digital Aim - ADVICE BLOG

Search Engine Optimisation - The Archaic way

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:11:00 +0000

Today we received from our very reputable domain and web hosts, Namesco, an ACT NOW! offer:

{Last day of the offer} - "You can get your website listed and noticed with our FREE search engine submission service worth £50 with any new annual website hosting plan." Namesco Ltd customer email - 29.9.08

Why does this stuff even exist?
Well in 1997 / 1998 when around 30 search engines controlled about 80% of the total searches made by consumer and the technology that their 'spiders' or 'robots' used to gather website information was far less sophisticated than it is today, it made some (limited) sense to build software that 'pinged' search engines saying "come and look at my site'. Some of these web services even made a sales differentiator out of annoying the search engines with a daily request for them to visit your site. This served to get new sites increased brand name web exposure and therefore increased traffic due to the spread of search engines used by your customers. Now however, a great way to get exposure on Google, Yahoo and MSN (the 3 that really matter in 2008) is certainly not to tap them on the shoulder everyday.
If you would like to have a conversation about how to increase you market share through increased traffic from Google's organic search listings then give us a call. DONT take up offers like this one.

Is the time now?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:28:00 +0000

The technology sector has been guilty of starting every article with one of a variety of “The time is now” statements. Many incarnations of this statement have underpinned key changes in the evolution of the digital marketing medium.

There were, to my mind, two points in time when the captains of our industry were most active in playing town crier. The 1st was undoubtedly upon the commercial roll out of the World Wide Web in the late 90’s when messaging centred around “get online or become a business dinosaur.”

Now that broadband arguably becomes the standard 81% of all UK internet connections* (up 20% on 2005) and we enter into the next phase of the growth in the role of the internet in the lives of consumers, many clients look to take independent advice on opportunities for increasing traffic to their site and converting more of that traffic into customers and in understanding how changing media patterns should affect how they plan their marketing.

The way we consume media has already changed greatly and the modern digital marketer needs to embrace the idea that they are no longer in control of the mode of communication. Long gone are the days of revelling in the infallibility of a TV advertising slot within News at 10 or Coronation Street.

New media marketing communication as a discipline is about adaptability to change – sponsorship will increase in prevalence as the next bedroom born user generated content (UGC) phenomenon explodes to levels of popularity that we have seen from Friends Reunited, then Bebo, then Pop Bitch and Facebook.

*(BMRB Oct 06)

Safari is coming onto your radar very soon

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:08:00 +0000

I'll confess to having been a long standing member of what was called the "Mac Minority". Of course I use PCs as well for client browser testing and (as an aside) my Subaru Impreza tuning software is not Mac compatible. The launch of the new 3G iphone at £100, (almost a third of the price of the original iphone) last Friday created so much demand on the O2 website that its servers fell over. The web development community has often done well to avoid adding Safari browser (now available on the PC too) to the list of browsers for testing in the web development project scoping documents. As the touch screen browser experience using the iphone's only web browser becomes more common place, the web design industry must sit up and realise the the 4% of web users on Safari (Stats from WC3) are very soon set to mushroom. If you would like to understand how mobile browsing is likely to affect you communications strategy over the next 2 years then give us a call for a chat.

Second Digital Picket Line

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:50:00 +0000

The web has without doubt revolutionised the way pressure groups and political activism has mobilised. In China, where the media is still somewhat restricted, worker blogs have exposed illegal working conditions in factories producing big brand western goods. Hong Kong also had its 1st ever strike earlier this year in a climate where the most populated country in the world is having to reassess the value of labour. This could not have been done without the usage of web communication as a mobilising factor. So what next? The French (who since Monsieur Guillotine rise to stardom) have never been shy of taking to the streets in protest took to submitting a raft of blogs to the employment tribunal in protest at FNAC the music retailers redundancy proposal.
There has been a lot of discussion about whether brands should be setting up stall in the virtual world of Second Life. Well it now seems that Second Life's role has influenced the traditional bricks and mortar life of one of the technology sector's founding fathers. Last September 2000 Italian IBM employees logged on to 2nd Life from home and staged a virtual protest on IBM's 2nd Life campus. Dramatically the event resulted in the resignation of the Italian Head of IBM and the RSU Union agreed a new pay deal. We have not seen the last of this - The King is dead - Long live free internet publishing.

