This month I'm doing something a little different. Rather than review
a product or service, I decided to attend Fawcette
Technical Publications' [see also http://www.ftpconferences.com/]
and Thunder Lizard
Productions' WebBuilder
conference that was held at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, September
9-11, 2002.
You may be wondering what you could possibly learn at what is primarily
a web design conference that will help you as a search engine marketing
professional. Turns out, you can learn plenty of things that you can
apply directly and indirectly to your craft.
True, most of the presentations were geared toward site design and
development and graphics design, with emphasis on using Macromedia's
new MX series of applications. Approximately two-thirds of the presentations
focused on site design and development, and graphics design. Still these
presentations were useful for the search engine marketing professional.
Often we are asked to perform site redesign by clients, or we recommend
redesigning the site to facilitate search engine marketing. Attending
these presentations will help you develop your design skills, dealing
with database driven sites, developing better client-side applications
and forms, learn about the newest design and development software and
more.
In addition to these design and development presentations, there were
presentations on outsourcing, project management, user testing, content
management, and more. Barbara "WebMama"
Coll also gave two presentations that introduced search engine marketing
to a predominately design and development audience.
The real gems from a search engine marketing perspective were the presentations
dealing with copywriting, home page optimization (not what your think!),
strategies for persuading visitors to buy, web site measurement and
analysis, and site stickiness. The reason I feel these were the real
gems of the conference is that clients are starting to ask for more
than just page optimization, submissions and monthly ranking reports
and page adjustments. They are starting to ask for copywriting, ROI
calculations, conversion rates and other web metrics.
Let's start with copywriting. If you're like me, virtually every search
engine marketing project requires at least a little copywriting. Nick
Usborne's presentation "Net Words: Writing a Great Message"
provided some valuable tips for writing effective content for any web
site. These tips may help you write effective, interesting, and perhaps
persuasive content for your clients' sites.
Next, Andrew Chak gave an extremely interesting and informative presentation
about "Optimizing Your Home Page." Going into this presentation
I was expecting a basic search engine marketing presentation, but instead
I was treated to a home page usability study. Chak showed the attendees
how various page elements, such as color, layout, and navigation, contribute
to a visitor's first impression, as well as draw them deeper into the
site. Chak also gave a presentation on "Strategies to Get Your
Customer to Buy," in which he discussed the decision process, the
best way to present and promote products, and more.
Nick Finck gave a presentation, "Avoiding the Web Death Sentence:
Design Strategies for Keeping Your Customer Around." I wanted to
attend this presentation, but unfortunately Finck's presentation was
scheduled for the same time as Chak's "Optimizing Your Home Page."
Additionally, Finck's presentation is not available on the Thunder Lizard
site. Learning more about site stickiness would certainly have been
useful.
Finally, Ashley Friedlein's presentation on "Web Site Measurement
and Analysis" was extremely informative. His presentation discussed
methods for site measurement and analysis beyond the typical traffic
analysis. Freidlein's presentation was definitely worth attending, especially
if you have client's asking for web metrics for ROI and conversion analysis,
or you are trying to add additional services to differentiate your company
from the competition.
I found many of the presentations I attended interesting and informative.
However, several seemed to lack much substance, and I felt they were
more like an informercial: the speaker presented a little interesting
information and few few pertinent examples, but lacking somewhat in
real substance or eye-opening material, then plugged his or her book.
Despite these few less interesting infomercial-style presentations,
there is a lot of good information to be had. The search engine marketing
industry has seen tremendous growth in the number of companies and individuals
offering optimization services. Clients are requesting additional services,
such as copywriting, enhanced site usability, ROI and other metric tracking
and more. A search engine marketing professional or company that can
develop such services will differentiate themselves from the standard
search engine marketing firm and develop lasting client relationships
(not to mention profits!) by offering more valuable services. WebBuilder
conferences, or any of the other Internet conferences such as NetWorld
+ Interop, can definitely teach some old search engine marketing professionals
some new tricks.
***About Bill Gentry:
Bill Gentry has been a professional Web designer since 1999 and a Search
Engine Optimization and Online Marketing specialist with Look Sharp
Designs since February 2000.
Review may not be reprinted without permission of Look Sharp Designs.
To request permission for reprinting rights, please contact Look Sharp Designs.
