Tom Funk's Blog, page 5

10% of Visitors Use On-Site Search

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...

12 Tips for Business Twitter Accounts

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 :)

Top 100 Social Media Books, Ever

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...

"Mayday" Google Algorithm Change Affects Long-Tail Searches

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...

Wine of the Month Club Wows Audience at Retail Marketing Conference

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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 "

Whoa, Google's New Look! Interface Change Is So Hard For Me

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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...

Ning Is No Longer Free

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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...

Twitter Advertising: "Promoted Tweets" Program Announced

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...

Scooter Store Is Fly, Says Blog

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...

Announcing the 2010 Multichannel Merchant Awards Finalists

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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...