October 8, 2022

Oct 8 2022

Google On The Use Of AI Images via @sejournal, @martinibuster

In a recent Search off the Record podcast, Google’s Lizzi Sassman and John Mueller discussed the use of AI generated images on websites.

Some of their opinions might seem surprising given how AI generated text content is treated by Google.

John Mueller highlighted inherent limitations in the AI image generator technology.

Automatically Generated Content

Automatically generated text content is prohibited for Google search within the limited context of the use of it for manipulating the search results.

Google’s guidelines on autogenerated content states:

“In cases where it’s intended to manipulate search rankings and not help users, Google may take actions on such content.”

Google’s John Mueller is also on record stating that AI generated text content is considered spam:

“For us these would, essentially, still fall into the category of automatically generated content which is something we’ve had in the Webmaster Guidelines since almost the beginning.

My suspicion is maybe the quality of content is a little bit better than the really old school tools, but for us it’s still automatically generated content, and that means for us it’s still against the Webmaster Guidelines. So we would consider that to be spam.

…But for us, if we see that something is automatically generated, then the webspam team can definitely take action on that.”

And perhaps in a sign of the fast pace of technological evolution, there are gray areas within Google’s prohibitions on auto-gen content.

For example, using automatic text translation to generate content is against the guidelines except in cases where a human reviews and curates the content.

In the above cited guideline on autogenerated content, autotranslated content is prohibited with the following statement:

“Text translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before publishing.”

Google also allows automatic generation of meta descriptions, presumably because meta descriptions are not used for ranking purposes.

“For larger database-driven sites, like product aggregators, hand-written descriptions can be impossible. …programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate and are encouraged.”

So, Google doesn’t ban AI content across the board, just in certain situations.

AI Generated Images

Given that AI generated content might qualify for ranking in Google Images, one would think that AI generated images are also prohibited.

But apparently, that’s not the case.

Lizzi Sassman and John Mueller discussed hypothetically using AI generated content on Google and they were pretty much okay with it.

This is what they said:

“Lizzi Sassman: Hey! So just to kick us off, I know that you’ve been doing a lot with DALL-E in the Craiyon site, and all these kinds of places to get fun images.

And I was wondering what would you say to using DALL-E to generate images for our site, Google Search Central, if we just started piping that in to refresh our images across the whole site– what would you say to that?

John Mueller: That would be an exciting move.”

The only part where Mueller expresses reservations about using AI for images is when depicting something that should properly be an actual thing, like a screenshot.

Mueller continued:

“I think the tricky part would be if you’re showing screenshots of specific things, and you’re piping that into some machine-art-generated thing, then maybe you don’t necessarily get actual screenshots.

Lizzi Sassman: It could go into an interesting direction. Okay, so it sounds like you’re bought in. Would you do this?

John Mueller: I would try it out. I mean…

Lizzi Sassman: You don’t want to tell me no?

John Mueller: I’m not going to say “no.”

I have no idea what it’d look like. Maybe it’ll look really cool. Or maybe for Halloween, we could do that.”

Limitations of AI Generated Content

The only reservation John Mueller had about AI images is that the technology is based off image datasets and so the ability to generate an image is limited to what’s in that library of images it was trained on.

Lizzi and John continued their discussion:

“I think one of the tricky parts with all of these tools is it builds off a known library of images.

And if there are not enough images reflected there, then whatever you ask is kind of very vague.

So I tried a lot of SEO terms once, and most of the time when it would recognize that this is something like marketing SEO-oriented, it would show me a graph of, like, some bar charts with a line graph
drawing up, and it’s like, “This is SEO.”

It’s like, “Well, it’s kind of like… it’s…”

Lizzi Sassman: That’s like your opinion, man.

John Mueller: Yeah. Exactly.”

AI Images Currently Okay?

Apparently the use of AI images within a website is okay.

Although autogenerated text content is prohibited/limited for ranking in Google Search, surprisingly there was no similar prohibition or caveat discussed about AI generated images and ranking in Google Images.

Citation

Listen to the Search Off the Record Podcast

The part about using AI Images begins at about the 34 second mark.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/san4ezz

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Oct 8 2022

The Download: music-making AI, and Kasparov’s defeat

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Google’s new AI can hear a snippet of song—and then keep on playing

A new AI system can create natural-sounding speech and music after being prompted with a few seconds of audio.

