Disclaimer Nick Valente is fully responsible for the content of this site. The opinons expressed are that of Nick Valente and do not represent his employeer or any of it's associated companies.
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 It was 10 years ago in March of 2001 that famed business strategist Michael Porter wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review titled Strategy & the Internet. In this article he got a few things wrong, like reverse auctions like Priceline would not continue to work & Internet advertising revenues would drop. Overall however Porter’s basic business strategies held true for the Internet as they did for the pre-digital world. It is a great article and worth the read.
In this article there is a section from an even older article that still holds great value today no matter how you do business.
The Six Principles of Strategic Positioning
- Start with the right goal - Economic value is created when customers are willing to pay a price for a product or service that exceeds the cost of producing it. If you’re simply going after value or market share, poor strategies often result.
- Be Different than Your Competition - You need to deliver a unique value in a particular set of uses for a particular set of customers. Simply copying what worked for someone else will mean compromises in price in market share.
- Have a Distinctive Value Chain - You must provide your service or product in a different way than your competitors. Adopting best practices means you’ll end up doing most things like your competitors, and have no advantage.
- You Need a Trade-Off - In order to be different you may need to abandon some features or service in order to be unique. These trade-offs need to be painful for your competition to copy. Trying to be all things to all customers will guarantee a lack of any advantage.
- Entire Value Chain Should be Interdependent - All elements of your company must fit together. Your product or service design should be uniquely fitted to your entire value chain. Copying a product feature is easy, copying an entire value chain is not.
- Continuity – Pick a direction and value proposition and stick with it. Develop continuous improvement along your strategic direction, but stay the course. Frequent corporate “reinvention” is usually a sign of poor strategic thinking.
Too many companies today can’t or won’t change to meet new business models or customer desires. How do the current successful Intenet business models mark up against Porter’s principals?
- GroupOn – Easily copied technically, but who will match their 6,000 sales people?
- FourSquare – Too easy to copy?
- Facebook – Are they loosing focus? Will they last? 6M less US memebers in recent months.
- Amazon – Difficult value chain to reproduce, yet all things to all people?
Does your business practice Porter’s Strategy for Success?
 Image via CrunchBase
This is a great video from SEOMOZ. It addresses the holistic approach to SEO I’ve been preaching for the past two years. Hat off to my friend Nick Musica for calling this out two years ago in his book, When Search Meets Usability.
Too many people think just regular everyday good content is going to get them found. Nope. There are too many people working the system today for that alone to get you on page one. Remember, there are only 10 spots on page one.
You need to go well beyond good content with:
- Great site usability
- Great looking site
- Multiple forms of media to engage the user including maybe games?
- Easily Shared content that is worth sharing
- Content Continuity and Flow. (content should feed off of and support other content)
- An overall strategy that ties everything together
Intangibles
I know this all still sound like just great content but it’s not. There is an intangible when it all comes together that makes people want to click on your links, share them and browse through your site. In other words, your writing about things and presenting things your passionate about.
What do you think?
 Image via Wikipedia
Gratification is the new rage, or will soon be. According to Gartner Group, by 2015, 70% of all the Global 2000will be actively using gamification in their business and 50% of their innovation process will be gamified.
Current Examples
Most of us have heard of or tried foursquare, the location based check-in service that makes a game out of checking in to different location. You collect badges and can become Mayor a location which might afford you special offers or awards. Some even classify Facebook and Twitter as a game where you’re collecting friends. Online collection games, search games an other types have been around as long as the internet. Other famous games include Farmville, which uses virtual currency as a motivator.
In addition to collecting badges you can get achievement awards, virtual or real currency and bragging rights to being at the top of a leader board.
Tapping Human Emotion
Games tap human emotion, reinforce desired activities and get people to do things they otherwise might find boring. Being the mayor of your Starbucks or at the top of a leader board gives a sense of accomplishment. This is nothing new. I found that if I timed my daughters 40 yard dashes and chart them, she becomes much more engaged in beating her previous times. Take this same effect and make it social and people will compete with each other for little other than bits on a screen.
Testing the Theory
Anyone wishing to try this without spending a bundle can go to Punchtab and use their gaming engine and see how it works. Let me know what you think. It’s really more of a social media play with a leaderboard but still pretty cool.
Give it a try and tell me if your company is planning to launch any games.
 Image via Wikipedia
So you’ve got a blog or website that allows users to post reviews or comments for your posts or products, good for you. Engaging your site visitors is critical in creating increased visitor loyalty and trust. The additional content is also great for better SEO.
