Before Web 2.0, organizations would take old brochure copy, poor graphics, a couple of cheesy widgets and off they go to build a web site in bad html code. With today’s user expectations, web sites have to be a bit more sophisticated, offering the best-of-breed in user experience and delivery.

To truly build a great web site presence, compete on a level playing field and convert customers, organizations must do a bit of homework before developing their web site.

Review competitors – in order to compete, organizations need to see how they fare against the competition. A comprehensive competitor’s analysis will allow the organization to provide a similar interactive experience when vying for customers to their products or services.

Know your audience – most web sites try to cater to a broad-base audience using a ‘hit or miss’ approach. With today’s web savvy user, web sites need to address exactly who their customers are. In most cases, audiences are looking to be entertained, informed or persuaded - but knowing specific industry focus, generational disposition and online behavior will go a long way in getting your audience to engage, drill down and act.

Create relevant content – with the growth of social communities, blogs and rich video media, content can be served up in many formats. Key to the use of these great Web 2.0 applications is providing relevant content to users.  Similar to ‘knowing your audience’, organizations must segment content based upon visitor types.

Enhance the experience – the visitor experience relates to ease of use, access to relevant content and tools that will help engage, connect and convert customers. Reviewing appropriate navigation, Flash or graphics, web tools or gadgets as well as call-to-action scenarios will enhance the experience and have the visitor coming back for more.

Integrate online and offline strategies – successful organizations have realized that integrating online and offline marketing strategies is the best way to tap into a large customer base and get customers to spend more. Moreover, when an integrated strategic plan is executed for online and offline simultaneously, customers get a single, unified message from the organization that reflects a cohesive brand.

More Related Strategy:

Engagement Redirects the Marketing Trajectory

Web Site Success Requires Companywide Collaboration

Web Personalization - No Longer the Next Frontier

Best

Denice MacDonald 

There has been a lot written recently on optimization -- so much that most online marketers have a hard time getting their head around all of it. Where to start, what will get more ROI -- or better yet, conversion. Well folks, it's as simple as choosing the right headline. 

When it comes to content created for web sites, headlines ranks as one of the highest priorities. Reason simply, a headline is not to sell, but to connect and resonate with visitors¹. Headlines aid in the visual task of scanning and skimming, which helps visitors organize the information presented².^. Persuasively worded, headlines encourage and guides visitors to go deeper into content within web sites - specifically, headline > subhead > web page content. 

No need to sacrifice integrity 

Headline copy to placate search engines and spam filters can lead to keyword-laden, uninteresting language. But, well thought out headlines targeted around keywords will make the difference between getting somewhat noticed versus noticed and acted upon. If you maintain clarity, relevance and credibility, you are guaranteed you will connect with visitors. Access the links below for specific tips on how to create successful headlines. 

Test your headlines 

Lastly, like any strategy, you will need to test your headlines with Google Adwords or a similar metrics tool. By doing so, you can really hone in on exactly which words are highly rated and resonate with visitors. 

Credits

¹Optimizing Headlines by Marketing Experiments

²Top 10 Ideas for Testing Your Headlines by Josh Hay

More Resources

How to Write an Effective Headline - Part 1: Basic Principles by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, Web Marketing Today

Writing Headlines That Get Results by Brian Clark

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Whether you intend to use SharePoint as a dedicated internal content management system, have a need for forms processing or merely want a platform for social computing, this is not a product that can be simply turned over to the IT department to install and manage. 

Organizations that want to accomplish the most with SharePoint will need to align business and IT teams to constructively design a specific approach or strategy – reason simply, SharePoint seems easy to use, but somewhat difficult to master. 

The first and foremost step, develop a strategy around business needs.

What are your business needs and how can SharePoint help in addressing those needs? The following are examples of business requirements ahead of a SharePoint install:

1. Improve communications and documentation between diverse locations by providing a central repository for production procedures and information
2. Provide a method for documentation change management sharing information
3. Reduce the cost and time of resolving problems by providing a central portal for users (staff or employees) to search processes, procedures and get up to date documentation
4. Provide the ability to work on documentation at the earliest emergence, before interaction with other processes and large volumes of users
5. Project managers can share documents and collaborate with other users on projects; using an integrated set of tools
6. Provide collaboration tools such as wiki’s and blogs within the context of an intranet allowing feedback, surveying and access to versioned documents  

Once these objectives have been defined, it will be much easier to align goals to SharePoint technology.   

