Whatever type of website reviews and ratings system you use, what is undeniable from the statistics is that if you generate reviews to place on your site they will both draw in new surfers as well as increase sales. With a review optimisation of a site can yield significant benefits on many fronts. The main and most tangible ones from product reviews are:

1. Visitor Confidence

If your website reviews products and services honestly, that is pretty obvious to any visitor. Regurgitated manufacturers’ marketing copy is a turnoff so having good user reviews and feedback will fill the visitor with confidence as to your intent and approach

2. Social Ratification

As soon as visitor confidence increases, you will be accepted socially. This means currently sharing through Google +1, Facebook and Twitter. The positive consequences of this are significant for adding to a site’s kudos in the marketplace and on the net.

3. Domain Authority

If you get visitor confidence and interaction and this is backed up by increasing social signals, you will build up ‘domain authority’. The increased natural and organic linking to your site and pages show this authority to the Google bots. Also, you are likely to get more return visitors and increased interaction.

4. Viral Potential

If you have domain authority, the viral potential for your website reviews is high. It is probable that you will be monitored on feeds and other channels by your readers. If hooked up with your own social profile as well, getting shared around the Internet is highly likely.

5. Increased Conversions

The trust that is built with the benefits above will help convert more visitors to sales. From studies by Deloitte & Touche LLP, over 50% of those asked said they were more likely to buy from a site with product reviews, increasing to over 80% when those reviews are based on actual consumer experience.

6. Long Tail Keyword Ranking

Reviews themselves generate a host of long tail keyword rankings. If you have the full details of a product in a review, optimisation for long tail is very effective. You could see quite a few high rankings without much effort.

7. Move A Potential Purchaser One Step On

What you are attempting to do as a seller and website owner is to move on the buyer to the last stages in the buying cycle to where they are ready to make a purchase. You have to go past the idea of a desire, through the information gathering and then checking to the actual purchase. User reviews and product reviews are very effective at doing this by adding confidence to a potential buyer that they have made the right choice in their mind.

8. Free Content

User and product reviews basically are free content for your site. This is the case, whether they add to an existing page through comments, or if they are actually full review articles submitted to you and they published. Where they are ad hoc comments added, with a rating, they are very powerful. This is not only free content, but it is continual fresh content in the eyes of the search engines and this will rank you higher. The ability to generate reviews in this way is highly beneficial.

9. Reduction In Complaints and Returns

It has been shown that reviews are very good at reducing returns. They highlight weaknesses so that a buyer is fully aware and has decided to spend money in that knowledge, knowing they can put up with it. But you do need to generate reviews in increasing quantities along with user input to see the benefits that website reviews will have on those figures.

10 Trust, Trust And More Trust

This really is the core of review optimisation for any business on the Internet. The build up of trust in all aspects of your interface via your website ratings and reviews will snowball. Each time you generate reviews or user comments, it provides a correlating review for you and it increases your trust factors. Soon, you will find that your product reviews become more trusted with less feedback. What you say, for instance in an ecommerce store description, is acted upon more as your word has been ratified as honest. Review optimisation is the key.

Related posts:

1. Marketing Your Business During a Recession
2. Why Google Analytics Is Essential For Your Website
3. Successful Ecommerce Website Design

Once used as an easy way to keep in touch with the office, or friends and family whilst away from home, over the last ten years or so the mobile phone has had us texting via SMS, then sending emails and transferring photos. More recently, the introduction of smartphones has meant we are able to access the internet, download music, stream TV and of course, shop online using m-commerce sites whilst on the go. With mobile broadband becoming a growing market and with investment in 3G and 4G networks for better coverage and service, being able to go online using your phone has become a popular choice for many consumers.

The rise of smartphones has been phenomenal, with popular handsets such as the Apple iPhone pushing the limits on what our simple mobile phone can achieve. With many other technology companies following suit, mobile website development and m-commerce is in demand by consumers, but are businesses and retailers alike ready for this format?

