In the last few weeks, statistics from Nielsen Online have revealed that there has been a surge in people shopping and buying things on the Internet.

Big players such as Littlewoods, Argos and Tesco saw the number of extra online shoppers increase by millions, but how does this affect smaller business within Liverpool?

Although we keep hearing about the ‘doom and gloom’ of the credit crunch this clearly demonstrates that more and more customers are using the Internet to shop for products and services, whether they’re in research mode, or already well down the ‘buying cycle’.

Using the web is perfect in helping them find what they are looking for saving them time and money.

Here’s how many people searched using theses terms for services in Liverpool last month:

“Accounts Liverpool”	7,200
“Solicitors Liverpool”	14,200
“Flower Liverpool”	3,900
“Hotel Liverpool”	336,000
“Restaurant Liverpool”	73,600

This is purely ‘topline’ data, but clearly shows what is out there for our local businesses; large numbers of people are already searching for what you offer, right now.

So how do you help them, find you?

Local listing in Google Maps is a priority as it is free and quite straightforward to set up.  Simply open a Google account and click the ‘local business centre’ and follow the instructions.  Tip here is to include ‘Liverpool’ in the title for your advert.

If you sell products, check out Google Base, we use this with many of our clients, one sells electric patio heaters and they’ve see seen a 17% uplift in traffic - all free clicks.

Create a Facebook group page for your business and begin to invite and add friends.  Some of our local hotels, restaurants and bars have already grasped the agility of facebook as a ‘keep in touch’ tool.

I bet many of you have had invites to events and nights out already; if not, I’m sure you’ll be getting something coming to your inbox about Valentines day.

Other results based marketing channels include Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising but be careful- we have many clients who come to us and have tried going this themselves, wasting a lot of money.  The campaigns must be built with the right structure. We have a Health and Safety client who has gone from a ‘couple’ of leads a week, to approximately 50 per day (and on a similar budget), simply by building and growing his campaign through a results driven, creative process.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Put the effort in to get this right, and you’ll be receiving free pre-qualified traffic to your websites for the long term.  Delivering a great return on investment.

Email Marketing – use it to build relationships with your new customers, build loyalty, cross sell and if you’re really clever, encourage them to recommend your services to their friends (now wouldn’t that be nice!).

Remember… people are ‘typing in what they are looking for’ and by using some tools of the trade, we can discover how many and what they actually ask for.  Then use the various online marketing channels to attract, capture and engage…making you more money, even while you sleep.

The real-time web has really taken off over the last year, and with Twitter showing a 10-fold increase in UK traffic in 2008, it shows no signs of slowing down in the next 12 months. So what is the real-time web exactly? With the huge number of blogging and microblogging services on the web, it allows even for the most basic user to update the world with what they're up to. While this is a great way to keep in touch with friends, it's also an even better way of being updated, in real-time, with the latest news and events from around the world. Basically, the real-time web is what is being talked about right now, right this second.

This poses a problem for Google Search, which is increasingly being shown up as just a historical web index, as user-generated posts from 10 seconds ago won't appear in Google until tomorrow. (I use the word just being relative to the subject, what Google does for indexing the historical web is incredible in its own right.)

This was brought in to focus recently with the plane crash over the Hudson River in New York. Twitter was flooded with user updates from the scene filled with comments, photos and mobile videos. These could all be seen within seconds of being posted by combining all the feeds together. Pretty smart.

 The problem is that, in cases like the Hudson River crash, Google could never keep up with the number of updates being posted every second the way Twitter itself can deliver the content to you. Could you imagine what the news would have been like if we had this during 9/11 or the JFK assasination?

Google's strength comes from the fact that if I now wanted to look up the Hudson River crash, 11 days after the incident, then Twitter wouldn't be the best place to look. It's just a shame for Google that most of the search traffic for the incident would've happened within hours of the incident itself.

So what does Google have to do to dominate this kind of activity? Working closer with Twitter (or just buying them out, in true Google fashion!) to provide a better real-time search engine would be enough. Twitter's search function at the moment runs rings around Google for real-time results as it can show you content that is only seconds old. It even alerts you to new items that have been posted since you submitted your search query, which would be a cool idea for Google to try out.

Another amazing feature Twitter's search function has is limiting results to a specific radius of a location. Which means you could build yourself a real-time news feed for user comments, photos and videos of an event that may be happening in your city, or even your street.

Will we see a dedicated real-time search engine from Google this year? I certainly hope so, but hold no expectations after their Blog search never really hit it off.

We recently advertised a job vacancy within our company on the local Job Centre website, which received great attention and has left us with more than a few CVs to read through. We started going through the first batch this week with expected results: some good, some bad. What I noticed though is that there were common trends running through them which I thought could be looked at and reviewed.

So here we go, I picked out my 5 favourites and given you my thoughts. Hopefully it might give you some insight in to how companies look at your application. The thing to remember is that you’re giving off all sorts of signals relating to what kind of employee you might be before we’ve even read your CV.

