Is your website code hurting your online marketing efforts?

Tables. Font tags. CSS/XHTML. Eyes glazing over yet? Well try to keep the lids open just a little longer. I promise to make this as fun as possible (or you can just skip to the video at the end).

Your web design is just a bunch of text

If you “view source” on your website you’ll see a bunch of text. That text is “the code” of your website. Your web browser (Firefox, Safari, IE, Chrome or whatever you use to surf the web) reads the code and then draws the website on your screen. Search engines and other computers also use this code to learn about your site. In fact, the search engines don’t look at what your site looks like at all, only what is written in that code. A search engine is only reading the code and doesn’t care how pretty your website looks.

A pretty web design could be the result of good or bad code. You need to view the source to be able to tell the difference.

There are many ways to write code and get the web browser to draw the same thing. Some of the ways to code the site are “bad” and some are “good.” And the only way to know if the code is bad or if it’s good is to look at the source. Your site may look pretty to you, but it may be miserable for other users or unreadable to search engines.

What does “bad” code look like?

Bad code can look like a lot of things. Unless you’re a web developer you’re going to get bored in a hurry if I go through all expressions of bad code. But I’ll give a quick way to tell if your code is really really bad.

Some key indicators of web code that might be hurting your internet marketing:

• If you see <table> in the code but there are no spreadsheet-like tables in your content.
• If there is almost nothing that makes sense to you when you read it and you see <object> and a bunch of other non-meaningful in the code.
• If you do not find <h1> in the code anywhere or if you can’t make sense of what comes right after it
• If almost all of your code involves <image src= followed by stuff that doesn’t make sense.

What makes “bad” code so bad?

Bad code is anything that doesn’t support your business objective. For the rest of this post I’m going to assume that your business objective involves internet marketing.

Here are two ways that bad code can get in the way of your internet marketing (I bet there’s more):

1. If your online marketing strategy involves using search engines, then bad code is anything that gets in the way of the search engines.
2. If your online marketing strategy is targeting visitors who are impatient with slow-loading websites, then bad code is anything that slows down your website.

Bad code derailing your search engine optimization efforts?

Bad code can be responsible for a web page that looks great to humans, but is completely unreadable to a search engine. If you can’t find anything in your code that makes sense, then the search engine can’t either. The search engine will treat it just a page full of random gunk. The more readable stuff in your web code, the more likely a search engine is going to find your page useful.

SEO efforts are harmed when the search engine spiders can’t read your code.

You will always need some sort of code to make the page work, but you want all that structural code to be as minimal as possible. Think of it like a percentage. You want a high percentage of stuff you can read compared to the stuff that is structural code. The search engine is always going to like sites that have the most useful content, they have to in order to remain relevant.

If another site has a better good code/bad code mix, then it will rank higher than yours.

Take Google, for example. If Google started returning all garbage pages that weren’t any good and some other service returned pages that were full of useful content, then more people would use the other service. And if more people used the other service then Google would make less money selling the ads they sprinkle around the margins of their search engine results page.

At the end of the day you’re marketing to humans and so are search engines. Both like lots of good content.

The search engine may be a machine, but it has to keep real humans happy. One way the machine determines whether people will be happy to see the page is by determining how much useful content that anyone can read is on the page compared to how much structural stuff that might be good or might not be so good.

Bad code frustrating your users?

Sometimes the way a web site is built can really slow it down. This is usually where people start talking about Flash and how evil it is. I won’t do that because there are ways to use Flash that don’t slow down a web site. All the same, make sure your site isn’t using too many graphics or a complicated layout that uses a bunch of the <table> things I noted above.

If your code is too complicated or includes a lot of images, it may be slow to load because the browser has to sort out the complicated code and then go fetch the images. Yes, seconds do matter to web visitors.

Bad code slows down your visitors, too. Bad for internet marketing.

Just because broadband is getting better penetration doesn’t mean we don’t have to worry about load time either. Because now we have a lot of cell phones and other mobile devices starting to browse the web and these little machines on their internet connections work faster when you have more good code.

