Low Awareness- This customer never heard of the brand and has never been on the website. These customers typically have the lowest conversion rate on their first visit. These customers may come back later and then will convert higher. For companies looking for branding not ROI the “Low Awareness” shoppers are the best to target because you can target a broad array of keywords to connect with a larger demographic of online shoppers.

Medium Awareness- This customer knows of the brand and has experienced some offline or online advertising but is not particularly sure they are going to buy anything. They might be a comparison shopper or window shopper. This customer has a mid-range conversion rate, although the landing page is important for all three of these tiers, the Landing page is even more important for the Medium awareness customer in terms of conversion rate because they might be enticed to buy if they find exactly what they are looking for. The “Medium Awareness” shopper is good for companies looking for some control of ROI but also to build product awareness and branding. For medium awareness shoppers it’s best to use mid range keywords staying away from extremely broad and specific terms.

Targeted Customer- This customer has already experienced off-line advertising and knows exactly what he/she is searching for. They will use more specific keywords to obtain the exact results they want. High conversion rates because they are interested enough to search for the product online and they are interested enough to take the next step. This customer will use more specific keyword phrases to find what they are looking for because they are already familiar with the product. Companies that use ROI to determine their spend would want to target the highly aware shopper while staying completely out of broad keywords as these would negatively impact the cost per conversion.

Blue Beanie Mark, originally uploaded by Own Page One.

A warm fuzzy way to raise awareness for Web Standards and Accessibility. Monday, November 26, 2007 is the day thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content. … Don a Blue Beanie and snap a photo. Then on November 26, switch your profile picture in Facebook and post your photo to the Blue Beanie Day group at Flickr.

On November 8, 2007, over 40,000 people in 175 cities in 35 countries gathered to honor World Usability Day. The founding goal of World Usability Day is to “ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use.” This year’s global theme focused on healthcare—how our health is influenced by design.

The Michigan event was hosted by the Michigan State University Usability & Accessibility Center. Two highlights for me were speakers who showed the incremental user interface improvements that they achieved through user experience research: Read More