As I spend more time around Cogo Labs’ search features and functions, I often find myself blown away by the power of startups that are able to get SEO and SEM right. At Vestigo, we use a tool called Minerva. 

Minerva shows us how traffic comes to a site and where it goes when it leaves the company’s website. It gives you techniques for using tools such as email and search terms and measures their effectiveness. All of this is truly insightful in our work at Vestigo.

To illustrate the power of SEO and SEM, compare the experience of interacting online with a company that centers its strategy around SEO and SEM versus one that views these techniques as just tasks to tick a box. Building your company for an online user experience will pay dividends in customer satisfaction and drive repeat sales.

Wayfair and Crate & Barrel are good examples. I am a lifelong Crate & Barrel customer. But when we recently updated the Vestigo office, I decided to give Wayfair a try.

I was so impressed with the Wayfair website and app, which made it incredibly easy to do business with the company. It took just a few clicks on a flight from Austin to Boston to choose and order the desks, chairs and file cabinets we needed to create a more useful and productive space for the firm. Please note that I covered the cost for the office makeover and not the fund. 

I then went to the Crate & Barrel website to add a few accessories. It showed some great products and good prices, but the user experience was so difficult, I gave up and went back to Wayfair to purchase the final touches.   

The ways in which you approach the online world can drive strikingly different experiences for your customers and prospects. It showed me the power of the insight that measures this from our Cogo partners.

Mark Casady
General Partner