What does Web 2.0 really mean in the marketing brief?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:56:00 +0000

Some marketeers will be unaware of the origins of the term “Web 2.0”. Oh so briefly: When US web strategist Tim O’reilly (Oreilly Media) formed a planning group of big- brains to analyse the changes in internet usage, the output created the 1st coining of the “Web 2.0” phrase. They examined the changing face of portal strategies from 99-2001 when the large media sites Yahoo, MSN, Lycos other search engines and BBC strived to provide all things to all men online. Since then we’ve seen the rise of empowered consumers defining product choices in vast forum groups, the phenomenon of online voyeurism in blogging exponential popularity growth. Google’s Pay per Click (PPC) launch (their 1st revenue stream) combined with increasing market share of searches and the impact of this on traditional marketing media is also central to the Web 2.0 era. Oreilly media’s site has an extensive article for those interested.

No-one can criticise a client’s desire to keep up with changing ways in which people are using the internet but its worth acknowledging that successful UGC initiatives providing active interaction with a brand requires skilful planning and intuitive implementation – its anything but plug and play. I saw a client brief recently that defined Web 2.0 as being UGC and “the ability to design web pages with rounded corners” – not entirely correct.

So how do brands build a reputation for being Web 2.0 compliant?
Listen to your online customers. It sounds basic, but many clients do very little analysis on their site traffic. How do they interact with the brand? What level of passion do you customers have for your products? What are your customers doing online now? If a brand attempts to engage its audience through a UGC concept without due consideration for your audience, customers may regard the efforts as misguided and perhaps damaging to their brand perceptions.
The danger to brands negating the planning process can be seen on many websites (I’ll avoid pointing out any examples) that have a discussion forum void of any discussion.

Web 2.0 should perhaps be considered as finding gold dust through brand depth – you can’t demand it you have to earn it through searching for increased respect from your online customer base.

What does this mean for brand managers?
-Surrender some control of your brand to your customers.
- If you moderate your UGC, do so retrospectively (get out of hours cover off-shore)
- Consider asking and rewarding some loyal customers to also act as moderators in responding to negativity rather than removing it.
- Look laterally at the opportunity to invite people to UGC – If your consumer product interest levels are already high then its most likely happening already. The last 2 cars I have owned have both had full ‘nuts and bolts’ forum attention in over 3 online sources each – none of these resources were provided by either car manufacturer or by a dealer network.
Overall avoid knee-jerk reactions and take advice from customers, and people in-touch with your brand who have UGC experience then review your options.
If your online customer engagement opportunity is strong then growth of awareness can be enormous and “Web 2.0” can therefore have significant meaning to your brand.

Pay Per Click Industry in Limbo

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:47:00 +0000

Nathan Levi, the Search Director of Razorfish wrote an excellent article in New Media Age on the 8th of November. I praise primarily, his honesty in acknowledging that the Paid Search / Pay Per Click / SEM industry is in limbo with the gold rush of super cheap customer acquisition costs in competitive markets now well and truly over. The question I ask is, whether the end of the honeymoon should primarily be an SEM agency headache? Well by the nature of pitching and the chest puffing process in competitive tender situation is, of course it is. However my message is directed to clients in saying that while PPC is a unique advertising media (the only media that is not paid by visibility but only charges when customers are pre-qualified by search term then by reviewing your ad) it should not be treated as the 'magic media' forever. Competition for TV eyeballs in the eighties made News at Ten and 'Corrie' the most prized TV spots. How did we achieve cut through in traditional media - through better creative standout, better marketing planning, brand building and the slickest fulfilment of customer expectations. If we apply the same rationale to PPC we should be looking at a raft of assets to maximise the budget (even if cost per clicks are increasing). Timed campaigns, landing page test, competitor tracking, supporting brand campaigns to increase generic searches and combining complimentary natural SEO strategies. When PPC is managed as a channel in its own right it still performs very well. I won't profess to know Nathan's specialism as well as he, but I will reiterate that increased focus on the customer experience rather than just "buying traffic" will increase conversions and repeat traffic to that Paid Search can remain the most cost effective paid marketing medium for the business. Who takes responsibility for the shape of the end-to-end customer journey is down to you.

E-commerce business leaves dragons short

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 21:56:00 +0000

Far would be it be for me to criticise the wealth of talent that makes up the BBCs Dragon's Den. However, it was interesting to see the responses to 2 young contestants (for want of a better term) who wanted cash to fund an online gambling price / promotions comparison site with SMS alerts, did not curry much instant favour in the den. Their revenue model is based upon affiliate schemes from the online gaming sites. I felt they had an interesting proposition presented by 2 smart young characters who had memorised their numbers well. The dragons acknowledged that the market was growing but hugely competitive. Is that not just the reason why an "offer comparison" might work well for the 1st independent (mover advantage)? Despite those who herald the coming of dot com2, the dragons generally all said that while the two presenters were very impressive, the idea was not. Duncan Bannatye even said that online bingo could never work -despite owning bricks and mortar casinos himself. Sadly I think that if Doug Richard had still been part of the 'den', the tone of the discussion may have been different. Interestingly Theo Paphitis alone gave them the investment. My issue was that they had additional interests in a media agency and the conflict on their efforts was clear to see. However - still the most compelling TV in my house. I'd welcome the views of anyone who saw the same episode.

