how they would rank so well since without the experts responses they are pretty light on content.
Well, this morning I figured out how they do it - they allow the engines to see the full responses while the normal web users don’t. This is cloaking, but not the kind that you’ve heard all the bad stories about - Google allows this type of cloaking for various subscriptions services (such as some newspapers).
So 2 takeaways:
1) Google should penalize these guys - Google claims to be the champion of web usability and this is a serious usability issue.
2) Just click on “Cached” under the Google description to see what Google sees - get all the content you want from EE without having to subscribe or login
Postelwait’s Goyin on a Money Hunt
Goyin is a Utah-based MLM company that promises to make distributors rich - I don’t care so much about the product or business model but the name is funny and Postelwait is having some fun with it - apparently he’s Goyin money hunting…
The power of internet marketing
My sister has a 5-year old kid who likes playing games on nick.com (of course only when he can’t play games on my “video game phone” - yeah, all those features packed in a Treo and all it looks like to them is a video game phone - nice one).
Apparently when games are loading a commercial plays - my nephew saw a commercial for Charmin Ultra. Since that time he has become a brand marketer’s dream come true - he told his mom that Charmin is the best because it’s softer and you can use less.
I’m pretty impressed with the power of this marketing tactic. This ad had his attention like no TV ad would because he was intently watching the screen waiting for his game to load. If you are involved with brand marketing consider contextual video advertising - it might just make a few mini fanboys.
On an unrelated note this same sister has a new website about string teaching - she’s taught orchestra and is a super awesome viola player or something.
Preston Wiley - My lesson in misspellings
The other day I was sifting through my referral logs and I noticed a surprising trend - more often than not when somebody found my site by searching for my name they weren’t searching for “Preston Wily” (the right way to spell my name), but “Preston Wiley.”
So what does this mean to an internet retailer (or anybody who owns a website)? Optimize your site for common misspellings of your website! This is usually surprisingly easy to do and, if you’re like me, could possibly drive more traffic than the correct spelling.
By the way most of the other Preston Wiley’s are smarter than me - I found a doctor, a programmer, a webmaster… maybe I should change my name.
Affiliate Programs - Retailers, watch your backs
I was sent a link today about opportunistic affiliates taking advantage of internet merchants - I have to say, the information scared me. And this article is not about 2-bit Yahoo store retailers being swindled - the case study shows examples of web giants Blockbuster and Netflix being overcharged by shady affiliate traffic.
We are excited about the launch of the Sewell affiliate program, but this serves as a good reminder that we need to keep an eye on what our affiliates are doing. Within a week of launch we saw some questionable techniques (which we addressed).
My conclusion? Have a sharp affiliate manager (like Postelwait) or hire a company to manage your affiliate program who knows what they’re doing.
Using Google rankings to sell?
I was curious the other day about Utah custom home builders so I did a search for “utah custom home” on Google.
Note: I have absolutely no affiliation with any company in this space.
I clicked on the first result, ultimatehomesutah.com, and was surprised to see that they actually advertise on their home page:
Ranked #1 on Google for Luxury Homes in Utah
I did a search for “luxury homes in Utah” and, sure enough, they were #1. That got me thinking, though - what if they lose their ranking? I mean, that wouldn’t look good, right, claiming #1 if they didn’t have it?
Also it drives home a suspicion I have always had about people’s perception of Google - people think that a high-ranking site is more credible because Google is “voting for it.”
This is not the case - Google’s rankings are determined a mathematical formula, or algorithm, but that doesn’t really matter if people think that a high ranking denotes more authority.
A local Utah company (a sometimes competitor of our Utah SEO company) really drives home the point that rankings don’t matter. I strongly disagree with this - not only do high ranking sites drive higher levels of traffic (they claim that traffic doesn’t matter, just the conversion rate) but, from what I’ve seen, they convert better as well.