The past two years have seen a massive growth in take up of mobile devices; in fact the global shipments of smartphones has surpassed global PC shipments two years earlier than predicted. This and the availability of good value data packages means that more and more people are turning to using the web on their mobile phone, smartphone or tablet.

Before devices such as Apple’s iPhone, the mobile web experience was slow and frustrating. Modern smartphones have made this a thing of the past, and through a carefully thought-out mobile presence, you can give your users an engaging experience that is relevant to their needs whilst they are on the move.

There are broadly two ways of having a mobile internet presence; create a mobile application, such as those that are available in the iTunes App or Google Play stores, or create a website that is mobile-ready. Whilst mobile applications can take advantage of native features of smartphones such as location detection or in the future, near field communications, they can be expensive to commission and do not work universally, making them an expensive proposition if you want to cover a range of operating systems.

Therefore, a more sensible approach for many businesses is to make their website adapt for browsers on different mobile devices. This is where Responsive Design comes in, which, in a nutshell is crafting a website so that it dynamically adapts to a user’s device in terms of platform, screen size and orientation.

This can bring notable business benefits. Without a separate site to maintain for each type of device, considerable time and money savings can be made. Your users will benefit from an optimal browsing experience regardless of whether they are using a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop. Furthermore, if your users are more able to interact effectively with your website, this is likely to lead to a greater number of conversions, be that joining your mailing list, requesting a quotation or placing an order.

It is not only mobile users that benefit; putting a spotlight on providing a valid experience to users on a smaller screen, helps focus attention on the site elements that are truly essential to your users, so your desktop visitors will benefit too.

We’re so convinced by the merits of Responsive Web Design that we’re employing this technique in our new Umbraco CMS solutions, to produce user-focused websites that render beautifully on mobile, tablet or desktops.

If you would like to talk to us about the benefits that a responsively-designed website could bring to your business, email us today or call us on 0151 282 4321.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

Two years we wrote a post in this blog about Google Buzz, and like everyone else, we weren’t enthused. Two years on, we have Google+ and worryingly, many people do not ‘Get it’. Only last week on a Google Analytics course I was asked by a marketing team “Why is being on Google+ useful to us?”

Getting out of the blocks

The first issue with Google+ is trying to understand what it is in the first place; in terms of social media it is more akin to Twitter, than Facebook. Most people get Facebook, because you have a website you can log in to. Google+ is more a set of social tools than a social network site, in the same way that a lot of the action on Twitter happens through third party websites and applications. However, what is more important with Google+ is that these tools are being embedded across Google’s product range such as Gmail and more notably the Google search engine.

Once you have got past the issue of what Google+ is, the second problem is that it is difficult to see the benefits as a casual user with only a few social contacts; the real benefits come from having a large network of People in your Google Circles.

Widening your Circles

In the same way as you want to attract Followers on Twitter and Fans on Facebook, it is your Circles that are important to you in Google+. If more People add you to one of their Circles, the more likely it is that your Google+ Posts will be seen and engaged with; that is easy to understand, because that is like Twitter and Facebook.

Furthermore, the more People you add to the Circles that you curate, the more likely it is that your Google+ Posts are going to be syndicated to right-minded users, and the larger your Circles, the larger your sphere of influence becomes. This is a bit more tenuous for businesses to buy into, as this represents a more convoluted way to get to an audience.

However, Google+ goes even further, offering a greater ability to target your messages than Twitter, because you can choose who you share content with, whereas with Twitter all your Followers receive everything that you tweet.

Influencing Search

The most recent innovation by Google is Search, plus Your World. This is Google’s social trump card and is what differentiates Google+ from Facebook and Twitter. Google’s key business is Search, and they are constantly looking at ways of delivering more relevant search engine results to its users. As human beings, when we are uncertain about something, we look to other people to guide us; this is known as social validation. We are even more likely to take advice from people that we know.

This is the whole crux of Search, plus Your World (SPYW); once you have performed a keyword search in Google you can personalise your search results which will pull in Posts and +1’ed content from People in your Circles that relate to your search. The intention from Google, is that this social layer of content will add valuable insight and reassurance to you, making the results more useful and relevant to you.