Death of the Page View?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:58:00 +0000

Clients Beware!
Not for the 1st time I have read that given this year's growth of mouse-over content appearing 'in-page' using Ajax programming technologies (see Wikipedia's Ajax page) , the measure of 'page views' from a log report becomes irrelevant.
These technologies when used in a customer centric usable design can significantly improve the user engagement with a website. However if you are a client that is still tusselling with the mesurement of current online user activity and what decisions should be made in response to the data, then take some advice and establish measurment criteria soon before the traffic data become obselete.
You have been warned!

P&G pushes online planning currency

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:02:00 +0000

The lead story in this week's copy of New Media Age is "Online planning Currency on horizon - finally". This story relates to a press release by Jicms, the joint committee trade body tasked with responding to call from P&G, Unillever and the COI for a central independent testing panel to provide independent research data for the industry on the success and failure in consumer terms of one digital initiative over another. Jicms have announced a timetable that rolls out its proposal to the online planning industry in Summer 2008. On the face of it this seems like a good idea. Or does it?
Paul Framption, head of digital at Media Contacts says " I'm not sure that a single online (planning) currency will work. All you are doing by trying to revert to an old model is to make old-school marketers more comfortable with digital."

Is he right? Well we need to understand the role of data in our digital marketing arena. The ratings panel that is used for TV and radio viewing and listening figures was created because TV and radio don't have log report or web analytics. TV and Radio also don't have Hitwise (data centre link) or our old friend Alexa Traffic rankings to justify ongoing spend or competitor positioning to the finance director.
Planning currency and ratings panels for traditional media exist to minimise risk in marketing investment providing an alternative for the largest advertisers to their brand tracking results and their focus group outputs.
The reality on the ground, as I see it, is that the majority of old-world (ie not dot-com / e-commerce businesses) are still struggling to agree metrics for success measurement of their current digital data. Many large organisations have departments running multiple analytics tools and no-one is centrally measuring overall success at a senior level. Therefore I'm inclined to agree with Paul and I believe that before the digital industry unveils another universal data 'pet' to its menagerie, we should make sure that our current data 'pets' are all being adaquately fed and watered. What's more if Jicms panel data analysis solution is not the very 'best of breed' then it will be inevitable ignored.

BBC Panorama - kid fighting videos - Is You Tube culpable?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 07:29:00 +0000

Early this week the BBC showed a very worthwhile episode of Panorama. It highlighted the growing number of playground fights and bullying incidents being recorded on mobile phones by kids and posted on You Tube. Like most adult viewers I was shocked by the programme, entitled "Children's fight club". However as the programme went on, I became less alarmed by the playground brawls which, without condemning any form of violence or bullying, remain to my mind, an inevitability of boys discovering testosterone at a young age. I became more alarmed by the old media guard call for greater online censorship. Now, there is a good case for asking You Tube to remove more of this material in the public interest but there is not a strong case, which Panorama mounted, for an end to You Tube's self censorship "report this as offensive" as an inadequate tool- And at this point I bring relevance to digital communications. Are the Panorama journalists not aware of the founding tenant of the internet is totally free access to information. This is the ultimate technological end to the end of nation state's manipulation of their subjects access to information and if we really do value freedom of speech. We are not talking about Britain but about the impact that the internet has had in enabling people in China, North Korea, Zimbabwe to find out what is happening in their own countries and get together with other people to take a stand. In a world where Murdoch's empire and editorial influence continues to grow along with other media moguls, then free access to online information of all kinds, is vital to the future of the world and I'm disappointed that Panorama felt no need to point this out as a possible negative to their suggestion of responsible corporate online censorship. Any day of the week I will take the 'rough with the smooth' in place of having Ronald McDonald moderating my blog (sorry digital Aim client base that sounded a bit militant!). It is very easy to find a police chief who will say that it is You Tube / Google's responsibility to contact them every time someone posts evidence of an illegal act. Come on the BBC - you can do better than that!

