Yes, that’s right the email field is pre-filled so no extra heavy lifting for the casual browser that can’t quite manage to find the energy to click through onto the site to look for any specific offers!

Once you hit the “Get offers” button you then see a simple confirmation appear in the same place on the ad.

For anybody that might be concerned about privacy and how your data might be used by an advertiser or Google themselves then don’t worry because Google of course has this covered off with a handy “privacy link” in the ad.

When clicked a pop up box appears helpfully informing the cautious form filler that “When you submit this form, your email address will be sent to the advertiser”. Phew, thanks Google!

If this is something that is going to be rolled out across the UK it raises some very interesting questions.

Is Google really planning to charge per lead for these enquiries? If so, is it really sacrificing clicks for leads? How much are leads likely to cost? Will more data fields be captured in the future? How do these site extensions affect click through rates? Is the consumer contact opt-in for the advertiser only or for Google as well?

There are also more prosaic lead gen specific questions such as is there any validation on the leads? Do lead buyers pay for all leads or just valid ones? Are the leads time-stamped and sent to the advertiser in real-time (as recommended by IAB best practice) or are they batched up and sent sporadically?

Whatever the answers to these questions, it seems like yet more evidence that Google are getting very serious about online lead generation. As they increasingly go head-to-head with Facebook for precious advertising dollars, moving down the funnel from clicks to leads might help to consolidate their place as the real online advertising super power.

View full post courtesy of Zonecrest Internet Marketing Watchdog

Ahrefs is an essential tool for any webmaster interested in traffic research, analysis and management. It uses its own bot and its own index, which they state is based on information from hundreds of billions (with a ‘”b”) website connections. The index is also updated every thirty minutes and has a ranking database of millions of keywords from about nine different countries. The basic user tools include:

• Site Explorer
• Reports
• SERPs analysis
• Labs/Tools

Most webmasters know that the goal is to get new and frequent visitors coming to the site from other websites like Google, Yahoo, blogs and so on. Every time a new visitor comes from a different website, the process is called a backlink, and this includes search engines. Being able to track your backlinks is one of the most important ways to tell precisely where your traffic is coming from.

Say you frequently link blog articles to Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and Reddit. You’re getting 2,000 page views in an hour. Ahrefs gives you a full analysis of where these hits are coming from. Now say Ahrefs tells you you’re getting 1,000 hits from Facebook, 500 from Twitter, 500 from StumbleUpon and none from Reddit. You can spend less time on Reddit and more time on the others where the majority of hits are coming from.

Backlinks is just the tip of the iceberg with Ahrefs. One of the main features of Ahref is its Site Explorer, where you have the option of choosing a specific URL, the domain with all subdomains or the domain with no subdomains. The interface provides interesting and vital stats, such as the total number of backlinks (including the type: text, image, redirects, etc.), unique domains and distinct referring IPs and subnets. Aside from the overview analysis, you’re provided with a slew of other research options to choose from, including:

• Newly discovered links from the previous month to the current month.
• Lost or dropped links.
• Anchor text report of external links.
• Crawled pages (Page URL and Title, Crawl Date, Page Size, etc.).
• Referring domains and subnet links from each domain.
• SERP information and positioning in multiple countries.
• Raw export of the data (based on the pricing plan).

Though Ahrefs is one of the most powerful tools a webmaster can have, there are some downsides. There are no special, so it isn’t mobile and has to run on a PC. It has to be constantly updated and it occasionally crashes and can potentially lose data (though this might depend on the resources of the PC and the internet connection itself). You access the application from its own server, so you don’t need local software installations, but this does take away some of the control that many users would prefer.

But there’s no reason to doubt its comprehensiveness. The server is quite fast, which makes the exportability of the data and the filtering capabilities very smooth for the most part. The tool does just what you expect it to do and is very easy to use, which requires very little entry-level experience. Ahrefs is highly recommended and a must-have for those who are into link research. From a scale of one to ten, it gets a solid eight.

