Blog - Archives January 2012

How can you maximise the conversion on your website

30 January 2012

Once you have a website that sells something, and everything is up and running, you will start to wonder how you can get more out of your traffic. There are usually a few more sales per thousand visitors to be squeezed out, but getting at these is sometimes more effort than it is actually worth.

This is why we do split and multivariate testing. Once you’re sure all of your basic design principles are sound (buy buttons in the right place, etc.), it’s easy to sit back, look at your website and think, “damn, that’s a good looking website I’ve got there”. Your customers might also think so, but you’d be surprised how subtle changes can make a huge difference. It’s impossible to tell until you try them, and this is where split testing and multivariate testing comes in handy.

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5 ways you can improve your LinkedIn profile

27 January 2012

LinkedIn is a great way to market yourself as a professional. It’s not much use for a business as a whole, but if you’re a freelancer, contractor or independent consultant it’s one of the most important digital business cards you can have, and you neglect it at your peril. Despite being around for a while, I’m amazed at how some people just fail at using their LinkedIn profiles to sell themselves.

Before I make a list, there’s just one thing I want to say about LinkedIn - it is not Facebook. That means that Facebook rules and customs do not apply. You want to be connected to everyone you’ve ever met, and everyone they’ve ever met - because you never know when one of those connections will turn into a business opportunity.

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Is email marketing dead?

25 January 2012

With the massive focus on SEO, social media engagement and PPC marketing techniques, you’d be forgiven for thinking that classic email marketing is a dead field. And it might be - but it’s easy to forget that email in itself is a type of social network, and one that is used by more people than any other.

I contend that email marketing is not dead - it’s just evolved into such a different creature that most companies have no idea how to approach it. Those who do, however, are raking in the cash. It’s all about using technology that’s available to you, and understanding what makes someone sign up to an email list and click on a link in your email, and what makes them delete your emails on sight.

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How can Twitter be useful for businesses?

23 January 2012

Twitter is undoubtedly a useful tool for promoting just about any business, but it’s application needs to be properly understood in the context of your business. Here are a few tips for using Twitter to promote your business.

1.Don’t underestimate Twitter’s usefulness

If you are in an extremely specialized niche market, don’t expect to suddenly have thousands of Twitter followers. Rather focus on entering the circles that are relevant to your business. Identify “power tweeters” in your area, and engage with them. Tweet at them, mention them, etc. Find trending topics relevant to your area and participate in these discussions.

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What is reverse google pagerank algorithm?

21 January 2012

It's a pile of rubbish that's what it is, however it does highlight the fact that there are lots of people out there who have no clue about internet marketing and no idea of the terminology, so when emails like these come into their inbox, some people would actually believe it to be useful.

So what is this?

We recently got a spam mail which read like this

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What you need to look for in a good logo

20 January 2012

Your logo is one of the most important - if not the most important - pieces of your website’s graphic design. A poorly designed, or an over or under-designed logo, will rob your website of credibility and make it look like you don’t know what you’re talking about. There are no hard and fast rules for logo design, but here are a few things to think about:

Two Types of Logo:

Iconic logos are logos like the Apple image, which contain no words but represent a brand. These are harder to come up with, and even more difficult to associate with your brand, but can be highly effective if well-designed and cleverly associated.

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How do you choose brand vs domain name for your new website?

18 January 2012

A lot of people ask me this when starting a new website, and I usually give them the same answer: Go with keywords. There are many reasons for this, which I’ll get to in a minute, but first let’s have a look at the case for using a catchy brand name as your domain.

There are plenty of websites that use a phrase or name that isn’t a common English word, and they are wildly popular. But they’re popular because they’ve spent millions of dollars on above-the-line advertising to associate that phrase or word they’ve made up with their business activity. A classic example is Wonga.com.

Wonga.com is a microlender - one of the first to gain a real foothold on the internet. You’d never naturally associate the meaningless word “Wonga” with borrowing money, which is why Wonga has spent so much money on catchy jingles, expensive TV ads, content network banners, etc. Personally I think they could have got a lot more bang for their buck by calling their business “QuickCash” or something - but they didn’t ask me for some reason.

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What is social bookmarking and what is it for?

13 January 2012

social bookmarking is the practice of posting links to articles and web pages to various “link aggregator” or social bookmark sites, such as Digg, Stumbleupon and so on. Social bookmarking sites rise and fall in popularity fairly quickly, but they generally have a few common features:

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What is Twitter seeding and what is it for?

11 January 2012

“Seeding” is the practice of carefully distributing content online through various channels, in the hope that it will become “viral” and be spread of its own accord. If this content is an advertising campaign cleverly disguised as a joke or some other kind of content that is noteworthy, the company that created it can reap huge benefits.

Twitter is uniquely suited to seeding viral content, because of its unique “trending” feature. A trending topic on Twitter can be seen by everyone - not just the people in your immediate network. This means that all you have to do to get tweets about your “topic” (for lack of a better word) seen by millions of people is reach a critical mass where that topic begins to “trend”.

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