Personal opinions, and I'm sure there will be many, don't really matter. Personally, I'm not too fond of the new design, since different content sections are difficult to distinguish one from another, making it difficult to really navigate among all of their homepage content.

I won't even go into the various internet marketing best practices that the New York Times is ignoring.

The key question from the website optimization viewpoint is whether the company actually split-tested the website live, on real users, and compared it against the old version to see how the redesign influences their key metrics.

There are no rules, but for a media site, the company should especially be watching:

a] Visitor / free subscriber conversion rate

b] Free subscriber / paid subscriber conversion rate

c] Visit frequency

d] Visit depth

e] Page impressions (which can then be converted into ad impression Dollars)

There are many other metrics and many other elements to take into consideration, but these would give at least a quick and brief overview of how the website's marketing effectiveness changed due to the redesign.

Only the New York Times can answer whether the redesign was a hit or a bust.

The question is if they're measuring the impact or not, and the even bigger question is if they split-tested the redesign upfront, before rolling out the new one to the entire public.

Too often companies don't really think of that, but rather just do a redesign without even testing if it improves their key metrics or not.

There's a reason for that, of course --> if you just spent a year redesigning your website, how are you going to explain to your boss that the previous version worked better and you just wasted dozens of thousands of Dollars ...

Simply go to Amazon, order his new book on how to make your life better, and get 59 additional free e-bonuses from Joe.

Click here for more details.

Again, a campaign to study and learn from. Especially since it already earned Joe a two-day-in-a-row #1 spot on Amazon.

And of course, the new book, Life's Missing Instruction Manual, is a perfect buy all by itself. And as far as I know Joe, his 59 bonus offer will only be available today.

Every now and again you read a story of some hero going that extra mile to help those in need. But for the most part, mainstream media are really lousy at conveying actual emotion, most times failing to capture the soul of the person they're writing about.

One of my business partners, Karen M. Wilson, who was instrumental in helping me launch the RSS e-book on the US market, is one of the people you don't get to read much about in the mainstream press.

But her story of how she did her part to help hurricane victims certainly deserves to be heard, perhaps even more so then most stories you can read about in your newspaper.

When she started putting pen to paper on her experiences, she never intended this to be published, simply wanting to share something with her friends. I feel honored she gave me her permission to reprint what she sent us ...

This is her story ...

"Regarding my trip . Yes, I am back, safe and sound. It was an amazing and heartbreaking experience. I've never worked so hard for no money and been so fulfilled in my life. :-)

They sent me to Houston and then to a huge shelter in Beaumont, TX along with 500+ other volunteers w/FEMA, Salvation Army, National Guard and on and on. Beaumont and the surrounding areas had only 40% of their power back when I arrived and it was another week before that rose to about 65-70%. From Beaumont, we left every day in 30+ "teams" that went out to the surrounding communities of Beaumont, Buna, Woodville, Lumberton, Port Arthur, Sabine Pass (where the eye of Rita went over), Holly Beach (in LA), Saratoga, Winnie, Sour Lake, etc. and made sure people had food, water, diapers, and anything else we could give them along with getting them signed up for the Red Cross debit card and Health Services (Rx and mental health counseling for those that needed it).

I saw everything from alligators in the road, to huge trees that had completely crushed homes, to children still living in homes that were covered in mold, to families living in tents next to the footprint of what used to be their home. Banks were damaged and not functioning so even those that had money could not access it.

Many of the businesses that were fortunate enough to have minor damage still were not open fully because their staff had been displaced from the hurricane. Some restaurants and grocery stores were offering $15+/hr just to attract the few workers that were available. Every agency, including FEMA (grin), was doing everything humanly possible to help these people but the scope of the disaster is sooooo large that it just isn't possible to reach people fast enough. There had been in excess of 13,000 volunteers in that area over the past 30 days (starting with Katrina) before I had arrived and people were still having to line up at food banks we set up just to get food for their family for a few days at a time.

It's definitely a labor of love to go there, but it changed me in ways I can't even describe. I honestly could have chucked everything and just stayed, and they asked me to, but I just couldn't take another 3 weeks off.

