jennie pearson

In my opinion, a website is just about worthless if it doesn’t contribute to the goals of the client who paid for it. Creative types love patting themselves on the back over how new and fancy their ideas are while the actual usefulness of it gets shoved to the wayside. One of my favorite bloggers, Seth Godin had something similar to say on this issue the other day. He writes, “less than 10% of these advertisers regularly measure results.” 10 percent only! This just doesn’t make any sense given the breadth of data that is now easily accessible online.

Measuring website performance is complex; there are so many things to keep in mind (this will become a major theme of this blog, I can already tell). One common thing people can do is regular analysis of your Google AdWords campaign.

Basically, the idea is like this: your website sells bike saddles so you’ve bid on the keyword “saddle.”  You’ll probably quickly notice that you’re losing money and ignoring potential customers because a) a lot of your clickthrough rate (CTR) is driven by cowboys not cyclists and b) most people don’t know that bikes don’t have seats they have saddles.

Google, being the smartypants they are, has of course thought of this. So you can put in keywords to avoid like “western.” So if someone searches for “western saddle,” your ad won’t show up. You might also want to consider adding “bike seat” because not every knows that when you ride a bike your derrière sits on the saddle, not a seat.

But I’m no expert on AdWords. Andrew Goodman, is the expert; I’m just trying to play catch-up. This guy has written an entire book about it. He’s even created a shorter version of the book that he’s giving away for free over here. I just started reading it but what I like about it so far is that he’s all about measurement and paying attention to the client’s needs.

Lesson of the Day
Today’s lesson of the day came on page 32 of Goodman’s free e-book, Google AdWords, A Brave New World (A Pocket Guide to the Road Ahead).
Don’t be afraid to use less precise keywords. “When you use exact matches only, you’re exhibiting fear of clicks. You’re opting out of potential customers.”
That’s a good lesson.

I’m fascinated by this publication, Communication Arts. I only recently learned of it because a website my boyfriend built was featured as a winner in the Interactive Annual 15.

Currently, this particular edition CA functions as our mouse pad, which I occasionally flip through when I’m bored or waiting for things to download. What strikes me as fascinating about it is that there doesn’t seem to be any firm criteria for which to judge the quality of the work featured in the magazine. For me, being a very quantitative person who likes to measure things, I find this very perplexing.

What I can’t seem to wrap my head around is the fact that there isn’t any concern with whether or not the website serves the needs of the client who commissioned the work. I’m not saying that I don’t think the winners in the issue are awesome – most of it is in fact pretty awesome.

But my question is: did it do anything? Did these really expensive/creative/innovative interactive websites increase sales, help to build brand equity, or bring in new customers? I think I’m a pretty good judge of when a website is cutting edge or new but to me it’s got to perform some function other than just being “creative.”

Maybe the “best” websites aren’t the most “creative”?