Is Personalization Changing Your Game Plan?
The Web is changing. Big surprise, right? Well, it might be for those who aren’t prepared or fail to see what’s going on.
(Credit)
In recent months, Google has introduced social and real time results to its regular SERPs in addition to an increase in personalization. With more and more people out of work and bending under financial strain, new websites and competition are popping up everywhere. The big question is what are you doing about it?
In terms of basic SEO, there isn’t much besides keeping up with the changes and doing what you can. Social Media is definitely starting to play a much larger role in many marketing plans. In fact, the latest study suggests 66% of government agencies have even got onboard. But what about your marketing plans and the strategies you create for others? Are they changing with the introduction of personalization and an increase in competition?
The Internet Marketer’s Guide to Battling Personalization?
One thing is for sure, sites that don’t cater to the user are going to be left behind, if they haven’t been already. Site owners need to start considering how they’ll go the extra mile in order to make the user feel at home and become a favorite. On the other hand, webmasters also need to keep it profitable. No easy task, for sure.
Usability
Usability has become almost a trend word, but there really is something to it. After all, the more easily I can navigate your site and find what I want, the more money I’m likely to spend. You might be thinking your website is already quite user friendly, but like someone who smells his own body odor for too long, it can be hard to spot the obvious.
Having a usability expert is one way to fix this. And, if you choose a good one, you’ll find that he or she has the uncanny ability to spot things that most of us don’t think of until they’re fixed. If you can’t afford one, but would still like to make improvements, talk to a partially technologically-challenged person and have them test your site.
Sit down with them at the computer and watch as they go through your website completing various tasks. This could include purchasing an item, signing up to your RSS feeds, finding specific information, and many other seemingly simple actions. Take note of how long it takes them to complete each thing, where they look, and the items they click on. You’ll find that doing this with a few people will help identify trouble spots. (Bonus tip: When they first open the site, ask them what the site is about and what they see first. This can be extremely powerful information!)
Conversion Optimization
Often confused with usability, conversion optimization can be a long, drawn out process. Experts in this field use analytics, live tracking, and many other components and tools to figure out what types of visitors use your site, what they’re looking for, and where they’re going. From there, they will create defined paths customized to meet the needs of each type of (profitable) visitor in order to boost conversions.
While this is no easy feat, there are steps you can take on your own to improve conversions. Site testing, analyzing your own analytics by creating custom events, and using tracking codes to find out what your customers are up to, what they like, and what they don’t like. Then, you can make the appropriate changes and test it out.
Site Optimization
While this is technically part of usability, SEO, and conversion optimization, I think it’s important enough to deserve its own category. This covers the technical side of the website and makes it work more efficiently and more accurately. In my eyes, this breaks down into two areas:
Data Optimization — This is a big one for sites with large amounts of information that are accessed by the user (For example, online catalogs, complex structures with numerous departments). These techniques use various structures and code systems to organize this data, recall it faster, and more accurately.
Web Design Optimization — Techniques such as combining or separating images into PSDs, improving the focus on particular elements, and improving the loading of the CSS through Javascript make the site faster, improve usability, and boost conversions.
These things might not help you overcome the effects of personalization and an increase in competition, but they can certainly help. If nothing else, you’ll be able to make the most of the traffic you do get.
So, what are you doing to help counteract personalization and improve the performance of your site?
January 18, 2010 at 3:34 am | Marketing | 4 comments
I sincerely hope those reading this take it to heart. NOW is the time to start and continually improve and enhance your Web site. Businesses that are not actively growing will start failing rapidly. Nothing is as fast as pay per click and search traffic – other methods take much longer to bear fruit – especially if you don’t have money to burn testing them.
Angie is absolutely correct about testing usability by watching someone who is not familiar with your site try to use it – and I do mean TRY. I highly recommend reading Steve Krug’s excellent book Don’t Make Me Think for more on optimum Web design and usability testing.
There are several exceptional sites on usability including UserEffect.com, GrokDotCom.com, BryanEisenberg.com and Sensible.com. All are well worth reading. I sometimes write about usability but always write about proven methods for growing businesses and blogs. I do hope you’ll become a regular reader.
Thanks Gail
Completely agree. Those are all fantastic resources. Websites and businesses that fail to diversify will simply disappear. So glad you stopped by.
Angie
Angie,
I do a lot of work with small businesses. They are still stuck on “I want an animated graphic.” When told they don’t need it, they need copy and a clean coded site to get noticed above their competition, they usually ask for two animated graphics.
Gail, those websites are good and I’d add http://www.jeffsextonwrites.com/ to that list.
I hear you Shane! I actually wrote a guest post over at NowSourcing on a similar issue. (It’s called Chicken Suits, Killer Dust Bunnies & Branding: Why Good Content Is Crap.) It blows my mind that some people will hunt out an expert, hire that person, then argue with everything they recommend. Very frustrating, and it’s sad because regardless how you handle the situation, the client still loses.