LEARN MORE:

From Microsoft

• Topics to consider before deploying SharePoint Products and Technologies

• Office SharePoint Server 2007 Technical Library in Compiled Help format

• Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit v3.0 x86

• Analyzing Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Usage

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Trial Version

Top 10 Benefits of MS SharePoint Services for Document Management by Positive NPV

The SharePoint Report by CMSWatch

Best

Denice MacDonald

Common Tag is an open tagging format developed to make content more connected, accessible and engaging. Unlike text tags, Common Tags are references to unique, well-defined concepts, complete with metadata and their own URLs.  

Specifically, Common Tag format is based on RDFa, a standard mechanism for placing structured content within HTML documents. The format uses the URIs of concepts defined on the Web as a way of anchoring the meaning of Tag objects. Common concepts can be found, among others, in two big databases of structured content or controlled vocabularies, as librarians call it – Freebase and DBpedia.  

According to the Common Tag web site, "The Common Tag format was developed to address the current shortcomings of tagging and help everyone - including end users, publishers, and developers - get more out of Web content. With Common Tag, content is tagged with unique, well-defined concepts - everything about New York City is tagged with one concept for New York City and everything about jaguar the animal is tagged with one concept for jaguar the animal.” 

Faviki is involved in the development of the  new open tagging format – Common Tag, together with AdaptiveBlue, DERI (NUI Galway), Yahoo!, Zemanta, and Zigtag. This is the first time that this number of web companies have stepped together from day one to introduce a tagging standard.

Resources:

Common Tag - The New Semantic Layer by Website Magazine, June, 2009

Will You Implement Yahoo's Common Tag? by Search Engine Roundtable, June, 2009

Best

Denice MacDonald

A heat map is a picture of a web page that shows where users click when they visit a particular page.  From a techy perspective, a heat map is artificial intelligence that simulates human vision during the first 5 seconds of exposure to visuals.  

How does it work? 

The areas that are clicked most often appear in red (hot spot), while the areas clicked least often appear in blue or with no color at all.   

Why should you care? 

Heat maps are a tool used by web developers as part of usability testing. Understanding how visitors behave when they visit your web site is crucial to improving its effectiveness – not to mention conversion.  

Looking at the image to the right, it appears that MacDonald Consulting needs to improve image placement on the header and within center copy real estate to increase visitor interaction and conversion. Doing so will encourage visitors to click on header links (top blue area to the right within the graphic).

How to build a website heat map:

Two of the most popular heat map generator applications are FuseStats and CrazyEgg but they charge for their service.  

Feng-GUI, however, offers free access to their service but there are some restrictions.

Best

Denice MacDonald

Creative Commons helps you publish your work online while letting others know exactly what they can and can't do with your work (any content or digital asset – including software).

With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify.

Creative Commons licenses contain four major permissions: 

1.  Attribution (by) requires users to attribute a work's original author. All Creative Commons licenses contain this option, but some now-deprecated licenses did not contain this component.

2.  Authors can either not restrict modification, or use Share-alike (sa), which is a copyleft requirement that requires that any derived works be licensed under the same license, or No derivatives (nd), which requires that the work not be modified.

3.  Non-commercial (nc) requires that the work not be used for commercial purposes.

4.  As of the current versions, all Creative Commons licenses allow the "core right" to redistribute a work for non-commercial purposes without modification. The Non-commercial and No derivatives options will make a work non-free.

Additional Resources:

Creative Commons 

Creative Common Icons

Creative Commons Images (Flikr)

Best

Denice MacDonald

According to Wikipedia, Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested — often by destroying mechanized looms—against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work.

Today, Luddites are often referred to as those individuals who have not embraced technology and prefer the old fashioned way over web-based access and solutions. If they do use the web (and this is definitely a growing market and should not be short-changed), they will require a certain online experience to convert.

If you are an online brand professional, web developer or even a business to consumer web site, how do you address Luddites and engage them to your online initiatives?

Keep it simple!

