“E-commerce takes off!” - apart from the 123% rise in UK online shopping (see 3), the recent Economist Article describes it neatly – US web users will spend c$120 billion dollars online this year: the range of goods bought online widens steadily (clothing was the biggest category of goods purchased online last Christmas) with further growth being driven by broadband.
This certainly squares with what we are finding on a daily basis, and the level of activity and new client discussions is greater than at any stage since we kicked off the business four years ago – we hope the growth in web volumes is helping to lift your own business too.
1. NET ISSUES
Important issues that could impact on your website approach
Accessibility
The issue remains live for all web site operators, flowing from the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, and the Disability Rights Commission Act 1999 - under the 1995 regulations all providers of goods and services must ensure that the disabled are not discriminated against, and have equality of access.
Although there remain minimal formal standards, or case law relating to web site accessibility, the Disability Commissioner ( www.drc-gb.org ) is increasing the pressure on web site operators to improve the accessibility levels – the recent DRC review of 1000 web sites found that 81% failed to meet the necessary standards.
The World Wide Web Consortium (WWW) has offered standards, embracing 3 levels of accessibility, ie Level A – basic accessibility, enabling most people to gain access to your site: Level AA – majority of disabled users will be able to access your web site and Level AAA – achieving the highest standards of accessibility.
There are web tools which will give you a virtually instant appraisal of your site against those standards, ie http://bobby.watchfire.com , - alternatively, NCS would be happy to assist in generating the assessment for you, and in defining and quantifying the cost of any improvement steps needed. In the meantime the Disability Commissioner has cautioned that web site operators are exposed to possible legal action by disabled consumers.
2. NET HAPPENINGS
News and themes from the Internet - home and abroad
Technology enablers still developing strongly………
WAP - in April page impressions averaged 47m per day – another record month (per MDA) with monthly volumes staying well above 1bn per month.
Broadband – nearly 25% of the UK population is connected to Broadband – almost double the level achieved last year, which stood at 12.5% in Feb 2003 (Brand Republic) There are 3.9m UK users, with 40,000 new connections each week.
Across Europe, Broadband penetration is likely to hit 20% by end 2004 and 41% by end 2008 (FT 15/6 Creative Business).
Internet – narrowband internet user volumes are now declining as users switch to Broadband – in UK, the % of total adults using narrowband has declined from 73% to 67% over the past year.(Imrg)
Online Shopping Update - UK and global figures showing strong growth…..
A stream of recent data has shown both the growth and the further potential in online shopping :
- in UK, Britons doubled their online spending in the first quarter of 2004 – year on year increase was 123%. Online grocery sales more than trebled, and books, music and travel surged also (Visa/Imrg)
- Debenhams is closing its mail order catalogue, and moving its home shopping to the internet – they achieved a 90% increase in their internet shopping service last year (Imrg)
- although US online sales now run at $55bn pa, it still represents only 1.6% of total sales – ie huge scope remains for increased online buying (Economist)
- Tesco.com’s sales exceeded £500m in year ended February – sales grew by 29%
Internet marketing spend growing, ……
Internet marketing spend is still growing faster than any other marketing media , with 20% of companies now allocating in excess of 5% of their marketing budgets to online marketing. (ipa.co.uk)
3. NET TIPS
Some hints you could consider
Not just the Home Page – its easy to over-focus on the Home Page. Content-rich sites draw traffic, but often the content focus is mainly on the Home Page, not the internal pages – if properly optimised, they can be critical also.
Title Tags – the company name or not? – if you wish to use the company name in the title tag, don’t restrict it to that – be sure to add a keyword or two to help attract relevant traffic that doesn’t know your name!
How many words ie per page? – you need to give the search engines plenty of keyword-rich copy to help them classify your site properly – a broad yardstick of about 250 words seems to be optimal:
- with our extensive Search Engine experience,NCS is happy to assist in reviewing any of the foregoing with you.
Can you see the picture? – we still get approaches from new clients who don’t have access to web stats. The minimum is online, near realtime, data which you can check daily, weekly, monthly etc.
Not hits, but visitors – probably still the most misunderstood aspect of site stats tracking. It’s the visitor, not the hit, figure which matters – hits can be the separate components of a page which have been pulled by the server.
4. NCS FOCUS
News and services from NCS that might help
Looks matter! – we agree with the view that more than 50% of a site’s appeal stems from its visual impact. Our latest designs have been well received, and further examples will be added to the portfolio over the coming month.
Be Dynamic! – NCS static/dynamic site mix has changed considerably. Majority of new sites being developed are now dynamically-based. Apart from making it easier to add features and functionality, it can also assist the ongoing Content Management process – we would be happy to explore the options further.
5. NET NOTHINGS you probably already know that:
“Googling It”- means checking it out online before you buy it – up to 75% of cars
have been ‘Googled’ online’ ie before the buyer goes to the dealer!
“Cloaking” - is not a dress code term, but the description of a dubious search
engine process which hides the real content from the search
engines - now banned by several search engines.
Developments in web marketing, site design, and web services
Social Networking and Mobile web use remain the two liveliest
issues in Web marketing currently - good use of both is a platform for getting better value from your site. In the next issue, we give an action check list on Social Networking, so this month we lead on Mobile web use – I hope the article and the rest of the content help you win more users for your site.
