Tagged with 'website'

Internal site search is one of those things that seems very simple: type in a term or phrase on a website, and you’ll get a list of results of pages on that site that are likely to contain what you’re looking for — very straightforward. Almost every site has search functionality built in.

It’s not quite that simple, of course, even though Google makes Internet search look like the easiest thing in the world.

What Do You Mean By Search?

First, there needs to be clarity on what someone means by talking about “search” — are we talking about search functionality within the website itself (ie, internal site search)? or are we talking about how people might search to find your site (i.e., external search)? There are approaches and techniques to deal with each type of search, and there is certainly some overlap between them, but they are very different issues. The information here is focused on internal site search.

Where Does That Internal Site Search Result Come From?

It’s important to understand where your search results are really coming from. Most searches are not done in real-time (that is, actually searching your website content at the time you put in your search term), but rather are running against a search index of some kind. A search index is a pre-defined, static pool of possible results. The value of a search index is that all the hard work of filtering for possible relevant terms, weighting relevancy, and optimization have already been done — so when a site visitor actually performs a search, it’s usually pretty fast and pretty on-target for what that person was looking for. The downside of a search index is that it’s a picture of your content at a particular time, so if that content changes (including adding content or deleting content) but the index isn’t updated, people won’t find that updated content.

There are some specialized searches that are done in real-time. For instance, many of Duo’s legal sites have specialized attorney searches that filter by office or practice area. Since these searches are running directly against the main content, they are always up-to-date — but they may not be as fast, and there’s no “results weighting” that can be done once the results come back.

Results weighting is also known as relevancy. It is a very important element to your search results. If you search for “dog”, you probably want those top results to be really focused on dog information. Search engines generally “guess” at that relevancy through a series of rules or parameters. For instance: is “dog” in the title of the page? Is it a term that’s used repeatedly in the body of the content? etc., etc. Very good search engines have been refining those rules for years now, but they rarely expose those rules to the public, since those rules are their competitive advantage.

There are, however, search engines that you can use that will allow you, as the website owner, the ability to tweak those rules to best match your particular content. Obviously the advantage of using one of these engines is that you have the ability to fine-tune your website’s search results. The downside is that this does require some effort, and that effort is ongoing — as your content changes over time, you are likely going to need to periodically revisit the rules you’ve established in your search engine.

Search Options

So on a practical level, what are your options for search? Listed below are some of the search options that Duo Consulting uses. This is not, by any means, an exhaustive listing of search options available. It’s just meant to provide a sense of the variety of options that exist.

eZ Search

eZ Search comes built-in with any site built on the eZ Publish Content Management System. Because it’s built into the system, you can control the frequency with which the site index is built. Thus, if you’re changing the content on your site quite often, you’ll have the ability to make sure that your search results will reflect those changes in a timely manner. There’s no weighting or relevancy, however.

eZ Find

eZ Find also works with the eZ Publish Content Management System. It’s built on the Solr open source search server, and it does allow for very fine-grained relevancy tweaking and options for indexing frequency. It also allows for searches to be done on an entirely separate server from the website itself — an important consideration if your site gets a lot of traffic and you need to consider how to decrease the load on your site as much as possible.

Drupal Search

Drupal, another Content Management System, also has search functionality built into it. As with eZ Search, it’s relatively simple and basic, although you do have control over how frequently your content is indexed. There are some modules (ie, Porter-Stemmer) that can be used in conjunction with the default search to raise the level of sophistication.

Acquia Drupal Search

Acquia is a commercially supported version of Drupal, and they have a search engine which is also based on Solr technology. It can either be used as an externally hosted service (billing is based on the volume of content), or you can use the module built by Acquia and set up a local Solr server. It offers relevance, author filtering (useful for sites using social media), term highlighting, and content recommendations.

Third-Party Search

Third-party search engines, such as Freefind or Google, can be seamlessly integrated into your website. You can retain the look and feel of your site, while at the same time leveraging the power of a search engine company that has already spent the time and effort to refine the relevancy rules. The search index itself, however, is something that you will only have limited control over in terms of indexing frequency and relevancy weighting.

There are a few things that you can do to guide third-party search engines. You can create sitemaps (essentially an XML map of your content that’s easy for search engines to digest), and some third-party search engines do have an on-demand indexing option.

Custom Search

A custom search is a search that’s so specific to certain content that it makes the most sense to custom-code it into the website. This often works for simple things (again, the example of filtering attorneys by office and/or practice area), and the search results are always up-to-date — but a more complex search result requirement begins to creep into re-inventing-the-wheel territory, so this should be used judiciously.

