Being Heardable

According to consumerwebwatch.org, 95% of consumers want access to a website's email address, street address, and phone number. When you address these concerns, you build trust and confidence that you're a legitimate business.

As a brand owner, one of the greatest assets you can have is trust. If your customers trust you they will talk about you, folow you, try your services, and buy from you. The more trust and credibility your website has, the more your brand will benefit.

Contact Methods: What We Look For

It is important to have as many connectivity options on your website as your business can afford. Email, fax, phone, forms, and live chat are all options that can help your customers reach you in a way that is most convenient for them. Using multiple contact methods and touch points can improve your conversion rates.

The Heardable platform samples 5 random pages of a branded website, including your home page, to see if we find contact forms, links to Contact Us pages, phone numbers, email addresses, or feedback links.

Scoring

When added together, the six Heardable subscores contribute to a brand's total brand health score. 1,000 is the scoring limit. Here are the total possible points for each subscore:

1. Portable: 200 points

2. Searchable: 200 points

3. Sociable: 200 points

4. Measurable: 100 points

5. Actionable: 150 points
   * Web accessibility
   * Live chat
   * Trust marks
   * Persuasive content    
   * Contact methods

6. Shareable: 150 points

Actionable subscore breakout
* Actionable makes up 15% of a brand's Heardable Score, or 150 points
* Contact methods make up about 30% of a brand's Actionable subscore
* Having multiple methods on multiple pages of your website will maximize the points you can earn.

Multiple Contact Methods: Why It Matters

Due to the popularity of search engines that serve up targeted results, web users are more likely than ever to be directed to specific pages within your website rather than be sent to your home page. This is significant because businesses tend to front load their home page with certain features and functionality that make it easy for users to interact -- or transact.

An example might be having a phone number visible in the page header, or perhaps a link to a Contact Us page in the footer. Surprisingly, many interior pages of web sites do not contain many of these helpful contact methods due to lazy design or lack of awareness as to how important it it to make it easy for site visitors to connect with you.

Top performing brands tend to make it as easy as possible for site visitors to get in touch with them. They try to make ever web page function like it’s the only page of the web site the user will ever see. With this mindset, top brands tend to include a phone number, mailing address, Contact Us link (or the equivelent), an email address, and sometimes even a contact form itself on every page of their site. Yes, every page!

Now some people will argue that having a Contact Us link in the footer is good enough. But you might be surprised to learn that every time you force your visitors to click to a new page to find what they need, a certain percentage of them leave your web site instead. This attrition is referred to as your bounce rate. High bounce rates are bad for your business.

Even if we buy into the argument that a Contact Us page is adaquate, there still needs to be a fair amount of actionable information included on the Contact Us page. Most online businesses have Contact Us pages with only partial information included, such as a lead form or a customer service phone number. Many online brands bury their contact information deep within their web site, making it very hard for visitors to figure out how best to interact with them.

The consequence of making it hard for visitors to connect with you is low trust in your brand. Untrustworthy web sites tend to have poor visit-to-lead ratios when compared to top performing web sites.

Remember the adage, "The easier you make it for your site visitors to interact with you, the more likely they will transact with you."

Heardable's Actionable Charts

Heardable's 3 actionable charts - Customer Focus, Actionable Elements, and Trust/Security - measure how easy a brand has made it to respond, communicate, and transact with them.

The Customer Focus chart compares the frequency of customer-focused words appearing on a brand's website versus brand-focused words. Addressing your customers and their needs tends to elicit greater response rates. The more orange you see covering the circle, the better you're doing.

The outer ring of the Actionable Elements chart examines how easy a brand makes it for site visitors to interact and transact with them using common features such as email, fax, phone, forms, and live chat. Many brands bury these features deep in their site or fail to include them, which frustrates consumers. The more orange you see, the better. The inner circle measures the percentage of alt tags optimized, which is one way brands can adhere to web accessibility guidelines.

The outer ring of the Trust/Security charts uses the color orange to validate whether trust seals have been deployed on a brand's website. The inner circle shows the percentage of SSL support completed, in orange. Trust marks and SSL certs help to convince website visitors that their customer information is safeguarded, the website they're on is a real business with a good reputation, and indicates a commitment to the customer.

Note: Studies have shown that persuasive website content, trust marks, and contact tools can dramatically improve website conversion rates.

Improve Your Actionable Subcore With Easy To Find Contact Info

Being Actionable means making it as easy as possible for your website visitors to trust you, review your content, ask questions, contact you in many ways, and purchase from you. Actionable brands tend to be highly optimized in several areas, such as placing multiple contact methods on every page of your site.

Making it easy for your website visitors to connect with you can improve your actionable subscore, which makes up approximately 30% of the 150 points assigned to being actionable.

Ideas for making your website easier to connect with:

Include a short lead form anywhere on your website where you expect your visitors might want to interact with you. This could mean on every page.

If that's not feasible, make sure you have a Contact Us page that's easy to find on your website (typically in the footer) and label it that way (don't be adventurous with your naming conventions). Try not to bury your Contact Us page deep within your hierarchy of website menu options.

Link to the Contact Us page from several places such as from your masthead navigation, your footer navigation, and from your content (as appropriate).

Include an email address in the global header or global footer area of the website.

Include a feedback link, widget, or third-party feedback tool on your home page -- or on other high-trafficked pages.

Include a phone number in the global header and/or global footer area of the website. The more times you call out a phone number on a website, the more likely your phone will ring! Obviously, if you business model doesn't want the phone to ring, you need to be smart about how you publish phone numbers on your website. Perhap you can do so in a less prominent way.

Need Help Making It Easier to Connect With Your Brand?

Heardable can answer any questions you may have about the various contact methods, where to place them on your site, and how each method can impact your bottom line. Our experts offer a free, no obligation consultation -- so give us a call today!

Phone:            1-888-520-0034      
Email: marketing@heardable.com
Form: Click here

Your brand is the best, isn't it? It creates wonderful products, offers a compelling array of nifty services, and it's proud of its many professional accomplishments.

The problem is, most of your website visitors could care less about YOU. They only care about one thing: Can you help THEM meet their needs?

If you want your website visitors to respond to your offers, interact with your content, sign up for your services, or purchase your products, your focus needs to be on them. The text you use on your web page, the videos you publish, the podcasts you post -- your content should address them and their wants and needs with greater frequency that you talk about yourself. 

Persuasive Content: What We Look For

When looking at a brand's actionability, Heardable's web crawler examines random pages on your website and counts specific words that are indicators of whether your focus is on your brand or your visitor.

Having personal, persuasive website content on your website has been shown to dramatically improve conversion rates. Marketers must establish the right tone for their website content, a mix between informative and engaging, speaking in personal tones while playing up the benefits of one’s products or services. This is difficult to do, but it’s attainable.

Specifically, Heardable samples up to 5 random website pages for a brand being scored and compares the frequency of visitor-focused words appearing on those pages with brand-focused words.

Brand-focused words include we'd, we'll, we're, we've, we, us, ourselves, our, myself, my, me, I -- as well as mentions of the brand name.

Visitor-focused words include you, you'll, your, you've, you're, & yourself.

In general, the more visitor-focused words you have on your website, the better.

Scoring

When added together, the six Heardable subscores contribute to a brand's total brand health score. 1,000 is the scoring limit. Here are the total possible points for each subscore:

1. Portable: 200 points

2. Searchable: 200 points

3. Sociable: 200 points

4. Measurable: 100 points

5. Actionable: 150 points
   * Web accessibility
   * Live chat
   * Trust marks
   * Persuasive content    
   * Contact methods

6. Shareable: 150 points

Actionable subscore breakout
* Actionable makes up 15% of a brand's Heardable Score, or 150 points
* Persuasive content makes up about 30% of a brand's Actionable subscore
* We count and compare the # of brand-focused words that appear on your website with the # of visitor-focused words. The more you speak to meeting the needs of your website visitors over simply talking about your brand, the higher you'll score.

Persuasive Content: Why It Matters

Many underperforming websites contain too much content about themselves, their company, and their products. This can alienate potential customers who are reading your page trying to figure out the benefits that THEY can expect from it.    

Review your website copy and rewrite it so that it speaks to user's directly, stating the benefits of using, trying, or buying your product or service.  

Studies have shown that brands can boost their response rates as much as 100% when website content or offers speak to in personal tones and addressing customer needs, rather than from a brand-centric POV.    

Example: Instead of saying:

“Our windows are more energy efficient than other brands"

Try

"Save yourself over $450 a year on energy costs, and still have the best looking home in your neighborhood."

Done right, persuasive content makes a powerful statement about your brand without beating on your chest to get noticed. Speaking from your visitor's POV and addressing their concerns allows you to own the statement, "Meeting our customer's needs is what Brand X is all about."

Heardable's Actionable Charts

Heardable's 3 actionable charts - Customer Focus, Actionable Elements, and Trust/Security - measure how easy a brand has made it to respond, communicate, and transact with them.

The Customer Focus chart compares the frequency of customer-focused words appearing on a brand's website versus brand-focused words. Addressing your customers and their needs tends to elicit greater response rates. The more orange you see covering the circle, the better you're doing.

The outer ring of the Actionable Elements chart examines how easy a brand makes it for site visitors to interact and transact with them using common features such as email, fax, phone, forms, and live chat. Many brands bury these features deep in their site or fail to include them, which frustrates consumers. The more orange you see, the better. The inner circle measures the percentage of alt tags optimized, which is one way brands can adhere to web accessibility guidelines.

The outer ring of the Trust/Security charts uses the color orange to validate whether trust seals have been deployed on a brand's website. The inner circle shows the percentage of SSL support completed, in orange. Trust marks and SSL certs help to convince website visitors that their customer information is safeguarded, the website they're on is a real business with a good reputation, and indicates a commitment to the customer.

Note: Studies have shown that persuasive website content, trust marks, and contact tools can dramatically improve website conversion rates.

Improve Your Actionable Subcore With User-Focused Content

Being Actionable means making it as easy as possible for your website visitors to trust you, review your content, ask questions, contact you in many ways, and purchase from you. Actionable brands tend to be highly optimized in several areas, such as ensuring that their website speaks to the needs of its visitors, whenever possible, as opposed to speaking primarily from a brand-centric point of view.

Rewriting your website content to be more persuasive will likely boost your actionable subscore, since having the right mix of visitor-focused content makes up approximately 30% of the 150 points assigned to being actionable.

Need Help Writing Persuasive Content?

Heardable can answer any questions you may have about writing better content. We can rewrite your current content or create new persuasive content for your to publish online. Our experts offer a free, no obligation consultation -- so give us a call today!

Phone:            1-888-520-0034      
Email: marketing@heardable.com
Form: Click here

To allay consumer fears and boost confidence, many online businesses display trust seals (or trust marks) on their websites. Trust marks help to convince website visitors that their customer information is safeguarded, the website they’re on is a real business with a good reputation, and it’s a firm that provides outstanding customer service.

Trust marks are images or logos that brands can place on their websites to show that they adhere to various security and privacy best practices. Some trust marks link back to the mark's provider where richer validation information is displayed.

What to Consider When Choosing a Trust Mark Provider

The most important factor to look for when choosing a trust mark provider is how recognizable the trust mark is. It would be a waste of time to display a trust mark that your site visitors do not recognize. On the other hand, you could choose a trust mark provider that's recognizable, such as the Better Business Bureau, but they may not be a good mark to display to your visitors. If you're in the consumer lending business, the BBB tends to have numerous negative complaints on file for nearly every lender in America. Displaying the BBB mark on your car loan website, for example, may only link your customers to a database of negative remarks -- which won't do you much good.

There are four primary types of trust marks:

1. Vulnerability scanning trust marks assure that your web site is free of security risks that could be exploited to steal user data such as passwords, account user names, credit card numbers, phone numbers, and the like.

2. Secure Socket Layer trust marks verify that your web site is secured with SSL encryption technology.

3. Privacy trust marks verify that personal information of visitors is secure.

4. Reputation trust marks validate that the business behind the website is legitimate.

Trust Marks - Page Placement Matters

Placement of the trust marks on the web page can impact conversion rates. The rule of thumb is to place them anywhere where consumers might have second thoughts about transacting with a brand.