AudioLM, developed by Google researchers, generates audio that fits the style of the prompt, including complex sounds like piano music, or people speaking, in a way that is almost indistinguishable from the original recording. Crucially, it doesn’t require labor-intensive transcription or labeling unlike most other AI-generated audio. Find out more, and listen to the sounds it created, here.

—Tammy Xu

I Was There When: AI mastered chess

I Was There When is an oral history project that’s part of our award-winning In Machines We Trust podcast. It features stories of how breakthroughs and watershed moments in artificial intelligence and computing happened, as told by the people who witnessed them.

In the latest episode we meet one of the world’s greatest chess players, Garry Kasparov, and hear why his loss against IBM’s Deep Blue computer 25 years ago still matters today. Listen to it on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you usually go for podcasts.

Is a covid and flu “twindemic” coming?

If you’re feeling a bit under the weather, rest assured, you’re not alone. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s just that time of year. That’s partly why health authorities on both sides of the Atlantic are urging people to get vaccinated—against both the flu and covid-19.

In recent months, we’ve heard warnings of a flu and covid “twindemic” on the horizon. Should we be worried? Let our senior biomedicine reporter Jessica Hamzelou walk you through the risks.

Jess’s story is from The Checkup, her new weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things health and tech-related. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 This is what life in the metaverse is like
It might be pretty fun—if you can afford it. (NYT $)
+ But Meta employees themselves aren’t convinced. (The Verge)

2 A winter covid wave looks likely
And this time, we’re doing next-to-nothing to stop it. (Ars Technica)
+ Long covid is still disabling millions of Americans. (Axios)
+ How the Chinese doctor who sounded the alarm over covid spent his final days. (NYT $)

3 Elon Musk has three weeks to buy Twitter
If he doesn’t go through with it in that timeframe, it’s back to the courtroom. (Quartz)
+ What happens now? (The Guardian)
+ Lost track of all the twists and turns? Here’s a handy timeline. (FT $)
+ Musk says he’ll turn Twitter into a ‘super app’. Here’s how these apps work. (BBC)

4 Self-driving cars still seem to be on the road to nowhere
Even after $100 billion has been poured into their development. (Bloomberg $)
+ Uber is still betting it can make robotaxis work. (The Verge)
+ The big new idea for making self-driving cars that can go anywhere. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Google has unveiled two text-to-video AI systems
The videos they produce are impressive, and vaguely unsettling. (The Verge)
+ This is what the next generation of AI looks like. (MIT Technology Review)

6 An influencer is suing TikTok over scam ads that use her videos
This sort of fraudulent marketing is rife online—and there’s a growing political consensus in favor of a crackdown. (WP $)

7 Crypto exchange Binance says hackers stole $100 million
This is yet another example of a ‘bridge’ attack between two blockchains. (WSJ $)
+ These commonplace hacks demonstrate how security is an afterthought in the crypto industry. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Boston Dynamics has pledged not to weaponize its robots
Great, but the next question is: how do they stop customers from doing it? (Axios)

9 This is why you can’t tickle yourself
Your brain knows what’s coming. (Wired $)

10 It’s cool to hate on candy corn online
If you live in the US, it’s simply impossible to avoid at this time of year. (The Atlantic $)

Quote of the day

“I sent it to the whole team. We did that—look at that.”

—Elena Adams, the lead engineer for NASA’s asteroid-smashing DART spacecraft, tells the New Yorker what she did with the telescope images of the aftermath of the collision last week.

The big story

India’s water crisis is already here. Climate change will compound it.

Severe droughts have drained rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers across vast parts of India in recent years, pushing the nation’s leaky, polluted water systems to the brink.

More than 600 million Indians face acute water shortages. Seventy percent of the nation’s water supply is contaminated, causing an estimated 200,000 deaths a year, and some 21 cities could run out of groundwater as early as next year.

Climate change will surely make the problem worse. It’s uncertain what role higher temperatures have played in recent droughts, as the climate models have mainly predicted increasingly intense Indian monsoons. But the longer-term forecast is that the extremes will become more extreme, threatening more frequent flooding and longer droughts. Read the full story.

—James Temple

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ This list of the world’s 50 best bars is guaranteed to be hotly contested. Only one way to check, I suppose… I’d better pack my bags!
+ The moustache is officially back in fashion.
+ Don’t even think about visiting somewhere new without doing a vibe check on Google Maps.
+ Here’s how long it takes to paint an enormous (and seriously impressive) mural.
+ Stephen King—of comedy.

