As a small business owner or marketer, you are constantly seeking new tools for your online marketing arsenal. One way to take your online marketing to the next level is through Behavioral Targeting. And an easy tool to help you capitalize on this opportunity is BTBuckets.

So, what is Behavioral Targeting (BT), you ask?

Behavioral Targeting leverages web browsing data to launch customized online content or ads to specific individuals. If you visit a website that uses BT, based on the pages you visit or the searches you make or the actions you take on the site, you may be presented with customized pages and/or ads that the site has found effective with your type of browsing behavior.

So, what is BTBuckets?

It’s a free on-site segmentation and Behavioral Targeting tool. With BTBuckets you can create user clusters based on behaviors your visitors exhibit on your website. The tool is flexible, and enables you to define the categories (or buckets) you’d like to track and to which you’d like to serve customized pages/ads.

To take your Behavioral Targeting to the next level, BTBuckets integrates into freely available Google tools such as Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer.

For case studies and examples of the tool in action, check out the BTBuckets blog.

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

Check out our latest blog posts on StartupNation.com, a site devoted to helping entrepreneurs, startups and small business owners build business and achieve success.

Our two latest posts are as follows:

The Mid-Year Website Checkup
(If you expect to get the most out of your website this year, you really can’t miss this!)

11 Reasons Your Business Needs a Blog
(If your business does not yet have a blog, read this!)

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

Fast Company announced The Fast Company 50 for 2009, identifying the country’s 50 most innovative companies.

This is the sixth in a series of quick website evaluations, in which Website Marketing NOW is reviewing the websites of the top 10 of The Fast Company list.

Are the websites of these companies just as innovative as the companies themselves? Or not…

Number six on The Fast Company 50 list is Intel:

Intel.com Website Strengths

The Intel.com website has various strengths. The immediate presentation of the home page is compelling, with high quality imagery and a curiosity-building message: “Today is so yesterday.” The site visitor naturally is interested in learning more to see what Intel means.

The home page’s design is clean and extremely easy to navigate. The page does an excellent job in segmenting the audience. There are clear choices for business users, consumers and those interested in learning more about Intel itself. This type of easy and clear segmentation from the start helps to ensure site visitors get the information they are seeking faster and more directly.

The site is well organized in terms of bucketing all information within these three categories.

There is a wealth of content on the site in many formats, and the full spectrum of content options is a strength of the Intel.com site. Content on the site includes blogs, forums, interactive applications, videos, user-generated content, contests, wikis, ask-the-expert, polls, online radio and a variety of communities.

In the consumer section of the site, customer stories abound, representing the value of Intel’s products in people’s lives. This is a creative way of sharing the benefits of Intel’s products, given the technical and hidden nature (acting as components within other, larger products) of its main products.

Intel.com Website Weaknesses

Although there is a whole lot to like about Intel.com, there are many, many flaws.

Although the home page does a good job in helping visitors to self-segment themselves, there are few options for quickly identifying how to solve the visitors’ problems. The business section of the site is extremely product-focused, rather than user-focused. This presents a major problem in the case of the first time visitor or someone who is not quite sure what Intel has to offer his or her business, and Intel would be wise to add navigational options for specific types of business solutions.

Where the company attempts to be cool and cutting edge, it fails. For example, if you go into the consumer section of the site and are intrigued by the navigational item called “Sponsors of Tomorrow,” you are presented with a futuristic 3D set of people and robots. It’s cool. However, there’s no explanation as to what this truly is. The only copy on the page states that Intel is blurring the lines between science-fiction and science-fact. Site visitors are requested to “start exploring.”

If you try to “explore,” though, all that you are presented with is an opportunity to predict the future and see what others have predicted. This is unaligned with the expectations that site visitors were presented with. No matter which character the site visitor clicks on, the same landing page appears. If the site visitor clicks on the “start exploring” button or the next button, it’s no different.

If site visitors click on links at the bottom of the “Sponsors of Tomorrow” page, they are presented with options to dress and prep an Intel worker or to view a wind tunnel. Totally random. Totally NOT “tomorrow”. What in the world was Intel thinking?

Other similar examples are also found within the site. So if Intel were interested in improving its website and adding more value to the user experience, they would think about relevance and value prior to developing what it thinks is “cool.”

One more weakness of Intel.com is navigation deep in the site. For example, when using these “cool” applications, it’s unclear how to navigate back to the Intel home page, or main business index page, etc. When in certain blogs, there is no clear navigation back to the site. Intel would benefit by ensuring visitors an easy path to the home page from anywhere within the site.

Check out our other evaluations of the organizations ranked atop the Fast Company 50:

#1 Team Obama

#2 Google

#3 Hulu.com

#4 Apple.com

#5 Cisco.com

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

Check out Website Marketing NOW’s latest blog post on StartupNation.com: eCommerce: 45 Tips to Turbocharge Your Sales.