Most brands insert trust seals wherever your website visitors might look for proof of security and authenticity:

* Shopping cart and checkout pages
* Log-in pages
* On your home page
* In the footer of all interior pages
* Next to your Buy It Now and Submit buttons
* On pages that display your privacy policy


Key Performance Indicators

The Heardable brand measurement and monitoring platform verifies whether or not trust mark code is active on a brand's website. There are over 50 trust mark providers in our database. Here is a partial list of trust mark companies:

* Verisign
* GoDaddy Secured
* Comodo
* WebTrust
* McAfee
* Merchant-Safe
* Shopper Guard
* RapidSSL
* Truste
* And More!

Scoring

When added together, the six Heardable subscores contribute to a brand's total brand health score. 1,000 is the scoring limit. Here are the total possible points for each subscore:

1. Portable: 200 points

2. Searchable: 200 points

3. Sociable: 200 points

4. Measurable: 100 points

5. Actionable: 150 points
   * Web accessibility
   * Live chat
   * Trust marks
   * Persuasive content    
   * Contact methods

6. Shareable: 150 points

Actionable subscore breakout
* Actionable makes up 15% of a brand's Heardable Score, or 150 points
* Trust marks make up about 30% of a brand's Actionable subscore
* Having at least one trust mark on your website is what we look for. If you use multiple trust marks, you do not receive additional points.

Trust Marks: Why They Matter

Ten times as many consumers feel trust is more important than cost when doing business online (VeriSign Brand Tracking Research). Yet, if you are a small company without a big brand name, it can be difficult to prove your identity online. Trust marks can make potential customers choose you over your competitors by giving them the confidence to click.

Statistics show that live chat make good business sense:

* Web sites that utilize trust marks enjoy an average 12% sales lift (McAfee, 2011)

* VeriSign seal boosts CanadaDrugs.com’s conversion rate 33% (Internet Retailer, 2011)

* BillTiger.com saw a 645% jump in the number website sign-ups by using trust marks (Symantec.com, 2011)
* 70% of shoppers said that they had abandoned an online transaction due to a lack of trust (TNS Research, 2010)

Having trust seals on your web properties is like getting a stamp of approval from a family member or friend. They can instantly provide your business with the credibility is needs to generate more clicks, better conversions, and additional sales.

Heardable believes that today's online brands should seriously reconsider deploying trust marks to any and all web properties: Websites, microsites, landing pages, and the like.

Trust marks also makes a statement about your brand. It says, "we're a quality company that safeguards customer information."

Heardable's Actionable Charts

We Heardable's 3 actionable charts - Customer Focus, Actionable Elements, and Trust/Security - measure how easy a brand has made it to respond, communicate, and transact with them.

The Customer Focus chart compares the frequency of customer-focused words appearing on a brand's website versus brand-focused words. Addressing your customers and their needs tends to elicit greater response rates. The more orange you see covering the circle, the better you're doing.

The outer ring of the Actionable Elements chart examines how easy a brand makes it for site visitors to interact and transact with them using common features such as email, fax, phone, forms, and live chat. Many brands bury these features deep in their site or fail to include them, which frustrates consumers. The more orange you see, the better. The inner circle measures the percentage of alt tags optimized, which is one way brands can adhere to web accessibility guidelines.

The outer ring of the Trust/Security charts uses the color orange to validate whether trust seals have been deployed on a brand's website. The inner circle shows the percentage of SSL support completed, in orange. Trust marks and SSL certs help to convince website visitors that their customer information is safeguarded, the website they're on is a real business with a good reputation, and indicates a commitment to the customer.

Note: Studies have shown that persuasive website content, trust marks, and contact tools can dramatically improve website conversion rates.

Improve Your Actionable Subcore By Adding Trust Marks

Being Actionable means making it as easy as possible for your website visitors to trust you, review your content, ask questions, contact you in many ways, and purchase from you. Actionable brands tend to be highly optimized in several areas, such as utilizing trust marks on several pages of their websites.

Adding a trust mark to your home page, checkout pages, and other key pages on your website will likely boost your actionable subscore, since trust marks makes up approximately 30% of the 150 points assigned to being actionable.

Need Help With Trust Marks?

The team at Heardable can answer any questions you may have about trust marks such as how to evaluate which trust mark provider is right for you, or what it might cost you per year, or where to place them on your website to maximize conversions. Our experts offer a free, no obligation consultation -- so give us a call today!

Phone:            1-888-520-0034      
Email: marketing@heardable.com
Form: Click here

Actionable brands care about meeting the needs of their site visitors, customers, business partners, and key constituents.

One way that brands meet the needs of their website users is by deploying live help software, also know as live chat.

Live Chat is a term used to describe instant messaging applications designed specifically to provide online assistance to visitors of a web site. Live chat is used as a customer service feature and a tool to assist in the sales process.

Market research firm, eConsultancy, published a report in 2010 titled, "How We Shop," in which online customers stated that having “no way to get a specific question answered” was the most frequent issue they had when researching or buying online, with 44% of respondents encountering the problem at least somewhat frequently.

Live chat is one way brands can offer instant online help to answer visitor questions.

Other research has shown that ecommerce websites experience sales increases when they showcase outstanding customer service as part of the sales consumption cycle. Live chat can solve user issues in a non-obtrusive way while encouraging a sale. For many businesses, it’s a feature that's both helpful to site visitors and beneficial to the company.

Live Chat Features

There are some of the features and benefits of using live chat on a website:

* Monitor your visitors in real-time
* Offer an instant way to answer their pressing questions
* A personal touch with the convenience of not having to talk to a live person
* Convert visitors to customers
* Reduce operational costs
* Boost customer satisfaction
* Save conversations for legal/compliance reasons

Key Performance Indicators

The Heardable brand measurement and monitoring platform verifies whether or not live chat code is active on a brand's website. Here is a partial list of the live chat tools that we monitor:

Activa Live Chat
activalive.com

activEngage
activengage.com

AliveChat
websitealive.com
       
Boldchat
boldchat.com

ClickAndChat
clickandchat.com

Egain
egain.com

Kayako
kayako.com

LIVECHAT
livechatinc.com

LivePerson
liveperson.com

LiveZilla
livezilla.net

nGenera
cim.ngenera.com

Olark
olark.com

Provide Support
providesupport.com

SiteMax
sightmax.com

Velaro
velaro.com

Volusion
volusion.com

WhosOn
whoson.com

ZaZaChat
zazachat.com

Scoring

When added together, the six Heardable subscores contribute to a brand's total brand health score. 1,000 is the scoring limit. Here are the total possible points for each subscore:

1. Portable: 200 points

2. Searchable: 200 points

3. Sociable: 200 points

4. Measurable: 100 points

5. Actionable: 150 points
   * Web accessibility
   * Live chat
   * Trust marks
   * Persuasive content    
   * Contact methods

6. Shareable: 150 points

Actionable subscore breakout
* Actionable makes up 15% of a brand's Heardable Score, or 150 points
* Live chat makes up about 30% of a brand's Actionable subscore
* Having at least one live chat tool is what we look for. If you use multiple live chat tools, you will not receive additional points.

Live Chat: Why It Matters

Think of live chat tools as beacons of assistance in a sea of uncertaintly. Have you ever traveled to a foreign country where you don't speak the language? Aren't you filled with relief when, at the airport, an airline representative recognizes you are confused, waves you over with a smile, then clarifies an important piece of information about your departure time and gate? It kinda reminds us of those old Motel 6 television commericals that closed with Tom Bodett's soothing voice saying, 'We'll leave the light on for you."

Statistics show that live chat make good business sense:

* Chatters who initiate a chat themselves convert at 4 times the rate of a regular website visitor ^
* Chatters engaged through a proactive chat invitation convert at 6 times the rate of a regular website visitor ^
* Depending on a website’s traffic volume, the live chat engagement percentage will be between ~1% and 20% ^
* The implementation of proactive chat on top of reactive chat will increase overall chat volume by between 40% to ~100% ^

^ Bold Software’s Live Chat Benchmark Report, 2009

Having live chat on your web properties is like leaving the light on for your customers. And it's good for your conversions to boot.

Live chat improves the user experience too:

A lot has been written about the importance of providing your website visitors with the best possible customer experience. The better the experience, the mantra goes, the more satisfied your users will be. And happy users behave differently. Visitor delight translates into higher sales, increased feedback, positive word of mouth, and greater brand loyalty.

One overlooked element of the user experience is live chat. Unfortunately, few companies other than hard core e-commerce sites employ live chat. This is a shame because live chat can help boost your online brand effectiveness for just pennies a day.

Live chat helps transform an ordinary web page into one that is more actionable for the user. And an actionable website is one that makes it easier for visitors to respond, communicate, and transact.

Heardable believes that today's online brands should seriously reconsider deploying live chat to all their web properties. Websites, microsites, landing pages, and the like. Not only is live chat affordable and of benefit to your site visitors, it can also improve your conversion ratios and customer satisfaction scores.

It also makes a statement about your brand. It says, "we're a trusted brand that cares about meeting the needs of our customers."

Heardable's Actionable Charts

Heardable's 3 actionable charts - Visitor Focus, Contact Methods, and Trust/Security - measure how easy a brand has made it to respond, communicate, and transact with them.

The outer ring of the Visitor Focus chart compares the frequency of customer-focused words appearing on a brand's website versus brand-focused words. Addressing your customers and their needs tends to elicit greater response rates. The more orange you see covering the circle, the better you're doing. The inner circle indicates whether live chat software is present. Orange means yes.

The outer ring of the Contact Methods chart examines how easy a brand makes it for site visitors to interact and transact with them using common features such as email, fax, phone, forms, and live chat. Many brands bury these features deep in their site or fail to include them, which frustrates consumers. The more orange you see, the better. The inner circle measures the percentage of alt tags optimized, which complies with the best practices and standards of web accessibility.

The outer ring of the Trust/Security charts uses the color orange to validate whether trust seals have been deployed on a brand's website. The inner circle shows the percentage of SSL support completed, in orange. Trust marks and SSL certs help to convince website visitors that their customer information is safeguarded, the website they're on is a real business with a good reputation, and indicates a commitment to the customer.

Note: Studies have shown that persuasive website content, trust marks, and contact tools can dramatically improve website conversion rates.

Improve Your Actionable Subcore With Live Chat

Being Actionable means making it as easy as possible for your website visitors to trust you, review your content, ask questions, contact you in many ways, and purchase from you. Actionable brands tend to be highly optimized in several areas, such as utilizing live chat, and other contact methods, on every page of their website.

Adding live chat to your website will likely boost your actionable subscore, since live chat makes up 30% of the 150 points assigned to being actionable.

Need Help With Live Chat?

Heardable can answer any questions you may have about live chat. Our experts have worked with most of the chat providers we profile in our platform -- and we can help answer questions such as which chat provider is right for my budget, or how to implement live chat to boost website conversion rates. Get your free, no obligation consultation!

Phone:            1-888-520-0034      
Email: marketing@heardable.com
Form: Click here

Actionable brands tend to be committed to diversity, affinity and accessibility in all that they do.

Smart brands continuously improve their online properties to make sure they comply with the best practices and standards defined by Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium.

Top performing brands often have their web properties monitored and tested by accessibility experts to ensure compliance.

The rule of thumb when assessing whether your website content and code is compliant is to confirm that both search engine spiders and human beings with disabilities can access the information they need from a website without encountering major obstacles.

For example, if you have images on your website, visually impaired visitors should be able to tell what’s in each photograph. This is commonly done by placing descriptive text within the alt tags embedded into the image.

In the example below, you can see Chase.com as it would appear to most site visitors. In the second image of the Chase.com website, we've disabled the ability to display images in our web browser to demonstrate the challenges that a visually impaired person might have in experiencing Chase's content.

Fortunately, Chase adheres to web accessibility guidelines and includes descriptive alt tags in its web page code. The result? Page readers can "see" that the page image contains the following content:

"Chase Freedom. One hundred dollars bonus cash back. Details. Opens new Window."

