The marketing world never stands still and the past 12 months have been no exception. The fast rate of development and customer uptake in the fields of social media and mobile have kept us all on our toes in 2011 and, as always, have provided new and exciting ways to engage customers.

But let’s not focus too much on what has happened in 2011 and look ahead to see what developments we think 2012 will bring.

This time we sat down with the whole Brinn team to pull together our list of marketing predictions for 2012. We came up with a huge list, which included everything from the sublime to the irrelevant right thought to the completely ridiculous! Instead of exposing you to all of these, and in the interests of brevity, we have instead carefully chosen our top 5 marketing predictions for 2012.

As always please contribute your own predictions in the comments section.

Here they are:

1. Huge Growth in Mobile Commerce and Marketing

Predicted by: Ally

In January this year I made my top five marketing predictions for 2011. I promised I would come back and review these towards the end of the year and, amazingly, we are now pretty much there. So will I feel all powerful with my fantastic ability to predict the future. Or will I be left feeling rather embarrassed like the leader of a religious cult who has wrongly predicted the end of the world? Let’s find out!

1. Price and value will be key communication messages

“Brands and retailers will be keen to communicate good value in 2011”

This prediction was bang on (if I do say so myself!). As high inflation and sluggish growth in the economy continued to bite, brands focussed on value as a key communication message. Organisations that were already perceived to be value brands hit the message home even harder (with the strapline ‘beat the VAT rise’ being used it seemed by almost everyone in January and February).

But even the more premium brands and retailers focused on value as a key marketing message. John Lewis continued to create powerful advertising campaigns centered round their ‘never knowingly undersold’ proposition.

The already price competitive supermarket chains also tried even harder to promote themselves as the best value with a range of ‘Price Promise’ initiatives. New Tesco Chief Executive Philip Clarke was also keen to focus on promoting value in new ways.

Verdict = Bang On!

2. Social and mCommerce will Become More Prominent

“As the uptake of smart phones and social networking continues to grow exponentially, expect to see both of these provide new ways for us to consume products”

I was making two points here – that ecommerce will spread and merge into the areas of social media and also mobile. I would say I was right with mobile but it’s still too early to tell with social media.

On the mobile front, the growth of web content consumption via mobile devices has been huge. For all of our clients’ websites we’re seeing around 10% of traffic coming in on mobile devices now (up from about 3% this time last year). This will no doubt continue to rise and it has already had huge implications on the ecommerce marketplace. Almost all of the large online retailers now have mobile stores or apps that allow consumers to browse and buy much more easily on a mobile device. This will continue to grow exponentially and if you run an online store without a mobile store format then I’m afraid to say it won’t be long before you get left behind.

On the social media front things have been much more underwhelming. Sure, a few online retailers have launched online store offerings directly through Facebook, but it’s yet to become commonplace or take off in any real way. I would also argue that there is no real sign of this imminent movem towards social commerce is either. Integration with social media sites on ecommerce websites is becoming not only commonplace but also pretty much vital… but as for purchasing directly through Facebook, results have been pretty poor.

Verdict = Right AND Wrong

3. Smaller Groups and Smaller Networks are the Way Forward

“Although social networking platforms such as Facebook continue to grow their user base, consumers will begin to split their networks into smaller groups or use a selection of new, niche social networking platforms to engage with different groups they’re involved with”

On a personal level, this year I’ve noticed more and more the difficulty and frustration of using Facebook when many different social groups are all in the one place. I have close friends, acquaintances, work colleagues and family on Facebook but I don’t want to share the same information with all of them. Despite making a number of changes to how this is managed in Facebook, it’s still cumbersome and difficult to implement and there’s been no real progress on this front.

Google + was launched in the summer, which focuses on making the separation of different social networks much easier by allowing users to separate groups into different social ‘circles’. The launch of this platform was much anticipated and there is already a staggering 50 million users on Google +. However usage levels of the new platform by users still appear to be low as we all try to work out quite how it actually works!

This idea of separating social networks is still an extremely pertinent subject and one I believe will happen and will have big marketing implications in the future. Progress in 2011 has been slow and it’s still too early to tell what shape this will take.

Verdict = Not yet Clear

4. Online Search will Change (Nothing New There Then!)

“Online search is continually changing and when it comes to optimising websites for search engines this means the goal posts are always moving”

When I read this prediction back I though to myself ‘Duh! Of course online search will change – it’s always changing’. Maybe I just put this in to make sure I was right with at least one of my predictions!

And I was right – online search has continued to change and evolve with Google, as always, leading the way. Twitter updates were included in search results (before being removed again), ‘official’ sites were given more prominence at the top of the rankings and Google’s Panda 2.5 algorithm update appears to have reduced the benefit of link building from low quality directory and article sites. This all has implications on the way we effectively optimize our websites for search and look out for more changes, and more changes, and more changes to come.

Verdict = Bang On!