A recent study by Morgan Stanley shows that in the next five years, more people will be connecting to the internet via mobile devices than on their PCs. The boom in social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and m-commerce sites has changed the way people use the internet and have put new mobile touch screen technology in demand. The ability to get online whenever and wherever we are has meant that businesses must now reconsider their websites and offer something that fits with the mobile commerce generation.

Mobile website designers understand that consumers are now able to browse mobile commerce sites on the go, 24 hours a day and they also realise that the smartphone format is different to the normal view you would have on your computer at home. This means that mobile website development needs to be approached in a slightly different way to regular website design. A mobile websites agency would be able to look at your company’s needs, be it to provide service information, news or m-commerce and design a site that not only complements your current site or brand proposition, but works just as hard as your existing website.

Currently, smartphones can be used to view websites that have been designed for viewing on a larger screen format such as a computer or laptop, the obvious differences being that a smartphone screen is much smaller and reading text or viewing images can become a problem. Mobile website designers know that mobile optimised sites can outperform non-optimised sites, especially where m-commerce sites are concerned. Difficulties in viewing their desired product properly or navigating through to the right information on an m-commerce site can put customers off. As most mobile website designers will tell you, consumers are focused on their task and are easily frustrated by sites that are slow to load or hard to navigate.

Mobile website development is essentially similar to regular website development, especially when it comes to m-commerce, with the main areas of look, navigation, product pages, shopping basket and ordering being the most important for consumers to be able to use. Retailers are realising the importance of having just as good a mobile commerce site as a regular site and are working with mobile website designers to produce sites that fit in with this new method of shopping.

Working with a mobile website agency can make the design of your mobile commerce site a lot easier. After all, they are the experts and can help you identify what will work well within your m-commerce site. In recent mystery shopping investigations, they showed that there were certain areas where mobile website designers should concentrate, such as the ‘look’ of the homepage. Feedback from the investigations said that many mobile commerce sites looked too plain and often didn’t correspond to other online presences that the company had. Your mobile website agency will tell you that brand is important and if you already have a developed look and feel that a consumer will identify with, you should use that as the base of your design. Remember, due to the small screen view, usability is key, but don’t let your customers forget they are visiting you.

Navigation and search options are also important in mobile website development. Just like non-optimised websites, you need to let customers get where they want to go in as few clicks as possible, so make all your navigation options as simple, obvious and easy to use as possible. Having a keyword search bar is a good idea, but make sure the results it gives are relevant to the search. If a consumer is frustrated by not getting where they want to go, they will look for their product elsewhere. When it comes to mobile commerce, most consumers know exactly what they are looking for, unlike via a PC format where the consumer may be more tempted to browse.

M-commerce sites often suffer because their product information is lacking. Just because you have a smaller viewing screen doesn’t mean you can scrimp on product information. In fact, during the mystery shopping investigation, a lot of the feedback related to sites not providing enough detailed descriptions or variety of images. Many of the better m-commerce sites offered full descriptions, more images and access to customer reviews via links on the product page.

The shopping basket and checkout area also needs to work in a similar way to a regular site, with as much flexibility as you can possibly get in a smaller format. Feedback from shoppers has mentioned simple things like being able to add or delete items easily and making your purchase obvious with a picture and brief description. Mobile website designers will be able to advise on all these areas and make them work well within the format.

When it comes to mobile commerce, simplicity is the key, especially when keyboards are generally small and fiddly to use. In the checkout area, you can help by offering time saving ideas such as postcode address finders and one-click payment options like Paypal.

Of course, it isn’t just retailers that need to pay heed to the new way of accessing the internet and using m-commerce. All businesses should be considering just how their clients use their site and how they might be hindered by the current format or design. Regardless of whether you are using m-commerce or generating sales leads through your site, a mobile website agency can make your site mobile ready and help you to move forward.

A mobile website agency can help you design your site to work seamlessly regardless of the technology format it is viewed on, with clear, consistent navigation, obvious call to action signs and thorough branding. A good agency will take time to learn about your business and your clients to produce a site that works hard for you.