Google’s integration of Google+ with its search engine results is a compelling reason why your business should be looking to Google+ to build audiences that will share your content and advocate your brand to their Circles. Not only will you benefit from social recommendation, but this will increase your visibility, whilst complementing your search engine optimisation and other search marketing activities. Now, do you ‘Get it’?

Authored by Ian Cockayne

If you are a small to medium-sized business owner, chances are by now you have jumped into social media in addition to search engine optimising your website and even running paid advertising campaigns.

The biggest problem that we see for small businesses is their approach to content. Many small business websites have a lumpy approach to content, whereby a lot of effort goes in to content when a website is launched (or re-launched) only for the website to be subsequently updated sporadically. It is for this same reason that many organisations struggle with social media; setting up a social media channel like a Twitter account or a Facebook page is very easy, what is far harder is keeping that channel populated with engaging content on a continual basis, particularly when resources are scarce.

However looking forward into 2012 and beyond, having a content strategy is going to be as important to most organisations as search engine optimisation or pay per click advertising has become. The big reason for this is that the search engines are being adapted to the fast-moving web ecosystem of news, blogs and status updates that we have today. Take the Google Panda update as an example; this update to the Google search engine aimed to lower the rank of “low quality” web presences such as link farms and screen-scraping sites to improve the quality of search engine results. Google does this by using an algorithm that identifies signs of website quality. One of these qualities is recency of publication. Therefore, if you are not actively publishing new content on your website on a regular basis your web pages and website as a whole will have reduced visibility in search engine results over time.

Your search engine optimisation will not necessarily save you either, as more traditional search engine optimisation techniques like on-page tactics carry less weight in influencing search engine ranking.

It may not be just small businesses that may be affected by this; many organisations have the concept of ‘evergreen’ content. Take for example an emergency service, that may have produced content on practical tips on firework safety. This content although seasonably relevant, would fall in the search engine results as it gets older if the content is not subsequently revisited, updated, optimised and socially flagged.

Therefore, if you are going to make one resolution for 2012 to help your business succeed online, set some time aside to put a content strategy in place. Look at simple ways that you can make your website up-to-date, such as sprucing up that News and Events section, planning a press release schedule or publishing a series of short interesting articles that cross-link to your products and services. Get your social channels in hand, selecting the ones you know you can commit to keeping up to date and that you can productively engage with.

Having a plan will help your keep your content production on track, whilst getting your social media in order will increase your visibility through a wealth of channels including social networks, search engine results, apps and mobile devices.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

If you are user of web analytics software, particularly Google Analytics you will have had a busy few months; lots of new features have been added to the new version of the product, but there have also been some changes that will affect the data in your reports. Last month, I wrote about the change in the way Google Analytics records the close of a session. This came into operation in August and caused much consternation amongst webmasters and website analysts alike.

Two months on, and Google have made another change under the hood and this time both webmasters and search engine optimisers are up in arms. The change this time is that when a signed in Google user visits a website from an organic Google search result, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognise the visit as an “organic” search, but Google will no longer pass the query terms that the user searched with to reach the site to the web analytics service.

This means that if you use a keywords report from your web analytics software to demonstrate the success of search engine optimisation efforts or improve your website, you will in the future be faced with incomplete keyword data. Considering the number of web users that regularly use Google services such as Gmail, Calendar, Reader, browse in Google Chrome or have joined the Google + social network, this is seen by webmasters and search engine specialists as presenting a significant problem.

There has been a lot of commentary in the blogosphere as to why this has been done; after all, its seems like an insane change to make considering how fundamental this information is to many people. The bottom line is that as a website owner or digital marketer you now face a new challenge, so what can you do about it?

1. Don't take this as a snub to your profession

This change does not undermine the importance of search engine optimisation as an industry. Granted traditional on-page SEO has less weight in influencing search engine ranking today. However, we are now publishing more, varied content than ever before, be that web page copy, geographic place information, video and social media campaigns. All of this can be returned in search engine results and all this content has the potential and need to be copywritten and optimised with measurable ends in mind.