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Oct 8 2022

3 Questions Every Home Page Should Answer

We live in a world of constant information. Our brains are on nonstop overdrive, forcing us to curate whatever is most valuable.

The curating process happens, for the most part, subconsciously. Our minds tend to make micro-decisions by asking a variation of three questions:

What is this?
Who is it for?
What do I get?

Over the years, many theories have surfaced regarding the human attention span. Regardless, external elements distract or direct our minds to the next thing to assess quickly.

Websites don’t escape this process, especially ecommerce sites, since visitors are looking to spend money. Hence merchants would benefit from addressing the three subconscious questions prominently (and quickly) on their home or landing pages.

The key is to eliminate clutter and excess text to guide visitors through the questions without effort.

What Is This?

Does your website answer “What is this?” quickly, without visitors having to scroll or click?

Images carry much importance because humans process visual info faster than text. Nonetheless, our brains naturally gravitate to the most prominent text first.

An excellent example is Jones Bar-B-Q, a family restaurant in Kansas City. The company’s home page nails the “what” through clean imagery and simple, large text.

Jones Bar-B-Q is straight to the point on its home page, using imagery and large text to tell visitors what the company does.

Who Is This For?

Remember, our brains subconsciously seek answers to the three questions to decide whether to proceed. In this fast process of curation, our brains look for cues.

A site’s bounce rates could reflect whether it has addressed the questions for its intended audience.

Content plays a fundamental role, and imagery should resonate with your target age.

Consider Allbirds, a sustainable shoe company. The images on the brand’s home page appeal to a younger generation — likely Millennials (20s and 30s) or older Gen Zs (20s) — based on aesthetics, clothing, and style of photography.

Simultaneously, the text — “Journey To A Super Natural Future” — affirms the brand’s mission and identity. The shoe categories are based on the user’s identity: Plant Pacer, Wool Runner, and Tree Runner.

The Allbirds home page targets a younger generation — appealing to its target audience based on photography and clothing style.

What Do I Get?

A variation of “What do I get” could be “So what?” as sometimes the benefit is intangible, such as advancing sustainability or an important cause.

Away, a travel gear brand, uses photos to showcase its products on the home page. And the words “Flex, Meet Green” convey a simple and straight-to-the-point message, addressing what customers receive and why they should care. That text clarifies the benefits — the suitcases are flexible and sustainable.

Screenshot of the home page of Away, luggage company.

Travel gear company Away clearly addresses on its home the two key benefits of its products: flexible and sustainable.

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Oct 8 2022

5 Content Marketing Ideas for October 2022

Content marketing and its close cousin search engine optimization are the “pull” in many promotional plans. Articles, videos, and podcasts draw prospective customers to businesses, engaging them with helpful, informative, or entertaining content.

In October 2022, your company’s content marketing might include articles about financial planning, holiday gift selection, Italian or Polish heritage, historical or celebrity birthdays, or celebrating Internet Day.

What follows are five content marketing ideas your business can use in October 2022.

1. Financial Planning Month

The Financial Planning Association created Financial Planning Month in 2002 to educate Americans about financial planning and how to save money. Financial planning includes topics such as retirement planning, estate planning, insurance, and investing.

October 2022 is Financial Planning Month in the United States. Use this celebration to produce content about smart holiday shopping and why your products are of great value.

Some have argued that it was no accident that this October observance comes just ahead of the Christmas gift-giving season when so many folks can overspend.

For your company’s October 2022 marketing, consider writing articles related to financial responsibility and holiday purchases. You might highlight the value associated with your products or how shopping for gifts early with a budget in mind might help your customers.

You can still aim to sell your products while making a case for responsible shopping and helping folks understand the value your products and business bring.

2. Holiday Buying Guides

‘Tis the season for giving, and your company’s content marketing should reflect that. October is a good time to start promoting gift guides featuring your best products and offers for Christmas 2022.

With October being two months before the holiday season, shoppers are likely already looking for gift ideas. Photo by Erica Marsland Huynh.

Do you sell beauty products? Why not put together a holiday makeup gift guide? Or, if you have a home decor business, put together a holiday home gift guide featuring items for every room.

Not only will this content benefit your customers as they look for holiday gifts, but it will also serve as a reminder that your company exists with compelling products.

