The Adido Digital Blog

Although Christmas may still seem a while off, the days are now getting shorter and if you are an online retailer, it's time to start getting your online strategy finalised to ensure that you make the most of the busy season.

Here are our top tips for online success this Christmas. Please note, this is not an ordered list! It is a good idea to consult with someone before initiating our recommendations to ensure your budget is maximised!

1. Set up a PPC campaign
Yes, it's an easy place to start but creating a Pay Per Click campaign, using Google Adwords (using one of our free £50 Adwords vouchers would be a good start), or something similar, can be done quickly and to your budget. Using PPC allows you to get instant & relevant website traffic to your website in hours allowing you to increase your sales when most shoppers are online. Many small businesses over look PPC throughout the year but it can be an easy way to increase orders at this crucial time of the year (don't forget to use seasonal terms for your phrases!). By the way, your PPC campaign doesn't have to be on Google, their are other ways to pay for relevant traffic which can work just as well...

2. Do some planning!
Despite what we said above, it's important to take time out to plan your Christmas online marketing strategy. Don't rush into it or leave it to the last minute. Last year over FOUR BILLION POUNDS was spent online in the UK. Rushing into online marketing activities without consideration could mean potentially lost sales or loss of margin. Use the Google Adwords & Google Trends Tools to help predict peaks of traffic.

3. Review your website TITLE & meta description tags
We assume that most ecommerce website managers or owners will have a content management system of some description to allow changes to be made. While it's the busy season it makes sense to review your title tags not only to ensure they are optimised for search engines as much as possible, but also to make your website stand out in the listings. Include key messages which will make your website stand out against your competitors.

4. Improve calls to action
One of the key reasons 82% of shoppers on ecommerce websites leave empty handed is that key messages or calls to action are not clear enough. We've seen ourselves that improving graphics, buttons or content which urges users to take action improves conversion rates. If you offer 'free shipping' or '24 hour order turnaround' then make sure you make your message clear and easy to see. This should be reviewed regularly all year round to make sure that you've got the best graphic & position for your message but is espicially important at your busiest time of the year.

5. Set up Google Analytics
This is an easy one. If you've got an ecommerce website and don't have Google Analytics, then make sure you set it up as soon as possible before your busy season really kicks off. It's vital to know how your users interact with your website at the busiest time of the year so that you can make any last minute adjustments to maximise your sales, even on the last day of trading. It's never to late to make changes to your website which can increase your online sales.

6. Add a Christmas logo
Ok, this isn't necessarily going to win over your potential buyers to get them to spend more money with you. But it will do two things. One, it shows that your website is current and up-to-date which build trust with your potential buyers. Two, it also adds some fun to your website which might not be evident at other points of the year.

7. Participate on relevant forums / networks
If you have a specific product for a specific market, then this is a must. However, even if you've got a product which might have mass appeal, it still makes sense to participate in social networks, the blogsphere or wherever your potential buyers are. Whatever you're selling, and there are very few niches which do not have conversations online, there will be places to interact with your audience and help guide them to your website.

8. Build your email database
Like other points mentioned here, this is something that should be done all year round. However, with millions being spent each hour over the Christmas period, the opportunity to capture vital emails address shouldn't be missed. If you own an ecommerce website and don't have an email newsletter sign up box on your website, then Christmas is THE time to add one. The email address collected at this time can be used for future marketing post Christmas and for future promotions (such as January sales!)

9. Do an email marketing campaign
If you've been trading online for a while, there is (or should be) a very good chance that you've built an email database of contact or people that have bought from you before. Even if you've an email database of a few dozen or even a few thousand, Christmas is a time where you have start doing some email marketing. Gettting your brand & products in front of your potential and existing at the right time can add many more sales through your online store for minimal investment.

10. Create some viral content
Creating viral content is sometimes very hard. Users want to share with others be it funny content, useful content or content of general interest. However, at the time of year when everyone is hunting for a bargain, vouchers can often be the best way to go. Sending special discount codes via email newsletters or making buyers aware of them on social networks or forums can be a great way to spread the word and get extra sales.

11. Be responsive
This means many things from picking up the phone quickly, putting products in the post promptly and also making changes to your website quickly. As an ecommerce retailer you'll have access to pages and pages of data which can be used to your advantage. As time is of the essence over the xmas period, wherever you can make use of the information that you have you must do so. If a product is selling particularly well, feature it on your home and landing pages. Make your website real estate work hard and you'll be rewarded.

12. Have fun!
It's important to remember that, no matter how stressful your office maybe over xmas, it is a time for cheer and enjoyment.  There is much to worry about, not only only online but also in office & warehouses across the country, we hope that everything is done in the Christmas spirit and everyone has a profitable time!


If you have any more tips to make the most of ecommerce this Christmas, please share them with us below!

NOTE: I wrote this post a day ago but woke today to hear of news that their may be a postal strike on the cards across the UK.

12 + 1. Have a contingency plan in place!
You never know what's going to happen in your ecommerce business. If the local postal strikes take place, what will you do? What happens if your web server stops working? How reliable are your hosting providers? Make sure you look at all possible angles of weakness and put a plan in place to try and cover every eventuality.

Try to keep up to date with the latest social & digital marketing trends can be hard. While platforms come and go (MySpace?) the trend towards real time is increasing. This shift to near real time documentation of events, thoughts and activity is growing. A new term for this phenomenon is 'lifestreaming'. In this article we outline what lifestreaming is and why it is important to know about for your business.


