Every web designer who works extensively with HTML and CSS knows that debugging a website in IE (no matter what version) is the equivalent to slowly plucking every hair from your head. There have been endless amounts of articles written on it from the amateur to the influenial - explaining everything from how to hack it (ahhhh!) to how to learn to love the bomb.

To date, perhaps the most frustrating part of cross-browser testing in IE has been the ability to run your websites in multiple versions of the same browser. As the web design world knows, Microsoft has put a cap on how my versions of IE can be running on a windows machine and that cap would be one. Now, there have been many ways around this - all of which have their ups and downs: installing multiple virtual environments that support different IE versions (ick); using a web app that takes screenshots of your site in IE; or using applications that are capable of installing multiple versions of IE thus letting you test to your heart's content.

I've tried all the ways above, the last having up till now been my choice of posion. However, recently (in my terms, not in terms of when the program was released) a new level of multiple IE testing has surfaced for the good of all designer-kind: IE Tester.

This is the holy grail of IE testing that we've all been waiting for - yes, it's alpha; no, it doesn't have debugging toolbars; but all those aside, HALLELUJAH!

Created by the same genius who made the IE debug bar (which has served me in countless ways over the years) this nifty little program installs on your windows system (XP and Vista) and lets you cleanly view the world through IE eyes. It's admitted that it's alpha, so bugs are more than likely probable; however, this little baby packs a major punch now and can only grow finer with time. The interface is sleak and lets you use tabs to keep track of your opened versions of IE. In addition, it supports a wide assortment of versions, including the very beta IE 8. But the creme de la creme for me - it doesn't denote to the highest IE browser setting when you use conditional comments, so IE 6 is IE 6 and IE 7 is IE 7 and the world just became a slightly better place for me to test in.

I'm hoping this cures my IE testing woes for years to come, as I've already seen it work magic in my testing days now, and I'm incredibly excited to see where this progresses in the future.

Before we start, what does "branding" mean to you?

If you're in the advertising/marketing industry, it may mean creating a cohesive look and feel for a particular company, service, or product in order to create a competitive advantage in the market vertical. In English, that would simply translate to "creating a preference for something being sold by a particular company".

Considering that I have worked with a variety of different companies which have ranged in size from small start-ups to global enterprises, I have a very particular take on what branding is and how much of it you can leave at the door when you're growing your business. To be blunt, Starling Interactive plays in the Direct Response arena because it's a solid way of retaining clients. You can measure and compare and calculate any campaign you wish. You know down to a penny what your return on investment is, and from that if it's wise to continue spending. With branding though, everything is really soft. Measurements, reporting metrics, and results are all muddled up with everything else you do. You run a branding campaign anywhere and who knows what the effect is? You have to wait and watch and bet that it will work. Therein is one of the problems I have with companies who with to "brand" themselves.

A brand isn't something you conjure up with your creative team or agency. It's not making a neat-o logo and catchphrase and then watching millions of dollars pour in. This applies to the hot "Web 2.0" ventures as well. No shiny logo with a reflection or big fonts will create market share. No, branding is much more than that.

Real branding, the kind that drives revenue for your company because of a preference, is gained through doing good things. You can spend millions of dollars on advertising, you can have Super Bowl ads and cool placements in movies and still get nowhere if you don't embrace this fact.

If you don't agree with me on this, pick a brand and think about it a little. Let's take the search giant "Google". Google owns a majority of the search market in the world, and has huge competition from companies such as Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and others. These are companies with budgets in the billion dollar range, yet they can't create what Google has. Why? Because Google approached their brand the right way. They focused on their product: a great search engine service. Then they kept focusing on that product to create the loyalty to their product over the competition. That approach is something that advertising and marketing can't buy.

Your "brand" will need to follow the same rules. If your product is lacking, your service sub-par, or your user experience worse than your competition, it will be all but impossible to throw advertising dollars at the problem to make it go away.

I've had the pleasure of running dozens upon dozens of conversion tests in my career for some very well established companies. These tests have covered e-commerce, lead generation, and ad revenue generation, along with every type of creative approach you can imagine.

Through this time I've learned a lot of very interesting things about testing a site to increase performance, along with some other very interesting things to consider when you perform your own A/n or Multi-Variate testing:

1. Park any emotional attachments at the door

Clients becoming emotionally attached to a creative piece is the number one problem that I've seen occur with any type of test. Whether its attachment to a writing style, image, trade dress, new creative, or old creative, it always hurts the test. Before you start any test, any stakeholders need to be aware that increasing conversion is the goal. This applies universally to any test, be it ecommerce driven, lead driven, or ad driven. As the business owner, you must have clarity in your mind about how far you're willing to go. If you ran a test and found that your trade dress and branding elements converted lower than a new version would you be willing to change it? If the verbiage that you yourself wrote - which you feel is the best thing ever written - bombs, would you separate yourself from it enough to allow positive change?

If you don't ask these questions, you can run into some very rocky situations. I've run multiple tests where the client had made up their mind before about the outcome, with highly detrimental results. These clients chose what they wanted to win, and when it didn't, insisted that their "top pick" be used instead. They would explain away hard results with empirical data like someone truly in denial. End result? Their company suffered lower conversions than they could have enjoyed.

