Online marketing news and resources.

The world of email marketing gets another hurdle to face as Google announce the launch of a ‘priority inbox’ for its Gmail. If you want to get your messages through and read then you need to know how the new system will sort the incoming mail.

Google algorithms have evolved over the years to become sophisticated learning mechanisms. The approach to evaluating Gmail will be not unlike the process the search engine spiders adopt to assess and index website content according to criteria based upon authenticity, importance, relevance and value.

The automatic capture and instant organisation of ‘important’ emails will demote other email in a process similar to spam filtering. This means that essentially, Gmail will operate by identifying the email that’s important to you, based upon what it has ‘learnt’ from analysing who you send email to the most, how often, and which keywords appear frequently in the emails you read.

For businesses, these indicators will be further essential items of information to carefully assess when compiling future email marketing campaigns and the focus on SEO keywords , even within general mail traffic, can only serve to reinforce their importance.

The upgraded system will highlight ‘starred’ messages, relegating all other mail to a third category called ‘everything else’. The ability for a message to make it to the ‘priority inbox’ will require considerable upping of the online marketing game where every word absolutely counts from the left hand side, demanding to be read!

The good news is that there are built-in manual controls to override and tune the system as well. If Priority Inbox makes a mistake, there are  +  −  buttons to correctly mark a conversation as ‘important’ or ‘not important’, and Priority Inbox will quickly learn current mail reading behaviour. Gmail allows you to toggle between the ‘priority view’ and the conventional ‘inbox view’, in chronological order – and the entire function can also be turned off!

The emphasis is again on adopting marketing strategies to put your brand identity in the best possible light by refraining from the monthly or quarterly mass email out by the lazy use of mail merge software that just simply personalises the intro line!

Today’s online engagement process is defined by social media and that means connecting or reconnecting with your niche audience so that they will ensure that your incoming mail messages or newsletter will be allowed access to priority inbox status.

Rumours that Google is looking to go into broadcasting have been leaking through online over the last few months, with Autumn set for the first appearance of Google TV-powered devices. The exciting crossover opportunities for businesses of all sizes and how website design and online marketing will be transformed, lies tantalisingly just weeks ahead.

According to the world’s No.1 search engine, Google TV will be an “open platform”, aiming to unite search and browse capabilities, integrating web search results and TV content, side by side. Google TV will support Flash and make the “full internet” available through set-top boxes and “integrated” TV screens.

Formatting website accessibility for the new channel could be an issue – the TV browser is Chrome – although Google TV is intended to work with existing TV screens but either TV or the set-top box will require an HDMI input or output, respectively.

Google TV ( GTV) will be built and remote controlled on the Android platform, not Chrome OS, and will run Android apps. Users will not require a cable TV subscription, although they will need WiFi in their home to access GTV and for those who simply wish to use Google TV to get internet content and web video as an alternative to paying for a cable subscription.

The present arrangements for advertising from traditional TV sources or existing internet sources/publishers/networks will continue but the likelihood of new and specific GTV ad formats to eventually be produced.

According to Google, there will be the same privacy options and controls as available for Chrome online and an indication that there will be tracking and data collection.

Partner companies involved, in addition to Adobe, will include amongst others, Intel (chip), Sony (TV) and Logitech (set-top box), Logitech says its box will have a remote which also integrates a keyboard. Google have yet to give any indication of pricing.

As and when Google TV finally hits a viewing screen, and we enter the next era of integrated online and broadcast interactive content, the possibilities for marketing strategies and optimising brand identity presence across the new interchangeable platform could be very attractive indeed!

It’s been said before – online marketing tools complement, not compete with each other! Reports always announce that one or the other is in the ascendency but in fact, social marketing helps draw attention to a company profile or product, whereas sales are likely to be generated when information is received by email!

Another report – based on a survey of over 1,400 so-called ‘representative’ consumers, – has just announced that email still beats social networks when it comes to marketing for eCommerce. Apparently, over a third of consumers are not using a social networking site, and online brand identity ‘fans’ are still in the minority!

