take advantage of Cyber Monday!

November 30th, 2009

shutterstock_6126811Today is forecast to be the busiest online shopping day of the year. Some call it “Mega Monday” others “Cyber Monday”…I’d call it an opportunity for all online retailers that use pay per click marketing.

If you are advertising on search engines using PPC marketing, it might just be worth upping your bids. The value you extract from PPC marketing is a result of the number of clicks multiplied by the rate at which those clickers actually buy something minus the cost of acquiring those clicks. I anticipate both the number of clicks and rate of purchase to be noticeably higher today, therefore you can probably increase the cost of acquiring clicks and still make a great return, with the added bonus of increased sales volume.

Happy hunting!

thomas marketing

How news (doesn’t) make money

November 26th, 2009

A news feed for a company website helps you bring in traffic, improve your search engine ranking and promote your business.

Of course if the news IS your business, it isn’t so simple to get the most out of it.

For years news outlets have been trying to find ways of making money online. By providing their content for free, they hoped to recoup the costs of lower paper sales with advertising revenue, yet this has failed to be a successful business model for most large papers.

Now Rupert Murdoch has been reported to be considering a deal with Bing, Microsoft’s search engine which would involve him removing his content from all other search engines, and making them exclusive to Bing.

Murdoch is the owner of News Corp, which in turn owns a number of newspapers in the UK, as well as the Sky and Fox television networks (both of which produce news that is available online).

There have long been rumblings that Murdoch objects to news being available for free on the internet. His previous idea for monetising News Corp’s sites was to erect a paywall, and requiring visitors to subscribe to his papers.

But the new plan, to shun Google and go to Bing (for a price, naturally) seems like a strategy concocted by someone with very little idea of how the net works.

If only News Corp outlets move to Bing, people will simply not find those sites. Bing has a 10% market share, compared to Google’s 65%. People use Google for a reason, they are unlikely to switch search engines just to get news from a particular source. If you were that desperate to read a story in The Sun, wouldn’t you just go straight to their site to begin with?

The only way that I can see Murdoch succeeding with this idea, is if he were to persuade other big news outlets to join him. If you could only find reputable well-read papers through Bing, people would be more likely to use it.

This would effectively create two tiers of news aggregators, the big names as provided by Bing with other search engines providing content from lesser-known sources.

It’s certainly a risk, for News Corp and for Bing. If they go ahead with the deal, both could easily lose money – Bing from the original deal, and News Corp from the decrease in visitors.

It just goes to prove that making money solely from content is very difficult, even the most established providers are struggling to find a way to make it profitable. This is because news outlets have nothing to provide their visitors with other than the content they are already getting for free.

News itself can’t generate money, unless you charge people for it. What it CAN do, is give you the opportunity to sell around it. You use a news feed to bring visitors to your site, to improve your search engine rankings, familiarise people with your company, and all those things should bring you an increase in sales.

Always remember, this is a long term strategy and not a quick fix. Even the most established news providers are struggling to turn news into a direct profit.

Luckily for you, you have something else to sell.

hannah copy writing, marketing

containing website widths

November 24th, 2009

With wide screens becoming ever more popular, so does the importance of assigning a width to websites. If you’re thinking of having your website expand to fit the width of the user’s screen, you may want to think again.

This won’t only be an ugly website to look at on certain screens, but can you imagine reading text on a widescreen monitor? Chances are you’ll get lost before finishing the line you’re on, and if you do manage to get halfway through a paragraph you’ll probably feel the need to claw your eyeballs out.

A safe max-width to work at for your website is 1000px, this should cater for the people whose monitors have a resolution of 1024px wide. The remaining 24px will come in use for the scroll bar that may appear on the right-hand side of the the browser.

bhups Uncategorized

Google Chrome OS – Can it compete with Windows?

November 20th, 2009

Google has recently released more detail on it’s new operating system, Google Chrome OS. Built on Googles browser Chrome, it differs greatly from traditional operating systems that we all know, such as Windows, OSX and Linux.Instead of having all your data and applications such as Word and Outlook stored on your computer hard drive, the applications instead, will be stored on one of Googles servers, called a Cloud. This means that you need to be connected to the Internet to use Chrome and access your applications. Of course right now this is a bit of an issue because broadband speeds, especially in certain parts of the UK are still very slow and sometimes unavailable. The good thing is that if you lost your laptop or it broke, then all you would need to would be to purchase a new one, connect to Google Chrome and your back up and running again. Another concern of course is that your data would be stored elsewhere and with people already worried about data protection it will be interesting to see how this one pans out.