3. Heritage Month

October is both Italian-American and Polish-American Heritage Month. It’s therefore an opportunity to create content celebrating the many contributions to America of Italian and Polish immigrants and their families.

For example, a business selling power equipment might create content describing how the wave of Polish immigration from 1870 to 1914 contributed to significant growth in U.S. public works and private construction.

A western clothing and footwear retailer might create content about the Italian artisans who essentially created the cowboy look. Pio Serratelli, an Italian, started his hat-making business in 1878. Many consider Serratelli as some of the best western hats ever made. Likewise, famous bootmaker Tony Lama, known for the cowboy boot company he started, was also Italian.

An Italian-American founded the Tony Lama boot company.

Within the industry your business serves, there will almost certainly be an opportunity to celebrate Italian-American or Polish-American heritage that would resonate with your customers.

4. Famous Birthdays

America’s 39th President, Jimmy Carter, was born on October 1, 1924.

A staple of “culture” or “lifestyle” content marketing is to create posts about famous individuals around the time of their birthdays. This tactic can be excellent if there is a connection between your products, customers, and the individual you feature.

A mini-biography about a celebrity might tie in well with your products. For example, a men’s apparel store could profile actor Zach Galifianakis’ style using press photos. The article could end with product suggestions for a similar look.

Here are a few examples of the individuals you might write about around their birthdays.

October 1

President Jimmy Carter
Julie Andrews
Zach Galifianakis

October 2

Sting
Annie Leibovitz
Mahatma Gandhi

October 3

Tessa Thompson
Al Sharpton
Gore Vidal

October 4

Susan Sarandon
Charlton Heston
Rembrandt

5. Internet Day

Sir Tim Berners-Lee helped to get the internet started and, therefore, contributed to the eventual growth of ecommerce.

On October 29, the world celebrates Internet Day to commemorate the creation of the first website by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. The simple page has only short text reading, “This is a test.”

While that may not sound like much, it’s hard to imagine a world without the internet. Today, the internet has become an essential part of our lives.

For this would-be holiday, find a way to connect the products or services you sell to the emergence of the world wide web.

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Oct 8 2022

Charts: Global Payments Trends and Outlook

Funding for the global payments industry in Q2 2022 experienced its biggest quarterly decline since 2020. That’s according to a research report by CB Insights, titled “State of Payments Q2’22.”

According to the report, global payments funding dropped to $5.1 billion, its lowest level since Q4 2020, down 43% from Q1 2022. The number of deals decreased 18% from the previous quarter to 256.

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The CB Insights report addressed unicorns, private companies valued at $1 billion or higher. In Q2 2022, seven new payments-related unicorns were born, increasing the global number to 96.

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According to a report by Insider Intelligence, the volume of U.S. B2B payment transactions is anticipated to increase 7.8% year-over-year this year, reaching roughly $28 trillion.

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Celent is a U.S.-based research and advisory firm focused on global financial technology. Celent surveyed banks in 2021 to create a worldwide “State of the Nation” report for non-card payments modernization, asking bank executives about the future of deployment methods.

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Oct 8 2022

SEO for Sitelinks

Organic sitelinks appear beneath a listing in search results. Google provides no clear guidelines on optimizing for sitelinks, making them unpredictable.

Here’s what we know and suspect.

Organic Sitelinks

Organic sitelinks appear in two forms:

Branded.
“Mini” (a single line).

Branded sitelinks show for brand-name search queries and are always at the top. Google inserts branded sitelinks in mostly high authority sites for known “entities,” high-volume queries Google knows as brands.

Sometimes branded sitelinks include a box to search the site right from Google. Google’s tutorial addresses how to use structured data to increase the chances of a sitelink search box.

In most cases, however, branded sitelinks are from the main navigation, such as this example for an “ebay” query.

Branded sitelinks are usually from the main navigation, such as this example for an “ebay” query.

Mini sitelinks mostly show up in the top 10 organic results. Mini sitelinks are contextual — i.e., based on the search query.

Mini sitelinks are contextual, such as for this query “how to copy twitter profile link.”

Optimizing for Mini Sitelinks

I know of no way to optimize for branded sitelinks other than changing a site’s primary navigation. (Paid search advertisers have much better control.) But there are few on-page tactics to generate mini sitelinks, which appear in two forms.

Jump-to sitelinks go directly to a section of the same page ranking for the search query.
Cross-site sitelinks go to other pages of the site related to the query.

