Timberline Interactive

We've recently been enabling Google Analytics site-search tracking for a number of CommerceV3 website clients.

It's always fruitful to see what people are searching for on your site, how frequently they buy and what they spend. Users of on-site search tend to be higher-converting and have higher AOV than non-users.

Avinash Kaushik's 2006 post on optimizing on-site search is still quite relevant. One thing Avinash finds is a roughly 10% benchmark for site search usage, i.e. the fraction of all visitors who use your site search. I've always thought 10% is a low number, but it does align with what we have seen for a number of different websites over the years.

One perspective to add is that someone who abandons a website after a single page view (i.e., bounce rate) can't possibly use on-site search. So if you subtract your bounce rate (say 35%) from the total visitors, and then calculate on-site search usage, you get a truer ratio — more like 15% of all visitors who stick around for more than one page.

My article "12 Tips for Successful Tweeting" ran yesterday on Multichannel Merchant and I believe it is appearing in print in Direct magazine.

Thanks, editors Tim Parry and Sherry Chiger, and Penton Media, for the exposure :)

I recently came across an list of the "Top 100 Social Media Books, Ever" compiled by Dutch software developer and writer Jurgen Appelo, and posted last August to his Mellow Billow blog, which is devoted to "Adventures in social media and CRM."

The ranking was based on six factors:

• Number of Google hits
• Number of Amazon rankings
• Average of Amazon rankings
• Number of Goodreads rankings
• Average of Goodreads rankings

I was pleased and flattered to see my book, Web 2.0 & Beyond, was named to the number 50 spot! Here are the top ten:

1. Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time
   Joel Comm, Ken Burge
2. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
   Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff
3. World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories
   David Meerman Scott
4. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
   Seth Godin
5. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
   Clay Shirky
6. The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It
   John Gerzema, Edward Lebar
7. The New Rules of Marketing and PR
   David Meerman Scott
8. What Would Google Do?
   Jeff Jarvis
9. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
   Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams
10. Personality Not Included
    Rohit Bhargava

Are you seeing declines in long-tail search traffic? Google's Matt Cutts confirms in this video posted to the Google Webmaster Help blog, that the recent "Mayday" algorithm change is real, and it's permanent. Dubbed "Mayday" by webmasters because it was first observed in early May, it has some website owners signalling SOS due to lost traffic, especially for long-tail terms.

As to what the algo change was, specifically, and how site owners can stay in Google's good graces for long-tail terms, Cutts didn't provide much help -- other than offering the timeworn advice to pursue good site usability and quality content.

Paul Kalemkiarian, owner of Wine of the Month club -- and son of the founder who in 1972 launched it as the first and original wine club -- spoke this morning at the Retail Marketing Conference in Orlando, Florida. If you're picturing some sedate Powerpoint exercise, think again. Paul is a born showman and he zipped through tons of practical, high-energy, no-nonsense tips on using video, Facebook, Twitter, and other relationship building to connect with your customers.

The session, dubbed "Social Media Marketing: How Wine of the Month Club Uncorked the Power of Its Online Community" began with a splash: Paul K, brandishing a big serrated carving knife from the hotel kitchen, sabered off the top of a champagne bottle, WHACK!

As a thanks to the terrific audience and organizers (special shout-outs to the DMA's Yasmin Melendez and Stephanie Chang), Wine of the Month Club is offering 10% off any purchase -- just visit the Wine of the Month Club online, and use code "retail" when you check out.

The Wine of the Month Club is the original and only trademarked wine of the month club. Every week, Paul tastes 400 wines (that is NOT a typo!) to choose the 12 wines he will offer each month as his featured selections. The club is headquartered in Arcadia, California.

Most adults seem to be adjusting to Google's new look, but I must confess I'm not among them -- I find it startling, and it just doesn't feel Googlish to me.

What it most reminds me of is Bing. The functionality is cooler than Bing, but the look is eerily similar.

"We’ve added contextually relevant, left-hand navigation to the page," announced Google's blog. "This new side panel highlights the most relevant search tools and refinements for your query. Over the past three years, we've launched Universal Search, the Search Options panel and Google Squared, and it’s those three technologies that power the left-hand panel."

Australians started seeing the new interface yesterday, some Americans reported seeing it begin rolling out last night, and I, here on the East Coast, just saw it for the first time a few minutes ago. Not a radical change, I guess. But I feel disoriented, a little stunned. Amazing how deeply familiar we are with our most frequently used web tools. It's as if you woke up one morn and your spouse of many years had had cosmetic surgery. Whoa! Even if it's good cosmetic surgery, whoa.

“Today’s changes are the latest in our continuing efforts to evolve and improve Google," said Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search Products & User Experience (and major celebrity among search geeks the world over). "We’ve been testing these changes with users over the past few months, and what we’re launching today reflects the feedback we’ve received.”

Jeez, yesterday Ning pulls the rug out from under the 2-million users of its free service, and today Google changes its face. The companies themselves can be counted on to tout the goodness and rightness and customer-inspiredness of their changes. But for heavy web users like me, interface change is so hard.

Stop the world, I wanna get off.

Ning, the software platform we've described as "your blog on steroids" (it supports the building of niche online communities) announced it will no longer be free.

