Symetri aims to enhance search engine results
Furniture companies offered tools to boost online presence
By Brian Carroll -- Furniture Today, March 14, 2005
High Point — Although search engine optimization rapidly is becoming standard practice in the online world, it still is relatively new in furniture, and Internet marketing companies like Symetri are trying to change that.
Thousands of times every day, furniture shoppers enter search terms such as "bedroom" and "desk" at sites like Google, and companies like Shopzilla.com and Pottery Barn are paying to show up on the first screen of findings, knowing that less than 15% of Web surfers drill down past the first page.
"Understanding how consumers find your site and what they do once they get there is a real opportunity, and we're helping companies capitalize on that opportunity," said Dan Nielsen, chief information officer at Symetri.
Symetri, like other Internet marketing companies, helps mostly manufacturers improve their search engine rankings. Google, Yahoo, MSN and other Web-crawling search engines use mathematical algorithms to find and rank sites and pages. But the algorithms are proprietary and secret, and change on a regular basis.
Still, companies can take measures to affect where their sites appear in search engine rankings.
Symetri CEO Ron Jones said his company has developed a way to put a monetary value on how consumers use Web sites. This enables manufacturers to allocate resources, to reorganize content online or change the architecture of a site — and to determine how much, for example, it is worth to have a consumer come into the site from Google.
"We analyze the traffic, what (consumers) did at your site and what search terms they used to get to your site," Nielsen said. "We can then put values on particular search terms."
On their sites, manufacturers typically have product catalogs and a dealer locator. Consumers are expected to browse the site, find a store near them and go to the store to buy the furniture.
So what is the value of one person using a dealer locator?
"Is it a penny? A half of a penny?" Jones asked. "You should be able to see where you should be putting your money."
Symetri, based in Greensboro, N.C., measures those monetary amounts and helps manufacturers analyze and interpret the data.
"If a company is doing a print campaign or special promotion, for example, we might suggest creating a landing page and tracking the traffic," Jones said. A landing page is a temporary home page that directs surfers to the permanent home page. Each hit can be recorded as a reaction to or product of the campaign or promotion.
So far, interest in the search engine marketing intelligence has been "keen," Nielsen said. Broyhill is one company experimenting with it, he said.
With some furniture production shifting to China and U.S. companies therefore becoming more marketing-oriented, Jones predicts increasing interest in online marketing tools.
Broyhill, Lee Inds., Carter Furniture and American Leather are among companies turning to Symetri for services ranging from consumer Web site development to dealer portal sites to sales force automation.
