Gavin Heaton has posted an excellent piece about the Three Ages of Content Management Systems which goes a long way to explaining how the web has evolved and how organisations and the systems they use may or may not have progressed. Its a great read and I urge you to take 5 minutes to see what Gavin has to say.

We now live in the sharing web age

The 3 ages Gavin talks about are:

• The Age of Waving

• The Age of Shouting

• The Age of Sharing

Clearly, given the ubiquity of social media now, we are in The Age of Sharing. Organisations who realise this and have moved to ensure their web presence reflects it are the ones who are benefiting. The content on their websites is being passed around, searched and now generates considerably more traffic than many of their contemporaries who still live in The Age of Shouting.

Unfortunately many people treat the web the same way as they treat their traditional advertising. They see it purely as a broadcasting media. They haven’t heard of the Age of Conversation and they haven’t heard of the 1000 True Fans theory. They are still yelling at an audience that isn’t necessarily listening.

At a more technical level, as Gavin points out, this is reflected in their Content Management Systems. The odds are that if a company has on old-fashioned, hard to use CMS then they are probably Shouting from their website. Its simply too hard to update information so they publish their content once and leave it. Or perhaps they spend a small fortune on Banner ads and Adwords to drive traffic to their static sites.

We constantly advise clients to take the Sharing route. Create innovative websites on easy-to-use CMS systems that are SEO and social media-friendly. It encourages a solid, long-term approach to marketing than generates much greater loyalty than shouting ever will. It results in increased traffic from multiple sources, like social networks and organic search, that is substantially more cost-effective than broadcast style advertising.

The question is, which web age do you live in?

StickySpace: premium web hosting, blinding speed

We are proud to announce the launch of our new premium web hosting service StickySpace.

StickySpace has been created in response to overwhelming client demand for a high-speed premium web hosting with great customer service.

It is also a direct response to the need for better site-speed to keep up with the latest search engine optimisation criteria. Google has made plenty of noise in the last year about how site speed is now a factor in search rankings, so we feel it is crucial that we ensure our clients are not penalised by the slow hosting speeds offered by many hosting companies.

StickySpace offers:

• Reliable Service

• Premium Hosting

• Blistering Speeds

• Massive traffic allowance

• Huge amounts of space

StickySpace completes the full web / SEO service from Sticky. Clients can now source their website build, search engine optimisation, inbound marketing strategy and web hosting from one supplier. The result should be better results, better traffic and better conversion rates.

If you are sick of the hosting run-around and want to step up to premium web hosting then take a look at StickySpace.

Over at Media Hunter, Craig has posted an interesting introduction to the field of trade promotion optimisation. Its a fascinating field that could seriously benefit from an integrated online approach.

Does your website need a rebuild or a re-think?

One of our biggest frustrations here at Sticky is seeing organisations pay little attention to their web presence. They run old, rarely updated websites that provide the user with little information and a generally poor experience. These organisations are finding it increasingly harder to compete and will be left behind unless they totally re-think (or start thinking about) online.

However, at the other end of the scale is the organisation who is enthusiastically online but is constantly thinking about a rebuild, or a new look, or an expensive new addition to their under-performing website. We see them all the time. I can think of a few examples where a site is going through its 2nd rebuild in as many years, when the original site was fine.

The thing is….if a website is under-performing the first thing everyone should look at are the real reasons why. In many cases its not the layout / design / format that necessarily needs work.

If the site isn’t getting enough traffic, the first thing you should look at is the quality of the content. Is it up to scratch? Does it really speak to the desired audience? Does it demand attention?

If the answer is NO to any of these then start improving and focusing your content NOW.

If you honestly think the content IS good enough then you need to address your traffic sources or and connections. Look at your web stats (surely you have web stats) and determine where the traffic is coming from.

Most under-performing websites get the bulk of their traffic from their URL (direct) or a Google search for their name. This means that most of your visitors already know of you and you are not using the web properly to grow your market.

If the majority of it is direct traffic then you need to bolster your search and referred traffic. You might need proper search engine optimisation, you might need to build your social networks.

Once again, if you don’t have many links coming into your site from other sources, there’s a very good chance your content is not working for you.

