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Your site visitor’s experience starts with waiting for that first page to load.  Does the speed of a website really influence visitors buying decisions on it? You bet it does. New research from e-commerce websites backs this perception up with lots of hard data.

Improving pageload speed helps:

• Increases conversion rates, page views, and time on site
• Decreases bounce rate and overall site operating costs
• With Google ranking, which takes the speed at which pages are served into account

In this post I’ll update you on the research, share some simple and free tools for measuring web performance, and show how simple improvements can yield dramatically faster sites.

Research Shows Faster Web Performance Helps Sites
Firefox and Shopzilla aren’t in the same business, but they both rely on their websites to convert visitors to users. Both companies created versions of their sites with cleaned-up code that looked the same but loaded faster. Each site split traffic, running the optimized code in side-by-side competition with their normal site.

The results were stark. Firefox measured a 15% increase in demo downloads, resulting in 60 million extra downloads from the optimized pages. Shopzilla measured up to a 12% increase in conversions.

And Slower Performance Hurts Sites
In order to measure the real cost of slow website performance, Microsoft served up slower pageloads to a segment of their audience. Reductions in user satisfaction were measurable by adding just two-tenths-of-a-second delay.  And even once page speed was improved, the group that had experienced slower load times persisted in ranking the site lower and converting on it less.

Read the full article

Since 2007 I’ve been noting a set of changes that collectively are changing the foundations of communications on the Web in ways that are more far-reaching than what we refer to as Web 2.0.

These include:

• Highly interactive application experiences that don’t use browsers
• Decentralized web and email communications – branding and 1:1 messages are often on intermediated sites
• Technical drivers are XML and the semantic Web
• SaaS and Fremium are its business drivers.

Last week, when Wired published its cover story “The Web Is Dead,” many of you suggested that it sounded a lot like the Web 3.0 theme. Yep, we’re describing the same thing. Just as FTP and Usenet are transport mechanisms used but not focused on by consumers, part of the Web will be behind the scenes for other applications.

Inside of Reuters,Web 3.0 was entirely defined by “the semantic Web.”  I think that is overly focused on an important technical mechanism.  Web 2.0 was no more just RSS feeds than Web 3.0 will be just structured data.  They are enablers for a growth of UX and interactivity beyond Web 2.0 today.

However, HTML5, RDFa, and the semantic Web are technical foundations for huge changes in how we build interactive mediums. This video on Web 3.0 from Kate Ray features web luminaries describing the importance of structured data in evolving our medium. The technical structures are important, but the art and application that will go along with this are unfinished. RSS along isn’t a revolution, and neither is the semantic Web — but they are both prerequisites.

Related Posts on Web 3.0

• Three Buckets of Distribution: Web 3.0 the Pageless Web – April 2010
• The Siteless Web and the End of Brand Website Rule: Web 3.0 – April 2010
• Envisioning the Web’s Next Big Change: Web 3.0 – October, 2007

Extending the digital marketing investment and IPO streak we called back in December, today the Wall Street Journal reports that IBM will acquire Unica for $480M.

See details: Wall St. Journal

Related Posts on Digital Investment:

• 2010 Prediction: Digital Marketing IPOs Skyrocket <Dec 27>
• Read the Steamy FriendFinder Prospectus: A Dating and Porn IPO <Jan 19>
• Oracle Purchases Market2Lead IP <May 28>
• Hearst Media Buys iCrossing <June 10>
• Jive Takes 30 Million in Funding – Positions for Future IPO <July 26>
• Skype and Demand Media IPOs <Aug 9>
• Webtrends Buys Transpond <Aug 10>

Judge Teri Jackson sentenced Terry Childs to 4 years in prison last week. Childs took sole control of San Francisco’s city network for nearly two weeks claiming he was the only person certified for such access.  He eventually provided administrative access to the mayor who negotiated with Childs after his arrest.

Childs will next receive a hearing on financial penalties on August 13, which could require him to cover the city’s US $900,000 bill, spent on trying to regain control of its network.

The four year sentence for hacking is on the high end on the available five year sentencing range.

More details in CSO’s Security and Risk Blog.

Related Posts:

• San Francisco City Network Held Hostage by ‘Maniacal’ Network Engineer <July 18, 2008>
• Rogue Admin Returns Control of San Francisco Network <July 24, 2008>
• Terry Childs, ‘Maniacal’ City Network Engineer, Found Guilty of Hacking <April 28, 2010>

Web analytics stalwart Webtrends is increasing its ability to measure traffic from Facebook users and iPhone owners with the acquisition of app platform provider Transpond. They see the acquisition as a complement to their purchase of landing-page optimizer Widemile (now Webtrends Optimize).

