When Eye Candy Isn't Sweet

ECandy executives were confident their Web site--featuring graphics of Gummi Bears, Swiss chocolate and other delicacies--would be a big hit when it launched in December. They were wrong.

The problem: Search engines don't have a sweet tooth. They only recognize plain vanilla HTML text.

Candy lovers, therefore, weren't finding the www.candy.com site near the top of their search engine responses.

The experience was a revelation for eCandy. "We wanted to offer a visual experience for users, but we had no idea that there are so many problems associated with being found by search engines," said director of marketing Kimberly Scheer. "That's serious, because search engines are the most important tool for people finding us."

Indeed, as many as 85 percent of consumers begin their Web sessions at a search engine, according to Forrester Research Inc. "I think it's healthy to look for about 30 percent of your traffic coming from search engines," says Sergey Brin, president of search engine Google.com.

New data from Forrester and PaineWebber Inc. shows that consumers only look through the first 30 search engine responses to find what they're looking for.

ECandy's search engine struggles are not unique. Simple design flaws--such as having "welcome" or a big graphic as the first visual that greets a site visitor, and therefore the one the search engine focuses on most--can cost precious hits or cut traffic off altogether.

After its initial missteps, eCandy hired search engine specialists iProspect.com to revamp its site and help raise its search engine profile. During the past few weeks, Web sites such as www.sharp-usa.com and Ameritech's SecurityLink.com have been, or are being redesinged with an increased emphasis on search engine recognition.

IProspect.com helped the eCandy build static HTML pages of mostly text describing the company's business. The new pages direct visitors to the company's photo-filled pages. Since eCandy hired iProspect in January, it has landed in the top 30 search engine responses with 14,455 percent greater frequency.

Its site was the first returned by a search engine 1,022 percent more often, and it was in the top 10 responses 7,655 percent more frequently. The company would not reveal the specific before-and-after numbers, but it's safe to assume the growth percentages reflect comparisons with very low original numbers.

Google.com's Brin said it's wise just to keep a site basic--not only so it's picked up by search engines but for the benefit of users as well. "Look at Yahoo, the most successful site on the Web. Its home page is really simple. It's not good to have gigantic Java applications," he said.

Sharp Electronics is still awaiting results on its recent Web redesign, which it used as an opportunity to redesign the way the site interacts with search engines. The company placed strong emphasis on identifying the keywords and phrases it wanted search engines to pick up, as well as on prioritizing them in terms of frequency and placement on the page.

"I had never heard of the concept of search engine positioning," said Mark Pusateri, formerly Sharp's manager of interactive marketing and now a senior information designer at Ernst & Young. "But I did know that we weren't showing up in the major searches." Pusateri learned quickly that words like "welcome" and "home page," often the most prominent words on a home page, are picked up by search engines as keywords.

Ameritech's SecurityLink.com faced similar problems, said director of customer marketing Nancy Gospo. "We noticed early on that we weren't coming up under obvious, generic search names like 'alarm systems,' or 'home security,' " she says. "We come up under our name, but we really don't have strong brand recognition yet." SecurityLink has just signed with Morevisibility.com to study search engine optimization.

Gospo said some search positioning vendors promise more traffic by simply repeating certain keywords over and over to fool search engines.

"We wanted something more sophisticated than that," she said. "We don't want the short-term hit only to be dropped. Because of the dynamic nature of search engines, we need to constantly be working with a partner."

And not all search engines are alike. While some search only for keywords, more sophisticated search engines, like go2.com and Google, look at many factors before ranking sites, including meta tags, HTML tags, embedded links and the importance of Web destinations linked to a site. IT managers must find search engine positioning firms that understand these factors, along with the idea that sites must remain visually appealing.

"Getting found is everybody's biggest challenge today. It's a huge issue," said Andy Feit, vice president of marketing at Inktomi. "But it's still critical to focus on having great content and consider the user's experience once he finds you."