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Bad Spelling Could Cost Your Online Business Millions

By Andrew Redfern @ 14th July 2011 12:18 pm Search Engine Optimisation

Online entrepreneur, Charles Duncombe, says that internet companies within the UK are haemorrhaging millions of pounds in revenue because their employees cannot spell. He believes that an analysis of website figures proves that a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half.

Mr Duncombe says that he has been “shocked at the poor quality of written English” when recruiting staff and says the biggest problem for online firms isn’t technology but finding staff who can spell.

“Often these cutting-edge companies depend upon old-fashioned skills” said Duncombe, owner of travel, mobile phone and clothing websites.
He says that with more and more companies heading into cyberspace, remedial spelling skill became more and more crucial. “This is because when you sell or communicate on the internet 99% of the time it is done by the written word” he explained.

And the businessman firmly believes that the effect of poor spelling can be quantified, as proven by one of his own businesses. He says he measured the revenue per visitor to the tightsplease.co.uk website and found that the revenue was twice as high after an error was corrected.

“If you project this across the whole of internet retail then millions of pounds worth of business is probably being lost each week due to simple spelling mistakes.”
When you consider that the Office for National Statistics published figures last month showing internet sales in the UK running at £527m per week, Mr Duncombe’s analysis suggests that this figure could yet be considerably higher.

There are a number of reasons why incorrect spelling could prove costly to your business. First of all, there is the issue of credibility. Consumers weary of fraud are unlikely to part with their money if they’re unsure of the site’s legitimacy.

William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, conforms to this opinion. He says that spelling errors were likely to “raise concerns over trust and credibility.”

“In these instances, when a consumer might be wary of spam or phishing efforts, a misspelt word could be a killer issue.”

Another drawback that an online company must consider is that if a keyword is misspelt on your site, a customer search is unlikely to find you in the first place, and your site will be beaten to the punch by able spelling competitors. This makes accurate spelling an incredibly important element for an internet business.
But James Fothergill, the CBI’s head of education and skills, says that poor spelling is a real, and widespread, problem.

“”Our recent research shows that 42% of employers are not satisfied with the basic reading and writing skills of school and college leavers and almost half have had to invest in remedial training to get their staff’s skills up-to-scratch.”

Entrepreneurs like Mr Duncombe might see the potential in SEO and internet business, but until basic literacy skills are improved upon, such potential is unlikely to be realised.

Google tells Businesses not to join Google+…yet

By Andrew Redfern @ 8th July 2011 12:29 pm Search Engine Optimisation

If you’re a business looking to pounce on the latest massive social media outlet, Google+, you’d do well to heed the latest warning from the Google camp.
The search engine giant has revealed that it is currently developing a Google+ experience specifically for businesses and asks brands who are interested in using the site to hold on and not create their Google+ profiles just yet.

Product Manager Christian Oestlien broke the news in a Google+ post and accompanying YouTube video. Oestlien explained that the Google+ team were working on a unique Google+ platform for businesses which would include extensive analytics and the ability to connect to other Google products such as AdWords, reasoning that “How users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands”.

The news comes a little late for a number of prominent brands. Ford, Breaking News, and web news outlet Mashable are among a number of companies who already use the site. But Oestlien assures us that good things come to those who wait.

“The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses,” he says. “We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.”

The Google+ business user platform is not expected to be introduced until later in the year, but a prototype is expected to launch in the meantime, in order to trial the brand orientated profiles with “a few marketing partners”. This experiment will take place within a matter of months and companies can even apply to take part, within a Google Spreadsheet, accessible via the original post.

If you’re among the many non-user early birds, it is not clear as to whether or not Google+ will shut down your profile completely or attempt to augment it somehow. What is sure is that you won’t be catching the word, just yet.

Remarkably, Google+ isn’t the first social network to experience a seemingly unexpected influx of brand-based involvement. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Google Buzz were all invaded by big businesses and that Google+ would be the same shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Perhaps the only surprise is that the Google+ team hadn’t predicted as much and prepared and optimised Google+ experience for businesses from the outset.
For now, the message from Google+ is to exercise some patience and wait until your company can benefit from a dedicated brand-orientated experience. Until then, this new pool of internet-dwelling consumers will remain an untapped resource.

