Jennifer Lind

In response to Seth Godin’s blog yesterday “Let me see,” in which he created a list of ways marketers could make the consumer’s life easier - not necessarily good for the company - I would like to expand his list to ways search engines could make search easier and more productive for searchers:

1. Show ecommerce websites by the number of people who purchased products and let me sort by number of returns, frequency of customer visits, and standard shipping rates.
2. Let consumers rate 1-5 stars next to the search results for how closely the site/landing page matches with common search terms. Filter out sites with many 1 ratings.
3. Let me sort websites that advertise the least/most.
4. I want to know how highly the company is ranked within their industry amongst industry leaders (bloggers, commentators, etc.).
5. I want to know what price points their products are at - should I expect high quality at a low price, low quality at a low price, etc.
6. I want to be able to sort the websites by informational content, transactional pages, and navigational pages (pages that simply link to other pages) results.
7. Establish relationships with sites that allow me to compare products and only allow these quality sites to place sponsored links.
8. Sort websites by the number of friends they have on Facebook or similar social media sites.
9. Show me how many informational webinars are sponsored by the company and their next event.

Is your website currently set up to help move us in this direction?

Great Ideas for interactive websites:

• LL Bean - used to have a person you could create on their website with your measurements. You could try clothes on your virtual person to see how they fit. I haven’t seen this feature on their site recently.
• Toys R Us - the book Groundswell (Li, Bernoff 200 recommends tools that would help parents choose the best toys for their kids, write reviews of the toys, and save toys to a favorites list. What about a tool that helps you plug in types of activities your kid enjoys or something you want them to learn, and Toys R Us recommends the best toys for you.
• Lowes has a garden planner that allows you to put flowers, trees, and shubs in any location on your lot, plus see plants that are only available for your area: http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=pg&p=Down_to_Earth%2FGardenPlanner%2Fgarden_planner_launch.html. The problem is you have to know measurements and it is not very user friendly unless you are an engineer. What about a landscape designer that has large sections of landscape designs in various shapes and you can then switch out certain plants if desired and place these large sections on your lawn. A great quality Lowes’ tool has is a shopping list for when you finish your design.

One goal I set for myself a month or two ago is to get involved on more social media sites. After all, internet marketing is my career and my passion, so I really should know as much as possible about this emerging form of marketing.

We all wear many hats, and have many stories to tell. On this blog, you see my career focused hat and the stories I can share about the internet marketing field. On other sites, I’ve dedicated to more personal stories. I recently added one of my most personal stories to Squidoo, and am eager but nervous about the results I will see (if any???). My goal here was to tell my own story about my dad’s cancer diagnosis and to create welcoming areas where others could tell their stories as well.

When I was looking through other squidoo sites, I noticed many great features such as adding content from Amazon, eBay, links, Flickr pictures, polls, and duels. This was a small trial of my social media technology knowledge as I linked to a Flickr set I made specifically about my squidoo topic. Otherwise, it was pretty easy to set up. I’m not saying this page is the best or even close - it’s my first attempt and I will continue to improve it.

There are some great opportunities on squidoo for businesses. For example, check out this page about a new style of laptop bags. This author describes the bags in detail, give you pricing details below, tells bag designers they can promote their bags through the page as well, and asks readers to explain which bag is their favorite and why. I love this because Squidoo creates a welcoming area where users can tell others about their favorite products, and promotes other user-generated content.

If you are interested in using Squidoo for your business, here some of the other applications you may be interested in: Youtube voting, Flickr voting, Amazon voting, text list, links voting, polaroids (giant picture!), RSS, talk bubble, sticky notes, the most important thing. Happy squidooing!

Since I am such “a good customer” of Kraftfoods.com (basically just an average email subscriber), I have been selectively chosen to try out Kraft’s new mobile recipe subscription.

How it works: subscribe online by entering your mobile #. You can sign up for weekly or daily recipes and then enter the time of day you would like to receive your recipe text. Kraft Foods will send you a recipe from one of 5 category choices every day at the time you selected.

If you decide to be proactive in your recipe search, just search the site for a recipe you’re interested in making. Then choose to either send the recipe or the shopping list to your phone.

Why I am not signing up for this service: Kraft’s message is just a url link that you need to either copy or paste into your phone browser, or go to a computer and plug in the url to get your recipe.

A whole world of games, learning activities, and other interactive tools are available for children. Learning isn’t just for the classroom anymore, and it definitely isn’t limited to reading a book or sitting through a discussion. I came across a website from Jefferson County Schools in Tennessee with a large resource of Interactive Websites that are specifically geared towards children for grades pre-K-12 (turns out there are many other sites with a compilation of interactive children’s sources as well). These sites cover a broad range of topics including math, the solar system, art,  animals, bacteria, etc. Many even have teachers guides.

Many of these sites are rudimentary in their look and feel and may require an adult to help the littler ones navigate since even I had a bit of difficulty finding the interactive portions through all the other links. However, some of the sites link to area science centers, national geographic, and other large organizations with money and staff available for web design. My personal favorite is the National Gallery of Art. Here, you can create your own art pieces online. Create still life paintings, landscapes, collages, mobiles, 3-d shapes, and tons of other options.

One thing that concerns me is that many of these interactive learning sites required registration to use. I’m not sure why you would require email and other info from a child to use your website.

It’s great to see that education has taken a bold pioneering stop toward interactive learning and is creating fun environments online for children.

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, I recently painted the bedroom a bold blue color. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to choose a color! By the time we were ready to paint, we had 8 paint samples each in 3 foot squares on our wall. Some blue-gray, some green-gray, some navy, some country blue, until we finally found the right shade of a blue with some green and a bit of black. Our own version of Aquarium! One tool that really helped was the Benjamin Moore Paint site, which is a great example of an interactive marketing site.

To start, you can either choose one of their rooms or upload your own digital photo. Skim through their paint chip samples to select the color you want for the walls, trim, hallway, and ceiling. You can even customize this with a specialty finish.

If you are totally lost, you can load combinations that will do all the work for you. When you’re done, you can print the project or save the colors to your notebook for future use.

The one thing they should consider adding is a feature that would automatically send your order to a local retailer. They could create an order form, allow you to select how much paint and what finish of each you need, and all you’d have to do is stop in and pick it up.