Web sites that are properly built with easy to use navigation, menus and call-to-actions are much more preferred over emphasizing 'internal search' as a way to engage visitors to your site. BUT, Luddites use search ten times more than most sophisticated web visitors and 'internal search' should continue to be part of the Luddite user experience strategy.

Manual over Automated

Most Luddites prefer human contact and are not impressed with fancy 'chat' or 'paypal' options. When catering to Luddites, ensure that there are plenty of options for manual interaction - including phone options for questions and/or ordering.

Respecting the Luddite

Show how you are personally using this new technology, how others are using it, and how they specifically could. FAQs or other similar resources will aid in providing Luddites the tools they need to engage.

Great Resources:

And the Luddites Shall Inherit the World (Wide Web) - By Steven Goodwin of Free Software Magazine

How to Sell Social Media to Cynics, Skeptics & Luddites - By Interactive Insights Group

Best

Denice MacDonald

You finally launched a much-anticipated Web 2.0+ web site and you can’t wait to hunker down and review your analytics. How do you gauge if your analytics for your site are appropriate, measurable and definable? And most importantly, who in your organization would benefit? 

Moving from a silo to a working team 

In the past, most web sites were created and managed within a silo. Now, it is recommended that organizations have a dedicated department or team leader focused to web statistics, watching the performance of various campaigns and then analyzing certain key metrics leading to higher ROI. After keen observation and reporting, useful recommendations are made to the various departments regarding how to increase conversions. 

Connecting the dots 

In many cases, the statistical information from web pages are important to the sales and marketing department as they relate to collaborative online and offline initiatives. The information technology department may find the numbers helpful in determining browser and network bandwidth needs. Web designers would be interested in the numbers to determine if each web page is attracting the number of visitors it should.

If a web page, or the entire site is underperforming, the web traffic statistics will reflect this and specific parts of the web site may need to be re-designed to attract more traffic. Lastly, management will want to see that the ongoing investment in the web site is yielding a definable ROI. Connecting disciplines and/or departments will help the organization perform on all four cylinders - defining and redefining web strategy as necessary. 

Web analytics – the PLAN 

Start with figuring out what you want to do with web analytics. You need to have a plan to have an idea of what your return will be on your investment. Again, this will include collaboration with other departments and disciplines. Then, you will need to select an analytics tool that works in tandem with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the organization resulting in reporting that makes sense to the various stakeholders. 

The right tools

Not all analytic tools are alike. Take time to review and possibly demo various options. Here are a few popular and time-tested solutions worth reviewing.

Google Analytics

IndexTools

Omniture's Site Catalyst

Unica's Net Insight

Web Trends

Coremetrics

For web statistics 'best practices' and more, visit: The Web Analytics Association 

Best

Denice MacDonald

You probably know that building links into your site is one of the most important things you can do in your efforts to improve your site's ranking.

A lot of people struggle with this process, especially at the beginning. Many questions also arise as to where the link should be placed on the site you are trying to get linked from, along with what kind of sites should you get links from, and what those links should look like.  Linking is no longer a passing fancy, it is a strategy that is relevant and necessary. Consder the following link building strategies:

Social Media: By submitting your site and content to social media aggregators such as Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and other niche social news sharing and bookmarking sites, you introduce their audience to your site and build high authority links to your organization.

Advertising: Text Links which are sold or purchased with the intention of advertising a relevant site or service to the audience of the site which is serving the link ads. These links are valued and treated as authority inbound links by the major search engines.

Editorial: Editorial links are links which are earned via relationships with journalists, bloggers or site publishers. By informing writers about your site and services, you persuade them to write about you.

Directory: Web directories classify sites into organized subjects and listings while also sending search traffic to those sites. Directories are a way to increase search rankings and site traffic.

Blogger Reviews: Similar to editorial links, blogger reviews are when you pay bloggers to take the time and write an honest review about your product, business or site - and link to you. Not only will your link be seen by search engines, but also by the readers and subscribers of these high level bloggers.

Privately Solicited Links: Contact site owners and negotiate private linking deals with your business goals in mind.

Blog Comment Participation: By intelligently adding to blog comment conversations, you build your online reputation along with inbound links to your site.