The Bay Area start-up employs 10, and provides a suite of software-as-a-service tools that lets firms create Social and Mobile apps to extend their market reach. Transpond will be known as Webtrends Apps.

Look around: These *are* amazing times. Who would imagine, in the “Summer of the Great Recession,“ that a digital content start-up and a phone company whose majority of customers pay nothing would be hot IPO news.  But that’s the point. These two companies shift the status away from the status quo.  And they’re heating up August, which is usually a quiet investment month.

Today Skype announced it would seek up to $100 million in its Initial Public Offiering (IPO).  This comes on the heels of last week’s S1 filing that content producer Demand Media seeks to raise $125 million. (You may recall that I predicted a digital IPO hot streak as a 2010 trend. So far, digital has been a hot spot in a largely cool market.)

If the name Demand Media doesn’t ring a bell, you may recall the lengthy feature in Wired that described them as a video content factory.  While I love video and at-scale content production, Peter Guber, Chair of Mandalay Entertainment and a board member of Demand Media, surely did not. During his INTA Keynote he explained how he helped counter this pejorative view through media outreach.

Demand Media’s genius is that it figured out that the things people are searching on aren’t necessarily what writers naturally focus on for fun.  That’s a breakthrough.  Imagine people searching for ways to get wasps out of their sheds, or how to draw a viking helmet.  But there aren’t many resources for such specific questions.

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When you were a kid, did you want to be in advertising?

These kids already get the business at a deep level, and they want to win a Jersey Award.

I was part of a manic panel discussion on sales strategies for a Web 2.0 world.  Amidst the usual Rorschach of social media advice were a few killer moments I have to share.

Framing Idea:
What’s the result of an abundance of information? Attention scarcity.
This is what makes insight a premium in the digital economy, and it makes simplicity the good manners of our age.

So What Should We Stop Doing For Simplicity?
My answer was “stop writing so damn much.”  I worked in my steadfast mantra “reading is for suckers” and suggested that if attendees cared about their readers and SEO, they should cut their copy in half and make a video or infographic.  The goal is to make such a great illustration or video that even competitors wouldn’t be able to resist linking to it or copying it.

This brought a follow-up question: “Where can I see a good infographic?” I probably should have mentioned a nice collection such as the one at Six Revisions.  Instead, I offered a single beautiful example, Flint Hahn’s Burning Man Infographic. The next follow-up: “What’s Burning Man?“  Somehow I was taking us way off track.

How Can We Make Email Marketing Work Better In a Social World?
My advice was to build a personal relationships with readers, to be real and relevant, and worry only about making kick-ass communications for the small group that is vital to their livelihood.  Again I was asked for a good example.  I could have referred to the nice marketing from Marketo that made the whole room turn out. Wouldn’t that have be supremely ingratiating? Do you think I did that?

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NASCAR drivers should watch out: the position of Chief Marketing Officer is fast replacing race-car driver as the riskiest job in North America.

According to Business Week, a CMO’s average tenure is only 28 months. Only 14 percent of CMOs for the worlds top brands have been in their jobs more than three years.

That’s dramatically different from their C-level peers:

• CEOs overall have an average tenure of 95 months (ITBusiness Edge)
• Fortune 1000 CEOs on average last 73 months. (Forbes.com)
• CFO average tenure is 52 months (CFO.com)
• CIO Tenure is 76 months. (ITBusiness Edge)

Change in Marketing Isn’t Always Good
High leadership turnover disrupts innovation and breeds chaos. New leaders often turn to their firm’s creative efforts to show fast, tangible change. This almost always distracts from thornier interdepartmental issues, which is where market strategy meets the firm.  This muddies the firm’s identity in the marketplace, and internally makes the new CMO seem fixated on advertising or MarCom rather than strategy and revenue growth.

There’s also a temptation for CMOs to bring in their own team, which can tank productivity while the new arrivals figure out the business and the remaining crop of young marketers politically showcase their worthiness.  Introducing a “hired gun” CMO raises fair questions about the career path for the company’s emerging marketing talent, many of whom will take the lesson that the path to promotion is an external one.

Marketing’s horse power has increased, it now has mechanisms to deliver 1:1 personalized mass marketing, using optimization, social CRM, and elaborate analytics. It is gaining a crew of experts in these disciplines, and more than ever CEO’s look to marketing to lead revenue growth. It no time for marketing’s leadership to be driving under a yellow flag.

Here are my thoughts on what we need to change in marketing — and by “we” I mean all of us: everyone in business.

Truth #1: Nobody Knows What the Hell Marketing is Doing
Why do Chief Marketers last one-third the time of their executive peers? The short answer: nobody knows what marketing is doing, and it’s easy for outsiders to imagine they can run the “make-it-pretty department”  better. That’s what phrases like “misaligned performance expectations” boil down to.

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