No doubt, m-commerce like the technology it is used on, will continue to grow and evolve and provide even more exciting opportunities for retailers and businesses to extend their brands to consumers.

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1. Making Flash Searchable
2. Successful Ecommerce Website Design
3. Job Vacancy: SEO Specialist / Search Marketing Executive – PPC

This is an excellent chance to build upon your experience in a dynamic role that comes complete with comprehensive training and development opportunities. What’s more, as our client continues to grow, there’s even potential to move into a management position.

In this client-facing role, as a SEO Specialist / Search Marketing Executive, you will be responsible for managing SEO and PPC campaigns across a range of industries.

Joining a fast-paced and dynamic environment, you’ll manage and develop existing accounts and assist in scoping and developing proposals for new prospects.

In this exciting role, your duties will include:

- Developing and pitching bespoke solutions for search marketing campaigns
- Managing client site content and improving SEO and conversion rates
- Implementing, analysing and optimising search marketing campaigns

To be considered for this role, you must have search marketing experience, including SEO and PPC

Additionally, as a SEO Specialist / Search Marketing Executive, you must be able to effectively communicate and present complex data, concepts and ideas in a structured and organised way. Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to work under pressure are also key.

Although not essential, the ideal applicant will have a background gained within a search marketing agency.

See person specification for details of this post.

Apply for this position. - Closing date for applications is 18/11/2011

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3. SEO Manager Job In Preston

Google has just unveiled Multi Channel Funnels for Google Analytics and in doing so, admitted the previous form of conversion tracking used was inadequate in that it would only track the last event prior to purchase.

To give you some idea of how this worked and the problems with it, we’ll take the example of an online shoe shop using multiple marketing channels all tracked by Google Analytics. Previously, Analytics would keep track of what clicks on AdWords, display advertising, organic search, social media and referring sites led to conversions. So, if a user searched for “running shoes” and clicked on your AdWords ad, they would be counted as a conversion for this format.

This provides great data on the effectiveness of the AdWords ad, but what if they only clicked the ad and made the purchase because they’d previously visited your site and read about your product from a link on a social media feed? In the past, because they used another channel before making a purchase, the social media feed would not get credited with any part of the conversion tracking by the systems in Google Analytics that deal with conversion tracking, despite it playing the main role in convincing the customer to make a purchase in this case.

Google Analytics now is able to perform multi channel tracking through a new product they launched earlier this month called Multi Channel Funnels. In this new section of Google Analytics, you can get a better impression of your overall ROI marketing effectiveness by tracking what channel paths are used by users and how long they take to make a conversion after being exposed to an initial channel. This means that if you’ve recently been on a Google Analytics training course, much of the most important part of tracking, which is conversions, has now been superseded due to the new multi channel tracking features.

Using Google Analytics with the old system may have previously given you bad data on the effectiveness of a campaign. Previously, when conducting ROI marketing assessments, the lack of direct conversions from a campaign, say an advert in an email newsletter that didn’t convert, might have led you to consider repeating the exercise as useless. However, it might have been the case that this had built brand awareness that led users to later search for your product and purchase this way, leading Google’s old conversion tracking to believe this was from an organic search. Thanks to the backdating on the reports using data Google has been collecting since January, you can now re-assess previous campaigns to see if the conclusions you made over their effectiveness stand up, now you have the ability to do multi channel tracking.

The only downside about this change is that it has made using Google Analytics that bit more complicated. Whilst much of the new system can be worked out through simply viewing the new reports in Analytics, understanding how to interpret the data might require more advanced Google Analytics training. This comes down to understanding how each channel plays in the overall conversion and thus the return on investment each form of marketing provides.