Jump-to sitelinks are based on inserting so-called “HTML anchor links” on a page and then linking to them. Clicking a link takes the visitor to that anchor without opening a new page.

WPBeginner explains how WordPress users can easily create a clickable table of contents via anchor texts in H2 or H3 subheadings. Here’s a screenshot below of a page that generates organic mini sitelinks using that method.

Consider updating a page if it includes a table of contents but fails to generate mini sitelinks on Google’s search results. In my experience, Google sometimes drops sitelinks if the content is a couple of years old.

Cross-site sitelinks show up when the underlying page links internally to others that elaborate on the topic. This is useful for highly-focused content.

Consider, too, linking prominently from one page to subheadings on another. Here’s an example of cross-site sitelinks on Google search results.

Example of cross-site sitelinks in Google search results.

Cross-site sitelinks show up when the underlying page links internally to others that elaborate on the topic, such as this example of adding menus in WordPress.

And here’s the page that populates them. As you can see, Google often drops some links and re-orders others.

This “About Menus” page populates cross-site sitelinks.

Cross-site sitelinks are harder to earn because they (apparently) rely on page authority, i.e., its backlink profile. Monitor your sitelinks using SE Ranking’s “Sitelinks” filter within its position monitoring tool. Save the filter for easier subsequent access.

How to Remove a Sitelink

A common reason to remove a sitelink is to replace it with another page. Unfortunately, Google provides few, if any, removal options.

Search Console no longer offers control over sitelinks. It used to.

Google recommends using a noindex meta tag to eliminate a sitelink. That recommendation, however, is incredibly damaging. It will remove the entire page from Google’s index, preventing it from ranking for any query.

Finally, this meta tag is still (apparently) supported by Google: . This will remove the sitelinks search box from your search snippet, but I am not sure if it will eliminate a page (from sitelinks). It’s worth a try if you’re desperate.

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Oct 8 2022

HelpFlow, a Live Chat Service, Ramps Up

In July I interviewed for this podcast an entrepreneur in California. His business sells custom dental guards and, importantly, offers 24/7 customer support. How, I asked, can a small business afford 24/7 support?

“We use a third-party live-chat service called HelpFlow,” the entrepreneur told me.

It turns out that yet another entrepreneur founded HelpFlow. His name is Jon Tucker. I ran him down, seeking to understand that business.

What follows is my interview with Tucker. The audio of our entire conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.

Eric Bandholz: Tell us about HelpFlow.

Jon Tucker: We run live chat and customer service teams for ecommerce brands. We’ve been doing it since 2015.

From the beginning we knew the value to any brand of good service. It’s tough to provide a 24/7 experience with fast response times. All owners think their business is complex, and they’re correct to a certain point. We’ve built an in-depth onboarding process, taking in tons of information about the business. It’s an intense form wizard.

We will know what you sell. We learn specific customer questions about shipping time and returns, as examples. We have a method of getting answers that apply to any store. Then we have a process to obtain info about the products — we pull in all your product pages, descriptions, and reviews. We have a crazy amount of data to answer product-specific questions, including the questions and answers from competitor sites and Amazon.

The result is a solid knowledge base from the first couple of days of onboarding. Then we work with the client to find additional queries. If we’re still unsure how to answer something, we’ll discuss with the client ways to respond.

It’s a very data-heavy process upfront to understand the business. We then update that data over time when people chat and clients give us feedback.

Bandholz: What’s your revenue model?

Tucker: We do a three-month initial contract, and then month-to-month. A new client is committed to 90 days, so there’s a bit of a financial buy-in. By then we’ve projected our costs and potential profit.

On the chat side, we charge a flat rate, depending on the chat volume, for 24/7 coverage. We don’t charge per chat, avoiding misaligned incentives with our clients.

We’re rigorous on tracking the sales generated from chat, knowing a client’s breakeven point and generating far above that, even with misattribution because some people who chatted would have bought anyway. We keep the pricing simple but make the reporting super granular for clients to understand the profitability.

Bandholz: Are you doing live chat only? What about email and web-based tickets?

Tucker: We started with just live chat until mid-2020. Then we launched customer service teams to run the entire helpdesk process — from tickets, social, and so on.

We did that for a couple of clients, and it worked well. So now there are two parts of our business. One is chat, which focuses on conversions. The other one is customer service operations. We can run an entire customer service team.

We offer staffing, too, for clients with a built-out process but need good agents.