Finally, if your traffic IS at reasonable levels but you are not getting the sales or leads you desire / require then you need to quickly address your conversion strategies (you do have conversion strategies don’t you?).

Too many organisations think that a “Contact Us” page is a conversion strategy. Its not. Smart inbound marketers provide multiple opportunities for visitors to become customers. They’ll have conversion strategies littered throughout their website.

So, by all means, consider rebuilding your website, it might really need it. But before you do, re-think its content, connections and conversion.

Note: you can get a quick idea of your website’s strengths and weaknesses with our Free Web NLYZR

Would you know Australia’s leading Real Estate Agencies, if you were asked to pick 30 of them? BRW did and published their Top Australian Agencies.

Here, we put them to the online performance test with NLYZR.

NLYZR assesses a website using criteria such as On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, Keyword search results, Competitor scores, Social media and traffic conversion. These are crucial aspects of Inbound Marketing.

Note: Scores can vary from month to month and depending upon search terms.

How do Australia’s leading Real Estate Agencies rate….

NLYZR Top 30 Real Estate Websites:

Ranked 1st
96.16/100 for First National Real Estate

Ranked 2nd
93.84/100 for LJ Hooker

Ranked 3rd
93.12/100 for Century 21 Real Estate

Ranked 4th
90.88/100 for McGrath Real Estate

Ranked 6th
90.52/100 for Ray White

Ranked 7th
89.96/100 for Elders

Ranked 8th
88.56/100 for Raine and Horne

Ranked 9th
73.6/100 for Re/Max Australia

Ranked 10th
72/100 for Professionals

Ranked 11th
70.4/100 for Roberts Real Estate

Ranked 12th
64/100 for Brock Harcourts

Ranked 13th
64/100 for Petrusma Property

Ranked 14th
63/100 for Philip Webb Real Estate

Ranked 15th
56.8/100 for Davey Evans Real Estate

Ranked 16th
52/100 for King and Co Property Consultants

Ranked 17th
51.2/100 for Melbourne Commerical Group

Ranked 18th
50.4/100 for Fitzpatricks Real Estate

Ranked 19th
48.8/100 for Roberts Real Estate

Ranked 20th
42.4/100 for WB Simpson & Son

Ranked 21st
31.2/100 for Barr and Standley Real Estate

Ranked 22nd
31.2/100 for Appoint Real Estate

Ranked 23rd
29.6/100 for MC Commercial

Ranked 24th
29.6/100 for Taplin Real Estate

Ranked 25th
28.8/100 for Weeks & Macklin

Ranked 26th
26.4/100 for Lang Realty

Ranked 27th
20/100 for m2 Office Leasing

Ranked 28th
13.6/100 for Burling Realty

Ranked 29th
10.4/100 for David Booth Real Estate

Ranked 30th
9/100 for Wollermann & Associates

UPDATE:

Harcourts launched a new site around the time this post was made and made us aware of it via comment below. We have run the site through NLYZR too and its scored 60.2/100 which would have ranked 15th on this list.

2ND UPDATE:

Barry Plant Real Estate have been assessed by NLYZR now and scored 77/100 which would have ranked them 9th on this list.

Excerpt of Report by Jeanne-Vida Douglas. BRW Magazine

Technologies once limited to only the biggest budgets are now affordable for businesses of any scale. Here are five of the most rewarding. 

Information technology has been the biggest driver of productivity since mechanisation took over from manual and animal labour at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Research from Finland suggests that access to simple data storage and processing computing facilities will increase the productivity of an average worked by 9 per cent a year; access to the internet will boost it by 14 per cent; mobile computing will increase worker productivity by 32 per cent.

Nonetheless, small businesses, which stand to gain the most from investing in It services, are often the most reticent to take advantage of the opportunities technology provides.

Unlike their larger counterparts, SMEs are often founded and run by specialists. The real estate agent, the carpenter and the distributor all know their trades, but don’t necessarily have the time to investigate emerging technologies or sit down to create a strategy for how a certain piece of software or hardware might make their businesses run more efficiently.

Those who take the time to investigate and invest in IT, however, often establish for themselves a substantial advantage over their competitors, and ultimately enable themselves to exploit the access to resources, staff and range of customers that would otherwise be out of their reach.

