E-marketing experts perform immersion baptism on 270 SIPA conference delegates.

Long gone are yesterday's newsletter conferences (2, 3, 4 years ago) of looking at the internet as "an option," "an opportunity," or "a business model to be explored." It's total immersion now. The internet is the water we are all swimming in. That message implicitly dominated the 23rd Annual Mid-Year Marketing Conference sponsored by the Specialized Information Publishers Association December 6-8, 2006, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Attendance was the highest it's been in several years--270 newsletter marketers, editors, website designers, vendors, and publishers, compared with 197 last year in Miami, which itself was 50 percent higher than the 2004 conference in New Orleans.

Smart speakers

Conference co-chairs Guy Crossley and Phil Ash promised "a whole herd of fresh faces with money-making insights." And they made good on their promise, in spades. The keynote speakers were new to the newsletter and specialized-information industry, and they had a lot to say. Here are some highlights.

* Kara Pernice Coyne, director of research, Nielsen Norman Group, said that "the heart of usability is to make people happy, make them feel good using your service by finding more features, products, and information. They must feel fruitful using your site."

She captivated the audience by walking us through their research on how users navigate websites. Nielsen Norman uses "eye-tracking" technology to monitor users as they visit a website. Coyne's screens showed "laser trails" of eye movement through text and illustrations. Very enlightening.

Reading on the web generally follows an F pattern (at least in Western cultures). The top stroke of the F is the first item read, the headline. The vertical stroke of the F represents scrolling down and scanning. The smaller horizontal stroke represents the user checking various categories.

Coyne advised publishers to design their sites accordingly, obviously avoiding, for example, a right-hand-side tool bar. She also cited "the shame of links"--using links such as "Read more," "Click here," or "Go to article." Instead, she said, "Give your link words rich content. Make them clear, concise, and simple."

Finally, she noted that people gravitate to numbers, so use numerals rather than spelled-out numbers. Also, people gravitate to CAPITAL LETTERS. (Also see Coyne's bylined sidebar, below.)

* Jared Spool, CEO, User Interface Engineering, also stressed making "your users happy--by making it easy to find what they want with compelling trigger words (links). He regaled the luncheon crowd with a witty and articulate debunking of some well-known websites by showing the obstacles and frustrations actual users encountered when trying to buy something, even when they knew exactly what they wanted (like a subscription to your newsletter, for example).

* Kevin Wilk, director of channel strategy and development at Yahoo!, reported that the #1 Google search word is Yahoo! and that the #1 Yahoo! search word is Google. (He also said he has witnessed users reading "Press any key" and then ask where the any key is.)

Wilk advised website designers to use the mantra FUSE: "Expand people's knowledge by helping them find, use, share, and expand what they want."

* Dana Todd, executive vice president of SiteLab and president of SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization), gave a fact-filled, out-with-the-old-and-in-with-the-new presentation that conference co-chair Phil Ash described as "like 30 seconds in the ring with Mike Tyson--I'm still lying on my back seeing stars."

Such was the pace and assertiveness of her speech, rousing the audience with statements like "Quality matters less than immediacy" and "Google is the new world--get used to it."

Todd also threw out a number of new words--at least new to me: crowdsourcing (I still haven't grasped that one); linkbait; frenemies (making friends out of enemies such as Google or even your competitors, which is related to her statement, "Partnerships are the new patents"); and media tapas (information by the slice).

She prefaced the heart of her presentation with the news that The New York Times has undertaken a reconfiguration of its editors to "optimize the paper's content for search engines." That often means rewriting headlines and stories to include key words.

Search engine optimization 

Todd gave the following advice to achieve search engine optimization:

* Start with your users. Ask them what they want and ask them how they access and use all kinds of information. Ask them how they use your information.

* Embrace searches and search engines. Think in key words. Search engines don't see your home page, only your content, as represented by key words. Cast a wide net so searchers can find you.

Comply with search engine guidelines. For example, Google needs a date to post articles, so always include a dateline.

* Prove you're a specialist. Organize your content into thematic clusters and verticals. Create verticles and links in your stories.

* Think like a retailer. If you had to sell your content on eBay, how would you sell it? Your information is inventory--merchandise it. Outline your "sell" benefits.

More than one conference speaker used the analogy of a funnel to guide visitors through your site to the sale. Everything you post on your site should flow down the funnel to the order page.

This issue of NL/NL features some other speakers' advice for publishers to master the brave new world of e-commerce.