Bandholz: Your agents are in the Philippines.

Tucker: Yes, we built the team from day one in the Philippines. The cultural differences are minor between that country and the U.S. and Western economies. In other regions, such as the Middle East, the differences are more pronounced. However, the Middle East is highly process-driven with phenomenal engineering. There’s a reason why they excel at software development.

Also, English is native in the Philippines. It’s a very Western culture, and the customer service industry is established.

Bandholz: What’s your technology stack, your software?

Tucker: If we’re responding to customer queries or staffing an agent, it’s all done on a client’s own systems working alongside the team there. Clients have access to every chat and provide feedback. We’ll have more access to a client’s systems if we’re doing full customer-service operations.

We’re super nerdy on forecasting. We project how many tickets will come in, how much manpower we will need, and when to start staffing. Our whole business revolves around forecasting and capacity tracking.

Bandholz: What is your vision for HelpFlow?

Tucker: The journey so far has been exciting. We were well positioned for Covid when ecommerce blew up. We grew a ton during that time. We’re focused now on scaling and expanding beyond ecommerce into other industries.

There are a lot of opportunities in healthcare, although it’s complex. All types of businesses need to provide 24/7 support.

Bandholz: Where can people connect with you or buy your services?

Tucker: Our website is HelpFlow.com. I’m on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Oct 8 2022

8 Gift Guide Ideas for Frazzled Shoppers

Shopping for gifts can be daunting. Stores can ease the burden with gift guides.

Holiday gift guides should appeal to all budgets and preferences. Consider creating categories based on price ranges, personalities, trends, and more.

Here are eight types of gift guides to consider.

8 Gift Guide Ideas

Gifts by price range work well for small or narrowly focused catalogs. Determine price ranges by average price points and the target audience. For example, discount stores could use ranges from under $10, $10-$25, $25-$35, and so on.

Gifts by category organize suggestions based on product types, such as apparel, electronics, and décor. They’re helpful for shoppers who know the kind of present they’re seeking.

Personality- and hobby-driven guides focus on individual recipients. “Dads” or “Moms” could be a category. “Thrill Seekers” could be another, for recipients who love things fast and furious. A fashion apparel store may offer items for buyers’ “smart and sassy” friends. A sporting goods site could include segments that appeal to boaters, campers, or hunters.

Hand-picked or curated guides evoke a sense of exclusivity. These can be based on what’s trending and popular or on niche interests. Curated guides work well for companies that instill trust in a community of customers.

Curated guides based on trending items rely on sales data to tell shoppers what’s popular.

Social guides rely on curating social media posts of customers or influencers around specific hashtags. It’s the most-used method of collecting and presenting those users’ favorite products. Many top brands rely on Instagram feeds for this purpose.

Trend-based guides rely on what’s in or happening now. Big brands often rely on celebrity and fashion trends, while others piggyback off the latest headlines or events. Backyard barbecues can inspire gift collections during the summer.

Quiz-based recommendations ask shoppers questions to determine their preferred items. Keep the questions short with 10 or fewer options. Note that guides needing shoppers’ inputs take much time to produce and likely require third-party tools that hook into product and sales data.

Staff picks are products your employees recommend to shoppers. Loyal customers trust the folks behind the scenes. Ask employees to tell their “story” by sharing what they love most.

Ways to Market

Having built the gift guides, your next steps are to market them, analyze their performance, and provide additional support.

Incorporate links to gift guides in the website’s primary navigation, emails, and marketing materials. Don’t leave shoppers hunting for gift suggestions.

Consider offering personalized help. Live chat and phone sessions with a personal shopper would be ideal for luxury stores. Or, shoppers can complete a questionnaire, which you could then respond to via email.

Offer gift wrapping and special messaging, so customers have gifts delivered to recipients directly. These offerings can make ordering a no-brainer.

Nordstrom uses callouts to promote extended support, such as styling and gift wrapping.

Analyze sales funnels to understand which recommended products sell best. Remove the slow movers and replace out-of-stock items.

Don’t forget to sell gift cards. They help gift-givers who can’t decide, while boosting your bottom line.

A Prime Benefit

With so many options, shopping for the perfect gift is more difficult each year. Done well, gift guides act as a prime benefit — a sort of white-glove service shoppers aren’t getting elsewhere.

And gift guides aren’t just for the winter holidays. Adjust the recommendations based on all seasons and holidays. Or create additional sections for birthdays and weddings, encouraging customers to return year-round.