1. Keep personal emails personal
Out of all the CVs we’ve looked at over the past few days, most of them were sent from applicants’ personal Hotmail accounts. Addresses included nicknames, dates of births, seemingly random numbers, etc. (One of them actually included the word “corpse” in their address!)

It’s a lost opportunity to display some essential skills required for a web job – registering domain names and maintaining mailboxes. Sure, you might say you can do these things in your CV, but what better way to get the message across than by showing off before your CV is even opened?

Weaknesses shown: You lack passion.

The first thing you should do when looking for a job is set up a separate, private email address dedicated to work-related business only. In this line of work, the best thing to do would be to grab your name as a domain and host your email from there (cv@yourname.co.uk is perfect.)

Strengths shown: You’re organised and professional.


2. Test your portfolio links
You should always double check any portfolio / work example URLs before sending that CV out. If they’re broken or point to the wrong place or, what we’ve received more than once, bring back a 404 error then you’re doing yourself more damage than showing up at our office and serenading us with your “employ me” song. (That would actually be awesome by the way - our address is on our contact page. )

Weaknesses shown: No attention to quality or detail.

Make sure you have full control over wherever you host your own work. Sharing off a friend’s server can’t always be reliable. Hosting is cheap these days, so invest in somewhere reliable with good uptime stats.

Strengths shown: Skills in hosting and web servers.


3. Present your CV in a formatted manner
I’m including this one because we received some CVs in .txt format. Please note that basic visual stimulation goes a long way when reading your personal statement!

Weaknesses shown:  You lack basic PC skills.

Send out your CV in .doc or .pdf format. These are industry standard and there’s sometimes when you just shouldn’t stand out from the crowd.

Strengths shown: You know your way around Microsoft Office.


4. Double check your spelling and grammar
This one goes for any CV, obviously, not just in the web design field. It still surprises me when reading some awful cover letters with a nice mix of spelling errors, grammar mistakes and general untidiness in presentation. Now we’re all human and all make mistakes (if you’re pedantic enough, you can find mistakes in everything) but try and show that you’ve made some effort with the things that matter.

Weaknesses shown:  No attention to detail.

Spell Checker can only take you so far. Read over your statements several times to make sure. I find that it helps if you print it out and read it properly.

Strengths shown: Pride in your own work.


5. If it’s a design role – show some flair
If you want a job that's to help a company stand out from the crowd, then you have to stand out from the crowd. There’s a term in the dating world known as peacocking, which is essentially a display of confidence and flair in your presentation to make yourself stand out. We can apply the same logic here (but not too much, find a balance!)

The memorable CVs are the ones that stand out – good and bad.

You need to show a genuine interest in what you’re applying for. I think I speak for most when I say I’d rather hire someone with fewer skills but with more desire to learn than vice versa.

Of course, you could stand out by doing something crazy, like showing up with a red chair or show off your credentials in tattoo form when your dedication to being a computer geek is put in to question in the middle of the job interview.

So to everyone, happy job hunting and good luck with any interviews you go for. Also, have you got your own tips or experiences? Share them with a comment!

Visits to the top ten online UK retailers grew by an average of 37% year-on-year through the Christmas period, according to Nielsen Online.

Amazon, which averaged 15.6m unique users each month during the Christmas period (October to December) and Play.com, which averaged 5.7m unique users a month, were the only pure-plays to feature in the top ten.

Amazon was top of the list, with Argos coming in second (8.2m users on average per month) and Tesco in third (7.3m users on average each month).

Littlewoods, which ranked sixth, was the fastest growing site in the top ten after it saw a 66% year-on-year increase.

Asda (8th) grew by 53% over the Christmas period while Marks & Spencer (5th) saw a 46% increase.

Alex Burmaster, communications director of Nielsen Online, said, “Online retail won’t be impervious to the tighter financial environment but it has an opportunity to weather the storm better than other elements of the economy, particularly if retailers promote the web as the best way of finding cheaper goods in the most efficient and convenient way possible.”

Source: nma.co.uk

UK shoppers spent over £4.67bn online in December, an increase of 14.2% on the previous year, according to figures from the IMRG Capgemini Index.

The amount UK consumers spent online in December 2008 represents an average of £76.67 for every person in the UK.

But monthly growth fell for the first time since December 2002 with consumers spending 1.5% less online than in November, which saw higher than average yearly growth partly due to the timing of Christmas 2008, where the peak shopping weekend fell on 29th and 30th November.

Consumers spent 13% more on alcohol in December compared to November and gifts and electrical goods also saw an increase in sales for December, as shoppers increased spend by 7% and 5% respectively.

Clothing, footwear and accessories all recorded flat growth compared to November, but shoppers spent 32% more compared to December 2007.

Both lingerie and health and beauty saw a decrease in sales, with lingerie sales falling 11% year on year and health and beauty sales dropped 4%.

James Roper, chief executive and founder of IMRG, said, “It’s becoming apparent that the recession is accelerating the rate at which the internet is impacting the retail sector.

