Author Archives: ghotchkiss

Usability and Asinine Comments from the Bay

Had a chance to catch one day of Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Week in San Francisco. Yesterday, I sat in on the eyetracking session and saw the results of the Nielsen Norman’s just completed study (numbers are still being crunched as we speak).

It was heartening to see that many of their findings mirrored our own, including F shaped scanning patterns, quick scans of pages and aversion of ads and large graphic blocks. It was in this last category that the asinine comments part comes (that’s why you’re really reading this, isn’t it?).

Jakob was demonstrating interaction with the home page of jcpenney.com. (The picture that I’ll be talking about has changed, but the basic page structure is the same). The heat map image showed clearly that the big block graphic, in this case a picture of a bed with a colorful spread, with some promotional text inset in the upper left and the lower right, received virtually no scanning. All the scanning was in the top navigation bar. The large block graphic “fenced in” the scan area, cutting users off from other promotional information that lay below the graphic. We saw the same thing occur with the Bombay Company site in a eyetracking study we did for MarketingSherpa (see below).

bombays

Some hot shot designer in the room decided to take exception with the proof in from of him, and called out some of the examples that Jakob has shown of large graphics that had received no scanning. He used words like apex composition and other regurgitated terms from a graphic design university text book to show that all the sites adhered to basic design principles and that the theoretical composition of the JCPenney picture was in fact spot on, drawing the eye from one promotional headline to the next. Jakob patiently pointed out the obvious, that the theory breaks down, because as the heat map clearly showed, no eyes were even being attracted, let alone drawn to any headlines. We settled back in our chairs, silently cheering the adroit handling of the blow hard in the back. Much to our amazement, the guy wouldn’t give up, continually going back to the point that the theory is right and works, despite evidence on a screen roughly 40 by 30 feet to the contrary. The mic finally had to be taken away from him.

A couple points here. Theories are theories, not fact. Heat maps are facts, at least for the sample of people in the study. And while you may argue that a sample of a couple hundred (the n of the NN/g study) isn’t representative, I would disagree. We’ve done enough to know that consistent behavior in eyetracking starts to emerge at about 10 people, then defines itself very clearly at 20 to 30 people. So designers, you just may have to forget everything you learned, because the way people interact with information is changing faster than new theories can be created. You have to keep an open mind.

Second of all, this guy was approaching this from a print paradigm, not an online one. His spouting of picture composition and eye flow comes from centuries of guessing about how we look at images. I remember talking to a university arts professor once who was really excited about eye tracking because we could finally find out if all the “crap that’s been spouted about how we look at paintings is even true or not”. I’m not saying century old principles are wrong, but you have to consider them in the appropriate context. Take our J.C. Penney picture. Mr. Design Dictionary is correct. The flow of the bed spread and the contours of the bed should hypothetically draw the eye from one headline to the other, if the eye entered the picture in the first place. In the print advertising world, photos act as an attractor. They grab the person who is reading adjacent, usually non relevant content, and pull them over to the ad. They are the entry point. If they do their job efficiently, you have altered the intent of the prospect. They have switched from reading a story to looking at your ad. The job of the photo is to channel this new intent to the right place.

With a website, you have the full intent of the user. That’s why they came to your site. A large block graphic gets in the way of that intent, and will be thin sliced out of the way. Worse, it could block the user from seeing the content on the site that they’re there to see. All the composition theory in the world won’t prevent that. Jakob’s point wasn’t that the picture was composed incorrectly; it was that the picture was a waste of valuable home page real estate.

Probably the most valuable thing I took from yesterday was a comment Jakob made as an aside. Branding online comes from the experience, not the exposure. This was in response to another comment somebody made about large graphics being present for branding purposes, and the seeming contradiction between the need for branding and best practices for usability. Online, a successful brand engagement and a successful user experience are the same thing. If you deliver efficiently on a user’s intent and make their online experience a pleasure, you will build more brand equity than you could ever build with gratuitous flash files, streaming media and huge graphics. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but all too often online, the designers win at the user’s expense.

