A practical guide to help you manage your website more effectively

Web Governance is the discipline that describes how to manage a website in a controlled and orderly way. Until quite recently few online professionals were interested in Governance. There were too many other problems that needed fixing first, like poor design and content. But not any more! A new generation of Executives for whom the web is neither cool nor cryptic are lifting the lid on operations and discovering teams that are poorly structured and under-resourced. What is the answer? To set things right, they need a practical Framework upon which to build a revised system of Web Governance. In this article we’ll explore a new model that explains in clear language how Governance works and a first step towards changing it for the better which can be applied to companies of different sizes.

A new system of Web Governance

At its most basic, governance…

Practical tips for pre-show event marketing

Exhibitions are a great way to get your company noticed in both business and consumer markets. Being able to meet and interact with dozens of potential new customers is a thrill in itself, never mind the long-term benefits of forging new business links in your sector. Generating interest in your company before a trade show is vital if you want to hit the ground running and gain new clients. Which means that your marketing team needs to be working like a well-oiled machine in the build up to the event. You might be sceptical about the glitz and glamour of exhibitions, but there is real value to attending a trade show. Face to face interaction is the best way to ensure that potential clients experience your company performing under pressure in a fast-paced environment. It is also a…

Getting campaign timing right to boost your email open and clickthrough rates

GetResponse analysed over 21 million email messages sent by US companies in the 1st quarter of 2012, and the results clearly demonstrated the optimum times for open and click-through rates for email campaigns. The infographic below provides clear evidence of when to schedule your email campaigns to improve engagement: One of the most important conclusions is that sending newsletters during readers’ top engagement times of 8 a.m. – 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. can increase their average open rates and CTR by 6% Be careful! You also need to consider time zone differences, subscribers daily routines and other best practices for email marketing.

 Highlights of the research:

Emails have the best results within the 1st hour after delivery. This…

Digital creates new battlegrounds where brands can win (or lose)

Dave and I were reminded of this 2009 McKinsey model recently since it raises useful questions about modern marketing which marketing managers need to answer when creating plans to get the best results. In 2012 Google's Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) which paints a similar picture of changing consumer behaviour is also gaining a lot of interest. Originally published in 2011, it's worth downloading the latest free 2012 PDF handbook . Both new models show that funnel models of purchase are becoming less useful (if they ever were) and we need to use new models to plan effectively.  We thought it best to summarise both models in a two-part format under the umbrella of 'customer purchase journeys'. So here, in Part 1 I review the relevance of the McKinsey consumer purchase journey.

A question originally asked by Procter & Gamble

It's important to credit Procter…

Will social media become a broadcast channel?

We've reviewed the implications of previous reports by GlobalWebIndex; they're a really good source to inform your approach. In their latest report, GlobalWebIndex revealed that 517 million individuals have created an account on Twitter, half actively used the platform in the past month, and half of those users had posted a tweet. On Facebook, 22 percent of the 845 million users that had visited Facebook in the past month did not make a single contribution. We can also see the growing importance of Google+ and how social networks are often accessed on mobile or tablet.

Overall, the report suggests that consumers are moving focus in their use of social media, from publishing to the world and communicating with friends or peers, to digesting content from trusted…

Which media give the best clickthrough rates?

I shared this engaging call-to-action on our Pinterest last week. Since size of a call-to-action has an impact on response rates, you would certainly expect this to perform well, although other factors may be at work here... There was an interesting discussion on Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter about this, thanks if you took part or shared. This tweet was my favourite summary: HUGE call-to-action, no reason to scan, no brand message = Epic Marketing FAIL (who drives & scans?) ow.ly/ed7U6 via @smartinsights — Linsay Duncan (@LinsayDuncan) October 4, 2012 Most labelled it “dumb” since lone drivers aren’t going to scan while driving and even passengers would need to be quick on the draw with their scanners. In terms of communications effectiveness, while you can’t miss the call-to-action, there…

Tips and examples for an effective Google+ content strategy

The overall aim of brands using social networking is to create engaged communities around compelling content that educates, entertains, inspires and/or angers. The key, then, is to use content to generate interest and ultimately Likes, Retweets, +1s, comments and shares for the content that’s being published. By generating interest for specific posts, users can produce a viral effect where that interest is then multiplied as a result of others throughout someone’s social graph being exposed to and then (hopefully) interacting with that content themselves.  And so the cycle continues as their social graphs become exposed to the content.

Creating impactful content on Google+

Custom Circles One of the unique aspects of Google+ is the intuitive nature of the interface and the ability to easily filter and segment people and companies into custom Circles. By focusing in on specific Circles, users…

This is the 12th step in my 12 part series on SEO.  In this article I’m looking at the role of voice-of-customer programs to help SEOs learn what is, and isn’t, working on their website, helping to inform optimisation and testing programs. It’s going to be short and hopefully sweet.

Why is Voice-of-Customer relevant to SEO?

Consider this scenario: You’ve got a webpage ranking well for a primary keyphrase. It’s driving muchos traffic, but your bounce rate is over 90% and has blown the site average for organic landing pages. As a result, you start to see your ranking drop. The search engines are starting to think your webpage isn’t so great after all. You can dig into your web analytics data to find out what is happening – visits, bounce rate, time-on-site etc, but...

What web analytics data won’t tell you is why that’s happening

This is where voice-of-customer (VoC) programs can help. VoC techniques…

Best practices in carousel design for effective web marketing

Carousels are an extremely popular element on home pages, intended to display a variety of content in an aesthetically pleasing way. Since I’m based in Australia, they’re more often called “Sliders”, others call them “rotating banners”. The inclusion of a carousel is probably one of the most common requests I get from clients during design revisions: “Can we put a carousel there?” Sure, why not you may say, they look great right? With the gentle animations and dreamy transitions, who wouldn’t want to sit there and admire it. But more often than not I think that carousels are wasted real estate, done poorly, and highly unusable. While carousels are still a very popular tool, I’m actually noticing a decline in their use on larger sites who are often leaders in modern design/layout techniques. Still, the trend decline will take a while to hit the majority…

The 'DARC' framework can help companies in selecting staff with the right digital skills

The rise in digital marketing has created a wealth of opportunities and at the same time, removed barriers to entry to a number of sectors where a start-up, sole trader or large corporation is now competing with one another globally. Smart Insights recently reported on a survey showing the digital marketing skills that employers are looking for, yet many of these skills aren't widely taught at college or university. For an example of a sector with increasing need for digital marketing, take online retailing: A recent article from Internet Retailing reported that in the UK, shoppers spent £5.8bn online in March, a rise of 14% compared to the same time last year and this is within the retail sector, a sector that has taken a pounding within the current economic climate, witnessed by the …