I’ve got bad code! I’m firing my web designer!

A word of caution here. You might have bad code for a variety of reasons. Here are two things you should consider before getting too worked up:

• If your website is five or more years old, remember that your website may have been good when it launched. New good coding methods are always being developed.
• This second one might be hard to take. You might have made design requests that could only be accomplished with bad code. Like a gigantic full-page image of some sort, or a great big animation or video, or very very specific control over where every pixel is on the screen. Sometimes meeting client demands can result in bad code (though your designer should at least give you a warning that you’re going into bad code territory).

I don’t want to read all this, I just want to watch a video about internet marketing and code

Here you go. My favorite internet marketing musician, SEO Rapper brings you through everything you need to know to keep your code all good.

G. Dewald at Vermont 3.0

I did mention it was conference season, right? Well for you Vermonters and Vermont-bound readers who missed your chance to hang out with Ted and Jonny at the Northeast Real Estate Conference and Expo, you can catch up with G. Dewald in late October.

Dewald will be part of a web design panel along with Propeller’s David Gibson and other members of the fertile Vermont web design and new media scene. Yes. Fertile.

More details as they come in. Meanwhile, you can read about last year’s Vermont 3.0 Tech Jam.

GroSolar

GroSolar, North America’s premier installer, distributor and integrator of solar energy solutions, has been launched with a new design by Union Street Media. The site makes use of our custom design services, content management system and highlights some of our multi-media integration possibilities.

GroSolar has been our client since 2005 and this is our second site for them. We enjoy working with them very much and apparently they enjoy working with us too. Here’s what they have to say:

I want to thank you for the impressive efforts and successful relaunch of groSolar.com. We are all very pleased with the site and hope you are proud of it as well.

Twitter for eCommerce

No no, there isn’t yet a shopping cart built right into Twitter. But that doesn’t stop folks from using the popular microblogging tool to increase sales on their sites. This post contains links to articles which describe uses of Twitter that generate sales of products, usually by driving traffic to a specific site.

This Twitter for eCommerce article is different from the Twitter for Lead Generation article in that while both are ultimately about making money from your use of Twitter, one makes that money by selling a widget and the other makes the money by having developing a financial relationship with a consumer.

• Read about this Threadless T-Shirt promotion. Note how there was a sale, the sale was promoted on Twitter and then a guy who got the Tweet forwarded it to everyone in his office
• Dell has used Twitter to sell $500,000 worth of refurb computers, according to Reuters.
• Lisa Suttora has a post outlining seven ways to market your ecommerce business via Twitter. It opens with some pitchy stuff (hey, she is a marketer after all) but skip to the list for some great tips.
• This article at MSNBC covers a variety of social media/texting marketing examples for retailers.

If you find this interesting, you might also enjoy other posts Twitter for Business series.

Please feel let me know if you find any other articles about Twitter and eCommerce.

Using the One-Click Real Estate Search Feature to Demonstrate Knowledge and Expertise

This post is part of Union Street Media’s submission for the Forrester Research Groundswell Award.

I would love it if you take time to write a review at the Groundswell site.

Name of Groundswell Entry:

One-Click Real Estate Search Feature

Name of Company Entering:

Union Street Media

Category:

Talking

Dates available to users:

December 2007 to present

What is the audience for the One-Click Real Estate Search Feature?

Real estate professionals looking to attract attention from consumers by demonstrating the the professional’s knowledge of consumer needs and property on the market.

What is the environment in which the One-Click Real Estate Search Feature operates?

Real estate marketing online has changed significantly in the past four years. One of the developments has been the rise of competition from other real estate professionals as well as the rise of real estate data aggregation sites.

Real estate professionals would like to attract as much of the initial attention of real estate consumers as possible. One advantage real estate professionals have over aggregation sites can be leveraged by demonstrating their knowledge of local markets.

What business problem does the One-Click Real Estate Search Feature solve?