Was it frustrating at times? You bet. It was hard to know that we, as volunteers, were being fed and sheltered when there were so many out there in need, but you have to make sure the people helping stay healthy so they can help those in need. Sleeping on a cot with a room full of strangers is a bit odd, as is trying to shower in a trailer and drying off with paper towels. :-)

Saddest of all, however, and unbeknownst to us, we were right in the heart of KKK-ville in Jasper County. With the bomb threat on our shelter, the KKK actually made it too dangerous for us to stay in that particular area, so they had to move us from the huge shelter in Beaumont and pull out on all the home visits in the area just because of a handful of backward, but potentially dangerous, people. Consequently, I then lived in an old, abandoned hospital in Baytown for the remainder of my time there and did phone visits instead. Of course, this meant that many, many people did not receive what they needed from us - but you do what you can with what you're given.

I would do it again in a heartbeat and plan to do it again next hurricane season. I am getting even more training between now and then and hope to be able to serve on the International Team when I retire.

I will never forget the spirit of the people in Texas helping us to help them. It was a very bonding experience. The added bonus was having the honor of meeting and working with hundreds of people (volunteers) who had given up their vacations and left jobs and families to come to the area and give of their time and skills to assist those in need.

My heart goes out to all those who are affected by adverse circumstances, for while I have a home and livelihood to return to, many of them will spend many months and years healing and rebuilding.

Karen M Wilson"

First of all, great thanks are in order to Robin Gurney and Priit Kallas of Altex Marketing who organized the excellent event and showed me around Talinn, as well as shared much information on internet marketing in Estonia.

Exploring internet marketing there actually helped me establish a much better global perspective of our industry, especially comparing it with the US and with my home market, Slovenia.

Perhaps even with a hint of nostalgia, as the Estonian internet market really reminds me of where we were in Slovenia a couple of years ago, with ad networks just starting to crop up and companies just starting to take advantage of many of the tactics already employed in the US.

But then on the other hand, while blogging is still a mistery in most of the Central and Eastern European region, it's really taking of in Estonia.

Putting things in perspective I can't help but to think that in some way, all of us working on these small markets are somewhat brave to take on populations of even less than 2.000.000. Yeah, in fact not even enough to do a decent test.

Compare this to the population of New York and you'll see what I mean. One week in the US talking about doing an e-mail test with 750.000 names, and then again another week working on markets that barely have twice or three times the population of the proposed e-mail test.

It certainly makes one think and re-affirm his conviction that in Central and Eastern Europe we really can't talk about individual markets, but need to take on the region as a whole and the challenges posed by its social, cultural and economic diversities.

Coming from a country with a population of 2.000.000, I do feel in some way privileged for working on the 350.000.000 CEE market, although the challenges we are facing are quite immense.

But going back to Estonia, one would think that such a small country wouldn't have many internet marketing opportunities. I, on the other hand, see the country as full of possibilities and open doors for anyone willing to spend some time getting to know the market.

Not only a country of unprecedented beauty, they must be one of the most advanced when it comes to all-round internet access and e-goverment, just to name two key aspects of the market.

A definite must-see for everyone, and an excellent destination for every internet marketer. If you'd like to pay them a visit, contact Robin and I'm sure he'd be interested in hearing what you'd like to present to his audiences there.

Just recently, Google came out with their Google Analytics service, for the first time bringing the power of almost enterprise-grade web analytics to every marketer out there --- for free.

Although there has been some talk of this happening for quite some time, it still comes as a shock.

Up until now, small-business marketers and independant marketers really didn't have that much choice in comprehensive web analytics services, as most were beyond their financial reach. Now, every marketer has been given an opportunity to dilligenty whatch their web metrics, especially their online conversion scenarios, and act on them to further improve his online conversions.

While I haven't had the time to test the service myself, what they offer does look impressive, even going as far as providing Sales Funnel Visualization.

And for me personally, this as well changes much. Even as a dedicated online conversions optimizer, I still evaded the subject somewhat on my site, due to the fact that marketers use a variety of inadequate web metrics solutions, making my advice practically useless unless they switch to some of the more comprehensive solutions.

So, kudos to Google.

And I refuse to go in to what Google might be doing with all the aggregate data generated by their Analytics users:) Let it suffice to say that they will without doubt gain insight in to incredible wealth of information on how internet users use the internet ... way way beyond search.