Tips cover marketing topics such as audience definition, driving traffic to your eCommerce site, marketing to your audience while they are on your site, increasing your Average Order Value (AOV), enhancing the shopping experience and generating repeat business. Read the post and learn how to generate more eCommerce sales!

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

Fast Company announced The Fast Company 50 for 2009, identifying the country’s 50 most innovative companies.

This is the fifth in a series of quick website evaluations, in which Website Marketing NOW is reviewing the websites of the top 10 of The Fast Company list. Are the websites of these companies just as innovative as the companies themselves? Or not…

Number five on The Fast Company 50 list is Cisco Systems:

Cisco.com Website Strengths

The Cisco.com website has various strengths. Upon landing on the home page, the site visitor is presented with stunning images above-the-fold along with compelling messaging.

The website contains customer-focused aspects which are helpful, such as its “Solutions” tab as the first option in the main navigation. Solutions are segmented according to business area or industry. Further down on the page, site visitors can self-segment themselves according to company size.

The website does a great job in maintaining its customer focus through the segmentation process. For example, if site visitors click on “Small Business,” and then click on the option for “I’m looking for…Solutions,” they are presented with small business specific, tech jargon-free options such as “Work from Anywhere” or “Be More Productive,” etc.

And engagement options abound. For example, within the small business section, site visitors are invited to join the Innovators Forum: “Learn small business best practices from industry experts, share success stories, join discussions on important business topics, and learn about special offers.”

Customer-focused offerings are displayed throughout the site. For example, right in the middle of the home page visitors will find: “Empower students, teachers and administrators with digital media.”

The website is easy to navigate, and contains a plethora of content. What specifically caught our attention was the relevancy of the content — for example, when checking out Cisco’s Business Video Solutions, the site visitor is presented with six videos covering different aspects of business video benefits.

Cisco.com also offers the site visitor the opportunity to customize the experience through MyCisco. It is here that site visitors can setup bookmarks and collaboration environments.

Finally, the site is also teaming with training, education and support resources.

Overall, a solid website.

Cisco.com Website Weaknesses

Although there is a whole lot to like about Cisco.com, the site can be overwhelming. There is so much information throughout the site, and so many options on so many pages, at times it feels like an octopus with legs that keep growing and growing.

For someone who is not quite familiar with their products and only vaguely aware of how their solutions would translate for their business, the site can be quite intimidating.

One effective way to solve this would be to offer an interactive guide right from the home page. A guide that asks what type of business the site visitor is in; that asks the size of the business; that asks about business challenges being experienced; that asks about business goals and objectives.

Through a step-by-step process, the site could hand-hold visitors to the exact information that would help them the most. So, rather than having site visitors clicking endlessly trying to decipher the site, instead the site would provide them with a clear and direct funnel to the most relevant content. This of course would be personalized for every single visitor.

Other sites (e.g., HumanaOne and Olay) have achieved this type of guide, and so it’s not as if Cisco would need to invent new technology to achieve this. All they need to do is put themselves in the place of their customers, and build a guide that walks them through a set of questions as if they were having a conversation in real life.

Check out our evaluations of the organizations ranked atop the Fast Company 50:

#1 Team Obama

#2 Google

#3 Hulu.com

#4 Apple.com

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

The GetElastic.com blog had an interesting post this week, pointing to the inclination of customers to prefer a free shipping offer over a dollar-based discount offer. So, for example, customers tend to purchase more when an online retailer offers free shipping of the purchase, rather than when the offer is for $10 or $50 off the regular price of the item.

GetElastic points to the following statistics:

• 61% online shoppers prefer to shop with a retailer that offers free shipping than one that doesn’t. — Forrester Research (2007)
• 43% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts because of unexpectedly high shipping charges. — PayPal, comScore (2008)
• 60% claim free shipping is a reason they are more likely to shop online. — Harris Interactive (2008)
• 90% believe free shipping offers would entice them to spend more online. — The Conference Board (2008)

This customer trend is interesting, in that it proves that any and all online retail offers should be tested. You never know what customers are going to respond to, and so the most effective way to refine and optimize your marketing offers is to test, test, test.

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

Small businesses are going social, leveraging social media and social networking sites/technologies to strengthen their overall marketing mix.

Although there is certainly a lot of hype around social marketing these days, the numbers indicate that small businesses are truly taking advantage of new opportunities presented by this type of marketing. According to a study by Sage Software and AMI-Partners, more than 260,000 small businesses in North America are now engaged in social networking.

Most of the businesses use professional social networking sites such as LinkedIn, according to the study. General social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook were also widely used.

What’s surprising is the number of small businesses that have yet to engage in blogging, which presents a company with a unique opportunity for engaging with customers in a controlled publishing environment. According to the study, 72% of small businesses have stayed away from blogging. Small businesses that are looking for a marketing edge should look to blogging as a potential tactic within their overall marketing mix, especially if their competition is not active in this area.

