"I am not going to pay attention to you because it is not high up on my list of things to do."
Permission Marketing Guru, Seth Godin, presenting to Google.
48 minutes long - grab yourself a cup of coffee and get an introduction to some new ideas (if you aren’t familiar).
It may just change the way you think about marketing YOUR business.
It’s funny, whilst fewer and fewer people ‘watch’ adverts on TV, more and more people are downloading (choosing to watch) great adverts online.
The Honda ‘Choir’ advert has now had more than 3,000,000 downloads.
"The microsite had a record 679,000 unique visitors during the same
reporting period. This led to Honda’s highest level of test drive
bookings ever."
Email is without a doubt vital to almost all businesses today.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of emails now passing across the
Internet consist not of essential business messages or even personal
correspondence, but spam. Full Report by The Retail Bulletin
Interestingly enough, our recent seminar had a slide (see above) outlining a report showing a representative sample of spam volumes between January and March 2005 (quoting the percentage of spam of total e-mail volume).
68-83%
It makes me wonder how we get any e-mail through at all.
UK retailers lost an estimated £84 million of online sales in the
busiest quarter of 2005 due to unreliable websites, according to
research conducted by leading retail analyst, Verdict Consulting. Based
on these results and conservative growth estimates of the online sales
channel, this figure looks set to rise to at least £226 million in lost
sales during 2006. source and more info - The Retail Bulletin
Here is an interesting article on 456 Berea St covering a story in the US where the National Federation of the Blind
(NFB) has brought legal action against Target corporation (a major
US-based discount retailer which operates more than 1,300 stores in 47
states) because their web site is not accessible. The NFB has raised
the issue with Target Corporation before:
"The website is no more accessible today than it was in May of last year, when we first complained to Target."
Accessibility for web sites (in my opinion) is mainly about working to standards. In the UK we have the DDA Accessibility law which covers the legal requirements, we have the W3C guidelines to help us, we also have so many tools available to achieve the standards, and also, it isn’t something new - as web developers we’ve known about these issues for some time.
However, so many businesses are not implementing the necessary strategies towards achieving compliance. What is even scarier, when you read some of the comments on the 456 Berea St Article, is the disdain towards the disabled. Shockingly unbelievable and also inexcusable.
I bet these are the same people who are so bent on not complying, but will blindingly moan about how Google doesn’t work in their favour and will pay thousands of pounds a month on adwords.
Sorry, did I mention that even if you did choose to ignore the needs of the 8.5 million disabled users of the Internet in the UK; a well built accessible web site communicates with other web sites, including search engines, so much better.
Why? Because they all speak the same accessible language!
SILICON VALLEY REPORTS - Google’s mysterious methods for ranking Web sites came under attack in a lawsuit accusing the online search engine leader of ruining
scores of Internet businesses that have been wrongfully banished from
its index.
The civil complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose by
KinderStart.com, seeks to be certified as a class action representing
the owners of all Web sites blacklisted by Google’s Internet-leading
search engine since January 2001.
KinderStart, a Norwalk-based Web site devoted to information about
children, says it was dropped from Google’s index a year ago without
warning.
Craig Killick Comments: Google has made a lot of small businesses become very successful and yes it does have a lot of power now. However, I would have thought if anyone had a business that relied on the internet for business, and especially the search engines, I would employ a programme of Best Practice for my web site. I would concentrate my budget on making my web site great as I could seeing as it is such a big part of the business model.
Not the be all and end all but a quick look shows you that we can’t even validate the website for standards compliance. This would be our number one rule.
It also goes back to the point that companies seem willing to spend lots of money on things like Adwords, without concentrating on building better web sites.
Yes, I am on a soap box, but’s it’s only cause I care - sometimes the simplest things make all the difference and can save your business thousands!
Great little idea here for Natan Jewelry Shop as pointed out for me by AdvertisingForPeanuts.
These transparent stickers were placed on women’s bathroom mirrors in all the well-to-do destinations in Sao Paulo
BBC article about how Disabled people are being drafted in to help ensure websites are usable by all.
The pool of disabled surfers has been brought together by the Usability Exchange, which aims to give instant feedback on website navigation.
Julie Howell, policy development manager at the RNIB,
said:"Research published by the Disability Rights Commission in 2004
showed that testing with disabled users may uncover 45% more
accessibility problems than testing with software alone."
The British Standards Institution and the Disability Rights Commission
have recently issued a new set of guidelines (PAS78) that recommend website creators involve
disabled people in testing.
We have just received, and are reviewing, our copy of this report and will be publishing a document covering the highlights. If you are intrested in receiving this, please contact Craig Killick.
The UK’s top 10 favourite online brand, according to a survey reported by the BBC today, in descending
order are:
I would have to ask who the 1,410 consumers YouGov spoke to were. Google I get, Topshop? Just goes to show - there’s a lot of different eyes to please and they don’t all see like ours.
As I mentioned in my last Post, I have been at TRAC 06, which is an event organised by one of our clients, McLean Events.
These events generate quite a bit of buzz, camaraderie, as friendships are formed and business is done. If only we could capture that spirit to enhance the event!
You know what - we only went and done it - see the Trac Blog.
Less than 48 hours later, the Blog has had 1857 page views - this is obviously the aftermath but is an ideal opportunity to prolong the buzz, capture some data, and turn it into an industry tool.