Why mobile is so important for local businesses
Google recently asked Neilson Group to study the behaviour of people using mobiles to purchase. You can find the full report here but the main points to take away are these.
People are spending more than 15 hours a week researching potential purchases on their phones with their main method of discovering information being search engines, primarily of course, Google. The research showed that being local is the key with users wanting businesses to be within 5 miles. They also want to make their decision and purchase within an hour.
This is a clear sign that local businesses need to concentrate their attention on mobile users. Responsive design that caters to tablets and phone is no longer the purview of large national businesses. The most important driver in getting a user to your site and to make a purchase is making sure their experience is smooth and engaging. If your website can provide that optimum user experience on a mobile phone you will be well on your way to being ahead of the competition.
If you need help getting your website mobile ready call eSterling on 0121 766 8087.
It’s 2014, shouldn’t your site work on mobile?
Major retailers have made the transition to support mobile devices and there is a growing necessity for smaller brands and businesses to follow suit. In the last week of December John Lewis saw 75% of the traffic to their online shop being made up of tablets and mobile phones. Shoe retailer Schuh found that nearly 70% of traffic came from mobile devices over the same period.
The facts are simple. If you have a website it has to cater to users accessing the site through a tablet or mobile phone. If you don’t you will be loosing business. A website that doesn’t display correctly, is slow, has a Flash intro, or is inconvenient to navigate will dissuade users. Those users will go to a competitor due to the frustrations of trying to use your website. If you sell online then then you practically speaking have little choice but to upgrade the design of your website or face the inevitable decline in sales.
Your first new year’s resolution should be to get a refresh of your site to make it responsive and work across all devices. Why not give eSterling a call and let us see what we can do to increase the sales through your website.
Rap Genius: back in the Google good books
According to Rap Genius they are no longer have an unnatural links penalty from Google after the search engine helpfully gave them assistance to correct their SEO tactics. During the last ten days after the penalty was applied the website couldn’t be found on the first few pages of search results even when their brand name was part of the query. Now they once again appear at the top of search results for their band name although their traffic has not returned to the levels they once enjoyed.
While it is great for Rap Genius to have their penalty lifted the actions of Google arguably show that there is one rule for big brands and another for smaller companies. A ten day manual penalty is a much shorter period of time than a small business could be expected to wait to see a return to search results.
Rap Genius vs. Google
Rap Genius didn’t find the best present from Santa in their stocking when they received a penalty from Google for using link schemes to boost their search rankings. This has resulted in their website not being found on the first page of results for even their own brand name. Instead news stories reporting this and their social media accounts are displayed. A site that saw over half a million unique visits a day has now been reduced to 10% of that showing the enormous power that Google hold in making an online business successful.
The link scheme they were penalised for was asking bloggers to join and affiliate scheme by adding a link to their website in exchange for a ‘thank you’ tweet from Rap Genius. In Google’s eyes even agreeing to exchange a tweet for a link back to a website is considered ‘paying’ for it and falls under “exchanging goods or services for links” which can result in a penalty. A link in a tweet may not have the same value to Google as a link on a website but social media still has an influence on search rankings. For Google this is about the credibility of the search results they provide and need to have these highly visible targets to penalise so as to not encourage link buying behaviour.
Critics argue that the manual penalties that Google applies are not done in a fair way as there are plenty of sites that buy links yet do not get penalised. The consensus is that Google would not be so vocal and stringent about the buying of back links if it didn’t actually work and wasn’t the easiest method to get a higher ranking.
It can be frustrating that behaviour of competitors is overlooked or even tolerated. When your competition is clearly buying links in order to improve their rankings yet do not receive a penalty and you follow Googles best practices and still get a lower position on search results it can be very tempting to follow suite. This is why gaming their SEO would have been a strategy that was seriously considered.
Most agree that Rap Genius has, in their market, the best content and is perceived to be the least spam driven lyrics site on the web. However others suggest that they couldn’t rely upon this to continue having good rankings. While they may have offered a better user experience they didn’t have the number of lyrics that other sites did. In addition while they may have built up an on-site community this would not be as important to ranking in Google as just providing the basic information people look for.
