As a volunteer reporter for Barry Schwartz’s Search Engine Roundtable blog, I’m often asked, “Why do you do it?” My consulting work is focused on usability and Internet application testing. Why am I out chasing sessions at search engine marketing conferences?

To begin with, my work began in web design and consulting/online teaching search engine optimization in the 1990’s. Therefore, I know many “long-timers” in the SEO/M industry. It remains an area of strong interest for me, which is why I continue to keep another volunteer, non-paying project, Cre8asiteforums, going. Discussions there cover web design, development, usability, accessibility, search engines, marketing, and much more.

This daily involvement keeps me well informed, which makes me unique to companies and individuals who wish for usability consulting from someone who can see the whole picture. I need (and want) to understand the code behind a page, the behaviors and habits of people intended to use those web pages and the ways in which the final product may be marketed.

Knowledge Fortifies and Enhances Skills

Since in today’s web environment, more and more people are finding web sites from social networking sites, I felt it was important for me to truly understand how advertising, marketing and public relations companies are applying social media to their clients’ marketing campaigns.

This is why I chose this particular conference as my next volunteer reporting “job”. Being there in person allows me to meet industry leaders or speakers who are teaching attendees. The entire time I’m at a conference related to marketing, in my mind, I’m weaving what I learn into what I know about human factors and user centered design.

For example, one of the messages that came from this conference on social media was that success comes from participating in social networking. It’s not something you can pretend to know from the outside, looking in. To truly understand who uses Facebook, Stumbleupon, or the hundreds of niche micro community sites popping up, marketing teams learn and apply campaigns by first getting involved with social media/networking communities.

When a client comes to you, seeking the right profitable course for their brand, a skilled marketer will know which social networking site is the best fit for your company. This may absolutely NOT be Digg, Reddit, MySpace or Facebook.

Choose a marketing company that takes the required time to study your target market and understands their behaviors, language, interests and their favorite ways of communicating with one another. This includes understanding the importance of usability, accessibility and persuasive web design and where these fit into web site promotion and social web behavior. Once again, I’ve reinforced my long-held belief that usability and seo (and all the related tie-in skills to these two areas), are able to join forces and provide a united project plan. A team such as this understands and values your brand reputation management.

They are also well aware that the Internet never sits still. Consider hiring employees and consultants who invest time in keeping their skills and knowledge current. Additionally, make sure to budget for continued education for your present staff. A poor choice in marketing or web design can absolutely crush your business.

This is why I place such value on reporting conference sessions and why I invest my own money to do it.

I want to be sure that those who hire me are getting the best person for the job.

Coverage by Search Engine Roundtable, Rather Than My Own Blog

Another key reason I’m tied to SER is because I’m a contributing writer for that blog. I do that, and conference reporting, because he’s been a great friend and strong supporter to me. So yes, a bit of simple loyalty and friendship certainly comes into play. Barry doesn’t put any pressure on his reporters. He’s always grateful for the help. I’m crazy enough to work for a smile and a hug sometimes…

It’s our tradition, at SER, to get the session information posted quickly. SER was the first blog to try and reach every SES conference and bring it to those who weren’t able to be there in person. Several years later this remains a volunteer project, where reporters offer to help Barry Schwartz (and now Tamar Weinberg), blog sessions. In cases like SES, where there are 3 - 4 days with 4 tracks of sessions, the result exceeds the exceptional when his volunteer reporting team produces nearly complete coverage.

Everyone has their own style. Perfect copy is not a requirement, nor a demand. (I tend to push out the first draft and then go back and edit for clarity and errors.) While the lack of perfection has been sometimes criticized, I feel that many people don’t realize that none of us are paid to do this. We pay for our own rooms, food and travel expenses to “give back” to the community in this way. We try to not make mistakes (like when I got dates wrong on Tuesday), but when we have a chance to breathe, someone from SER manages to go back and catch the errors readers haven’t already pointed out.

Lastly, I do this work wearing my jeans and sneakers if I wish to. (Thanks so much for that!)

Barry’s Recap of Sessions is here

SMX was a two-day, one track conference. The following were covered (all sessions except the last one on Wednesday, which was a clinic. We also don’t report Q & A, which follow each session.)

