Google Site Search – Affordable website search
A couple weeks back we rolled more changes out on Levolor.com, one in particular included the implementation of Google's hosted Site Search product: http://www.google.com/sitesearch/.
Considering we had never offered site-based search before and nearly every day we heard from our feedback tool that visitors wanted to be able to search, this was a really straight-forward, quick, and easy implementation that I wish we had done it sooner.
Search can help reveal visitor intent
Google Site Search offers several customization options within their interface. Perhaps the biggest thing we've learned thus far is what people are wanting to find on the site based on keyword reports. This offers another slice of valuable data to layer on top of navigation/pathing and conversion analytics to better understand the wants and needs for your visitors.
While search will certainly help search-savvy visitors find the products and content that already exist on your site, perhaps the more interesting piece of data is what they're searching for that doesn't exist on your site. This data can assist in providing you the necessary insights on what additional products and features to add to your site.
At a minimum of $100/year, the barrier to entry for site search is extremely low
Google's pricing methodology is very smart -- starting out at just $100/year for indexing up to 5,000 pages and offering 250,000 queries. That is very impressive technology and search sophistication that can be added to virtually any site on a budget. This really lowers the barrier to entry for smart, savvy search tools for websites thereby making it almost completely inexcusable to not have search on your site.
What Google Site Search is not
Google Site Search is not a search merchandising tool like the Fast Search and Omniture Site Searches of the industry. One can only hope that over time Google will integrate new merchandising-related features that make it a viable competitor to give these other industry players good competition. What Google Analytics has done for web analytics I imagine it will do for merchandise-based search optimization as their engineers continue to improve the product features and functionality.
Parenting like a product manager
In a discussion with a friend/coworker this week on our way to lunch, we were chatting about the annual review process and merit increases at our company. He had made the comment that his parents jokingly compare his salary to his sister's salary (who evidently makes considerably more than him). I then went off on a tangent and wondered what it would be like if parents treated their kids like product managers treated their products? It made for an amusing conversation and poked fun at the day-to-day marketing world we live in:
ROI of parenting (evaluating "performance" of a son/daughter)
Like product managers, parents could look at the time they were investing in their children and begin measuring their return on investment (ROI). If their daughter was outperforming their son in grades, relationships, etc., like a product manager, the parents would focus additional efforts in their son in an effort to boost performance. At some point however, the son does risk being cast aside as a "laggard." The daughter also risks attention and her performance could suffer due to the extra attention being paid to their son. It's a constant balance of determining where time is maximized on your products (children)!
Correlating performance to self esteem (like correlating product sales to consumer confidence)
With the economy heading south like it has been, we begin to see more product managers correlate consumer confidence to purchases of their products to help explain a downturn in top-line sales.
What if parents measured their son or daughter's self esteem and correlated it with their performance?
If self esteem has a direct correlation to performance, then how can you "move the needle" like a product manager "moves the needle" in a down economy? A trip to Disney World, of course (sort of like a discount or rebate on a product)! Take a look:
Other market conditions may be influencing performance
Some parents may be quick to jump to conclusions like many product managers, however. One may look at this and say "If we take more trips to Disney World, I can create consistent lift in performance regardless of self esteem conditions." This would be the equivalent to always offering a discount on your product -- the risk is the behavior of the consumer becomes one of not purchasing unless a discount is offered.
The last thing a parent wants to do is have their son or daughter get in the mindset of only performing well shortly after a Disney World vacation. Product marketing and parenting is a tricky balance of priorities and market conditions.
Sometimes we just have to sit back and laugh at ourselves and the marketing world we live in.
Shake-up at WebTrends; Omniture’s acquisitions and customer service
This year has been a good year for Omniture customers -- seeing their favorite web analytics vendor gobble up other businesses such as TouchClarity, Offermatica, and Visual Sciences. The recent shake-up at WebTrends as outlined by webmetricsguru.com, poses a lot of questions for web analytics customers.
We're actually in a unique position being both a WebTrends and Omniture customer. We use the WebTrends Dynamic Search product for SEM management and optimization. I would love to see Omniture acquire WebTrends so we can stop dancing around separate reporting for the WebTrends Dynamic Search product. However, it doesn't look like an acquisition of WebTrends will be a reality. Oh well, for now.