2. Don't get too cozy with Rich Media

This goes right along with number 1 above. A client has a simple, straightforward website that immediately offers the cost, details of the product, call-to-action, and other supporting materials. They then decide that they want sexy, they want flashy, they want cool. They end up with a flash driven, AJAX bejeweled site with the production value of a Michael Bay company. Guess what? Unless you're in a very specific niche where Rich Media does work, your site will bomb.

If you are running a direct response website you need to remember what your goal is: sales. This means giving the consumer a positive experience with your site. Old school usability rules. Do they have to wait for a pre-loader, an effect? Do they have to play detective just to get a price or and "add to cart" button? If so, the odds are your shiny new site will bomb.

3. Start simple, then get complicated

You've heard this before in a variety of ways. When it comes to site testing for direct response it means making your website into an online salesman. In all the tests I've run, the two easiest things to try out that add to conversion are bullet points and emphasizing your response mechanism. The first one is straightforward, now for your response mechanism. This is the thing you are trying to get your user to do - it can be filling out a lead form, clicking an "add to cart" button, or watching a video. Adding emphasis to this mechanism to "break it out" of the rest of the page is what you're looking for.

4. Don't stop testing

You can never say that you have the "best" version of a website. You may have a great conversion for a time, but things change, and you can always make things better. Additionally, if you're like most businesses, the seasons of the year will effect you. A time generic page may do great, but why do you think retailers always put up seasonal ads?

You must get into the habit of planning tests for different seasons and events. Just like a retailer you need to find ways to elicit a consumer to purchase using anything you have, which brings us to the final point.

5. Beware anyone who tells you they "know" what's best

We've all met a version of this particular marketer. They will always claim that testing is irrelevant because they've built X amount of websites that drove Y amount of traffic and they "know what people want".

Bogus! If they knew what people wanted, they would be mega billionaires hanging out with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. This person will regularly be disguised as a Marketing Manager, all the way up to a C-level executive. Whatever their title is, they're full of it if they make such a silly claim.

Testing is one of the few ways a business can find out what people want. The others are market testing, focus groups, and a few other highly valuable methods. Making a website based on an over-sized ego is not one them.

I've gone over this point in other places, most notably talking about eCommerce and bad shopping experiences, but I still see many people making the mistake of having their shopping solution as a footnote on their business plan.

While these same people will testify to how great the internet is, and how it's changed the way that traditional mediums process campaigns, many times they've only done a cursory pass at their site and failed to look at it from an objective point of view. That one process right there might be able to give you more insight into a struggling online initiative than anything else. Maybe your site is pretty, maybe it is using up-to-date technologies and you spent a pretty penny on it, but if it's not performing then none of that matters.

What would you think of your site if you were a new user? The answer of "be totally excited for how cool my store is" is incorrect, and I'll tell you why: online users are a cynical bunch, me included. I can't tell you how many tens of thousands of banners I've seen through the years, how many convoluted ordering systems I've been forced into, or how many hundreds of sites I've had to create a password for, only never to return. When you consider that, I can truthfully tell you that I've abandoned purchases for things I've wanted based solely on the pain in the neck it was causing me to buy it.

You spend so much money to convince people to give you money, then you turn around and make it hard for them to hand it over! Really, why do you want to try to up-sell them something through 4 screens? If you have only 10 products to offer, why do you think they'll want to get a user name and password that's been verified through e-mail? What they really want to do is never have anything to do with you again. Forcing them to register will not create loyalty or increase their buying.

Luckily for you, there are tons of great services online that take a lot of the guesswork out of selling online (that was a hint, by the way). There are also a great deal of experts in this field, the team at Starling Interactive included, that deal with the terrors of usability every day.

Whether it's your own common sense, our team, or another team, you owe it to yourself to take a second glance at what you're doing online. Doing so can only increase profits.

I've heard a lot of concern from retail business owners expressing doubts about getting into affiliate marketing "this late in the game". I usually respond with a bit of a chuckle, since I don't think the affiliate vertical, or even any of the other online verticals, are anywhere near mature.

Even more business owners don't quite understand how powerful affiliate marketing is. While those "in the know" online have long past had a drink of the affiliate kool-aid, it turns out a lot of people in the offline world haven't had a sip of this wonderful drink yet. For those who haven't, let's do a quick overview of what an affiliate is, without jargon or buzzwords:

Affiliates are commissioned sales agents working for you online

That's it. One sentence explanation. We're going to stay away from the words "communications", "partnership", "value added", and some of the other gems that are so often used to initiate people into affiliate marketing. They're sales agents that you don't have to pay, unless of course they perform. Now really think about that and what it means to you. Because of the lower barrier to entry, affiliate marketing is one of the great places to start online. Your ROI is guaranteed, and you only pay for results.

That's not all! If you have really good affiliates, they'll have access to their own marketing tools. They can do paid search, natural search, e-mail marketing, heck, they can even have their own affiliates working for them. If you manage them well, treat them right, and most importantly, give them a good revenue oriented reason to work with you, you're golden.