The business & commercial presence will be key to how the +1 buttons are used. If the Google+ system remains a network of friends and family then the commercial networking opportunities stemming from your pages being +1ed will be limited. If however Google+ has a LinkedIn style business niche aspect to it then it could well become a vital tool in promoting your site towards your key target audience. Whilst all this ignores the SEO implications of how the +1 votes will be incorporated into the Google Algorithm it will still be an extremely important issue for the take-up of this latest Google innovation

Content is Key to a Successful SEO Campaign

By Andrew Redfern @ 6th July 2011 8:20 am Search Engine Optimisation

Everybody wants their website to show up on the first page of an internet search but for that to be possible, you’d need one hell of a big page. Search engines are designed to present their results in order of the pages’ relevance to the search criteria and their quality, based on a number of factors.

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, refers to a range of techniques designed to ensure that your site demands as much of the search engine’s attention as possible. Because you could offer the best product or service in your field, but if nobody can see your site, they’re unlikely to ever know it.

One of the most important facts to get your head around when trying to optimise your site is the power of the written word. They say a picture speaks a thousand words, but search engines don’t see pictures, so we’d take the thousand words every time.

Of course it’s not quite as simple as that.

If you’re selling bikes, there’s no point transcribing ‘War and Peace’ over your homepage. The key is to feature plenty of text that’s relevant to the searches you’re hoping to feature on. In this example, that would mean featuring words like ‘bike’, ‘bikes’ or ‘bicycle’ for the search engine crawlers to pick up on.

A beautiful image of a shiny, new bike might look great, but the search engines simply won’t know that it’s there.

That’s why when designing your site, it’s crucial to remember to include plenty of relevant text based information. The search engine spiders can crawl through text, but not Flash or images.

Black Friday, Manic Monday, Cyber Monday: All Time High for UK Online Christmas Shopping

By Andrew Redfern @ 8th December 2010 10:57 am Search Engine Optimisation

A £0.5bn shopping binge was forecasted for Sunday December the 5th and Monday December 6th by the IMRG, UK trade association for online retailers with a total online spend for the whole of the Christmas period expected to be £12.4bn.

The festive shopping season kicked off with Amazon UK’s “Black Friday” event which lasted throughout the whole of the last week of November created a massive rush towards a flurry of bargains. As “lightening deal” products were selling out in a matter of seconds, it was criticised by frustrated shoppers on its Black Friday

Forums and Twitter, the Advertising Standards Authority were ready to investigate complaints.

The hot bargains included the Nintendo Wii which was sold for £50, a massive 70% off the normal price and Take That’s new album, Progress for just £1, a saving of 88.8% but these deals where gone in seconds leaving shoppers to wonder how many of these deal items are actually available in the first place.

Black Friday didn’t quite catch on with other UK retailers this year, but with the publicity that Amazon’s deals attracted, it is likely that other retailers will be watching trends closely, thinking ahead to next year.

Cyber Monday, however, which ran from Monday 28th November until the 6th December sparked some more excitement within the UK online community. More online retailers provided greater discounts high street shops offered up to 20% discount online during this period.

A record £831,000 was spent online in just one minute on Monday the 6th December at 1:15pm with 128 transactions per second, compared to £732,000 in the busiest minute on Monday 7th December 2009. Sales have been increasing steadily since 28th November, the US’s Cyber Monday with yesterday being dubbed as Mega Monday in the UK with sales significantly higher than the previous Monday.

The first week of December is traditionally the busiest shopping week of the year, leading up to Christmas. People have received their November Salaries and are buying Christmas gifts with online deliveries arriving with plenty of time for Christmas. This year with the cold snap that we are currently experiencing, even more people are shopping online in the warmth of their living room rather than braving the freezing high street.

Selfridges stated its online sales soared 50% last week, while John Lewis said sales through its website increased by 62.2%. On Sunday eBays UK sales were up by 18% on the same day last year with 17 items being purchased every second, dubbed their “Super Sunday”.

According to analysis by online fraud prevention company Retail Decisions, the most sought after gifts that are being snapped up by internet shoppers this year are the Mini Micro T-bar Scooter, the Nintendo Wii Fit Plus game, Lego’s Winter Toy Workshop and the Apple iPod Touch. The chart below shows the search volume for each of the most popular gifts. The iPod, Wii and Lego all have similar volume online, the Micro Scooter has considerably less, people may purchase this on the high street rather than online.