Omniture's Challenge: Information Architecture and UI
Included in webmetricsguru.com posting is the following:
I told Josh that I've worked with Omniture some, recently, but found the platform, while it can do everything, doesn't always do it elegantly - he responded that I should be using the newer technology Omniture has come up with - not the older stuff; I replied the newer stuff (IE: Discover 2) is very expensive and not everyone can afford it.
The above comment couldn't be further from the truth. The good thing about Omniture is it can do whatever you want. The bad thing about Omniture is it can do whatever you want. It can be a very complex system and for us, we have actually done 2 implementations. The first round established the basics, and after 2 months of being in production, we fine-tuned the implementation considerably after we learned more about the intricacies of the tool.
Taking a page out of the Google Analytics book
Omniture should take a page out of the Google Analytics book and check out the report designs, navigation, and general user interface of this free product. Omniture is a complex interface for the average business user. Google seems to master the ability to create interfaces that most users can figure out without any knowledgebases, tech support, or training. There is power in this and it's why Google is good at what they do. If Omniture could start adopting some of this thinking their SiteCatalyst UI, it'd be a great start.
Omniture's other challenge: Timely Customer Service & Support
What I really, really, really would like to see is for Omniture to focus on improving their customer support. Phone support is speedy, but rarely resolves in a question being answered if the problem is complex and doesn't involve basic functionality of their application. This is not to downplay the expertise of their tech support -- it's just that each customer's implementation is different and it takes time to dig into some issues. Perfectly understandable.
However, e-mail support is terrible. I'm not really sure why they offer it because the response rate is, on average, a week for basic requests (which can be handled on-the-fly with a single phone call). Support requests that require higher-tier support go unanswered for several weeks. It often takes an e-mail to our account manager to get an update that is more detailed than "we are working on the problem." As a customer, we feel like they are either blowing off our follow-up inquiries about open tickets or their support system does not do a satisfactory job at escalating stale tickets in the queue. Coming from an agency and project management background, this is a big no-no.
Soliciting Feedback from Customers
There are several usability issues throughout their interfaces. Nothing that prevents you from getting your work done, but just design issues that force you to do a lot of extra clicking. This, combined with the continued frustration we run into with support inquiries makes me believe they would really benefit from using OpinionLab or any feedback tool for that matter. My single biggest complaint is that it feels like there is no venue for customers to provide feedback.
Applying Six Sigma to Web Development, Design, and Usability
A few weeks ago while analyzing the results of an internal test on a new web design we're testing, it was brought up about how manufacturing is guided by Six Sigma standards. It was suggested the website live in a similar realm of excellence.
What is Six Sigma?
Six Sigma is a rigorous and disciplined methodology that uses data and statistical analysis to measure and improve a company's operational performance by identifying and eliminating "defects" in manufacturing and service-related processes. Commonly defined as 3.4 defects per million opportunities, Six Sigma can be defined and understood at three distinct levels: metric, methodology (DMAIC/DFSSstructured problem solving roadmap and tools) and philosophy (Reduce variation in your business and take customer-focused, data driven decisions).
Can Six Sigma be applied to web development, design, and usability?
This is a very logical question. Yes, it can be applied, but achieving it is another issue altogether.
Pulling from Jakob Nielson's November 2003 post, Six Sigma engineering relies on a five-step process called DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control). He was really ahead of his time in this article. A google search does not pull up much information on applying six sigma to web development, design, or usability. This tells me the concept has not been discussed too much and it makes sense -- the web is still in its infancy, and the more experienced developers within organizations today are now moving into upper management where they are beginning to look at the website from a higher view within the company.
As the web becomes more of a vital tool for most businesses today, upper management (who often times knows little about how exactly a website goes together or how to build a successful site) is seeing the value in applying other business practices and methodologies towards the design, testing, and execution of their websites.
Why Six Sigma is difficult to achieve in web development today.
In manufacturing, the amount of variables encountered in an assembly line is not as vast as a complex website. Manufacturing doesn't deal directly with consumers, either, and the manufacturing process has very strict processes and tolerances for how things are assembled.A website is dynamic in nature and also navigated and operated by your customers -- customers who may not know a thing about your product and have had no training on your website. Manufacturing lines are staffed by duty-specific workers, trained to perform specific tasks accurately and efficiently.
