You’ve heard the sayings:  50 is the new 30…Pink is the new red.  Here’s one for online marketing:  phone calls are the new online forms.  OK, calls certainly are not entirely new, but tracking them as results of paid search campaigns has remained a niche strategy.

I’ve been working with a paid search expert firm that is using a service to swap a tracking phone number for the main number on a webpage when the visitor originates from an adwords campaign.  So not only do we measure online conversions – submitted forms – from the paid search spend, but we also can measure calls generated. Here’s the kicker – we are getting ten times the response through calls than through online forms.

If we had  measured only online conversions, we might have declared a dismal ROI on the paid search investment.  As it is, we’re seeing great ROI, with cost-per-lead at a very manageable level.  The campaign is new, so we still are honing – meaning, likely we can get that cost-per-lead down even more.

Curious…a friend asked if I had SEO insights in to choosing among Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress to build a dozen sites.

Wordpress has nice seo plugins for page and site optimization, and it has xml sitemap functionality. And the easy integration with Google Analytics makes a difference over the long haul if you are optimizing a site for search.

(I have worked a bit in DotNetNuke…the newer versions do support meta-tagging well and have an xml sitemap builder built in. That said, my experience in getting the xml sitemap to include all the pages, or event the majority of the pages, has been mixed…am trying a new module this week.)

Haven’t worked much in either Drupal or Joomla, though. Would be grateful to hear comments related to SEO strengths and challenges related to working in either of these very powerful CMS’s.

Having the fun of  account managing a brand new  website. So much to consider: Time, money, technology. Search visibility. Copy, art, design. Conversion paths. Whether or not to succumb to what we know about which sorts of photos “convert;” which background colors are more 2.0; and the readability (or lack thereof) of bulleted text. The tension between the one overarching message…and the promise of something for everyone, all above the fold, of course. Having a ball!

While the intersection of SEO and branding may be a four-way-stop, the intersection of solid database technology, online SaaS, and nonprofit CRM may very well be Convio’s Common Ground. I’ve got a background in nonprofit leadership, so I know first-hand the donor management, constituent management, and IT strategy pain points that come with meeting mission and money goals. So it is with encouragement that I read the great mentions online about Common Ground CRM. Both the SaaS platform and the nonprofit-centric Salesforce integration are important differentiators.

I’m curious – anyone reading this using Common Ground CRM Saas from Convio? Like it?

Had to take down my Adbusters calendar because the September image was just too haunting for the kitchen (not to mention terribly difficult to explain to the children:

“Well, you see, that man is driving a truck, and he’s frowning and eating a junk food sandwich. His truck is decorated with beautiful fringe like a nurturing authentic home might have thrown over a couch. But this man is not at home, rather, he’s driving a truck full of something for other people to buy with money they’ve made by being in their own life of mindless driving toward something all the while trying to make it feel a little like home…” and the children are just staring at me politely, quite possibly wishing they hadn’t asked)

…and came across this quote captioning January:

“The future will be small, slow, and local” Woody Tasch

A couple of sites I pay attention to are national brands grappling to harness local search advantages in the context of more traditional large-site search optimization strategies.  One aspect of local search – that you don’t have to have a website to be listed in the 10-pack – is particularly interesting. Certainly a leveler of the playing field.

Another nuance is the value of a #1 organic ranking compared to being in the 10-pack (since the 10-pack appears above the #1 ranking [update fall 09 - now it's at rank 3, or, somewhere else...depending...so the conclusion of the next sentence has aged]). It looks like what used to be assumed was a greater value of a #1 organic ranking now is evolving to the 10-pack listing having equal or greater value.  This specific review takes in to account some on-site activity so it’s not apples to apples, but presents a trend to keep an eye on.

Basecamp and Dropbox sitting in a tree

K I S S I N G

First comes auto synchronization of multi-user documents.

Then comes the end of uploading the new version.

Then comes a real calendaring function to perfect it all.

PS.  no gantt chart required

In the last couple of years six of my friends have wondered about optimizing their ecommerce sites. Whether it’s vintage purses, organic cosmetics, addiction therapy, or competitive gymnastics, a better presence online matters to the bottom line.

None of these sites comes with a huge paid ads budget, and any monthly spend on getting more search visibility is likely in the 3 figures a month…more than a full highlight (hair!) but less than a car payment.  Who is serving this niche?  Free tools don’t cut it – none of these folks will find time to piece together info about htags and backlinks with info about keyword density and image tagging, then prioritize urls in a list, check it twice, rinse, lather, repeat.

Where is the tool equivalent to the meal planner I subscribe to?  Not a recipes site, with a long, overwhelming list of cool stuff I could make if I were a better person.  Rather, a site where I put in my preferences, some do’s and dont’s, and a credit card number.  And presto, every week, I get 4 recipes and a shopping list I can arrange to match the aisles where I shop.  The next week I get an email asking how the meals worked out.  Now that’s support I’ll pay for.

Interactive Austin 2009 - Keynote

There always are life lessons as I draw while tradeshowing.  Today’s were:

1. Sharpen the pencils before leaving home.

2. Really, 104 pencils are too many for a quick sketch.

It is that latter mismatch of investment in accuracy vs. probable degree of impact on outcome that becomes meaningful for web analytics.

An audience member at the Metrics and Measurement morning panel at Austin Interactive 2009 asked about finding benchmarks for an ongoing children’s public health initiative website. After suggesting tangibles (see if other large states are interested in comparing notes , for instance),  Ian Strain Seymour of Austin’s Apogee Search offered some advice on how much time and energy to invest in validating, verifying, comparing, scrubbing etc any one measure.

Only if the measured value of the metric will cause changes in how things are done at your organization does it then make sense to go above and beyond to be SURE you have confidence in the measure.

Otherwise, three shades of blue are plenty.