If you're reading this and it sounds good, know this: it's not too late to get involved. Affiliates are constantly popping up and looking for new opportunities. Even if you work with products or services that are leaning in the direction of being commodity's you can still succeed, but first you need to get going with your own program.

No one will ever deny that Paid Search is a great way to generate revenue for a company. The statistics are staggering, and for our purposes don't even need to be repeated. Everyone knows that between Google, Yahoo, and MSN that a boatload of people are searching for millions of things every single day, and that Natural Search and Paid Search are the way to reach them.

What I find a lot of business owners don't understand is the nuance of Search, and what they can really expect from the launch of campaigns. For now we'll focus on Paid Search, and the two big divisions you'll see therein

Trade Name Search vs. Generic Search

Every few months I'll have a new client ask about the breakdown in their search reports. They'll wonder aloud the value in having someone manage search when the majority of their conversions are coming from "Trade Name" oriented searches, an example for me would be the search phrase "Starling Interactive", as opposed to "online marketing".

Now, I know of a few different approaches to setting up Paid Search, and I've always favored one that segregates trade terms from non-trade terms. This gives a great insight into the power and volume of other media sources pushing the company forward. The problem this creates is that when clients see the number side by side the non-trade terms look like they convert terribly. This isn't an undue assumption, since trade terms can convert anywhere from 5% and up all the way into the range of 20-40% conversion, depending on the service/product and the keyword phrase.

By comparison you have generic search, which converts at a much more modest range of 1-3%, again depending on the service/product and the keyword phrase. Relative to a trade name query, this is indeed terrible, but once you look at the mechanics of the situation, you see that generic really isn't doing badly at all.

The key different between these two types of search are what drives them. While a consumer searching for "running shoes" has not made a brand decision in their buying efforts, someone searching for "Nike shoes" certainly has. Which one do you think will convert better? Trade oriented search also benefits from other methods of advertising, especially that of Direct Response TV advertising. When you take into effect what it took to even get a trade name search to your site, the conversion actually drops, since another advertising method had to drive the traffic, and your site is now handling the conversion aspect

That said, my personal viewpoint on Paid Search and both mediums is responsibility. Most search marketers understand that there is a ceiling to what Paid Search can do - it is by no means a "silver bullet" meant to support an entire company, but it can definitely drive highly controlled results in a short period of time.

This should be a rather short article on SEO. It's going to be short because SEO really hasn't changed a lot in the years and years that the discipline has been around.

While it's true there are more SEO consultancies around now than you can shake a stick at (why you would shake this stick, I don't know), the truth is that most of them charge exorbitant fees to tell you one thing: Write more content. This famous phrase of course is usually used to say, "Content is King". In other words, quit pouring money into a consultant, and get yourself a writer.

The more you write, the more information search engines will have about your website and what you're trying to do, and at the end of the day, that's what the search engines need. How many users would love Google or any of its competitors if it spit out garbage results? The service of the engines exists solely in their ability to give people what they want. If you have bad natural search rankings, it's either because you don't have what the people want yet, or the search engines don't know that you do.

There are of course some technical aspects to SEO, but unless you're publishing to a blog that runs fully off of Flash and AJAX with a robots.txt file set to turn away all the engines, you should probably focus on your content first.

That's it. Start writing about things that people want to hear about. Don't worry about position 1, or even 2 on any SERP right now, just make something worth while.

One New Message Received:

"Hello there,

I would like to be your friend on this great social networking site we're both members of. I don't actually use the site to make real friends, and I'm not an active member of the community, but I still think I'd like to be your friend.

Why? Oh, that's easy. I want to send you communications and updates about my products and services. No, not like e-mail, because we'll be friends and I want to give you a personal message. Well, no, it won't be "personal" since I'll send these announcements to all of my friends, but come on, give friendship a chance!

Sincerely,

Spokesperson, Company XYZ"

The biggest mistake that I see companies engaging in these days regarding Social Media is acting like it is just another conduit for sending out SPAM. They rush the bandwagon to be a part of Myspace and Facebook, they setup Twitter accounts to blab incessantly about their own company, they setup a blog that offers no real insight or value, and they submit anything they possibly can to sites like Digg and Technorati - over and over and over, ad infinitum.

I can understand the urge to "get going" with this newfangled social media thing. I can understand that companies want to "reach out" to their base in a meaningful way. The problem is most companies are taking their first step with a "me first" attitude. They don't care about a social community outside of an ROI it will support. They don't get what it means to enter into these groups responsibly, which is the biggest reason they fail.

The first rule, and the most important rule, that all companies need to remember when engaging in Social Marketing is this: Be social.

No one wants to get a Myspace bulletin with a 10% off coupon from you. No one wants to hear about a new special you have going through Twitter. That's called SPAM, and everyone already gets enough of it.

Today's Social Media Homework lesson: Go to your favorite Social Media site and take a look at other companies who have a presence. Count how many you personally would want to visit again. Now count how many are just plain annoying, shameless plugs for a product or service. Now divide those two numbers together and you'll get what I call the "BS Factor".

Next time: What people *do* want to hear about.