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Oct 8 2022

The Rise of the Ecommerce Marketer

The leadership of ecommerce companies has shifted since the industry’s inception two decades ago. The shift can give us clues to ecommerce’s not-to-distant future.

In the early days, ecommerce management included skilled developers and technophiles, according to Rick Wilson, CEO of Miva, an ecommerce platform.

Today, software engineers and developers are in the tactical and technical trenches, if they even exist within the ecommerce organization. Marketers have taken center stage in many, if not most, ecommerce organizations.

“We have fully entered the age of the non-technical online merchant,” Wilson wrote in an email on September 14, 2022.

Although Wilson did not comment on the implications of this move toward non-technical and marketing-focused leadership, we can make some inferences.

Moving from Tech

As the ecommerce industry has grown, many complex technical problems are no longer an issue. Platforms such as Shopify and Miva have leveled the tech playing field, making it relatively easy for businesses to launch and operate.

Years ago, companies needed to build secure websites that properly merchandised their products. They needed to accept payments in a safe and Payment Card Industry-compliant way. They had to avoid data breaches and win at search engine optimization. And, often, they needed to integrate with legacy business systems.

Image of a person holding a credit card using a laptop.

In the early days of ecommerce, companies were responsible for building their own sites.

No matter where one looked in ecommerce’s early days, there was a technical problem. Thus code-savvy developers and engineers rose to the top ecommerce positions.

Circa 2022, although using Shopify requires a few development skills — or at least a good template — services such as Webflow take no real technical skill. A small ecommerce business with a reasonably talented graphic designer can create an acceptable and functional ecommerce website with little to no programming capabilities.

Wilson’s company, Miva, is one of several platforms that make running an ecommerce business easy in terms of the required technical knowledge.

What’s more, hundreds of apps and tools require no code to integrate just about every software solution one could imagine. Want to connect an ecommerce shop to Amazon? There is an app for that. Need an order management system? No problem. Want integrated email marketing solutions? That’s why Shopify recently invested another $100 million in Klaviyo.

It is no longer about how to operate online. It is about how to market online.

New Channels

The parity in ecommerce platforms and tools has given rise to a new breed of ecommerce professional — the marketer.

The problem now is not how to run an ecommerce website but how to create a profit-driving ecommerce machine that predictably generates sales. That’s just the sort of place where marketing professionals thrive.

Marketers have long used intuition, data, and grit to identify and scale promotional channels.

These professionals invented direct marketing, pioneered the gift with purchase, and transformed Facebook from a simple social media platform into an advertising empire when they learned they could use its behavioral targeting to generate ecommerce sales.

Marketers now lead many ecommerce operations because the real problem is a scarcity of sales.

If we accept this premise, we can assume that ecommerce could go through a significant channel shift, and marketers will continue to seek new and scalable opportunities.

New channels might include some combination of commerce video, text messaging, ecommerce marketplaces, or influencer marketing to drive sales.

Takeaways

All of this is good news for ecommerce professionals. No matter your role — merchant, marketer, or enthusiast — it’s an excellent time to get involved.

A new generation of ecommerce professionals — more focused on marketing and sales than technology — is emerging. And this change will almost certainly disrupt the market and create opportunities.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments

Oct 8 2022

25 Free Tools to Test Your Website

Regularly testing your ecommerce website’s performance will ensure it’s running at an optimal level. There are plenty of free resources available to help.

Here is a list of free tools to test your website. There are tools to measure download speed, monitor user experience, test accessibility, locate broken links, evaluate search engine and browser compatibility, and check mobile friendliness. All of these tools have free plans, and most offer premium options.

Free Tests for Your Site

W3C Markup Validation Service, from World Wide Web Consortium, checks the markup of web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, and MathML, among others. This resource offers tools to validate specific content, such as RSS feeds and CSS, check a website’s level of international friendliness, or find broken links.

Screenshot of W3C Markup Validation Service website.

W3C Markup Validation Service

Google PageSpeed Insights reports on the performance of a page on mobile and desktop devices and suggests how to improve, providing both lab and field data. Lab data helps debug performance issues, but it may not capture real-world bottlenecks. Field data is useful for capturing real-world user experience but has a limited set of metrics.

Pingdom Website Speed Test analyzes the load speed of a website and identifies why a page is fast, slow, too big, and so on. See how your website conforms to performance recommendations from Google. Pingdom offers a premium service for web speed monitoring.