Chase describes the image as a bonus cash back offer, and let's the user know that details are available in a new window.

Nicely done!

Web Accessibility Features

There are some things brands can to comply with Web Accessibility guidelines:

* Adjustable font size control
* Title attributes for additional information about links
* Association of data cells in data tables with their headers
* Provide a text-only version of your website that allows text readers to "play" it
* JavaScript or style sheets to enhance the appearance and functionality of the website
* Structural markup to indicate headings and lists to aid in page comprehension
* Association of forms with labels
* Alternative text detail for appropriate images and other non-text elements

Key Performance Indicators

The Heardable brand effectiveness platform looks at two key performance indicators to assess whether a brand is adhering to web accessibility guidelines:

Alt tags - We look at a random sampling of website pages to determine what percentage of all images have alt tags containing descriptive content. Goal is to be 100% optimized.
 
Adjustable font size - We look at a random sampling of a brand's website pages to determine if text size adjustment code is present. Goal is for thos capabilty to be found.

Scoring

When added together, the six Heardable subscores contribute to a brand's total brand health score. 1,000 is the scoring limit. Here are the total possible points for each subscore:

1. Portable: 200 points

2. Searchable: 200 points

3. Sociable: 200 points

4. Measurable: 100 points

5. Actionable: 150 points
   * Web accessibility
   * Live chat
   * Trust marks
   * Persuasive content    
   * Contact methods

6. Shareable: 150 points

Actionable subscore breakout
* Actionable makes up 15% of a brand's Heardable Score, or 150 points
* Web accessibilty makes up about 30% of a brand's Actionable subscore
* Alt tags are most important, weighted 9:1 over adjustable font size

Web Accessibility: Why It Matters

If you are a large brand, you may be at legal risk for non-compliance if you fail to make reasonable efforts to ensure that your website complies with web accessibility guidelines.

Another reason why it's important to comply with web accessibility guidelines is the good web usability aligns with corporate governance. Being helpful to all of your website visitors means you are a brand who practices what it preaches in the areas of diversity, affinity and accessibility. It's just good business practice to be in compliance.

A third reason it makes sense to comply with web accessibility standards is SEO (search engine optimization). Often times, web usability best practices -- such as making it easier for those whom are visually impaired to experience your website -- are the same actions that tend to make it easier for search engine bots to do similar activities. Highly accessible websites tend to be SEO-friendly too, which is an added benefit of being compliant.

Following SEO best practices is smart for you business. Did you know that SEO traffic converts 60% more often, spends 50% more, and views 82% more web pages than non-SEO traffic (Source: Bazaarvoice case study with major electronics retailer).

How to Interpret Our Actionable Charts

Heardable's 3 actionable charts - Customer Focus, Actionable Elements, and Trust/Security - measure how easy a brand has made it to respond, communicate, and transact with them.

The Customer Focus chart compares the frequency of customer-focused words appearing on a brand's website versus brand-focused words. Addressing your customers and their needs tends to elicit greater response rates. The more orange you see covering the circle, the better you're doing.

The outer ring of the Actionable Elements chart examines how easy a brand makes it for site visitors to interact and transact with them using common features such as email, fax, phone, forms, and live chat. Many brands bury these features deep in their site or fail to include them, which frustrates consumers. The more orange you see, the better. The inner circle measures the percentage of alt tags optimized, which is one way brands can adhere to web accessibility guidelines.

The outer ring of the Trust/Security charts uses the color orange to validate whether trust seals have been deployed on a brand's website. The inner circle shows the percentage of SSL support completed, in orange. Trust marks and SSL certs help to convince website visitors that their customer information is safeguarded, the website they're on is a real business with a good reputation, and indicates a commitment to the customer.

Note: Studies have shown that persuasive website content, trust marks, and contact tools can dramatically improve website conversion rates.

How to Improve Your Actionable Subcore

Being Actionable means making it as easy as possible for your website visitors to trust you, review your content, ask questions, contact you in many ways, and purchase from you. Actionable brands tend to be highly optimized in several areas, such as putting phone numbers and other contact information on every page of their websites, or utilizing trust marks to instill user confidence.

Improving web accessibility will likely improve a brand's actionable subscore, since web assessibility makes up 30% of the 150 points assigned to being actionable.

Tips on improving web accessibility:

* Review section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
* Audit all the images on your website to ensure that descriptive content is included in all alt tags
* Add code to your website that allows visitors to make text size adjustments
* Hire a consultant or empower a member of your staff to take on web accessibility improvement
* Review your website with a text reader to see how well your site "reads'
* Rescan your brand on Heardable.com to see if your score has improved

Need Help With Web Accessibility?
The team at Heardable can answer any questions you may have about web accessibility. Our experts offer a free, no obligation consultation -- so give us a call today!

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Email: marketing@heardable.com
Form: Click here

Attention Powerpoint Lovers -- 'Branding Is Like Beekeeping" is a visual allegory about how marketing is akin to the laws of nature. We've found some similarities between beekeeping and branding -- utilizing bees as a metaphor for how web surfers (and brands) could use a little help navigating to and from the 'hives' of life.

Protect that queen bee [aka your CEO] at all costs. After all -- No bees, no honey. No work, no money!

At Heardable, we believe brands are invisible if their products and services and not getting found online. And, if you are not actively participating in the millions of social conversations taking place in real-time around your brand, your marketing efforts may be falling short as well.

In today's competitive world, well feel strongly that being heard is a marketing imperative. That's why we created this 26 page PPT presentation for you titled, 'Ballad of the Invisible Brand." It's not a song or a poem or Ralph Ellison's classic novel, but we do think it's an engaging way to get our point across. We do hope you enjoy it.

If you enjoyed this presentation, please mention it to a friend or colleague who might benefit from reading it. Use the social media links below to mention it to people in your social network. Thanks!

It's been said that within every marketing professional lies one or two original ideas waiting to be exploited, manipulated, and pushed on a unwitting consumer. It's a dastardly pun on one's own profession but it demonstrates just how radically different the entire advertising and marketing world now operates.

There was a time when consumers had few ways of avoiding intrusive efforts to market to them. The onslaught was everywhere. But today's consumer is the empowered, busy bee. We steer clear of smokey, corporate propaganda. Our instincts guide us in an informed way. We consult with others online who we trust for guidance. We alert others of something meaningful or useful. A quorum in our network can cause a swarm of action.

For brands to survive and prosper, they must master entirely new skills be effective. Conversations rule. Digital communities are the medium. Trust is essential.

In fact, branding has become a lot like beekeeping. Marketers build hives/websites & online campaigns. They extract honey/feedback. They control parasites/negative press. They raise queen bees/create awareness. They sell honey/products & services.

To learn more about how you can Master Your Online Marketing Strategy, click through the following Powerpoint presentation.

If you enjoyed this presentation, please mention it to a friend or colleague who might benefit from reading it. Use the social media links below to mention it to people in your social network. Thanks!

In our humble opinion, brands that understand the significance of working with the Social Web will be ahead of those brands who are slow to respond, or worse, are seen as anti-social.

Here is a PowerPoint deck we posted on SlideShare titled, "How the Social Web Enables Heardable Brands," that we thought our visitors might enjoy.

Several recent registered users of Heardable.com have asked us if the Heardable Platform can help online marketing professionals evaluate the effectiveness of their website redesign efforts. Our answer: Yes indeed!
 
Before we get to our case study -- Southwest.com's recently redesigned website and how its Heardable Score was impacted -- let's quickly review the Heardable Scoring system, as well as how online brand performance can be tracked over time utilizing our Brand Directory feature to profile any brand. This is the foundation on which you'll be able to measure and monitor the effectiveness of your website redesign -- and the ripple effect that this may have had on your brand.
 
Heardable Scoring System: A Quick Recap
 
As you may already know, the Heardable platform currently looks at 20 on-site and 20 off-site variables to determine a brand's visibility across the web, which includes the underlying effectiveness of the brand's website. Heardable provides a comprehensive, diagnostic analysis of six key attributes:
 
1. Actionable: Do you make it easy for your site visitors to engage & transact with you?
2. Measurable: Do you monitor your site via web analytics software and/or advertising tracking beacons?
3. Portable: Have you optimized your site experience for the major mobile web browsers?
4. Searchable: Is your site SEO optimized, with an emphasis on local search?
5. Shareable: Does your site make it easy to send and receive data feeds in multiple formats?
6. Sociable: Does your brand actively participate in social media across a span of external services?
 
A brand's Heardable Score is calculated by rolling up each of the six subscore values into the main Heardable Score.
 
How Online Brand Performance Can Be Tracked Over Time
 
Site visitors who click on the Brand Directory section of Heardable, or myHeardable, can track a brand's performance over time via a graph that displays all points in time that a particular brand has been scanned using our scoring engine, mapped to a timeline.

To access Brand Directory and myHeardable, you first need to sign up (for free) as a registered user on our website. Right now, Heardable allows anyone who registers to access all of our site pages, features and functionality for free. In time, we will be introducing a paid subscription service and charging a monthly fee for certain areas of our site.
 
If you'd like to see how your brand (and its corresponding Heardable Score) can be tracked over time, we suggest that you first visit the Brand Directory page. By default, Heardable.com's score and graph appear on the page. At a glance viewers are provided with:
 
1) A screen capture of our home page
2) Date our site was last scanned
3) Ability to re-scan our brand/URL
4) Graph showing how our brand has scored over time
 
To showcase another brand, simply enter a new domain name / URL into the Search Brand Profiles search box and click SEARCH. If this is the first time a particular domain name/URL has been scanned, it may take up to 30 seconds or more to display the Heardable Score. This is because the Heardable algorithm conducts its analysis in real-time. If the domain name/URL is a new scan, you may want to request a screen capture of the home page by clicking the UPDATE IMAGE button.
 
If you examine the graph that appears on the brand profile page, you will notice that you can roll over specific dates tp see what Heardable Score was captured at that point in time.
 
Southwest.com's Recently Redesigned Website -- How Its Heardable Score Was Impacted
 
Wanna see brand measurement and monitoring in action? Let's look at Southwest.com - a website redesign gone bad.
 
From what we have read about online, Southwest.com redesigned its website and released it to much fanfare on Jan 15, 2010. Two weeks later, their Heardable Score tanked, dropping from from a high of 511/1000 to 341/1000. Ouch. (see below).

 
If you were to read Southwest's corporate blog, it's almost amusing to watch the participants high-five each other over how great the new Southwest.com site is doing. And from a look and feel point of view, there may be some valid improvements that users can point to that have actually improved the experience. However, when you look at how this new site performs from a brand effectiveness perspective, the changes that Southwest have rolled out have had a 33% drop in online brand effectiveness.

In our humble opinion, Southwest Airlines chairman and CEO Gary Kelly should take his CMO to the tool shed for a good tongue lashing.  Baring that, Southwest's management might want to devote some serious hours to exploring how its newly redesigned website could possibly be performing worse than its old website. It is not easy to go one step forward and three steps back with a website redesign, but that's just what Southwest seems to have done. Whether anyone at Southwest is even aware this has happened, or cares, is a good question.

This is yet another reason why we created the Heardable platform -- to help busy web professionals understand, measure, and monitor the full impact of their online marketing efforts. We like to think of Heardable as the ultimate reporting mechanism for understanding the correlation between brand visibility and company profitability.

Hundreds of thousands of today's smartest companies have successfully deployed landing pages (LP's) to support their online marketing campaigns--landing pages that deliver measurable results. Even more web businesses utilize standard web pages to not only provide useful, relevant content, but to convert visitors into sales leads (or closed sales). Landing page optimization is critical to an online brand's success--and to a brand's Actionable Subscore, an important component of a brand's overall Heardable Score. So where does a marketer begin?

If you're a sales or service organization doing business online, you should be utilizing landing pages to boost your visit-to-sales conversion rates. Not only can DEDICATED landing pages provide a better user experience than sending prospects to traditional pages within your website, but landing page performance can be uniquely tracked, provided your online marketing team or creative agencies with more control and flexibility in their campaign spends as they drive test traffic--and optimize performance--over time. Landing page testing will eventually results in you having more control over your online marketing budget--allowing savvy marketers the ability to forecast and plan for scaled growth.