Things to Consider When Planning Your Internal Site Search Strategy

So having said all of this, what kind of search will work best for you? If you can answer the following questions, you’ll be well on your way to figuring out the best solution to fit your needs.

How much content will I have?

If you have a lot of website content, then you will probably need a more sophisticated search engine for the internal search on your site. If you don’t have a lot of content now, then certainly this is something you’d want to evaluate as the site grows — what works on Day One of the site launching may not be as useful a year later.

How much traffic will I have?

If your site has a lot of traffic, then you’ll probably want to consider moving the search traffic off to a server that’s separate from your own site, or a third-party search engine. As with content, this is a situation you’ll want to periodically re-evaluate.

How frequently will I want that content indexed, so that the search results are freshest?

Instantly? Hourly? daily? weekly? If your content must be 100% fresh 100% of the time, then you’ve narrowed your choices to search engines that you’ll have direct access to controlling the refresh time. That said, this is something to look at carefully — does it really have to be that closely in sync with real-time content updates?

How much fine-tuning and/or control do I want over the search results?

…and how much effort do you want to put towards that fine-tuning and control? If this is important for you (i.e., you want to make sure that content within an employee’s primary biography is weighted more heavily in search results than his or her community activities), then you’ll want a search engine that you can have that level of control over. On the other hand, it will mean a commitment on your part to invest in the time to experiment and tweak those settings, and that will probably need to be revisited over time as your content changes as well.

There are still quite a few nuances to talk through beyond this, but tackling these questions at the beginning will certainly get you most of the way there.

What About External Search?

If you are concerned about how public search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) will find your site, then you will be focused on optimizing your site for that: Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They key to good SEO for your site is good content, of course, but beyond that, Duo would be happy to speak with you about detailed approaches and strategies for your site.

I have a love/hate relationship with website awards.

Prevailing Hate
I hate awards for two reasons. First, aiming to win awards is a terrible incentive.  I mean, do you want your website developer to say, “We’re going to build you a website that will win you some really great awards!” Or would you rather they say, “We’re going to build you a website that is going to achieve your business objectives!”  Can you do both? Maybe.  But which fence is that web developer swinging for?  Your needs? Or more plaques on their wall? Why should there be any distraction from the obvious objective.

Second, most web award programs suck. Quite simply, they often reward pretty websites. Rarely is there any serious lifting of the hood to find out how robust the site is. Criteria such as interaction, information architecture, usability, content quality, search optimization, engagement,  goal and conversion orientation are rarely part of the evaluation. That’s because these essential requirements are also the hardest to judge. But everybody has an opinion about pretty.  Web awards often reward pretty junk.

Embraceable Love
I love website awards almost as passionately as I hate them. Usually so much effort goes into the creation of a good website that it’s wonderful to see these business solutions recognized. Moreover, the site development is generally driven by internal client staff who sweat bullets producing their online presence. When their site is recognized with an award, it’s just great seeing them and their organizations get the recognition they deserve

And don’t think those acrylic and lacquered wood awards don’t mean something. I closed an award winning computer business in 1993 and among the last things I tossed out – 16 years later – were some of the award plaques this business had won. Even after the business is toast, the awards validated a lot of the effort.

And the Winners Are……
Today, the Web Marketing Association announced their WebAwards for 2009. And I have no ambivalence in celebrating the winners.  Duo is one of a handful of companies worldwide that won 5 or more web awards. Our client sites that received recognition include:

• comScore- Marketing Standard of Excellence
• Youth Ready Chicago – Government Standard of Excellence
• American Library Association – Non-Profit Standard of Excellence
• Burnham Nationwide – Consulting Standard of Excellence
• Illinois Humanities Council – Non-Profit Standard of Excellence
• PricePlease, Inc. – Outstanding Website

A tip of the hat to these organizations. I want to believe that in all cases their business objectives were paramount on our development agenda and the sites are now meetings these performance objectives.

Of course, the award plaques won’t look too bad on our wall.

Becker Professional Education, a subsidiary of DeVry Inc., was undergoing major re-branding and positioning of its offerings. They faced several website dilemmas. The professional services education company offers exam review programs to help professionals prepare for certifications in accounting, finance as well as providing continuing education. Each of these focused offerings was featured within one of four independent websites, BeckerCPE.com, BeckerCPA.com, BeckerPM.com and Stalla.com. The company intended to bring them all under one website, Becker.com.