Taming the Spam Beast
As anyone who has ever had to deal with comments or reviews knows, dealing with spam can be a full time job. So much so that programs have become popular that allow you to either log in with another ID, like facebook, twitter or linkedIN accounts, or use a third party service that manages commenting across multiple sites like disqus or js-kit.
The advantage of both of these methods is they validate the site visitor and help reduce spam.
Pros and Cons of External Logins and Community Platforms
Pros
- Easy for site visitors to logon
- Reduced spamming with some
- Sometimes visitors are already logged in making it easy to post
Cons
- You may loose control of your visitor database
- If the service goes down, see Twitters uptime reports, you may loose the ability for visitors to log in
- Javascript based systems like disqus and JS-kit cannot be easily scanned by Google so you may get no SEO benefit
- Facebooks comments box has a similar problem as it is loaded in an iFrame, and cannot be crawled (without some programing tricks)
This last con is a significant enough problem for the javascript based programs to not use them on a heavily community based site. As of this writing we are using disqus on nickvalente.com.
Best Bet for Comments
What will work best of you depends on what you’re trying to get from the comments on your site. Using the out of the box comment system in WordPress ,Blogger or your CMS should work fine for most folks who have a thriving monitored community. If however you have low traffic or don’t actively participate in your sites community, consider one of these solutions.
What do you think?
 Like all social content, it is best to mix your promotional material with a healthy amount of content that is of significant interest to your audience. If as part of your Internet strategy you’re writing a blog about audio equipment, a minimum of 60% of your posts should be about the technology and music that help deliver enjoyment to your customer. The other 40% or less can be about your product. Each post should close with a short pitch which relates to the post, but keeping your audience engaged and wanting to open your emails, read your blog posts or visit your facebook page depends on delivering content that interests them.
Engaging your Affiliates
Affiliates are like any other sales channel, the more information you give them the better they will perform. This also includes the frequency and content of your messages. Reach out with new content about your products on a regular basis, but also reach out to them on matters that will help there overall business. A high performing affiliate will mean more sales for you. Look at the email I just got from the Volusion affiliate program. It addresses an issue that all affiliates are concerned with; getting their site to the top of the search engine results. This affiliate newsletter does not even mention the Volusion product, it only purpose is to help affiliates succeed.
Lesson: No matter what communication methods you use with your customers, remember to address their desires before you address yours. Give before you expect to receive.
I only do a site of the week when I see something I really like, or is a real disaster. This week it is a site that I really like. It does almost everything right. Giggle.com is a small national chain of baby product stores whose online presence is well thought out, and offers a compelling eCommerce experience.
In this review I’m concentrating on the overall structure, tone and usability of the site.
1. The top navigation offers links to all of Giggle’s properties; the online shop, their blogs and the cradle, which appears to be another site altogether. This last entry is the only thing on this site I don’t really get. More later.
* I stared this rather than numbered it because the placement and ease of finding the login and Checkout button are for eCommerce sites, a key issue.
2. Listing some key reasons folks likely come to the site in text and graphics is a great idea. These “task” related items stand out for the visitor that needs to get in and out.
3. Nicely laid out menu of categories important to every parent
Between 3 & 4 is a Key Message of Fabulous Free Shipping which is hard to miss and reinforced with the truck image
4. The featured area uses non-Flash technology, a big plus, but maintains a fun, engaging and functional look and feel.
5. Adding a contest is always a great way to engage site visitors. Sharing stories is a great way to do it. I did not see this integrated into their facebook fan page, which would have been ideal, but it is possible I missed this.
What I really liked
- Despite having a lot going on, the page remains accessible and well laid out.
- Everything from login, search and navigation is where users would expect it to be. No surprises usually means less barrier to a sale.
- Great thought to SEO & Social Media. There were several blogs including blogs for each of the stores! Better yet the blogs were active, well written and inviting. The Facebook page was also pretty active but could have used a bit more fan engagement.
- No Flash. If you’ve read my other articles you’ll note I’m not a big proponent of Flash. It has it’s place but is often over used, and implemented poorly.
- On the product pages they have typical customer reviews but also have a section called “ask & answer”, where customers can post questions and the Giggle.com staff answers. This is a great way to get additional user generated content for product pages, beyond the usual product copy. Since search engines often field questions, this is a feature I’d like to see more sites have to boost SEO.
Lone Concern
Though the top link to Cradle.com is certainly content that is relevant to the topic, it appears to be a totally different business. Giggle.com is an advertiser on this site but directing someone off your site like this is never a good idea no matter how well intentioned. Giggle.com has enough great resources that it should be able to get by without it.