View full post courtesy of Zonecrest Internet Marketing Watchdog

Application developers (with or without the blessing of Enterprise Architecture) select platform components such as application servers, middleware etc.  I&O keeps the servers running – probably up to the operating system.  The app owners then manage their apps and the platform components.  I&O has no SLAs on the platform, etc.

In the PaaS era, I think this needs to change.  IT Operations (I&O) needs to have full accountability and responsibility for the OPERATION of the PaaS layer. PaaS is no longer a part of the application, but is now really part of the core platform operated by IT.  It’s about 24×7 monitoring, support, etc. and generally this is a task that I&O is ultimately best able to handle.

Both teams need to be accountable and responsible for the definition of the PaaS layer to ensure it meets the right business and operational needs.  But when it comes to operations, I&O now takes charge.

The implication of this will be a need for PaaS operations and administration skills in the I&O business.  It also means that the developers and application ownership teams need only worry about the application itself – and not the standard plumbing that supports it.

Result?  Better reliability of the application AND better agility and productivity in development.  That’s a win, right?

View full post courtesy of Zonecrest Internet Marketing Watchdog

Surprise of the night went to TradeDoubler, which forced Affiliate Window to relinquish its grip on the Publishers’ Choice of Network award. Until this year’s awards, Affiliate Window had won in this category for five years in a row. 

According to the awards’ founder Matthew Wood: 

Stepping up from last year, the winners demonstrated a significant focus on greater collaboration, multi-channel exposure and data utilisation. Enabling all parties to contribute towards effective and smart consumer influence and loyalty.

You can view the full list of winners and commended entries here. 

View full post courtesy of Zonecrest Internet Marketing Watchdog

The sheer number of tweets is likely to be a major influence, not least because it’s one of the easiest things for Google to figure out. 

Research from Branded3 showed some strong correlations between rankings and retweet volume. It found that the more (re)tweets, the higher the rankings. If you can muster a whopping 7,500+ retweets then you might find yourself on the first page of Google, according to this study. 

Average retweet volume

Let’s say Google has figured out that I average 200 retweets for every new blog post that I publish. If I write a post that generates 2,000 retweets then that might wave a big flag in its face.

Context and comment

Last year I wrote about how to extract meaning from retweets. Some people will retweet others verbatim, without appending their own comments or views. I much prefer to see the tweets that say “great post” or “rubbish post”. Google might take notice of these nano reviews, just as I do. 

The ‘65 character rule’ for headlines should be adhered to if you want to encourage people to add comments to retweets.

Bio information

What keywords are in your bio? Do they match the content and focus of your Twitter feed? What about your followers, and the people you are following? If Google make sense of your interests, expertise and influence then it stands to reason that it might use this knowledge when calculating search placements.

Human-powered accounts vs feeds

It is really easy for a human to spot a Twitter account that is purely automated. Google should be able to take notice of this too, to discount accounts that have no conversational tweets or only ever share links to one source.

Reach

Your own network of followers will be responsible for driving the majority of retweets, at least initially. But sometimes one or more tipping points are reached and many people from outside your network will share your content. I think of this as ‘the Kevin Bacon effect’, and it’s potentially something Google could consider when sniffing around social platforms for information.

Frequency

How often do you share content on Twitter? Low volume accounts with a high velocity of retweets suggest authority, for example @ThisIsSethsBlog (although points may be deducted for automation and a thorough absence of conversation).

Retweeter authority

Who is doing the tweeting? How much of an authority are they on the subject that they are tweeting about? If Avinash Kaushik retweets one of our analytics-themed blog posts then will Google give us a little extra love? That stands to reason, from where I’m sitting.

Conversational vs link-based tweets

Google will take particular care over tweets containing links, since links continue to make Google’s world spin. But to what degree might conversation-based tweets impact rankings, if at all? Will Google only take notice of tweets with links in them, or is there a bigger picture to look at? Remember that we all talk about brands on Twitter without necessarily linking to them.