Serena Collage Goes Terminal

At the same time, the content management system on which the BeckerCPA.com website was operating, Serena Collage, was approaching its technology end-of-life. Although the content management system was performing suitably, Serena, had announced there would be no further upgrades and support would be ending for its Collage web content management system (CMS). Although there was no imminent urgency, the prudent path for Becker, as well as all Serena Collage customers, was to make plans to replace Collage with a suitable CMS alternative.

Choosing a Replacement Content Management System

The first task was to identify a content management system that could not only replace the feature set of Collage but also accommodate the unique needs of the business units being integrated into the website.  Together with Becker, Duo selected Hannon Hill’s Cascade Server CMS. Cascade Server offered two immediate benefits. Cascade Server’s architecture and publishing model is very similar to that of Collage.  Replacing Collage with Cascade Server requires only a modest amount of retraining for site administrators. And in ways that it does differ, Cascade Server is easier to navigate for making site changes.

Migrating Content

The second non-trivial task was migrating the content from different sites with different or non-existent CMS into Cascade Server. To facilitate this migration, Duo customized Hannon Hill’s script for automating the migration of Collage’s “Contribution Types” into Cascade Server’s “Asset Factories” as well as WYSIWYG to WYSIWYG.

More Considerations

A project of this magnitude is littered with details. The BeckerCPA website is integrated with LearnLive, a separate course management system and a script drives the daily data refresh. Duo also acknowledged the legacy value of the old website pages.  Important landing pages from the old website were mapped and redirected to similarly relevant pages of the new website.

As companies continue to upgrade and revise their nth generation websites, the task of migrating old sites to the new is becoming increasingly complex. Developing a plan of action and including the migration effort into the scope of the project are essential considerations to achieve a successful outcome.

Good economy or bad, marketing budgets are always subject to scrutiny by business managers. Dollars are allocated to various resources and out comes…. what? A brochure? A well-placed article in a trade publication? A speaking engagement? Often it is a lot of feel-good stuff. And I’m not saying it doesn’t work – sometimes. But connecting the investment to the bottom line, what business managers like to call return on investment (ROI), is frequently a stretch. Or, at worst, it is a complete non-starter.  So here comes this Internet thingy which generates gobs of data on all aspects of its performance and what happens? For many marketers, this information is the elephant in the room.  We know it’s there.  We just choose not to recognize it. I’ve dubbed this Faith Based Internet Marketing.

Faith-based Internet Marketing is simply this: PRAY people visit your website. HOPE they find value when they are there. BELIEVE it will help business.

Faith, of course, is a cornerstone of many of our lives, where we have the wisdom to accept much which cannot be otherwise proved. But, really, it has no place in Internet marketing.  Clearly, you do not have to pray that people will visit your website. There are multiple strategies for influencing that outcome and countless tools for measuring your achievement. “Hope” is not an action step as much as it is a state of anticipation. If you are really concerned about site visitors finding value, and you better darn well be, examine your site’s content and method of content delivery to document that it truly provides value. And, again, measure your content types to know if they are being “consumed” as you expect.  And challenge the belief that all your investment of resources actually helps your business.

Most of Duo’s clients don’t sell stuff on their website. So connecting the Internet marketing dot to the meeting-the-business-objective dot is often the most challenging. I don’t have the magic answer to this dilemma. If I did, I’d write a book and not a blog post. One recommendation I often make is to imagine that you didn’t have a web presence at all. Then start identifying exactly what would be lost. Scarily, maybe nothing! But if you do identify that which you would miss, put a dollar value on it – and measure that, too.

If you take these steps, when the Grim Budget Reaper comes to visit, you’ll have the tools to defend your Internet assets – and possibly expand them. Keep the faith. But don’t practice Faith Based Internet Marketing.

I really dislike website launch announcements. You know, “We’re pleased to announce the launch of our new, fancynewsite.whatever, blah, blah.” But last night’s launch of the new CouponCabin website is more than

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about a cool new site, which it is.  It is about having an effective internal process for running a project, the value of dedicated staff and the importance of having a functional partnership with the client.  This is what our project manager, Tara Vorhes, shared with our company in a launch announcement email.  I want to share it with you:

“As many of you (at Duo) know, this project was a huge challenge for the project team with an incredibly aggressive, not-flexible deadline that was of highest priority for the client.  The custom developed site went live this evening when just about 2 months ago the wireframes were being approved, designs kicking off, and estimates being completed.  The team pulled together to launch on time and in budget. Everyone brought their “A” game.