Real estate professionals want to use their knowledge of their market to deliver the most appropriately customized search results for their clients. Existing generic MLS sites (sites containing all of the listing data for a particular geographic region as entered by realtors but lacking visual style or other customizations) typically do not offer this capability. Existing aggregation sites may not contain the most accurate information.

What are the business goals of the One-Click Real Estate Search Feature?

This feature was developed to help real estate professionals attract consumer attention by demonstrating the depth of their knowledge about their local markets to consumers. As with any business, efficiency is important. Use of the tool should require as little time as possible to yield the greatest benefit possible.

How does this feature work?

The feature begins by pooling data from the real estate professional’s MLS (Multiple Listing Service, a database of property information entered by realtors and maintained by an organization of realtors). This gives their site an advantage over national aggregators as MLS data is often perceived as more accurate and complete than that of aggregation sites.

After the MLS data is added to the system, a real estate professional can then enter in specific search criteria which is run against the MLS data. It is easy to create searches such as whether or not the property is suitable for equestrian use, architectural style, proximity to sports facilities and so on as well as for number of rooms or pricing or other non-specialized information.

Introductory or explanatory text can be added to the search to further demonstrate the real estate professionals knowledge about homes within the One-Click search.

The search query can be given any name which the real estate professional thinks is relevant, and then saved.

Once saved, a link to the search results is available from anywhere on the real estate professional’s web site. The search results page displays the text as well as the listings which are related to the search.

It is important to note that the creativity and knowledge expressed by the real estate professional in using local language and expressions can differentiate them from their local and regional competitors as well as national aggregation sites. It is also important to note that this language and expression is accompanied by presenting relevant information to consumers.

In list form, because I love lists:

1. Import MLS system for most accurate data (automatic from our CMS)
2. From the admin site create search filter
3. From the admin site name the search filter
4. Save and go about your day
5. Someone finds your search result page

Two examples of how this all appears on a site, for a consumer: Wright Realty’s White Mountains Ski Homes One-Click Real Estate Search and Patton Property Group’s Bring on the Horses One Click Real Estate Search.

Business results of the One Click Real Estate Search feature:

First, some qualitative results. Here is what one of the users of this feature, Sean Bossie of Wright Realty, has to say:

“The diversity of use for this tool is at first very subtle and admittedly I overlooked its true strength by the apparent simplicity of it.

The “One Click” customized real estate searches we create offer our users the online experience they want–speed in searching and clear, targeted results. If a potential client is interested in purchasing a “log home near a river in the White Mountain National Forest” we can now create that very specific targeted search–rapidly reducing the time it would take this user to dig through hundreds of listings in numerous towns in order to read the detail view and find this particular home.”

The effect of this tool is magnified when combined with existing analytics tools such as Google Analytics. Again, from Sean Bossie:

“The use of these ‘Long Tail’ custom searches now allows even small firms like ourselves to use Pareto distribution strategies that the mega-marketing companies like Amazon and Netflix do. Not only does this help us reach ALL our potential client needs but it also leverages our search engine efforts with new, increased exposure for those ‘One Click’ searches.”

I particularly like how the combination of using Google Analytics to listen can be combined with using the One-Click Real Estate Search to present the right listings.

Now for some numbers.

One way to measure the results of using the One-Click Real Estate Search feature would be to look at the number of landings the One-Click Real Estate Search generates and multiply that number by the cost for a keyword buy in the general area. This would give us a sense of the value of the real estate professional’s knowledge which is now unleashed by the feature. The metric could probably be improved or refined but should serve as a useful indicator nonetheless.

Last month, Patton Property Group received about 630 landings on pages generated via the One-Click Real Estate Search feature. The average cost of an keyword buy in the appropriate real estate market is about $3.25. It would cost about $2,040 per month to deliver the same targeted traffic via Google Adwords.

Note: These measurements do not calculate the value of pleasing a consumer who arrived on the site via another source.

