The recent exposure and publication of the emails of a law firm showed how easily confidential information can be posted on the Net. However, a more troubling problem is the proximity of any web user to malware, or malicious software or content, even through seemingly trustable websites and businesses.
A recent report by Websense shows that on average any user is just two clicks away from malware. From a business point of view, the last thing you want to do is be seen to be responsible for infecting your potential customer’s computers, however unknowingly that may have occurred. From an internet marketing agency point of view, particularly when finding backlinks, or banner sharing etc, it is vital that you do not unwittingly expose your clients to such dangers by linking to sites in bad neighbourhoods.
Interestingly, one of the points of entry to such sites is through trending topics, rather than through more obvious routes such as sexual content. This is not to say that adult and gaming sites do not pose a critical risk, but breaking news or top topics, such as “World Cup 2010″ earlier this summer, showed 25% of the search results were “poisoned”. Other trending news items have been even higher.
Users of the top 1000 websites were rarely more than 2 clicks aware from malware, as well as 70% of the top news sites and forums, and 50% of the social networking sites. Whilst needing to secure your business by educating your employees who are using the Net, it is also wise to use a competent internet marketing agency who will not expose you to such risks through their marketing activities.
Whatever you sell, whether it is a book, e-book, electronic equipment, music, groceries, or any other of the myriad products you can now sell through Amazon, it is worth making the most of the sections offered to your business by Amazon to convert visitors to purchasers.
You should always add a beguiling product description, clear photos, (including larger versions for detail of your product), keywords and tags, and encourage your customers to review your product. The added option to create a video review, using a webcam or mobile phone, will help to ensure that you are using your past customer’s feedback to help the purchase decision.
This is a fairly new feature on Amazon and you could increase the chance of your products being reviewed in this way by running a competition through your website, twitter, email list or Facebook for the best product review. Astonishingly, some reviews on Amazon have actually gone viral – the most famous of these being for the Bible; however, this is unlikely to happen for your reviews, but you never know unless you try!
Companies who have collected and analysed data over the years have often exhibited a considerable competitive edge; none more so than Google, who have taken data acquisition for advertising revenue to extremes – often at the expense of popularity with some who take exception to this level of data mining.
However, the quantity of data now available to companies (particularly with the response to the call for open data from government bodies) means that any company, large or small, can begin to build exciting and useful ‘maps’ of customer preferences and locations, (think of the information about you that a supermarket loyalty card generates) as well as create business tools, e.g. route maps for most efficient delivery routes based on when a customer will be available to sign for a parcel.
As we all know, possibly the most useful information your website can provide for your business is the statistics available from your analytics package. However, this wealth of information is often only given the most cursory attention, meaning that much that could be learned is ignored. Beyond your own data provided by your web analytics service, there are a number of sources making data available to all, including government departments – check http://www.data.gov.uk for an enormous range of data and new mash-ups of the data of interest to every British citizen as well as businesses.
For more on how data mining is changing our lives, this article in The Telegraph provides some very interesting new uses of data: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7963311/10-ways-data-is-changing-how-we-live.html
The TopSEOs awards for August 2010 are out, and ClickThrough has been given two of them!
We’re delighted to see that we have been ranked fifth in the global Conversion Enhancement category, the only UK headquartered internet marketing company to make the list. TopSEOs state that they judge companies on their ability to conduct client site analysis, develop conversion strategies, as well as implementation and ongoing testing. It’s a testament to the work we have done to put conversion optimisation at the centre of our Digital Strategy Wheel, which defines the approach we take to client’s businesses.
ClickThrough also got a nod in the list of UK Online Reputation Management companies, coming in seventh place in the August 2010 rankings. Our ability to combine social media marketing, online PR and SEO techniques to provide a robust reputation management service to clients is gaining momentum.
A big pat on the back to all our search conversion experts as they continue to deliver a great service to our clients.
During one of our training courses, we discuss security issues that SMEs may face, including permitting members of staff access to or control of security passwords. This can obviously cause problems should that employee be ill, leave, or worse still, bear a grudge against the company for whatever reason. It is not just access to passwords though that can be a problem. Access to other information that may seem almost trivial can actually compromise your security.
It is not just small companies who need to seriously consider what secure information your employees have access to. A recent hackers conference set a challenge to phone major corporations and extract potentially sensitive information which could be used to attack the corporate network. The technique used – social engineering- is well known to scammers and hustlers, on and offline, as well as crackers.
As can be seen from the experiment above, knowing browsers, operating systems, make of laptop and so on used within a company can all provide information of use to someone with malicious motives. Known vulnerabilities within both hardware and software can permit access into your corporate network, which can then lead to information you had thought was securely locked behind a firewall or similar.
This type of attack should be of particular concern to e-commerce companies who may hold confidential information about their customers on their network or within their backend systems.
Firstly, however friendly the caller may appear, advise your staff never to give out details of your systems unless it has been authorised and approved and there is proof that the caller is who they claim to be. Secondly, ensure that any known vulnerabilities have been addressed on your systems. The end result of not addressing security issues and understanding your responsibilities under the Data Protection Act could well be far more than a little reputation management or damage limitation. Trust from your customers is vital in this day and age – breaking that trust could be the end of the line for your business.
Whilst many businesses understand that their analytics can provide them with invaluable data, few use the features of their analytics packages to full effect.