First, let’s define what a landing page is. Typically, a landing page is a web page that supports an online marketing campaign, promotes a limited number of calls to actions and/or links, and is designed to convert visitors into sales. Akin to direct mail marketing, the landing page itself is akin to the letter you are presented with when you open a direct mail piece whose job it is to get the reader to react. Often, a landing page is separate and distinct from a main website, having a unique URL and allowing for end-to-end campaign tracking (via unique, dynamic phone numbers and/or source code tracking appended to the URL).

Typical Landing Page Elements

- Header masthead (logo, tagline, phone number)

- Hero shot (a graphic representation of the benefit of the product or service you are selling)

- Headline text and supporting text

- An offer (50% off your first order, free shipping)

- A limited time offer with an expiration date to create a sense of urgency

- Limited calls to action (cal this phone #, complete this form, engage in live chat)

- Direct response elements (eg: an arrow effect to draw the visitor's eye to something on the page)

- Customer testimonials, trust marks, ratings (to build trust and re-enforce visitor’s purchase decision)

- Brief product or service comparisons using bullet points or numbered summaries

Studying your competitor’s landing pages are a logical place to start when considering a landing page strategy of your own. Just keep in mind that other companies may have created their landing pages with entirely different goals in mind...so the exercise to identify the right landing page for your company may not be a simple apples to apples comparison. Your brand standards and sales goals may be different than those of competing firms. It can’t hurt to know what your competitors are doing. It's just not a good creative strategy to copy them.

It is important to note that if you copy a competitor's landing pages you may be doing so at your own peril. Who is to say that your competitors know what they are doing? Their LP's may not be performing very well. The visit-to-lead ratios, for example, on company Y’s landing page may be 2%, and all of the leads as form submissions, which could be far below your target goal of 4% with 75% of the leads being via phone. This 'fast follower' tactic of copying what others are doing online is not always the smartest move.

When you are ready to implement a landing page design, deployment, and testing process, Heardable recommends you start by identifying a few important elements having to do with your goals and objectives.

10-Step Landing Page Development Process

1.  Identify the baseline visit-to-lead ratio you are trying to beat (ie: 3%)

2.  Spell out the desired mix of lead transaction type you want (ie: 70% phone, 30% form)

3.  Name your optimal product mix (ie: 50% premium brand dogfood, 30% animal toys, 20% grooming products)

4.  Recognize your desired customer mix (ie: 90% repeat/existing customers, 10% once-and-gone customers)

5.  Be clear what source traffic will be sent to your landing page (ie: paid search, banner ads, etc).

6.  Identify the time of year this landing page will be used (to gauge whether or not this could/should impact the design)

7.  Decide between valuate using brand colors vs. colors that may elicite higher response online

8.  Lead form style & placement: Short form, dynamic form, multi-part form -- each type can impact your results

9.  On-site help: Mousever, tutorials, and the like are known to impact conversion rates

10. Ancillary elements you may need, such as live chat, audio, flash animation, video, calculators, click to call, etc.

Once each of these development steps is thought through, you will be ready to design your new new landing page(s) by varying the tone, style, layout and feature functionality to see which variations provide the best user experience as well as the best visit-to-lead ratio.

Optimize Your Landing Pages With Testing

Testing your landing pages head to head against each other (A/B testing) or testing elements within a landing page, is an important step on your way to getting the best performance out of your landing pages. Only testing with live online traffic will reveal your true, winning landing page design combinations. Online visitors are a funny breed. Often, the ‘best’ designs perform poorly and ‘ugly’ designs yield great results.

Keep in mind that 'champion' landing pages may age or grow stale over time, meaning that you'll want to constantly test your control landing pages against new challengers to optimize your landing page performance.

From a brand perspective, it's a smart idea to find a landing page that you are proud to display to the world--one that reflects your brand style and values while fulfilling your sales/conversion goals.

Multivariate Testing

Multivariate testing sits as a 'layer' on top of your winning landing page design construct and uses a vendor's mathematical formulas & back-end campaign set-up interface to serve up unique combinations of creative elements on a page to see which array deliveres the best results. With multivariate testing, it's possible to test many creative elements at the same time without requiring technology resources to manage each test. Popular multivariate packages are Omniture's Test & Target and Interwoven's Optimost.

Multivariate testing is utilized to see which combination of landing page elements works best for a given traffic source. For example, you might find that a certain headline, combined with a particular hereo shot and a short form will improve your visit-to-lead ratio for a paid search campaign, while another multivariate combination will yield better results for a display campaign on Yahoo. The beauty of multivariate testing is that you can quickly identify winning combinations of creative elements off of a single landing page design, generating higher profits faster than using traditional testing methods such as A/B testing.

Actionable Scores Can Increase By Optimizing Site Pages

Truth be told, most website visitors may not engage with your branf offer via a paid landing page specifically designed to support your paid marketing efforts. In fact, most online consumers with come to your site via search engines and they will 'land' on interior pages of your website that were relative to the search that was being performed. This little known fact is very important so we're stating it again in another way:

MOST OF YOUR SITE VISITORS WILL NEVER SEE YOUR HOME PAGE OR CONTACT PAGE.

Knowing this, wouldn't you, the marketer, want to make sure that each page on your site makes it as easy as possible for a visitor to engagce and transact with your company? Providing simple things like contact information on every page of your site is something that is very eacy to do, yet most firms don't do it. The result is that you force your visitors to go out of their way to engage with you. And, with everyone being so time deprived, every obstacle you create on your website to impead communication or transactions will have a negative impact on your site's conversion ratio.

Conclusion

Heardable encourages marketers to consider a wildcard design now and again that breaks all the know rules. This is one way to radically out-perform, or lose to, your control landing page. Our experience has shown that breakthrough landing page designs often come from trying something completely different. Good luck and happy testing!

Online panel research can be utilized as a fast, fun and affordable way to gain insight about the user-friendliness of your website. It's a type of online research that utilizes actual site visitor participation or 'simulated panel' of like user bases in pre-planned, online research sessions.

Also referred to as listening panels, online panel research can simplify your web research needs by combining a Q&A sessions with interactive elicitation methods. Results are collected online in real-time, providing you with speedy, accurate insights that can be immediately acted upon.

Benefits of Online Panel Research

   1. Aid in the development of a website, landing page, banner ad, or online demo
   2. Identify information architecture or navigation nomenclature
   3. Explore consumer needs, values, thoughts, and opinions
   4. Test your creative designs prior to launch
   5. Save time and money by identifying potential design & functionality flaws in advance

Usability expert, Craig Tomlin, had this to share about the importance of testing a site's design, "Because the primary interaction that takes place on your site is one-way visual, you must be zealous in your attempts to understand and evaluate how well you are communicating perceived affordance.  Testing and optimization of elements that impact perceived affordance should be your number one goal, because it directly impacts your conversion rates, and thus your web site’s ROI."

Types of Online Panel Research Services

Sort-It: Participants are presented with a series of labeled cards and asked to sort them into like groups. They can also add their own cards and name the groups. Sort-It is an ideal first step in designing a website's information architecture, determining a site's navigation nomenclature, and optimizing a site for SEO.

"Information architecture and labeling should be the result of card sorts and ethnographic research regarding the typical user’s mental map of the content & flow," say Tomlin. "Matching the mental map of the users with the main navigation and drop downs is one of the most important ways to ensure good usability and a satisfying user experience."

Brainstorm-It: Participants are asked to list as many items as they can think of (within an optional time limit) around a designated question or topic. For example, a home loans website might ask an online panel to list all the content, features or actions they would expect to find on a mortgage website. This exercise can be an excellent first step in understanding user preferences such as website goals & needs, feature-functionality, information achitechture, navigation nomenclature, and identifying keywords that will resonate with both humans and search engine bots.

Divide-It: Participants are asked to spend virtual money for 'items' they value over other items. Each dollar spent on one item is a dollar they cannot spend on other items. Forcing the test subject to make hard choices can yield better research results, and better decision-making on your part. Divide-It can also be modified to help your determine the best price points for your products or services by eliciting consumer responses to hypothetical price points.

Stick-It: Understand how consumers react to a creative image--be it a website design, banner ad, landing page or some other creative marketing asset. Test subjects drag pre-made sticky notes, or create their own stickies, to express how they feel. They can even choose where to place the stickie on your design, which can provide added feedback on your designs. Think of Stick-It as human A/B testing of your designs.

As you can see, online panel research can make website research interactive and informative by utilizing fun elicitation methods. So what are you waiting for? Hire a usability consultant or find an online panel research firm to help you gain insights into your site visitor behavior.

Tomlin concurs, "Need a leg-up on your competition? Carefully examine the usability and functionality of your high level marketing pages with a detailed usability test, knowing that finding and fixing minor annoyances or functional issues could have beneficial impact on your conversion."

Websites That Click

Website Usability Testing and Optimization

A Heardable White Paper, #2 - Copyright 2010 - Craig Tomlin, Certified Usabilty Expert

Introduction

Usability for a company can be a two-edged sword.  Done well, usability can add to the user experience and add to the website's incremental revenue.  Poorly executed usability can lead to lost revenue, or even worse, a negative Brand experience.  It only takes a few customers with bad experiences telling their friends before a brand has a crisis of mega proportions on its hands.  Put another way, the risks associated with a bad user experience can and will impact a company's bottom line and its reputation, something that no amount of advertising spend may be able to fix.

The wise staff at Heardable concedes that even great usability is not a cure-all. A user-centered website could achieve results that are impressive in terms of customer satisfaction scores, but a site’s conversion rates may be low. In other words, visitors love the site, but it’s just not achieving your target business goals.

After reading this white paper, we hope you walk away agreeing that usability is an important piece of the online optimization puzzle – and that online success will come from integrating the usability processes into your ongoing web marketing strategy.

What is Usability?

According to Wikipedia, Usability is “a qualitative attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use.  The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.”  For websites, usability generally equates to how efficient the web site is to use, how easy it is to learn and how satisfying the experience associated with the site. 

Website usability can be measured by indirect methods.  Typical usability measurements might be “time to complete a task,” “whether a task was successfully completed or not” or “number of errors encountered.” Other methods of usability testing can quantify the “overall satisfaction” of the website or tasks.

In addition to task-based assessments, there are other forms of usability analysis and measurement.  Some of the more common forms include “heuristic reviews,” expert reviews of websites based on design best practices; “eye tracking” which uses an apparatus to track where on the screen a user looks, as well as “heat maps” or “click-stream” data that record the location and number of clicks users make on a page or pages.

Besides usability testing, there is another form of usability; usability engineering.  Usability engineering is the iterative process of researching and designing products that provide a positive and satisfying user experience.

Usability has two important bottom-line benefits for a business:

First – Increase website conversion by making websites easier for customers to use

Second – Reduce expensive website “fixes” post launch by designing usable sites from inception

We will cover both of these benefits in more detail later.  We will also provide additional benefits that derive from usability testing and optimization.

Usability Can Be Performed Quickly and Inexpensively

A common misconception about usability and usability testing is that it is expensive, and takes a long time to conduct.  The reality is usability testing can be conducted quickly, and for low cost.

Traditional methods of usability testing have relied upon special observation and testing rooms, usually with one-way mirrors and video recorders so that observers could witness and tape the usability testing sessions.  However, today software enables usability testing and recording to be conducted from most laptops or computers, and from almost anywhere.  Usability testing sessions are recorded in digital form right from the laptop used for testing, for easy editing and playback later.  This software is actually cheaper than the rental cost of a traditional usability testing lab. 

In addition, the ability to use broadband internet connections with remote testing software makes remote usability testing possible, as well as remote observation of the tests.  It is a common practice now for design teams to connect virtually to a remote usability testing session, even though the team may literally be spread around the world.

Savvy usability practitioners can use a variety of quick and cheap (but still effective) techniques to conduct usability tests.  For example, by using testing software such as TechSmith’s Morae or Clearleft’s Silverback, a usability practitioner can conduct remote usability tests with participants in 6 or 7 cities across the country, or world, in a day, saving thousands of dollars in travel and lodging expenses and saving a week’s worth of travel time.