Tips for social marketing for small businesses:

• Decide in which forms of social marketing you will participate. Then focus. Don’t try to do everything - you’ll spread yourself too thin and will limit effectiveness.
• Create conversations with prospective clients.
• Track sales through social media.
• Offer real value to others through unique and valuable content.
• Be respectful. Don’t try to “sell” via social media, unless it’s the appropriate venue (e.g., special coupons via Twitter, etc.). Think of why your prospective clients are online, and then provide them with solutions and answers.

Is your small business leveraging social marketing to engage with your prospective clients? If not, you may be missing out on a real business-building opportunity.

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

Bing is here! Bing is Microsoft’s new search engine, just launched this week. It’s being promoted as a “decision” engine, helping searchers find relevant information in a more holistic, semantically-friendly manner.

The jury is still out.

Bing appers to be a good engine, and the engine results appear to be relevant. The most immediately noticeable feature is perhaps the categorization of searches, and these categories can be found on the left side of the page. Also, by moving your cursor to the right of the search result, little snippets of additional information from the website appear, and this is useful. Another nice feature is the visual display of the Image and Video tab results - rather cool.

However, in terms of innovation, Bing falls short. The features Microsoft is touting do not really raise the bar significantly, and some of them can already be found elsewhere online including Ask.com.

Overall, Bing is nice. It’s not revolutionary.

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

Fast Company announced The Fast Company 50 for 2009, identifying the country’s 50 most innovative companies.

This is the fourth in a series of quick website evaluations, in which Website Marketing NOW is reviewing the websites of the top 10 of The Fast Company list. Are the websites of these companies just as innovative as the companies themselves? Or not…

Number four on The Fast Company 50 list is Apple.com:

Apple.com Website Strengths

What makes Apple.com so great is 1) just how beautiful the site is, and 2) the site’s ease-of-use. Among electronics websites, Apple.com is so far beyond the others from an aesthetic perspective, it’s a bit ridiculous.

Apple’s site is purely wonderful to view. The images are bold, clear and beautiful. And it’s not just the imagery that works well. It’s how Apple includes a small bit of text that remarkably hits the mark in messaging and in differentiating the brand and products.

For example:

Small Talk.

The new iPod Shuffle. The first music player that talks to you.

Or:

iPhone 3G

35,000 apps. And counting.

The fastest way to buy an iPhone3G starts right here.

Wow! Apple is great at marketing. And they have a great website.

Apple.com Website Weaknesses

Surprisingly, for a company so exceptional at marketing, the site is surprisingly product-focused. This is noticeable even at the most basic levels of the site.

For example, the top-level navigation is extremely product-focused rather than audience- or solution-focused, with labels such as “Store,” “Mac,” “iPod + iTunes,” “iPhone.”

It seems that Apple is missing a critical way of connecting with its audience, and that’s through the customer’s lifestyle, interests and objectives.

What is it that the customer is looking for? Music? OK. Let’s figure out how the site can satisfy the customer’s needs:

• Is the customer looking to CREATE music, or LISTEN to music?
• Is it for fun?
• For sharing?
• Is the customer a DJ?
• A road-warrior looking for simple music solutions for traveling?
• Getting ready to put together a party mix?
• Looking to build the perfect music system for the home?
• Hoping to have some tunes to listen to while jogging around the neighborhood?
• Etc.

By focusing on lifestyle/interest/objective, Apple could address the customer’s true needs more effectively. It would provide a better solution for the customer, and would open up a number of relevant cross-sell opportunities for Apple. A true Win-Win.

We’re not saying that Apple should eliminate its product-focused content. We’re just saying that complementary to the product-focus, it should add lifestyle-focused, interest-focused and objective-focused content that speaks to distinct audience segments.

Even where Apple does seem to integrate this into their site, it’s at the product level. So for example, you first have to visit the iPhone section in order to know that there are great applications for traveling or office productivity. This is short-sighted and limiting, both to the customer as well as to Apple.

This dual approach to customer communication would enable someone who does not know what an iPhone3G is or has not already decided on the product, to instead focus on the most important things they would like to achieve, with the technology simply being an enabler rather than being the objective in and of itself.

Check out our evaluations of the organizations ranked atop the Fast Company 50:

#1 Team Obama

#2 Google

#3 Hulu.com

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

Website Marketing NOW is a regular contributor of website and Internet marketing advice on StartupNation.com, a truly awesome site dedicated to helping entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses become successful through education, inspiration and community.

Several of our recent blog posts on StartupNation.com have been extremely popular, generating some of the highest page views among all the blogs on the site in 2009.

Based on the popularity of the blog posts, we thought you might find the content valuable and so are highlighting the most highly read posts here for you. Check them out!

• 15 Questions to Measure the Strength of Your Home Page
• The Internet Marketing Checklist for Small Business
• 19 Ways to Increase Your Website Conversions
• 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Designing Your Website
• 11 Reasons People Leave Your Website

Hope that you find the advice to be useful in taking your website and your Internet marketing to the next level. Happy Reading!

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.