Read one Irish entrepreneur's blog as she operates a business in Dublin
Skangers R Us!
November 24, 2005
Having held page 1 position on Google for the word "skangers" for the past 2 years now, we were terribly disappointed recently to discover that we have been knocked to page 2 for skangers.
That is why we have dedicated this entry to the word skanger. I just want to make sure the word - (what word? Yes, skanger) - appears a few more times on this site (which is the opposite of skanger) to try to leap back up onto page 1 again.
Best SEO Company
November 23, 2005
Is Brightspark! Search for "Christmas Gift Ideas" on the pages from Ireland on Google.ie and see what you get. Is it by any chance for this client?
Why yes of course it is. And I'm not really giving any secrets away here either - everyone knows that Butlers Chocolates competes in the gift giving market and Christmas time is the height of gift giving time where else would you want to be only #1 on Google.
You'd want to see how they're ranking for their selected keywords on Global Google (ie. google.com) - but I won't be telling that because that would be giving the game away!
If you're involved in a non-chocolate gift giving company and you'd like to see yourself up high on Google, why not give us a call?
Worst Commercial Site
November 22, 2005
It's that time of year again - when IQContent announce their 'worst corporate site in Ireland' award. Hot on the heels of the recent IIA web awards, I really enjoy the IQ Content one because it always gives me a laugh.
This year's 'winner' or loser is the cinema plex at Dundrum Shopping Centre. You'd think with all that money swishing around they'd have got a decent website up for the cinema? But no, it smacks of an organisation that doesn't appreciate good design and online purchasing of movie tickets.
See for yourself how bad it is: http://www.moviesatdundrum.ie/
There are rotating images on the home page and there's 1 of Bill Murray looking really nervous, looks like he's just had a peek at the site too!!
And if you want to read IQ Content's usability review of it, you can do that here: http://iqcontent.com/publications/features/article_66/
I do have to point out however that the sunflower image on IQ Content's new look website is the same one that has been used for ages by Net Affinity on theirs. I'd say if you're going to put yourself in the position of publicly knocking sites, at least getyour own house in order first!!
Email Marketing IS Sexy
November 21, 2005
Before SEO, before PPC, before SEM, before interstitials and day parting, there was email. Done properly, email can be a real asset to an online marketing programme.
So says Jeanne Jennings on clickz and I'm totally with her on this one. There is a lot of hype around search engine marketing right now, fuelled in large part by the Google/Yahoo! PR machines - don't forget that Google is making more money from Adwords than it ever did from search - so of course it's hard to escape.
This article on Clickz reminds us of the 6 key steps to making your email marketing soar...of course if you use Brightspark for your email marketing, then you can be confident that all of this is being done on your behalf already:
- Track
- Report
- Analyse
- Test
- Implement
- Repeat
Google Analytics
November 18, 2005
Another great service from Google - they've repackaged a site statistics reporting tool called Urchin and rebranded it as Google Analytics. It's free to use if you're a Google Advertiser or Account Holder and provides a wealth of information and reporting that is of great value for increasing conversions.
According to SiteProNews, "Conversions can mean different things to different people but ultimately means the same thing - getting site visitors to do an intended task while visiting your site. For an ecommerce site, site-visits that lead to sales are considered conversions. Sites that primarily provide information might see an increase in repeat visitors as an indication of successful conversions. Similarly, sites running ads powered by Google AdWords might consider ad-clicks as successful conversions as Google certainly does."
I'm off to explore Google Analytics further. You can too: http://www.google.com/analytics/
4G Web Strategy
November 16, 2005
Have you ever downloaded an article intending to read it, left it languishing on your desktop for weeks on end and considered deleting it? That happens to me quite a lot and was about to happen to this article that I downloaded in early October. But something made me read it last Friday afternoon and the thoughts and messages contained therein made my little heart sing! It's so good to know that there are others out there who are singing from the same hymn sheet as you.