Depending on the market niche a business occupies, email marketing can definitely be the more important way to contact people over a longer period of time, because, as a rule, almost everyone reads email. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, or LinkedIn will invariably update to an email account anyway!

As we  all should know by now, because a variety of media platforms are available, every user will adopt the channel they feel is best for them, even though, as the long established workhorse, email continues to be the desired channel for many types of commercial communication. (more…)

It is fairly common knowledge amongst many of the website design and marketing agencies, there have been recent changes to Google’s algorithm, influencing optimised content, link building, and ultimately, visitor search results. In short, Google looks at site pages for signals of human activity in the form of regular, fresh content of relevance, influence and authority.

After two decades, the web resembles Mount Everest. Countless explorers have visited, leaving behind a detritus littered landscape. There are simply thousands upon thousands of dead or automated websites left unattended or simply not being looked after and updated on a regular basis.

This begs the question of how much – or how little – online marketing the site owner companies are actually doing? What would be the incentive, value and interest for a return visit? Aside from an eCommerce business alerting their database via an email marketing newsletter to a few price changes, the content remains unaltered, and means visitors will not be staying at the site to engage further. In other words, a brand identity is formed of a price–driven attitude, which offers potential customers nothing further in terms of added content value.

Google is always changing, and some important changes are now more evident than ever before. Relevant back linking from niche market sites is now more important and valuable, even if the sites are lower ranked. It had always been assumed that the top ranking factor voted by Google was always keyword-focused, anchor text from external links. (more…)

It really does seem that the case for implementing subscription internet, or Web 3.0, gets stronger everyday! Email intrays and blog comment forums are clogged up with over 85 per cent spam. News that Twitter crime has risen as usage has increased is only as expected!

Website hackers, PC jackers, password pirates, zombies, trojans, and worms threaten to totally crash civilisation online at any given moment. Firewalls, AntiMalware, PC Defenders and Spyware Terminators – endless security software is needed to simply try and guard you from the ceaseless hordes of cyber barbarians trying to find a way past your precious portals!

So who are we engaging with on the web anyway? Where do our online marketing messages and social media connections really end up? Deleted or destined for a darker place?

According to latest analysis of more than 25 million Twitter accounts, as users become more active, the malicious activity also increases. True Twitter Users are tweeting more often but the survey reveals that worryingly, only 28.87 per cent of Twitter users are actual True Twitter Users!

Twitter has 105,779,710 registered users!

Further statistics from April 2010 claim that Twitter has 300,000 new users signing up with 600 million search queries every single day, and receives 180 million unique visitors per month!

But the report finds that half of Twitter users tweet less than once a day, and only one in 10 users tweet five or more times a day. 30 per cent of Twitter accounts have never tweeted.

Whilst one in every eight Twitter users has at least 10 times more followers than they are following, only one in 10 users is following more than 100 users, and almost half are following less than five!

Yet, the Twitter Crime Rate for the first half of 2010 stands at 1.67 per cent. Based on the above figures, there appears to be an alarming large number of microblog imposters marauding the social networks.

Does this mean the optimisation of website accessibility for social media messaging, network engagement and tsunami waves of mobile applications are opening up your system to total takeover by malevolent forces, more than ever before?

In the end, is there a bitter twist if you Twitter this?

Nope!

Seems the message has not been getting through! A new 2010 study finds that nearly half of the UK’s SME websites contain little or no SEO, are not indexed with search engines and thus, fail to make any visible impact on driving visitor traffic, whatsoever!

According to a recent State of UK Business Websites Study, of a sample 1,000 SME websites analysed, around 47 per cent contained little or no SEO content.

It beggars belief that nearly twenty years since the start of the web, in today’s highly sophisticated online marketing environment, fast forwarding into mobile internet and social media led customer engagement, a staggering half of business websites defeat the purpose of their existence in the first place.

