Website design newsletter
Every month we publish interesting news articles relating to website design, search engine trends and other exciting changes happening online.
September 2007
Contents
Poll reveals email marketing crisis
The changing face of Website search
Online World Cup tickets warning
Poll reveals email marketing crisis
September 2007
Email Marketing has been used and abused, but it's time for a revolution according to Australia's leading web tool provider, Interspire.
In an Interspire poll conducted in July, over half of respondents expressed a negative opinion of Email Marketing, with 36% citing 'spam' as the most commonly associated word. Other word associations included: 'a lot of work', 'boring' and 'yuck'.
A staggering 89% of people said anti-spam laws, overcoming junk/bulk email folders and the public perception of Email Marketing were the main challenges faced when trying to implement a campaign. Approximately 25% of respondents said they did not feel confident about implementing a successful campaign at all.
Interspire co-founder Mitchell Harper said since email was born, the concept of Email Marketing has struggled.
"It grew into a rather awkward and gangly teenager that was struggling to find a place in the business world. Businesses were very haphazard and gung-ho in their approach. Through the late 90s, we saw email being severely misused and spam laws introduced in Australia in 2003. Today, Email Marketing is a grey area for many businesses that are unsure of how to make the most of it, and it has been unfairly tarnished because of misuse by large online marketing companies."
Mr Harper said that 'real' Email Marketing is a business skill - it requires strategy, thought, specialised knowledge, creativity and an understanding of how to effectively communicate and offer information to people via email. And it has a lot of potential to assist a business to grow, he said.
"Email is the most common platform for business communication today and is inexpensive - its use as a promotional tool should be a given. Email Marketing should be professional and an essential, everyday part of a business's promotional toolkit, just like advertisements, websites and sales people.
"There are actually many techniques businesses can use to ensure email messages not only reach intended recipients, but are valued by them. The more businesses that adopt these techniques the better the public perception of Email Marketing will be - and this will have a positive snowball effect."
Source: www.designertoday.com/News.aspx
The changing face of Website search
September 2007
Being 'top of the search results' is every Web site owner's goal, but forthcoming search engine changes may well render this meaningless.
It would be no exaggeration to say that search engines are seen by many to be the gatekeeper's new customers. After all, searching on the Web is becoming the most common way of finding products, services and suppliers. No surprise then that people want to be high in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
This provides two key challenges, one for today and one for tomorrow. First, when people say that they aren't high enough in Google (or any other search engine), they are often highly optimistic about the search terms someone might use to find them - so the assumption that they may not be high enough up in the search results may not be correct. As an example, a painter and decorator might type 'decorator' and (of course) find that he/she is not listed on the first search results page. In fact, this is not something to be obsessed about, because that's not normal search behaviour. Normally people use longer search phrases which are more specific to their needs - such as 'decorator Cardiff' - which is then going to narrow the results down into something that's more relevant to the person who is searching. It's well known that if you're not in the top few search results then you will get less benefit - but, what's not as well known is that when people don't find what they are looking for in the first few items listed in the SERPs, they are more likely to change their search than they are to keep looking further down, or on additional pages. So, they might type 'household decorator Cardiff bay' for example, which is going to improve the relevancy of the results no end. This type of search is referred to as a 'long-tail search' and usually represents terms which are of most individual relevance to the person who is searching.
It's not been lost on Google (and other search engines) that for search engines to be really relevant, they have to reflect the needs and situation of each person. If I live in Cardiff Bay, it would be far better if I get the results of the latter search when I type the shorter search phrase - with search engines somehow 'knowing' what it is I mean and what it is I'm really looking for.
Take a slightly different search. If I were to search for 'Dalek' (also a resident of Cardiff these days, but we're not sure that Google knows this) what do I mean? I may well mean the Daleks, Doctor Who's greatest foe - but there is also a very popular band called Dalek, a very successful artist called Dalek, and there's even a hypnotist called Dale K!
