It's All Geek To Me - June 6th 2006

We're not going anywhere, and this is certainly not good-bye. There's too much, still, to write about, and always will be as the Internet evolves and morphs and advances. We are, though, reducing our frequency to once monthly, so this is the June issue. Our next publication date will be in early July, so don't think two weeks from now that we have forgotten you, or lost your email address.

Thanks, again, for subscribing to IAGTM. See you next month.

Big League vs Little League I wish I had a story to tell about baseball or some other sport, but like most geeks I can't really be described as athletic, so this story is about choir. When I was a kid I sang in choir – mostly tenor, but I had the range to be a bass in a pinch. I spent years singing the usual songs, doing the typical scale exercises, and having a pretty good time. I was good, even if I say so myself. In fact, my choir teacher asked me to try out for American Musicians Abroad so I could sing in Europe for a month or so.

Nervously, I did the tryout and got the slot – 21 countries in 21 days (or something like that) and we even sang in Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral. Everyone was excited about that, as the building – major construction was done by 1250 - has unique acoustical properties and reverbs for about 15 seconds, better than any modern concert hall. My mother was in Paris, even, and got to hear us sing, a very proud moment for me. The story, though, is about what happened before we left the US.

Our first practice was in Philadelphia a few days before we were scheduled to leave – and I felt pretty ready when I got there. I knew my scales, I knew my breathing exercises, I had even memorized the Latin (they don't let you sing whatever you want in cathedrals, no matter how much you explain that doo-wop is really cool) for our “cathedral” number.

I got my butt kicked and felt like I hardly knew what I was doing. I am pretty sure I was the worst tenor in the room. The other kids had special throat sprays, pitch pipes the likes of which I had never seen, and were doing exercises that were way beyond me. It only got worse when the conductor stepped up and “assumed” everyone present knew what they were doing.

I learned pretty quickly, though, did OK, and had a great time tromping around Europe – but most of what I found out is that this was my one shot at the “big league." Many of my fellow choir members were counting on a choir scholarship to college. They had lots to teach me about caring for your voice, and I had begun the process thinking I knew a decent bit about such things. I had spent years blissfully unaware that the big leagues even existed.

Your website is just the same – you can “succeed” with it without ever knowing about the big league stuff. The problem is that until you get the basics down you can't possibly learn , much less execute, big league techniques.

This has been a problem of website owners for many years , and it is particularly frustrating to see so many never get to an understanding of what could be. Every category has examples but here are a half dozen of the most common....

Domain Names

Little League: It is possible to have multiple domain names point to one site.

Big League: Using a strategic array of domains that reflect your products and services while tracking customer usage and adjusting the strategy on that basis.

Statistics

Little League: You can tell how many people came to your site, where they came from, and what they clicked on.

Big League: Calculating conversion rate on individual pages and adjusting based on what is working better, real time usage data, making the data available to your entire Marketing team, Product performance dashboards, Path analysis, customer segmentation, converting the raw numbers into actionable steps you can test, and being relentless about your results.

E-Mail Marketing

Little League: Publishing decent communications on a regular basis while using a written e-newsletter plan.

Big League: Automate everything, track email campaign results while segmenting your list on that basis, work on delivery issues regularly, monitor delivered sales from campaigns, and use a written strategy to grow your list.

Cost Per Click – CPC

Little League: I can pay to get people to come to my website based on what they type in using those little ads at the top of yahoo and down the side on google.

Big League: Local targeting, Budget Strategies, Bidding Strategies, Keyword Analysis, Ad Copy Strategies, Tracking by sales conversion by word/engine, and using an automated system to do much of the grunt work.

Shopping Carts

Little League: I can sell things to people on my site with a cart.

Big League: Connection to your Point of Sale system, flexible discounting and online coupons, automated order management, integrated analytics, sales reporting & analysis, product data feeds, shipping label generation, related items, automatic up-selling, and customer registration that ties into your other systems.

Search Engine Listings

Little League: I need my site on search engines and I have to pay some of them every year.

Big League: Automated monitoring of rankings, ongoing submissions, tracking your competitors, submission of specific URLs, page keyword optimization, and ongoing analysis.

So when I got back to the US I just had to go see my choir teacher and tell him about my experience. “What made you think I could do that?” I inquired. “I had taught you all the basics and knew you should go see what else there was,” he replied.

The same is true with your website – you can only get into the big league after you have mastered the basics.