The One-Click Real Estate Search Feature is available as a component of the Union Street Media Real Estate Web Design CMS.

Meet Ted and Jonny at Northeast Real Estate Conference and Expo

It’s conference season!

Union Street Media will be at the Northeast Real Estate Conference and Expo this week. It will be a good chance for existing clients to hear from Ted and Jonny about our new initiatives in real estate internet marketing, improvements to our software and just to chat. And if you aren’t a client of ours yet, maybe we can help answer any questions you might have.

Here are the details: Sheraton Hotel & Conference Center in Burlington, Vermont on September 10-12, 2008 and a little more information is available via a PDF at the Vermont Association of Real Estate website.

Stop by booth 24.

Smith, Bell & Thomson

Insurers Smith, Bell & Thomson is a leader in the field of specialty insurance such as artist’s insurance and woodturner’s insurance. They are also Vermont’s foremost captive insurance manager. Their Union Street Media website includes our custom design services, content management system and integrated site search.

Measuring Twitter: Marketing, Conversations and Individuals

This post is a part of the overall Twitter for Business series here at the Internet Marketing for Real Estate blog. Once you get into Twitter for awhile you (or our boss) will want to know what good it is doing. Here are some links to posts and articles about Twitter measurement tools and techniques.

Measuring advertising and marketing efforts that use Twitter as a distribution medium/source

Increasingly, we see that Twitter is being used to blast away with “Hey check out my latest post” and “use my great service” etc. Perhaps a bit obnoxious to the non-commercial user of Twitter. If your marketing strategy for Twitter does not involve annoying your followers into submission, perhaps you might consider measuring your activity and finding out which topics are most interesting to your followers. Here’s where you can really use social media to advantage. Check out these reviews on using Twitter in conjunction with your advertising and marketing efforts:

• Before you even get started, you might want to know more about who is using Twitter and how are they using it. Jeremiah Owyang has decoded HP Lab’s Twitter research for you.
• Twittertise is an analytics and Tweet-delay service that helps you plan and track your advertising messages.
• Measure web traffic you generate via Twitter by combining TinyURL and Google Analytics. Justin Cutroni tells all.
• Use Tweetburner to measure your relevance on Twitter.
• Measure your relevance on Twitter with Cli.gs and get some 301 redirect action from it as well.
• Anil Batra has some initial KPIs for Twitter use on his blog.

Measuring brands, topics and conversations on Twitter

Since Twitter is a quick, easy and in-the-moment communication medium, a lot of different things are discussed each minute. Perhaps you’re interested in buzz measurement or looking for some insight into what the Twittersphere currently finds interesting.

• If you want to use free tools to figure out how much of the Twittersphere is talking about something, check out our Twist and Tweetrush method.
• If your brand/topic isn’t very large, perhaps you could measure the conversation using Tweetbeep and Tweetrush
• Here’s a brief case study about the impact of the 2008 Seinfeld ads on Microsoft’s brand as measured via Twitter.

Measuring individual activity on Twitter

Perhaps you are interested in what someone’s Twitter usage is like. Maybe they are claiming to be a social media marketing whiz-bang genius and you want to check out their credentials. That sort of thing. Or maybe you’re just a stalker. There are a variety of tools available to measure people’s use of Twitter.

• Xefer is a tool that shows hourly, monthly and daily breakdown of twitter usage. It also shows followers. It is limited to the most recen 800 Twitter posts.
• Adam Fullerton gives a quick snapshot of Hubspot’s Twitter Grader, a tool for checking how complete your Twitter profile is among other things.
• Mashable gives an excellent overview of a tool called Tweeple Twak. Learn about your follow/unfollow rate, locations of your followers and more. Probably the closest thing to GA for Twitter I’ve seen yet. If only it would have a built-in URL shortener or partner with someone like Cli.gs then it would be slam dunk.
• Respected Web Analyst Nick Arnet puts together an excellent blog post on measuring influence on Twitter.

If I’ve missed something good please don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments section.

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