brizad - 12:36 am on Jun 14, 2004 (gmt 0)

Blaze, I'm not really talking about a brand per se, although it would probably work best for a brand.

For SERPS:
Like in my previous example, shopping for a DVD player. I was trying to find ratings, reviews, recommendations or something other than just the stock manufacturers sales blurb and product specs. I found that almost every single page was the exact same info for pages and pages into the google results. So how does this help your potential customer--delivering the same content as everyone else? (lets not even start on spamming and cloaking)

If I could have found one site that had the even the appearance that an actual human being was involved-- say maybe a review of the product, or a comment from someone that owned it I would have been thrilled. This would have "overdelivered" on my expectation.

In the end, I did what I always do. I checked am*z*n and e*pinion to see what real people had to say and I bought from Am*z*n even though they did not have the best price. Just because I could read what other people said about it and becuase there is an actual review from big A.

A person making a buying decision goes through the exact same 5 step buying process whether they are shopping on the web or at wal mart. If you skip one of these steps, sales suffer. No question about it.

As for if this would work for PPC. Hmmm not sure. I think it would relate to acurate and not over-hyped ad copy. If you overpromise in the ad copy then the client gets to the merchant site/product and is dissapointed, then you have wasted the persons time and wasted whatever you paid for the click. You may have also hurt the "brand" of the website that you referred to.

Just food for thought. Everyone had to follow their own path.