Resources:

• 101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Web Site by Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall
• Link Building - Web Site Resource

Software/Tools:

• Axandra
• Zeus
• Link Assistant

Best,

Denice MacDonald

TinyURL is a web service created by Kevin Gilbertson that provides short aliases to redirect long URLs. Basically, TinyURL turns a long URL into a much shorter one.

For example, I took my URL and made a TinyURL:

http://www.macdonaldconsultingservices.com/ has a length of 42 characters and resulted in the following TinyURL which has a length of 25 characters: http://tinyurl.com/dn373h

Or, I can give my recipients confidence with a preview TinyURL: http://preview.tinyurl.com/dn373h

The preview feature allows recipients to preview the link at the TinyURL site so that they can see that the link directs to my web site and not a phishing site or a site with potential viruses.

How can you use TinyURL?

• If you want to 'cloak' a URL and give some mystery to a link within a 'known' campaign.
• You want to shorten, drastically, a URL such as a MapQuest link within e-mails.
• You want to shorten a lengthy product link, video or podcast link so that it doesn't break within a critical e-newsletter.
• Within Twitter, to minimize the use of characters.

Basically, the use of TinyURL is endless. For more learning, click on the following YouTube video.

Best

Denice MacDonald

It is imperative that all departments, disciplines and vested shareholders collaborate on the daily feeding and overall strategy of the organization's web site initiative - or else the web site will fail.

Why? Web sites are no longer ancillary; they are mission critical - adding substantially to the organization's bottom-line. Moreover, the combined needs of various departments or disciplines actually enhance the dynamic strategy behind the on-going transition of an organization's web site by offering various views and points of entry to clients, customers, employees and shareholders.

How? Collabration does not begin by ordering various departments into a conference room for a strategy meeting. It begins with defining needs, strategies and business goals. In most cases, what the sales department requires is not much different than what the HR department may need. Each is looking to communicate the organizations value and offerings while providing easy call-to-action scenarios for visitors and on-going interaction to the organization's web site.

Where to begin? Start with simple site goals that require collaboration against business needs from various departments. Begin the process of determining how the needs intertwine or can be repurposed to satisfy many needs.

SCENARIO 

HR is trying to hire high end sales professionals in a very tight market. The Sales department is trying to get a new product to market. Marketing has a tight budget but would welcome PR exposure relative to company growth.

SUGGESTIONS

Use web video to create employee profiles for HR enticing 'like' recruits. Use the same web video but add additional footage to introduce and e-mail video newsletter to targeted customers and leads that may benefit from the new product. Have marketing dove-tail the e-mail video newsletter AND web video components to the web site thereby increasing interaction to the site through video news releases. What will this take? It will take two or three days of shooting, various formatting of the web video, simple permission-granted e-mail program and some high end content. Using a create it once, use many ways concept has leveraged the collaboration of various department initiatives while safeguarding a cohesive web brand strategy.

Best

Denice MacDonald

In a recent presentation, Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst, Forrester shared key learning for businesses interested in leveraging and enacting a social media business strategy.

Basically, companies have historically viewed social media as strictly technology – not a business or marketing strategy. He suggests that businesses should start with their target audience and determine what kind of relationship they want to have with them.

During the presentation, Jeremy provided the six levels of participation – a segmentation of target audience by behavior known as Social Technographics^TM. In general, brands, web sites, and any other companies pursuing social technologies should analyze their customers' Social Technographics^TM first and then create a social strategy based on this profile¹.

Six Social Technographics^TM

Creators – these are individuals that are the true advocates of creating blogs, uploading video or music. Creators are individuals that want to share something they are passionate about.

Critics – these individuals provide reviews, feedback and participate in forums.

Collectors – these individuals organize and tag content, subscribe to RSS feeds and enjoy accessing polling information or other comparable data.

Joiners – these individuals are social network hounds. They enjoy belonging and participating in all types of social networks from MySpace, Facebook and others.

Spectators – these individuals are voyeurs of social media. They typically read, watch and listen.

Inactives – these individuals do not participate on any level with social media. In fact, they are the fastest growing untapped behavior.

Profile your customers' social behaviors by using this tool: Social Technology Tool.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .      .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .      .     .     .     .     .

