Hanging A Useful “Shingle”
Before you hang out your shingle, figure out exactly what your web site is supposed to do first. Brochure-ware sites are no longer useful. “Billboards on the Information Highway” are way outdated – don’t fool yourself into thinking your web site can be of any use to you if you’re just using it as an electronic business card. You don’t need bling. You need a purpose for the site to fulfill that makes it worth the trouble it took (and the money it costs) to keep it around.
Adding a 5th Dimension to PPC Testing
PPC analytsts are generally familiar with a standard set of landing page test dimensions – placement of elements on the page, voicing the call to action (color and wording), varying degrees of branding, and ultimately, the conversion event itself. You can set up split-testing by simply duplicating entire campaigns, changing one test dimension and setting up ad schedules. Most people test a landing page’s physical elements – color, wording, content, form or no form, etc. Very few people test these different elements along with timing.
Wordle and the Horrible Landing Page
First thing to remember – repeat after me – Google is NOT a person. Googlebot is not going to buy your products. People buy products. Search engine designers have been shouting for years for us to stop trying to optimize for their algorithms and just write for our customers, but no one listens. Choosing to make a purchase on a web site is a complicated psychological process. Deciding how relevant a web page is to a certain keyword is NOT. You cannot achieve maximum results for both processes with the same page. You must compromise or you lose.