“The traditional retail model in which stock is held in an outlet for collection by the consumer is giving way to a hybrid model that emphasises the store’s role as a display area and leisure destination, and the value of both these aspects diminish in a recession.

“Brands that are nimble in a cross-channel environment give their customers a more efficient, easy-to-use service and are rewarded with increased conversion rates and larger average shopping baskets,” said Roper.

Source: nma.co.uk

With many of our clients, when we are researching our client’s marketplace and carrying out keyword research and competitor analysis, one of the indicators we take into consideration is the ‘search trends’ of their target audience.

We can get this info from a variety of tools andresources. If they have Google Analytics integrated in the site, it can provide a great insight into what is happening and WHEN it is happing on your website!

Likewise, Google’s keyword research tool (which is free), will also provide topline info on the trends for a given keyword. Make sure you click on the drop down window and choose ‘Show All’

You’ll see a search volumes peaks and troughs, this is information is ‘goldust’ when helping you decide when and where to turn on the afterburners and pull out all the stops for you pay per click advertising campaigns.

If you want some free advice or help when planning you PPC campaigns for 2009, why not join our Ph.University or drop us a line…we’d love to hear from you.

As we are advocates of diligent keyword research to ensure our clients hit the ground running with the search marketing campaigns.  We thought we’d look how healthy, searchers habits are.

According to the data, there appears to be a spike in searches this January on all things related to your health and fitness....there’s a surprise!  But this year, according to Hitwise, there’s been an increase in gym interest and a decline in search queries involving the keyword “diet.”

In the UK, traffic to Health Clubs spiked increased 14 % compared to this time last year. Searches for “diet” and “diets” have fallen by 20 percent and 50 percent respectively.

If you look at Google Trends, this shows us that the “fitness” exceeds searches for “diet,” “diet pills,” and even “gastric bypass.” Another comparison shows the term “exercise” is only half as popular as “diet” with a definite spike for both at the end of December.

So no major surprises, considering the time of year.  But it might be that people are now thinking more long term and realise that exercise brings more than just weight loss.

By researching and knowing how to read into this information can make all the difference if you are in the health and fitness industry.  ‘Searcher habits’ and their mindsets when online can make be the key decision makers in how you attract, engage and convert users into customers.

One of our New Year’s resolutions for 2009...make sure our clients stay ahead of their competition with healthy search habits!

Be Relevant and Engage users with your Google AdWords Campaign

Along with targeting and drilling down on specific keywords and phrases. Your advert copy is a fundamental success factor for a successful campaign. You need to be relevant to user searching for what you offer.

You must be creative in designing your ad copy. Engage and encourage the user to ‘click’ your AdWords advert rather than your competitors.

3 lines of 25, 35, 35 characters and a display URL. Make sure you use them to the best effect. Things to consider:

• Keyword in the title
• Talk about features
• Clear call to action
• Always ensure the ad copy is relevant to the specific keyword ‘theme
• >Be creative in your approach

You also have the possibility to ‘split test your AdWords adverts for any given ad group. This is something you must do to continuously to improve your AdWords account performance and improve your ROI.

What’s more if you’re ‘seen’ by Google to be relevant (your click through rate or CTR is one way that Google recognises this), Google AdWords will reward you for it with improved positioning on the search results page while you’ll receive a better return on your budget.

However, Google a system that measures advertisers relevancy which is 'Google Quality Score'.  You must learn how to master this system in order to get them most from your pay per click advertising campaigns

Find out mroe by joing our Ph University.

How you organise, set up and tailor your AdWords account affects the success of your PPC advertising. Whilst having your AdWords account organised through ‘best practice’ structure will keep things simple and help you manage performance.

You can target your AdWords account to specific countries, regions and even radius based to specific locations. Set up your campaign to a ‘core’ area and theme. Then set up a number of ad groups to target variations around specific keywords and phrases.

• Organise AdWords Campaigns byTopic
• Target the right Locations
• Create Highly Specific Ad groups
• Avoid Duplicate Keywords across Ad Groups

Take time to plan and map out your cam,apign will protect your budget, google quality score...ensuring you improve your ROI and make your budget go further.

Google AdWords Quality Score (GQS) - What is it?

Google’s mission is to provide the most relevant and useful information to the user based on what they have searched for. They ensure this through having systems that measure relevancy and more importantly for you… reward the smart advertisers for being relevant.

Quality Score helps ensure that only the most relevant ads appear to users on Google. The AdWords system works best for everybody—advertisers, users, publishers and Google too—when the ads that they display match users' needs as closely as possible. Relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in a higher position and bring you the most success.

By using best practice techniques in your Google AdWords campaign i.e. methodical keyword analysis, best practice set up, along with other ‘optimisation’ techniques you can achieve a strong quality score.

The benefits you through in improved Google AdWords rankings (ahead of your competition) whilst helping your Pay Per Click advertising budget go further.