Social Networking - an explosion in a vacuum

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 12:28:00 +0000

More and more I'm reading about so called experts in business social networking. These people I tend to treat with a little caution for fear that they may have pre-existed as the eternal business networker and have simply rebranded themselves following the cataclysmic rise of the likes of Bebo and Myspace. However if we look to understand the root of the rise of youth social networks we should perhaps acknowledge that technology has only provided a vehicle for a point in time were offline communities are at their weakest. Children and parents are bombarded with horror stories of child abduction, inner city violence and our post Thatcherite materialist era has left little of the community high street, church group or Tupaware party network. It is perhaps in this vacum, that youth social networking had the chance to explode - and it is perhaps for this reason that traditional marketing departments should take heed of the new online marketing metrics that operate in this communication environment. This is an area where trust is earned through the effort of communication and where broadcast will always be shunned as irrelevant unless engagement is both highly targeted and creative. This is really only the beginning of the change that will expand over the next 10 years. We can suggest that the www is only 10 years old as a comms media, but the real changes are happening faster now as a result of 85%+ broadband access. Marketeers need to look and learn fast or suffer at the hands of newly empowered consummers.

Virginal approach to usability

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 09:42:00 +0000

I was attempting to book a train earlier this week on Virgintrains.co.uk and I found the user journey to be, better than it was on the old Q-Jump system used on The TrainLine.com but still less that enviable. As digital consultants, we inevitable give digital marketing advice free to open doors, so I sent the list of comments to webmaster@virgintrains.co.uk.

Apologies for unsolicited mail but as a customer experience consultant I was
unable to prevent myself from noting some customer experience issues I had
on the Virgin train site recently.
Unpopulated return time minutes on page 1
Overnight train journeys offered with no warning
Next page auto selects travel the day before creating increased booking
errors
Order of journeys changes to non chronological for "later trains"
You can click on single journey train "journey details" but can not edit or
opt to go back
Purchase process
No flag to go to postcode look up and address field breaks
Only can delete and add new journeys at the end of the process - no edit
facility
+Registration process is now in the right place not at the start of the
search as was the case on the previous site version 2005.
Login
Order_login shows an update button - unclear as to what happens next.
Management of expectations will increase online booking saving the
commissions payable to the station booking offices / other train companies.
Please let me know the name of the person in charge of this area or ask then
to get in touch if they would like help in increasing site revenues and
customer loyalty to the Virgin Train brand at this, the start of a customers
brand experience before travel.
Kind regards
Scott

Rather strangely and hilariously, I have recieved this reply:

Dear Scott
I am sorry to hear of the problems encountered when using our site.
I apologise for the inconvenience caused to you. I have forwarded your request to the Virgin Customer Relations team, who will respond to you directly. Please contact Customer Relations at customer.relations@virgintrains.co.uk for future help and information.

For any urgent bookings, please feel free to call our Web Support team on 0870 010 1127 (0800 hrs - 2200 hrs) who will be happy to make any bookings for you.
If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate in contacting us.
Kind regards
Krishna

Drawing an Iceberg -Concept designer or HTML designer

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Wed, 09 May 2007 13:45:00 +0000

Recently I read an article in Revolution that looked at the pros and cons of specialist independent web design agency over technical web development company over an integrated communications agency. While I intend to blog about this issue in detail later, this article and some work I've done recently for 2 integrated communication agencies has highlighted a point of great industry debate: Who designs better websites - the concept designer from print / graphics / advertising / brand ID background(working with no HTML programming skill) or the technician who programmes HTML / CSS / Flash etc who lives and breathes websites? In advising on the "buildability" of a given website route to a concept designer I found myself explaining that only 40% of great web design is based on what it looks like - 60% of the iceberg is below water. Meaning, in a time of full digital marketing employment, the designer truly worth their salt is focused on intuative transitions from page to page, navigation that has a clearly communicated hierarchy across content boxes, secondary nav and the main nav. ebay, amazon and Google are not sexy designs but their brands have grown through excellence in usable, intuative technology.
I struggle to decide whether one type of designer is better than the other. Arguably the HTML designer will achieve a presentable route faster but is less likely to challenge the client's expectations of creativity. Ideally have both - make sure they work with mutual respect for each other and distribute briefs based on suitability for that client.

iGoogle launch is poor brand management

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Sun, 06 May 2007 19:17:00 +0000

Google have rebranded their search engine for all Safari web browsers. Safari is the web browser supplied free on all Apple Mac's running the OSX series of operating systems. While most Mac users use Firefox browsers, Safari has seen growth in the last few years. However, perhaps as Google's Eric Schmidt is also on the board of Apple, Google has attempted to cash in on the techno-cool associated with i-pod's dominance of the MP3 player market and brand perceptions of Apple at the Prince of Techno-cool. In my view, this attempt at brand personalisation for Mac users reeks of the same strategy that Microsoft used when Microsoft launched a customisable, graphically rich version of Internet Explorer 5 for the mac. Internet Explorer usage on the Mac continued to fall to a point when Microsoft killed off their Internet Explorer Mac browser. Google, the e-business global super brand should take heed and think carefully before attempting 'cool - britainnia' style PR strategies.