Will Rap Genius be able to return to the top of rankings by cleaning up their site and disavowing those links and will Google be seen to apply their penalties in a fairer way? We will await that news.
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Is The Design Of Your Website Letting You Down?
If you’ve seen your ranking results improve over the past year but haven’t seen an equal measure of new business, it is likely that your website needs a refresh. With the Internet now more competitive than it has ever been, it is not enough to be visible to customers, you need to really grab the opportunity to turn their casual browsing into a solid enquiry or sale.
A website refresh needn’t be an expensive affair, but there are a few important points to consider:
- 1. Is your site visible to all browsers?
Does your site display equally well on desktop PCs, mobile phones and tablets? Or are you missing out on a sizeable chunk of the market. The chances are, if your site was built more than three years ago then it won’t be responsive to all viewing platforms and will need to be updated.
- 2. Are you sending the right message?
From their entry point on the site, can your customers understand what you do, find what they need and get the resolution they require in a few simple clicks? If your site is cluttered and difficult to navigate it is likely that your customers will lose interest and move onto the next site. After all, it costs them nothing to browse.
- 3. Is your information up-to-date?
Keeping your site up to date is paramount. Can you administer any special offers? Make price changes? Update contact or address details? Making sure you have a regular supply of fresh new content on the site not only holds the interest of your customers, but it also satisfies Google too, making an increase in rankings more likely.
- 4. How attractive are you to customers?
Browsers online are usually looking for the following three things: a company who can deliver what they are looking for, competitive prices and good reputation. It is so important that you get this information displayed on your website in a clear way. A conversion specialist can help you to understand how to clearly communicate with your customer and maximise your chances of increased business.
eSterling are happy to offer all existing clients a free website health check, which focuses on improving the design of your site. Remember, a good design not only has a positive impact on your potential customers, it will also help to improve your SEO results. We are offering a 10% discount for all design work ordered during December 2013 and would be more than happy to discuss your website with you. Please get in touch today.
Shh, don’t mention Christmas!
As ludicrous as it sounds, there are only 106 days left until Christmas and whilst the sane amongst us are still hanging desperately onto barbeque season and flip flops, the retailers amongst us know that now is the time to get ready for the festive season. The mince pies are in the supermarkets, the incidence of toy adverts on the television is steadily increasing and consumers, whether they know it or not, are being subtly herded towards the bright lights and ringing tills of Christmas shopping.
Now is the time to make sure your website is ready for the approaching season of madness, take stock, decide on any strategies or special offers and make sure your web development company has details of any changes you want to make sooner rather than later. Christmas 2013 is going to be tough for retailers but with a slight upward trend in the amount of consumer spending, for the well-prepared things are looking up. So, what to do to get your website ready?
1. Freshen up.
Have a good check through your content. It is always a good idea to change or add to your website, keeping your content fresh not only gives you Google points, but it keeps your customers interested too. If your site has a featured products section, start adding in your best-sellers or any new ranges. Make sure any photography is professional and shows off your products to their best advantage.
2. Special Offers.
Consider running some seasonal offers. Online purchasers love little extras like free delivery and that can make the difference between them choosing your site and someone else’s for their gifts. Most modern ecommerce systems will allow you to display linked products (customers who bought this also bought that). Alternatively a good old-fashioned BOGOF always goes down a treat.
3. Keep things simple.
Making your website hassle-free is one major way of improving your customer commitment. Look at how smoothly your search function works, and how easy it is for customers to checkout. Keep things simple and give good customer service and people will come back.
4. Don’t go mad on the tinsel.
Although you want to get ready for the festive market, don’t over-do the Christmas vibe. Gradually introduce changes to the site to get ready for the bells and whistles of December, but don’t go for it too early.
If you need to discuss any promotional changes to your website, or would like further information on website design, get in touch with eSterling today. We offer full design and development services to ensure your website is at the heart of your business.
Google’s Smartphone SERPs – Ranking On The Move
Anyone who pays any attention whatsoever to the world of web design will by now be very familiar with mobile sites and the concept of responsive design (and if you aren’t, you can read more here).
Well, now there’s another reason to perfect your mobile presence – Google have now decided to take the smartphone-friendliness of a website into consideration when determining where a site ranks in its SERPS – meaning if your site can’t strut it’s stuff on the small screen, you could be losing even more traffic than before.