¹Citation/Credit

Data from Forrester Research Technographics^® surveys, 2008. For further details on the Social Technographics profile, see groundswell.forrester.com. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

There is always good discussion with my colleagues relating to development methodologies. None could be more invigorating than discussions related to Agile development. 

Waterfall is linear and predictable

Waterfall is a sequential process of development that historically includes four distinct stages: analysis, design, implementation, evaluation/metrics and maintenance. Critical downside for this approach is that if there is a major change far along in implementation, code typically needs to be redeveloped from scratch. Instead of predictable, we now have a lot of scope creep.

Agile methods adapt to change

Agile, on the other hand, emphasizes values and principles rather than processes. Moreover, there is less documentation and more collaboration allowing for ongoing refinement of the project. Of critical importance is that this method is adaptable -- a leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork, self-organization and accountability.

Can’t we just all get along

If you can’t decide which may work for you, I’ve found an excellent slideshare presentation by Maria Giudice, CEO and Founder, Hot Studio Inc. entitled “Can’t we just all get along?” that discusses the pros and cons of both methodologies and provides an interesting take on a Waterfall hybrid.

Best

Denice MacDonald

Armed with weekly web addresses, Barack Obama uses online video to inform and engage us in ways that could not be accomplished via radio broadcasts or through typical print means. 

Barack has embraced video as an opportunity to personally shape and frame his message in a way that resonates with all types of viewers and constituents. The reception of these online video updates has reinforced the influence of online video to an all time level. 

Demand validated - online video the big tech winner in 2008.

As more data about 2008 Internet usage in the US is released, online video increasingly looks like one of the year’s big winners. US Internet users viewed 12.7 billion online videos during November 2008 alone, up more than one-third over November 2007, according to data released in January 2009 by comScore¹. 

What does this mean for your organization? 

Now is the time to seriously think about integrating video into the marketing mix. Reason simply, online video has come full circle in pricing making it affordable for almost everyone.

Video can be added to web sites for internal communications, distance learning, sales support, sales training, integrated with webinars, as rich media within e-mails and as an engagement strategy for banner advertising. Moreover, video now has the capacity to be tagged for search engine optimization to elevate web rankings.   

To help you get started, I’ve provided some really good local talent (Wisconsin). I trust these vendors to help you create stellar video that can be created once, paid for once, but used many ways. 

Matt Nies and Rick Kallien, Owners - Pixelbox Visual Design 

Paul Kaplan, Owner - PKA Productions 

Patrice Nault, Media Project Manager - Plum Moving Media

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .    .   .   .   .   .   .

¹Sources:

comScore 

Best,

Denice MacDonald

As we move into 2009, most marketing communications and interactive agencies are gearing up for Web Award submissions for their clients. Typically, most agencies will submit at least 5 of their top web sites for consideration. The process is complimentary by the agency and leads to brand building for the client.

If you are not connected to an agency and developed your web site or web initiative internally, you can submit your web site or online initiative to a number of well-known award organizations. Moreover, most of the award organizations will promote winners through press releases and other web channels resulting in high visibility for the winning organization. Here are my top picks for consideration:

The Best Designs – The Best Designs (TBD) recognizes the best Flash and CSS web sites from around the world. Websites are categorized by CSS or Flash and also by elements of the design. TBD is usually updated every weekday, with the exception of holidays. Cost: Free

Video Festival Award – The U. S. International Film And Video Festival was founded in 1967 and is one of the world's leading international events exclusively to recognition of outstanding Business, Television, Documentary, Educational, Entertainment, Industrial and Informational productions. There is an interactive division if your project is a mix of film video on your web site. Cost: $200-$300 (based on length)

The FWA – Favorite Website Awards (FWA) is an industry recognized award program and inspirational portal based in England and is one of the World’s leading web site recognitions. FWA is widely recognized as the number 1 achievement for innovative web design through the Site of the Year Award. Cost: 34.50 GBP (Great Britain Pounds) per site

SEOmoz Web 2.0 – Founded in 2006, SEOMoz awards web sites that focus on user empowerment, open-source applications and emerging web technologies. Cost: Free (Accepting nominations for 2009) 