Follower vs following ratios

If you’re lucky enough to have 100,000 followers but only follow 100 people then Google may well assign VIP status to you and your tweets. Retweets from celebrities will be even more sought after.

Spam followers

There are tools that you can use to remove spammers who are following you. This is a good idea, even if it does reduce your follower numbers (artificially inflated by morons, so don’t worry about it). If Google starts to take notice of the proportion of spammers following Twitter accounts then it will become the hygienic thing to do.

Verified accounts

Presumably this is at the very least an indicator of credibility. 

What do you think? What social signals do you think are the most important for Google?

View full post courtesy of Zonecrest Internet Marketing Watchdog

Video is on the up

When we drill down and look at the types of jobs that are increasingly being outsourced, it is interesting to note that video is the big mover year-on-year. Videography was the second fastest growing skill in the last year (272% increase), followed by Video Production (253%) and Video Editing (233%).

Requirements for infographics spiralled in the last 12 months too with a monumental 552% increase. However that growth has slowed recently and there was no change in demand from February to March this year.

The only skill to see a drop in demand over the last year was Newsletters (-12%). Though in the month from February to March we saw less demand for SEM (-39%), Newsletters (-15%), eBooks (-9%) and Affiliate Marketing (-9%). 

Three reasons for increased demand

A common reaction to this growth in demand would be to question why this is happening. For me, when it comes to digital marketing, there are three key reasons:

• Economy.
  There is no doubt that the difficult economic conditions over the last few years has put strain on marketing budgets. Using freelancers is a good way to control costs, especially when there are freezes on hiring additional full time headcount.
   
• Flexibility. Marketing disciplines and campaigns are far more varied in this digital age. It is often hard for marketing teams and agencies to predict what skills will be needed from one month to the next.
   
• Specialisms. Following on from this last point, it is often necessary to have a specific specialist for a specific task. Hiring a freelancer who has the necessary skills that might be missing in the agency or in-house department is a much more effective way to manage this.

We’ll continue to chart these trends, identify areas where there is significant change and will include these in future monthly posts.

View full post courtesy of Zonecrest Internet Marketing Watchdog

Lots of people continue to perpetuate the idea that the AWS APIs are a de facto standard, so we should just all move on about it.  At the same time, everybody seems to acknowledge the fact that Amazon has never ever indicated that they want to be a true standard.  Are we reallyIn fact, they have played quite the coy game and kept silent luring potential competitors into a false sense of complacency.

Amazon has licensed their APIs to Eucalyptus under what I and others broadly assume to be a a hard and fast restriction to the enterprise private cloud market. I would not be surprised to learn that the restrictions went further – perhaps prohibiting Eucalyptus from offering any other API or claiming compatibility with other clouds.

Amazon Has ZERO Interest in Making This Easy

Make no mistake – Amazon cares deeply about who uses their APIs and for what purpose.  They use silence as a way to freeze the entire market.  If they licensed it freely and put the API into an independent governance body, we’d be done.  But why would they ever do this and enable easy portability to other public cloud providers?  You’re right – they wouldn’t. If Amazon came out and told everybody to bugger off, we’d also be done – or at least unstuck from the current stupidly wishful thinking that permeates this discussion.  Amazon likes us acting like the deer-in-the-headlights losers we all seem to be. Why? Because this waiting robs us of our will and initiative.

It’s Time to Create A Cloud API Standard

Do I know what this is or should be? Nope. Could be OpenStack API. It won’t be vCloud API. It doesn’t freaking matter. Some group of smart cloud platform providers out there should just define, publish, freely licence and fully implement a new standard cloud API.

DO NOT CREATE A CLOUD API STANDARDS ORG OR COMMITTEE. Just go do it, publish it under Creative Commons, commit to it and go. License it under Apache. And AFTER it gets adopted and there’s some need for governance going forward, then create a governance model (or just throw it under Apache). Then every tool or system that needs to access APIs has to only do it twice. Once for Amazon and once for the true standard.