The team really did everything they could to make it happen and always with a smile.  Matt did a fantastic job as the tech lead for this project  (however he may be dreaming about data imports and caching for weeks to come), Tim was a huge help with so many pieces in addition to the user submitted content, and Jeff was invaluable for interaction design and build.  Many people played a role in the team and in our ability to meet this incredibly important launch date: Pooja, Jough, Scott, Brian, Rose, Sue, Dan, Tony, Phil, Graham, and Fred.  It was absolutely a team effort and everyone exemplified the Duo core values- whether through joining the team for the past month or in the last week for testing.”

Tara also added how valuable the CouponCabin contribution was by being positive, engaged and responsive, thereby permitting Duo to adjust and move efficiently through the project.

So there you have it. On time. On budget. Engaged client. Core company values. Successful launch. These are things we’re truly pleased to announce.

Last night, the Chicago Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association held their annual “Your Honor Awards” recognition dinner. Like every event the Chicago LMA Chapter conducts, this event, held at Scoozi in Chicago, was top flight. Megan McKeon of McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP made organizing the well-produced awards presentations and dinner appear effortless. And the Wall Street Journal footed the bill for this private party whose bar never closed. I was there to confirm it.

Chicago LMA Awards Judges' Innovation Award to Valorem Law website

What really made the evening special for us was the recognition of our client, Valorem Law.  Valorem, a one-year-old firm, is comprised of expatriates (yes, I once spelled this ex-patriots) of BigLaw.  These thought leaders long ago recognized the sea change occurring in the legal industry and founded their firm on the premise of, among other innovative factors, the “billable hour is dead.”

Recognizing the firm’s innovative culture and business proposition, the LMA honored Valorem’s website with the Judges’ Innovation Award, unique recognition issued at the discretion of LMA. Innovation. It’s great to hear that term in the legal market. While we are thrilled to share in some of the glow cast by Valorem’s achievement, more importantly, this Innovation Award illuminates how lawyers who have worked hard to understand the Internet leveraged it in pursuit of their business.

The Valorem Law website has also been recognized by the Web Marketing Association with a 2008 Legal Standard of Excellence WebAward.

While watching Top Gear on BBC America, I shop for an “I AM THE STIG” t-shirt on the BBC America website as a gift for my husband. While reading Real Simple magazine, I watch Clean House on the Style channel and plan a trip to The Container Store for more storage bins for toys and clothes for my kids. It’s a wonder I can pay attention to all of these messages, yet I am making decisions based on my media consumption.

Ad revenue takes a nose dive, jobs fall off as well

But with the global credit crisis and continual news of lost jobs in lots of different sectors, are my eyeballs and eardrums worth less than they used to be? Apparently so. Take a look at this post and graph from Peter Kafka on his Media Memo column: Why You’re Losing Your Magazine Job. The quarterly changes in ad pages for 2006, 2007, and first quarter of 2008 were nearly flat, hovering around 1% to 3%. But last summer, they took a nosedive to the double digits, 14% drop in number of ad pages. The data is from MinOnline, the Media Industry Newsletter. They also report this week that automotive magazine ad revenues dropped by more than $400 million in 2008. Now, online advertising revenues totaled $5.7 billion in the second quarter of 2008 – compared compared with $5.1 billion in the second quarter of 2007. Magazine advertising revenue for full-year 2008 closed at $23,652,018,533. That number, $23 billion, contains a lot of commas. It would appear that your eyeballs while looking at a website are worth less than while reading a magazine. Actually, I guess I’d have to calculate the cost per pair of eyes based on magazine circulation or website viewers. Are online ads easier to track conversions from, compared to print media, and therefore more valuable in measurability and value for the investment?

Faster news cycles, content delivery must keep up

You also have to wonder, why is the printed word declining so much faster than other media? A commenter on Peter Kafka’s blog entry responds, “The notion of waiting on tomorrow morning’s paper for the news is almost lunacy to anyone under the age of 30.”

For both the magazine and newspaper, just employing a web editor is no longer enough. They must meet their readers where they live, as the Christian Science Monitor is striving to do. Read more about combining print and web content deliverables in Michael Silverman’s informative blog entry, News is Hot, Newspapers Are Not. They will not abandon the printed, indepth background coverage that their readers crave, but will deliver a weekly print publication in addition to the web content. I think we’re witnessing the future of news”papers” and it’s quite an exciting time.

Bling is usually characterized as offering a special extra “punch” to an ensemble or outfit. Bling is an accessory, which is how I would describe sidebar widgets on your website or blog. Accessories can enhance the main site but can also offer eye candy or a shiny bauble to help the main site gain more attention at the social web party. Coco Chanel is quoted as saying, “Before leaving the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory.”  Do you need to examine your website to see if it has one or two too many widgets that may detract from your site’s main messaging?

