Web Wise Business – websites scotland (and beyond)
website development and websites Scotland from web wise businessArchive for websites scotland
Pay Per Click Marketing – Brand Name Targeting
An important tip to remember when it comes to Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing is to determine what you gain by targeting your own brand name. If you already hold the first spot in the natural search rankings for your brand name, then spending money on PPC for the term is a wasted effort. Since visitors are already searching for you (they’ve entered your brand name), you will simply end up paying money to get people onto your website that were going to visit it anyway.
Targeting your own brand name should only be done when you do not hold the number one spot in the natural search results for the term, or if your brand name is a commonly used term or name, such as Web Design Scotland.
Credit Crunch Winners – Managed IT Services
It wasn’t so long ago that most of the evenings TV entertainment involved buying a house, botching a renovation and selling quickly at vast profit due to rampant housing inflation.
Now, however, Halloween TV included “Credit Crunch Winners” where former dragon Richard Farleigh ran around looking at those entrepreneurs who are seeing something to be cheerful about. Iceland and Aldi were featured heavily and sales are up as we seek cheaper alternatives.
Also featured was a company that supply a cost effective remote PA service. These services have been around a while but are now in vogue as business avoids recruiting when they can outsource. We see the same opportunities in web development and managed it services as more and more businesses seek to secure external help rather than build expensive in house capability.
As the recession kicks in we will see new business models spring up – so if anyone is needing something outsourced and want to be inventive let us know.
Acquire, convert and retain – web development
The phrase we keep using in the office is acquire, convert, retain. It’s become a bit of a mantra. It’s one of those Web 2 phrases. Web 2? There is a phrase you don’t hear as often as you did a year ago.
We reckon that’s because folks are doing web 2 development without even thinking about it. Our web development activities are now regularly focussed on interactivity with users – and how you use that interactivity to acquire, convert and retain online visitors.
Will the recession accelerate Managed IT Services uptake and other pay as you go approaches?
Now that the Bank of England have come clean and pointed out that there is an elephant in the room (they’ve used the recession word) I guess we need to think through how that elephant impacts the wee world we inhabit.
For us that world is web development as well as the pay as you go services that we provide such as hosting and web support. I’m sure we’ll see some push back on pricing – that’s only to be expected – but I guess we’ll just have to stand our ground and point out that the services we supply are to aid the sales effort of the companies we support.
My gut feeling is that pay as you go services such as managed IT services and the web support type services we offer should increase in popularity. When times are tight businesses become more focussed on outsourcing rather than building things in house or investing in large capital projects – so cost effective solutions like managed IT services should see an upswing.
We’ll see how things shake out – but recessions have a habit of throwing up innovations and new ways of working. So pretty soon I suspect that the elephant in the room may well prove to be available on a monthly subscription basis – who knows?
ecommerce websites – getting ready for Santa
It comes round earlier and earlier – or it does if you work in a Garden Centre….Christmas. I was buying bulbs as way of some retail therapy to help get over the economic outlook for 2009 (some nice daffs in Spring I thought).
But on arriving at The Dobbies Gardening Cathedral I found that the bulbs had been moved away in favour of tinsel and fancy xmas wares. It was only the start of October. But it did make me think – if Garden Centres are getting their shop in order – then we’d better check our retailer customers with ecommerce websites and make sure they were also up to speed.
So if you are retailing online remember – xmas is coming the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in the pay pal hat.
DNN intranet development
One of the pleasures of using DotNetNuke is that it makes the administration of an intranet system so straightforward. We’ve extended the DotNetNuke DNN Content Management Significantly – but that has been possible because much of what DNN provides allows you to do a lot of the tedious stuff quicky.
Privileges are easily set up and administered leaving our web development team to get on with the main task of intranet development. Check out DNN for yourselves – very cool (though to be fair a bit hard at first). DNN intranet development has allowed us to deploy significant projects quickly – worth a look if you are a .net organisation and need something that works well.
Google, gambling and growth
Google have turned back on Adwords for gambling businesses in the UK. It’s sure to be unpopular among some but for Google it sees them re-enter a market that US congress pushed them out of 4 years back.
Seeing them re-enter the advertising market for gamblers is a wee bit surprising. Only last year Linden Labs had to duck out of gambling because of cross border legal issues. They got hosed by their gambling second lifers – but stuck to their guns for fear of legal pursuit by the US of A.
The change in mood will see new revenues at a time when it is expected that financial institution advertising will drop – so good timing. Profits at Google continue to improve – the numbers are staggering. What Google sees as profit – most would see as a GDP. More comment on the Web Wise Business news page – web development news.
Read all about it… extranet, extranet, extranet
Right! So now that intranet is a recognised word how long will it be before “extranet” is in common parlance?
Unlike persevering with intranet for a while (see previous blog) we dropped extranet pretty quick when talking to possible clients. It was clear that extranet didn’t convey much…. in fact “extra” seemed to imply not required, non essential and totally excessive. How would you like us to sell you a “non-essential-net”…… doesn’t sound very compelling does it?
But now that we are getting asked for “intranets” we reckon it’s only 12 months before we get asked directly for “extranets”. Yes we know they have been around since Adam was a ZX Spectrum fan but the phrase isn’t one you normally hear… is it?
We’ve been knocking out extranets for years – though we’ve never really used the term – our extranet development team have been building integrated web based systems since the millenium bug looked like a real threat. So watch out for your first enquiry from a prospect asking for an “extranet” – will it happen before the end of 2009?
It’s good to hear clients talk about intranets – as it helps us have meaningful discussions – wo how long before the get the extra help they need with extranets?
When did intranet suddenly become a word?
A few years back we were banging the drum about the need for many businesses to look at intranets to help service their business. It wasn’t the most successful marketing campaign we had ever run to be honest. At that time it seemed that nobody believed us about the benefits that would accrue from an intranet system. In fact the start of the conversation normally consisted of the prospect repeating the word “intranet” several times to make sure we did’nt mean internet.
So after a while we took the hint and dropped that word in favour of phrases like office integration and automation (not much more popular to be honest).
So why have we had a rash of prospects recently open up the conversation with the words – do you do intranets? The first time it happened I thought it was just an odd remark – but it’s been happening more and more – it seems that intranet is now an acceptable word among folk other than the expected software developers and intranet development teams.
Discovering that “intranet” is now becoming a common phrase is somewhat cheering. As web development folks we are unusual – our background is really back office transaction processing and yes…. intranets. So we are encouraged that we can now have a sensible comnversion about how to make the best use of web technology without avoiding the term intranet. We’ve been intranet development experts for years – we’ve just been avoiding saying it. Looks like “intranet” has been outed. Good.
Stirling Joiners join in online
The building trade are starting to get the online message. Stirling joiners Anderson Ogilvie Joiners decided it was time to join in and get online – and we’ve been happy to oblige. The joiner and building business services customers in Stirling, Edinburgh and Glasgow and in some cases much further afield.
The building trade is clearly going through a a major downsizing and it is clear that many joiners and builders are now looking at how to promote their work in a cost effective way. A well presented website is clearly important and in a sector not known for its marketing skills it will be interesting to see how many other building and joinery services firms start looking at their online presence.