WEB MARKETING

Although 80 per cent of small businesses in Australia use the internet, and almost 43 per cent go online to place orders or buy products and services, fewer than 25 per cent of these businesses actually extend such a service to their own customers, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports.

Having grown accustomed to static $500 websites, many smaller companies balk at the cost of creating a more dynamic and effective web presence, and as a result are losing potential customers.

“It’s hard when you’re a small business – especially in the trades – where you know that spending $20,000 on your machinery or tools will increase your productivity, but you don’t really understand how investing that money in your website will boost your business,” business manager for the Melbourne head quartered construction company 4Walls, Kelly Savvides, says.

Nonetheless, by integrating search engine optimisation technology into the company’s website, 4Walls was able to respond in a more targeted way to web-based searches. And as a result, it could win more work.

“There is no point in having an aesthetically pleasing web site that no one can find,” Savvides says. “We only need to win one contract as a result of being easier to find on the web and we cover the extra cost of making it more functional.”

With 80 staff scattered across Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra, removalists King & Wilson decided to make a substantial investment in the technology underpinning its company website in 2004, to offer customers the opportunity to get quotes and customer service over the internet.

Using technology from Melbourne web software specialists bwired, the company paid off the extra cost within a month due to increased sales.

“Investing in the internet totally changed the way we advertised. We pulled out of the Yellow Pages in Sydney and Melbourne because the internet was generating enough work,” managing director Andrew Wilson says. “At first we thought about the internet in terms of look and branding, but we found out more about how people look for information on the web and now we just keep tweaking the site and get more business as a result.”

www.eutopia.com.au provides the information Australia’s growing fascination with European wine demands – what’s available, how it compares, where to find it and for how much.

Eutopia, a free site, has been launched due to a lack of available information for Australians to make an informed purchase of European wine. Whilst there is a wealth of knowledge available on international websites, there is no mention of Australian availability, release date or price. In addition Australians, beginning a discovery of European wines and accustomed to fuller bodied wines, can be confused by international reviews written with a different context.

Eutopia contains a constantly updated directory of Australian Fine Wine Retailers and European importers and a database with the distribution details of over 800 European wines. In addition to regular articles and reviews, a monthly regional focus will include a diverse range of feature articles, vintages guides, in-depth interviews plus food and travel information designed to broaden readers’ understanding and interest.

Wine writers David Brookes and Nick Ryan provide independent wine reviews and articles. Matthew Dunne, Sommelier at Aria Restaurant, is bringing a fresh perspective to food and wine matching and Andrew Stewart is contributing feature articles.

In November, Nick will report live from the Hospice de Beaune barrel tasting and auction plus giving a first glimpse of the 2009 vintage in Burgundy, Rhone and Piedmont. In March Dave will cover Prowein in Germany before a live look at Bordeaux 2009.

Eutopia has been created by Nicholas and Frances Crampton along with Dan and Tina Fitzgerald and a fair chunk of help from Sticky Advertising here in Newcastle. Frances and Nicholas have day jobs as European wine importers, but relish the chance Eutopia provides to be involved in the entire world of European wine.

Good web design is increasingly important for businesses trying to compete at a time when the Internet is the most consumed media in Australia. However, merely having a website isn’t enough these days. A good website is one that can be found easily in search, provides the visitor with relevant information and must has effective traffic conversion strategies in place.

So how much time have you spent thinking about the wording of your navigation? Or the location of a crucial button or link? You’d be amazed at the difference in results you can achieve with subtle changes.

We have been running Traffic Visualisation Analytics, such as heat-mapping, on several sites to monitor the results from changes to layout and wording. It has been a revelation. We have been able to see where people are clicking on the tested sites and where they came from. Then after making small changes we can compare results.

Heat mapping in action

On this particular site we found that visitors weren’t clicking through as much as we’d like to one of the most important pages in the navigation, “products”. So after a week of monitoring we changed the name of that page in the navigation to “services”.

The results were immediate and stunning. We achieved a 72% increase in clicks-through to the target page in one week. That’s a massive improvement from changing just one word on the site. Those increased clicks-through led to more inquiries for our “services” so it has immediately paid dividends.

On several other sites we are testing button locations for key prompts. These tests are also proving to be extremely illuminating. By visually observing the trail of clicks on a website you can quickly get a feel for what’s working and what’s not working. you can also quickly identify the pages that might need boosting.