Yahoo Has the Answers, Google Still Searching

First published June 22, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Google may be the king of search, but in one area at least, Yahoo is kicking Google’s can around the block. The upstart Yahoo Answers has blown by the venerable Google Answers (venerable at least by Internet time, having been around since May 2002), and seems to be drawing rave reviews from analysts and users alike. The service launched in December of 2005, and had its 10 millionth question posted in May. When it comes to share of the online answer market, it has amassed about 10 times the traffic that Google Answers has in the past 6 months, according to Hitwise.

Everything Old is New Again

Posting questions online is nothing new. Ask Jeeves’ AnswerPoint was around long before either Google or Yahoo, starting in early 2000. But it never took off, and was wrapped up in May of 2002 (ironically, the same week Google Answers launched). According to Ask head Jim Lanzone, “AnswerPoint wasn’t a failure, nor a smashing success.” At the time, Ask Jeeves had to focus on things like the continuing integration of Teoma and the launch of Smart Answers (Ask’s version of vertical shortcuts, a la Google’s Onebox or Yahoo’s Shortcuts), and decided to pull the plug on AnswerPoint. Lanzone remembers that “the user base was actually pretty upset about it; they were a very small, but very loyal group.” LookSmart also went down this path with LookSmart Live, born in 1999 but long since faded away.

When it comes to Yahoo Answers, success seems to lie at the convergence of a number of tried and true online concepts. First of all, the answer service depends on community. Unlike Google, there’s no cost to the service. It relies on its community to answer posted questions, giving it a viral vitality somewhat like a wiki or forum. Coming from Yahoo, it’s of course categorized and searchable, giving users the opportunity to tap into the existing answer base to see if their question has already been answered. And it provides the wisdom of the masses, giving its community the ability to rate posted answers, thereby vouching for the reliability of the information.

The Good Samaritan Syndrome

As is so often the case, Yahoo’s strength is also its point of vulnerability. It lives through its community, so it can also die through lack of interest from that community. It was this challenge that was a major factor leading to the demise of AnswerPoint. Ask’s Jim Lanzone again provides some perspective from their experience: “As a free service, there was little incentive for people to answer other people’s questions.” Other community-based forums, such as Amazon or TripAdvisor, are giving people the chance to play critic, and we all love the sense of power that comes with swaying other people’s opinions. But with something like Yahoo Answers, the only real incentive is the act of being a Good Samaritan and sharing some knowledge. In effect, you have a business model that depends on a community of high school know-it-alls, consumer mavens, and good-hearted people. It’s great if it can reach the critical mass to survive, but that’s a big if.

Yahoo’s Model vs Google’s

What is perhaps most interesting about this is to see why Yahoo’s model has taken off, while Google’s continues to limp along. With the Google model, you pay “carefully screened researchers” to answer your questions. The cost can range from a few dollars to hundreds, depending on the complexity of the question. It’s perhaps not surprising that Google went with a model that eliminated community–going for a much more controllable approach, given the challenges faced previously by Ask Jeeves and LookSmart. Like Yahoo, Google allows you to search through already answered questions, but the number isn’t anywhere near what you’ll find on Yahoo–usually resulting in decidedly non-relevant results for more specific questions.

I find the two approaches somewhat telling of the strategic thought coming from the different organizations. Google’s is a “we know best” approach, the somewhat antiseptic model that eliminates the messiness of real people from the equation, whereas Yahoo dives into the organic nature of community, embraces it, and enables it. Yahoo Answers has cast its fate into the hands of its users, deciding to live or die by the enthusiasm of its community. Its success depends completely on critical mass–and so far, it seems to be rolling in the right direction. A little over a year ago, I wrote that perhaps search can be the tool to ensure that real people like you and me are heard. It seems that Yahoo Answers could be heading in that direction.