Why Usability is Important

As was mentioned above, usability has two important bottom line benefits for a business; it improves conversion and decreases expensive post launch “fixes” if designed as user-friendly from inception.

The Return on Investment (ROI) of Usability is simple to calculate from a conversion standpoint, the formula is:

As an example, assume:

• Annual website revenue = $1,000,000
• Current conversion rate = 10%
• Improved conversion rate = 12%

Then... 

$1,000,000 x (.12/.10) - $1,000,000 = $200,000 annual ROI

If you were to subtract the one-time cost for the usability project, (let’s make up a number and assume $15,000) then the first year’s ROI is…

$200,000 - $15,000 = $185,000 the first year, and the full $200,000 each year thereafter.

The major difference between spending money on usability improvements for websites and spending money on paid advertising is one of duration.  With usability improvements, the one-time expense  can deliver increased sales and ROI for the lifetime of the website.  However, increasing advertising spend will increase sales short-term, but at the conclusion of the advertising campaign the sales volume will drop back to prior levels.

Usability improves trust.  Trust is a critical component of sales, whether online or offline.  Without trust, online purchase commitments are harder to attain.  A website that is easier to use, that makes it easy for a visitor to navigate and find the information they seek will naturally generate trust.  Repeat visits will happen more often if the website visitor is confident (ie trusts) that they can find what they are looking for. 

Usability reduces the cost per sale of a website.  This is another critical fact that is often overlooked by website owners.  Usability improvements reduce the cost per sale over the lifetime of the website, paid advertising doesn’t do this.  The reason why?  The cost per sale of an incremental advertising-generated sale will always be a fixed amount.  For example, paying $10,000 for an advertising campaign that generates an additional 100 incremental sales means a cost per sale of $100.  When the advertising campaign stops, so do the incremental sales, and thus the cost per sale is fixed at $100. 

However, paying $10,000 for usability improvements that generate incremental sales means the cost per sale will be reduced over time.  The first 100 incremental sales generated by usability improvements are $100 per sale, but the next 100, and the 100 after that begin to reduce the usability-generated incremental cost per sale.  If 1,000 incremental sales are eventually made from the single usability spend, then the cost per sale is actually $10.

Usability improves the efficiency of a website.  Even for customers who are shopping, and do not buy on their first visit, if the efficiency of the website is improved via usability testing and improvements, then so is the ease-of-use, which equals increased satisfaction. 

Increasing the satisfaction of the website will increase the probability that the shopper will return to the website, which will provide additional opportunities for incremental sales.  Usability testing of shopping tasks on a website will reveal places where efficiency improvements can be made. 

Usability during the design process gives a voice to your customers.  A traditional website design methodology is based on use cases and requirements documents, which normally are written from the “system” or corporate perspective but include little or no end-user requirements.  The example being a company that wishes to sell its products on the web will have a list of necessary back-end transactions and requirements that must take place, and will design the website based on the needs of those transactions.  Specifications for website design and functionality then come from what the system needs, with little or no regard to what the end-user needs.

By including usability testing and recommendations at the inception of the design project, the customer’s voice is added.  This type of design process is typically referred to as a “user-centered” design approach.  This design approach combines the system specifications and use cases with the needs and expectations of the end customer.  The customers “voice,” i.e. their expectations and needs, are included.  The end result of this is a website that not only enables the system’s requirements, but incorporates the expectations and needs of the end-user, which provides a more effective and efficient design and thus a better performing website.

The Costs of Website Usability

What does usability cost?  Usability projects and companies run the gamut from small, simple and low cost (ie hundreds of dollars), to large, complex and high cost (tens of thousands of dollars).  Some freelancer usability consultants charge based on hours, some based on a project variable such as number of pages reviewed or number of sessions conducted.  A typical website usability study can cost several hundred, to several thousand dollars, and can take a matter of a few days to a few weeks.

For some companies, usability is a necessary function and therefore full-time employees handle usability testing and analysis on an on-going basis.  For these companies, the cost of usability is predominately associated with the cost to hire and retain qualified usability practitioners.

For companies that seek a usability vendor for a specific usability project, best practices include asking for responses to a Request for Information or Request for Information.  It’s wise to also ask colleagues for referrals to firms they may have used in the past.  Additional places to find potential vendors include the Usability Professional’s Association, which provides a listing of members.  It should be noted that the Usability Professionals Association does not specifically vet members, however by using a checklist to vet each vendor (see example below) anyone seeking the services of a usability vendor can easily do this themselves.

Unlike certain professional fields, such as Physicians or Accountants, there is no requirement for education and certification in usability, this means almost anyone can declare themselves a usability practitioner.  A smart company seeking usability services will ask for education and related work-experience examples from prospective usability vendors.  One organization, Human Factors International, offers usability practitioner certification via an extensive test.  Usability practitioners who pass this test are referred to as “Certified Usability Analysts” or CUAs for short.  Many universities now offer courses in Human Factors, Usability or Human Computer Interaction and it is becoming more common to see usability practitioners with PhDs, Masters or Bachelors’ degrees in the field.

Checklist for evaluating usability practitioners.   A recommended approach to evaluating potential usability vendors is to use a checklist of common usability practices and procedures that any competent vendor should have no problem addressing.  Here is a suggested checklist:

Why Companies Don't Do Usability

There are an ever increasing number of companies who produce or re-design websites with user-centered design process and usability.  However there also continue to be plenty of companies that create or re-design their websites with little or no usability applied.  There are typically 5 main reasons why these companies don’t do usability

First, many corporate websites are "owned" by various business units.  Each business unit owner has his or her own agenda for their section of the corporate web site.  It can be very difficult, sometimes seemingly impossible, to get everyone who owns a segment of a corporate web site to agree to usability improvements or changes to the website, often because different business owners have different needs which may or may not be "helped" by the suggested changes. Committees that produce lots of talk but little action, endless meetings and countless emails seem to be the norm, with actual website changes and improvements (work) being rather rare. And when the work is done, it is usually a fairly large endeavor requiring undue amounts of time and energy from both IT and business resources.

Second, there are often differing opinions about what usability improvements should be made, where and when to a website. Conflicting points of view caused by conflicting business needs is one of the most common reasons it is difficult to gain consensus.

Third, there are sometimes additional compounded differences in opinion, caused by differences in basic understanding of whom "typical" users are, and what needs these users have. In this situation, a common held belief is “I know my group of website users, and they would never (or always) know what to do.”  This knowledge often comes from web site log transaction data coupled with demographics of existing customers, and may or may not reflect the actual behavioral tendencies website visitors actually have when confronted with usability issues on the website.

Fourth, a further complication is not all business owners actually have expertise or even a basic education on the principles of good website design or development processes.  Lack of knowledge about the benefits of usability, or assumptions about how a design process should be implemented that do not include usability ultimately mean money left on the table in terms of fewer transactions or a frustrating user experience.

Fifth and finally, there is a generally held belief that usability adds complexity to a website development process by adding extra time and thus extra expense.  In fact, by adding usability testing at key points throughout the development process, usability can be included as part of the development process and adds no additional time at all.  Further, by including usability as part of the development process it can actually save expense in the form of fewer post-launch “fixes,” and increased website conversion.

Website Usability Best Practices

It’s beyond the scope of this white paper to list all of the possible website usability best practices, however there are a few key points to keep in mind:

The critical importance of language & labeling.   Often, usability testing and subsequent improvements will focus on testing the language and labeling used for defining the content and navigation.  Proper labeling ensures website visitors can quickly find the content they seek.  It is critically important to make it as easy and simple as possible for website visitors to find content without having to stop and think due to confusing navigation.  If website visitors are forced to search for content due to poor use of language (ie the site doesn’t use words the visitors expect) it’s highly likely they will abandon the website or not complete a transaction.

Using Personas to test. Usability testing and analysis is only effective if it tests “typical” website visitors.  As an extreme example, it’s important to test a website devoted to Senior Citizen health care issues with people who are of that age.  Poor or even bad results would be obtained if teens were used to test the site. 

By conducting research into typical website visitors, usability practitioners can develop an archetype – or representation of typical visitors, called a “Persona.”  A Persona is a fictional representation of the typical website visitor and includes enough information to assist designers in making decisions based on the goals and behaviors of the typical website visitor.  Among other uses, usability practitioners include the information about Personas when finding usability test participants.  The test participants should match the goals and behaviors of the Persona.  This ensures that usability testing results will accurately predict where the issues are, and what improvements will best solve the problem.

Designing around website and user goals.  The critical purpose of website usability testing is to help increase the number of sales or other important transactions on a website.  This means the goals of the website should be clearly defined.  It’s sometimes the case however where there are no clear website goals, or just as often, that there are multiple and sometimes conflicting goals for the website among various business units.  Many successful usability improvement projects start by interviewing key stakeholders and documenting the goals for the website.  Armed with this information, the testing methodology can be created to address how best to improve the site to obtain those goals.

However, there is another critical set of goals, which usually is not documented or even well known by business units or stakeholders.  These are the website visitor goals.  For example, a business may have the goal of increasing conversion of an eCommerce website by 10%, but the website visitor’s goal may be to purchase a product that solves an immediate need.  It’s not the purchase of the product, it’s using the product to solve a problem which ultimately meets the visitor’s goal.  By understanding the true goals of website visitors, usability optimization can be conducted that structures the content, function and flow of the site to better define for the website visitors how the purchase of the company’s product will solve their ultimate needs.

Designing for Both Search Engines and Humans.  It’s a fact that if the user cannot find the website, then the usability of the website doesn’t matter.  To this end, making sure the website is friendly to search engines, so that the site will rank higher in the natural search listings, is very important.  Luckily many of the usability optimization techniques that make sites more friendly to humans work equally well for making the site friendly for search engines.  For example, organizing content into user-friendly buckets of information, then clearly labeling those content buckets, helps humans and search engines better define and find the content.

However, there can be times where optimizing websites for usability impact search engine optimization in a negative way.  For example, removing large amounts of keyword-rich content to improve the readability of a web page could have a negative impact from a search engine optimization standpoint.  A wise website manager will understand this, and request that any usability work being done on a website include an evaluation of whether the recommended changes will help, or hurt, search engine optimization.

Typically the practice of usability has not specifically incorporated the methodology and techniques necessary to ensure search engine optimization.  However, this is changing as the awareness of the importance of optimizing websites for search engines has become more mainstream.  Some usability practitioners specialize in Search Engine Optimization as well as usability, and there are more and more usability firms that either have search engine optimization staff available, or partners who specialize in search engine optimization.

Conclusion: Usability Is Critical For Website Success

Usability has two important bottom-line benefits for a business:

First – Usability can increase website conversion by making websites easier for customers to use

Second – Usability can reduce expensive website “fixes” post launch by designing usable sites from inception

An additional benefit often overlooked by web managers is that usability, unlike paid advertising, reduces the overall cost per sale of a website on a continual basis for the lifetime of the website.  Paid advertising cannot do this because paid advertising will have a fixed cost per sale at the conclusion of the campaign.

The cost of usability varies greatly, depending on many factors.  Usability projects and companies run the gamut from small, simple and low cost (ie hundreds of dollars), to large, complex and high cost (tens of thousands of dollars).  Some freelancer usability consultants charge based on hours, some based on a project variable such as number of pages reviewed or number of sessions conducted.  A typical website usability study can cost several hundred, to several thousand dollars, and can take a matter of a few days to a few weeks.

Usability can and should be conducted by website owners who are interested in improving the user experience, and thus improving the conversion of the site.

Invasion of the Microsites

How Microsites Give Brands A Competitive Edge

A Heardable White Paper, #1 - Copyright 2010, Heardable, Inc.

Introduction

This Heardable whitepaper will help you understand what a microsite is, their relationship to a company’s main website, how they can provide you with tracking and speed to market advantages in your online direct response marketing efforts, and why you might want to consider deploying them separately and apart from your internal technology development process. 

