The Pre-Commerce Blog

And About That Disembodied, Disinterested, Third-person Voice

An excellent article on writing marketing copy from MarketingProfs. (Written by Gwyneth Dwyer)

An Evil Business

It's been a good couple of years for the word evil because both the President of the United States, and the management team of the worlds' most visible company (Google) have put it in their respective mission statements. The word hasn't had this much press since the Salem Witch Trials.

For the President, idiology and hyperbole can work. It engergizes the base. But I think the guys at Google are going to regret saying it. Because they're going to be a business soon. And as evidenced by lots of recent decisions they've had to make, businesses have lots of factors to consider when making decisions. And usually the ones about 'what will make us more money?' wind up winning out over 'what would a hippie do?'.

Consider what they've done in just the last few weeks: * They've put Gmail into test, pissing off the privacy fear mongers. * They've stopped taking gambling ads in response to silly government pressure, pissing off the 14 guys who actually own those millions of gambling sites and the thousands of affiliates who earn good money from them. * They've removed perfectly good web pages from their listings at the behest of hollywood and other large and clearly oppressive business interests, pissing off anybody who still believes in freedom of speech. * They've started supporting banner ads via Adsense, pissing off those opposed to colored pixels and those who think that subtle commerce is somehow more acceptable than garish commerce.

And clearly this is just the beginning. The point isn't that any of these moves are right or wrong. Clearly there are some of both :-) Mostly I'd say their moves, or more precisely their ability and willingness to move, have been quite impressive. If they can get all this done running on a few hundred $k, I can't wait to see what they do with $1.6 billion.

The point is that when you promise to be a saint everybody gets their own idea of what you mean, and it doesn't take too long before a great many people are disappointed. I'm afraid there's a backlash brewing here to the Google-love-fest that's been going on, and the boys themselves put the kettle on and turned up the heat. The press is going to love it. It'll be great for the blog-o-sphere. Too bad it largely didn't need to happen. 

Hey Google! Can You Help Me Find A Web Site?

I love the Alexa toolbar because of the 'suggested sites' that it displays as you browse. I nearly always keep this visible, and have found hundreds of great sites I would have never known about because of it. I also display the Google Toolbar, which leads me to this request: Please add 'other sites you might like' to the Google Toolbar.

Doesn't this make all the sense in the world? Isn't Google supposed to help people find websites? Well there are a lot more ways of finding sites than just search, and recommendation is a huge one. Some recommendations come from friends, some from links between sites, but there are lots of algorithmic ways to determine 'other sites like this one' and Google should devote some PHD brainpower to this endeavor.

I think this would not only help web surfers, those poor folks that Google claims to place high above all others, but I think it would ultimately help them with their SEO manipulation problem. How? By exposing people to new web sites, these sites can earn the kind of 'good' links that Google lives - ones bestowed based on love and merit alone (as opposed to those evil links that traded or purchased or otherwise created to influence PageRank).

I'm assuming Google will take the same alorithm they use to determine context for Adwords, and apply the results against their organic results list rather than the paid results list. The 'new site exposure' will occur because the algo will (hopefully) find new and insightful keyword combinations to search based on, therefore showing people sites different from those that they usually see when they type in their typical search queries.

It's also interesting to note that Amazon, which ownes Alexa, chose not to include site recommendations in the A9 toolbar. So this plea goes out to them as well.

That's Nice

Why do so many sites announced that they're new, or updated? Does this information help me in any way? Are they letting me know that the old one was really lousy and I'm lucky I didn't show up back then? Should I buy something because they're trying so hard? What is the point of sharing this information?

The Self-Service Web

A few days ago I wrote about continuously improving your web site. One argument against this type of effort is that 'our web site isn't for selling, it just generates leads which our sales people handle'. I heard a similar refrain just a few days ago from the VP of Marketing at a very successful enterprise software company.

This article over at MarketingProfs.com talks about managing a web site and refers to the self-service web. That's a great phrase because I think every web site has to at least aim for self-service. The brief history of the internet is that people are getting more and more comfortable making increasingly complex buying decisions entirely based on a web-based interaction. Several years ago, the argument went, books and CDs were the first ecommerce success stories because people knew what they were buying so the 'trust' hurdle was low. It took a few years for online clothing and financial transactions to take off. Today there is virtually nothing that isn't sold online - and in substantial quantities.

If your business isn't finding customers making purchase decisions based solely on interactions with your web site, then your web site needs more work. The first step: ask your sales people to list the most common initial questions and issues that customers bring when they first make contact. Take a look at your site and see if the answers to these questions are already there and need improvement, or (as is more likely) these issues aren't yet addressed online. Improve the site to cover this ground, and re-poll the sales people in a few weeks. Repeat this cycle until the first thing your sales people hear when they pick up the phone is "I'd like to place an order".

Then move ordering online...

A Lawyer On Your PR Team?

The strange little distortions and perversions caused by PageRank-lust just keep coming. Now we have the humorous-yet-probably-true theory (via MarketingVox) that filing a lawsuit is good for your site traffic.

The idea is that a lawsuit, especially one against a highly visible company like Google, will get reported and linked on a lot of sites, thereby propelling your site up the SERPS for your targetted keywords. So the web becomes just like Hollywood - it doesn't matter what they're saying as long as they're talking about you!