Apr 7 2006

Build and Market a Website that Sells: Day 1

by

Yesterday evening was the first part of the four-part class I’m teaching at the local community college: Build and Market a Website that Sells. The text book is my very own E-Marketing Performance: Effective Strategies for Building Optimizing and Marketing Your Website Online. The class will run for four consecutive Thursdays, two hours each.

I was actually pretty worried that I would have more time than I could fill with this first session. Now I’m worried that I won’t have enough time during all the remaining sessions. Turns out that I have a natural ability to yap at the mouth when in front of an audience… but only when I have pre-prepared comments. Heck, put me in front of an audience without anything prepared, you know… off the cuff ad-libbing and I’m bound to start hemming and hawing.

This first class turned out to be pretty fun. We didn’t get through all the exercises in class, but that allowed me to “assign some homework!” That’s what real teachers do, right? We tackled the Introduction and Section 1 of the book. I was a bit rushed on the second half of section one and went over time a bit but no one seemed to care, or at least if they did, they chose not to riot.

On one of the exercises I had everybody in the class go through a purchase process, starting with research to elimination to selection and everything but the actual purchase. To monitor behavior I have everybody two things to look for, one was a motorcycle battery and the other was a wedding ceremony. The results turned out to be pretty interesting. The only parameters were that they don’t just buy any battery or ceremony, they had to base their decisions in the class on what they would actually do if they were looking for these things.

Most everybody started with Google for a search, one person used DogPile and another used Ask.com. In some cases students went directly to a site bypassing search, because they already know a site that would meet their needs. In almost all cases, students selected the #1 ranked site for their query. Some looked at several of the top ranked sites but no one clicked past the first page. Most sponsored ads were ignored except in the cases where the sponsored results were above the natural results and then the #1 sponsored result was clicked.

A few of the students, after finding their battery actually went back to the search engine to search for the particular model number of the battery they “needed” in order to do a price comparison. While they all seemed to find the battery they needed in their first search going back and comparing prices shows that being there in the research phase isn’t necessarily a lock and other sites can possible steal business away by being well-ranked for more specific phrases, in this case specific product numbers.

Looking for weddings was more subjective to taste but the process was pretty much the same. Many of the students looked used “Lake Tahoe” in their query because they felt that this would represent a beautiful place to be married. Interestingly I never suggested that they had to get married locally, which Tahoe is, but this was a common destination point. I believe one typed in Reno Wedding.

Overall, the exercise showed that every user has different wants and needs and inevitably as they go through their search and selection process they’ll end up going in many different directions. While they all seemed attracted to the top ranked sites, from there it was anybody’s guess as to which direction they would go, depending on what they found in their research. Top rankings do matter, but so does the information people need to make a decision to purchase. And no matter what, you’ll never be able to get 100% conversion just because, even in our small group, everybody’s needs were different. Magnify that a few billion times and you’re now dealing in a very real online world.

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Tags: ASK, Google, Marketing, Search & Marketing, Search Engines, SEO / SEM Research
Posted in Marketing, Search & Marketing

2 Responses to “Build and Market a Website that Sells: Day 1”

  1. Igor M. says:

    Stoney, now you’re teaching? I think it’s fun to teach this stuff as we are very much passionate about it (so far).

    I am still waiting for you to e-mail me that ebook just for being the active posting visitor on your blog. ;-)

    Anyway … what you described is actually what has been discussed in the MarketingSherpa eye tracking report. I saw those charts and it’s true … people look at the first 4-5 natural results and only about 30% glance at the side ads. What is interesting is that this varies by industry. For example, in our industry where our potential customers do research before buying from a company, we’ve noticed that being #2 or #5 in the side ads didn’t make a difference (as long as you’re on page 1). We got the same amount of traffic.

    I think it’s excellent that colleges are starting to recognize “search marketing”. When I was in college (few years ago) never did I hear the words “internet” “search” or “marketing” together in one sentence.

    April 7th, 2006 at 10:21 am
  2. Stoney deGeyter says:

    I am still waiting for you to e-mail me that ebook just for being the active posting visitor on your blog.

    Well, since you put it that way…

    I have read the Sherpa eye tracking stuff. It’s always interesting to see those things confirmed with your own real life instances. What was most interesting is that most people didn’t even search for the phrase I actually thought they would! I also really liked how after finding their product some went back to compare prices too!

    April 7th, 2006 at 11:48 am