Dotcom-Monitor lets you test your website speed in real browsers for free from up to three worldwide locations. Users may select which browser they’d like to run. The test supports Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and mobile browsers on Android, iPhone, and iPad. Free for up to 250 tests per month from five concurrent locations.

Screenshot from Dotcom Monitor home page.

Dotcom-Monitor

Yellow Lab Tools is a free and open-source online test to help speed up heavy web pages. Check performance best practices. Detect problems with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, fonts, and more. Provides precise information to fix the detected problems.

Web Page Analyzer is a free web speed test with advice on improvement. Enter a URL to calculate page size, composition, and download time. The script computes the size of individual elements and sums up each type.

SERP Racer lets you compare scores across key search queries in your niche to understand better the impact of page speed on your business. Enter Google search terms, and run a search to compare site speeds.

SERP Racer

KeyCDN Website Speed Test is a full-page speed test from 10 locations worldwide. The results show the requests, content size, and load time. In addition, a waterfall details each asset’s timings and HTTP headers.

Dead Link Checker crawls a website, identifying broken links to correct. Target an entire website or a single page. Create an account to check multiple sites or schedule an auto-check.

Ahrefs offers free tools to check the search-engine-optimization health of your website. Run a site audit to uncover your website’s technical and on-page issues. Use the Webmaster Tools feature to monitor your overall SEO setup, browse backlink data, and compare your site to competitors in SERPs.

Screenshot of Ahrefs Webmaster Tools home page.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Seorch offers a free test that checks the essential components of SEO, including whether your website meets Google’s quality guidelines. The SEO Check will analyze your website and show errors that prevent a good ranking. Check each URL any number of times.

Inspectlet is a user-testing platform to watch individual visitor behavior on your site with session recording. It includes dynamic heatmaps, A/B testing, form metrics, and error logging. Free for one website and up to 2,500 sessions per month.

Nibbler is a free tool for testing websites. Enter the address of any website, and Nibbler generates a report scoring the website for key areas, including accessibility, SEO, social media, and technology. Nibbler is free but limited to three reports.

Nibbler

GTmetrix provides insights on how well your site loads and recommendations on how to optimize it. GTmetrix can test your pages daily, weekly, or monthly. Set conditions based on page speed and size. Receive email alerts on performance. Analyze the loading of your site from seven global locations.

Uptrends Website Speed Test gives a snapshot of how your desktop or mobile users experience your site. Test in the browser of your choice. Check your Google PageSpeed Insights score, recommended improvements, important page metrics, and page-load progression waterfall report. View important loading events with Google’s Core Web Vitals or W3C navigation timing metrics.

HubSpot Website Grader evaluates website performance, including page size, page requests, page speed, and more. It also analyzes responsive design, SEO, and security.

HubSpot Website Grader

After the Deadline checks your text and issues feedback on your writing. Copy and paste your text for contextual spell checking, advanced style checking, and intelligent grammar checking.

UsabilityHub is a remote-user research platform to test your design with real people. Assess the effectiveness of your site’s navigation and content by measuring how users complete tasks using your designs. Free plan with up to three collaborators and tests in up to 2 minutes.

Five Second Tests, from UsabilityHub, evaluate your site by measuring visitors’ recall and first impressions. Free plan with up to three collaborators and tests for up to 2 minutes.

UsabilityHub - Five Second Tests website.

UsabilityHub – Five Second Tests

Juicy Studio Readability Test analyzes the ease of reading level of your text. The algorithms provide only a rough guide but can indicate whether you’ve written content at the right level for the intended audience.

Browsershots will test your website’s browser compatibility, producing screenshots of your web design in different operating systems and browsers.

LambdaTest performs live, interactive cross-browser testing of your public or locally-hosted websites and web apps across 3,000 browsers, devices, and operating systems. Debug in real-time with integrated tools on both desktop and mobile browsers. Free plan for one test and up to 60 minutes a month of real-time browser testing.

LambdaTest

ClickHeat provides a heatmap of clicks on an HTML page, showing hot and cold click zones. ClickHeat is free and open source.

Xenu’s Link Sleuth checks websites for broken links on images, frames, plugins, backgrounds, local image maps, stylesheets, scripts, and Java applets.

UptimeRobot is an online monitoring application to know when your website is down. The free plan offers 50 monitors for 5-minute checks.

UptimeRobot

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