Even give it a branding value like Intel Inside and make it an evaluation criteria in bids and RFPs. I don’t care – just stop treating AWS API as anything other than a tightly controlled proprietary API by the dominant cloud provider that you should NOT USE EVER (once there is a standard).

Take it one step forward – publish a library to translate the Standard API to AWS under an Apache license and get people to not even code AWS API into their tools.  We need to isolate AWS API behind a standard API wall.  Forever.

Then, and only then, perhaps we can get customers together and get them to force Amazon to change to the standard (which they will do if they are losing enough business but only then).

View full post courtesy of Zonecrest Internet Marketing Watchdog

Nice big search box 

One of the most prominent features on the Sears homepage is the large site search box, which is similar to that used by Amazon.

Since Sears has a large stock range, including some technical products with long titles and model numbers, this makes perfect sense. 

The trend is for customers to enter longer search queries of two or more words, and those that are looking for the model number of a specific TV or laptop will also tend to enter longer strings. Larger search boxes suit these users. 

With a smaller search box, as customers type longer queries in, then the text will simply disappear from view. This is no disaster, but having a longer search box makes it easier for customers to edit their search terms in case of misspellings and allows them to be more precise with their product queries. 

A minority of people may use site search, but by entering product names and model numbers, they are indicating greater purchase intent than the average user. 

Targeted use of live chat on product pages

Having looked at a product page for a dishwasher and clicked on the specifications link, I see this pop up box proactively offering live chat with an appliances expert:

I’m not seeing this on every product page, which suggests that Sears has cleverly targeted the more complex products and offered users some one-to-one assistance. 

I suspect the average person hasn’t a clue how to distinguish one dishwasher from another, so it makes sense to offer live chat here. I’ve also noticed live chat appear if you hit the back button during checkout. 

Also, stats have shown that, when live chat is used, this can produce conversion rates ten times the site average. 

Surveys for checkout abandonment

I bailed out of the checkout process while looking at the site, but before I could head for another webpage, I saw this message: 

Some may find the pop up annoying, but if even a relatively small proportion of people complete the survey, then this could provide some valuable insight for Sears to reduce checkout abandonment in future. 

Sending cart abandonment emails

Cart abandonment emails are a great way to revive sales that may have otherwise been lost. After abandoning the checkout process, I received this email within a few hours:

Offering emails for out of stock items

I have my doubts about whether unavailable items should be shown, of which more later, but Sears does at least offer to email customers when the item is back in stock: 

The bad

Unavailable stock

A retailer such as Sears, with a large product range, will always have a number of items that are currently unavailable for purchase. 

There are a number of ways to handle out of stock items, such as offering to email customers, which Sears does, but displaying products which are out of stock can be annoying for customers. 

Sears could add ‘show only available items’ to its filtered navigation options, which would avoid any frustration, while still allowing users to use the email option. 

It could also show alternative, similar products which may suit the customer’s needs, or perhaps advise them where they can find the item offline. 

Poor usability when zooming in to images

Zoom tools are great for seeing detail on products, things like the number of USB ports on a laptop, or in this case, the control panel on a dishwasher. 

As you can see from the screenshot, the highlighted area on the left suggests I should be seeing a larger image of the control panel, but I’m not. 

Cluttered product pages

While many of the key points of information are clearly visible, (price, product name etc) there is much that is lost in the clutter of the page. 

Of course, products like laptops require plenty of detail but I think the presentation of information could be better here. 

Calls to action unclear

This was the case on product pages and during the checkout process. The checkout pages are long, but this does mean that, once you have filled details in, you’re looking for the continue link. 

It is there, but since it’s below the fold on most pages, this may cause confusion for some users. 

Assuming in store collection 

After adding this TV to my cart and heading for the checkout, it defaults to in store pick up:

It’s great that Sears offers this, but I may well be too lazy to head to the store or, since it’s six miles away, I may prefer home delivery. 