Overall kudo’s to Giggle.com for having a great site.
Important Note – When it comes to eCommerce designs, one size does not fit all. The best practice is to test, test and test. There are some best practice and usability guidelines to follow, but keeping an eye on constant conversion improvement should be an ongoing goal.
In probably one of the best inforgraphics on Search Engine Optimizaiton, SearchEngineLand.com shows the importance of all the major factors at work to create a perfect storm, for a high page ranking site.
The following chart shows all the major aspects of SEO, their underlying factors, and the estimated weight of each. Weight is a 1 – 3 with 3 being the highest adn can be found int eh upper right corner of each block. Note that the estimated weight is of course subjective and can change from moment to moment depending on a number of factors I’ll discuss a bit later.
No doubt this is a great chart and an excellent representation of how all the pieces fit together.
A Higher Level View
Another way to look at these SEO factors is by their relationship to each other. All have a role in making the other work. Consider the following graphic.
Keeping in mid that just ranking high is not enough, this chart follows top down view of a consumer coming to your website. I added Design (design and usability) as a key factor for SEO. Let’s look at it one block at a time.
- Architecture - Users dont’ see your architecture but without doing it right the rest of the uderlying blocks are at risk. If serach engines cannot crawl your site or if your site loads too slow, then you risk not getting indexed or having a lower number of pages indexed. It also is the key to content success via your content management system.
- Content - Content rides on top of your architecture. If your Content Management system is too difficult to use, then you’ll get less new, fresh, timely content. Having a good content planning process will help ensure success.
- Trust - Assuming you have a good flow of quality content you will be albe to continually attract new users and build trust.
- Social and Link Building - Social sharing and natural link builidng won’t happen unless you have trust, built upon your good content that was supported by a solid, easy to manage architecture.
- HTML (TAGS) - This may not seem to make sense to have at the bottom but consider this. The HTML title, description and header tags are realy part of your content strategy, and your first level of marketing. They are also part of the first thing your potential site visitor sees. If they don’t like the title of your listing you may not get them to read the description. If they read the description it better be exactly what they are looking for or they will move on.
Personal & Design
These factors are shown virticaly to show their effect on Content, Trust, Social and In-bound linking.
- Personal - Location, history & social are also controled by the searchers previous search history, current events and a dozen other factors we dont’ even know about. Therefore I put it as an over-arching factor against the bottom teirs. Being aware of the world around you as well as current search trending will benefit your content creation, and SEO strategy.
- Design - Design is really design and usability. With the major search engines offering an instant preview of your content, it also has a major effect on someone clicking through to your site.
The Ultimate Goal – A ClickThrough
The realtive values of all the SEO actions combined, and their relationship to each other is critical for SEO success. It is only as good at the weakest link. Keep in mind that the main goal is not to just rank high on a results page, but to get a click through. So mind your relationships well.
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 There is no doubt that the Facebook like button can help your social media efforts. However there are times when it is not the best choice for your site.
B2C vs B2B Sites
Facebook Like buttons work great for B2C sites, especially sites that have popular products, or products that have an emotional attachment for the consumer. If you have a B2B product or service, a Like button may not work very well.
On the June 15th “This Week In Google“, a show that talks about Google and the Cloud, host Leo Laporte and guest Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land, lamented on how the Facebook Like buttons get very few clicks on their industry related business sites. They seems very perplexed and seemed to feel bad about it.
Consumers Like, Business People InShare
While consumers are using the Like button in droves, business people don’t. I propose this is simply because business people, myself included, don’t want to bore their friends and family with business stuff they like, but do want to share it with their industry peers.
Observational Data
Of the several blogs I write for, including this one, I’ve seen this exact behavior. Look at the posts on nickvlaente.com. All the social sharing is either on LinkedIn or Twitter. There may not be a single Facebook like. (feel free to do so though!) I’ve seen the same thing on the other B2B sites I write for. All LinkedIn. On the other hand the consumer sites have no LinkedIn and are all Facebook Like.
Recommendations for Business Social Sharing
If you have a B2B site or blog, be sure to have a LinkedIn button and promote your content via it and Twitter. Things to do:
- Get your InShare buttons here
- Set up your LinkedIn account to automatically post your blog posts
- Talk about your blog posts in appropriate LinkedIn forums
- Use hashtags and Bio on Twitter, it does help.
Does your e-commerce system present a problem for the 2011 holiday season?  It’s almost July, but depending on the size of your company and e-commerce efforts it may not be too late to upgrade your e-commerce platform.