Can widgets sell?

If your site is for online commerce, selling products, services, or event registrations, think of how handy the related items lists can be for someone shopping online. Better yet, let your online catalog show “read wear” to others online. A well-browsed print catalog might show dog eared corners or coffee-mug circles on favorite pages. Similarly, your popular online catalog can remain neat but feature widgets that display related popular choices of prior visitors. Take this example from the Eagle Optics web site, which supplies birdwatching optical tools.

Are there authoritative widgets?

If your site exists mostly as an informational or authoritative source of information, you might want to show your experts’ comments or punditry in other areas of the web, such as a Twitter RSS feed with their latest “between the blog posts” micro-posts, or report web visitor or authoring statistics.

What about lead generation widgets?

If your site assists in lead generation, you can use widgets to draw visitors’ attention to the best ways to contact you. There may be metadata you can report to your visitors to help convince them to get in touch. Also consider the mobile phone user and make a widget that makes their lives easier when getting in touch with you through your site.

What does your website offer visitors visually?

I’ve been reading “The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures” and something that stuck with me was the use of our “mind’s eye” – that we all have images we carry around with us. Also, apply the visual analysis we all use to figure out what we need to accomplish and how to accomplish it when we walk into a room - but consider what visitors need when they “walk” up to your website.

What are your favorite examples of sites with well-done widgets or sites with over-done widgets?

Well-written content adds value to any website. Whether for business or personal use, a website should provide information that increases the knowledge store of the World Wide Web. A key benefit of expanding your website content is that it provides more terms for search engines to index. An additional plus is that websites that update more frequently often earn a higher rank due to their activity.

How does content get on your website? There are three simple methods:

• Write it yourself.
• Hire the services of other writers.
• Aggregate content from outside sources.

(Okay, there is a legendary fourth, which is to let a room full of monkeys loose on various computers and see if they can type the collected works of Shakespeare. But only the above three are practical.)

My post on the benefits of cloud computing is an example of the third option, exercised by the Cloud Computing Journal, an online magazine published by SYS-CoN Media that uses all three methods to increase their content base. What struck me about their method of content aggregation is that within minutes of posting the article, Jeremy Geelan, Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events, sent me an email requesting permission to reprint it, offering full credit and a bio.

This was unexpected, but refreshing. Websites that aggregate content usually do so by programming a script to search the web for content and post it to their site verbatim. The intent of this method is to increase their indexed content and drive their search engine page rank, but all it does is create a mess of noise on the Internet. Articles about securing your java application and enjoying a java chip mocha frappuccino don’t usually belong on the same page, but they might if they share the word java.

Even if an automated script could request permission from content authors before copying it onto their site, it would be difficult to automate a filtering mechanism that also ensures the content is relevant. Alternatively, a human being can review all aggregated content and apply their own site’s editorial guidelines to add value before posting it live. This is what set my experience with SYS-CON apart from the rest:

They Credit Their Sources

By offering to post links back to Duo Consulting and my personal/professional blog, they already received top marks in my book. One of my friends complains that his photographs are all over the Internet without any credit back to the source. His website explicitly states that he allows anyone to use his images provided they acknowledge where they came from. A simple email request could avoid creating bad blood between your organization and theirs.

They Edit Content to Increase Value

Since posting my article to the Duo Consulting’s blog, it’s taken on a whole new life. The alternate version sports a spunky new title and tag line:

The Three Salient Features of Cloud Computing: Accessibility, Availability, and Scalability: Cloud computing provides tangible benefits, available to users on request

Also, my closing paragraph is now at the beginning, which gives additional weight to my all-time favorite lines:

“…the availability of our resources dictates our current needs…and our needs always expand beyond the capacity of our resources….”

In addition, Jeremy reviewed my blog’s About Tony Chung page and hand-crafted an author bio with a photo.

They Ask for Permission

I mentioned to Jeremy that I would be writing this article, and gave him my initial three-point skeleton. He wanted me to list this point at the top, because for them, there is no substitute for the personal touch when aggregating content. I chose instead to close with this point, because it is by far the most important concept in re-purposing content from outside sources.

Requesting permission to reproduce others’ ideas shows respect to the creator, elicits respect from the creator, and fosters a sense of community. This experience is what drove me to write this article, because the simple effort of ask me impressed me so much. According to Jeremy, this has been SYS-CON’s model for years, and will continue to be their model.

Content may be freely available on the web, but it is definitely not free.