2. Change the way you demonstrate results

What will need to change is how webmasters and search engine specialists prove their success. However, aside from a web analytics keywords report there are plenty of tools available; search engine ranking reports produced by tools like Web Position readily provide up-to-date information on how well a website or web page ranks against chosen keywords and demonstrate your search engine visibility or saturation relative to competitors.

Google itself provides Google Webmaster Tools. We have long been advocates of this product, seeing it as the unsung hero of the Google toolkit. For a while it has provided a Google Analytics-style search queries report that shows the volume of search queries for which your site ranks, your average position and your click through rate (CTR). This can be seen as similar to a search engine ranking report, but is also as good, if not even better than the Google Analytics keywords report as you are not only seeing keywords that result in click throughs, but keywords that do not. The good news is that Google Webmaster Tools reports are now available through the new version of Google Analytics, found in Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimization; if you already have Webmaster Tools running on a site with a Google Analytics profile, you will simple need to validate the Webmaster Tools profile.

3. Change the way you think about SEO and insight

I can understand the appeal of the keywords report. You can see the number of visitors you are getting as a result of keyword combinations and the conversion rate for visitors using those keywords. Clients new to web analytics are certainly blown away by this when they first see it. However is the use of certain keywords to find your site going to influence whether a visitor converts on your site?

Often visitors come to a website using one set of keywords, only to use different keywords on the site itself. What about if a visitor arrives at your website and the copy does not tell them what they want to know? Or they do not like the price of what they are looking for, or the delivery charge is too steep? Has a visitor seen your email newsletter? Or have they interacted with you on a social platform? Maybe they are pushed for time to look for a product or service? Conversion decisions can be influenced by a wide range of factors, and in today's complex online ecosystem with numerous advertising channels, social media, and mobile and geographic contexts, I would argue that keyword use alone does not give us enough insight.

This is why Google have been adding tools like multi-channel funnels to Google Analytics, so you can review the relative importance of all your marketing channels in bringing visitors to your website in the run up to conversion. Just like viewing one metric on its own does not give you insight, looking at one marketing tactic also does not give you the true insight you need.

I am not saying that Google's change is trivial, and it is presenting another challenge in producing reliable information from web analytics reports. However, content optimisation is an activity embedded across all online marketing tactics which is only increasing in importance. What webmasters and search engine specialists need to look at in the light of Google's latest change, is which reports now communicate your success transparently and if you are a Google Analytics user, how you can use the new reporting features to illustrate true insight to clients.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

What has changed?

Recently Google has made a number of improvements to their Google Analytics product. However, in August a significant modification was made; they changed the way Google Analytics records the end of a session from:

• More than 30 minutes have elapsed between pageviews for a single visitor
• At the end of a day
• When a visitor closes their browser

To:

• More than 30 minutes have elapsed between pageviews for a single visitor
• At the end of a day
• When any traffic source value for the user changes. Traffic source information includes:utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_content, utm_id, utm_campaign, and gclid

When this was announced in the Google Analytics blog, it was estimated that users would see a less than 1% change. However in the days following the release many users were reporting more significant changes in their reports, with the issue being slightly confused due to bugs that were discovered and subsequently fixed.

What does it mean?

Now if you are not a web analytics ‘statto’ or as a busy business owner only have time to give your reports a quick review, then you may not realise the full implications of this change. Modifying the way a session is calculated brings about a fundamental change to the way your website traffic patterns are reported and how much your data is affected will depend upon your online marketing and website usage pattern.

For example, with the close of a browser not ending a session, additional visits will not be recorded in the cases of a user closing the browser or a browser crash and the visitor returning back to your site within 30 minutes. This has the potential effect of reducing the number of visits, whilst increasing time on site and number of pages viewed. This sort of change seems logical and is welcome.