Social Media Marketing Essentials
Linkbait - Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites
Extra! Extra! The Social News Sites
A Marketer’s Guide to Social Bookmarking & Tagging
Keynote Q&A: Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us & Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon
Effectively Leveraging Social Networking
Evangelist - The Marketer’s Role in SMM
Micro Communities
Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers & Answer Sharing

I also linked to additional coverage and photos in Photos Are Up for SMX Social Media NYC

As I’ve mentioned, this is the last conference I can afford to volunteer for. It’s been an honor to serve the Search Engine Marketing industry in this way.

……………………………………

Related:

SMX: Was it worth it? Did I learn anything? Will I go again? by Brendan Picha.

Photos from Liana Evans’ SMX Social NYC 2007 pictures set.

It appears as though the pickings for those interested in both usability/user experience design and search engine optimization/marketing have one more conference to choose from in the same week. Jakob Nielson’s User Experience 2007 conference is set for December 2-7, 2007, in Las Vegas.

So are:

Pubcon - December 4-7,
Search Engine Strategies Chicago - December 3 - 7.

One wonders how this happened?

Interestingly, from the search engine marketing side, more traditional speakers are filtering out into other large, established conferences, such as those from the Direct Marketing Association. Talk at the SMX Social Media conference in NYC, where I’m posting this from, is about the number of conferences, limited number of speakers to go around, making hard choices and in some cases, leaving old stomping grounds and leaping into related industries in an effort to reach and network with new people and companies.

Okay…back to my duties covering sessions at the conference I did get to.

For December? I’m staying home.

If you wish to see some great photos, check out SMX SM NYC Photos here.

I’m “live blogging” at Search Engine Roundtable.

More photos to come. Last night’s shots were from the packed house cancer fund raiser.

Coverage from my fellow press workers:

SearchEngineJournal, reported by Eric Lander - It was a great pleasure to meet and spend time with you Eric!
Search Engine Land reported by Vanessa Fox and Rebecca Kelley
AimClear reported by Marty Weintraub
Search Marketing Gurus reported by Liana Evans (Emetrics live blogging coverage from Washington, DC is also on this blog.)
Bruce Clay Blog, by Lisa Barone - She recaps the session coverage.
Top Rank Blog reported by Dana Larson - Link is to her recap that has pictures. She also has additional session coverage.
Web Pro News, both written and video
Sphinn - session coverage with comments; off-beat angles and various perspectives
IMNY Charity Party - Oh, What a Night!! reported by Shana Albert - one of my new favorite new blogger “finds” from Sphinn
Wikipedia Administrator: SMX V-Interview by Marty Weintraub - (Marty made being in tiny press room so much fun! Thanks for all the reasons to crack up.)
Squareoak coverage reported by company owner, Brendan Picha - (It was great meeting and spending time with you Brendan!)
SEOMoz, reported by Rebecca Kelley

Li Evans tagged me the other day about reasons to go to the IM NY Leukemia and Lymphoma Society fund raiser in New York city this coming Monday.

Because I’m one of those barefoot, happier in the country folks whose idea of real transportation is a horse, the only reason I’m truly able to get to this gig is because of Li, whose duty tomorrow will be dragging me on a train to NY.

This is my last conference for the SEO industry this year, in which I volunteer my time to cover sessions for the SearchEngineRoundtable. It’s hard work, but worth the pressure because I’m grateful for the education I’m receiving as I’m typing along.

The SMX SM conference is focused on social media and how it relates to marketing. Since Internet users control marketing these days, rather than marketing directing our choices and their brand reputation, how social sites fit in, are utilized, and even exploited, are all important aspects of Internet marketing to know these days.

There’s little in the way of how usability, user centered design, and captology fit into social media design, but persuasive design is already on this elephant’s back. I’m also paying attention to Luke Wroblewski’s articles on form and application design because the better designed applications will help in creating the whole “social” aspect of the Internet. Facebook users can testify that some of the applications offered there are simply a pain in the neck to use, with some of them not offering any information before requiring you to install them.