One of the worst things you can do to hurt your Sales Conversion Path and thus your ultimate Sales Conversion Rate, is putting obstacles in front of the prospect during the sales cycle.

I especially see companies doing so with their E-commerce B2C Online Sales Cycle, usually by requesting the prospect to register and then log-in before completing the order.

While this can make perfect sense for an experienced internet veteran, our E-commerce tests at Studio Moderna show time and time again that shortening the E-commerce Sales Cycle always improves conversion.

In B2B, the Sales Conversion Path usually does not include making the final order online, but is rather focused on lead generation, lead qualification and lead education ... which still does not warrant for putting obstacles in our prospect's way.

To get the drift, just take a look at the SiteExecutive content management system website.

Their online Sales Conversion Path clearly includes demonstrating their product to interested prospects, which they are trying to do with a highlighted product demo.

Certainly an excellent idea ... up to the point where they want you to undergo a "difficult" registration process before giving you access to the demo. Of course, the process is used to generate leads and acquire data that will help SiteExecutive make the sale ...

However, placing the registration barrier in front of the product demo is just bad practice. There are other ways of capturing this data, for example by providing a how-to e-zine on content management, and so on, including an "additional information request" form after the demo.

The moral of this somewhat too long story is simple: don't put obstacles on your prospects' path when they are taking part in your Sales Conversion Process ... you'll just annoy them and in many cases lose them outright.

But the truth is, although business blogging is getting much coverage, we are still far from seeing it reach mainstream marketing, regardless of what we wish to believe. Mass advertising is still the name of the game.

As a direct marketer, I'm naturally not too happy about that, but that's the way the wheel turns, and direct marketing is slowly but surely getting its right place in the marketing mix.

Returning to blogging, a comment I received from a friend in Slovenia a couple of months ago (but never got 'round to publishing it due to time constrains) demonstrates quite nicely the sentiment about blogging in advertising circles.

Zoran Savin, the IAB representative in Slovenia and the Creative Director of a Web agency in Slovenia, is an ad man bringing cool internet marketing ideas to traditional advertisers, and doing a good job of it.

Here's his input on blogging:

"Crazy idea, using blogs for marketing. In fact, how many of you were surprised when businesses went towards corporate blogs? Well, the simple logic of these investments is now getting clearer day by day.

Of course blogs are very much like the traditional "mouth to mouth marketing", but faster and easier to reach, available 24 hours per day, giving thought-leaders even more power to influence people around the world.

But there's more to it than this. As comScore Networks just reported this week, bloggers have a wonderful audience. There are about 50 million of them in America representing about 30 percent of the total U.S. Internet population. And they are, in comparison to the average Internet user, significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high-speed connections. Pretty impressive. Blog readers also visit nearly twice as many websites as the Internet average, and they are much more likely to shop online. So, do not wonder why any more, use them to your advantage."

True to the above comment, Zoran's agency recently helped the largest Slovenian newspaper publisher launch their own blog service, going the way of Blogger and other services, but in this case with mainstream media support.

To see the point, just read this story one of our readers just sent us:

"In early 2005 our Sharp microwave broke down after many years of successful service. So we needed a new one, but I had to be sure that the new model apart from meeting our functional requirements also would fit within the same dimensions the old one had occupied.

On the www.sharp.nl web site I found an email facility through which I sent them this question.

The very next day in the mail I found a big envelope from the Benelux Sharp importer with letter + product brochure and extensive additional information about sizes, etc. In fact, everything I needed to solve the issue. When I took all this info with me to the local store I even knew more than the salesperson!

Needless to say we're very satisfied customers ..."

The campaigns were being analyzed in real time by our partners, Iprom, which is one of the leading providers of ad measurement and serving solutions in Europe.

In one of the first such studies in the world, after a 1 month research period, which included advertising on 85+ web media and 50 different ad creatives, our preliminary results show that new customers were, on the average, exposed to the ad creative 16.9 times before making the purchase. The campaign reach was 100,000+ internet users and standard IAB ad creative sizes were used (728x90px and 160x600px; static .jpg files). This is just one of the 67 variables we are currently watching and analyzing.

What do these results tell us?

While it's still to early to be completely certain, but based on this data we can presume that the optimum ad impression frequency is 17 impressions per user, after which we either cease the campaign or start advertising another product.