A website on the other hand can be navigated in millions of different ways and combinations by millions of different people. Testing each of these combinations is impossible and will result in you testing your website into eternity without ever releasing it to the market. Add on top of this a team of people who are most likely very diverse in their backgrounds: developers, designers, and marketers -- each come with their own education and experiences and often time have no visibility into what their other team members' job responsibilities really entail (how many developers do you know that can truly do graphic design? how many designers do you know that can write complex database queries?).
Accept the variables in web development, and apply the concepts of Six Sigma
The key is applying the Six Sigma mentality to web development, design, and usability so you can get the best balance of accuracy and conversions. The problem most developers and designers have is that they get "tunnel vision" and focus exclusively on just one piece of the entire web application. This is a problem for any type of site which has multiple conversion funnels (sales, registration forms, contact forms, etc.).
Next Segments:
More on this topic over the next several days as I cover each phase of the DMAIC process in individual blog posts in an effort to keep the posts spread out and on-topic, rather than one long, rambling post. 
I'll provide links at the end of this post as each phase of DMAIC is evaluated.
Recommended steps for optimizing conversion paths
Here I sit, the end of day #3 in Orem, UT, in my hotel room preparing for a final day of Omniture web analytics training. Information overload is an understatement after spending 9AM-5PM talking about web analytics and how to use the Omniture tool. By no means is this Omniture's fault, there is just so much information to think about and crafting the correct strategy for how you send data to any web analytics tool is a time-consuming challenge in itself. Because you can literally track anything you dream up, the takeaway from this week's training is to focus on the business objectives, and then craft your analytics strategy from there.
Here's a list of steps which was provided in training this week which is helpful for anybody getting into analytics or revamping their approach to analytics on their site:
- Define conversion paths. A "conversion" is a KPI (Key Performance Indicator), or in other words, a business goal. If you're an e-commerce site, an order is a conversion. Your business goal may be to increase top-line revenue which will translate to increasing the number of orders and/or average order value.
- Find holes. This is a critical step in monitoring conversion paths. If 100% of your traffic is reaching step 1/5 of your checkout process, but only 5% are making it to the final step 5, then you've got a problem. Identifying the holes in your conversion paths can uncover technical issues and/or usability issues with your site.
- Run a detailed analysis. What exactly are the scenarios in which only 5% are converting of the 100% of traffic that starts in the funnel? Run additional analytics reports to see if you can mine any additional data that could shed light on the issue.
- Hypothesize. If the detailed analysis doesn't turn up any obvious technical issues, start evaluating from a usability standpoint. Why is the fall-out happening?
- Test. You've got your hypothesis, now test it. Repeat steps 2-5. This is a never-ending process!
This is a very straight-forward list of items to follow when evaluating each of your conversion funnels on your site. Get the basic funnels down that align with your business goals, and then worry about the deeper-diving reports later on when you're comfortable that your analytics strategy is correctly implemented. Tools like Omniture's Data Warehouse make it very easy to go back and re-evaluate data in the event that you add an additional conversion funnel to align with new business goals or to track something you might not have thought of during your initial analytics implementation.
Blog by Eric Long
I'm an experienced online marketer, information architect, digital strategist, and social media enthusiast. I'm passionate about providing outstanding cross-channel experiences for considered purchases (with a focus on mass customization).
About Eric Long
Recent Tweets
- New blog post: Mass Customization, Considered Purchases, & Mental Models - Why Usability & Content Strategy Matter http://t.co/ABOwvq1Z 1 month ago
- Looking for a Manager of Web & App development to come work for us and manage a team of Sr. PHP & Ajax Developers: http://t.co/16BhmKjx 1 month ago
- UX Practitioners Will Excel in an Increasingly Digital World: http://t.co/QH6cgr5 5 months ago
- UX practitioners have bright futures with more & more marketers needing help understanding relevancy for when/why to use new technologies. 6 months ago
- We're looking for a Manager of Interactive Design & UX to come work for us: http://t.co/0U1AbN8 7 months ago