Metrics that Matter

There have been a few stories coming out lately about numbers and metrics. In our business, we tend to drown in the numbers. Just yesterday, I had a meeting with our team here to talk about the issue. The thing to realize is that not all of us are numbers people. For many of us, myself included, I’m more comfortable with stories than columns and columns of numbers. I love data, but not for the data itself, but rather for the story that’s hidden inside that data. I recently received a presentation from a very well known research company that was presented to a client. Inside the slide deck, there were tons of graphs and charts, all chock full of numbers. But after looking at almost 60 slides, I still couldn’t figure out the story. When we work with numbers day in and day out and get caught up in the micro stories within those numbers, we tend to forget to take a step back and get a look at the big picture. As Bill Wise from Did-It said in a recent column, often in search, it’s the bigger numbers that are more important.

Also, we have to realize that the same numbers can tell different stories to different people. As search marketers reporting to our clients, we have to first know what story each stakeholder wants to hear, and then interpret the numbers to see if that story is true or not. All too often we present reams and reams of numbers, without trying to find the story within them.

That’s my issue with most analytics programs. There’s no shortage of numbers, but there is a distinct lack of meaning. Most analytics programs needs someone skilled to analyze the numbers, distill out the meaning and help us understand it. I’ve talked to John Marshall at Clicktracks about this previously, who takes a refreshingly “big picture” view of analytics. In a recent e-mail summit, John suggested that perhaps marketers are a little too fixated on ROI, and should step back a little to gain a better perspective.

Like all industries, search marketer has a number of metrics that are unique to us. At the practitioner level, each number is important, but only as an indicator of a bigger whole. When you report on the number of links built, or keyword density on a page, or even average bid amounts for a keyword bucket and cost per acquisition, you tend to start focusing on those numbers as the ones being important. But it’s useful to step back and remember that ultimately, you’re going to be reporting on this campaign to someone who doesn’t care about links, or occurrences of keywords on a page, or the fluctuation in bid prices for your number one term. All they’re going to care about is how the campaign added (or detracted) from their bottom line. Ultimately, that’s the story you’re going to have to tell.

At Enquiro, we’re really working hard to keep focused on the story, and not lose sight of it in a maze of numbers. We call it “metrics that matter” Our analytics specialist, Manoj Jasra, has done some writing on the subject. Check out his blog.

Obviously, I Don’t Have all the Answers (but Yahoo might)

I hate to admit it, but I may have completely missed the next big thing in search.

Yahoo Answers is getting some rave reviews. At first look, I thought Yahoo Answers was nothing more than an interesting experiment, but it seems to be taking off with both analysts and users!

Yahoo! Answers is the convergence of some fairly long toothed online concepts. It combines the community involvement of a wiki or forum with the searchability of an engine, and the organized hierarchy of a directory. None of these things are new, which is maybe why I didn’t think anything of it at first. But let’s face it, sometimes you don’t need to be new to take off virally on the net, you just have to put a new spin on old functionality, and it seems that Yahoo! just may have done it. We like real one-on-one interactions online. We like other people’s opinions. Hundreds of years of social interaction have hardwired that into us. And Yahoo capitalizes on it. Post a question, and get other users to answer it. Or search through the existing questions to see if yours has already been posted. It connects people with people in a most efficient way. And of course, it gives Yahoo! another opportunity to monetize traffic that is growing significantly.

There’s something simple but compelling about the virtual communities that immediately form around topics on something like Yahoo! Answers. The challenge with communities is that there needs to be critical mass, and the reassurance of a number of people having the same opinion. If you post an question and get one answer, you wonder about its reliability. If you get the same answer from 10 people (or, in the case of Answers, one answer that 10 people vote for) you have more faith in it. Yahoo! can bring critical mass and the safety of numbers (the wisdom of crowds) to its online community.

One thing that should be noted. Yahoo! Answers has taken off and announced the posting of their 10 millionth question in May. The service has blown by Google Answers, as shown by this chart courtesy of Hitwise and posted on Searchenginewatch (thanks Danny).

hitwisechart

So..what did Yahoo! tap into, that Google didn’t? The interesting thing about this is that it speaks to the difference in culture between the two organizations. Yahoo created a community and enabled the wisdom of the masses. Google, typically, came out with an approach that said “we know best” and asked you to post your questions to be answered by Google researchers. One resonated with the public, and one didn’t.