5. TV Advertising will make a Comeback?

“With online streaming, digital TV streaming and the new advertising model for sites such as YouTube, there is now once again space for the traditional TV advertising format”

We’ve all talked for so long about the death of TV advertising but I predicted that 2011 would be a year we began to realise that there’s still great benefit to be had from the 30-second TV ad format. I think it’s fair to say this prediction was correct. Firstly, with the growth of on demand and online television as well as the advertising now used on sites such as YouTube, the 30-second TV ad format has seen resurgence in popularity over online banner advertising and other forms of online advertising. Secondly, I feel advertisers have begun to fall in love with the TV ad format all over again. Firms like British Airways and John Lewis have put a lot of budget into creating adverts that really resonate with consumers and highlight the value of the brand. I think John Lewis have been much more successful than British Airways at actually achieving this but that’s a story for another day. One thing I clear though – the TV advert is here to stay.

Verdict = Bang On!

Just like Nostradamus himself I can’t be 100% correct all of the time! Overall though I’m pleased that the majority of my 2011 predictions were on the ball.

There’s always a lot of talk about the latest marketing methods and how they will completely rewrite the way we promote our businesses. For the past couple of years that talk has centered round social media and this was reflected in my top marketing predictions for 2011. Interestingly though, important a marketing tool as it is, it hasn’t completely re-written the rulebook. Yes social media is important but the fundamental principles of marketing are still the same and a lot of the other tools we’ve used for 50 years plus are still equally important in running a successful marketing campaign.

The lesson to take from this is that in a fast-moving discipline like marketing it’s important to stay up to date with the latest tools available - but just make sure you don’t forget about the old ones, they can be just as effective.

What will my predictions be for 2012? Well you don’t have to wait too long too find out - I’ll follow this post up with my 2012 predictions before the end of the year.

As I’ve said many times in the past - SEO is a bit of a black art. Most of us know it’s a really important part of any good online marketing strategy but very few of us actually know what’s involved in making a site rank no1 in the major search engines for our selected key terms.

The fundamental reason for this comes from the very top – the search engines themselves. Google is by far the largest search engine so lets use them as an example. Google, like all search engines, have their own unique algorithm to determine where a site ranks. The algorithm calculates where a site should rank according to a huge number of factors. Each of these factors (and there are 100’s) is given a different weight or importance in the algorithm. Get all of these factors right and you’ll dominate the search engines. However, this is much easier said than done – mainly because Google keeps their algorithm, and the factors involved in ranking at the top, highly secretive. So essentially, SEO is a guessing game. Over time SEO companies get better and understanding what these ranking factors are through trial and error… but then Google will change the rules, which they often do!

Google have to do this because if we knew the rules we’d all build sites and optimise them in exactly the same way and they would have no way of ranking sites effectively.

Because of all this SEO companies are also highly secretive. They don’t want to give away exactly what they’re doing because then they’d give away their competitive advantage over other SEO companies who have not worked out how to ‘play’ the search engines quite as well.

The problem with everything I’ve just explained above, and it’s a problem I’m sure you’re all too aware of, is that this leads to many SEO companies offering services that can be quite misleading. If an SEO company doesn’t tell you what’s involved in their service, which most won’t, then it can be extremely difficult to know which companies are offering true value for money. The sad truth is that, some SEO companies will sell a service to you that involves very little actual work for the company, offers little in the way of results and is expensive for what you’re (not) getting.

Ok so I’ve probably scared you away from SEO forever now, but never fear. What I want to do is give some practical tips and advice on how to pick the best SEO company that will give you real value for money.

Educate yourself

The more you know about what’s actually involved in SEO then the more you will be able to suss out what a company is offering you. I know it’s a bit of effort but spending just 2 hours scouring the internet or dipping into an SEO book will pay you back in droves because you will be so much better equipped to choose a better provider. When the difference between a good SEO company and a bad one is either success that will generate real business for you or expensive failure that will achieve nothing, then this education is well worth the time invested. You’re reading this blog post so that’s a good start!

Proper keyword analysis and selection

When in discussions with an SEO provider, make sure to discuss the selection of keywords you would like to optimise your site for. If they suggest key terms for you then ask them the number of monthly searches completed for this term. If you’re paying good money for SEO then I suggest you find a provider that analyses search trends and finds key terms that they can optimise your site for that have significant monthly search traffic. I’ve often spoken to businesses that have told me they rank no1 in Google for a certain term, which sounds impressive. However when we go and do the keyword analysis on this it emerges that barely anyone (if anyone at all) is searching or optimising for that term. It’s easy to optimise a site for a term that no one else is optimising for but it provides no benefit to the client. In my opinion, effective keyword selection is the most important factor in effective SEO so make sure you ask about it.

Details, details, details

I mentioned in the start of this post that, for good reason, most SEO companies won’t tell you every last detail of what their process is. However, you should be weary of an SEO provider that won’t tell you anything at all. This is where a bit of SEO education comes in handy. Ask more specific questions than just ‘what’s involved in SEO?’ If the company does link building then ask about their process for sourcing links – do they have a current network of links that they will add your site to or do they go out looking for linking opportunities specific to your industry? If they are doing your on-page SEO then ask for an analysis of your site as it is at the moment and ask what they would like to change on the site to improve SEO.