These of course can vary from campaign to campaign, based on ad creative and the product advertised. But it does tell us that each campaign needs to be carefully analyzed to establish the optimum impression frequency per user, in order not to waste funds.

Furthermore, the results show that established standards for impressions do not always work. Namely, much previos research by other companies showed that the optimum number of ad impressions per user per campaign is app. 9, which in this case is proven completely wrong.

By knowing the right number for our company, we are now able to precisely plan the required frequency to reach maximum effect for our money.

We are of course continuing the research and expanding it to all of our 20 Central and Eastern European markets, and we will be sharing more results (especially aggregate results in the attempt to establish valid standards) as they become available.

This "blog" started out with the intention of covering my internet marketing findings, experience and test results, but soon became everything but that.

Part of the reason for this unfortunate turn of events is that I'm under obligation not to share practically anything we're doing and especially not mention any numbers at all. Makes sense of course, since I'm sure our DRTV competitors would love to get their hands on our test reports and findings on what's working for us in terms of e-commerce and online direct marketing.

With this said, this blog will continue its life, although I'll only be able to share our results once they become public knowledge.

Instead, the blog will focus on my direct marketing commentary and the experience that I am at liberty to share.

Comments are of course most welcome.

On September 21st he'll be doing it again, this time with a free teleseminar entitled The 7 Steps to Creating the Ultimate Small Business Marketing System, which he developed especially for his blog readers, but also extends the invitation to you.

Plan to attend a free 1-hour telesession introduction to the Duct Tape Marketing System and each of the courses of action in the Duct Tape Marketing Teleseminar Series. Each participant will receive an information rich introduction to some of my most powerful marketing strategies along with an audio recording of the session, 25-page marketing plan overview and marketing self-analysis tool.

Take a look.

Anyway, Dr. Mani also innovatively uses internet marketing to help kids born with heart defects.

On August 6th, in a very special event called the Heart Kds Blogathon, he is blogging non-stop for 24 hours to raise funds for his 'heart kids'.

And this year, he's setting his sights high. He plans to raise $100,000 in a day to fund lifesaving heart surgery for 50 children. He's got 3 very practical plans worked out - check them out here.

Also, don't forget to drop by and encourage him on the big day! Make sure you visit his blog on August 6th, 2005.

A very useful read. You can download it here.

Abstract:

"By now,the words "authentication,accreditation and reputation" (AAR) are staples of every email marketer's vocabulary. Generally speaking, marketers understand that these solutions are aimed at reducing spam and phishing. Unfortunately, however, much of the discussion around these developments has been technically dense, leaving many feeling hopelessly "on the outside looking in."

For the most part, the technological implementation of authentication is the responsibility of an organization's IT department and/or its email service and technology partners. But at its core, successful email delivery under an AAR regime necessitates adherence to various ISP/Web-based email client delivery requirements, careful monitoring, and sending consumers the most relevant and wanted communications. This places the onus for deliverability success right back on the shoulders of those in charge of their organization's email campaigns - marketers.

This white paper takes the clutter out of the confusing AAR story and focuses squarely on what marketers need to know to be successful in language that marketers can understand, and answers:

--> Why are mailbox providers developing and implementing AAR solutions?

--> What are the leading AAR solutions,how do they work,and how will they benefit legitimate marketers?

--> How can I navigate AAR successfully?"

As usual, MarketingSherpa was quick to follow-up with interpretation and has a great how-to article on the topic (open-access until July 10th).

To summarize:

a] Both lists set up Do Not Contact lists where children e-mail addresses or e-mail addresses that can be accessed by children can be registered.

b] The law prohibits you from sending any content or links to content that children can't legally see or respond to. Period. Existing business relationships and opt-in lists have no bearing on the matter.

c] Penalties can even include jail time.

d] Unappropriate content might even include information of financial services, such as credit card offers. And yes, this also includes content on the sites you're linking to in your e-mail communications.

e] The only way to be completely safe is to run your lists through the purge lists, which will be made available soon.

The text of both laws is available here.

E-mail marketing just got much harder ... again.

Many reasons for that, but the most important one is that I want to switch to a reputable vendor that will have a positive impact on my delivery rates, or at least now have a negative one.

This list from MarketingProfs is certainly coming in handy.

BTW - if you have any recommendations, I'd be most happy to hear about them.