Can you afford to miss the online marketing buzz?

According to Nielsen Online, UK has approximately 48.8 million users of the Internet as of June 2009 data. This represents 79.8% of the entire population. Thus, targeting this huge pool of consumers from a single website is a golden opportunity. Read More Of This Story »

According to a survey conducted by Penn Schoen & Berland Associates and LinkShare in March 2009, 81% of the respondents prefer to research online before making a purchase. Moreover, 92% showed more confidence in the information provided online than in that offered by sales people in brick and mortar shops. This underlines the importance of online marketing. The top ten predictions for online marketing are: Read More Of This Story »

The debate on ‘PPC versus SEO’ is as heated as ever. According to UK Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Report 2009, there has been a noteworthy increase in the number of businesses shifting to PPC as their sole internet marketing strategy. Since 2008, this figure has increased from 12% to 22%. Obviously, despite its copious benefits, SEO loses out to PPC on the following grounds: Read More Of This Story »

The World Wide Web is still in the throes of convergence and, interestingly, mavericks never burn out. They might fade a bit, linger in the background, but they too, like everyone else, have a right to their little spot in the universe.

This is the case with Wolfram Alpha, which makes its unique point of working out answers, rather than simply retrieving them from memory. Sure, even the best of creative people do dip into memory once in a while, but it’s what they do with it that counts. While the world wonders which is cooler, Google or Wolfram Alpha, the so called ‘answer’ engine has found its niche. Read More Of This Story »

The aim of this article is to outline a semantically well laid out page for SEO. It’s important to remember this is never at the expense of usability or trying to game the search engines; it’s more about how to structure a well laid out web page with SEO factored into the mix. Read More Of This Story »

The whole point of creating a website is to ensure maximum visibility for your business. But unless you can monitor the flow of traffic on the site, the website cannot be fine-tuned to have the greatest impact or to attract the target audience most effectively. The best way to track the number of visitors to a website for free is through Google Analytics. This tool makes it possible for site owners to not only track the number of visitors, but to also gather various kinds of information, such as sources from where the traffic is originating, the behavior and patterns of visitors and the overall time spent by a visitor on the site. Read More Of This Story »

When it comes to online business, among the things that matter the most is the conversion rate. The conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors who actually opt to make a purchase from the site. With an increase in the conversion rates, your cost-per-acquisition (CPA), or the amount you spend on acquiring a new customer, starts declining. This has a direct impact on your profits and your bargaining power with suppliers. Read More Of This Story »

The past couple of years, 2007 and 2008, have been terrible for the credit market, and the repercussions have been seen across all sectors around the globe. With the credit meltdown, 2008 also marked the onset of a severe recession that is likely to last for some years to come. The credit crunch and recession continue to pose problems for businesses in winning new clients and orders in 2009. Businesses need to find new ways to counter the ensuing tough competition and to spend marketing money more effectively. Read More Of This Story »

Small businesses in the UK are increasingly turning towards Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to get noticed. SEO plays a key role in driving more traffic to a website, thus improving its business potential.

While SEO is a powerful tool, it does not yield results if not used properly. So, here are ten SEO tips to direct relevant traffic to your website. Read More Of This Story »

A recent research conducted by E-consultancy has projected that companies in the UK will hike their advertising spending (ad spend) on search engine marketing (SEM) by 24% to £2.75 billion in 2008. This research result comes at a time when there’s widespread concern over an overall slowdown in advertising due to recession-related worries. Read More Of This Story »

The exponentially growing popularity of social media has made this channel highly attractive to online marketers. Social media is a powerful channel that can be used by companies and brands to stand out in the sea of information available on the Internet. However, while most PR firms and advertising agencies try to capitalize on this trend, there are certain misconceptions that greatly skew the results. Read More Of This Story »

In email marketing, data related to open rates and click rates can prove to be extremely useful. There is a huge difference in the percentage of marketing emails opened and clicked among various industries. Hence, when one is establishing goals or making a decision regarding an email marketing campaign, benchmark data could play a significant role. Such data could also prove critical in tracking performance and for expectation setting. Read More Of This Story »

The term “Affiliate Marketing” seems to be increasing in popularity in the U.K. In fact, affiliate marketing has become a fast growing segment in the U.K. So, what does this mean for you?

Well, this refers to the growing popularity of an online advertising medium where the advertisers are basically online merchants who have products or services to sell. This also includes pay publishers, who are basically independent parties that promote products or services of an advertiser on their website. The “pay-for-performance” model is a situation where those who introduce new clients to a business receive some form of monetary compensation. Read More Of This Story »

In its latest move, Google launched Lively, a 3D virtual world application that can be accessed across sites that you already visit. This new application is all set to change the way communication and growth of business occurs over the Internet in the near future.

How does Lively work?

Every Google account user can have his/her own avatar, which can be used on any Lively virtual room. Lively must, however, first be downloaded by users. Also, users need to either have a Google account or a Facebook account to create Lively rooms. Users will be able to access pictures from photo sharing sites and use these to wall-paper their Lively virtual rooms. Read More Of This Story »

The announcement by Adobe in the first week of July 2008 has come as a huge relief for many web developers and advertisers! Adobe has changed the world of web designing forever by announcing that it will provide sites such as Yahoo! and Google new software to make Flash searchable. Up until now, Flash content was invisible to current search technologies due to the fact that it was buried inside Adobe’s SWF Flash file format. So by rolling out this new software, Adobe makes it possible for search engines like Google and Yahoo! to crawl as well as index the content.

What this announcement also means is that it will allow the search of Flash-based web content on Flash. This will help the pages inside Flash-based sites to be displayed higher in the search results. So the Google and Yahoo! search engine spiders will now be able to index SWF content. This also includes Flash “gadget” options, such as menus or buttons. Read More Of This Story »

In June this year, BusinessWeek.com covered a range of web design experts to know more about their web design rules. The luminaries included Don Norman, co-founder of the famous Nielsen Norman Group, and Khoi Vinh, the design director of NYTimes.com.

Simply put, these web design contributors explained the “10 commandments for Web Design for 2008.”

So, here’s a recap of what these 10 commandments mean and how they can help you improve the web design of your site: Read More Of This Story »

Most avid Internet users visit search engines multiple times a day. Most users don’t realise that their computers leave behind valuable trails of information during search engine usage. What most users also don’t know is that search engines collect logs of the search terms, while matching these search terms to get your name, computer address and the kind of information you might have shared with the said search engine.

No wonder, Google’s announcement of privacy policy measures created widespread ripples and led to mixed reactions across the world. Google provided a link to lead a user to the Privacy Center web page. Read More Of This Story »