Google have announced in a recent blog post that they are planning to roll out algorithm updates that will penalise websites that are incorrectly configured for mobile browsing.
Here are a few of the most common errors made in mobile sites, and our advice for avoiding them:
Correct Your Redirect
A common strategy for providing a mobile site alongside your desktop website is to use different URLs to serve different pages. This tactic can work very well, as it allows you to lay out the content on your pages in a different format that is better suited for smaller screens and touch-based interaction. However, these redirects must be handled correctly in order to provide a consistent experience for the user with minimal frustration.
A mistake that often crops up with this sort of configuration is directing smartphone users to a set page (most often the home page), no matter which desktop page they are trying to access – requiring extra work from the user in order to navigate back to the page they originally attempted to visit in the first place! Naturally, this can be a source of annoyance for the user, and can result in them leaving your site in search of something less tedious to find their way around.
The solution for this issue is simple – make sure each page redirects to its own respective mobile-friendly page. If the content is not available in mobile form, then directing the user to the home page or other related page is preferable to serving a 404 page – but still not really ideal.
Video Woes
The difficulty that mobile platforms have with video content is well documented, and a topic for lengthy discussion in its own right. However, if you’re serving unplayable video content to your mobile users, pretty soon you can expect to see a drop in your search rankings.
The solution for this problem is (perhaps unsurprisingly) to avoid Flash content on mobile sites in general, as it is unsupported in iOS and Android version 4.1 and higher. To include video content, it is possible to use the new HTML5 markup <video> tag, which should work without a hitch on all mobile platforms.
App-Unhappy
If you also provide a mobile app, it would seem only logical to promote this app to users browsing on a mobile device – and this can seem like a perfectly user-friendly move too, as your app may provide a better interface for your users to interact with similar content. However, advertising your app through interstitials or other methods which disrupt the conventional user experience of your site will soon start to have a negative impact on your site’s rankings, as well as annoying your users.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t try to entice mobile users with your shiny new app – as long as it is done tastefully. Google recommends using a “simple banner” displayed inline, alongside the rest of your website’s content. This can mean either a standard HTML image banner or utilising the support offered by the device’s native browser and operating system – for example Smart App Banners for Safari on iOS6.
More Speed, Less Haste
On top of these new rules concerning content, Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts has alluded to a site speed penalty for mobile sites, similar to the penalty imposed on slow loading desktop sites. Whilst not much information has been disclosed at the minute, it’s fairly safe to assume that as mobile users are often connected to the internet via low-speed cellular connections, the load time that must be achieved will probably be significantly faster than in the desktop speed test.
As is usually the case with Google’s algorithm updates, these new guidelines will help to make the web a better place – both for webmasters and users themselves. Here at eSterling, we welcome them with open arms, and look forward to the mobile web becoming more user-centric and streamlined.
If you’d like to read more on the issues which may cause your mobile site to lose rankings, Google has helpfully compiled a list of common mistakes in smartphone sites to help you out.
As always, if there’s anything in this post which you wish to discuss or would like some more information on, please leave us a message in the comments or email us here.
I/O, I/O, It’s Off To Work We Go… Google’s I/O Conference 2013
Google’s annual developer conference, I/O (that’s geek-speak for Input/Output, to all you non-techies) went ahead last week. Whilst we weren’t able to fly the team out to San Francisco and we’ve been hard at work preparing for the upcoming Penguin 2.0 update, we have been keeping a keen eye on what went on at the event. Over the weekend we finally got time to sit down and watch the keynote from the event in it’s entirety ( all 3 hours, 51 minutes and 25 seconds of it!) so here’s our run down of the new tech that the Big G has unleashed…
Google Play Music goes Streaming
In what looks like an attempt to go head-to-head with services like Spotify, Pandora and Grooveshark, Google Play Music will now offer unlimited streaming music for a monthly subscription fee of $9.99. Dubbed “Google Music All Access”, the new service will offer radio-style streams and smart playlists, but whether this is enough to compete with the existing options in this field remains to be seen.