Once you have installed the necessary tracking code on each page of your website, then there are multiple options which you can configure to make the most of the data available. For instance, you can set conversion goals to check whether your visitors are performing the tasks that a) you expect them to and b) without abandoning processes part way through. This will allow you to rethink your strategy if visitors are not completing goals, and check that all your processes are working correctly for the users.
E-commerce tracking is a little more complicated, particularly if you have multiple products. In Google Analytics you will need to activate e-commerce tracking within your Google account, and then place specific code for each product on your site. Full details of this and an example are given within the Google Analytics Help pages.
So, check you are gathering the data that your analytics package makes available to you, and then monitor how your website is performing. If required, seek the help of web analytics consultants. As ever, it is by monitoring, measuring, and adapting that you will benefit the most from your own data.
If you are running a Pay Per Click campaign and a particular ad leads to a product that is out of stock, you are throwing money down the drain. The potential customer has clicked on the ad, arrived on your site only to find it is out of stock, and will then, more than likely, leave. Not only has this cost you the price of the click, but potentially it has cost you brand reputation in the mind of that user.
Whilst for some companies it may not be a simple or cheap matter to tie your inventory directly into your PPC campaign management, and automate the process when a product goes out of stock, it is only a matter of moments to do it manually. Put on hold any ads which relate to out of stock products and make it a priority in your daily tasks.
The click may only cost you a small amount but these can add up over time, and are so easily avoidable. And also, if a product is out of stock, make sure you offer your site visitor alternative products, or a chance to be informed as soon as the product comes back in stock. Harvesting email addresses like this will give you the chance to pick up potential customers in future even if the item they wanted at that moment is not available.
Many people assume, wrongly, that a site visitor will arrive at your site through the front page. If you have implemented website optimisation correctly, the search engines will list multiple pages in the rankings for different terms. These will lead people to enter your site at whichever page is linked from that search. Additionally, if you are using PPC correctly, you may well be driving people to a specific landing page from an advert, so this will be the entry page.
Reader journeys are about how a visitor to your site achieves their goal by following the easiest path possible. Hence, you design your site so that a visitor can easily navigate to the page or product or link that they wish to be at without any confusion. So, if you are basing your reader journeys on entry via the front page only, you have already created the possibility that a site visitor will land on an entirely different page and be unclear what to do next.
Think about the type of visitors who will come to your site. For instance, do you sell to both the trade and retail? If you do, and a visitor needs to immediately find the part of the site relevant to them, it may be worth considering having two entirely different sites, which clearly link to each other so that a site visitor can easily transpose to the alternative site as required in case they accidentally land on the wrong site to begin with.
Are your visitors there to compare product prices with your competitors, to make a purchase, to research information, contact you, sign up to a newsletter, find a download or white paper everyone is talking about or interact with your community? Whatever a site visitor is endeavouring to do, your task when designing your website is to make that easy. It is also important that the reader journey leads your site visitors to achieve your goals as well.
If your website is there to help you achieve sales, then make sure that it is the minimum number of clicks to your catalogue of products and your e-commerce store,wherever in the site a visitor enters. Make it a simple task to look at all of your products, find all of your white papers, sign up to your newsletters or find all of your contact details whatever it is you want your customers to be doing on your site.
Make a list of possible actions a site visitor may wish to take on your site, and then give it a go for yourself. How easy is it to reach the goal? Could you simplify matters? Add pointers to make a specific task really simple? Have a look at paths through your site for common actions and see whether people are dropping out at a certain point. You can do this by setting Goals in Google Analytics and seeing whether these are being completed by your visitors. Once you understand what your site visitors want to be able to do, you can help them achieve their goals, and yours, by tweaking your site accordingly.
The BBC is reporting that virtual goods will make billions over the next few years on sites such as Facebook and gaming sites.
This however is only a new phenomenon to the West and to the BBC! Sites such as Cyworld in Korea have been in profit for several years due to the introduction of a currency (acorns) which permits members to buy virtual goods for their ‘mini worlds’, as gifts for friends and so on.
In addition, many gamers have been earning real world cash by developing characters for games and then selling these on eBay and other sites. About 5 years ago, I remember reading about a teenager who sold a game character for $20,000 to a gamer who did not have the time to play and wanted an advanced character in a role-playing game.
Goods created from 1s and 0s are likely to gain popularity in certain circles as we move into a world where ‘free’ ceases to mean ‘free’. As long as the purchase price is a no brainer, and below the line where transaction decisions need to be seriously considered, it is likely that micro-purchasing may finally find its niche.
To date, micro transactions have been stymied by the costs of processing the transaction through the banking system, but it is likely that 2010 and beyond will see the resolution of this; perhaps by the introduction of systems which allow people to buy ‘credits’ for whole networks eg Facebook, which can be spent in a variety of applications, games, and even perhaps with e-commerce providers who offer digital versions of their product set.
For many, it may be difficult to see how this can fit their business model, but for those with a little imagination, it may be time to look to the East and see how this has already become a mature market there. As a marketing gimmick, it is a good idea, but as a method for generating revenue, it may have far more legs.
Although vouchers and coupons seem to have a rather lowly image in this country, they can bring in additional trade, and help create “word of mouse” promotion for your company.
Kelkoo have just announced that they are adding voucher codes from MyVouchers, allowing shoppers access to 250-300 new codes each day to get discounts from over 2000 online retailers.
During times of recession, and particularly in the New Year when the credit card bills begin to bite, this is precisely the type of alternative that will help you find customers and build brand loyalty. Plus, it is has that “feelgood factor” for shoppers that they have found themselves a bargain.
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