Thoughts about Small Business and Web2.0

 With the addition of Webmaster John to our team, that got us thinking about web development and small business.  “I got one, but now what do I do with it?“

 Some thought provoking statistics from Nielson Net Ratings and Foresee Result groups:

• When shopping for a product or service, 73% of consumers use search engines to find local businesses from which to buy.
• Search engines are the first source to which consumers turn to find local businesses (31%), ahead of even print yellow pages (30%).
• Over 77% of people said they were more likely to make a purchase from an unfamiliar business with a quality Web site than a poor Web site from a known business
• Nearly 40% of multi-channel shoppers prefer to use the web for browsing and researching their purchases. Of this group, 71% complete their purchase in the store.
• On every key measure driving satisfaction, retailers’ websites are better at producing satisfied customers than traditional stores are.

Thought 1:  Poorly designed websites perform badly in search engines.  If 73% of potential customers are using search engines to find you, can your website be found?  Was SEO/SEM a consideration when the website was first conceived?

 Thought 2:  Is your site easily navigable.  Are your visitors vexed by unorganized pages and unfindable information?

• Is the layout organized well?
• Do pages load quickly?
• Is the color scheme appealing, and does it suit your target market?
• Is it easy to navigate?
• Are customers’ potential questions answered for them on the site?
• Is your ordering process simple enough?
• Can customers find your site with a simple keyword search?

Thought 3:  Who’s watching the “store”?   You’ve spent the time and money on your website.  Don’t leave it alone.  You need to understand your return on investment and understand if it was worth it.  Statistics help you understand your customers experience on your site.  Do your visitors look at a couple of pages, then get to “x” page and leave?  What does that mean to you?  Are they finding out that you aren’t offering what they need, or maybe there just isn’t enough information to push them further.  Watch for trends, and make changes as needed.  Keep track and keep your eye on the stats.

 A properly laid out web design plan that incorporates design and SEM is key to answering the thoughts above.

Localize your Google

Last week we talked about Yahoo Neighbors, and how you can leverage it for local search.  Yahoo Neighbors can help local businesses in cities across the US to gain traction in local search results and potentially evolve into a default best practice for all small and local businesses.

 Today, let’s discuss the Google Local Business Center.

 If you’re a local business owner, it’s clear that Google helps customers find you. Not just by using Google search to find out about you, but Google Maps as well, so they can get to you in multiple different ways.  Now, imagine if there were a way for you to get a better understanding of how those customers are finding you.  What Keywords did they use to search for you?  Where are they coming from, did they drive across town just to try your huge selection of pasta dishes?  If you recently started offline advertising in a particular newspaper or coupon service, what happens to the traffic?  Was it successful, or perhaps didn’t quite meet your expectations?  If you had access to that kind of information, would it help you make better decisions in regards to how you apply your marketing dollars and how you would drive your traffic so you can attract more customers?

 

 

 

The Google LBC tool was launched back in June 2009,(www.google.com/lbc). The LBC is a free tool that enables business owners to control the content in their business listings as they appear in Google Search and Google Maps.

Once you sign up, Google populates a dashboard for claimed listings with data from the last 30 days.  New information is added every day, so make sure to check frequently. 

How is this different from my Google Analytics account (or other web tracking tool)?  Well, before now, you could track usage metrics on your website using a tool like Google Analytics, but data about how customers found you through your local listing never got back to you.  All you have to do is claim your listing in the LBC and go through a quick verification process to get access to the following kinds of data:

• Impressions: The number of times the business listing appeared as a result on a Google.com search or Google Maps search in a given period.
• Actions: The number of times people interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times they clicked through to the business’ website or requested driving directions to the business.
• Top search queries: Which queries led customers to the business listing; for example, are they finding the listing for a cafe by searching for “tea” or “coffee”?
• Zip codes where driving directions come from: Which zip codes customers are coming from when they request directions to your location.

The Google LBC dashboard:

 

It’s just one more tool that can help you target local search data and make informed decisions on what is working for you, and what isn’t. 

And that’s good information to have.

Small and Local Businesses, Meet your Neighbors – on Yahoo Local

Search and social marketing continue to cross paths and merge together as the internet industry expands and evolves to fit our needs.  Yahoo Neighbors is a conversation based tool that has the potential to do great things for small and local businesses by opening up a Q & A within the local business space.  While us search engine marketers have known about the influence of local search (such as Yahoo Local) and Q & A sites, like Yahoo Answers for a long time; Yahoo Neighbors is essentially a hybrid of the two concepts and conveniently brings the power of locality to smaller cities that Yahoo Answers lacks, in addition to adding a social element to local search that wasn’t there before.

In most scenarios, Yahoo Neighbors will help local businesses in cities across the US to gain traction in local search results and potentially evolve into a default best practice for all small and local businesses.

• Designed by search engine forward thinking minds, so naturally SEO credibility will come into play.
• Helps to promote website visibility through conversation, Q & A and quasi-reviews.
• Helps build and establish website and business presence and authority in the market.
• Highly useful for reputation monitoring and management.
• Has the potential to translate well to Social Media with the addition of sharing functionalities.