Is pitching the best way to drive value?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:40:00 +0000

This week the Chairman of AKQA (an global digital agency many designers would say were at the top of their peer pole) went on record this week in the NMA magazine. asking clients to establish a better spirit of partnership and that clients generally reduce the number of digital pitches they hold. He said "agencies and clients need to work together so the client can find the best partner for their needs."

I commend both Ahmed (AKQA) and Morgan (Tribal DDB) who re-iterated the point, as some would see it as brave taking this lead. We are all aware that the commercial reality of running a service business is that the time scheduled for teams working across strategic, technical, creative and project management needs to be paid for for agencies to survive. It is true that in web design and online marketing there is often a culture of fear in marketing departments that have felt they did not get value for money last time around or are nervous about briefing agencies for accurate costings. The well documented skills shortage affects client and agency alike and to ensure EVERYONE gets better value for money, a reduction in project based pitching is something digitalAim preaches to its clients. If a client is unsure about how best to scope a brief for accurate costing then seek independent advice that is the hole that digital Aim seeks to fill for marketing and brand managers. For more information about digital Aim's independent support in briefing more effectively for better creative and financial response from web design agencies please feel free to contact us or review the digital Aim services page.

Don't forget about SEO in TV landing sites

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:19:00 +0000

For the second time today I saw the dazzling (if drastically unbranded) new Playstation 3 TV campaign. The high drama involves dogs throwing grenades and gangsters suitcases of money exploding to reveal Sony Playstation's new Playstation 3 URL for ThisisLiving.TV .
I saw this and wondered who would have planned such a major launch around a new URL (subject to Google's sandbox / quarantine) and using a domain suffix designed for TV companies and production houses and that has very little consumer awareness.
When I searched for "Playstation", "Playstation 3", "PS3" on Google.co.uk (other that 1 in 4 searches showing the URL in the paid for PPC listing) the new high profile launch site remained invisible through the most common consumer search method. I fear that the site will have been planned by ad agency TBWA. From further investigation online it seems that Sony briefed the agency Ramp Industry to plan a Web 2.0 independent User controlled platform for discussion about the PS3 functionality (called 3 speech) before allowing TBWA a long leash over the online response mechanism for the site. I found www.thisisliving.TV to be a highly over indulgent piece of rich media Flash site. It took much longer to load that the displayed pre-loader graphic and the navigation is so explorative (and unintuitive) that you soon become frustrated as each room move requires a return to the main screen, a hotel reception area. I found some user posted dancing videos but many moderator’s dances were still in place suggesting not many 'real people' have yet taken part.
Beyond the URL issue - I doubt that this site will survive 6 months after the end of the TV campaign. I'd have expected better strategic thinking from Sony and TBWA - come on guys - broadband access does not mean we can forget everything learnt over the last 10 years.

Pay Per Action - A strange departure for Google

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:43:00 +0000

Google has this week announced the trialling in the USA of a Cost Per Action system to take the Adwords model further than the highly successful Pay Per Click Online advertising model. The original announcement is visible at Google Pay Per Action.

The reason I find this strange is that core to what Google does is to assess the quality of site's content in terms of keyword searches and positioning within the search index. Pay per click has been a revolutionary digital marketing media in terms of creating a model that enables online marketing professionals to pre-qualify prospects by search phrase and then by advert copy before any money is paid to the media owner. When Google then bought Urchin software and offered Google Analytics free of charge to Adwords customers it inevitably accelerated the growth of Pay per Click as an advertising media.
However the level of conversion that pre-qualified website traffic offers is based on a multitude of factors that Google the media owner, can not control:
-Faith in the brand
-Online customer experience - ease of navigation
-Financial value of the purchase / time cost of interaction
-Level of purchase contemplation / lifespan of the product
-Perceptions of product quality
-Perceptions of the level of transaction security
-Management of expectations of service offering / communications plan

Obviously the list above changes based on what the digital marketing aims are but I find it a little disconcerting that Google would attempt to create a technical solution that simplifies or even negates all of the human psychology that goes into online purchase decisions or sign up to an online brand engagement.
A clash of technology versus digital communications expertise perhaps?

Ebay strengthen Web 2.0 marketing position

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 11:16:00 +0000

Having just come back from a long weekend away, I logged on to ebay to see a few significant customer experience and web 2.0 realted updates. It appears that some usability testing has made them increase the prominence of the core call to actions - 'Place bid' and 'Watch this item'. I could speculate that ebay have analysed the volume of bids placed from items that were previously being watched and then had 'auction ending' reminder emails sent to the watchers and found that an increased number of bids are placed on heavily watched icons.

