High Street spending figures continue to weaken. However, online shopping continues to surge. Broadband adoption is driving this strongly, and is likely to do so for the next five years or so, (section 1.ii). It is not surprising then, that we are seeing also a huge shift to internet advertising in all its forms, (section 1.iii), away from traditional media.
Our challenge to you is to ask whether you reflect this in your own marketing mix - if not, be sure to ask us how we can help you get more benefit from online advertising in your business!
1. NET HAPPENINGS
News, themes and trends from the Internet - home and abroad
i. Technology enablers still developing strongly.................
Broadband - in UK, 33% of households which connect to the internet, now do so via Broadband, with UK Broadband users predicted to double in the next 5 years.
Broadband users are now growing at 50,000 per week. (Forrester/New Media Age)
Behavioural data shows that Broadband users spend twice as much time online as non-broadband, with a strong increase also in their use of online shopping. (Forrester)
WAP - 1.82bn of WAP pages were viewed in UK during March - an increase of 30% on Mar 2004 levels - total WAP page impressions are now running at 58m daily. (Mobile Data Assocn MDA)
Text messaging - over 2.5bn text messages were sent in March in the UK, up 21% on March 2004 levels. Approximately 58m text messages are being sent daily. (MDA)
ii. Online Shopping Update - UK figures showing strong growth......
- internet shopping in UK continues to grow at c20% pa, contrasting sharply with minimal - or even negative - growth in High Street retail spending.
- nearly 9% of all UK retail sales are now done on line - compares with only 6% in 2004.
- there are now over 17m online shoppers in UK - figure has increased from 12.2m in 2004, ie up 40% (Continental Research).
iii.Internet Advertising - continued shift away from traditional media....
- in 2005 there has been continued strong growth in online advertising, and a shift away from traditional advertising spend. This is on the back of a 40% increase in online advertising spend in 2004. (IAB)
- budget shifts were seen away from spend on TV, radio, sponsorship, PR etc (IPA)
- this reflect patterns in the US where internet ad spend is predicted to reach $14bn in 2005, rising to $26bn in 2010 (New Media Age).
- Pay Per Click remains comfortably the largest area of internet advertising spend.
2. NET TIPS
Some hints you could consider
Have you got the right mix? - Paid for advertising, ie Pay Per Click remains the strongest area of internet advertising spend, (although increasing use being made of Banner advertising). However, first challenge for any company is to review the mix between online and offline spend, and consider whether they need to change the mix, in favour of online spend, in line with an increasing number of marketing professionals.
Beware phoney links buiding - Google are believed to be intensifying efforts to weed out companies, which are using dubious link-building techniques, eg between companies which lack real content or even true existence. It needs to be remembered that Google, can - and will - remove companies from its index where they discover dubious search engine practices have been used.
"Conversion before volume" -it can be useful to bear in mind in selecting keywords that the conversion rate matters more than the volume of click throughs. Careful selection, particularly using additional qualifying words or phrases can help to screen out traffic that in fact is not targetting the products you are selling.
Net Commerce Solutions has several years experience in these areas - we would be happy to assist with any issues you may have on search engine marketing.
Light touch text presentation - help site visitors by avoiding long paragraphs. Using sub headings, short paragraphs, bullet-points, and straplines, can help to present text in a way that is both visually appealing and more likely to retain the interest of site visitors.
3. NCS FOCUS
News and services from NCS that might help
NCS e-Commerce Service - this has been enhanced to include a features/cost comparison of major online card payment providers.
As part of this, we are able to use our payment pricing model to assess online payment costs in individual cases
NCS Branding Service -where needed, we can provide a full branding service, embracing logo development, and multi-format provision of images for letterheads, email headers, e-quote headers - please approach us if a quote would be useful.
Visual interest - we have an increasing number of sites in our portfolio where the visual interest of the site has been enhanced by including "movement" on the pages. This avoids the static appearance which many web pages have. We would be happy to provide specific examples, and to consider whether these might enhance the look of your site.
Presenting images - presenting large images eg photos, on web sites often produces a weak visual impact, and uses space sub-optimally. Increasingly, when presenting photo images within a web site, Net Commerce uses a design technique which presents "thumbnails" of the photos, which then expand, into a common location, when the mouse is moved over the thumbnail - this also creates increased interactivity for site users.
We can show specific examples of this approach if this is of interest to you.
4. NET NOTHINGS
You probably already know that:
The Slurp-Bot battle - doesn't relate to binge drinking, but to the intense competition between Yahoo (and their search spider "Slurp") and Google (and their search spider "Bot")
Oldies are goodies - adults are more skilled at navigating the web than teenagers. Neilson Norman Group who ran the research said that the teenagers' success rate for completing a series of set tasks was only 55% compared to 66% for adults - partly this stemmed from poor reading skills.
Teenies don't want "flash and glitz" - a recent survey of users aged between 13 and 17 found that they did not like sites that were "heavily glitzy" or used flashing graphics - they did like sites that have social and interactive elements.(NNG Group).
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.
