CogBlog

The new Ask Jeeves search platform appears to be just an Ask Jeeves branded version of Looksmart's platform. I noticed the similarity in their interfaces, and it seems there is other evidence as well.

Looksmart's account admin:


Ask Jeeves account admin:


Ask Jeeves has said they built "a lot" of it themselves, but it appears the management interface is pulled directly from Looksmart. For marketers this will just mean the headache of one more not-so-great interface to deal with. At least it is one we already know from Looksmart.

I think a lot of 2nd tier search engines seem to discount the importance of a highly usable interface for advertisers. It's almost a cliche at this point, but they really could learn a few things from Google. Their management interface remains the fastest, most intuitive out there.

Yahoo/Overture is a strong second, and could be much better if they could throw off the Microsoft-specific interface design philosophy. I truly don't understand why anyone would build a web-application that requires Internet Explorer on a Windows PC to operate properly! I could almost see it if the result was something actually better than the alternative, but it never is.

I've always wondered whether hosting contact forms on a secure page would actually boost conversion rates. Do people just feel more comfortable completing a form if the page hosting the form shows the little lock in the corner. I'm sure it is true for a commerce checkout process, but what about a simple form that only asks for name/phone/email and the like?

I actually saw a message recently that said "I can't believe this form isn't secure?", so obviously there is a certain group of people who would be influenced. This doesn't completely make sense to me, everyone routinely sends much more sensitive information than names and phone numbers unprotected via email without thinking twice about it. And, the page hosting the form doesn't need to be secure as long as the form posts to a secure url. So, this is really all about a person's perception of security.

To answer this question we set up a split test of 4 versions of the same simple form on a client site. We also tested whether the inclusion of a privacy policy makes a difference. So our options were non-secure/no privacy, secure/no privacy, non-secure/privacy, and secure with a privacy policy.

After about 3,000 visits to the split options the results are:

neither - 14.7% conversion rate
secure only - 12.8% conversion
privacy only - 16.4% conversion
privacy and secure - 16.2% conversion

So running things through a secure page, independent of other factors, actually reduced our conversion rate. Maybe that little message about entering a secure page actually scares a few people away. The privacy policy did positively influence conversion, but the secure form at best didn't help and may actually hurt conversion. In the presence of the privacy policy the secure page did not show a statistically significant influence on conversion.

Today we launched a new site for an exhibit of photography by Sebastaio Salgado. The exhibit will be the first public event for The Leonardo in downtown Salt Lake City. The photographs are absolutely incredible. If you are in SLC between October 1st, and December 17th I recommend a visit to the exhibit. Here is the exhibit site:

http://www.theleonardo.org/salgado/

You can learn more about The Leonardo here.

Recently we've been researching large lists of phrases within particular categories for a client. We're taking a category as a whole, researching top search phrases within the category and plotting this against bid levels for the top 20 Yahooo Search Marketing positions. It is very interesting to see the level of competition, or lack of, in particular verticals.

Bid levels tend to vary both as a function of the number of advertisers bidding on a particular phrase and the level of price competition for a top spot. If you were to try to fit an exponential curve to the level of price decay by position the curve will be much more flat for some phrases than for others. It would be interesting to see how this changes over time. I would suspect that as competition increases, and as fewer new advertisers bid on a particular phrase the curve will flatten out.

Finance categories are extremely competitive. One of the most competitive phrases I've seen yet is "life insurance settlements" with the top three positions all bidding over $35/click. The chart above shows the curve for "mortgage note buyers" and "online home equity loans", both of which have nearly the same top bid (~$9.50) but very different competition curves.

I'll see if I can post more of these oh-so-interesting observations in the future. That'll keep you coming back...

We were contacted today by this site:

http://www.google-advertising-professionals.net/

It is a directory of companies who have completed the Google AdWords certification process. It is an interesting idea. The listings are pretty sparse at the moment, but I'm sure will become more fleshed out soon.