Perhaps more likely is that they have undergone a full customer experience review. This is likely to be a response to having undertaken usability testing research which has shown that new ebay users who are not familiar with all of the functionality that ebay offers, are unclear as to the simplest customer journey and some people may now be bewildered by the depth of ebay's functionality when arriving on the site for the first time.

Ebay have also further increased their position as one of the core definers of what Web 2.0 is really all about. They have increased the sophistication of the feedback process so that buyers can rate the accuracy of product descriptions, delivery speed, packaging and quality of customer communication. This usage of technology to create greater transparency of transaction history and to encourage greater levels of seller customer service is what underpins ebay's position as a leading commercially successful web 2.0 case study. If you are interested in understanding more about how the metrics of the Web 2.0 era could affect your brand or would like to discuss a customer experience review the please contact digital Aim.

SEO agencies breath a sigh of relief

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 10:16:00 +0000

Last week Google has announced that following new legislation it will now 'anonymise' all of the search engine queries / search engine keywords that it holds on file for any Google users who have a G-mail account or a login for any of other Google services, such as personalised search. It remains to be seen as to whether this will bring an end to Google personalised search or whether they will be able to adapt anonymity to this. While uptake of personalised search is relatively low, it does pose a significant threat to the search engine optimisation industry who report positioning of clients within search engine indexes for searches under a given target keyword. The full story is available at Netimperative's site.
For more information about deciding where search engine marketing should fit into your marketing strategy then get in touch.

What defines customer experience?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:15:00 +0000

“Clients buy design within a given deliver medium (in this case web) but the direction and mapping of the communication journey defines the creative destination, the customer experience and the results that follow.” - Scott Howard

Short blog I grant you - but in writing a proposal I wanted to capture this thought as ultimately I think this sums up why many websites that are well designed, technically well scoped fail to achieve their objectives in making people take action in the most interactive media the world has ever seen. When this changes Digital Aim will have to find something else to do. For now however we are keeping very busy indeed.

Microsoft Vista - same old same old

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 13:27:00 +0000

You can't take it away from Bill Gates - he is responsible for the creation of the personal computer software licence- that was, many years ago, a true piece of business genius. However it is indeed painful to see that like Internet Explorer 7's rip off of Firefox's creativity in creating a more intuitive web browser, Vista has remarkable similarities to Apple's OS x system which has been around for 3 years. Why is it that this organisation has no creativity other than in it's ability to use intellectual property law to hurt the very competitors that give it all of its creative ideas? I refer rhetorically, of course to the patenting of Apple's Ipod circular controller for which, Apple now has to pay Microsoft £3 for every Ipod sold.

I know that I rarely use this "Advice blog" as a rant vehicle but my advice can only be - consider trialling Linux (it runs off a CD so there is no risk and turning back to windows is effortless) or buy a Mac for your house and use Firefox with wanton abandon so that marketeers continue to cater for it in browser compatibility. Should Microsoft's monopoly on web browsing and PC operating systems ever fully materialise then I fear greatly for ongoing innovation within our industry.
Rant over.

Beware of SEO specialists offering new pages

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:35:00 +0000

Many readers will already have hear of doorway / feeder / champion pages that are created as a means of creating search engine friendly site content that links to your homepage and therefore negates the need to optimise any of the content that is currently on your website. Some SEO companies will register a new domain name for you (so ultimately they control any traffic they get before being penalised) while others will build pages onto your site.

However to help forever banish the debate as to whether this is spam or not - a recent post on one of Google's senior developers blog stated:

"If “undetectable to search engines” is listed as one of the major selling points of a particular link scheme, it probably violates our quality guidelines and the guidelines of other major search engines.

The “undetectable” claim brought up fond memories of another time someone claimed to me that their spam was undetectable. It was November 2002, so cue up the wavy time-warp special effect and let’s go back in time.

I had just removed a very large data recovery website from Google. They asked me why their website appeared to be penalized. I replied with this email:

Pages like
http://www.xxxxxxxxxx.com/data-recovery-software-cw.html
http://www.xxxxxxxxxx.com/data-recovery-software-dr.html
http://www.xxxxxxxxxx.com/data-recovery-software-mn.html
http://www.xxxxxxxxxx.com/data-recovery-software-aa.html
http://www.xxxxxxxxxx.com/data-recovery-software-it.html
http://www.xxxxxxxxxx.com/data-recovery-software-gl.html

appear to have garbage doorways with text about random SCSI things.
Visiting those pages in Internet Explorer just redirects to your
homepage. Using doorways + sneaky redirects is a serious violation
of Google’s spam guidelines. In order to relist you (and it will take
about 7-8 weeks), we need to have clear evidence that all these pages
are gone, and that we won’t see these sort of tricks on your domain
again.