However, a more interesting issue relates to the new way that sessions are closed; when the traffic source information changes. This is particularly going to affect websites using different types of online marketing tactics, such as ecommerce sites and may be exacerbated by users’ browsing tactics. In a tabbed browsing world, it is not uncommon for web users to be looking for products via keyword searches in a search engine in one window, clicking through paid advertising in a second window, whilst reviewing comparison sites in a third window. Each of these means of reaching a website has the potential for changing the traffic source information for a visitor in Google Analytics, potentially signalling multiple visits from one visitor within a 30 minute period. This could increase the number of visits recorded to your site, increase the number of return visitors, and increase the bounce rate whilst decreasing time on site, pages per visit and for the conversion junkies amongst us reduce your conversion rates.

What is the verdict?

It is no wonder then that there were so many complaints when this change occurred, as webmasters found that the data on their traffic patterns had significantly shifted coupled with the subsequent complication of how they are going to accurately compare their current and historical data.

As much as in the immediate term this change in visitor tracking poses challenges, looking forward this change is a valuable one to businesses using Google Analytics. Firstly, it is an attempt by Google to make the data that is recorded about sites more reliable taking into account modern browser usage patterns. Secondly, this change accompanies the introduction of multi-channel funnel reports in the new Google Analytics interface. These reports will help marketers understand the paths that visitors use to visit their website in the run up to conversions and as a result better identify the value marketing tactics have in influencing customer decisions.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

I’ve come to the conclusion in the last few weeks that some bloggers and journalists just shouldn’t be allowed near numbers.  They clearly don’t have any sort of grasp of statistics or how to do a comparison.  Their memory or knowledge of the history of their subject is woefully inadequate.  However by thinking about how they misunderstand statistics we can understand our own websites better.

What they do have is a headline in mind and they try to force the numbers to fit.  Here are a three of the variations I’ve seen:

Google+ Fails to beat Facebook – the argument here goes Facebook has 700 billion trillion gazillion users and Google+ has only 20 million.  At no point does the article point out that Google+ launched only weeks ago and is still in beta.

Google Fails because Facebook has more time on site per visit or pageviews – here the mistake is comparing Apples with Oranges.  They’re not comparing Google+ with Facebook – they’re comparing Google (primarily search) with Facebook.  If the time on site for Google was the same as Facebook I’d be concerned.  The point of a search engine is to get you to the good information quickly.  The point of a social network is to interact with your community.  These are two different tasks and the meaningful metrics are radically different.  Once we know how Google+ stacks up against Facebook this would be a valid comparison.

Google+ is just for men - All new social networks tend to be picked up by certain groups ahead of other groups.  Network analysis of social networks has shown that people with an interest tend to invite people with the same interest.  They have also shown that many interests have either lots of men or lots of women involved.  One early mailing list system found that for the first few months most of the lists set up were created by people who were interested in lizards.  Every day new lists for lizard lovers of different types would be added.  Then some amphibian and bird themed lists crept in.  Then they reached pet lovers and at that point lists for all kinds of interests appeared as people with pets and other interests signed up.  Social networks take time to grow and diversify.

While reading about Google+, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Bing, Apple, Microsoft and all the other companies and services beloved of pundits ask the question: Do the Numbers Make Sense?  What would good numbers for Facebook or Google be?

Then think about your site.  What would good numbers for it be?  Are there factors that skew the numbers just like there are factors affecting the big players?  Can you alter some of those factors or do you just have to understand them?  Is a number bad or good in your context?  As otherwise all the numbers are just Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

It would be safe to say that at time of writing, Facebook is in its heyday with countless brands flocking to the social network to launch their campaigns and embedded web presences. However, at the same time the press is already starting to prophesise its demise on the back of notable losses in users in both the UK and the US during May 2011.

What is actually playing out is a natural part of the product lifecycle curve, where after rapid growth you then see a period of maturity, followed by a period of decline. Facebook has been phenomenally successful through these introduction and growth phases, and as a result has become a sensible choice for brands when selecting a vehicle to implement their social media strategy. However, if Facebook has reached critical mass and the level of maturity, the product lifecycle model indicates that the only way from this point is down. If that is the case, Facebook is at a critical point in its evolution. What's more, if it does not retain its position as the dominant social platform, where will that leave brands' social media strategies?