Why bother having a website if you are not prepared to invest in it’s growth and development? Learn to understand how it should properly function to enable it to perform properly so your business brand identity stands a chance of succeeding online? (more…)

While it’s true that some businesses will always take a ‘wait and see’ attitude to changes resulting from emerging technology, there are many who readily see the online marketing opportunities for taking a competitive lead in their particular niche.

Of course, all the high profile publicity given to the teething problems of Apple iPhone4 have not helped! In any event, some business owners will a take the view that most technological changes are no more than a passing fad, citing that they can’t see how social media would work to make money for their particular business.

The development of the mobile internet may not be so easily dismissed as recent research seems to suggest that more businesses have embraced the possibilities of mobile, and of those with dedicated mobile sites, 39 per cent highlighted the benefits as being ‘sales from a new channel’.

In fact, two thirds of respondents went as far as saying that mobile was seen as important or essential for making their brand identity visible. As a consequence, they felt they were able to provide a more quicker, easier and efficient way of communicating with their customer base. Moreover, their mobile sites also enabled positive feedback to be received and gave flexible opportunity for two-way interaction with 83 per cent stating results met or exceeded expectations. (more…)

Does this week’s railing against the free web by Prince, quickly following on the heels  of the paywall now firmly in place around the Times and Sunday Times, seem to be heralding a new era of two-tier online engagement between paying for original quality content/news and free access to all other common sources?

It’s possible that the assumptions of whole generations of users who have grown up to believe that the essential web, websites and content is grown, run and consumed in a so-called ‘no overheads’ Garden of Eden, are about to be challenged.

A common myth seems now to be woven into the general understanding of online as automatically being cheaper than offline. This may have been briefly thought to be the case in the early days of the web but the business of creating today’s web design and online marketing for operating a visible, successful eCommerce presence is a grown up sophisticated operation indeed.

It simply isn’t the case, as some business owners tend to assume, that because there appears to be less material costs involved in constructing a purposeful website, developing its functionality, creating powerful content and going ‘live’ than opening a high street or retail park outlet, that it follows that there is a corresponding downsizing of cost ratio to value. (more…)

Latest figures show that one in four UK adults using the internet today are aged between 50 to 64, a sure indicator of a seriously expanded demographic, which website design and marketing agencies and their business clients should be taking on board.

According to UKOM, a division of market research company Nielsen, which measures internet usage, the UK web audience increased by 1.9 million during 2009, with an additional 1 million people aged 50 or over now online, accounting for more than half of new users. The fastest growing sector on Facebook is the over-40s, although the core user is 22-45-year-olds.

Business owners of web based services and eCommerce sites need to be aware that not only is the medium of the web itself maturing but the audience is shifting towards older age groups, raising issues regarding future marketing strategies. Whilst most of the new users (722,000) were men, 15% (284,000) were women, of which, 272,000 were aged 21-34, followed by an additional 231,000 teenage girls between the ages of 12 and 20, who now have access to the internet.

The new figures throws into high relief, the recently introduced British Standards Institute (BSI) revised guidelines – ‘BS 8878 Web Accessibility: Code of Practice’ – stating the legal obligations for making web products accessible to the disabled and elderly. The legislation impacts ease of website accessibility for newest web platforms such as iPhone and iPad. (more…)

Will we or won’t we pay? The Times has been getting on with bricking up online access to its news pages by starting the process of requesting visitor registration ahead of charging, due to commence this week. Is this the first act of Web 3.0 or an error of judgement?

Internet conferences and web seminars have long been discussing whether the end of the first phase of the open net was in sight, given that brands like Google, Apple, eBay, Facebook and Twitter have come to dominate the landscape, even as Microsoft’s all pervasive software stranglehold has been loosened.

In other words, are we witnessing News International’s battle for the control of website accessibility as a sign of things to come or a resuscitated revenue strategy as a stand alone event?

It may yet be too early to call. Indeed, media companies experiment with new online marketing business models all the time, gently calling for opt in email marketing newsletter sign ups and restricting access to reports, white papers and membership exclusives to registered and approved parties. (more…)