Below, we provide a quick walk-through of using Google Analytics with some of the new features and how to interpret their data for use in ROI marketing. The Path Length view of Google Analytics allows you to see how many channels users went through before a purchase, as well as the collective conversion value. This is displayed in both raw numbers and as a percentage of overall conversions, presented as a bar chart. Using Google Analytics with this data is particularly useful if you are doing split testing as it shows how effective each version of your site is at making a user convert on an initial visit. It may well be the case that the data here will show that one version of your site used on A/B testing converts more initially due to a more sales-like pitch, but less overall as it puts users off returning. This can be further complemented by testing individual AdWords campaigns for conversion length, so you can see how your ‘off-site’ copy affects your conversion rate.

The next part of this short Google Analytics training to look at is the Time Lag report. The data here shows the number of days taken by a user to convert. This data can be useful if you are using marketing techniques that follow users, for instance display advertising that shows ads to users who have previously visited your site or newsletters that have automatic emails they send to new members after a set number of days. The data here can show you how useful these campaigns are over time and thus allow you to set how long you continue to pay for them before their ROI becomes too low.

For sequential data of the unique channel paths used by users to get to conversions, Google uses the Top Conversion Paths report. When using Google Analytics, this is the first report you’ll see in the new Multi Channel Tracking section. This can show both the interaction between multiple channels, say a user first visiting through social media then directly, as well as multiple instances of the same channel, for instance two organic searches before the conversion was made. This data can become more specific, allowing you to look at data down to the level of individual keywords. You can even group these into meaningful sets that allow you to see what type of visitors are making conversions when you’re measuring conversion tracking. For instance, you could group those searching for the name of your site together under a ‘Brand Search’ label and see how important your brand is to overall conversion versus searches that involve generic keywords relating to your product or other marketing channels, something which previously was unavailable when using Google Analytics for ROI marketing.

One of the most important steps in multi channel tracking is the initial first interaction. This is how a user initially visits your site before ultimately making a conversion. This is important both in measuring the effectiveness of these initial interactions and seeing what paths that follow them lead to higher conversions. This way you can put more of your effort in ROI marketing towards these initial interactions as well as optimise your website for each path to interact with the user in the way which, several steps of the path later, will lead to a conversion. For example, this data may give you the insight that users initially visiting from one keyword make most conversions after visiting your site from a social network further down the path, so giving you an incentive to promote your social media profiles more to these users on their landing page.

Google Analytics now also provides a report listing each channel and their overall conversions, their final-channel conversions and their amount of assisted conversions as well as a ratio between them. This data is great for working out the overall effectiveness of each part of your ROI marketing, but can require Google Analytics training in order to understand the importance of each of these. The data in this report alone only gives an impression of each channel in the overall multi channel tracking rather than the interaction between them which is key to understanding the channel path users take in your conversion tracking, enabling you to gain a much better understanding of how to improve your ROI marketing strategy.

Related posts:

1. Why Google Analytics Is Essential For Your Website
2. PPC Conversion Testing: Getting More from Your AdWords Campaigns
3. Best Practices for Conversion Rate Optimisation

Specific tasks include (but not restricted to)

• Development of advertising campaign proposals for clients
  • Researching
  • Planning
  • Documenting
  • Set up and implementation of the campaign
• Day to day management of existing campaigns
  • Tracking activity and performance
  • Updating campaigns to achieve performance objectives
  • Monitoring campaign performance
  • Investigation and analysis of performance
• Reporting on campaign performance – written and verbal as required
• Research and development activities to keep abreast of market innovations and apply to existing and future campaigns

The successful candidate will have a sound understanding of advertising and marketing principles and techniques and will be enthusiastic, committed and numerate. You must be organised; highly self-motivated and able to work on your own initiative as well as being part of a close-knit team in a fast-growing business.  Strong communication, analytical skills and a customer-focused approach are essential.

Previous experience in online marketing is not essential as training will be given.

See person specification for details of this post.