Clear reporting

Before you engage with an SEO company make sure they will give you ranking reports on a monthly basis at least with comments and analysis on the past months performance and what needs to improved in following months to keep progressing. If link building is part of your SEO package then ensure you get a monthly linking report detailing all the links sourced in the past month. For the first couple of months check a few of the links they provide and check the quality of site and link they have sourced. Some link building companies paste spammy links on forums for instance, which quickly get deleted by the forums webmaster and provide little in the way of SEO results. Look for good quality links and non-spammy posts.

Overnight success is not possible

Be weary of companies offering instant success. SEO success is not something that can be achieved overnight and it will usually take up to 12-18 months to get to your end goal. SEO companies offering overnight success will either not deliver, offer very temporary success or will achieve a no1 ranking that no one is searching for. The only potential time to accept this offer is if you don’t have to pay until they get the result because you have less to lose in that situation… but even then I’d make sure you lay out all the details of the contract carefully.

Have they called you or have you called them?

Just a small final observation I’ve made over the years. It never ceases to amaze me how many SEO companies call us trying to sell us services that we already provide in house! Sometimes I’ll engage in conversation with them to do a bit of ‘competitor analysis’ and find out what they’re actually offering. Now it wouldn’t be fair to say any company that calls you out of the blue trying to sell SEO is a bad one, but in my experience you’re better spending the time to seek out a company online rather than engaging in conversation with those bombarding you with calls. Do an online search for SEO companies – if a company’s top when searching for SEO then they must be doing something right!

I hope you found this helpful but, if you can’t be bothered doing all of this research, then I’ve heard of a really good SEO company called Brinn Marketing. You should give them a call…

Any other tips on picking a good SEO company then, as always, leave a comment!

Like a lot of things in the marketing world, opinions on design and advertising are very often subjective. If you ask someone’s opinion on an idea or concept, you often find their opinion is based on whether or not they have a personal affinity with it – is it similar to things they like and have done in the past? Does it appeal to the consumer type that person fits into? Very rarely however do you get an objective opinion on a design i.e. does this piece of work answer the brief? Have you researched the stated target audience and found out what they think?

When it comes to branding, this issue can go even deeper than it does just with design because these subjective opinions and ideals go right to the very core of what a company is about. If these things are wrong at the start then the project you’re working on could be fatally flawed before you even begin.

Let me give you an example:

Imagine a company came to us looking to rebrand their business. As we do on all branding projects, we would begin by asking lots of questions about who their customers are – demographic profiles, likes, dislikes, which other brands they buy from, where they shop, what they do in their spare time, what makes them tick, average customer spend etc.

When you ask these questions you will get one of 2 types of answers. The first answers will come from the clients you should be listening to because they are objective answers. They will either refer to actual information they have on who their customers are based on research and sales data, or they will just be in tune to who their customers are having run the customer facing side of the business for some time. Their answers will always be quantifiable in some way and you will get a sense of true objectiveness.

The second types of answers will come from the clients you’ve got too watch out for because their answers will be more subjective. You can tell because many of the answers are not backed up with anything more than vague anecdotal evidence. More important than that though you will notice that the client doesn’t tell you who their customers and target audience ARE but who they WANT THEM TO BE.

Even more important than that is that, in the vast majority of cases, the client will want their customers to be like them. They will project their upbringing, economic background, cultural attitudes and buying habits onto their target customer – even if the product or service they’re offering actually fits a completely different customer profile.

So imagine a company was selling a consumer good that they wanted to create a new brand for. Also imagine the product was selling in a competitive market place where there are a number of different products and price points ranging from lower-end, through to premium, through to extreme luxury.

Let’s say this product fitted into the lower end of the market – it was relatively cheap to make, had low price points, used fairly low-end materials and components and would probably be sold in department stores such as TG Hughes or BHS.

Also imagine that your client doesn’t shop in BHS and TJ Hughes, they shop in John Lewis or Harvey Nichols. They are from a relatively high socio-economic background. A certain type of advertising appeals to them and they’re exposed to it in media such as Country Living Magazine or the Telegraph. You’re more likely to find them at the ballet than you are at McDonalds tucking into a Big Mac!

So if you ask that client who their customers and target customers are they’ll probably start telling you they shop in John Lewis, are from an ABC1 socio-economic background, pay attention to adverts they see in the Telegraph or Country Living magazine and often attend the ballet!

There are 2 reasons why this happens:

• The first reason is that it’s common for people to project an image of their customers to be just like them. Most of us surround ourselves with people are just like us – our friends and acquaintances have similar opinions, like similar things and are pretty likely to come from a similar socio-economic background to ourselves. Because of this it’s actually very difficult for anyone to truly put themselves into someone else’s shoes and understand what their wants and needs from a product or service might be.