What is lifestreaming?
Lifestreaming is the latest phenomenon that evolves from the field of social media. In a nutshell, it is an online diary that documents someone’s daily life in chronologically order (See the wordspy definition)


Lifestreaming can simply mean to blog in a new style. Lifestreams include thoughts, observations, links and records from everyday life. Contrary to standard blog posts, they are short and random. And, frequently, videos or pictures are inserted to convey meaning. Julia Allison’s blog is exemplary for this kind of lifestreaming. By sharing her opinions and day-to-day events in a very succinctly way, she has reached web celebrity status. Interestingly, her blog does not read vertically like common blogs, but horizontally, which mimics a timeline

Having said that, a lifestream is also the aggregation of content from different social networking sites. Lifestream services gather a person’s online activity and broadcast it from a single entry. All of these services are based on the fact that it becomes increasingly difficult for friends, family and colleagues to keep track of a person’s online presence, since people use more and more social networking platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and Flickr, to mention just a few.


Tumblr and FriendsFeed are very similar lifestreaming services. Both are able to merge existing RSS-approved social networking accounts and they also allow its members to post content from the application itself.

Another lifestreaming service is called posterous. Here, members send the desired content, which can be any type of file, as an attachment of an email. A famous member of posterous is the well-known (former) blogger Steve Rubel. He states that “blogging feels old” and that posterous “feels more like flow.”


In one of his posts, he uses this diagram to illustrate how he gets inspired. For example, he uses FriendsFeed as his first filter for all his web actions. He then collects all relevant information in his email account. From there, he sends it to posterous, which in turn, automatically updates some of his other networking sites accounts.


Profilactic, yet another lifestream service, enables members to import information from more than 150 services. However, there is no possibility to post content directly from this website. This means, it is an online media aggregator per se.


Who should use lifestreaming service?
Everybody who is enthusiastic and excited about social networking and who has multiple accounts can use lifestreaming services.


What makes a good lifestream?
In order to create an entertaining lifestream, users should publish information from all facets of their lives. This can include news or reviews of local events, as well as videos, pictures or texts that feature their hobbies and interests. Further, regular updates about the working and personal life is a good idea. Finally, posts about interesting, amusing, funny or bizarre things are very popular.


Why is lifestreaming important?
As we move towards a more 'real time' web where things happen near instantly, lifestreaming will become more important and more common place. Those individuals or companies who are able to relay information to their audience sooner rather than later will end up being remembered in the minds of their target audience than some of their competitors.


Summary
We believe that in the coming years lifestreaming may end up becoming a full time job for online marketers and businesses as the move into online & social networking becomes even more important to businesses of all size. We have already seen individuals and businesses make this fundamental shift towards the real time and expect this trend to continue in 2009 and accelerate in 2010.

As the SEO industry matures and many companies are feeling the benefit of great search marketing or digital marketing campaigns, companies big and small are willing to take risks to get top positions. As experts in SEO, we've heard all of the questions from our clients about how to get to the top, no matter what the cost.

Our answer is always clear; don't try and cheat the search engines.

If you read the SEO forums regularly, you'll know the so called 'black hat' techniques used by shady SEO companies are hugely frowned on and should never be practised.

The more common black hat techniques which are used include using hidden text on pages which contain dozens/hundreds of links, using dodgy redirects to try to fool search engines and creating copy which is too keyphrase heavy. This is just the tip of the iceberg as many more bad practises are carried out, some which are very obvious, some less so.

Despite search engines like Google publishing their guidelines on SEO, credible websites like SEOMoz publishing their ranking factors and dozens of forums giving advice on best practise, many companies, both BIG and small, still ignore this advice and try and cheat the search engines.

We've found some clear examples while searching around recently of websites who are using unethical practises to try to get better rankings. Perhaps they should have spoken to a credible SEO company first?

Netbanx
Bad use of pale text on a white background containing keyword & keyphrase rich text and links out of context with the rest of the website. This runs the risk of being seen as being sneaky. Note, this is one we found recently, hopefully they fix it.




BMW
Ok, this is old but this screenshot (from Blogscoped) shows how the site did look a few years back. Note the repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, repetitive text on the page.


Car insurance website
This website shows you how to not create landing pages. The overuse of poor content on this page would most probably be seen as spammy and wouldn't get any brownie points with Google. Users wouldn't like it either.

88db
We've saved the best to last on this one. This page shows a dizzying amount of keyword repetition as well as trying to baffle the user by splashing numerous colours across the page. One of the worst examples of keyword stuffing we've seen in a long time.


These are just some examples of how not to do SEO. We never recommend practices such as those shown above to anyone because it doesn't do any good and it certainly doesn't doesn't help us.

If you think that your website is running the line between good and/or bad, let us know and we'll be happy to review it.

We've been lucky enough to have been given several Google Adwords Vouchers worth £50 by the official Adwords team to clients who start new campaigns with us.

We don't have a huge amount of vouchers to give away, so if you'd like to start advertising using Google Adwords in the coming months, please get in contact with us to arrange a meeting. Speak to one of our team on 0845 260 2343 or send us an email via our website.

Please note, our vouchers are set to expire at the end of 2009, so make sure you don't miss out.