Clicksharp Marketing

Today, KeyRelevance’s Bill Slawski (not to be confused with Bill Swerski) treated us to a monumental bit of news.

In a running commentary entitled SEO By The Sea, Bill reports that Yahoo! has submitted a patent application to (at least partially) codify and automated usability reviews for webpages. Essentially, this means that the actual user experience of any given web page will be rated against all others on like terms, not unlike the Quality Score metric that interacts with bid prices in Google AdWords, to determine whose ads get shown where, and for what price.

First, what exactly is usability? According to Jakob Nielsen, “usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use.”

Second, why is Yahoo’s announcement important? There are a variety of reasons, but three major ones emerge:

1. Recognition of the conversion cycle. Nowadays, the winners in search engine marketing separate themselves from the pack by extending beyond just traffic generation, and driving conversions. This means that if a client sells products on their website, a conversion is a completed sale… and traffic is just traffic. Much of this hinges on a smart, usable site.
2. Competition in paid search advertising. Already a competitive arena (and more so every day), now it won’t suffice to just do keyword research and good copy. The usability of landing pages will contribute to the efficacy of an ad campaign, to the point where all the leaders will inevitably be the ones who invested in usability reviews.
3. The emergence of usability as a major element of the digital marketing mix.

This last one will very likely shape the search engine marketing business in the coming few years.

Google has made it clear that its mission is to “organize the world’s information.” Yahoo’s search mission is a little less clear, though with news like this, it appears the Microsoft takeover talks have got them thinking in the right direction. By implementing usability algorithms into the search experience, these engineers will make major inroads in their mission of delivering the smoothest, most organized information experience.

Usability reviews and user testing can often claim tens of thousands of dollars from a marketing budget. As these services (and the public’s awareness of them) evolve from super-premium to “must have,” new players will emerge. Competition will refine both the service and its price. Designers who invested in usability training will reap the benefits. And downstream, the people out there doing business will see better returns on their digital marketing campaigns.

The most ambitious marketers are investing now in usability, despite its caviar reputation: very rich and delicate, and won’t fill you up like the rest of your meal. But down the road, they will have usability experts to thank for making their site the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Assuming a continued dedication by Yahoo to seeing its patent through (and similar inroads by its competition), usability experts will be a very well-fed group in 3-5 years’ time.

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Paul Burani
Clicksharp Marketing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 @ 8:09 am on the category Pay-per-click advertising, SEM, SEO, Usability, Website design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.


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