One major advantage I see from a personal point of view is that you could have multiple machines using the same OS environment. As I work from home a fair bit and occasionally from a client’s office, I have to make sure that I have got all the correct files with me and applications, such as my website editor setup correctly before I can work efficiently. Google OS could eliminate these problems.

So is a Cloud OS the future? I think it probably is. There a plenty of advantages to using it and security would be a major factor. However Chrome is not due to be released until Xmas 2010 and even then it’s only on Netbooks. I think broadband speeds and availability will have to dramatically improve before Google Chrome can challenge the king of the OS, Windows, but it’s something I’m certainly looking forward too.

mark computing

How news makes money: Part 3

November 19th, 2009

As with so many things on the net – the answer lies with Google.

You might have noticed people in the press getting up in arms about GoogleNews and other news aggregators, but in my experience, this is mostly because they don’t know how it works.

Getting into a recognised news aggregator’s listings is great for your site, because aggregators work just like search engines. People search for terms they want to read about, and the aggregator will provide them with a list of the relevant stories available online.

Being part of that list gives your site wider exposure, and if you give visitors a story they want, they’ll come to your site to find out more. It’s a big step in bringing more traffic to your site, and also getting people familiarised with your brand and company.

Of course, big newspapers will usually get their stories at the top of the list, because they are recognised and respected as sources for news content, but if you have a relevant story (with a distinct, searchable headline) you can boost your site closer to the top.

This is the reason that some of the more established news providers are unhappy with aggregators, because they see them as giving equal status to stories from smaller news outlets.

In actual fact, if so much online content was not written from similar sources (a lot of news stories are not uncovered and written by reporters, but by copy and sub-editors who take information from the same organisations – such as the Associated Press), then they would not appear alongside smaller news sources.

So, to get to the top of GoogleNews, you need to combine relevance and originality with searchability. Standing out on top of those listings will help you improve your site and your company’s reputation, and bring you the traffic to boost your sales too.

hannah copy writing, marketing

should I use a contact form on my website?

November 16th, 2009

There are a million good reasons why a contact us page is a must for every website. Here are 6 of them ;)

a contact form provides versatility

a contact form provides versatility

  1. 24/7 availability!
    You want your customers to be able to get in touch with you when it suits them. A telephone number is of course a “must”, but is by no means an alternative to a contact form. If you are prepared to answer the telephone at 4am then all power to you…if you are not, then a contact us form captures vital information from willing enquirers for you to follow up at a suitable time. Your website can literally be working for you whilst you are sleeping.
  2. Protecting your email privacy!
    Search engines scour the internet for new websites and information….so do spammers! A contact form will protect your email address from unwanted attention, whilst retaining your availability to customers.
  3. Intelligent routing!
    Do you have different departments or availabilities in your company? Your contact form can route enquiries through to the relevant people without making your customers think too hard!
  4. Essential information!
    A contact form lets you structure the information that your customers provide. Do you need to know an organisations size or an enquirers location before you call them back? You can ask (or insist) people give you this information with a contact form.
  5. Intuition!
    People expect to find a contact form on a website. Having one is part of a larger ethic towards keeping your websites simple and intuitive.
  6. Customer discretion!
    Lots of people surf the internet when they should be working. Those same people may like to make subtle enquiries about a service or product, but are not at liberty to pick up the phone (the less cynical side of me says perhaps they are in a library). A contact form gives these people the option to request a call back or more information at a time or in a manor that suits them.

Photos courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons license from users eyesogreen

thomas marketing

Page expired PHP problems

November 11th, 2009

I’ve been recently developing a very large scale website and back end system for a client and during the development process we came across and very annoying yet common issue that really spoils the user experience. When data is posted from one page to another and the user navigates back using the “Back” button in their browser, you get a warning page saying that the page has expired. Not only is this very annoying for the user, but could potentially turn them off from using the site altogether.

So what’s the solution? Well there are a couple of things we can do to help the problem, but the only real way to get around this is to use a header redirect once the form has been posted. Let’s look at an example.

So you have a form like below and you want the users name to be stored in a session variable.

<form action=”step_2.php” method=”post”>
<input type=”text” id=”users_name” name=”users_name” />
<input type=”submit” id=”submit” name=”submit” value=”SUBMIT” />
</form>

When the SUBMIT button is then pressed a PHP script is called to store the users_name in a SESSION variable, like so:

<?php
if (isset($_POST['users_name'])) {
$_SESSION['users_name'] = $_POST['users_name'];
}
?>

The one thing that is missing from this script is the header redirect. This will redirect the page to the page of your choice and will eliminate the Page Expired issue. So to do this simply change the above script to:

<?php
if (isset($_POST['users_name'])) {
$_SESSION['users_name'] = $_POST['users_name'];
header(‘Location: step_2.php’);
}
?>

Perfect!

mark development

what is a landing page?

