Live from the Cat X Factor

If you didn't attend the Cat X Factor conference in London today, you'll regret it--especially if your competitors attended. I just slipped out to give my hand a break from jotting down all the ecommerce tips and tactics that Amy Africa and Stephan Spencer are sharing. 

I know I'm not the only one who was both impressed (by the level of detail in the session) and dismayed (by how many things we're doing wrong with our website--alas).  

I'll be writing up the sessions in greater detail for our Insight enewsletter and the Catalogue e-business website. In the meantime, though, here are a few of my favourite quotes:

"You can't just throw money at the web. If you don't involve the right people and you don't think about your user, you'll have a crappy site."--Amy

"Keywords you consider relevant to your business might be keywords that no-one searches for except your CEO."--Stephan, in discussing the need to conduct keyword research for the most effective SEO.

"Navigation is about 60 percent of success."--Amy

"Long URLs are repellent, pushing the user to look at the [search] listing below."--Stephan

"Anything after an ampersand, people do not see."--Amy

I'll let you know when I've put together a more thorough summary of the session, which covered everything from meta tags to trigger emails to Twitter.--SC