• Secondly it’s also common for brand owners to be ‘aspirational’ when it comes to their business – they want to be seen as premium even if their product or service doesn’t suit this brand type and even though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with selling a ‘lower-end’ product.

But what can I do to fix this?

I suppose that depends what your relationship with your client is like. If you have a relationship where you as the agency are expected to challenge your client’s assumptions then it’s all about convincing the client round to your objective way of thinking with good reasoning. If you don’t have that kind of relationship and your client can’t be convinced then you can either create what they want you to even though you know it won’t be effective OR walk away.

A tough decision that I’ll leave up to you!

Most of us, regardless of our chosen career path, have to present from time-to-time. Depending on your line of work, a presentation or pitch could be a daily event or a once in a blue moon occurrence but never the less it’s something we all have to do.

Of course we’re presenting all the time but in this instance I’m talking about formal presentations or pitches that involve standing up in front of a room of people with slides and talking. As a marketing agency we’re presenting and pitching all the time and it’s something I personally enjoy doing. This hasn’t always been the case though and it took me a while to develop the skills and confidence to stand up in front of peers, colleagues, clients and potential clients and talk with ease.

Over the years I’ve been provided with little nuggets of advice about presenting that have really helped shape my style and build my confidence. I want to share these top 5 bits of advice with you today. I’ll start from 5 and work my way to number 1 (like a shortened version of the UK Top 40…):

5. Break it up

Remember this simple fact: people lose attention after 10-minutes

The only effective way to combat this and keep your audience engaged is to mix-up your presentations. This doesn’t mean you should change topic and start talking about something new every 10-minutes (more on why you shouldn’t do that in point 2), it’s actually about using a mix of different methods and mediums to get your point across. For instance, I try not to talk for any longer than 10-minutes at a time – I break up spells of ‘pure presenting’ by throwing a question out to the audience for discussion, running a demonstration of what I’m talking about or even watching small 2-3 minute video clips that illustrate my points. It all helps keep your audience engaged for your whole presentation.

4. Less jargon, more swearing…

I’m not actually telling you to swear in your presentations (that was just a ploy to grab your attention but more on that in point 1!). What I’m actually saying here is that filling your presentations full of industry jargon can be just as damaging filling your presentation with the most offensive expletives you can think of. And that’s no over exaggeration – it’s a well researched fact that not only do people switch off when jargon is used but it’s also a huge pet hate for many. Keep your use of language simple and straight to the point – regardless of your audience. In Apple’s World Developer Conference’s Steve Jobs still uses simple language and explanations even though he’s talking to an audience full of technical wizards (not actual wizards). In fact, when you compare presentations by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, Jobs is found to use much less technical jargon than Gates, which is why he is so good at engaging the millions with his presentations. To use that classic clichéd acronym, Keep It Simple Stupid!

3. Put numbers in context

This point is particularly important if your presentation is a pitch for a new piece of work, but it is still relevant to all presentations that involve the use of numbers or prices.

Without going too deep into the highly complex field of price psychology, remember this simple fact: numbers or prices mean nothing to people – it’s all about context. In other words, people’s perception of price value and numbers in general are based only on comparison to something else – on it’s own a number is nothing but a number.

I’ve been to many pitches and presentations where the presenter displays a figure or figures designed to really impress the audience:

“We saved 12,000 tonnes of carbon emissions this year’
‘All this will cost you £14,000’,
‘9,290 people returned this product after purchase’.

What do all of these numbers actually mean?

Is 9,290 a lot of returns?
Is £14,000 good value?
Is 12,000 tonnes of carbon emissions impressive?

Equally though, if you put numbers in to some kind of context they can be extremely powerful and persuasive. Show people what 12,000 tonnes of carbon emissions looks like or tell us how many planes could fly around the world on that number of emissions and quickly you have a much more compelling argument. The same can be said when it comes to pricing – if we’re building a website and delivering an online marketing campaign for a client we often compare the price of doing this to other forms of marketing activity, which are often very expensive and offer no real guarantees or way of tracking effectiveness. This makes a really powerful argument towards opting for our low-risk pricing model.

2. Tell a Story (and make sure it’s only one story)

What’s the overall point of your presentation? Make sure you set this out first before you start. The best presentations have a clear overall point that they want to get across and keep referring back to it throughout the presentation. Of course, there is always lots of information to get across and many points to be made, but try and wrap all of this up into one overriding theme.

For instance, I recently gave a presentation/marketing workshop called ‘why marketing doesn’t work’. Ok, so the title might sound a bit negative, but it got the attention of the audience and it gave me a really strong theme for the presentation, which focused on the 5 core reasons why marketing can fail and an overall strategy for creating more effective marketing campaigns. I won’t give away any more right now so you’ll need to attend one of my marketing workshops if you want to know all my industry tips and secrets!

1. Less text, more images

And in at number 1 is the simplest but best of all the bits of advice I’ve been given on presenting:

Remove almost all text from your slides and make it much, much more graphic.