Apply for this position. - Closing date for applications is 27/05/2011

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1. Job Vacancy: SEO Specialist / Search Marketing Executive – PPC
2. Pay Per Click (PPC) Analyst / Account Manager
3. Vacancy Announcement – Web Designer Job

At Soap Media we pride ourselves on the quality of our work and our care and commitment to all our customers.  If you like what you have heard about Soap Media and have the talent, commitment and skills we seek then we would like to talk to you about joining our web design team in return for an exciting career opportunity and a competitive remuneration package.

Reporting to a Senior Web Designer, the Web Designer will work within our web design unit and be responsible for the creation and development of the some of the company’s web output.

This will involve-

• planning and developing wireframe layouts
• develop these wireframes into visual representations of the finished product
• convert the designs into clean, compliant XHTML/CSS

We expect you to keep up to date with developments in trends and technologies and attend any training as determined from time to time.

See person specification for details of this post.

Apply for this position. - Closing date for applications is 15/03/2011

No related posts.

31st March Awards Dinner

Of course the shortlist is not the end of the story: the winner will be announced at the awards event to be held at Blackpool Hilton, 31st March 2011. So we very much hope to be sharing more good news with you in the near future…

Tickets are on sale now. And if you can’t be there on the night, follow on Twitter.

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1. Marketing Your Business During a Recession
2. Mobile Websites & m-Commerce: The next revolution in digital

PPC specialists have a number of PPC conversion testing tools at their disposal to assist them with running successful PPC campaigns for their clients. Here are a few of the most important tools they use when running AdWords campaigns.

AdWords Campaign Experiments

AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) is one of the main PPC conversion testing tools available in AdWords. It allows you to make changes to various aspects of your PPC campaign and then designate a percentage that you want this change to apply to in order to produce two splits: the experimental split and the control split.

Using these two splits you can compare statistics for both the experimental and control traffic, allowing you to see how the changes that you are applying to your keywords, ad groups, placements and bids affect the performance of your campaign.

ACE allows you to test various features depending on whether your ads appear in the search network or the display network. Following are a few of the features you can experiment with in each.

Search Network

In the search network, two of the most important aspects that you will want to test are your keywords and bids.

ACE allows you to add or delete specific keywords to your campaign so that you can see how this affects its performance, which is ideal for finding the most profitable keywords and dropping those that aren’t as profitable.

You can also experiment with the CPC bids of your keywords by increasing or decreasing their maximum CPCs and split testing the changes to see if this affects the conversion rate for particular keyword bids.

On the search network, you can also change aspects of the ads themselves, including headlines, display URLs, images and calls to action. ACE is a useful PPC conversion testing tool because it gives you accurate statistics on how specific changes to your ads directly affect their performance.

Other factors that you can experiment with in the search network include new ad groups, keyword match types where you can test the performance of various match types within an ad group, ad group default bids and keyword insertion.

Display Network

In the display network, one of the most useful experiments is to alter your bids on managed placements, whether CPC or CPM bids, in order to see whether these changes improve the performance of your ads. You can also experiment with additional placements where you can specify different websites for your ads to appear and then get rid of placements which are performing badly.

On top of these, you can also experiment with: additional keywords for your groups; new text ads, display ads or ad groups; ad group default bids where you can alter the maximum CPC, CPM or CPA bids; remarketing to increase your brand exposure; and site exclusions where you specify sites where you do not want your ads to appear which helps you control your targeting.

Google Website Optimiser

Whereas ACE is used to make changes to your actual ads to increase conversions, Google Website Optimiser plays an important role in the PPC conversion testing process by allowing you to optimise the traffic that arrives on your site to maximise conversions.

A conversion can come in the form of buying a product, signing up to a newsletter or filling out a contact form – essentially, any action that is of value to the company. A conversion’s worth varies from company to company, so it’s up to you to decide upon an appropriate cost per conversion and use this as your goal by which you can measure the success of your campaign.

Different features on your website will affect the amount of conversions you get from your traffic. Google Website Optimiser allows you to test variations of different features such as the headline, large images and the call to action, through two different types of test: A/B split testing and multivariate testing.