Matt"

Word from the wise - Feel free to use this when qualifying whether or not the techniques offered by a prospective SEO you are talking to are genuinely ethical or not.
Scott Howard
digitalAim

New regulations on Company Information Online

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:36:00 +0000

Due to changes at the start of Jan (07) via what is called a "Statutory Instrument" all companies should now specify their company registration number, place of registration, and your registered business address somewhere on your website. This statutory instrument has been used to update to the First Company Law of 1985.

The company info does not need to appear on every page of the website but will need to appear in email footers. While many websites will already show this required information in the likes of your About us, Legals or Contact Us pages, others will need to update theirs in the coming months. Much like the disability discrimination act, it is unlikely that the law will be ruthlessly enforced in the short term (especially when the Statutory Instrument was passed after the proposed start date of 1.1.07)

Ecommerce Regulations, (miss-named due to legal confusion around the definition of E-Commerce) passed in 2002, states that certain basic information is listed on any commercial site. The law specifies that the following should be visible- "where the service provider is registered in a trade or similar register available to the public, details of the register in which the service provider is entered and his registration number, or equivalent means of identification in that register".

The legal community have been busy defining the definition above as including the company registration no. and place of registration. The Ecommerce Regulations also require specification of the registered office address.
making the mistake of thinking that the Ecommerce Regulations do not apply to websites that do not sell online (in fact they apply to almost all websites).

In simple terms the information to be show somewhere within each site:

Your name, trading address and email address of the service provider.
The name of the organisation with which the customer is actually entering into a contract. ( Even if this is different from the trading name - eg. Scott Howard trading as digitalAim).

It is not acceptable to the law to just include a 'contact us' form without also providing a valid email address (good news for spamers) and a physical address that has visible prominence on the site. A registered office address should be acceptable for Ecom businesses that do not want to divulge their physical address. If the business is a limited company of plc, the registered office address must be also included as a mandatory.
For registered companies the company registration number should be shown and in turn, under the Companies Act, the place of registation should be shown alongside. If the business is VAT registered then the number should be shown.

Our advice would be that this information be contained in a seperate 'legal information' or 'company information'. When designing or approving your site map remember that the link to this information need not neccesarily be part of the primary navigation and could quite easily be an underlined text link from your about us page. PLC's and Private Finance Initiative companies may choose to make their compliance more visible than most.

Author - Scott Howard

Better Email Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 13:03:00 +0000

"Just send out the emails"

Often email marketing is viewed as such a cheap direct marketing medium, that it would be a shame not to use it frequently as part of a company’s communications strategy. Let me try to balance this view.

How do we measure the hidden costs of ill thought out email marketing campaign?

A wiser man than myself, a very experienced direct marketing specialist, running a large DM agency in 2000 said that email marketing was the scariest of all direct marketing media. Why? Because upon receipt of a poorly thought out mailing, with such ease half of your database can withdraw the ‘permission to communicate’ they once afforded your organisation. Six years later, I have never heard of a mass exodus story (that may have more to do with agencies and clients keeping major faux-pas under wraps) but arguably as the volume of spam (unsolicited) emails cluttering up inboxes grows, it becomes an ever more difficult media in which to perform successful marketing campaigns.

Back to basics

The ease with which we send mails through online e-blast systems or through specialist agencies, has perhaps helped take many marketers’ eyes off the basic fact that, short of mobile marketing, email remains the most intrusive medium to have ever existed in the history of media.
The role of email has changed in our lives. Work email inboxes have become documentation tools for business communication used for staff and supplier accountability tracking. Marketing into this environment now presents very different challenges from a few years ago. All technological novelty has gone forever from the graphical or flash animated email that aims to distract you with a witty branded message or update on the latest ‘what’s new from us?’ feature.

Many consumers now maintain a Google, Yahoo or Hotmail account specifically for email sign up and registration procedures at point of purchase. That way, their primary inbox is empty of most marketing materials. Few people also know how to make complaints about unsolicited mail and recent studies have shown that many people have little faith in many organisations’ unsubscribe process.
The browser based mail providers (Yahoo, Hotmail etc) woo new customers based on the sophistication of their spam filters over their competitiors.

So what’s to be done?