You’ve probably heard before that too much text on presentation slides is bad but I’m going one step further than that; I think almost all text from presentation slides should be removed. There is no reason to have more than 30 words on a presentation slide and often even that is too much.

Words on a slide are usually used to help the presenter more than engage the audience – it gives the presenter anchor points to remember what they’re talking about. However, from the audience’s point of view, the text just distracts them from what you’re saying.

Removing words from your slides will force the audience to actually listen to what you’re saying and using interesting graphics and imagery really improves how engaged they are by what you’re saying. If you are worried about losing where you are without the text cues then print out your slides, take notes and use these as your cue cards.

Although you are removing text, spend more time on the text you have kept on your slides. Use Twitter as inspiration and try to make each statement less than 140 characters and really memorable and engaging. Removing the amount of text gives you a real opportunity to be short, snappy and much more interesting.

Well that’s it, I hope you found this helpful and, as always, any further comments and insight are more than welcome.

I had a really interesting conversation today. It started with this question:

“Is your online shop empty?”

My immediate answer was no; we have lots of traffic visiting our website and it’s growing every month. What the person asking the question actually meant was empty of staff rather than empty of potential customers, which is a much more interesting question.

In today’s world we all spend so much of our marketing budget driving traffic to our website. Whether it be SEO, Google Adwords, Social Media, traditional Advertising or the many other methods of marketing communication available, most of us now understand that it’s important to drive traffic to our website.

That’s all very well, and, as an online marketing company, it’s nice to see more and more organisations utilising online marketing in this way. But what’s just as important is what happens when a potential customer arrives at your website. How do engage with them? If you have a sales team how do they know who is visiting your site so they can get in touch with them? How do you turn a browser into an enquirer or buying customer? What happens once a potential customer leaves your site? Will you ever hear from them again or are they off to browse (and buy) elsewhere?

It all comes down to the fact that we are so concerned with driving traffic to our websites that we often forget that we also need to turn traffic into solid business. So many websites, even really well designed websites with great content, aren’t geared towards actually generating enquiries.

Think of your website as a physical shop, showroom or office. Driving lots of traffic to your website is great but it’s like buying a prime retail space on Oxford Street and forgetting to staff the shop. If there are no sales staff there to assist, no cashiers to put the sale through and no customer service advisors to help with any queries, then the chance of that potential customer actually buying something is pretty slim.

A website is a great opportunity to generate qualified sales leads for your business, and your sales team should be focused on dealing with the potential customers that have already visited your website.

But how do I know who’s visited my website?

There are lots of online software systems available that let you better track the potential customers that have visited your website, but there’s actually a much easier way to engage customers online:

Do something more than ‘Contact Us’

It never ceases to amaze me how many websites have no other means of capturing enquiries than the age-old ‘contact us’ form. Think how uninspiring a ‘contact us’ form is. Consider the effort a customer needs to put in to explain their enquiry, fill out their details and press send. It might not sound like much effort but it’s enough of a barrier to stop many people making an enquiry.

Now begin to think of much easier and more inspiring ways you can capture prospects visiting your website. Here are some examples of great ways to do this:

- Have a live chat feature on your website. Many potential customers have questions they’d like answered and a live chat feature provides a simple and easy way to get their questions answered.

 - Post additional literature and information on your website that customers need to download. Before they can download it ask them to fill in a short form with basic details. Then you have a way to know that person was on your website, and that they are potentially interested in your product or services.
- Be more inspiring with your web forms by thinking about what your customers actually want. We have a ‘free SEO health check request’ form on our website. 10 times more customers get in touch with us through this form than they do through our contact us page. What’s even better is that the SEO health-check review actually gives us something to talk to the potential customer about when we call them. It’s a much greater ice breaker than “Hi this is Ryan from Brinn Marketing and I wanted to tell you about some of our great SEO services’

Whatever you do, it’s all about being that bit more engaging and captivating. You’ve spent all that money getting people to your website, now think about how you can take them to that next stage.

What do you do on your website to increase enquiries and conversions? As always, any new tips and ideas are welcome.

A couple of our clients are big advertisers in Design Week and have been for many years. So we’re in constant contact with different members of the team at Centaur Media. I received a phone call from our contact at Design Week yesterday to tell me that, as of next week, the magazine will no longer be published in print and will be available in digital format only.

In the past 18 months there’s been a really big move towards digital versions of publications thanks in large part to the success of tablet devices such as the iPad. However, for now, most publications are still available in print as well.

Design Week is a huge magazine in the design industry and it’s got to be one of the first big movers towards a fully digital format. Our contact told me that one of the reasons for this is because they already generate more advertising revenue through their website than they do the print magazine – which sounds like a pretty good reason to me!

My opinion on the movement of pretty much any traditional media or marketing channel towards a digital solution is positive. As a (mainly online) marketer and someone with a keen interest in new digital technologies, I feel digital marketing gives us all so much more feedback and control to know what’s working and what’s not. It also makes things so much more dynamic and reactive – allowing publications to update news and stories as they happen.