I’d rather it assumed delivery, then provided store pick up as an alternative option. After all, a 42″ TV isn’t the easiest thing to carry. 

The ugly

Unavailable pages

I encountered this page on a number of occasions:

Sears does at least handle this well, by apologising for the error and providing alternative such as site search and a range of contact options, but too many error pages reduce customer trust in a website. 

If they see multiple error pages, they may wonder if there is a problem with the site and even whether it is secure. 

An Econsultancy survey on reasons for abandoning online purchases found that technical problems would cause 54.5% of users to abandon the site. 

Errors 

Perhaps it’s just me, but when trying to select categories from the left hand menu, I was instead shown recommendations based on my most recently browsed products. 

On this particular session, I was unable to access the laptops category except by using the site search box. Errors like this could easily cause customers to abandon the site. 

In conclusion…

In general, Sears is a very usable site, and one which does well to make it easy to navigate and select from a wide product range. 

There are more positives than negatives on the site. There are obvious plus points I haven’t mentioned, such as a smooth enclosed checkout process, and excellent site search. 

However, there are always potential areas for improvement with any e-commerce site, and some of the problems i mention here, if addressed, should help to boost Sears’ conversion rates by removing barriers to purchase. 

Of course, user testing, intelligent use of analytics and multivariate testing etc will help any e-commerce manager to improve sales more than a single site review, but the points I’ve mentioned here will hopefully provide some food for thought. 

I’d love to see your thoughts on the review. Perhaps I’m wrong on some of these points, or maybe there are issues I’ve missed… 

View full post courtesy of Zonecrest Internet Marketing Watchdog

We checked each newspaper to see if it had a Google+ page, how many followers it had and finally how often  content from its web site is recommended (through the +1 button), using our global social media database.

Comparing the data we found three key points:  

The Financial Times has most followers 

As of 26 April 2012,  the FT had by far the most followers of the newspapers we looked at, with 637,724 having the newspaper’s brand page in their Google+ ‘Circles’.

Next up was the New York Times with 370,043, the Wall Street Journal with 173,993 and The Guardian with 130,629. The Daily Mail, normally at the top of any web charts, had just 53,110, behind the likes of The Independent (108,969).

The FT’s high percentage of international coverage could be a significant factor in its leadership when it comes to followers.

Google + is expanding incredibly rapidly in the UK

We originally analysed the UK papers on Google+ in w/c 19th March, while for the US papers it was on 2nd April. When we updated the data for this blog post, we found that the growth has been impressive.

From 372,159 followers in March, the FT has added over 250,000 followers to bring it up to 637,724 by 26 April 2012. Other UK papers have made similar gains, while the U.S. papers we studied show less rapid growth (over an obviously shorter time period).

However despite this growth there are still four national UK newspapers,  The Times, Sun, Daily Express and Daily Star, without Google+ pages, meaning they are missing out on potential followers and traffic.

SiteGrowth in followers:

• FT: 42% growth (372,159 to 637,724).
• The Guardian: 42% growth (75,255 to 130,629).
• Daily Mail: 33% growth (35,490 to 53,110).
• Wall Street Journal: 14% growth (149,905 to 173,993).
• New York Times: 3% growth (360,032 to 370,043).

Following isn’t the same as sharing

While the FT has the largest number of followers this doesn’t necessarily equate to content sharing,possibly due to its paywall restrictions.

Our weekly data shows that content from the New York Times (nytimes.com) and Daily Mail (Dailymail.co.uk) websites received the most +1 recommendations.

Nytimes.com, which drops its paywall for links from Google+ and other sites, received an average of 26,665 +1s per week, while in the UK the Dailymail.co.uk averaged a weekly 10,493 +1s.  

We all know that getting your content shared or recommended on social networks such as Google+  helps to generate traffic. But, the search industry is increasingly aware that it also has an impact on how sites rank and are positioned in search results.

Google is now showing personalised search results which incorporate online content that people’s Google+ followers have recommended, and its “rel=author” mark-up feature is now highlighting content from specific authors in searches using the author’s Google+ accounts.