On the face of the statistics, you could say that this concern is not well-founded. As I write this, the Facebook statistics page states that the social network has over 750 million active users, so with that many members, you cannot be wrong? Well, if you look at the statistics a bit further, maybe not. They currently state, 50% of active users login on any given day. That is still an impressive number, but did you know that to be classed as an active user, you only need to have logged in once in the past 30 days? Also, much as we have seen with Twitter, activity is skewed by heavy users. The Facebook statistics page claims that there are more than 250 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices; any commuter would believe this figure judging on the amount of Facebook time that is had on public transport. However, it goes on to say that users that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users. This all sounds great if your audience profile includes younger mobile users, however if you are a brand aiming for the more mainstream audience that has now gravitated towards the service, you really need to find out more about its Facebook usage profile and be measuring meaningful engagement and return on investment metrics to understand if Facebook is the right channel for you.

New users is one story, but in the product lifecycle existing users play a big part at the maturity and decline phases. Facebook has other challenges to face up to if it is to stop bleeding existing users. Firstly, there is the issue of privacy, where it has a checkered history, the most recent issue being the implementation of facial recognition software. The younger Generation Y audience is far more accepting of sharing information, but this mindset does change over time, whereas Generation X who is the newcomer to Facebook is more concerned about what information is publicly available about it. Secondly, there is security. Despite Facebook being viewed largely as a walled garden from the perspective of the average user, it has its fair share of problems with applications creating spam and trying to operate malware within its walls. Granted all of this can be reported and policed, but this is not going to inspire confidence amongst less proficient users and encourage greater engagement with Facebook which therefore affects the brands that advertise within it.

Clearly, Facebook is an amazing success story and a big player within the sprawl of social channels available today. However, if you are putting together your social media strategy, take a look behind the headline numbers and understand your audience profile when selecting your platforms for execution. This will give you the confidence that you are engaging with your audience in the right social space whilst minimising the likelihood of having to start it all over again elsewhere.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

It had to happen, social media is finally being put through the wringer like search engine optimisation and link building before it. Whilst journalists have recently had a field day prophesising the demise (or at least a threat to the dominance) of Facebook, businesses are also getting wise to the claims of social media ninjas in the same way they have got wise to get-ranked quick search engine marketers and dodgy car salesmen before them.

All of this can only be a good thing. For a long time, social media has been surrounded by an enormous amount of hype. What businesses and public sector bodies want is to employ social media strategies that generate positive returns and service uptake. The way to do this is to move your thinking away from the brands to thinking about social media strategically.

You can start by asking yourself six key questions:

• What are my business objectives?
• Who am I talking with?
• What is my competition doing?
• What are my resources?
• How do I equip my organisation for social media?
• How am I going to measure success?

Once you have these questions answered, then and only then should you start putting a plan into place which includes choosing the platforms for execution, be that micro-blogging services like Twitter, public social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn, content sharing networks like Flickr or Youtube, or more staple tools such as forums or email marketing.

If this still feels like a step into the unknown, there are plenty of social media strategists that can help you. Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz published an excellent post summarising the expertise you should be looking for from a social media expert. As you will see, whilst knowledge about social media platforms and software tools is important, you should also be looking for intelligent insight into tactics, audience psychology and measurement techniques and practical ideas around the type of creative that contributes to successful social media campaigns.

We have already helped a number of our clients dovetail social media into their integrated campaigns through their web presences. If you need help with your social media strategy, why not contact us today to discuss how we can help you? Alternatively, if you want to do it yourself, we also offer a half day Social Media Marketing course to give you practical advice and a toolkit so you can create your own social media strategy. Ninja suit not required.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

The rise of mobile devices and online maps has opened up a whole new area of search – local search. In April 2010 Google said a fifth of all searches are local searches.

When I’m planning a holiday, I now use Google maps to find attractions to see, public transport to get around and cafes for a quick snack. When I’m there, I’ll find Wi-Fi hotspots (my favourite has to be in the Gardens at London’s Natural History Museum) to find things I’d not planned for.

So it’s vital for businesses to get themselves onto the map and public bodies to boost their service uptake by connecting locations to services. It’s also vital that the right places are connected; I once walked for nearly two miles to a nature reserve to find the visitor centre marked on the map was the administration buildings and not the entrance!  The entrance wasn’t on the map - it was on a side road a mile and a half back the way I’d walked.