At the moment a couple of our clients advertise in Design Week. How effective is this for them? The truth is we will never REALLY know – there is some, what I would describe as, anecdotal evidence of how effective it is; new contacts and mentioning they’ve seen the adverts in Design Week, and the same feedback from some hard enquiries.

However, if this same advertising took place in Design Week’s digital format we would know exactly how effective that advert was – how many impressions we got, how many clicks, actions users took on the clients website and exactly how many hard enquiries and business was generated from that advertising campaign. As a marketer it makes perfect sense.

Even so, I have to say I was still quite surprised by this news. It certainly seems like a pretty bold move to make – especially for a design magazine. For instance, the first ‘designer-type’ I told gave me this reaction:

“So where are we going to advertise now?”

The immediate presumption was that we would need to find another print publication to advertise in rather than stick with Design Week and just move over to their digital format. Primarily I think this is because, rightly or wrongly, there are still a lot of people in the design community who are very attached to print design. From a design point-of-view, I can completely sympathise. Print Design gives a designer so much more freedom, whereas there are greater technical constraints that affect design in the digital world. In addition, there is still something ‘nice’ about having a magazine in print format and the shape, texture and style of Design Week is unsurprisingly well designed and tactile, which represents a large part of the value that designers see in the Design Week brand. How will Centaur achieve this same value online or in digital format? That will be pretty hard to do. Perhaps more importantly, will this move alienate a lot of their current readers and advertisers? I think there’s a chance it might.

In my opinion, this is yet another signal towards the merging of print and digital media, which I think is a good thing. But will we ever move away completely from traditional print media, and will some of the design community revolt against this decision by Design Week?

What do you think?

We had a meeting with a client this week that knocked me for six. Not because what happened in the meeting was particularly shocking, actually because it was so rare and refreshing. After presenting our design concept for a new brand and website the client said:

“Personally I’m not sure about the design – it’s not really my style but if you think it will work then I think we should go with it”

To let me explain why I was so surprised by this comment I need to put it in context:

There are a huge number of different elements involved in creating a successful online business. When we work on large-scale ecommerce projects it can often seem like an insurmountable task at the beginning (I should add that with good planning and a great team we quickly make sense of it all!).

To give you an idea of what’s involved in the creation of a full-scale ecommerce business, these are the major elements:

Branding
Keyword Analysis
Site Mapping
Wireframing
Content Creation
Copywriting
Web Design
Technical Design
Social Media Integration
Product Data Formatting and Input
Product Image Shoots
Payment Gateway Integration
Functionality Testing
Browser Testing

Of all these different elements it never ceases to amaze me how often the only thing the customer is concerned about is the ‘web design’ aspect of the project. Not only that but it is only the very small nuances of web design that concerns most people; ‘can we change the purple to blue’, ‘can we move that bit of text down a bit’, ‘can we make that button a little bit smaller’ etc. Everything else we’re pretty much left to our own devices on and the customer trusts our expertise to be able to deliver these elements.

Now, of course, we want to make sure all of our customers are happy with the end result of any web project we’re a part of, but quite often I do question (sometimes openly, other times I keep it to myself!) the reasons behind opinions on design. Specifically I think: Is the feedback objective or subjective?

An objective opinion will usually be anchored with a really good reason: ‘Can we change the tone of blue used as I think it would make things more consistent with our offline marketing material’

A subjective opinion is usually made for no reason other than personal preference: ‘I think it would look nicer if that was blue, we moved that button down a bit and those photos were a bit smaller’

The problem is, design is such a subjective area – we could design a website, show it 10 different people and every single one of them would have a different opinion about it. Equally if we took all the comments on board from these 10 people, made the changes requested and presented it again, you can be sure no one would like it. The design would become a Frankenstein – a mish-mash result of design-by-committee. Even if everyone did like it I would be worried – good design should rarely please absolutely everyone because, the truth is, if everyone likes it then it’s usually a bit boring.

That’s why it was such a nice surprise to hear a customer tell us that, while they weren’t sure about the design, they completely trusted in our expertise and ability to create a powerful brand and engaging website. After all, with a good brief in place before the project even started, we had a clear idea of who we were targeting and designing for and had really focused on developing a brand and website design that would engage that customer base.

So maybe the next time any of us are presented with a piece of design for anything we’re doing in our businesses we shouldn’t ask ‘do I like this?’ and instead ask ‘will my customers like this?’ Because, actually, whether or not any of us like it personally is kind of irrelevant.

Am I right or am I just moaning about changes to our lovely designs? Comments welcome on that one!

We’re constantly told how important link building is but very few of us understand how to actually build quality links to our websites. Here are five simple link building strategies you can implement today:

 

Link Building Explained

Search Engines rank websites according to two broad factors - on-page factors and off-page factors. On-page factors relate to your website itself. If you’ve done your keyword analysis, your site is well coded, well structured and has lots of relevant content on it then you have the building blocks in place to be a hit with the search engines. Crucially though, getting these on-page factors right is not enough to get first page rankings. To achieve this you also need to work on your off-page factors – these relate to building a stream of quality links to your site.

Search engines see any link that comes to you from an external website as a vote. Put simply, the more votes you get then the higher up you go in the search engines. If you’re lucky enough to have a website that is already a huge hit or has lots of people talking then you’ll naturally have many people linking to it as they suggest your website to others across the web. However most of us aren’t that lucky and so we have to work at it.

It is also worth noting that the internet is not a true democracy. Some votes from highly ranked, reputable websites are given a much heavier weighting than others coming from lower ranked websites. In addition, having too many links from low ranked websites can begin to have a negative impact on your sites ranking.
 

How do I know if Websites are Highly Ranked?

This is actually fairly simple. Search Engines assign a Page Rank to websites, which is a number from 0 to 10 – the higher the number, then the higher the ranking of that site, and the more benefit you will get if that site links to yours. Reputable, high traffic websites such as the BBC News site have very highly rated Page Rank ratings but, lets face it, it’s not going to be easy to convince the BBC to link to your site (although not impossible)! Equally, many directories that are purely set up to provide free back links for websites have a low Page Rank and can often be seen as ‘link farming’ websites, which are viewed negatively by Search Engines.

*There are many free page rank checking tools you can use to identify the Page Rank of websites you’re thinking of linking to.

So what you want to do is build a mix of links to your site with links from moderately and highly ranked websites. But what is actually involved in building quality back links? Below are five simple link-building strategies that will begin to help you understand how it’s done.

 

Strategy 1: Commenting on Relevant Industry Blogs

Search engines love blogs, and by posting your link on highly ranked blogs you will get instant SEO benefit (without a huge amount of effort involved). To create back-links on blogs, you should:

- Identify blogs that have a high Page Rank, are relevant to your industry and provide ‘do follow’ links (these are the type of blogs where a link to your website will be counted as a vote).

- Take the time to read the posts on each blog you’ve identified and find a post you feel knowledgeable enough about to make a relevant comment related to the subject matter of the post.

- In your comment include a link with relevant anchor text such as your keyword. You can include your link within the website URL form box as well as within the comment itself (if allowed). When creating a back-link, ensure you use anchor text to describe the website you are directing people to. To do this, you need to include a bit of HTML code to create your back-link in with anchor text:

<a href=http://www.yourwebsitesite.com>type keyword here</a>

- Repeat this process on an ongoing basis on many different industry blogs.
 

Strategy 2: Identifying Reputable Directory Back-links

Directory submissions are the most well-known and practiced form of link building for those looking to quickly increase their search engine ranking. That’s because, although fairly tedious, submitting to directories is simple and doesn’t involve much thinking! Directory submissions can be part of an effective link building campaign but there is one thing to keep in mind when using them:

Search engines don’t like to see an instant flood of irrelevant links pointing to your website and prefer to see a pattern of increased links over an extended period of time. Always select a relevant industry category to place your website listing in and use targeted keyphrases in both your title and description.
 

Strategy 3: Social Bookmarking Links

Social Bookmarking communities are essentially websites that allow users categorise and recommend sites to the community that they like or have found useful information on. Social Bookmarking websites generate millions of daily traffic so they provide great SEO benefit as well as driving some of that traffic directly to your site. Social Bookmark communities such as Digg and Technorati allow you to quickly generate great quality links from high Page Rank and high authority websites.

Here’s how to create linking opportunities from Social Bookmarking sites:

- Register for a free account on each bookmarking website site making sure to include your website URL and description of your business with keywords when creating your profile.

- Create a system to organize the web pages you want to bookmark. One way of doing this is to create a ‘Bookmarks’ folder within your web browser toolbar.

- Create a folder for every day of the week, so that you can easily submit your links to the top bookmarking websites regularly, without posting to the same site twice in any given day. (This is something you REALLY want to avoid!).

- To start you off add between 5-10 bookmark sites into each of your bookmarks and then each day, load up these websites and submit your website as a new bookmark.

Below are some of the most popular Social Bookmarking networks to get you started:

Digg
SlashDot
Technorati
Furl
Mixx

Strategy 4: Become an Article Marketer

Article marketing is one of the best ways to generate a high amount of quality links to your site relatively quickly. To become an article marketer you’ll need a base of around 12-15 original articles that include your keywords within the title and body of the article itself. Each article should be around 350-400 words in length. Articles should be completely original and high quality so focus on writing about a subject you know lots about (probably something related to the industry you work in)

If you already have a blog then the good news is that you can use previous posts as a starting point for you articles.

Start by submitting your articles into the most popular directories. First submit your article to Ezine (the largest of these sites) and, after waiting for 24 hours, also submit your articles into the other highly ranked article-based directories.

When registering for each article directory you’ll be asked to create an author resource box. This resource box is where you tell the reader about the author (you!) and the box is tagged at the bottom of any article you have written. You are allowed to create links with your keywords in the author resource box and this is often the only place where a back-linking is permitted, so make sure you spend the time on creating your resource box.

