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.

There’s more to site optimization than SEO

If you read this blog you probably already know about search engine optimization. But there’s another kind of optimization. One that is just as important (maybe even more important) as being number 1 in Google. That other kind of optimization is performance optimization. Read more

Using Web Traffic Analysis to Know More About Your Customers

All the numbers and charts from your analytics package are the equivalent of watching customers walk into a retail store, browse around and hopefully buy something. While many business owners who are new to analytics focus heavily on the number of people coming in the door (site visits), not as many focus on what they do when they get in the door.

To stretch this metaphor a bit more, retail stores often have someone on staff that is tasked specifically with setting up the store so that people can find things they are looking for, discover things they weren’t looking for but might like and conduct a transaction. These staff members watch the store in person or via video to understand traffic patterns.

For your site, your web analytics is what you have to observe traffic. And making changes to the structure of your site (either by rearranging, adding or removing content) can improve the entire user experience.

An article from the Wall Street Journal published last month describes how several online retailers are using this customer experience data to improve their sales. Sometimes making small discoveries (like using the number zero in a coupon code can cause user failure because they don’t know if it’s the letter O or a zero) that have dramatic impact.

According to the article “trade group Shop.org and Forrester found that online retailers are allocating 21% of their total 2008 marketing budgets to online customer retention.” Another great data point from the study: “32% of Web shoppers have been online for seven years.” These folks have high expectations.

So dig a little deeper, get beyond the total number of visits coming to your site and start asking questions about what they do when they get there. Put that information in context, make a decision about how you can improve life for your online customer based on that information and move forward.

Moved Site Optimization Series to a page

Just some small admin stuff, but I moved the Site Optimization Series table of contents to a page. You’ll now be able to access those posts directly from the sidebar.

Performance Optimization for Real Estate Part 3: Benchmarks

Alright. We’ve done the broad-stroke overview of performance optimization. We’ve established some objectives. We took a side-road to learn a bit about picking something to measure on our website. Now it’s time to benchmark.

Why Benchmark?

The goal of a benchmark study is to figure out how your site is performing before you do anything at all. If done well, it should give you a good base from which to try and test different site changes (optimizations, hopefully). So you’re going to get two things from your benchmark study:

• A ruler by which to measure performance of your website (so you know if that big increase really is great or if it’s pretty typical)
• Some general insight into the patterns of use on your site (what pages are people going to often? what search terms are they using to find your site? Are they converting from search terms? How many visits to your site is typical? Whatever KPIs you are using).

Read more

4 things you can do right now to improve your website home page and why

For most sites, the home page is by far the most visited. The visitor segments are the most broad here too: random search engine traffic, sometimes advertising ends up here (though I, personally, recommend against that), sometimes a link from someone’s blog ends up going to your home page. All of these wide, varied audiences need to be directed and channeled to the place that will help them get something done.

Too often, home pages end up getting fractured and fragmented due to a lack of focus. These tips should help you get focused.

Here’s a quick list of simple things you can do to make your real estate home page more effective. To be honest, several of these tips could work for any business site with a little tweaking.

1. Have one main headline that tells users what can be done on your site. Resist the urge to use the generic “Welcome to my homepage” stuff. People aren’t on your homepage to feel welcome, they are there to accomplish a task. You can’t make them feel welcome by saying “Welcome.” You can, however, make them feel welcome by making it easier for them to accomplish their task (like buy or sell a property).
2. Have a page title (the text at the very top of the browser) that relates to your headline and contains the search term you want most. This will help in two ways: it will help your search ranking and will improve the usability of your listing in the search engine result page.
3. Include a clear call-to-action. You probably have a desired outcome for people who come to your site. Know what that outcome is and make it easy for your site visitors do what you would like them to do.
4. Include a visual and direct link to the thing you want to sell most, like a featured property listing, a page with your listings on it, a page with listings that you like to represent, whatever it is that you do best. Some of your site visitors know exactly what they are looking for and will likely skip over your offer. But other visitors will appreciate your suggestion to get them started down the path to do business with you.

What are some other things you can do to make your home page better?

Heads up: Guest post over at MyTechOpinion

Readers of my “Site Optimization Series for Real Estate” may find some usefulness in my recent guest post for Nicole and Reggie over at MyTechOpinion.com.

It’s called “Three KPIs for Real Estate Websites.”

On-site Optimization for Real Estate Part 2: Getting ready to measure

Last time we discussed the overview of a site optimization process, so I bet you’re ready to get rolling on improving your site. But before we can start implementing our process we need to chart a course. Let’s get started.

Determine the objective

For most real estate sites, the objective is to increase qualified leads (the people who are looking for the kind of property you like to sell or selling the kind of property you like to buy). Maybe there are other objectives as well. Think about this as you begin your process. Maybe sometime in the future your goals and objectives will change, that’s fine. The important thing is to know what your goals are so that you can track them.

Track your progress

Once your objectives are determined, it’s time to figure out what metrics you’re going to use to track your progress. The TLA (three letter acronym) used to describe the metrics that connect to your objective is KPI (key performance indicator). It’s very important to remember that every KPI is a metric but not every metric is a KPI. There are hundreds of reports a decent analytics package will produce for you. Not all of them relate to your objective. An excellent rundown of what makes a metric into a KPI can be found on Dennis Mortensen’s VisualRevenue blog:

7 KPI characteristics

1. a KPI echoes organizational goals
2. a KPI is decided by management
3. a KPI provides context
4. a KPI creates meaning on all organizational levels
5. a KPI is based on legitimate data
6. a KPI is easy to understand
7. a KPI leads to action!

I know it’s easy to let your eyes glaze over as you read that handy list. But resist the urge. Note a couple important items like #2: a KPI is decided by management. That means you. Your analyst (me) can make some good suggestions but ultimately you’ve got to decide that it’s relevant. If you don’t, then everyone will just be spinning their wheels. Take the time to understand why your analyst is suggesting a specific KPI and make it a conversation.

Another great one is #5: a KPI based on legitimate data. You need to understand your analytics package and establish your degree of confidence in it. You also need to understand what your analyst is doing with the numbers outside of the analytics package (yes, we’re making spreadsheets and trying to provide more context–Google Analytics has some pretty graphs, but we need more).

Number 7 is the most important of all: a KPI leads to action. If you can’t do anything with the data, if you can’t base a business decision on it, then it isn’t worth tracking. It may be interesting. Entertainment is interesting. Analysis needs to inform action.

For some examples of KPIs for real estate sites, check out my guest post over at MyTechOpinion.com: Three KPIs for Real Estate Websites.

Now what?

Take a deep breath. If you’ve come this far chances are good that you’ve done more than your competition: you know what you want to do and you know how you will measure your progress. And you are committed to making improvements to speed your progress. You’ve done the thinking and now it’s time for acting.

Next time we’re going to cover setting up a benchmark study (so we can see if any of our decisions and actions are helping or hurting).

Performance Optimization for Real Estate Part 1: Overview

I remember back in the earlier days of making websites how people could post a site and pretty much forget about it for a year or two. Some people can still do that, I suppose. But the businesses that rapidly review their market climate, attempt to gain insight into their customers needs and act on those insights will do better than those which do not.

Constantly redesigning a website can’t be cost-effective, can it? Read more

Web Analytics Training at EpikOne

On Tuesday, Jan 29th EpikOne will be hosting one of their excellent online trainings. I highly recommend it for people who are interested in deepening their knowledge of web analytics, usability, and online marketing in general. Check out Justin Cutroni’s posts on the Epik blog, as well, for some more background on these folks.