At last, the upturn we guessed at in December seems to be happening – online retail sales are growing strongly year on year, and many of our own clients are getting busier, stepping up their site promotion and refreshing their web site designs.
We have covered in (1) - at greater length than usual – how to use one of the key web promotion tools, i.e. email marketing, to help push your own web business forward. There is a lot of experience behind these suggestions and we hope applying them helps bring you useful, repeating, gains in your income.
1.NET ISSUES
Significant issues that could impact on your website approach
How to use email marketing effectively
Email marketing is a powerful, low cost way to generate sales. The following email marketing tips are drawn from many years of managing client email marketing campaigns.
1. Get your processes sorted before you start emailing marketing campaigns
Collect email addresses systematically e.g. those you sell to, send brochures to, or those who visit your website.
If you send email marketing from your web server, the load can affect the performance of your website. So send mailings from a separate server which is white listed with leading ISPs to prevent mailings being wrongly identified as SPAM.
Set up a system to handle email marketing bounces. If you send from your PC or website, decide how to handle each email that bounces - use a third party like Net Commerce Solutions with the software to handle them automatically.
2.Email marketing needs good design
Design an email template using your corporate colours and logo - this can be used for all future emailings at no extra cost. Always include an unsubscribe option in the template.
And always develop a text only version of your emailings for those who can only receive text. This needs to include the full url of all links including your unsubscribe option.
NCS, via its Brand Design Service, can of course assist with the Design aspect.
3.Link your email marketing to your website content and promotion
One of the main purposes of emailing marketing should be to get recipients to visit your website, so always link to your website in your mailing - you can link from images as well as from text.
If you include an image of a product, link the image to that product on your website. If you mention a product, link the text to that product page on your website.
Avoid making your emailing look like SPAM to the SPAM filters. Using multicoloured text is generally a bad idea as is using only images. Some email marketing providers like NCS can test your mailing in all the main email packages and SPAM filters to check how it is likely to fare.
4.Good email marketing needs appealing emails
Make the subject line of your email interesting – if not, the recipient may not even open it. Action words and compelling, up to the minute subjects should be included e.g. enter our free competition, see our new product.
Try to include salutations (e.g. Dear Michael) in your mailings if you know the people involved. But be sure to get their names right!
5.Check the results of your email marketing
Set up an M/I system to check which emails bounced, which were opened / unopened, who clicked on which links, and how many spam complaints you got. And refine your email marketing by comparing campaigns sent at various different times to find when it’s best to reach your target audience.
NCS provides a full set of reports on all your mailings showing who opened them, who clicked on which links, and therefore who is interested in which products.
6.For effective email marketing, manage your email list properly
Manage your emailing list so that those who unsubscribe hear from you no more. You can resend mailings which bounce with a soft bounce (i.e. something like mail box full) - you may get through next time, but stop sending emails to addresses which have a hard bounce (e.g. no such email address, no such domain). Of course, our mailing list management software will do this for you automatically.
7.Good email marketing needs good timing
When is the best time to send emailings? Experience tells us that for classic newsletters, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings generally give the best results. However, with Blackberries and other 3G mobile phones on the increase, we are now finding emailings at 6pm are often opened and read much more quickly than previously.
Choose the best times of year for your emailings. This will vary according to your business, but think of the special dates, i.e. Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Mothering Sunday etc.
Remember, we can help you with every aspect of email marketing, including email design, website content alignment, monitoring and selecting the timing of your campaigns.
2. NET HAPPENINGS
News, themes and trends from the Internet – home and abroad
Online channels show strong growth.....
Mobile web access/m-commerce – shows continued strong growth – around a fifth of all retail web site visits are now made via mobile internet (nma.co.uk/ComScore)
Social Networking – approx 86% of the UK online population visited a social networking site in January 2010. Within this Facebook continues to dominate – its volumes grew by nearly 50% during the last year (nma.co.uk/ComScore).
UK online sales are now climbing strongly – the IMRG/Capgemini Sales Index showed that, year on year, e-retail grew by 15% in March.
- IPA/BDO Bellwether report (April) showed that, overall, UK marketing budgets will increase in 2010 – i.e. the first time since 2007. Within this, Online marketing spend, especially Search, is forecast to grow particularly strongly
- Google revenue grew by 23% in Q1, showing the scale of the shift to online marketing (nma.co.uk).
3. NET TIPS
Some hints you could consider
Be local – if you are a locally based business, make it very clear where you do business. Using the local area code with your phone number shows immediately that you are based in the vicinity. Non–geographic numbers, e.g. 0870, are a valuable business tool, but the local number shows you are really local. NCS can help build your local search engine presence.
Use that space - the top right hand corner of a webpage is the most valuable "call to action" area on a website – make sure you don’t fill that part of the screen with eye-candy, or a very deep header, but use it for your key message.
Be alive to 2012 – we know some web owners are already considering how to adapt their offer or their promotion to reflect opportunities coming out of the 2012 London Olympics – it might be worth reflecting whether it will give any new opportunities for your business.
4. NCS FOCUS
News and services from NCS that might help
News Releases – has your business done anything worth telling the world about – e.g. new clients gained, or new products/services you now offer? If so, think about a News Release – we have much experience in preparing and distributing Online Press Releases. An Online news release can also be a useful way to create inbound links to your site.
Google Maps – we have helped our clients, and ourselves, gain useful links from Google Maps.
Firstly, register an account with Google, and verify your listing. Key action is to then add reviews. To practice, (and using us as an example) once you have an account you can add a (hopefully) good/5 star review for our web design and SEO promotion, or for a friend’s business - just search on Maps for Net Commerce Solutions and write a review covering our web design and SEO / promotion plus general service level to you.If you are happy with the procedure, you can ask a few clients to add a review - it can give you a strong local ranking with Google.
Does your shopping cart work? – a recent survey (Internet Retailing) found that 64% of online shoppers abandon sites at point of purchase because the shopping cart on the site doesn’t work properly. Please contact us if you would like a free check.
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.