Search and the C-Level Ceiling

First published June 15, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

What is the No. 1 thing that keeps the sales teams at Yahoo, Google and MSN up at night? It’s not click fraud, it’s not capping of bid prices, and it’s not counting their stock options. This is another “C” word. I call it the C-Level Ceiling.

No Keys to the Executive Washroom for SEM

In corporate America, there’s a vast distance between the front line and the top management in most Fortune 500s. The C Level sees rolled-up dashboards, while front-line practitioners are up to their earlobes in masses of detail. Both bring their own kind of blindness. At the C Level, aggregation of metrics means senior management might not see the small emerging factors that could make a big difference if applied more broadly. And practitioners get swept away in minutiae, sometimes not getting the luxury of seeing their contributions as part of the bigger picture. Somewhere between these two extremes, search is caught in the land of the “trial” budget.

Search just hasn’t broken into the spotlight at the top of the corporate ladder. Senior execs don’t get search, they don’t want to get search and they certainly don’t want to move significant budget to search. As you move down the corporate ladder, the love affair with search gets more ardent. At the front-line practitioner level, it’s a full-blown romantic obsession, because the front line sees in gritty detail how well search can perform. But as you move away from the front line, the search story gets lost in a maze of numbers, being rolled up into one category after another, until it all but disappears at the highest level of reporting.

Search is a blip in the total marketing picture, a rounding error in most budget allocations. Despite the best efforts of the big search engines, the industry has been unsuccessful in getting the C Level to buy into search. So why is that?

I’m Too Sexy for This Channel

First, even if you don’t “get” something, you can still be interested in it. Everybody at the C level loves to get involved in the new corporate TV ads, because that’s sexy. If you’re launching a sponsorship of a NASCAR race, or the Olympics, or the World Cup, or a Rolling Stones Concert Tour, that’s sexy (with room for differing opinions on the sexiness of the Rolling Stones). If you’re doing product placement on “Survivor” or “American Idol,” that’s sexy. Search just isn’t sexy. Never was and never will be. The CEO or CMO is just not going to give up a weekend yacht trip to approve the latest search ads.

So, the first thing against search is there’s no sex appeal to draw in corporate execs, whether or not they “get” it (and most times, they don’t).

Use Me, But Please Respect Me

It’s estimated that there are about 630,000 C-Level executives in the U.S. If you asked them where the most effective place to reach them with an advertising message would be, they would tell you the Wall Street Journal print edition. And, according to a new study by Ipsos, there’s some validity in that. The Journal reaches 46 percent of the market. This is the place C Levels turn to get detailed information and opinion. They respect the Journal.

But an even more effective intersection would be search. The most dominant medium these executives use to stay in touch is the Internet. 55 percent use it at work, and 34 percent use it at home. Now, unless C Levels use the Internet in a totally different way than every other human, that means they’ll be using search a lot. So the very same executives that continue to allocate huge budgets to TV and print, and teeny tiny budgets to search, use search, a lot! Way more than they watch TV. Why is that?

The Generation Gap

A generation gap exists between the C Level and the front-line practitioners, and the executives at the top just haven’t accepted the fact that the world has changed right under their very feet. At the C level, despite tons of evidence that confirms the world is turning online, they’re still stuck very much in an offline world when it comes to budget allocation. And it’s not that they aren’t aware of the quantum shift in our society. It’s a comfort level issue. They know customers are wired, but they’re not exactly sure how online marketing works. The rules are still being written. At least with television or print, there’s the comfort of knowing they’ve been doing it for years. There are budget line items that are rubber- stamped each year, media buyers and agencies that are more than happy to take the money, and media outlets that are hanging on tenaciously to the budgets. For executives allowing the status quo to continue, the question they reassure themselves with is, “How could the world change so radically that the things we’ve done for the past 3 decades could be no longer valid?”

We saw an example of this recently. A travel company that targets young adults (18 – 30) continues to spend millions each year to produce huge, glossy brochures. At the practitioner level, this company has initiated research that shows that the vast majority of their target market does their research online. Yet the entire online budget is a tiny fraction of the print budget for the brochures that nobody reads anymore. Everyone who works on the front lines of this company knows they are seriously out of step with their market, but no one has been able to convince executives to cut the budget on print and swing it into online. The word hasn’t been able to get past the C-Level ceiling.

