So the Google show finally opened, with the multi-billion dollar valuation being taken as a symbol of the internet revival. However, the latest research (Continental Research) shows that only 50% of UK businesses have a web site, and only 22% of UK businesses operate full e-commerce sites, ie with sales and payment online.

Its worth a thought too that still only around 50% of UK households are even online – all power to Google then, but clearly much growth is still to come.

 

 

1. NET ISSUES
Important issues that could impact on your website approach

 

New TPS Legislation

From July all business lists used for telemarketing must be screened against the Telephone Preference Service. This follows the approach within the consumer market for many years, whereby personal consumers can register their phone number with the Telephone Preference Survey.

Telemarketers must delete from their call schedules any numbers registered with the TPS or incur fines. This approach now applies also within the business market as part of the changes within the Privacy and Telecommunications Bill enacted at the end of last year.

NCS can assist clients in finding specialists screening companies who will assist in screening their call lists.

 

2. NET HAPPENINGS
News and themes from the Internet - home and abroad

 

Technology enablers still developing strongly………

SMS

• UK monthly text messaging in 2004 is running above 2.10 billion – ie for six consecutive months it has exceeded 2 billion. This represents growth of c28% on the total sent during the same period in 2003. (mda.org)

WAP

• WAP pages viewed are running at over 1.4 billion per month – daily average has been running at 45 million, more than double 2003. (mda.org)

• 4 billion page impressions in Q2- up 42% on same period in 2003

Broadband

• More than 91 per cent of UK homes and businesses are now connected to broadband-enabled exchanges and that figure will reach 99.6 per cent by next summer, putting the UK ahead of any other G7 country in terms of DSL availability. (BT.Com)

Internet Access

• By Q1 2004 49% of UK homes (12.1 million) could access the Internet – a 400% increase of the past 5 years.

• However, 39% of adults in the UK have never actually used the Internet. (New Media Age / ONS)

Online Shopping Update – UK Credit Card usage confirms strong growth…………

The number of credit card payments made online has increased five-fold since 1999, with 10 per cent of all credit card payments now taking place online compared to just 2 per cent 5 years ago. (Apacs)

The top five online purchases by credit card in 2003 were books and CDs, followed by travel, computer equipment, financial services and groceries.

The figures showed that men shop online more than women, with 35 per cent of the 10.5 million male Internet shoppers making eleven or more purchases in the second half of 2003, compared with only 27 per cent of the 9.8 million female online shoppers.

Top spot goes to Argos:

Data released by Overture shows that the most searched for UK retail brands (ie,via Overture) are:

1. Argos 18%               

2. Amazon 15%            

3. Tesco 14%               

4. B & Q 13%               

5. Currys 8% 

6. PC World 7%

7. Next 7%

8. Comet 6%

9. Homebase 6%

10. Debenhams 6%

Internet media spend continues to grow…………………………………………………..

Recent data (iabuk.net) shows that online advertising spend is up by 80%. This strong growth in internet marketing spend is now well established with growth for 9 successive

quarters in internet advertising spend (iabuk.net).

Paid search remains the largest form of internet advertising, and US data (from Jupiterresearch.com) suggests that paid search in US will double over the next 5 years

from $2.5bn pa to $5.0bn pa.

 

3. NET TIPS
Some hints you could consider

 

Web Site Design and Management

Christmas is coming – if you want better Christmas sales this year, now might be the time to define any changes needed on your site, and get these implemented in order to avoid last minute pressures.

Conversion disappointing? – if your web stats confirm a good visit rate, but conversions are low, have you considered promotions, and special offers – they are well proven in traditional marketing, but probably under-used by web site owners.

Web Site Text - a common discussion point with new clients, who often like either no text, or full, flowing text on their web sites. However, the strong learning is that:

• text is important for search engines – we recommend typically 250 words or so depending on the content, but
• many web users scan text, not read it– research suggests that only 25% of of the words on a web site are actually read (InterWorks) – so the proven approach is to use text, but keep it slim and to the point.

 

Search Engine Marketing

Pay Per Click (PPC) is not a substitute for thorough optimisation – we are constantly surprised by the number of companies who feature in the sponsored, ie paid for, search results at the side/top of Google, but who have low Google Page Rankings, and too few links.

PPC is a powerful reinforcement for a well-optimised site – however, it is poor use of budget to spend on PPC, before ensuring that the site, is carefully optimised (both keywords and text), and that the linkage volumes are at least on a par, or exceed competitor link volumes and quality.

It is true that Google AdWords can kick in within 24 hours to help push up site visit volumes, but (longer term) this should be used to reinforce, not replace, good natural search result performance.

Don’t get blacklisted – we have highlighted dubious search engine practices in the past, which can easily get a site blacklisted by the search engines. A further

technique to be avoided is “Mirror Websites”–ie sites with identical content, but different URLs. Although this has been used to help get strong rankings, it can easily be identified by the search engines who may well delist the site in question.

NCS is highly experienced in Search Engine marketing, and is happy to assist clients in reviewing their web site promotion options.

 

4. NCS FOCUS
News and services from NCS that might help

NCS Logo/Branding Service - we find continued interest from both clients and prospects, in aligning offline and online media, eg email headers, letter headers, quotation documents, and business cards.

We are happy to develop and provide logo images which can be used across a range of material – please approach us for a quote if you wish to explore this further.

NCS Card Payment Pricing Model – card payment costs can be a material cost for an online retailer. NCS has developed a card payment pricing model to assist new clients in assessing the optimum payment route given the number of models now in existence.

 

 

5. NET NOTHINGS you probably already know that:

Brits search most – the average UK search engine user makes 42 searches per month on average – ahead of US, Canadian, French and German searchers. (Comscore.com)

Britney wins - Britney Spears is the most searched for female pop artist within the UK – in the list of the top ten she was the clear winner, with Madonna coming a lowly 9 th (per Overture)

BOGOFF – is not a rude invitation to go away, but simply the useful promotion tool, ie B uy O ne G et O ne F ree.

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.