Yahoo Neighbors is in essence a community based Q & A, coupled with SEO value (Yahoo properties are designed by SEO-inclined folks and Yahoo Answers already ranks well in SERPs) and RSS attributes.  Not only could this tool become a large source of referral traffic for local businesses, but companies can also use it as a Reputation Management tool by opting into RSS feeds for specific categories and even more granularly down to a single topic.  Get social media sharing functionalities in place, and Yahoo might really have something.  The only catch?  Yahoo Neighbors is still in beta format, and although it has officially launched and is available nationwide, most cities have yet to establish good content and user participation.  Until the Yahoo Neighbor wave gains momentum with local searchers, smaller cities will have to wait a little longer to see Neighbors in action and to decide how to grab value from its offerings.

The Love/Hate Relationship with Facebook

You see her walk into the classroom and sit in front of you.  You’re so enamored by her appearance that you ask to borrow her Play-Doh.  Before you know it, it’s time for recess.  Fast forward 20 years and your first love from those early years sends you a friend request on Facebook.  Feelings of rejection from your elementary school love resurface.  Do you accept that friend request? Do you reject that request?  Let’s not be overdramatic, and hopefully you are not still obsessed with your way-back-when love from 20 years ago.  However, there’s nothing wrong with wondering what your ex-significant other is up to these days, whether it is their career choices, school choice, or marital status.  That is what social media sites, such as Facebook help us accomplish.  They serve as points of connection that link friends (or former bfs/gfs) together while helping us garner information that we couldn’t get anywhere else.

So, you accept that friend connection.  Do you write something on the wall of your new “friend?”  Are you still vindictive of the fact that you were dumped 20 years ago?  Do you update your Facebook status to reflect that pain? That is where the fine line exists.  Apparently a percentage of Facebook users complete that action to evoke feelings of jealousy that they think their ex-partner might have. According to a poll from UK based Alibi, 58% of Facebook users have looked up and became friends with an ex in the past, with approximately 15% of those users admitting to changing their status to make said ex-partner jealous.  Additionally, 39% of those “cyber stalkers” took advantage of social media sites to spread rumors about their ex.

While these figures may seem a bit high, it does bring up the issue of social media sites and the accessibility of information.  How much is too much?  Use the limited profile section and relevant privacy settings to protect your personal information, whether if it’s from that bitter ex-lover from the 4^th grade, or possibility even a future employer.  My advice: don’t stalk!

Twitter + Location-Based Tweets = “TwitterStalk”

Location is everything.  So it comes as no surprise that one of the fastest climbing social media sites on the web is adding a location feature to their social toolset.  Twitter has just announced that their new location API will soon be rolled out to users to couple location data with individual tweets for a more robust set of information.  Imagine you are road tripping to Portland to visit a friend and make a Quiznos pit-stop.  As a Twitter user they will be able to tell that you are at the Quiznos in Hood River and will arrive on their doorstep in under an hour.  This combination will in theory make each tweet more meaningful (as content and users will be searchable by actual location), relevant and develop into a more powerful business, marketing and personal tool with this additional layer of data.

Not long from now, knowing someone’s precise location in real-time will be a huge part of how Twitter is turning the corner towards new and data-driven innovations – even before Facebook has had the chance to add a similar location-based element to their site.  Being able to accurately “TwitterStalk” an individual by location may raise speculation, but perhaps this “I know Where You Tweeted from Last” addition will be able to bring relevancy to even the most useless of tweets by placing them in context by location.  Thus, making the Twitter experience more impactful for more users.

And on another note, the opt-in aspect of this location feature should help to avoid the indignation of even their most privacy-paranoid users.  Your location will only be shared if you check the box.

So how will this change help us and help Twitter users worldwide?

• People will be able to more accurately search for the information they are looking for.
• Tweets can be filtered efficiently by location, making you an even more informed stalker.
• There is the potential to build and launch a location-based ad network – which I know we’ve all been waiting to see when Twitter would take a stab at this.

We, as social media users and consumers, are much more adapted to the constant changes that happen daily within the social media landscape than we were just 3 years ago.  In the fall of 2006, I can recall the racket that ensued around my college campus when Facebook added their first generation “Mini-Feed”, and which quickly inspired an outburst of “groups against the Facebook Mini-Feed” in heated protest.  This whole new level of knowledge of what friends were doing on Facebook was mind boggling.  Now several years down the road, the idea that we can see the actual location that someone is posting from is exciting and highly anticipated by many users.  Getting news and information from friends and connections in real-time is the norm, and waiting to read headlines as they roll off the press seems archaic.

With the rise of Twitter and the mass of second-by-second information sharing, the need and expectation that this would be taken to the next level was imminent.  Location information is the next big thing, and the big online powerhouses like Google have already begun their work on it.  Google was on the ball first, launching Google Latitude.  The smart players like Twitter have to adapt, re-tool and innovate to not only keep up, but to continue to evolve the way we use social media.