The title of this white paper, 'Invasion of the Microsites,' takes its cue from the science fiction movies of the 1950’s that were strongly influenced by the paranoia of the Nuclear Age and the fears of the unknown.  The same fear exists in the web marketing space, as developers, technologists and channel managers struggle with the rapid evolution of roles & responsibilities. Consider the increasing speed and reach of overlapping skill sets, the diversivication of publishing duties,  and the simplification of tools. The fear is real. But the solutions are attainable.

According to Wikipedia, a Microsite is ‘An Internet web design term referring to an individual web page or cluster of pages which are meant to function as an auxiliary supplement to a primary website. The microsite's main landing page most likely has its own domain name or subdomain.’

Culled from from years of hands on experience doing work for several Fortune 100 brands, we've pulled together a host of essential strategies, tactics and other helpful nuggets of knowledge that might can help you determine if deploying microsites makes sense for you and your company.

Microsites can play several different rolls for an organization—and no two microsites need to serve the same purpose. Done right, microsites can play a critical, role as part of the suite of web publishing tools in helping companies boost their long tail SEO results, expand their direct response lead generation opportunities and better meet the needs of visitors. Microsites can even provide a lift to your paid campaigns, such as DRTV, by creating a second chance to convert visitors into leads (people can either call the number in the TV commercial or visit your microsite, get more information and transact—all trackable back to the originating campaign. It’s exciting stuff. We know microsites work because we’ve seen the results first hand and will demonstrate with examples.

Heardable’s Definition & Use of Microsites

At Heardable, we go beyond the typical definition, and use, of Microsites.  Microsites are a cluster of web pages which are meant to function as auxiliary supplements to a primary website. They usually have their own easy to remember vanity URL. They typically focus on one particular product, group of services, or are designed to support a unique marketing offer. And manyMany microsites are designed with a short lifecycle in mind, meaning they are only live on the internet for a short period of time. However, there are plenty of exceptions to that rule. A microsite can often outperform and outlive a sisterother Company web sites.

Heardable believes that microsites  can and should live side by side with a main website for long periods of time in ways that bring substantial, ancillary benefits to an organization. Microsites can do this by concentrating their content around products, services or offerings that are not highlighted well on a main website. This is especially true of large corporate websites, where certain divisional content is often buried deep in a website, or not included at all, due to the dominance of other products, services, or departments within a firm.

The above image showcases our hub & spoke microsite cluster, which outlines possible correlations between a main website and unique microsites that can have a tangential, mutually beneficial relationship to the mother site. What this image points out is the symbiotic relationship that can exist between a main website and a microsite, in addition to the content focus that a microsite might have as opposed to a more generic main site.

From more of a technical Point Of View, some microsites are linked to, or linked from, a main company website – depending on the requirements set forth in the development specifications. And microsites can be hosted internally or completely separate from a company’s main server cluster. If hosted internally, a vanity URL typically re-directs to a sub-domain, which can either help or hinder your SEO efforts (more on this later).

The Business Case for Microsites

The case for creating microsites has many origins—and most reasons are born out of a need by marketers to have more control over their online marketing campaigns or website optimization efforts. Among many internet marketers, a common complaint  is departments or divisions within a corporation have differing business goals, which are reflected in the Corporate website strategies and tactics.  This often leaves internet marketers in a position where they are not in control of the end-to-end components of their campaign touch points.

T.S. Eliot said Anyone, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. It’s a whimsical quote from a notable writer but it easily could have been muttered by an online marketer attempting to explain how gosh darn hard it can be to create and optimize a website – using SEO or direct response marketing tactics – when you have to rely on an internal technical team for ‘assistance’ and a legal department for ‘approval.

Common challenges online marketers face:

- Main corporate websites are difficult to optimize

- Too many constituents have a stake in the main site

-  Long development queues & slow approval processes stifle innovation

- Need to quickly market a specific product, offer, or campaign

 - Need to focus on specific search keywords that a main website may not be optimized for

- A need to deploy DR elements that may not be appropriate for a main site

- Desire to have a unique look & feel or content that cannot or does not exist on a main site

- Marketers not empowered to create web pages themselves

 - Desire to capitalize on the long tail of search, but not sure how

 - Paid search opportunities are maxed out

- Reporting on results / generating an ROI

- Legal restrictions and process controls limit publishing options

At Heardable, we have developed a unique system that utilizes a rapid process to publish content in multiple formats in ways that are optimized, and thus friendly to both humans and search engine spiders. Our hub and spoke marketing microsite solution for example, was born out of a need to deliver an impactful solution for our clients. And we didn’t delelop our solutions overnight.  In fact, we carefully studied online and offline channels to document best practices and formulate ways to streamline cumbersome and inefficient processes.

In direct mail, for example, we studied how a direct marketer can work with a creative agency or its in-house creative team to craft campaign offers and messaging, work with an analytics team to determine the right customer segments to mail to, then work with a fulfillment house to execute (pull the mailing lists together, print the mailers, and send them through the postal service). No in-house technical resources are needed, even though there are parts of a direct mail campaign that are highly ‘technical’ in nature.

Many web campaigns, on the other hand, are still considered one-part marketing and two parts technology—even though the ‘technology’ exists for online marketers to operate 100% independently from a company’s IT team. The hang up? Many companies still consider anything ‘web page’ related as falling into the e-commerce or development realm simply because HTML code is, GULP, code!

At Heardable, we hear this argument all the time. We have been present for countless conversations around boardrooms that pitted forward-thinking online marketers against turf-threatened technologists. Here’s one of our favorite analogies used to explain why web pages are not anymore ‘development’ than empowering an administrative assistant to use Excel.

When windows spreadsheets first came to market back in the 1980’s, they were considered to be ‘powerful’ software that empowered highly skilled and expensive analysts to ‘crunch the numbers’ and provide business executives with various ways to better understand the statistics behind a company’s performance metrics. Few knew how to use these spreadsheet tools, but over time, training improved and newer software versions became more intuitive so that anyone, even a high-school graduate working as an assistant, could import data from SQL server databases, conduct analytical processing of OLAP data, generate rich visual charts, and export data into HTML—all with simple clicks of a mouse.

Do these sound like the skills of a highly skilled analyst or programmer? Once upon a time they may have been, but the power of the tools changed all that. Today, anybody with access to Excel and a few minutes of training can perform these ‘complex’ job duties.

The same can be said for creating web pages. Anyone can go into Word, create a document, save it is as HTML, and upload it to the web. No developers needed. Any 12- year-old can set up a GoDaddy account (using Mom’s credit card, with permission, of course) set up a robust e-commerce website for about a hundred dollars and go live in one day without any technical support.

So why is it that so many companies don’t empower their marketers to do what today’s web services and tools allow them to? Well, smaller companies do—and they are much more nimble and able to react to changing market conditions. These smaller firms can quickly transform their online campaigns into realities because their marketing staff is empowered differently than many who work at large corporations. Big companies, are so committed to a command and control silo mentality that for marketers to be successful, they have no choice but to outsource most of their landing page and microsite development  to an outside agency.

If that sounds silly to you, then you are not alone in your assessment. The odd part is that by playing hardball and not being flexible to the realities of today, internal e-commerce development teams may be laying the groundwork for their own demise. If they are unable or unwilling to partner or even cede control of a limited number of web processes to marketers who posses the skill and knowledge to serve themselves, they may simply be hoarding tools and process steps that will quickly become out-of-date, unused, or even scorned.

Software Development vs. Web Publishing

Many of us know first-hand that most corporate websites were not designed according to a Web 2.0 publishing paradigm. Content management is hard to do, simple RSS or API feeds are difficult to implement, real-time content syndication is nearly impossible, and social commentary from customers is practically non-existent.

Why is it that so many corporate websites are bound to the Web 1.0 world of a software development lifecycle mentality? It’s the approach!  Here’s the typical large corporation approach to web development:

- First, identify the ‘problems’ to be solved following a detailed Six Sigma analysis process

- Then, create detailed design specifications in a business requirements document (an inch thick paper document)

- Next, hand that over to a technology team to build and deploy

- Rinse and repeat

Is it any wonder that today’s medium to large companies have little to no chance of competing with internet start-up or web-savvy competitors.

Heaven forbid that the business environment should change, competitors emerge, or new ideas come forth that might conflict with the carefully scripted and well documented process that most marketers planning web initiatives have to deal with.

In most industries throughout the world, website development has evolved. It’s no longer about command and control.  It’s about try and revise. It’s a publishing model that takes into account the spirit of rapid prototyping, freeing up data and process, empowering others to create, edit and publish content AND code, and much, much more.

Truth be told, many internal ecommerce or technology teams have little experience with publishing models. In fact, this type of web marketing model flies in the face of what IT mavens have spoon fed their staffs for years. That’s why so many of today’s forward-thinking and successful online brands have partnered with external agencies or consulting firms to help them ‘skate to where the puck is going,” so to speak.

It’s important that as a social web marketer, you never give in to the naysayers. When confronted with process wonks that say no, ask yourself if you can go over, under, around or right through this artificial barrier to success. Surprisingly, the answer is often, yes you can!

Getting From Point A to Point B

A friend of mine, Sandor Marik, shared this simple analogy with me back when we worked together many years ago...and could shed some light on best possible approach to microsite development success. Is it better for a company to work with their own in-house web development team or externally, such as with a creative agency, and why? (Note: I am paraphrasing below).

Let's assume you own a race car team. You have the best drivers and the best cars. You're in NYC and want to get to an appointment.

Would you use one of your formula one race cars and driver or would you flag a taxi cab?

Or... would you hire a taxi cab driver to help your race car driver drive you to the appointment??

Or, should you hire a taxi cab driver full-time to drive one of your race cars to appointments?

Sure, the race car driver has the expertise to drive the race car really fast, but you are ignoring the environment, so it may not be the best choice. Without knowing the city, it will definitely take longer to get to your spot. Not only that, you may not even make it alive...

Hiring the taxi cab driver to "help" your driver may not be the best option either... It's going to get a bit crowded (lots of opinions, too), and by the time he explains things, he could drive you to the location (and back) himself...

The taxi cab driver is the expert at the environment, and in business, often time that's a much more useful knowledge than the having the best tools/infrastructure.

Sure, if you want to build a brand new corporate site with lots of bells and whistles, you would use the internal team. But when you want to get something specific done quickly, effectively, you should get the expert that has the most relevant expertise.

Multiple Benefits of Microsites

Among other benefits, a microsite can give you the opportunity to break away from your corporate brand and/or brand standards, plus the confines of your internal e-commerce development cycle, which may be restricting the growth of one of your online marketing campaigns or SEO targeting efforts.

For example, an insurance firm might be launching a new product and ancillary social media services aimed at the collegiate market. The current queue within a company's tech department might be six months to one year before any serious development efforts could commence.  Using an outside firm to build and host a microsite could be a more efficient way of constructing a solution that compliments a company's main website . It can do this by focusing on a unique customer demographic, publishing specialized content, and expanding its SEO reach into the long tail of natural search. The best part id that this site could be live months before the tech department can even begin work.

There are numerous benefits that a microsite can bring to an organization, including:

- Channel support (capturing additional leads if linked to from a landing page)

- Faster publishing & optimization

- Ability to test new concepts, or test against content found on a main website

- Can be inexpensive to launch & maintain (cost benefit is positive)

- Rich campaign tracking possible

- Incremental, organic search engine traffic  -- or more natural search results on page one

- Ability to get a second paid placement in paid search (different brands / sites can set up their own unique paid campaigns, which could expand your paid reach

- A microsite with a domain name that includes relevant keywords in it is more likely to perform better for Search Engine Optimization.

- A short URL name in a microsite may be more straightforward to remember when used in mobile or television campaigns, since URL’s with fewer character are generally easier to recall

Common Microsite Features Demystified

Relevant Keyword-Rich Content

Nothing beats great content, so be sure to include as much of it as you can muster for your microsite. Plus, the deeper the number of indexed pages your microsite has, the more SEO traffic you will likely be able to generate. This is because search engines factor the number of indexed pages on your site into their search algorithms. Don’t forget to weave keywords into your microsite content itself (headline, body, etc), and to utilize keywords that your main site is not optimized for. This will decrease the likelihood your new microsite will cannibalize any of your main website’s traffic while increasing your chances for appearing in organic search results.

