Conversion-Calls

Getting back to some sort of normality after my holidays although the laptop was working for about 10 of the 14 days but at least the sun was shining which is not exactly the way to describe the Irish Summer, a paradox in itslef.

Anyway less babble, as mentioned not fully up to speed on my thought process so I thought I would put up a “little tip” blog. You may have heard those more knowledgeable about Online Marketing and SEO talking about keyword density and not to overkill your content with the same words over and over again, although you may be tempted in your search to get to the Number 1 slot on Google!!

A good tool to help you look at the keyword denisty on any given webpage is WeBuildPages. This will quickly show you how repetitive your 1 word, 2 word phrases and 3 word phrases are on your webpage. Remember 5-7% is the limit, no higher than that…..although your may be tempted!!!

As we know branding is key for a lot of businesses and the naming convention for a business can also echo the brand. A lot of website names or urls these days actually reflect the product offering rather than the company behind it www.games.com for example or www.myhome.ie.  

Recently that has been taken a step further in that you can now look to personalise the extension, the dot-ie or dot-com aspect of your web address. So, for example instead of being restricted to sites ending in dot-com or dot-org, eBay could have a site that ends with dot-ebay or Dublin could ends it web name with dot-Dub. Impacts on Branding and more importantly impacts on SEO and the online marketing aspects of your website could serve to localise results even further. Learn more on website naming changes from ENN.

For those of you that do not know, I am a member of BNI, a networking group and recently we got away from all the serious meeting stuff and had a few socialable drinks. Getting entrepreneurs and business owners to talk on a social level is always going to be difficult as they are constantly drawn back to analogies of their business based on the conversations around them. However a balance was struck as the football was on which was a welcome distraction from just talking “shop”!   

So were am I going with this apart from an insight into my Thursday evening, well the topic of conversation from a business perspective always came back to knowing exactly where your business stands and being able to formulate actions for the future. From my background I spoke to a lot of the other members about the company’s that I work for and that from an online perspective they always know where they stand as I report back to them via Google Anaytics (GA). They can effectively track their website performance in relation to visitors, keywords, page visits and conversions. I would recommend utilising this to anyone who has a website but is never 100% sure as to how it is performing for their business. If you could only map that information-rich knowledge back into your offline activities not only would you know what the bottom line is but I am positive you would never pass it!!     

Came across a prospect recently looking to optimise a website for a large clothes retail group. Site had only recently been built so I started my assessment and straight away what jumped out…….the “childrens clothes” page was entitled http://www.siteabc.ie/index.php?a=products&c=3
Competitors within that space had their associated “childrens clothes” page entitled www.siteabc.ie/catalog/ChildrenClothes.php or www.siteabc.ie/childrensClothes
Now I am not a developer so am sure I would be missing the obvious in their worlds but just a word or warning to those looking at optimising their website from scratch, look at how your developer entitle’s your WebPages, it will help your pages achieve a better PageRank
 

Came across this and thought we have reached a new level of advertising!!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0qMe7Z3EYg

In a world where search dominates product selection or product research, does brand still have a place? Has google thought us not to be brand loyal any more, considering that once we search on the product type we are then looking at the most relevant results that are applicable, but that result is based on product information and not on brand awareness.

Example taken from searchenginewatch is that of looking to buy a new MP3 player in 2008? With a search engine, that’s about all you need to know. A search in Google for “mp3 player” brings up mp3.com a site dedicated to that product type but has no brand loyalty.

Is the case strong enough to hold up , I am siding with the No’s, perhaps not yet but maybe in time. Brand still has a strong role to play but maybe those brand based website’s need to get generic in order to compliment pure product based searches.

I had the pleasure of being invited to a Toastmasters meeting last night and whilst we may have notions of self confidence, having a topic thrust at you without any notice as to its subject matter and expected to talk for 2 minutes is certainly an awakening moment. For some people, only death is more frightening. For others, death is preferable.

They say the some people’s biggest fear is public speaking and that they would rather drown. In fact it ranks up with being burned to death and falling to your death.

In reality we do not have topics thrust upon us and expected to talk in great detail about the pros and cons of a particular subject, in reality we already know our subject matter so we should be able to present the information in a concise manner, educating others through our knowledge. Take that analogy a step further and think about your website, do you educate people, do you clearly present the benefits and features of your service or product and provide them with the opportunity to make an informed decision. That’s what online marketing is all about, allowing others to make that informed decision based on your knowledge.

Part of my working week also involves BNI, a networking organisation that supports businesses in developing strategic alliances and generating referral business from one another. This week we had a stand at the BT Small Business & Franchise Show which looks to provide enterprise opportunities for start-ups and also support for newly established SME’s.

What I did not see strangely enough was any visible web presence, nobody representing the online aspects of business. A little strange but perhaps expected as we talk about cutting edge but do we really support all aspects of business. I can fill the niche of online marketing and conversion analysis but your online strategy needs to be more than that. Perhaps next year I can lobby my online colleagues to have a co-sponsored stand that looks at the full realm of the Online Business including development, design, marketing and integration with off-line business objectives. 

Does my need to be treated as a customer mean I am high maintenance? Have our levels of acceptance dipped so low as to make us an easy target for those servicing multiple levels of customers? A recent experience with a certain banking institution in this country left me wondering do all service related industries just “talk the talk” and not actually delivery upon their well-thought out branding and the highly polished content that exists on their website.

Like everyone else I throw my eyes to heaven when I read some of this content, they almost give me wings to fly such is the depth of promises made. Why am I ranting, purely because companies no longer have to talk about service if they have it printed all over their websites, but they do still have to deliver upon it…….apparently!

Our population is growing but at nearly 4.5 million, is the market large enough to sustain a healthy investment in Online Marketing? Our neighbours in the UK at 70 million plus, can certainly boast a very healthy online industry where online advertisement spend surpasses many of the more traditional media types, of radio, newspapers and T.V.

In recent figures released from Nielsen Online, “Irish Internet Users buy more product categories than any other country in the world”. It seems our online market is growing at a very healthy rate as Irish consumers “display the highest confidence when buying online and are very savvy compared to other countries shoppers”.

This may come as a shock to some when you think of the headaches that the country has expereinced with Broadband over the past 2 years but the reality is that this has only directly affected the usage of online gamming, broadcast media or videos and not the more traditional purchase types.

So the reality is our market is active, the audience is enthusiastic and willing to spend but how does your website shape up? The business case for investment seems to be proven but do you have visibility online and more importantly will your website have credibility once a visitor arrives at your homepage?