A/B split testing is where you compare the performance of completely different versions of a page, and is good to use when you want to change the whole look of a page to diagnose what’s going wrong and work out how you can improve it.

Multivariate testing is used to compare the performance of different content and design features in various locations on the page. This is a better option when you want to experiment with changes to different parts of the page at the same time. For example, you could try out three different headlines and then see how each of these performs and which leads to the most conversions.

This makes Google Website Optimiser an excellent tool for increasing conversion rates and ROI, as well as retaining more customers.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a set of tools that allows you to use the statistics that AdWords and other advertising platforms provide in order to optimise your campaign to increase conversions. As such, it plays a very important role in the PPC conversion testing process.

One of the factors involved in maximising your conversions is knowing where different conversions are coming from, whether AdWords or other PPC platforms as well as search engines, affiliates or social media platforms, and Analytics provides you with detailed statistics on this.

It can also provide you with detailed information on how your PPC campaigns are performing, as well as details of separate keywords and ad groups, helping you to make informed decisions when buying your keywords.

Part of the aim when using Analytics is to improve the content optimisation of your website, and the reports that it generates can be used to create better landing pages through integrating the correct keywords and ads.

You can also optimise the steps that a visitor can take on the way to making a conversion through funnel and navigation reports. These allow you to see what percentage of visitors who start the checkout proces asctually finish each step, as well as where visitors who drop out of the funnel process actually go. You can then use this information to change various factors that get in the way of conversions.

Use the PPC Conversion Testing Tools Available

All of these PPC conversion testing tools can be used to optimise your PPC campaigns and increase your conversion rates. But with all of these various testing methods, it is essential that you utilise them on a regular basis. Doing a one-off test once in a while will not help you very much at all with your campaign. But if you turn this into a regular practice, you will constantly be able to change and improve upon the success of your PPC campaign.

Related posts:

1. Google Analytics – Multi Channel Funnels For Better Conversion Insight
2. Best Practices for Conversion Rate Optimisation
3. Ecommerce Usability: Best Practices for High Conversion Rates

Soap has been established for 5 years and during that time has built up a fantastic portfolio ranging from large blue chip companies to more local SME’s all of which we care about equally and deeply. Part of this caring means that we are looking for a talented and passionate SEO person to come on board and join our SEO team.

You will be responsible for managing Search Engine Optimisation campaigns in a client-facing role. We’re looking for experienced and confident people, capable of answering all client questions in a comprehensive and in-depth way.

Skills / Experience:

• Attend client pitches and assist business development in identifying the SEO needs of potential clients, plus any specific on-page issues
• Become the Account Manager and single point of contact for a number of Soap Media’s high-value clients
• Analyse, identify and report on both on-page and off-page issues faced by clients and their competitors
• Document and report back to clients on recommendations that would help their site attain greater traffic, rankings and conversions
• Work with other SEO team members to brainstorm new ideas and identify complex issues faced by new and existing clients
• Build high quality back links and engage on blogs, forums and social media websites

Candidate Requirements:

• Able to work independently as well as part of a team
• Confident and comfortable in a business meeting environment with senior client and internal staff
• Can explain technical issues in a way that nontechnical clients can understand and technical contacts can implement
• Strong knowledge of on-page SEO factors, including dissecting HTML code, building logical site architectures and giving alternative implementation recommendations to a client’s technical team
• Understand the significance of external links, how they affect rankings and what factors play an important role
• Experience in using Website Analytics data to discover trends, untapped search terms and on-page issues
• Good written English skills and an ability to explain complex concepts in an easy to digest and organised manner
• Proven ability to increase the rankings, traffic and visibility of a website via Search Engine Optimisation
• Technical skills such as JavaScript/PHP/Perl/Python coding or server administration experience would be an advantage but in no way essential
• Hard working and ambitious with strong organisational skills

you can apply for the position or learn more about the role by emailing your CV to: recruitment@soapmedia.co.uk

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2. Job Vacancy: SEO Specialist / Search Marketing Executive – PPC
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