Be sure to consider creating content in multiple formats such as text, podcasts, PDF's, videos, blog posts, screencasts, etc.  This content can be crawled by the search engines and your web pages containing this content can appear in general Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) or in vertical SERP’s such as audio search, image search, and the like.

Link bait content is also smart to include on your microsite, but difficult to create.  Link bait has been described as any form of link-worthy content that naturally attracts links, bookmarks or promotes viral behavior. Link bait can take the form of useful tools, cool widgets, humorous videos, or the just plain unusual. The key to link bait content is in its uniqueness and timing. Link bait is sometimes referred to as the holy grail of Search Engine Optimization, since this ‘premium’ content can drive huge amounts of organic (unpaid) website traffic. 

Two link bait examples:  Death By Caffeine Calculator and the new baby development simulator.

Direct Response Elements

Testing has proven that direct response elements can increase ‘visit-to-lead’ conversion rates on your microsite or your site’s corresponding landing pages. Direct response elements can include calls to action (such as placing multiple phone numbers on a single page or big red form submission buttons), or other on-page elements to attract a visitor’s attention such as a yellow highlighter effect on a phrase to emphasis an offer or product benefit, or the use of an arrow graphic to draw the eye to something on the page you’d like to highlight.

Used sparingly, direct response visual cues can be quite effective in boosting microsite conversion rates. David Greene, co-founder of the boutique creative agency, Creative-Spark, says that his work on a microsite for Countrywide Home Loans increased leads by 295% over the previous online execution that was in place prior to launching the targeted microsite. Key to the site’s success, claims David, were the direct response elements that they interwove throughout the site experience.

Content or Tool Syndication

When you create killer content for your microsite, why not syndicate it to external websites so that you increase the exposure of your products, services and your brand? Take tools for example. A self-contained calculator widget can be built in Flash with an RSS feed reader included, plus links back to your microsite. Such widgets are ‘portable’ in that they do not need to reside exclusively on a company website (an insurance agent could add them to their own blog, for example).

Such widgets are typically updated via API feeds or RSS feeds, which allows for instantaneous changes to widget content whenever the feed is updated. The benefit to you? Your microsite gets brand exposure and visitor traffic from sources outside of your usual circle of influencers. The benefit to tool users? They get to publish cool tools on their websites or custom portal pages and don’t have to think twice about the accuracy of the tool, as the tool is always live and changing.

API & RSS Feeds

Microsite content can be enhanced by including relevant API feeds from outside firms and mashing them up with content found on your microsite to add unique value to your audience. You can also gain natural search traffic if you brand this unique mashed-up combination as your own, with a special name and description of the ‘enhanced’ service that is provided.

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS feeds are a simple way to let external websites link to content on our landing sites. For many microsites, articles and tools can have RSS feeds be built into the publishing process. This ‘syndicating’ of content helps companies create a larger audience for their content since not every consumer will visit a particular microsite on a regular basis (they may go to their iGoogle page multiple times each day, for example).

At its most basic, RSS generates a list of links, generated programmatically, to designated resources on a site with a description of the content for each link. This feed can automatically be regenerated periodic times (eg: daily). This way, when new content updates are added to  the landing site (eg: a new article is published via RSS), the RSS feed is updated. RSS feeds help drive traffic back to the site, which is very important for natural search.

Geo-Specific, Natural Search Optimized Pages

A microsite can be enhanced in another way, by adding metro-specific content pages.  Adding such pages can help boost SEO rankings in local markets (aka the long tail of search results).  When the microsite appears high in organic search results, Google, Yahoo, and MSN visibility jumps many-fold, which can ultimately result in more visits, leads, and sales.

A significant population of search engine searchers will never visit the main company website because it is not optimized beyond a core set of branded keywords (eg: sports equipment, tennis balls, team jerseys, etc) and only attracts visitors clicking on high-volume keywords appearing on the top pages in search results.

For example: Search engines don’t ‘see’ REI as a California Hiking Shoes website because the sight is optimized for terms such as: outdoor gear store, outdoor adventure, equipment and clothing for camping and hiking, cycling, climbing, kayaking, skiing and outdoor activities. Even though REI is one of the top sellers of hiking shoes for California residents, and even though thousands of search engine users are actively searching for stores like REI when they conduct a search for California Hiking Shoes, REI doesn’t appear until page 5 of Google search organic results. A microsite optimized around such keywords, if deemed important by REI, could result in a sales boost for hiking shoes.

Keep in mind that the long tail of keywords is much larger than the short portion of the tail—so there is a huge traffic and lead generation opportunity for a microsite optimized for targeted long tail terms. For more information on how geo-specific content pages can improve your local search results, visit Heardable’s GeoPing service.

Dynamic Phone Numbers & Campaign Trackability

Many of today’s top online marketing microsites employ a complex campaign tracking solution that can account for every visit, lead and sale back to the creative (banner ad), placement (insurance section)and media (Yahoo). This allows marketers to account for, and justify, their online campaign budgets. A critical component to microsite tracking is the use and on-screen display of a unique toll-free phone number. Better yet is when a microsite can serve up a unique toll free number to visitors based on the originating campaign.

Heardable’s toll free phone number tracking solution for microsites and landing pages is called Dynamic800. Dynamic800 works by inserting code into a web page to detect the incoming URL parameters of the visitor and dynamically serve up a unique campaign tracking phone number that is associated with the corresponding URL string. By doing so, the originating online campaign gets credit for any phone sales that microsite generates.

Adding a dynamic phone tracking solution to your microsite can provide trackable visit-to-lead rate lifts of up to 40% or more. One Heardable client, Benson Space Company, experienced a whopping 230% increase in its paid search campaign that ran for 60 days on Google during the launch of its new space tourism service. The lift was was tracked back to a specific toll free phone number that was served up on its microsite used by visitors making reservations by phone.

As simple as this may sound, 95% of microsites and landing pages do not utilize this type of phone tracking solution – mainly because they do not know how to set it up, nor track the results of their efforts. For more information on this exciting website enhancement that helps microsites become more trackable, contact Heardable.

Natural Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Did you know that more than 80% of clicks on search engine results pages can be attributed to the organic listings on the page as opposed to the paid search ads that appear at the very top and right side of the page? When you just consider the size and scale of the number of users who use search engines and respond to natural search results, you can see why we advocate that every microsite be optimized according to natural search guiding principles.

Natural search results are the non-paid display & ranking of results that appear after a user conducts a keyword search on a search engine. Search engine optimization (SEO) is an on-going process of adjusting a web site’s technical structure and content to favor search engine Spiders, the algorithms search engines use to find and rank sites, including microsites. Optimizing your microsite for natural search can also benefit users by providing easier-to-use site experiences.

General benefits of search optimization include:

- More logical organization of your site content (for both humans and bots)

- Increase in incremental site traffic

- Reduction in overall cost per acquisition (when factoring in ‘free’ natural search traffic)

Keywords for a particular microsite, for example, can be focused around a subset of keywords that a company’s main website is not optimized for.  This increases the likelihood that a microsite can deliver incremental ‘long tail’ natural search visits and secondarily, not compete directly with a main website.

Conclusion

We’ve bombarded you with lots of information in this paper—some of it may have been familiar to you, while other concepts such as Dynamic800 and long tail SEO optimization may be new concepts that you’re just learning about. Clearly, microsites present both a challenge and an opportunity for online marketers.

Done right, a microsite can have a symbiotic relationship to a company’s main website and a company’s overall SEO goals. Tracking and speed to market are just two of the many advantages a microsite can provide, but there are literally dozens of smaller advantages that a well-executed microsite strategy can provide. It’s important to decide for yourself what strategies and tactics work best for you and your organization. There is no cookie cutter approach that works for all.

Finally, while the authors of this report certainly make a strong case for outsourcing microsite development, hosting and ongoing optimization, we certainly realize that many companies will be able to muster enough internal support for microsites that a successful internal deployment is entirely possible. By discussing common sticking points and providing ways to overcome internal objections, we hope that we’ve helped stimulate a spirited dialog that marketers and technologists need to have in order to face up the realities of today’s web publishing world in a way that allows each side to partner as an effective and cohesive online direct response team to attain a company’s online marketing goals.

Badges are a great way for you to showcase any brand's Heardable Score. Display a badge on your website, blog, or personalized start page and you'll be sharing that brand's effectiveness with your visitors!

When showcasing your own brand with a Heardable badge, your website will receive the 'Heardable stamp of approval.' Your latest Heardable Score will be updated to your badge automagically via of real-time data feeds.

Set-up and install your Heardable badge today!

5-Step Badge Set Up Process

1.  From our badge page, enter the domain name you'd like to track (eg: mashable.com)
2.  Select your badge size/style (1 of 2 designs)
3.  Click the Update Script Button
4.  Copy the badge script/code
5.  Insert script/code into the code of your website, blog, or personalized start page

The beauty of badges is that you don't need to know how to program to use them. Installing a badge on your website, whether it be a personalized start page on Google or a blog, is a simple matter of copying our script/code and pasting it into the appropriate place on your designated site.

Pasting our script/code and getting it to work is a little more challenging because you need to know where to paste it. If you use a popular blog host like Wordpress or a start page on Google, you can search through their FAQ's and help links for information on how to install a badge, gadget, or widget.

Once you know where to paste our badge scipt/code, you're done!

Team Heardable has received numerous requests from users seeking more information about our Heardable Scores. Namely, how are scores are derived, as well as the relationship between how the six subscores are rolled up into the main score.

Here is a PowerPoint deck we posted on SlideShare that might help you get up to speed quickly. Enjoy!

There are several tools and features on Heardable that have practical utility for marketers large and small. Take our Follow Brand feature for example. It allows you to follow any brand you find interesting after discovering it on the Brand Directory page. Following a brand means a particular brand will be added to your myHeardable portfolio, alowing you one-click access to it any time you want to call it up again.

Our Follow Brand feature is a real time-saver for busy professionals who conduct numerous brand searches and need to bookmark/recall certain brands at any given point in time.

Here's how you Follow a Brand:

Step 1

From our home page, click on the Sign-Up or Log In Iink.

Step 2

If you are new to Heardable, Sign-Up. If you are a returning member, Log In.

Step 3

Click the Brand Directory tab.

Step 4

From the Brand Directory page, search for a brand using the Brand Profile Search Tool. Be sure to Rescan the domain if it hasn't beend scanned recently. You will know this by looking at the Date Last Refreshed notation under the brand's domain name located on the left side of the page.

The Follow Brand feature is located on the left side of the page below the screen shot of the brand's home page. If no home page image image has yet been imported into Heardable, simply click on the Update Image button.

Step 5

Click on the myHeardable tab to go to the myHeardable page. From here, you will notice that the brand you just added to your follow list appears in the left column under Brands I'm Following. Any time you visit Hearable and want to quickly recall any Brand you are following, just return to the myHeardable page after loggin in and click on the brand name. You will then be taken the the Brand Directory page that contains all the details on that brand. It's that simple. 

You're all set!

You've mastered the basic steps to Following a Brand on Heardable. We hope you've enjoyed this brief tutorial.

Heardable.com is the world's first and only real-time online brand optimization tool. And unlike other online measurement and analytics tools like Compete, Quantcast, and Alexa, the Heardable platform can examine any brand--big or small--as long as you have your own website. 

Heardable.com can do this because our lightning fast brand measurement algorithm looks at 20 onsite and 20 offsite brand variables--in REAL TIME--then compiles and scores your brand's online performance, delivering you a Heardable Score made up of 6 distinct subscores, plus includes recommendations for improving your score. No other online tool does anything like it. 
 
A company like Compete.com, on the other hand, can’t see millions of websites on the Internet because their solution relies on a panel of users to report web metrics for any sites that the panelists visit. If you cannot see your website using Compete, it means Compete doesn't have statistically relevant user information to project with. Start-up companies, small mom & pop business, or sites with little website traffic are plain out of luck. In Compete.com's eyes, your brand is invisible. 
 
