November 29, 2006
Listen to your Analytics - New Web site for Marqui.com "coming soon"
Well I just caught up with the news (here and here) of a few weeks ago that Riya Technology launched a new service called Like.com. For those who haven't seen the news, this is alpha technology that provides a visual search shopping engine based on its visual recognition technology. Simply choose an image of an item and Like.com compares the shape, color, and texture to other items in the database and displays the most similar results from merchants. Their monetization comes via pay-per-click and pay-per-action advertising. Simple.
Why did this catch my eye? Well, in a previous life I used to compete with Riya as part of the post-9/11-how-can-we-make-money-with-cool-technology-in-a-world-turned-upside-down [I was working with a company that designed and sold a facial recognition and visual search technologies amongst other things]. Like most in the sector, we were all trying to capitalize with that big score selling into Homeland Security or other such government groups. Meanwhile, there were constant 'dreamers' who were approaching us to use our SDK within any of a multitude of marketing schemes: facial recognition to recognize people as they walked by billboards; image recognition to identify product placements in TV spots; and yes, visual search to find me other products like this one.
I am not sure why I didn't see the simplicity of the idea at the time. However, I would guess that most likely it was because we were simply keeping our heads down, focussed on one market, one concept, and one idea. Even with hindsight, I don't know if we were unable or unwilling to think outside the box to see an obvious solution.
Why is this relevant to our blog today?
I believe that marketers all too often simply keep their heads down, focussed on
one task, one project, or one campaign strategy -- failing to see the simplest
idea or failing to heed the metrics about what is working and what is not: "I'll
just run one more ad in that magazine, this time with a better position (even
though my ROI wasn't there last time)" ... or, "We'll go back to that tradeshow
again this year and try it one more time (maybe last year's poor attendance was
due to the snowstorm)." I know I've done it. In fact, in these two short months
that I've been at Marqui, I am guilty of doing it here.
You see, when I first started, I looked at our own Marqui.com Web site and
the metrics that we had on our site traffic, and in all honesty, we were not
converting nearly enough site visitors to actions: be it downloading a whitepaper, contacting sales, or
requesting a 1-on-1
demonstration. Sure a few tweaks were made and there was acknowledgement
that changes were required, but I didn't calculate the cost that not optimizing
(via navigation, copy, multivariate landing pages, etc.) would have on our
day-to-day business. I was ignoring the signs and focussed on other lead
generation and strategic activities instead.
No more. Starting next week (if all goes to schedule), you will see a new web
site for Marqui.com. It should have cleaner navigation while providing readers
with an "ah-ha, so that is what you do" sort of feeling. Or that is the intent.
Rest assured, I will be monitoring our metrics closely, testing, re-launching,
and then testing again. I was going to write, "I'll keep you posted on how we
do", but the reality is, you will be the ones to tell me how we did, so "keep me
posted, will you?"
PS... If you have not looked at your web site recently -- I mean really
looked at it -- there is no time like the present. Trust me.
Posted by at November 29, 2006