For any business with a strong need for goal conversion, visual analytics is strongly recommended. One or two changes could make a big difference to your bottom line.

We have now begun introducing Traffic Visualisation Analytics such as heat-mapping to selected clients. Let us know if you’d like to find out how it could help your organisation.

]]> http://www.getsticky.com.au/in-web-design-one-word-can-make-a-big-difference/feed/ 1 http://www.getsticky.com.au/first-thoughts-on-bing-and-seo/ http://www.getsticky.com.au/first-thoughts-on-bing-and-seo/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:41:44 +0000 craig http://www.getsticky.com.au/?p=364

Microsoft’s new search engine Bing was launched with little fanfare in Australia this week. Touted as the big M’s challenge to Google after years in the search wilderness, Bing claims to intuitively understand what people are seeking on the internet.

Microsoft cited study results indicating that an estimated 30 per cent of online searches are abandoned out of frustration and that searchers often fail to get what they seek on a first try.

Bing relies predominately on algorithms and key words to provide results for online searches but has infused some “semantic technology that deduces intended meanings of phrases”, according to Microsoft.

Having been live a few days now, we thought we take Bing for a run around the block and see how it stacks up.

Our first impressions of Bing are that its clean and easy to use, not dissimilar to Google in that regard.

The big difference is in the search results. Its immediately clear that Bing’s algorithm is very different to Google’s. Do the same search in Bing and Google and you can receive totally different results. We feel that Bing is placing greater emphasis on certain links.

A developer challenged me yesterday about whether our SEO system would work as well under Bing as it does for Google. Good question.

So today we have started running our optimised sites and keywords through Bing to see how they performed. The results were interesting to say the least. We had no problems in showing up on first page of Bing for all the tests we ran. In some cases we were higher than in Google, others a little lower. But in many cases they were different pages to the one’s we had optimised for Google. It seems some of our secondary SEO strategies work better on Bing.

Does Bing radically change the search engine optimisation challenge? At this stage we don’t think so, as long as you are being extremely thorough with your SEO. However if you think you can just get away with some basic SEO, you might not be found as easily on Bing.

Of course, the bigger question is whether Bing will get any real traction in the marketplace? Google an amazingly dominant search engine and is the default for most people. That’s going to be a hard habit to break.

Bing gives Microsoft “a leg up” on competitors but is more likely to lure users from Yahoo! because “Google is too much of a habit for everyone,” Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk said in a blog post.

We’ll keep an eye of the stats and let you know.

Following on from our previous post, Internet marketing tips – the basics, we thought we’d highlight five more essential Internet Marketing Tips to keep in mind. These specifically address the question: What do you really want from your website?

We are constantly surprised at the random reasons businesses come up with for creating a new site or doing a re-design. Most of them have very little to do with results or marketing effectiveness. Why??

1. The number one objective for any company website should be to attract more visitors and leads and sales. Everything you do on your site should be created to meet these objectives. Spend less time worrying about tweaking little design elements and more time implementing elements that will help you achieve your company’s sales objectives.

2. Invest more in good content than in “sexy” design. In the longer term, content rules. People search the internet for information, not the cool little Flash animation you spent 3 months designing.

3. Invest more in search engine optimisation than games and widgets. These days the internet is about giving users what they are looking for, not playing with cute toys or functions on your site. Your internet strategy should be focusssed on inbound marketing, potential customers coming to you. Therefore your budget should reflect a serious commitment to optimising your site to attract the right visitors. A plain site with good optimisation is much better than a funky site that nobody visits.

4. Have a content building plan. Successful internet marketing revolves around a steady stream of quality content. Search engines love fresh content. If you don’t feed them you’ll be the ones who are starved of visitors.

5. Experiment. Like all marketing, you need to continually experiment with your internet marketing to get results. Some strategies work, some fail. Some conversion techniques are winners, others miss the mark. Keep trying different ideas. Make sure your site is flexible enough and easy enough to allow you to conduct these experiment. If you have to phone your web developer every time you want to try something then you are using the wrong platform.

Once again, these are simple tips, but its amazing how many businesses do not create sites with the right objectives in mind. These internet marketing tips will drive traffic and sales….what else do you want?