It only takes 5 minutes to read this and I highly recommend you do. This summarises what Brightspark is about in terms of its attitude to the internet and online marketing. The graphic on page 5 is particularly accurate.
What?
You don't want to go to the hassle of reading it yourself, you want me to summarise it for you?
It charts the evolvement of the web from the first generation websites of 1994, through to the 1999 era of proliferation of sites thanks to Dreamweaver and FrontPage. 3G website era is the 'command and control' of Content Management Systems with news feeds, portals and ecommerce engines.... A quote I like:
Most marketing departments are disenfranchised from the web experience by the tyranny of their IT departments - the online suffragettes of their generation.
But the good news is that 'right here right now' everything's changing. And yes, that is a quote from Fat Boy Slim there.
Word of mouth marketing is all around us and the hold trinity of advertising, exhibitions and corporate bribery is completely and absolutely fucked. [That was the word used in the article, not my choice!]
Traditional website structure just doesn't work anymore.
And then it comes on to that brilliant diagram and waxes lyrical about the new way of web.
4G - it's revolution, not evolution.
The guys who penned that piece are called Dave Wilson and davidcoe - and yes, that's how he likes to be written in lower case and one word. Gosh, I have problems trying to fight hyphens in Maryrose, I'd say he has his work cut out for him...
Anyway enough from me. Read it: 4th Generation Web Strategy
SEM versus SEO
November 11, 2005
In the UK, SEM (search engine marketing) is way more popular and talked about than SEO (search engine optimisation). Yahoo! have outsourced all their SEM to external SEM agencies and SEM is driving huge amounts of traffic to sites such as Ladbrokes, Tesco Online, and the banks - to name a few.
Here on the other side of the puddle, things are different. Most businesses are very keen to have their sites SEO'ed. They want to be able to go in and search for their business offering and find themselves 'top of the pile'. The reason for this is because many of them never click on the right hand side themselves, so they don't believe in it.
I do though - and so do all of Brightspark's clients for whom we have run SEM campaigns. I prefer to call them pay per click campaigns because that is a more accurate description of what they are. (If you would like to read up on our approach to pay per click, you can here.)
With the increasing dilution of search engine results from blogs, jobs sites and other randoms that do not provide the answer to your search, people will be forced to look right and consider pay per click even more. Try looking for a conveyancing solicitor on Google Ireland right now and you'll see what I mean. You can't find one.
But you can find a number of switched on legal practices offering conveyancing services on the right hand side. It's even likely that many of these firms wouldn't appear on the left hand side because for small firms with a limited online marketing budget, pay per click is a nice inexpensive way of hitting the front page of the search engine results. It's also a nice way to guarantee a position there while working away on the SEO - because that takes up to 3 months.
The following article was sent to me recently and it raises the issue of how the web analytics vendors are responding to the need for reporting on SEM campaigns. Good article, but interesting to note how the UK writer refers to SEO as SEM's "little sister".
MCD becomes compliant
November 10, 2005
After 2 years of sending emails with no ability to unsubscribe, no contact us on the website that allows you to unsubscribe and a relentless monthly poorly designed email - MCD announced in an email this morning that they are 'upgrading their database' and will give us all a 'heads up' when the feature is available. When will that be? Soon.
Sounds to me like MCD got their knuckles slapped by the Data Commissioner! That database line sounds like "OK, we know we have to do something, we'll just say something and hope it all goes away..."
In the meantime, MCD stands as a good example of poor execution of email marketing and lack of personalisation. Even the language is wrong - they say they'll give us all a 'heads up' re. the database, yet on the same page they are promoting Brendan O'Carroll! (Yes, under 30's you're right who is he?) They haven't bothered to amend the text promoting The Frames gig in The Point. It's tonight but they are still using the same text as they did in weeks previously referring to November 10th as if it's some date far away.
MCD is an example of an organisation that is doing its own email marketing and doing it badly. They would be better off doing no email marketing if they are not willing to spend money on getting a professional to do it for them and bring the results and reporting that well executed email campaigns bring.