Search Delegated down the Ladder

With the meager budgets going to search, we can count on the responsibility for these campaigns being passed far down the line. Executives spend their time looking at the things that have the greatest impact financially on the company. If search is 2 percent of the entire advertising budget, but television accounts for 45 percent, the CMO is going to be spending a lot more time with television. That just stands to reason. So the future of search lies lost in the middle management layer, cut off from the budget allocations that can make a real difference.

Hammering the Message Home

So, what will shake up the status quo? Well, the shift has already begun. Calls for more accountability in advertising are great news for search. Someday in the not-too-distant future, the CMO, looking at the detailed report on the search campaign, will scratch his head and ask the fateful question, “Why can’t we get these kind of metrics for all our channels?” And there, in that one sentence, the battle will be won. It won’t be a quick win, but it will be tremendously satisfying.

Engaging Conversation about Engagement

The AAAA, ARF and a lot of other acronyms out there are all waxing on eloquently about engagement being the new metric. Over at iMedia, David Smith says it’s not really a metric, but more of a psychographic.

I’ve had bones to pick with the trotting out of engagement as a one size fits all metric myself, and talked a little about this in one of my Search Insider columns. When you look at ARF’s existing media model

  • Vehicle exposure
  • Advertising exposure
  • Advertising attentiveness
  • Advertising communication
  • Advertising persuasion
  • Advertising response
  • Sales response

One thing strikes home. This doesn’t really work very well for “pull media”. It’s all about push. ARF’s aiming at adding engagement to the mix. Same thing holds true. That’s a brand metric that is relevant when you’re pushing messages at a market, rather than having them request the messages from you, via a search engine, for example. It’s a completely different dynamic, and needs a different set of measurements. Let me guess who’s driving the ARF MI4 agenda: big agencies perhaps?

RSS Feeds vs E-mails: More Eyetracking Data from Jakob Nielsen

Jakob Nielsen’s Neilsen Norman Group just released an eyetracking study looking at scan patterns of e-mail newsletters vs RSS feeds. The summary results? People spend more time scanning newsletters, but are ruthless in scanning titles that pop up in their newsreaders. Again, both Jakob’s studies and ours seem to keep coming to the same conclusions, we’re evolving a very advanced form of “thin slicing” when we interact with information online. We have to, as there’s an overload of stimuli. I’m heading down to San Francisco next week to spend some time at Jakob’s usability summit, and hope to chat with him more about this.

Google Trying to Broaden Revenue Stream

More evidence that Google is very aware of it’s single stream revenue vulnerability, and is looking for ways to broaden it. VP of global online sales, Sheryl Sandberg was cornered by Piper Jaffray’s Safa Rashtchy about their ongoing experimentation for new ad formats, including video, and indicated that while it’s still in testing phase Google will continue to play in this particular sandbox. “I think it’s fair to say we have basically just started,” said Sandberg.

Based on my understanding, the testing will be far more aggressive in the AdSense network than it will be on the actual SERP’s, and that’s a good thing. One has to approach further commercialization of a search results page with tremendous trepidation. In fact, my advice would be, don’t even go there.

MySpace Working to Monetize Traffic

Just last week I took a CNN analyst to task for not seeing the importance of MySpace. How quickly things come to pass on the online world. Yesterday came the announcement that News Corp is looking for a search partner to help them monetize the incredible traffic that MySpace is generating. See, create an online community and there will be ways to monetize it. Analysts, look up just a little from the quarterly returns and try to look a little further down the road.

Stay Tuned for more from Quintura

The developers of Quintura, the semantic mapping engine that I took a look at last month, apparently took my comments to heart. I got an email from Yakov Sadchikov saying they launched a new service for the Russian market and an English Version should be coming soon. Yakov says, “we will keep on introducing new features to solve this issue of ‘longer than a second and more than one click to refine search'”. He also pointed me to a good review on Tucows. He says to keep tuned. I will!