Here are seven ways to make sure you’re accurately represented in the search engines local index.

Is Your Contact Information Search Engine Friendly?

Check that your key contact details on your website (ideally your home page and contact page) are accessible to search engines. Make sure they are in HTML and not buried in a graphic, Flash or other format. Ideally include your physical location and phone number.

Google Places

Get your free Google Places page. This lets you set your location, contact information, categories and opening times. If you’ve got multiple locations there is a bulk upload facility using a spreadsheet.

Bing Local

Bing may not get as many visits or send as many visitors to your site as Google, but its users are loyal and so if you’re serious about local search you’ll want to get your Bing Local  listing too. To do this you need to go to the 118 Information website and follow the simple steps to find your business there.

Claim your Profiles

There are other local search websites and directories. Some are new including Yelp and Foursquare, while others have been around in some form since before the web like Yell.com and Thomson Local. Not only does being listed on them give you more places where you can be found, it reinforces the information about where you are to other search engines and prevents someone maliciously cybersquatting on your location.

Check your Records

Many offline records, from company registrations to Yellow Pages listings, include your organisation’s contact information. Make sure these are up to date as the search engines may be checking these sources to validate the data they are using. This is especially important if you’ve moved premises as your old address can be listed instead of your current one.

Add a KML File to your Site

KML or Keyhole Markup Language files can be added to your site in a similar way to an XML sitemap. Instead of telling search engines about your web pages, it tells it about your places.  Like an XML sitemap, you can submit it to Google through Google Webmaster Tools.  There are a variety of tools you can use to make a KML file or we can help you with this.

Advanced Markup

To really help the search engines understand where you are, you can use specialist markup. Using the hCard / microformat in your website’s html to mark up locations is probably the best known way of doing this. 

Google, Bing and Yahoo came together recently to launch schemas.org which has many specialist markup formats you can use to make pages more search engine friendly. These include a basic place format along with specialist formats for local businesses, tourist attractions and civic structures from bus stops to zoos.

You can also add downloadable vCards to your website so visitors can easily download contact details to use. With these there is no need to cut and paste contact details from a web page into your contact list in your email or on your smartphone.

Earlier this month, one of our team had the fortune of a day out at our nation’s capital to attend the Internet World 2011 event. After a day of meeting, greeting, networking and learning, they returned the next day brimming with new ideas and brandishing what seemed to be a small forest-worth of flyers, pamphlets, and whitepapers (also known as bumf).

Now, when you attend an event such as this, it is great if you can identify one thing that stands out, that has legs, and this year it is Social CRM.

At this point, some of you are thinking that this is another buzzword thought up by some bright spark in a minimalist new media company which involved taking something that has existed for ages and making it ‘shiny and new’ by sticking the word ‘social’ in front of it. However, this makes sense, and if you have been spending the last couple of years getting stuck into social media you should be looking into it, today.

Social CRM is an evolution of the traditional concept of CRM (that’s Customer Relationship Management, to you and me). However, despite its name, traditional CRM is actually company focussed, it creates a process by which a company can organise its sales, marketing and support functions to target customers with communications in order to leverage more out of their wallet. However, the traditional CRM process is fundamentally one-way.

Your customers now expect collaboration any time, any place, any where, instead of simply having marketing messages pushed to them. Customers expect to talk with brands to solve their specific problems and shape their own relationships with those brands. This is a crucial difference between traditional and Social CRM. The pay-off is that brands that do this well will benefit from customers that act as brand advocates, open to promoting and recommending them through social channels which are an increasingly important marketing tool that can dovetail with other marketing efforts such as search engine optimsation.

The issue for many organisations is that there now needs to be a change in mindset. Many of you reading this will have invested a large amount of time and money building presences on social media sites. However, you now have to move away from Follower counts, Re-tweets and Likes to understand how you are going to manage the online communities that you have created and how you are going to create value from them. Failing to do so will send your social presence in decline and put back the progress you have made; now is the time to realise the CRM value of social media.

Authored by Ian Cockayne