We decided to put Heardable and Compete to a side-by-side test. On 2/6/10 we grabbed three random domain names off of a Google search to see how each company stacks up. Via Google, we searched the word, Start Up, in the news section and the first two results we saw were stories about the companies--LensVector and Kwedit. Then we searched Google web for the term, Boise Coffee Shop. Lucys-Coffee.com appeared as the third local result. 
 
Let's take a look at what we found. 
 
New startup company Kwedit Inc., an innovative, online payments provider for people don't have a credit card or prefer to pay with cash, is making it easier for users of free online games like Farmville to pay for the virtual goods sold in such games using cash or third-party payments. 
 
Can Kwedit.com be examined on Compete.com? No. Compete's data methodology doesn't allow them to "see" Kwedit.com, so no information is available to you. 

 
Can Kwedit.com be examined on Heardable.com? Absolutely! Kwedit.com has a Heardable Score of 241/1000. Heardable also provides "under-the-hood analysis" showing you how that score was derived. You can see a snapshot of Kwedit's home page, you can follow Kwedit's progress over time in your personal portfolio with just one click, and you can monitor Kwedit on a graphical timeline along side it key competitors--all courtesy of Heardable! 

 
Lucy's Coffee and Espresso is a small family owned business in Boise, Idaho. The name Lucy comes from the matriarch of the family, Luceal "Lucy" Lemon. According to their website, "Lucy was known for her warm and productive kitchen with a bottomless pot of fresh coffee for the many visitors who tended to congregate when the smells of fresh baked goods permeated the neighborhood." 
 
Can Lucys-Coffee.com be examined on Compete.com? No. Compete's data methodology doesn't allow them to "see" Lucys-Coffee.com, so no information is available to you. 

 
Can Lucys-Coffee.com be examined on Heardable.com? Yes! Lucys-Coffee.com has a Heardable Score of 124/1000. Heardable.com provides "under-the-hood analysis" showing you how that score was derived. You can also see a snapshot of Lucys-Coffee's home page, you can follow Lucys-Coffee's progress over time in your personal portfolio with just one click, and you can monitor Lucys-Coffee.com on a graphical timeline next to its key competitors--all via Heardable! 

 
LensVector is a start-up company based in Mountain View, California that hopes its optical components using solid-state electronics will replace moving parts in consumer camera technology. On Thursday, February 4th, the company raised $30 million in a third round of funding.  
 
Can LensVector.com be examined on Compete.com? No. Compete's data methodology doesn't allow them to "see" LensVector.com, so no information is available to you. 

 
Can LensVector.com be examined on Heardable.com? We sure can! LensVector.com has a Heardable Score of 75/1000, and the website provides "under-the-hood analysis" showing you how that score was derived. You can see a snapshot of LensVector's home page, you can follow LensVector's progress over time in your personal portfolio with just one click, and you can monitor LensVector.com on a graphical timeline next to its key competitors--all courtesy of  Heardable! 

 
In summary, we don't need to boast about how Heardable beat Compete in our face-off. Actually, each service is quite complimentary. They measure different things and they approach how they measure brand performance in very different ways--from their algorithms, to the output of results, to the feature-functionality on their websites. The big takeaway here is that real-time analytics trumps aggregate sample data any day.  
 
As a small business owner, start-up CEO, brand manager, business development vp, or everyday online marketer, we're pretty sure you'd agree that the ability to instantly and accurately assess how well your brand is performing against your competition is paramount to your continued success. Isn't it? 
 
We've had our say. Case closed. :)

Heardable has created the simplest and most effective way to measure your online brand performance against the competition. Type any URL into our free Heardable tool and we'll provide you with an instant Heardable Score. 

Heardable assesses a brand's portability, shareability, searchability, measurability, sociability, and actionability via a Heardable Score and six breakout sub-scores, which are utilized together as a new framework for determining any brand's position within the online marketplace.

How Our Scoring Works

The highest possible Heardable Score that can be achieved is 1000. Scoring bands roughly breakout as follows:

0-200 = Poor

201-400 = Average

401-600 = Above Average

601-800 = Category Leader

801-1000 = Champion

Analytics engine in action

The six ABLE’s

Heardable’s ABLE engine is made up of six unique sub-parameters that compile individual sub-scores, then apply a custom weighting algorithm to render the final Heardable Score. For our free scanning tool, our engine looks at five random pages on a given domain. This allows for a light site scan and a speedy turn time for generating a score.

It is possible to get slightly different Heardable scores if multiple scans are performed on the same URL, since out engine picks up to five random site pages  to examine during each scan using our free tool.

Over weeks and months, Heardable Scores can vary dramatically, based on publishing and optimization activities that brand marketers may have implemented to improve their scores. We recommended you rescan your Heardable Score at least once a month, if not more often. If you regularly compare your domain score against competitor scores, you can gain a wide perspective on the accuracy and viability of any single Heardable Score.

1. Measurable – Are you monitoring your site traffic and brand impact?

THE FACTS:

There are two generally accepted categories of web analytics (and statistics); off-site and on-site. As its name denotes, off-site analytics and statistics includes the measurement, analysis and reporting of a website’s potential audience (opportunity), share of voice (visibility), and buzz (comments) that is occurring on the Internet as a whole.

On-site analytics refers specifically to the web based measurement, analysis and reporting of specific data on a given website. This includes conversion elements (i.e. landing pages, exit pages, etc.) On-site analytics measures the web based performance of a website from a commercial perspective. When “web analytics” is used in a commercial context most people are referring to on-site web analytics.

THE HEARDABLE FACTOR:

Heardable takes into account 20 on- and off-site variables to give you the most holistic purview of your measurability.

Having a measurable website means you’re dedicated to tracking, monitoring and optimizing your site traffic, e-commerce, and online advertising efforts.

Your Heardable rating is determined by scanning your site for popular web analytics tools, plus any ad network tracking beacons that we may find.

A low measurable score means that we did not detect enough tracking indicators to give us confidence that your site has been optimized for online marketing.

However, we are aware of the possibility that your brand may be utilizing custom analytics tools, looking at raw server data, or directing paid traffic to landing pages instead of to your main site, which could negatively impact your measurable rating.

2. Searchable – Is your website optimized for local search and other SEO smart practices?

THE FACTS:

By 2013 total US search marketing will reach nearly $23.4 billion, and marketers will be spending more on SEO than on contextual advertising. A good reason for this prediction is simply sue to the consolidation of content and contextual ads through social networks and conversation engines. (eMarketer).

In the SEMPO State of Search Marketing Survey, SEO was ranked the #2 internet marketing tactic for generating Return On Investment (ROI).  Those numbers speak loud and clear.  It’s because of SEO that thousands of businesses have increased revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars at a fraction of the cost of other forms of advertising.

THE HEARDABLE FACTOR:

A website optimized for local SEO can be more easily found by crawlers and bots, which can boost site traffic over time.

Heardable’s engine counts the number of inbound links to your site, plus examines a sub-set of webs pages to determine how visible your site might be to search engines, with special emphasis placed on local, natural search parameters.

The higher your rating, the better your site is at being ’searchable.’ A low searchable rating means that we did not detect localized content and other common SEO enhancements on your site. To make your website more findable, you may want to consider adding localized content to your site and committing to an inbound link building program.

We realize that some firms may be very good at SEO, and have concentrated your efforts instead on alternative SEO best practices that our tool does not evaluate. Again, the goal of Heardable is to give you the most holistic purview of where your brand sits within the landscape.

3. Shareable – Are you sharing and syndicating data?

THE FACTS:

There are over 25 primary social bookmarking channels that syndicate and share content between more than 1.6B Internet users worldwide. With social utilities such as Twitter (which comprises 11.1% of this marketshare), 10% of the user base generates 90% of all shared content; to give you an idea of how powerful this relatively ’small’ channel is, there are over 58M Twitter users [Web Strategist Blog].

THE HEARDABLE FACTOR:

This means that your brand has an opportunity to exponentially increase its awareness and reach by simply syndicating web content through a group of select channels.

Being shareable means the Heardable engine has scanned your site for API feeds, RSS feeds, video feeds, and podcast feeds. Depth of feeds is an indication that a company is syndicating content to the deep web, thereby increasing its odds of being heard.

Social media plays off of the belief that you get what you give. Being sharable is about the act of exchanging of one thing for another, and it’s governed by the Law of Reciprocity, the force that ties the bonds of online communities.

4. Sociable – Is your brand part of social conversation?

THE FACTS:

Friends still play an important role in influencing consumers. Eighty-three percent of online shoppers said they are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know, while 74 percent are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy the product in the first place. [Manage Smarter, September 2009]

Users put great trust in their social networks. One-half of Beresford respondents said they considered information shared on their networks when making a decision—and the proportion was higher among users ages 18 to 24, at 65%. [eMarketer, October 2009]

THE HEARDABLE FACTOR:

The value of social engagement cannot be underestimated. Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing is transforming how consumers think about brands and act out purchase decisions. Companies that are part of the conversation are in a better position to monitor, engage, and respond to social-search as a marketing channel.

A high shareable rating means your site is likely an active player in the social networking arena. Our engine measures only a small sample of the hundreds of social websites that can show you if your brand is being well represented. Only a handful of social sites have high volume so if you’re active on the top social sites, the Heardable engine assumes you’re participating in other social conversations as well.

We do recognize that some brands are more socially savvy than our sociable score recognizes; this is something, with your feedback, we will continue to improve upon.

5. Portable – Is your website optimized for viewing via the most popular mobile browsers?

THE FACTS:

The total number of mobile payment users worldwide has totaled 73.4 million in 2009; it is predicted that the number of mobile payment users will reach more than 190 million in 2012, representing more than 3% of total mobile users worldwide and attaining a level at which it will be considered “mainstream.” [Gartner, Inc.]

More content is being shared across the social web on mobile devices than ever before; Facebook’s worldwide mobile audience just crossed 65 million active users. To put that in perspective, that’s nearly 25% of all of Facebook’s total worldwide reach – and four times as many people using Facebook Mobile than this time last year — with total usage up 300% from last year. [Facebook Blog]

THE HEARDABLE FACTOR:

There’s simply no denying it — Portability is what the web itself has become…  A place where information can be shared anywhere and everywhere, at any given time. Content portability is the life currency of any brand — without it, you are naked in a consumer landscape that is booming and yearning for the next best thing.

The more mobile devices your site is optimized for, the better positioned your brand is to capitalize on the emerging mobile market. Portability was determined by detecting auto redirects for the three top mobile browsers; iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile.

A high Heardable portable rating means you take the mobile market seriously and don’t assume everyone visiting your website is doing so from a mainframe computer.

To make your brand more portable, you’ll want to enhance the experience of site visitors using hand-held devices. Start by designing a smaller, custom interface for your top trafficked pages on your site. Then install a mobile browser redirect script onto your site. See how cost effective it can be to optimize your website for mobile.

6. Actionable – Are you making it easy for site visitors to transact?

THE FACTS:

Since 2006, Web security fears have resulted in an estimated $2.6 billion in lost online commerce. This suggests that while there has been an overall increase in online shopping, banking, securities trading and tax filing, online businesses are less effective than they should be in instilling trust and are leaving money on the table as a result.

Since early 2007, organizations have been able to definitively verify their identity to consumers using one of the developments in Internet security such as Extended Validation SSL Certificates. Over the last two years, these certificates have demonstrated an ability to accelerate online commerce by increasing visitor confidence in legitimate sites and, thereby, increasing numbers of transactions. [Gartner]

THE HEARDABLE FACTOR:

An actionable website is one that makes it easier for visitors to respond, communicate, share and transact.

The Heardable engine scans your site looking for email addresses, phone numbers, forms, trust seals, live chat, and also examines your page copy to see if it speaks in a chest-pounding brand voice or uses visitor-focused words such as you and your as a way of better connecting with users.

A high customer focus ratio means you speak about your visitors more often than you speak about your brand. Studies have shown that customers respond well to website’s that speak to their needs in a more personal tone. A low customer focus ratio means your site may be speaking about your company more often than the visitor. Consider re-writing your site content using more visitor-focused words.

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