The current paradigm of search engines is to provide pretty much the same set of answers to everyone - so, the higher listings will be (looking at it from a simplistic perspective) the most popular pages with that search term. But this doesn't make the search right - I may well have been searching for the artist Dalek and not the metal-cased creatures from Skaro. If that's the case, the SERPs may be relevant to more of the world, but will be less relevant to me.
And that's the second key challenge - the search engine challenge of tomorrow.
The search engines know that they need to provide more relevant information, at an individual level. They need to have some notion of which of the different meanings of a word are the ones which you are specifically looking for without typing the long-tail search.
This type of personalised search is in its infancy, but the goal is really to have search engines learn the types of things that we are looking for, so as to provide the most relevant results. So, if I'm a dance music fan, when I type Dalek, the top of my search result will be the band, or, if I'm a Doctor Who fan, the top results will be the Doctor's worst enemy.
And there's the challenge for Web site owners - because being top of the search results will be less related to factors which can be controlled and predicted, such as the copy/keywords on your site, the other sites which link to your site and so on. Two people sitting next to each other might type in the same search term and get two radically different (yet equally relevant) search results.
When search results are delivered in this way, no one is 'top' of the search results, and measuring your place in the SERPs becomes very difficult indeed - since it depends on the person doing the search. But it does mean that search results will be fairer (since many sites can hold the theoretical 'top' position at the same time) and it will be much harder to use underhand techniques to achieve higher rankings.
Source: www.e-academy.ltd.uk/news/
Online World Cup tickets warning
September 2007
A Wales rugby fan has warned of the dangers of buying World Cup tickets online after he was conned by a suspected auction site fraudster.
Lee Pope, 48, from Wrexham, paid £360 for four tickets to see Wales vs Australia in Cardiff on 15 September. The tickets never arrived and the seller has been suspended from eBay, who warned buyers to check carefully and report any suspicious listings.
Mr Pope said: "I would urge people to be wary. This guy seemed genuine." He added: "I already know of five other people who have had the same thing happen."
Construction worker Mr Pope and three friends booked accommodation in Cardiff after securing the match tickets in April. He was told by the seller that the tickets would be dispatched in July. Mr Pope arranged for the payment to be made through PayPal, but said he did not expect the money to be taken until the tickets were due to be sent out.
He said: "This guy seemed genuine. I contacted him in mid July and he told me he was on holiday, but that everything was going to be all right. He gave me all the spiel. I had checked his feedback and it all looked good. There certainly wasn't anything there that made it look as though he wasn't genuine. He had been selling all kinds of tickets for various shows and concerts in London, it all looked okay."
He added: "Now I can't get hold of the guy, his phone always goes to voicemail. I contacted eBay last week and they told me this guy was no longer a member on the site. I looked through the history and found other people who had bought tickets from him. I already know of five other people who have had the same thing happen, and that's without looking very hard. There must be others as well."
Mr Pope has since managed to buy two more tickets for the same match through a travel agent for £99.50 each. He is still determined that he and his friends see the game live, and do not lose the money for their hotel bookings.
He added: "I'm sure there are genuine sites and sellers out there, but I would urge people to be wary. I also think PayPal should hold on to money until the goods are about to be dispatched, especially when things are bought in advance. But when I spoke to PayPal they said it was outside their 45 day cut-off point, and there was nothing they could do."
A PayPal spokesperson told BBC News Online: "Thank you for bringing this query to our attention. We are currently looking into the specific situation and once the investigation has been formally completed, appropriate action will be taken."
In a statement, eBay said: "When buying on eBay.co.uk it is important to always check the details of the listing as well as a seller's feedback rating. We encourage buyers to contact the seller if they have any questions before bidding on an item, including establishing an expected delivery date where event or festival tickets are concerned, and to report any suspicious listings to eBay though the safety centre. We can confirm that on this occasion the seller concerned has been suspended from the site."
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk
