To be (Online) or not to be (Online) , that is the question

Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,

 

Now I don’t think Shakespeare had the internet in mind when he wrote this great passage.....however I would much rather an outrageous fortune over a Sea of trouble any day!!

 

I begin this article in this fashion because of some figures which I came across in a report from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

 

The report shows that “88 per cent of household internet users are undertaking one or more e-commerce activities and 69 per cent purchasing at least one good or service in the last six months”.

 

The study was conducted to explore consumer behaviour in the retail sector in Australia and what effects the behaviour may have on that sector in the next 5-10 years. It highlighted a growing trend for online shoppers.

 

Unsurprisingly, young people bought more stuff online than old people. Convenience was the number one reason for buying using a mouse rather than cash.

 

According to the study, travel goods and services were the most popular purchases online (56 percent), followed by concerts, events or movie tickets (43 percent) and trailed by household items, including computers and other home-related gadgetry (47 percent).

 

Of course, none of this was overly surprising.....so I looked for some more data to get a bigger picture of retail behaviour!! I found some data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showing that consumers still ‘take a trip to the local shopping center as it is — and will remain — a form of entertainment for many Australians. The same data also indicated that those who are already comfortable shopping online are likely to grow even more so, funneling more and more dollars to Web sites as they continue to increase the number and amount of products they buy online.

 

All in all it was a very interesting investigative experience!! I suggest you ask yourself some of these questions....

 

• What kind of stuff do you buy online?
• Is it planned or just incidental things?
• What amount do you feel comfortable with when buying online?
• What product do you feel comfortable with when buying online?
• And lastly Why?

 

I think it is important to understand the growing trend and what could and would be deemed acceptable to be sold and bought online. Personally.....there are no boundaries to doing so....you just need some smarts to do it effectively.

 

Seems like a bit of a rhetorical question I know, however I recently found and analysed some statistics on some research which was completed by mobile service provider Amaysim. Turns out that this is what Australian Facebook users seem to be doing and thinking when it comes to asking for advice.

Around 95 per cent of Australian social media users have used their networking sites to ask for help. And we’re not just talking about your favourite place to eat or where you should go for a drink!! The study found that nearly one in 10 Australians are happy airing details of medical symptoms, with a further 10 per cent having asked for relationship advice, and being a parent myself, unsurprisingly 15 per cent have virtually screamed out for help with parenting.

Basically what this means is that nearly half of Aussie social media users ask their social networks for advice every day. I am almost certain this figure is higher, as I could not locate the questions that were asked of the research group. But I am certain there are several factors which were probably not accounted for.

The Media Manager for Amaysim, Ged Mansour stated that is was basically "Aussies have always enjoyed a chin wag over the back fence!"

Mr Mansour went on to state that "Social media has kicked over that fence and invited the neighbours in, along with the neighbour's friends and their friends' friends."

The study found some users request help for some unusual problems including "Does this chunk from my chin need stitches?" and "How do I unhook a bra?"

But the most commonly sought assistance is in the areas of entertainment, with 41 per cent of Aussie users asking their social networks for recommendations for restaurants and 32 per cent for holiday spots.

Some interesting findings and evidence of the effectiveness of social media, and its role in society.

Many people browse the web with a mobile device. How do you prepare your website for mobile users?

Mobile browsers are growing rapidly and a lot of business owners are concerned with how to optimised their website for these users.

First there are some general rules of thumb which you do have to take into account for mobile users. Then there are some decisions to be made how to allow access to mobile users.

Do you want to a Mobile Website or do you want a Mobile Friendly site?? Yes there is a difference.

Mobile Website: Here is a perfect example of a Mobile Website. Sydney Morning Herald has created a mobile website specifically designed to allow it to render within the parameters of the mobile device being used. It makes for a pleasant experience for the user compared to a regular site. SMH have done this as the rendering of their full site would drive people crazy. See below

It now makes it very difficult to read and understand without stretching the screen. It also takes longer to load and shows information that is probably not relevant to the visitor.

Mobile Friendly Site: These sites eliminate the use to technology that limits the experience for the visitor. The best examples of this are sites which are predominantly use flash to drive the visitor experience. In these cases, the site will not launch on a mobile device and hence render the experience as useless.

A point of special consideration, before you start designing your website or your mobile site, is how you would like to allow mobile users to access your page. There are several options, ranging from automatic generation of mobile pages under the same URL's to having dedicated mobile pages to even having special (sub) domains for mobile devices. The way you want to deal with the pages in your domain greatly impacts the way you design the mobile web pages.

Using the same URL for both the mobile and desktop version has huge benefits. The biggest benefit is that for users the URL does not matter: people might enter a URL by hand, are originating from a RSS feed or follow a link from another website and are expecting specific content. Basically all you have to do is strip or modify the content based on the client capabilities.

Whatever you decide works best for you and for your clients, Smooth Corporate can build and provide the solution to ensure you have a presence in the Mobile Sense. If you are unsure about the presentation of your Website on a mobile device or would like further information, please feel free to Contact Us through the details on the website or directly through to your Smooth Corporate representative.

This year Google is already pushing out what will be their largest change to search that they have ever done. With such huge changes in effect it's important for you, as a website owner, to be prepared and have a clear plan of action for 2012.

In this blog post I am not going to be talking about what the latest changes are or show you screen shots of the changes. There are a ton of other websites that have done this over the last day. Instead I am going to be sharing some unique insights on how I see these changes effecting your online business.

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"Search has always brought you information from across the web. Now, search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends. When signed in with Google+, you'll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow. You can even expand your world by discovering people related to your search." -Google


Why SEO Is More Important Than Ever.

Let's firstly examine what the new search results will turn up. When you do a search query the results are going to be far more tailored to you with information from your friends, shares from your social circles, etc.

New search results may include the following:

Listings from the web – (SEO based / Organic)
Listings tailored by your personal shares and actions
Listings shown because of your social connections
More Public Google+ profiles and posts
Photos shared on Picasa and Google+ by your social connections
Private, "Limited", photos that you have shared or have been shared with you privately
Regular Photos off the web
YouTube Videos
AdWord Ads

As you can see the normal SEO results are going to be taking up far less of the search results page. However, does this mean SEO is less important? I would actually say this means SEO is MORE important than ever. It no longer is good enough to rank on page one for a keyword. Page one doesn't mean anything anymore. What is important is ranking with in the top three positions for your keywords.

On any given search phrase there may only be three organic listings in the SERPs. The rest of the positions on page one of Google could all be taken up by a potential customers social influence. They may see results from their friends, photos their family shared and so on. Which means there aren't ten slots for organic listings anymore. There may only be a very small handful of organic slots open on the first page of Google for various keyword phrases.

This means the real estate for the first page just got a whole lot smaller. It is more important than ever for you to push forward with your SEO campaigns getting your website into those coveted top three ranking spots. This will ensure that your website will be on the first page of Google no matter how big a potential customers social influence might be.

Let's examine a few other reasons why SEO is still vitally important in 2012:

People who aren't signed in:


Google's customised search results is for people who are signed into their Google profile. Personally, this always applies to me as I am always signed into my Gmail account. 

However, we shouldn't forget about the millions of people who don't have Google accounts or aren't signed in. My very own brother hates Gmail, has no need for Google plus and doesn't ever use a Google account. His search results will be primarily organic listings. He has no social influence for Google to pull from since he isn't signed in. SEO and Adwords are the only two ways a website is going to reach people like him when he preforms search queries.

Additionally, we have to consider all the employees working at offices that do not allow them to be personally logged in to their Google accounts. I have a friend who is a purchaser at mid sized company. He is constantly doing searches on the internet for items for the office. Anything from batteries, office chairs, tools, software to huge purchases. All the searches he preforms on a daily basis are all SEO driven. He is not allowed to surf Facebook, Google+ or check his private Gmails at work. This means he is personally never signed in for a customised experience. SEO is still vital to reach the millions of people like him.

Lastly, I would consider the millions of people using smart phones who don't use gmail. I have a second friend who has an iPhone but does not have a Gmail account or Google+ account. When they preform hundreds of searches they are not tied into any particular social network. All the results they find are SEO driven.

People With Small Social Networks:

I would say the people who are reading this blog, myself included, are a bit out of the ordinary when it comes to Social Media and Social Networks. People outside of the SEO and Website world, besides teenagers, will a lot of times have smaller social networks.

My Sister would be a great example of this. The last time I checked my sisters profile she had a whopping 42 friends. That's the sum of her entire online social network. People like her are not going to see a very big change when it comes to their search results. From time to time she may preform a search where a few of her friends have shared something and she will have custom tailored result. However, the majority of her searches will be, you guessed it, SEO driven.

Way To Increase Your Market Leadership:

If a potential customer does a search for a product you happen to sell…they may see personalised results, from friends, for your competitors product. This potential customer is currently outside of your sphere of influence. If you didn't use the SEO tactic you would miss out on this customer with no chance of having your website placed in front of them.

However, let's say you rank on page one for an organic listing. This potential customer may see his friend Bob recommended your competitor and he may visit that site. However, this customer isn't about to spend $100 on a product without a little research. So he goes back to the results page and looks for the next organic listing. If you used SEO on your website then this potential customer would now land on your page. If you had a better offer than your competitor this potential customer may decide to buy your product instead. Not only do they buy your product but they were so happy with your service that they actually click that Google +1 on your website. 

With that simple act you reached this potential customer, but better than that you entered his sphere of influence. Next time this customers friend Bob searches for this product he will see your website pop up as well. Now you don't only reach that one potential customer but it becomes a chain reaction increasing your sphere of influence and market leadership.

Through the use of SEO we can grow our influence and market leadership by reaching potential customers who may never of found us before. This brings me to my next point. That Market Leadership is becoming MORE important than it ever has in the online world.

Market Leadership.

Market Leadership has always been important in a business. Building relationships with your customers and being recognised as a industry leader has always helped sales. However, Market Leadership didn't use to do anything for a company when it came to search results.

With Google's new search features this has changed. Now a site with relatively poor SEO can still rank high on page one. A site simply needs to have a friends recommendation and the next time you do a search you will see that brand as recommended for you.

By connecting with your customer base and gaining their follows, likes and loyalty you will now automatically be connected to their social influence. Essentially, a single like from a well connected person could potentially increase your rankings for hundreds of other people when they search for a product you sell.

One Social Network Isn't Enough.

Google's latest update is called, "Search Plus, Your World" but probably a more appropriate title for it is "Search Plus, Google+". Because no other major Social Network is working with Google's latest changes. In fact Google is primarily only highlighting their other services they own such as Picasa, Google+, YouTube, etc..

This doesn't however mean that you only need to focus your SEO and Market Leadership on Google owned products. That would be a critical mistake. It's true Google + has become hugely important for SEO and traffic generation with Google's latest changes.

However, the majority of your customers aren't on Google + they are on Facebook. Also the popular search engine Bing is incorporating a similar personalised search result based off of Facebook likes not Google +1's.

So Google and Facebook are critical to a successful SEO and Market Leadership campaign but so are the other top Social Networks like StumbleUpon and LinkedIn with over 100+million registered accounts….Not to mention Twitter, etc.

So to have a truly successful SEO and Market Leadership campaign we need be present in all the platforms our potential customers are hanging out at. This means maintaining a presence on several different locations at once. It almost seems impossible. Let's look at how we can use a tool to accomplish this task and stay current with Google's changes.



-All the best this 2012