1 NET ISSUES
Significant issues that could impact on your website approach
Using Mobile access to bring more visitors to your site
Use this approach to increase your site traffic through Mobile web access:
a) Scale of web usage - using mobiles to access the web has stepped up sharply over the past year - according to Scoot UK, web traffic from mobile devices increased by over 4000% in the last 18 months. Apple hold by far the greatest share of this - their devices now handle more than 70% of mobile traffic on the web.
Even a year ago nearly 70% of i–phone users visited web sites via their phone on a daily basis.
b) Most popular uses - the most popular use of mobiles on the web is for email (59% of users); news headlines (46%) and social networking (41%)
c) Web brands – the most popular web brands were Google (55%); Facebook (42%); BBCNews (40%); E-bay (30%) and YouTube (77%)
d) Trends - Gartner reported in May that, worldwide, smart-phone sales increased by 85% year-on-year, so web usage trend seems likely to continue growing.
Clearly website owners should consider carefully the extent of the need to tailor their sites to suit mobile phone visitors, and how best to do this.
e) Our Approach - NCS assesses the degree of mobile relevance for all sites we develop, especially potentially high usage sites, e.g. information only sites, forums, social networking, sites addressing young user market.
Lower priority sites e.g. within certain industrial/commercial sectors will be identified also with, typically, a different technical solution being offered. Optimal domain usage, i.e. whether .mobi is best option, or whether non mobile domains will be adequate, are considered also.
f) Technical solutions - the optimal technical solution will be considered, e.g. for simple sites– the existing web site will often suffice for majority of mobile phones, with minimal content change needed, and .mobi use not needed.
For complex sites, e.g. for mobile-relevant sites with high content levels, (e.g. offering a wide range of products) a .mobi domain may be appropriate; the text content may need simplification; use of the flash/javascript content of existing site may need removing and image formats may need changing.
We will consider with clients the optimal level of search spend, once the site is up, to achieve the necessary level of visibility for the site.
g) Cost - the cost of specifying and developing fully mobile-friendly sites depends on the profile of individual sites. In some instances an effective solution can be delivered for minimal additional cost, as all requirements can be incorporated within the basic site specification.
In other cases it may be necessary to radically tailor the site content for mobile visitors - effectively a separate, mobile - orientated site is needed, although it can detect the mobile device and serve up a different set of pages suitable to them.
Under all options we closely tailor the price to reflect the work needed, with maximum re-use of existing content.
2. NET HAPPENINGS
News, themes and trends from the Internet – home and abroad
Mobile web usage - UK web traffic from mobile devices has increased by over 4000% in the last 18 months. Apple hold by far the greatest share of this - their devices now handling more than 70% of all mobile traffic (scoot.co.uk).
Social Networking - Facebook remains dominant – in the US 50% of the population is now on Facebook (Dreamgrow.com) – followed by YouTube and Twitter.
Online Shopping Update - UK online shopping is growing at 18% pa – the UK is Europe’s leading e-retail economy, with online sales likely to reach c£75bn in 2011 (imrg.org). By contrast, overall retail sales have actually shown falls in recent months.
Internet Promotion – double digit growth in online advertising spend is expected in 2011 – being driven by higher social media use, video, and display advertising. Paid search and mobile show strong growth also (nma.co.uk).
3. NET TIPS
Some hints you could consider
Use correct anchor text - when you put links to pages on your site, use terms for the clickable link which are the terms people will use when searching in a Search Engine for that activity. e.g. if you are a golf equipment e-tailer, and want to link to your new products page, don’t use “our new products” for the link, but describe the page more specifically, for example, “latest golf hybrids and drivers” – Search Engines attach far greater weight to specific terms like these.
Having said this, it is also important to vary the anchor text in your links – so don’t put the same text in all your links.
Get a long tail – long tail keywords are those which have several words, not a single word as the search term. Recent research (axandra.com) has highlighted that long tail keywords are much more likely to result in a sale than more general ones and often have less competition from other sites.
Thus, you will get both better conversion rates and more visitors if you focus on long tail keywords, rather than a single word, for your keyword.
Get on top - research (optify.net/axandra.com) has confirmed that if you get to the top positions on page 1 of Google, you not only get more clicks (the top 3 get 60% of the clicks), but you get a higher click through rate. Optify conclude that if you you double your site promotion spend to get to from 2nd position to 1st, you might triple your visits for that keyword.
NCS has 10 years experience in Search Engine marketing, so please contact us if you need help with this.
Think Firefox – the lastest Statcounter browsers statistics show that by May, Firefox held a share of 42% of browser usage - Internet Explorer was below 25% with Google Chrome increasing to nearly 26%. Clearly, Web owners need to check that their sites operate effectively with each of these browsers.
4. NCS FOCUS
News and services from NCS that might help
New Sites – we have launched a number of sites since the last newsletter – just visit our News Release page for a sample or click on our Portfolio page to see a much wider selection of our work.
Content Development - Google are reducing the rankings of shallow content sites, ie sites with minimal content. So be wary of relying on a minimal, passive, brochure site, to gain the search engine ranking you need. We have massive experience developing content for sites across a wide range of sectors – just approach us if you think your content needs enhancing.