I think we can expect more of the same. So media owners and other big brands who are not fully embracing Google+ need to get in on the act.

View full post courtesy of Zonecrest Internet Marketing Watchdog

Sound familiar? You could replace the words LinkedIn Group with trade show booth and you get my point. Branding is not enough to create sales. Nor is branding—or its “kissing social cousin” engagement—able to produce customer behavior (e.g. business leads). Why? Because they are rarely executed as processes aimed at producing behavioral outcomes.

Branding and engagement use tools like creativity to create, at best, brand name recall and preference. Hence, direct response must be added in to social engagement campaigns for leads and sales to manifest. It doesn’t “just happen.”

It’s What Has Always Worked

The Web and social media are built for direct response and that’s where we’re heading as an industry. In fact direct response is where the ecommerce action has been since day one. Witness the multi-billion dollar affiliate marketing industry, Google Adwords. These innovations fueled rapid growth of ecommerce in the early days.

“We’re all direct marketers now. The Web is one big direct marketing machine and everyone is invited to the party,” says Mike Moran, formerly of IBM, a distinguished engineer and author of Do it Wrong Quickly, who says marketers come from two distinct backgrounds:

Brand marketers are the ones whose work you see on TV. They are all about branding, brand image, brand awareness—use whatever word you want—and their success has made Coca-Cola and many other consumer products into household names. Direct marketers are decidedly less sexy … constantly searching for the next idea that increases response. They are all about sales, and couldn’t care less about brand image as long as the cash register rings.

Moran says social engagement marketers with an interest in driving sales have much to learn from the practice of direct response marketing. David Ogilvy said this too. In short direct response works and it’s never been more needed by those of us with things to sell online.

Customers Expect Proof, Upfront, for Free

Based on my own research while writing my book I’ve come to discover that people are buying in business-to-business and business-to-consumer contexts using social media. Yes, they’re buying as a result of content marketing. However, customers only purchase when the business behind the content is willing to prove the effectiveness of the product or service (in some small but meaningful way) prior to the purchase. Executing this requires use of direct response.

What I’m getting at here is “engaging content that provides value” does not work nearly as well as engaging content that delivers a result before the sale. That translates to solving a related problem, or giving an actual sample of a unique experience. It’s the difference between telling a customer you’re the best choice and proving it to them. It’s the difference between ascribing characteristics to your brand as bait for customers and letting customers’ actual experiences create your brand for you.

“We develop brands to help customers achieve outcomes that they can’t achieve through products and services alone,” says Brian Phipps, an independent brand strategy consultant.

“Thus, a ‘brand’  is much more than an identity, a stylized sales stimulant, a promise or a reputation. It’s a deliverable that acts as a supra-product method of creating value, limited only by the brand imagination of the company.”

Results in Advance

This idea of being less artsy, creative or funny (branding) and more useful (content-rooted direct response) is what’s fueling the success of Frank Kern and his clients. The concept begins with you/your brand giving materially useful things to prospective customers—like tools and utilities that solve problems for them. This often includes multimedia, educational content that proves your worth, builds trust. In the end, prospective buyers factor the seller’s ability to actually produce a result for them into consideration when the call-to-action arrives. 

In this context your product is nothing more than an extension of benefits customers already received from you (for free). Your product suddenly becomes a chance to solve a prospect’s nagging problem, avoid a risk or exploit an opportunity. Good deeds (deliverables) using helpful tools, advice, free samples of experiences all help buyers see your product as a logical investment rather than an expense.

By providing what Mr. Kern calls “results in advance” we marketers can do something remarkable. By moving prospects closer to their goal before we ask them to buy anything we bring customers closer to joy… so much so that they appreciate what we’ve given them and WANT to pay us to reach their ultimate goal.

What do you think?

photo credit: gnackgnackgnack

View full post courtesy of Zonecrest Internet Marketing Watchdog