Strange but true
November 09, 2005
Mac users will be familiar with the formatting palettes for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. It's a little box kind of like the properties inspector on Dreamweaver that you can move about and access quickly and easily.
Well mine had disappeared since around early 2004 and has just reappeared again. I swear I haven't done any messing around with preferences to get it back that I haven't tried before, but it's back. Call me superstitious but this happened AFTER I posted the blog about The Great Man that is Mr Steve Jobs.....
[All: "You're superstitious!"]
Age Intolerant Font
November 07, 2005
Yesterday's Observor carried a definition of a new noun - 'age intolerant font': "an 'under 40 font' is any typeface which strains and pains eyes by being too small (or fancy). Under-40 is not a reference to point-size, but to it being less readable in general for people over 40 years old, when focus range narrows and shifts towards distance vision.
Under 40 Fonts make people cross, cross-eyed or feel mortal. They are said to exacerbate spectacle sales and sideline the bulk of the population from cutting-edge culture..."
That was written by John Hind. How much are you betting that he's over 40?
Nothing wrong with that at all, in fact a friend commented not so long ago that 40th birthday parties are becoming the new 21st's - for her.
Telecom Mayhem
November 04, 2005
When I was born, the planets must have been aligned in such as a way as to cause Telecom Mayhem in my life. Because, the absolute worse case scenario always happens to me.
Recent case in point - anyone reading the blogs around August/Sept will be aware of the difficulty in getting my broadband set up when I moved. That all got sorted and I then had great difficulty moving my calls and line rental to Access Telecom. That all got sorted.
Now I just got a bill from UTV internet for calls and internet! The really worrying thing is that they just have free rein to charge my credit card for whatever amount they want. 3 phone calls from me and I've found someone who is not working off a script. 2 hours of getting to the bottom of it later and we've established I am being charged for calls by Access and by UTV. And if I want to get rid of UTV, they have no option but to put my calls back to eircom...
I got on to Access and they have also been charging me for my old phone number - amalgamating old number and new number onto the 1 bills in an opaque uneasy to spot way...
I telephoned ComReg the telecoms regulator because, costs aside, I am very worried that UTV can just charge my card whatever they want. The nice girl at ComReg talked about process and procedure and before I nodded off, I gleaned that if I wanted to complain about this, I'd have to do it officially and UTV would have 2 weeks in which to come back to me. And then what? they've still charged my credit card unlawfully as far as I'm concerned.
God this country's telecoms sucks. At least if that Swiss company buy eircom, they might inject a little swiss precision around their organisation. In the meantime, I'm off to investigate using Skype for everything.
Marketing to Women
November 02, 2005
Wow I never realised I was 'standard' but now I know I am, thanks to this great article on marketing to women. Andrea Learned, the writer, takes us through the 'common man's guide' to marketing to women. Download it here. (18 page pdf)
These can be summed up as follows:
1. Get to know them - update your research, the number of housewives has most likely decreased since your last research was carried out...
2. Stay in touch - keep in contact regularly. [I would add - Email Marketing is great for this].
3. Don't stray from the path - maintain and embrace brand authenticity.
4. Don't use 'talk' - see below:
- Car Talk - the writer looks at some car websites and concludes that they overuse flash which we women perceive as an unnecessary gimic. She also concludes that the car companies use sex very badly as an aid to the sales process.
- Geek Talk - I loved this section, I was nodding in agreement - she makes the point that women will always go for the lifestyle benefit first and then the tech spec. Eg. buying a computer, women will go for the fact that the model can handle email, internet surfing and bookkeeping online...and the fact that it's a model 2.G pentium 5, etc etc second. Digital camera companies take note. Women will buy for the quality and speed of photos your camera can take, not the number of pixels.
- Sex Talk - an example of a US wine that overuses inuendo is given and shown as a bit of a failure. Getting the level of sex talk right when marketing to women is a fine line between smutty and smarmy.
This article came to me through the Change This website, a site dedicated to bringing thought provoking manifestos to people who think as well as just consume!!