Ning has always had fee-based service levels for sites using "premium services" like custom domain names, or to buy away the Google AdSense ads that appear on all free Ning sites. Yet about 95% of the platform's estimated 2 million websites are free. And by July, those sites need to make other plans.

Under the new Ning pricing plan, the minimum monthly charge (dubbed "Ning Mini") will be $2.95. The two higher tiers are Ning Plus ($20 per month) and Ning Pro ($50 per month).

Ning says that 80% of its revenue comes from the 5% of sites already paying for premium services. Some 75% of Ning's traffic comes from these premium-service sites.

Ning is offering a "30 day grace period" after the July launch date for "for existing Ning Networks to purchase one of the pricing plans." After that, it's lights out.

Out on the Twittersphere can be heard disappointment and a few cries of "abandon ship!" but thus far not the widespread tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth one might expect.

Frankly, what bothers me most about the move is the announcement email's vapidly positive tone: "We’re writing today to let you know about some new and exciting changes coming to Ning."

Oh, yeah, paying for what you're used to getting for free sure is "new and exciting." Ning is a great software with a visionary founder. I would have expected more candor and less spin from them.

Long before Twitter itself devised how to monetize its platform, enterprising third parties found their own ways. Firms like SponsoredTweets, Ad.ly, Assetize, Magpie, and 140 Proof assembled networks of celebrity, specialist, and ordinary-folks tweeters willing to incorporate sponsored messages into their Twitter stream. Or they inserted sponsored messages into the streams displayed on third-party Twitter clients like Tweetdeck, TweetUp, and Echofon.

Now, Twitter is entering the fray with its own Promoted Tweets service. In a blog post describing the move, Twitter pointed out that it had moved slowly and with such deliberation, that pundits like comedian Stephen Colbert were scoring laughs with lines like, "So, I assume that 'Biz' in 'Biz Stone' does not stand for 'Business Model.'"

Under the Promoted Tweets system, businesses will bid to promote their own tweets into conversations on particular topics. Say you’re promoting Kim Kardashian's line of cosmetics. You might create a tweet triggered by her name, her reality show or other relevant terms. Your tweet then appears atop Kim-related conversations (identified by the label "Promoted Tweet").

Twitter has devised a quality-scoring system similar to that of Google Adwords: If your promoted tweet is frequently clicked, re-tweeted, or favorited, it will remain highly listed for its key-terms. If not, it will sink into obscurity.

So the important thing here, as with any social media advertising, is to recognize that these environments were designed primarily to be social, personal and honest. They're just not designed for traditional advertising. Blatantly commercial messages served up as promoted tweets will surely backfire – turning off the receivers, and turning them against the platform. To be warmly received, and passed along to friends, family and business contacts, a promoted tweet will need all the ingredients of a winning “natural” tweet:

• Be hilarious, offbeat, fascinating, heartwarming, or remarkable, or
• Make a powerful offer (deep discount, cool contest, or giveaway), or
• Appeal to people’s instincts for social good or other strongly-held causes, or
• Fit a tangible need for specialized information (recipes, how-to, breaking news, events, top-ten lists)

You Already Know Who It Is is an edgy, hip, urban, rap-inspired and very random blog devoted to, well (in the words of its anonymous author, YAKWII) " the random type of sh*t that you'll see on here."

So it was a a bit of a surprise to see the Scooter Store Online featured on YAWKII's pages. The provider of electric mobility scooters and power wheelchairs is more a household name with the AARP set than with the gangsta crowd. But it seems some of the plush EVRider models, with their alloy wheels, aggressive tires, and candy paint, get serious respect:

"C’mon, what old person is going to rock this?  This is made to run from the cops.  On top of the slick paint job, it’s got shocks and fenders. Perfect for a high-speed chase.  Guarantee this thing goes at least 50 mph!"

Congrats to the Scooter Store for this nice shout-out from an unexpected source. When you put your products out to the world, you never know who will holla back!

The judges have selected the finalists in Multichannel Merchant’s MCM AWARDS. The judging panel named 51 print channel finalists and 21 Web channel finalists. Gold and Silver Award winners will be announced May 25 at a special luncheon at the Retail Marketing Conference (formerly ACCM) in Orlando, Florida.

Timberline's Tom Funk was proud to be one of the web judges. Here are the Finalists:

Web Finalists

Apparel, Sales Over $20 million
• L.L. Bean
• Patagonia
• Boston Proper
• Express
• The Territory Ahead

Business Specialty Products
• ePromos

Children’s Products
• Chasing Fireflies
• One Step Ahead

Computer and High-Tech Equipment and Software
• Crutchfield
• Musician’s Friend

Consumer Specialty Products, Sales Under $20 million
• Century Novelty
• Collage Video

Consumer Specialty Products, Sales Over $20 million
Army/Air Force Exchange Service
eBags.com

Food/Gifts, Sales Under $20 million
King Arthur Flour
Fairytale Brownies

Food/Gifts, Sales Over $20 million
Harry & David

Home, Hardware and Gardening Products
PexSupply.com

Industrial Supplies/MRO
Labelmaster

Sporting Goods/Hobbies
Boundless Journeys
The Orvis Co.
Performance Bicycle