SXSW – SXSW Web Awards uncover the best new web sites and celebrate those who are building and implementing tomorrow's online trends. Cost: $25 per site

The Webby Awards – Reflecting the tremendous growth of the Internet as a tool for business and everyday lives, the Annual Webby Awards continues to expand the mission of the Webby by honoring excellence in over 100+ Web Sites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video, and Mobile Web categories. Cost: Web/Mobile: $295, Advertising: $295-$495, Online Film and Video: $225  

WebAwards – Web Marketing Association’s WebAwards is the premier annual web site award competition that names the best web sites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all web site development. Cost: $195 per site (discount available for non-profits)

With varying degrees of pricing and diverse categories, anyone can afford to submit a web site or online initiative for an award.

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Internal search relates to keywords that people use while visiting your web site. On average, 10% of all visitors to web sites will use ‘search’ for one reason or another.

When using internal search, visitors are able to search web site content on their own terms, specify their intent through refinements and evaluate related content for further exploration and discovery¹. If there is a disruption in finding content or if visitors feel that they do not get satisfying results, they will abandon the effort and possibly leave the web site altogether. 

How do you know if your internal site search is meeting visitor expectations? And more importantly, is the internal search function aiding in converting visitors? Internal site search is successful only when it works in tandem with well defined content or properly segmented product or services (navigation and taxonomy).

Check these quick metrics to gauge the effectiveness of your web site’s internal search: 

What is the average number of searches per visit? The average is roughly 2-3 times per visit. A ratio above this benchmark could be a sign that your content is not relevant or your navigation structure needs work. 

What is the percentage of visitors going directly to search from their initial entry page? For example, a retail site with a high percentage of new visitors going directly to search is probably not optimal. Visitors should be able to get to product by navigation, product links or targeted content. 

How many searches resulted in “0 matches” as a percent of search attempts? You want this number to be as low as possible. Misspellings, buzzwords, the use of phrases associated with a competitor, or even lack of your search solution crawling all your content can be the issue. You would be surprised how often the entire site is not crawled (sections such as about, news etc.) with site search concentrating solely on product results.

What percent of visitors gave up on your search and abandoned your site from the search page as a result of too few or too many results?  Moreover, if a null page is returned, are there help, FAQs or ‘suggestions’ to keep the visitor interested? 

Excerpts:

• Kick Butt with Internal Site Search Analytics¹
• Internal Search Report  
• Internal Search: 7 ways to ensure your users can find your information

Internal Search Tools and Resources:

• Endeca
• Fast Search (Microsoft Subsidiary)
• Google Search Appliance 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Bottom-line, web personalization is more than a web tool, it is a web strategy. If properly implemented, web personalization can make or break the success of many web sites - especially sites vying for conversion and repeat business. 

Web personalization begins with understanding business requirements and visitor definition. Who is the customer and then, what is the segmented content, applications or other resources that will resonate with their needs? By providing personalization, we not only cater to the demands of our customers, but we have an edge in engaging them to the brand and to an actionable step. All web sites can benefit from personalization – it is just a matter of determining which one is best. 

Explicit Personalization 

Explicit personalization is the "myPage Portal" model whereby users can chose functionality and lay it out on a personal home page. The 'myPage' method provides an intuitive, browser-based interface for end users to customize content and other resources of a site within a roles-based framework. Users can subscribe to information and applications and chose content that is important to them. They can at any time, add additional applications, content or content categories or default back to the site’s original (generic) categories or content. Moreover, in more sophisticated situations, visitors can setup a detailed profile for e-mail marketing and/other methods of ongoing dialogue or permission-based communications – including social networking. Great examples of explicit personalization: BBC in the UK and iGoogle. 

Implicit Personalization  

Implicit personalization involves actively presenting different content and services to different users based on identity, volunteered information, navigation and click stream behavior. Basically, implicit personalization detects browser capabilities as well as the operating system environment and language of the incoming browser. These characteristics coupled with ‘clicking’ automatically drives the display of the appropriate content and functionality for each visitor. Implicit personalization can readily be seen in any type of retail site that remembers last-viewed items or web sites with relational interaction that is database driven. Great examples of implicit personalization: Target, Yahoo or any weather sites. 