Posting here next week, between the conference, work and being a mom (and “frying up the bacon”, you know the drill) will be up for grabs. I’ll be at Barry’s blog, and trying to not freak out on the subway. I have some recall of being on one once a long time ago, and I haven’t been on train in over 30 years!

However, after what I went through to get to the San Jose SES conference by way of getting stranded twice in Chicago, this should be a piece of cake.

I only live 2 hours away from NYC. How hard can this be?

Yesterday I added a little something to my blog post that likely went unnoticed. It’s a habit I’ve gotten into and is something I’ve begun to share with clients when I review their web sites. I decided to point it out and tell you more about it.

I had referred readers to a link labeled “The Art and Science of User Experience at Google” and prefaced the link with a sentence that explained the link was about a video presentation. One common usability issue that frequently comes up are links that go to PDF’s, files, videos, FLASH or podcasts, with no warning beforehand. If we don’t have the technology to handle the browser request, we’re left with a non-functioning task. Sometimes a computer will lock up, especially in cases where an older version of a plug-in has not been upgraded.

I realized my readers might not click the link, believing it would immediately launch a video. Since I knew this wasn’t the case, I added a note for them, saying “(The page is static. You can then choose to view the video.)” This informs my readers. It gives them a choice in this task. Above all, it creates user confidence.

Every time we click a link we have in our mind an expectation for what will happen next. The link label, if descriptive, will give a hint. My link to the Google presentation did not offer a fair clue and I don’t like doing that.

User Instructions

An area where thinking ahead like this benefits your site visitors is shopping carts and online applications. Certain routine tasks are taken for granted by web site owners, such as requiring phone numbers. Perhaps their web site analysis is showing frequent error messages triggered by customers ignoring this field, or entering bogus phone numbers to get the form to work. The data shows an issue, but doesn’t provide the reasons for it.

Research into usability case studies shows that some basic behaviors are commonplace. One of them is trust. Another is confidence. Pages, navigation, content and links that don’t provide a hint of trust or enable user confidence risk task incompletion. In the case of applications, the risk is form abandonment.

I’m finding more and more larger ecommerce companies have figured out the value to their customers in establishing communication during all tasks. This means that next to a phone number field they will add a small note saying, “We need it for your credit card purchase” or “Check the box below that best describes when we can call you.” The latter one acknowledges they know you, the customer, don’t enjoy handing over private information, but if you choose to, the company will honor your choice in call back time.

Another way to create confidence is to indicate how many pages a form will be and how long it might take to complete it. Surveys are notorious for not warning us how long they are. Shopping carts sometimes seem designed as one-way roads. A simple statement that says, “Don’t worry. You can change your choices later” is an excellent way to communicate that you appreciate their time and want to make the process painless and easy.

For shopping carts that require registration before permitting customers to add to the cart, it helps to convey the reasons why you do this. State them in a way that clearly shows it’s a consumer benefit. For example, if you hold onto their information with a cookie, this lets them go off, do price comparisons, and return to their selections on your site. Pre-registration is less of an issue when the thought process and value to the customer is clear.

Communicate Value

There’s another hidden benefit to strolling beside your online visitor as they move about your web site. It’s part of your job to constantly remind customers how what you offer is something of value to them. This is not the same as listing product benefits.

The value proposition can be things like how much time they’ll save if they use your product. How will their hair look after using it? How much money can you save them? What do your customers get and do you understand why these things are important to them?

If you do understand how your offer, solution, information or service will enhance something for your customer and you’ve convinced them, than you also want to help them convince their friends. This could be hard to do if what you offer is more expensive than your competitor.

This is where your guidance and careful care during their web site experience pays off for you. Some people will be more than happy to pay extra for items found on sites that work better for them. If a site sells a product for less, but is broken, difficult to use, confusing, frustrating, or not accessible, your lower price is not offering any benefit unless your customer loves a challenge.

Convey your total and complete devotion to customer service by being one step ahead of your site visitors. Ease their minds. Offer choices. Be pleasant.

If your visitors don’t need extra instructions, they’ll scan right past them (but intuitively acknowledge your extra concern.)

For those that do rely on written help, your patient guidance and interest in their experience with your web pages will pay off for you in the long run because they will gladly refer the company that just made their day.