Here are the top article directories that you should focus on submitting content to:

ArticlesBase
Buzzle
GoArticles
ArticlesFactory
ArticleSnatch
WebProNews
ArticleDashboard
SubmitYourNewArticle

Strategy 5: A Shameless Plug…

You know a shameless plug for our link building services is coming here but actually there’s very good reason to outsource your link building campaigns to an external company. Link building is not a difficult task but it is a time consuming one. Companies who specialise in online marketing and link building are set up to run multiple link building campaigns at one time and they have processes to be able to do what you could achieve at a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost.

That said, you CAN run a successful link building campaign without any professional external help. Hopefully what I have given you today are some ideas and tips to get started.

Good luck and if you liked this article why not link to it?!

Discover five quick steps to increase online conversions today (if you’ve not already done them!)

 

Before I start I want to apologise for the distinct slowdown in blog posts over the past few weeks. No matter how much I preach about the importance of blogging in any good online marketing strategy, it’s always the first thing to fall by the wayside when things get really busy! On the upside we’ve got some really interesting new projects we’re working on, which I’m excited to tell you all about in due course. All of our blog posts are now being featured widely across the web on platforms such as Ezine and Article Base so look out for them there too.

 

Anyway here goes:

 

If you run or manage an online business then you’ll be constantly engaged in trying to increase the percentage of your website visitors that make a purchase. Unless you’re converting 100% of visitors into buyers (if you are then call me NOW – we need to talk!) then this is a job that’s never finished – it’s an ongoing mission.

 

What I want to reveal today is five simple steps that so many ecommerce site owners fail to implement. They’re those annoying, seemingly obvious little things that sometimes are easy to forget about, but are really important fundamentals in building an effective, trusted online business. So check the list and if you’re missing any of these five options then implement them now to see an instantaneous and marked improvement in online conversions.

1. Products, Products, Products

Are your products the first thing a user sees when they hit your site? If not then make sure they are. It’s amazing how often ecommerce websites have products hidden within the navigation. Think of your online store as if it were a physical shop on the high street. Your homepage is your shop window so showing off your best products to entice customers into the shop further is an absolute must. If you’ve got no products in the window then you probably look like one of those shops with white paint and ‘closing down sale’ over the windows… not good!

2. A Picture Paints a Thousand Sales

 

Good product images add a huge amount of value to ecommerce sites and the big online players are continually improving the way they use imagery to increase online conversions. If you run an online store then it’s difficult to give the customer the same demonstration of the product as you could if they were in a physical store actually looking at it! That’s why it’s so important to give as good a reflection of the product as possible through the use of great images.

 

ASOS film a catwalk video for every new product they add to the site and you can imagine how much time and money is involved in doing this for an online store the size of ASOS. Hopefully this highlights how important a factor this is in generating online sales!

 

If your images are lacking then begin investing the time now in capturing better ones. Depending on your budget there are specialised companies out there that charge a fixed cost to take professional studio shots of each of your products. If that’s not possible then you should take new images in-house making sure you have a good quality camera, tripod and a consistent background to shoot your images. Make sure you have shot each product at a number of different angles.

3. The Humble Search Box

 

Such a simple piece of functionality but something I’m beginning to notice more and more ecommerce sites are failing to include (even some of the large online players). It doesn’t matter how great your navigation is, it’s difficult to categorise every product you have in a way that customers can easily find and some people just prefer to search first before exploring categories (especially if they’re searching for something specific). The search box is a pretty simple piece of functionality to include – you can even use Google site search if you’re looking to quickly implement search functionality.

4. Shout About Returns

 

This is a quick change we implemented for a client about a year ago and we saw conversion rates increase instantly and quite dramatically. All we did was create a content holder on each page template that advertised the efficient and simple returns policy. We highlighted the returns policy even more at the checkout stage and the decrease in the cart abandon rate was quite astonishing. I don’t for a second think that potential customers were leaving because they didn’t think the shop had a returns policy, but by simply highlighting it just added the extra little bit of, almost subconscious, trust and credibility to get the user to take the desired action.

5. Clear Customer Service

This is similar to highlighting the returns policy but is another highly effective method to increase online conversions. Does your online shop have a clear customer service area? If a user were to purchase a product then have an issue then would they be able to easily resolve it? Can a user ask a question about a product before purchasing it and get an instant answer?

 

Whether you include a section in your main navigation, have a live chat facility available from each page or predominantly display a customer service phone number on your site, all of these actions build trust and credibility and remove barriers to a user making a purchase. Again, it’s on an almost sub-conscious level, but if a user gets the impression when on your online shop that you are a ‘real’ company that they could contact directly and resolve any issue with, then they are much more likely to make a purchase.

 

What else can you be doing to increase online conversions? A huge amount if truth be told but implement these steps first and you’ll be on the right track. Let us know how you get on.