NetNews our ONLINE NEWSLETTER (NetNews November 2004)

Developments in web marketing, site design, and web services

The Online Newsletter from Net Commerce Solutions

The Search Engine wars continue. Google’s market capitalization has exceeded $50 bn and – underlining the importance of the search process - Microsoft have announced their own search engine initiative.

With our help (hopefully) our own clients focus increasingly on lifting their site ranking, via link building, site optimization, and promotion.

However, many web companies, and new site owners still focus more on web site styling than the critical search engine dimension needed to get a strong level of traffic to their sites. We hope NetNews can give you some useful pointers on this.

1. NET ISSUES
Important issues that could impact on your website approach

It pays to advertise - we are seeing increasingly proactive promotion of web sites. UK Online advertising will reach £500m by end 2004, and is likely to overtake radio advertising by 2007. Since 2003, online ad spend in UK has exceeded cinema advertising (iabuk.net) and is now running at c150% of cinema advertising spend.

The latest figures (iabuk.net/PriceWaterhouseCooper) show a huge (76%) year on year increase in online advertising within the UK.

The key message, within the mix of possible options is to consider first using more paid search advertising – UK web site owners spent £115m on paid search advertising in the first half of 2004 – virtually double the 2003 level.

2. NET HAPPENINGS
News, themes and trends from the Internet – home and abroad

Technology enablers still developing strongly…………….…………..……………

WAP – 1.08 bn of WAP pages were viewed during September – an increase of 20% on September 2003 levels – total WAP page impressions are predicted to exceed 13 billion for 2004 (Mobile Data Assocn (MDA).

Text messaging – UK text messages now exceed 2 billion per month, ie 2.13 billion for September: 2004 volumes are up by c23% on 2004 (MDA).

Broadband – over 5m UK households now have broadband internet access –broadband usage in the UK has grown by 50% during past 6 months (nopworld.com)

Internet – over 50% of UK’s 25m households are now online.

Online Shopping Update - UK figures showing strong growth…………….

• the 18m online shoppers in the UK will spend £15bn online in 2004: currently volume is growing by 37% year on year
• e-retail may represent 10% of all UK shopping by 2005
• the 12m regular online shoppers in the UK spent over £1bn online in September, with clothing being the fastest growing sector (FT/Imrg)

Forrester Research has predicted that within US, online retail sales will more than double by 2010 to US$316 billion, with most retail segments growing by between 10% and 20% over that period.

Hitwise feel that in the UK - with increasing adoption of broadband Internet connections and growing consumer confidence in shopping online - the online market will grow at a similar pace. They highlight the Tesco model, where profits from its online groceries business grew by 27% for the half year ending 14 August, ie:

• since January 2004, Tesco Superstore experienced a 26% increase in online traffic.
• site visitors are spending an average of nearly 22 minutes on the site.

3. NET TIPS
Some hints you could consider

Search Engine Marketing

Links are critical - to rank highly in search engine results it is essential to have inbound links from good quality sites. The links will be more effective if they come from a site that is a) in a field closely related to your own b) has a good Google page ranking and c) includes your keywords in the link text.

NCS can help with every aspect of this, from building your understanding and approach, to finding, contacting, and finalising inbound links to your site.

Don’t just use single keywords – there is an increasing tendency for users to insert phrases, not single words into Google etc. Recent Hitwise research shows that, in many sectors, up to 60% of successful searches feature three or four keywords.

This learning applies also within PayPerClick – the bid level (cost) of a single, very generic term can be very high. However, if you add a qualifying phrase or adjective, to produce more targetted keywords, the cost can drop sharply – and may help improve your conversion rate also.

Think Google – it is still, massively, the most strongly used search engine, with nearly 80% of UK searchers using it regularly (New Media Age).

Web Site Design and Content

Get some testimony – to help improve enquiry, and conversion rates, start putting comments from satisfied clients on to your site – when they say something positive about your product/service, ask them if you can put the quote on the site.

Where you have bult a strong client base, consider putting a list of your client names on the site – it can act as implicit testimony to your expertise.

Don’t be static – some, even very restrained, visual “movement” can strongly increase the visual appeal of web page. Attractive effects can be incorporated at low cost – whilst avoiding excessive use of Flash which can increase download times, and consume bandwidth.

Don’t Flash and Splash - excessive Flash slows the site down. Using this on a “Splash page”, ie a landing, or gateway page, can lose visitors quickly. Generally, it is best to take your visitors straight to your Home Page.

4. NCS FOCUS
News and services from NCS that might help

Auto – links capability – achieving a high volume of links manually can be very time consuming. NCS now provides clients with an enhanced auto link capability to make it easier for visitors to your site to set up links to you, but with you retaining control of quality in each instance.

Presenting images on the site – a large volume of images, eg photos, on a web site can use excessive amounts of space, and produce a heavy visual impact. NCS increasingly uses thumbnails of images, which expand on mouserollover, to give better use of space, and a more pleasing visual impact.

Please approach us if you feel NCS help with the foregoing, would be useful.

5. NET NOTHINGS
You probably already know that:

The EU is coming – after co.uk and .com, comes .eu – ie registration for the new top level domain will begin in Q1 2005

The reading habit is going online – European consumers now spend twice as much time on the web as they spend reading newspapers (eiaa.net)

Dave Abernethy,
Managing Director,
Net Commerce Solutions Ltd

Tel:     (+44) (0) 870 246 7642

info@net-commerce-solutions.co.uk     Web site: www.net-commerce-solutions.co.uk

Registered in England and Wales. Company number 4052885: 6 Bramble Close, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, AL5 4AN