Top providers
Website Magazine posted the top 100 e-commerce platforms based up on traffic to their sites. The list includes a few of my favorites. ZenCart, oscommerce and Magento, which is a top notch freemiumservice, where the platform is free but you pay for service as you need it. (how long it stays free now that EBay has purchased them is to be seen)
What is Your Systems Weak Point?
No e-commerce system does everything exactly as you’d want it too. Each has it’s pros and cons. The key is to find which items mean the most to your customer set, and find a platform that addresses those needs.
Here are some key issues many e-commerce folks worry about
Merchandising
Being able to present products in a format that meets the expectations of your visitors is a key conversion factor. If you are selling high-end products then images & videos should be of high consideration. Do you need 360 views, overview videos, interactive text overlays, roll-over close ups? If you’re selling comidity items then the ability to call out specials, price/feature comparissions, use special fomating and listing formats may be critical to your customers. If your current system can’t meet your needs, look for a outside service company to fill the gap.
Promotional
How often has a competitor presented a pricing model, or coupon offer, that you could not match or compete with becasue your e-commerce platform could not accomadate it? My personal experince seling both service and hard-goods, is that the ability to have a high level of flexibility in pricing, coupons, sales, and bundling can make the differece between creative offers that close sales, and cart abandonment.
Mobile
The 2011 selling season may be a turning point for mobile commerce. Depending on your product and customer base, having a mobile strategy is anywhere from a nice to have to critical. Be sure to look at your analytics to see how your mobile traffic is trending for some insight on how important this avenue of e-Commerce will be for you.
What’s your keys to e-commerce for holiday 2011?
 Email marketing is alive and well. In fact as I mentioned in a recent post on email mistakes , Website Magazine states that Email is responsible for 56.8 percent of traffic arriving at the shopping cart and 67 percent of the conversions.
There are several area’s in which companies miss opportunities to increase loyalty, and increase sales by staying customer centric with their approach to email.
- Informative vs. Promotional - Of course you want to sell products, but in between purchases you want to engage customers in a way that makes them want to open your emails. Giving them content they care about helps build this behavior. Adding product or industry related educational/informational content, can help in keeping their interest. This content should have links back to related products on your site.
- Build Excitement – Pre-promote your next email topic on your site, and in your emails. Let them know what’s coming next, so they have a reason to read look forward to your next email.
- Automated vs Triggered – Take advantage of purchases and other on-site events with triggered emails, by sending a follow-up message that is related to the purchase. If they purchased an iPod, send them a list of accessories. Send your automated emails out on the same day and time, and give customers something to look forward to. (see item one).
- Don’t Overload – Think usability. An email that is too busy and tries to promote too many items, will often loose your customer. Stay focused.
- Segment your lists – To start, make your sign up as simple as possible, asking only what you need. Later you can include short polls in your emails to further segment your lists.
- Easy to Find List Sign-up - Make your email sign-up message easy to find, with a real value proposition for your customer. Example: “Sign up for the latest on pet health and product discounts” .
- Be Social – Include social links in your email, make them easy to share.
Keeping focused on your customers needs and desires, can help increase and maintain their interest, and their open and click through rates.
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It was 10 years ago in March of 2001 that famed business strategist Michael Porter wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review titled Strategy & the Internet. In this article he got a few things wrong, like reverse auctions like Priceline would not continue to work & Internet advertising revenues would drop. Overall however Porter’s basic business strategies held true for the Internet as they did for the pre-digital world. It is a great article and worth the read.
Getting the Most out of Comments
Image via Wikipedia
So you’ve got a blog or website that allows users to post reviews or comments for your posts or products, good for you. Engaging your site visitors is critical in creating increased visitor loyalty and trust. The additional content is also great for better SEO.
Taming the Spam Beast
As anyone who has ever had to deal with comments or reviews knows, dealing with spam can be a full time job. So much so that programs have become popular that allow you to either log in with another ID, like facebook, twitter or linkedIN accounts, or use a third party service that manages commenting across multiple sites like disqus or js-kit.
The advantage of both of these methods is they validate the site visitor and help reduce spam.
Pros and Cons of External Logins and Community Platforms
Pros
Cons
This last con is a significant enough problem for the javascript based programs to not use them on a heavily community based site. As of this writing we are using disqus on nickvalente.com.
Best Bet for Comments
What will work best of you depends on what you’re trying to get from the comments on your site. Using the out of the box comment system in WordPress ,Blogger or your CMS should work fine for most folks who have a thriving monitored community. If however you have low traffic or don’t actively participate in your sites community, consider one of these solutions.
What do you think?
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