Stick around and I will show you how to break down SEO/SEM to basic managable elements using free tools and resources. This combined with some usabbility, user experience and good old common sense will elevate your efforts from the predictability of online product programs under-performing due to the direction of product enhancement being driven by opinions of the clients, developers, managers, and stakeholders. Start backing up your recommendations with undisputible data and making arguments against wasteful implementations of technology with in-your-face statistical data, proving that an element, utility or idea is just not working.
We will address internal company applications, Business to Client apps, Business to client Employee extranets, public marketing websites, eCommerce sites, Benefits and plan sponsorship portals, Work life intranets, Total Compensation and Self service HR portals, HSA Member and non Member sites, Investment House Portals, Day trading applications and any other online program or service you are in charge of making successful.
Usually when a company is looking for SEO/SEM candidates to begin work or take over a program, it usually means the company has a website of some sort with little or no supporting programs that make up the foundation for the online product program. SEO/SEM is just today's buzz word for something every Web application needs and if ignored you may be lost in the dark depths of page 10,234, of Google's search results. This means no one will find you no matter what search criteria is entered. SEO and SEM along with supplimental support programs can strengthen your success rate into the top teir of online web services. No matter your size, shape or budget.
If after reading my free information you do not wish to take all of this on yourself due to time constraints, lacking skills in content writing, HTML, or general interest. Call me and I will layout a strategy for you after a free consultation. You can then take that strategy plan to any credible SEO house to have it executed. I can fulfill the program launch and ongoing maintenance if you wish at a fraction of what bigger firms charge for their services. Reason being is that I take a different approach involving less work with measurable success. If my plan fails to make the target goals, you dont pay me, it's just that simple. I am so confident in my SEO methodologies, I can guarantee measured traffic increases with higher conversion rates with a lower cost per lead.
Here are the secrets to a successful Web Product or Service Program:
Secret #1:
Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing (SEO/SEM) is a small part of the process in launching your online program. SEO/SEM is one of the many elements needed to create, market, grow and profit from an online product or service no matter what you are selling. SEO/SEM should be planned up front in and around the design phase but fully implemented lastly except for some initial code needed for META tags and the naming conventions for images, pages and links are important as well as Domain setup, and keyword research. Your SEM plan can be helped along by myself or by having a Google rep. come by to strategize with you. Google can provide a wealth of data on your specific niche but may charge a comparable fortune to reveal it to you. Most data Google reps are armed with can be had for free or for much less through a consultant such as myself. I too promote products and services on the web and use the same utilities as everyone else so tapping my brain can be much less costly.
Asking a designer to plan out the UI with the training Development Manager may seem like a waste of time to the designers and development people, yet integrating the training methodologies early into the development lifecycle speeds up development and makes for the most effective training program thats somewhat built in to application. This is true for customer service and customer satisfaction programs as well. When planned early on, it makes for seamless launch and bed-down process for the application or service.
Secret #2:
The online product or service your marketing must have value, viral elements and a great design to attract your target audience. It needs scaleability, quick-to-market functionality, ongoing enhancements, fresh content, fresh content and fresh content. Add that to a group of well planned support programs, and you have what makes up the core foundation of any Web-based program. The support system for web-based product is made up of Dynamic Communications, internal and external Marketing, Customer Service, Customer Satisfaction, Content Management, Daily Operations, Ongoing enhancements, trend data capture and analytics, and legal/corporate compliance. Without any of these elements, SEO/SEM is just an effort you are billed for monthly and provides no value as well as destroying the integrity of your product/service and company brand. Even if your revamping an old proprietary application, you can leapfrog competitors products by building a foundation from these elements. Follow this method when reinventing applications by adding tools and services that other applications from your competitors do not yet have. I have been involved with many projects that took 20 year old, outdated and under documented applications and within a few Sprints we were able to leapfrog the competitor with new self-service tools, life event triggers, manager self-service and massive, dynamic, personalized electronic communications to the userbase. We gave the application new life and all we did was add 3 not-so-new elements and reinforced the core supporting programs by dusting them off and updating some best practices. 75 clients and 200,000 users thought we had built a whole new system. The biggest change for me on this app was an error code that came up when a specific data field was not filled in by the user. The error read: "Field fault error code 2771 stack code dump". Well, in a few minutes, we changes the error to "please fill in all required fields, Thank You! Benefitsweb Team" this change eliminated 20,000 tickets and calls to our call center over a year period. A significant savings in labor and an easy fix to something that was wrong for 20 years due no error tracking and no gathering of feedback.
Secret #3:
Right Skills for the right Jobs: Team members need to align with thier jobs. If you are an entrapenuer working alone, you will need help. Identify your weaknesses and find those who are strong in those areas. You may not need to hire them but consult at the least and there maybe some opportunity to barter for some services if your budget is tight. In a corporate setting, have a Bus. Analyst, usability person, User experience person, javscript specialist, graphics designer and a flash developer. Some will wear multiple hats but try to keep specialized unless budget prevents this. The product owner takes requirements from the client but should not dtermine the placement of buttons and links usually. usability/UX folks know what works and frown on designing based on the opinion of underqualified stakeholders.
Secret #4:
Mandatory Supporting Programs for ANY online product or service. These elements are just as important as SEO/SEM and make up the core foundation of any successful online program and are as follows:
- Product Design (or service structure) Program, Stable and proven development process with qualified team using some form of Rapid Software Development methodology such as the Agile development process.
- Hardware and Network Development Program
- Product Launch and Bed Down Program
- Operations/Administration Program
- Enhancement Program/ Product Growth and Evolution
- Marketing Program - Internally and Externally. Ongoing within the company, with print, web, press, radio, social media, publications, blogs, micro-blogs, verticle indexes
- Communications Program - Internal, External, Mass, Public, Inter-app, Dynamic B2C, B2B, B2E, B2Subscriber, press, direct, leadership updates, print to web publications, mass email tracking and reporting, list management, list development, CAN Spam compliance, integration to CRM i.e., Salesforce, Integration of 3rd party vendor's API to any proprietary data fields inside participant portal and applications for personalized communications and data tracking. All data must be analysed to drive direction of communications.
- Comprehensive Reporting Program to all levels of employees, developers, management, stakeholders and leadership with well formatted data that suits it's target audience along with outside industry data, benchmarks, recommendations based on trend analysis for Web usage, Communication, Development research, Competition, product peformance, industry trends, culture trends, actuarial predictions and new technology developments and breakthroughs monitoring.
- Training Development Program - For all stakeholders, client leads, operations team, developers, user base, trainers, sales personel, designers, clients, other product program participants
- Compliance Program - Legal, Corporate, Client requirements, contractual, SLAs, best practices
- Customer Service Program strict SLAs, unsurpassed response time and perfect resolution record.
- Customer Satisfaction Program - 4.5 or higher as based on ASCI standards
- Process Development, Best Practices identification, Ongoing Process Improvement, Documentation through structured writing of manuals and quickstart guides for all operational elements with ongoing process of analyzing/prioritizing/implementing change derived from consistant feedback from all program participants.
More on this topic later with real life case studies from fortune 500 companies and their past projects.
So for now, keep screwin' it up till your next conference call is with Bangalor India...
Shane J
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