Create Satisfied Customers, Partners, Stakeholders and Employees

Given the right tools, web developers and e-business strategies can create personalization with rules that will intelligently respond to a user's identity and habits -- presenting information, functionality, and products aligned with the user's interests resulting in ongoing engagement. Such a high level of service results in satisfied customers, partners, stakeholders and even employees. But it doesn’t end here – any web strategy requires ongoing measurement and refinement. Web personalization will provide the ultimate metrics for refining or re-defining an ongoing web strategy. 

Sources:

Implicit and Explicit Personalization in Search by Exalead

Personalization Framework by Sitefinity

A Standard Framework for Web Personalization by Laura Thomson, School of Computer Science and IT, RMIT University

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Registering an original domain name is harder than ever, forcing many of us to buy URLs already in existence.

Jennifer Slegg provides a checklist of 12 things to consider before making the leap. Her advice? Take time to run some keyword searches.

1. Consider whether the URL has branding appeal ("Google" is preferable to "Best-search-engine-ever.com").
2. Check Archive.org to make sure your new site didn't have a previous life as an adult site, or worse.
3. And my favorite: Per Jennifer, do the double entendre test. Pen Island sounds great till you see it typed as one word, all lowercase.
4. Lastly, safeguard brand hijacking by buying all the associated extensions so that others do not (.net, .tv etc.).

More Resources:

Blogs about Domain Strategies

Domain Optimization: Optimal Domain Strategy

Best,

Denice MacDonald

When search engines visit your web site, they take into consideration the number AND type of web sites that link to and from your site. A higher quality backlink will have more weight than a lower quality link. 

Backlinking with reputable web sites 

Backlinks from highly reputable sites on a given topic are highly valuable. If both sites have content around keyword topics, the backlink is considered relevant and believed to have a stronger influence on search engine rankings. Careful, though, you don't want to just backlink with anyone. The key to backlinking is assuring that you are in the right neighborhood; that is, you are attracting top notch visitors from comparably valued web sites.  

Double the SEO bang by including keywords in anchor text 

A high quality backlink will include one or more of your web site keywords in the anchor text (the anchor text of a link is the actual part of the link that is clicked and takes the person doing the clicking to your web site). The reason a link with the keyword in the anchor text is given more weight than links without your keywords in the anchor text is that it appears that the links are coming from sites with related information when the keywords are found within the anchor text. 

Where to start 

Step One:  Research! 

Determine how your links are working now (see tools below). Take some time to unearth keywords on your current web site and those of your competitors. 

Step Two:  Existing web content, relationships or campaigns 

Begin linking with existing channels including social networking sites such as mySpace and Facebook, blogs or company press releases. Include links to trade shows, reputable vendors, and even web sites that the company may have given donations. Be very selective about directories though - they need to be scrutinized and directly related to your products or services.  

Step Three: Niche site links 

Begin looking for those valuable web sites that mirror topics or keywords. Take the time to get to know the link owner - call or email. Lastly, don't forget to take advantage of RSS feeds.  

Tools for keyword search and backlink analysis: 

• WebCEO (Free! Download)
• Wordtracker (Free Seven Day Free Trial)
• Backlink Analysis Tool (Membership required)
• Track Your Rivals and Eat Their Lunch! (By Compete.com) 

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Website Magazine is the one magazine that focuses exclusively on the business of running a website: tips for successful websites, solutions for enhancing website traffic, the latest Internet industry trends and statistics, as well as news analysis on the Internet industry.

By providing a broad scope of useful articles and tapping premier talent in the industry, Website Magazine covers all the elements that together make websites successful: search engine optimization and marketing, website design, content management, blogging, E-commerce, online advertising, email marketing, analytics, web software and applications, customer service/customer relationship management, web hosting, mobile web and more. 

I highly recommend that anyone who is involved with web site development, strategy or execution (including internet marketing) subscribe to this publication. Website Magazine has also developed additional content exclusive to their digital edition which is available only to subscribers.

You'll find insightful articles on SEO for WordPress, product videos and ROI, advantages of being a certified Google AdWords Professional, Internet usage market share, domain names and SEO and the ultimate PPC bid matrix.

Lastly, you can join Website Magazine's online community and get a free listing!

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Enjoy!

Denice MacDonald