November 9th, 2009

Landing pages are a way to instantly connect with visitors to your website, significantly increasing the likely-hood they will end up purchasing from you (or do whatever your websites intended goal is).back

In certain forms of online marketing, such as pay per click or buying adverts on other sites, you can control the pages on your site to which your visitors are first taken. Quite simply, the more relevant your page, the more likely you are to retain your visitors attention.

They say (whoever “they” are) that you have around 3 seconds to convince a visitor your site is worthy of attention before that visitor hits the dreaded “back” button. Don’t make people work hard to give you their custom! Take them to a relevant page at your first opportunity.

All too often I click on an advert (in Google for instance) after a key-phrase search and arrive at a seemingly unrelated page. It’s possible the site I arrive at will provide the product/service I am after, but it’s more probable that I’ll just exit the site at this point.

If a visitor has already told you what they are looking for, by way of a key-phrase search in Google, or a specific offer on an advert, and you still send them to a less relevant page on your website then quite frankly you are being lazy and deserve probably deserved a bounce (a bounce is when somebody finds your website but then exits before viewing another page).

So a landing page is a page on your website specifically designed to capture the attention of your visitor and guide them through to the product or service they want to buy.

When you create a landing page for key-phrase based advertising…put the key-phrase in at the top of the page as a headline (this tells people they are in the right place instantly). Then below this headline put all the products or services you provide that relate to this key-phrase.

The same goes for an online advert. If you are advertising a particular product or price point…link through to a page on your site that concentrates almost entirely on this offer. Make the offer the headline on the page.

I can recall innumerate instances where landing pages have increased the performance of my online advertising by over 300%. If you are spending £100, £1,000 or £10,000 on your marketing, that’s a hell of an improvement.

This is such an easy tactic, it’s relevant for your customers, it’s profitable for you and it’s likely to be incredibly cheap to implement. So why doesn’t everyone do it? Probably because they haven’t thought of it…but now you have, so no excuses!

thomas marketing

How news makes money: Part 2

November 9th, 2009

It can be hard to find the right balance between an informative and an interesting story.

Sometimes, however, you hit the jackpot.

For example: last week, everyone’s favourite Sir/Lord/Businessman/Reality TV Character/Walking Catchphrase managed to offend the very people he’s supposed to be “championing” in government.

That’s right folks, Lord Alan Sugar, Enterprise Champion for the Government, told small businesses they were “moaners”.

Putting aside the genius of his comments for a moment, as a news item this story is fantastically attractive because it combines the interests of a particular audience (small business owners), with the interest of a huge number of people (anyone who takes an interest in The Apprentice, or Suralan himself).

This gives you both a wide exposure, but still keeps the high level of relevance to your audience.

Having someone famous in your headline is always going to get you more exposure, but be careful not to be disingenuous. If your headline states “Britney sniffs our socks”, and it turns out that Britney is an 8 year-old Basset hound from Wiltshire, you’re going to lose most of your visitors as soon as they arrive.

With your news, you should never sacrifice relevance for wider exposure (search engines will punish you for this even more than your visitors) – but you should sure as hell make the most of it if you can combine the two!

Of course, if you do want to write silly stories about Basset hounds and kittens and high heels in the workplace, I suggest you start writing a blog instead!

hannah copy writing, marketing, website strategy

How news makes money: Part 1

November 6th, 2009

A news feed is often a great way to bring people to your website – but it can also be very tricky to get right.

Of course, the more people you get to your site, the better opportunity you have to turn those visitors into customers, and make more money out of your web presence.

Keeping a relevant news feed can be massively valuable. Search engines always prefer sites with relevant content, especially if they update that content regularly, and a news feed can help you do this.

Getting into a news aggregator, such as Google News is also highly valuable, and can help your site get much wider exposure.

It isn’t an ideal option for everyone though – news means different things to different people. If your clients have an interest in your industry, keeping them updated with the latest news is going to matter to them. However, if you’re selling socks, updates on the availability of cotton and the newest darning machines is probably not going to titillate your customers.

News feeds are of most value when you have a clearly defined audience, with a specific area of interest. Of course, once you’ve identified your target audience, you need to provide them with stories that matter to them. Tailoring each article to the interests of your visitors will keep your news feed relevant to them, and relevant content is something that search engines adore.

So, news can give you wider exposure and a greater volume of relevant content – which are both excellent ways of improving your standing in search engines, allowing you to reach out to potential customers and bring more visitors to your website.

hannah copy writing, marketing, website strategy

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