Although we do include social networking (Including Twitter) in the marketing mix for some clients, I have always had the nagging voice in my head saying “is this really worth it?”.

Being honest, although I believe the answer is probably “in some cases yes” I don’t really have an answer as yet.

I have however found an interesting thread on the UK Business forum, which I believe makes some useful comment on the subject, so I thought I would share it:

Twitter, Whats the point – From the UK Business forum

Its that the of year again where we will be spending a couple of weeks chilling out & recharging so that we can be fired up to meet your internet marketing needs in 2010.

To this end, our offices will be closed from lunchtime on 18th December, re-opening on 4th January. Well refreshed & ready to help you make the most of the web in 2010 and beyond.

We will be monitoring our emails over the holidays, so if you have anything that can’t wait until the 4th Jan, feel free to drop us an email.

For a while now, we have been saying that when measuring online success you should focus on metrics that offer real value like site visitors and conversions rates. Rather than the usual ones touted by SEO companies (Google page rank, number of page 1 listings etc). With this in mind, it is good to know that the mighty brains at Google agree! As illustrated by this recent post on Webmaster central:

“Don’t worry. In fact, don’t bother thinking about it. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s useful for you as a site owner. If you’re looking for metrics, we’d encourage you to check out Analytics, think about conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), relevancy, or other metrics that actually correlate to meaningful gains for your website or business.” – Susan Moskwa (Google Employee)

FYI, here’s the post

If you want some help adding Google analytics to your site, we are happy to do it for free – Click here for details

As a marketer, I am a great fan of e-commerce for smaller retail businesses as it is a great way to get close to your customers & service a wide marketplace without spiraling overheads.

However, when making the decision to set up an ecommerce site, one key question is which shopping cart system to go for. There are many on the market, but which is the right one?

I recently found a useful summary of the main carts on the market which highlights their advantages & disadvantages so I thought I would share it:

www.itwebexperts.com/oscommerce_zencart_xcart_comparison.php

We develop our sites in CRE loaded, and the key reason for this is its flexibility. I am a marketer and as such believe that e-commerce is a marketing and not an IT issue. I am also firm believer that your business should drive the e-commerce system, and not the other way round.

CRE loaded is relatively easy to customise, so when a customer comes to me and says “Can I ……. with the online shop?” The answer is invariably “Yes” and the solution will not normally be expensive to implement.

So if you are considering taking the plunge into e-commerce, I recommend reading the above review, and feel free to contact us, as we are always happy to discuss the options.

Traditionally redirecting a standard HTML page on a Windows server has been tricky especially if you don’t have access to the server config.

This may now have changed. I was watching an interview with one of the Google “Geeks”, and he was explaining that Search engines have agreed a new standard for redirects. (In addition to 301 which is still perfectly legitimate):

Here is a link to the interview if you are interested

The method is simple & involves adding a tag to the top of the page

link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/example.php”

where href = points to the page you want the search engine to index.

(note: This needs to be put in the normal opening & closing tags <......./> in the header of the document)

A couple of incidents recently have caused me to ask this question, and it’s is one you should be asking too. In many cases you may find that it is not be as secure as it needs to be.

In simple terms your on-line brand consists of 2 elements:

1. Your domain name
2. Your website

There are a few things you need to check with both of these elements:

Your Domain Name

This is arguably the most important factor as this IS your on-line brand. It is therefore essential that it is secure. To confirm that it is, you need to check that the domain registered to you. If it is not, get it changed NOW.

You can check this by doing a Whois lookup (here is a link to the one we use – www.dnsstuff.com) and check the Registrant Details. This should be your company. If it isn’t you need to get on to your domain supplier & ask them to change it.

Your Website

The big question here is “Are your website and any associated databases backed up regularly”.

Ask yourself the question:

“If I woke one morning to find my website was gone, or worse still had been hacked & replaced with someone else’s content, what would I do?”

If you have a back up the answer is simple – restore the back up and you are sorted. If its not, then the result could be an expensive rebuild from scratch!

You should check with your web provider that your site is backed up regularly and what they would do in the case of a “disaster”.

If you have any concerns that your web presence is not secure, feel free to contact us, and we will be happy to give you our input.

At BSA Marketing – We are always advocating the use of Web marketing, but I recently came across a real world example where a company’s approach to marketing on the web directly influenced their business.

Picture the scene:

It 7pm on a Friday night, and you decide to go out for a meal. You know where you want to go, but want to book a table & don’t know the phone number:

Enter Google maps – do a search. Nothing…

Try Google search…

…….It comes up with a number but its an old one, so no joy there either.

At this point you change tack & think “OK, I don’t want to risk it, so where else can I go”;

Back to Google maps, you do a search for Restaurants, and up comes an Italian that you know is pretty good. Two more clicks & you are talking to them & the table is booked.

That restaurant who had got their web marketing right got my business that night!! (and it was a very good meal).

The Italian restaurant was Va Bene in Glossop, Derbyshire if you are interested.

I was recently made aware of this video on Youtube. Although I am not 100% convinced that this trick will work, I can see where he is coming from, and its very easy to implements so thought it worth passing on.

Please feel free to comment. I would be interested in the opinion of others on this one!

Thanks to Richard at Mortgage Savers for passing this to me

Earlier this year, a study showed on-line sales have grown 14% in the year to May 09 (compared with year to May 08).

“The e-retail industry continues to perform well during the recession with year on year growth at around 15% being achieved consistently over the last 10 months. We are also seeing growth in the average basket value with UK shoppers spending £10 more online per visit compared to a year ago.”

Mike Petevinos, Head of Consulting for Retail for Capgemini UK

With more and more shopping being done on-line, e-commerce is rapidly becoming an essential part of any retailers marketing mix.

However, traditionally a fully featured & flexible e-commerce systems have been expensive, and have meant taking a decision to buy in to a solution provided by a specific suplier.

At BSA We take a different approach:

We believe On-line retailing is still about Marketing & Customer Service. As such any e-commerce system has to support these areas not drive them.

With over 20 years experience in Marketing, and 10 years experience in marketing on the internet, we are ideally placed to deliver e-commerce solutions that work in the real world.

Furthermore, buy focusing on open source solutions*, we are able to deliver solutions quickly & within realistic budgets.

“I was desperate to upgrade our website in particular we needed more functionality for our consumers to stay competitive in our marketplace. I researched a number of providers who were charging 10′s of thousands of pounds to make the home page look great but found they had no true knowledge of retail on-line, stock systems and “behind the scenes” functionality paramount to our business.

BSA were not only able to provide the solutions I needed but also offered advice and support giving me confidence their knowledge could better promote my business. The end result was providing a great website at a fraction of the cost, giving great value for money.”

Nicky Weatherup – MD – Littlefishtoys.co.uk

We are now providing e-commerce solutions for a wide range of retailers from food, to clothing, to children’s toys, and are confident that we can provide real solutions solutions from as little as £950 +VAT

You can take a look at some of the solutions we have already provided in our Gallery.

*We develop our e-commerce systems using CRE Loaded, a commercially supported variant of leading open source e-commerce system os-Commerce

This month, we have launched a new e-commerce website for littlefishtoys.co.uk, a the leading independent on-line retailer in the UK traditional toy market. The site which is based on the open source CRE Loaded e-commerce system has many enhancements over and above the standard CRE professional B2B installation including:

• Customer Loyalty Scheme
• Support Tcketing System
• Enhanced Stock Control Functionality
• Enhanced Order Processing Functionality
• Enhanced Marketing Functionality
• And Much More

The site which serves customers globally, has seen a significant increase in activity & sales since the launch of the new site.