Robin Goad, Research Director at Hitwise UK, said: ‘Last weekend was certainly the busiest of the pre-Christmas season so far this year, but the clue that we are not quite there yet is the comparison between traffic levels on Sunday (November 28th) and Monday (November 29th).

‘For most of the year, UK Internet visits to retailers peak on the Sunday and drop off on the Monday, and only on Mega Sunday / Monday do the traffic levels match. This didn’t happen this Sunday and Monday, implying that Mega Monday is still to come.’

Google Algorithm Rewards ‘Nicer’ Brands

By Andrew Redfern @ 7th December 2010 2:37 pm Search Engine Optimisation

Google has made changes to its algorithm to bring companies with the best reviews to the top of searches and lower rankings for those with poor customer relations. According to Google, the change was made in response to a New York Times article about Decor My Eyes, a shady ecommerce business that was receiving excellent SEO results through receiving lots of negative reviews after deliberately abusing customers and through spam and paid links.

Google makes its changes in a ‘squeaky wheel’ priority fashion, focusing on problems as they arise. Since the New York Times published the article on positive rankings from bad reviews Google made it a priority to make searches more relevant, giving people better results.

They have been focusing recently on local searches for bricks and mortar businesses such as restaurants, bringing the most relevant local results to the top of the search. Now reviews are being considered, this is definitely a step in the right direction, especially as businesses with bad reviews are being penalised. Google is still considering introducing user reviews and ratings alongside search results.

Optimise My Website – But Why?

By Andrew Redfern @ 5th November 2010 5:43 pm Search Engine Optimisation

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of improving the visibility of your website to Search Engines so you can achieve the highest possible position within the natural search listings on the Search Engines.

Search Engine Optimisation is essentially the process of understanding how Search Engines calculate their search results and applying that understanding to enable your site to appear as high in their results as possible.

The higher your rankings are the more visitors you will have; the more visitors you have the more conversions you will get.

Another way to optimise your website is through PPC (Pay Per Click). This involves positioning your business in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for a selection of terms that your potential customers use, to search for the products and services you offer.

For a company with online presence, the visibility of their website to potential clients is just as important as, for example, retail customers being able to find the physical location of a high street store or to find the number of a call centre. If people are not able to locate it, traffic volumes will slowdown and drastically fall, potential clients might never find you at all.

Advertising your web address on printed media/ radio or TV is not enough, you cannot be certain that all potential clients will pick up or hear the advert. However, if a potential client types a few words into a search engine, they can be directed to your website. To ensure they are taken to your website above your competitors, your website needs to be optimised correctly to be in the highest rankings of the search.

How optimising your website will help your business:

It will lower advertising costs.
It is cost effective in increasing sales leads.
A properly optimised website will rank high and therefore will put you ahead of your competitors, many of which will not have optimised their website.
Your reach will be extended globally through international search engines and target specific geographic regions with different campaigns.
It will bring high quality potential clients to your website.
A fully optimised website will enable you to build an online reputation and to build your brand online communicating your marketing message to your target audience.

16% Rise in Online Christmas Shopping

By Andrew Redfern @ 19th October 2010 11:22 am Search Engine Optimisation

It has been predicted that in the run up to Christmas 2010, online sales will be up by 16% to £6.4bn on the same period of 2009. This will bring the total online sales for the year 2010 to £57.8bn compared to £49.8bn in 2009, supporting the trend towards the increase in online shopping which will certainly create a challenge to the dominance of the high street.

The prediction follows reports in June 2010 that online shopping had increased by 22% over the past year compared to 2008/2009. In September, online shopping sales had increased by 24% year on year as consumers started their Christmas and winter clothes shopping early. Chris Webster, head of retail consulting and technology at Capgemini noted an interesting observation that consumers are starting to spread the cost of Christmas over several pay checks and we may start to see an early peak in Christmas shopping spends.

Director of Hit Search Andy Donaldson commented on the topic “ We have a variety of huge retail brands and despite the economic downturn over the past 2 – 3 years they have prospered right throughout the year. Proof that by getting the online marketing mix right, can not only buck seasonal trends, but also stabilise businesses above and beyond their bricks and mortar sales – especially during this key period for retail.”

Hit Search provides a range of search engine optimisation and pay per click solutions helping you to increase your online presence for a share in this growing trend. Call 0845 643 9289 to hear about what we can do for you.

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