1/ Target and segment
High interest products are the one area of email marketing that is still riding high with excellent open and response rates. If you happen to be updating the world on the availability for the cure for cancer or have cracked the formula for alchemy then stop reading now, otherwise, let’s get clever about what your online consumers want and not all of them, but what stream A, B, C, D, E are looking for.

If you can make the sign up process as easy as possible but ask a couple of additional questions so that your database can receive targeted messages based on their preferences. If you have already completed data capture then consider incentivising completion of a questionnaire by your current subscribers to give you this knowledge.

2/ Keep it short and to the point
Think like a Junior PR Girl – The Junior PR person knows that they have to make their writing stand out over the mountain of press releases that hit news editors fax machines / in boxes every day. Make the subject line of the email catchy but clear an consise – Don’t use CAPS – it looks like spam and sounds like you are shouting (and no-one responds well to shouting)
Make sure the content respects the time and interests of your valuable recipients.

3/ Make unsubscribe easy
Don’t hide the unsubscribe in a tiny font at the bottom of the email. If you do you risk a high level of “This is spam” clicks from users with Hotmail, G-Mail and Yahoo account and this can lead to your campaign being black-listed by a mail provider. There have been a number of blue-chip cases of this in AOL and Hotmail recently.

4/ Give something away
If you are asking anyone to take action of any kind bribery always works well. Entrance to a prize draw or a free mini-consultation can have a dramatic effect on your response rates.

5/ Use a gentle tone of voice
Remember where the Internet comes from. If the remote control was the biggest threat to TV advertising in the last 20 years, then remember that speedy movement from page to page is at the heart of how most people use the Internet. If you do not respond to this consumer behaviour you will most likely fail in your objectives.

6/ Manage consumer expectation of how often mails will be sent.
At the point of sign up make a commitment to how often mails will be sent. Sounds simple but it is rarely done but engages a level of trust with your recipient. Better still, capture a response for data segmentation from a new recipient at sign up that tells you how often they would like to hear from you.

7/ Reward responses to research or requests for feedback
Incentives for action and rewards for action taken are cut from the same piece of wood. Rather than focusing on how cheaply email marketing can be performed, establish a budget for your email activity that is a fraction of the cost of other media but enables you to reward recipients in considered ways that your competitors are not doing.

8/ Test you mails / learn / test again
Response rates are the lifeblood of offline direct marketing. They are also the cornerstones of email marketing. Consider that recipients within your database have a lifespan -Changing interests, boredom, changing email addresses will naturally erode your database. Therefore it is vital to use your data to learn what worked well, what worked less well and build your knowledge and organic growth of the email list. By consistent analysis of open rates, click rates, path analysis and cost per objective met, your campaign will get better every month through ongoing learnings inherent in your results.

For more information about better use of email marketing contact
scott.howard@digitalaim.co.uk

Beyond the predictions of broadband saturation

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Howard) — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:53:00 +0000

Ever since the rumors of high speed internet access started early in the new millennium, the web design and online marketing industry started predicting what universal roll out of broadband speed would mean for the commercial web design industry. Arguably we are now on the brink of that point in time.
While there are still many UK households that are not yet online at all, Point Topic broadband industry analysts
(http://www.point-topic.com) say:
"Only three years ago, one analyst was forecasting that it would take until 2008 for broadband to reach 35 percent of British households. That milestone was passed last January."
This report (of October 2006) suggests that the proportion of UK homes with broadband will nearly double, from 34% at the start of 2006 to 64% at the end of 2008, when the number of households with broadband internet access installed should be around 18.5 million.
The fastest growth rates in broadband penetration are likely to be in the countryside, which currently have the lowest levels of penetration, largely due to restricted service access. Geographically the highest take-up is likely to remain in the South East. It is thought that 80-90 % of households in the South East will have broadband access within the next two years.

So, what has the broadband revolution brought us?
The predications that large 350k Flash animated pages would remove the boxed portal style web design template from the Internet have already been proven to be false. In the mid to late ninties -the early days of web design the excitement of the media was in managing design and HTML programming across a variety of ever changing browsers, operating systems and in designing for 800x600 screen resolutions while catering for the slow death of the 640x480 screen size. (Apologies to some for minor level of techno–chat in the last sentence)
The excitement of the new age of www2 comes from the fact that consumers are far less interested in a "being all things to all men" approach to content but more in using new technology to surf faster through an ever growing range of choices in product research, corporate research or in exploring the tastes of online peers in social networking.
The reality of the coming of the next chapter in Internet communication is that brand owners and online marketing manager need to look, not for formulas, but for a personal communication opportunity that harnesses considered application of web technologies, that they can call their own. Approaching our industry in this nature is likely to increase a brands online profile and will help in determining who the next commercial Myspace, You Tube or Ebay will be.