Maps Updated
One of the most useful Google services, Google Maps has been given a massive update, including a serious design refinement. The new Maps isn’t just a pretty face though – sporting tighter integration with Google’s social services, more emphasis one Street View and 3D, and the ability for users to submit Android “Photo Spheres” enabling people to actually look around the interior of businesses and public places, this is one of the most significant announcements at this year’s I/O. For those planning on going a bit further afield for their next holiday, Google Maps now includes the astounding ability to explore outer space! Don’t throw out your old A-Z atlas just yet though – the new and improved Maps service is currently invite only. Head over to the this page to request an invite.
Google Wallet and Gmail Integration
Google Wallet has now been tightly integrated with Gmail to allow you to send money as an email attachment, making sending cash from your Wallet easier than ever. On top of this, Google have released an API that allows developers to streamline the process of paying with your Google Wallet from within apps or online. Whilst Google is keen to stress that they are not abandoning the NFC element of Google Wallet, these new additions could really give the service the boost it needs to take off properly!
Google Play Gets Games Services
Google Play will provide games developers with the ability to introduce social features such as effortless multiplayer modes, high scores and achievements into their games – a feature that iOS users have been enjoying for a while now. These social features will all be tightly integrated with Google+, so in order to compete with your friends you must be in each other’s Circles. Google says they will also introduce the ability to play a game on one device, then pick up exactly where you left off on another – perfect for swapping between phone and tablet!
Huge updates to Google+
Google’s very own social network – or “social layer” as they prefer to call it – has been treated to no less than 41 updates, not least of all including a swanky new image-led, Pinterest-inspired interface. Tighter integration with other Google services through Google+ Hangouts mean that now all of the Google messaging services can be accessed from one location, offering a seamless transition between your favourite Google communication tools.
Samsung Galaxy S4 with Stock Android Coming in June
Perhaps the biggest surprise of all from this year’s conference, Google will be shipping a version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 without Samsung’s TouchWiz UI and included apps. Sporting a simpler Android install, this should put the handset in line for early OS updates direct from Google, whilst trimming away the “bloat” in the form of Samsung’s pre-installed software. Unfortunately this variant of the S4 is only scheduled for release in the US at present – hopefully we will see a release on this side of the pond soon!
So that concludes our roundup of the key announcements of this year’s I/O. There’s been a whole host of announcements across the full spectrum of Google’s apps and services, and it looks like it’s going to be another strong year for the Big G. For more information, check out the post on Google’s own blog.
Fun For Friday – Meet Finch, the New Face of Facebook
For this week’s Fun for Friday (including even more alliteration in the title than usual!), we are going to take a look at how Facebook (with the assistance of a Pixar artist and a certain Mr Charles Darwin) are planning to change the face of Facebook… quite literally!
For those of you new to the concept of emoticons (which by now is surely not many), they are small pictures used in text based messaging services intended to convey non-verbal communication (e.g. emotions or actions) through text based forms of communication.
Facebook have been experimenting with emoticons for quite a while now, allowing them to be tagged onto status updates and recently also introducing larger-than-life emoticons in the form of “stickers” in the new much talked about “Facebook Home” interface for Android/iOS.
But this time around, Facebook are really trying something new – and enlisting the help of some of the best professionals in the area.
Pixar artist Matt Jones has been lending a hand to Facebook in the development of these new icons.
About the project, Jones (a story illustrator at Pixar and former storyboard artist at the Wallace and Gromit Studios) said:
“Facebook was canny enough to realize that traditional emoticons are quite bland. At Pixar, we consider emotional states every day with every drawing we make. Our work is informed by the years of study we do, constantly studying people’s gestures and expressions in real life.”
Jones also mentioned that they had been experimenting with variation in colour, which seems interesting as the default yellow which seems to be the “norm” for these emoticons has always stuck me as a little odd. However, he mentioned that the typical Facebook blue colour looked a bit strange, so we will have to wait to find out what the final colour scheme Jones comes up with looks like.
A selection of Jones’s thumbnail sketches of “Finch”
The commission of an artist from a company such as Pixar seems a very logical decision – after all, Pixar are renowned for introducing emotion and personality to usually inanimate objects, so who better to inject a sense of real feeling into these sub-100 pixel images – but Facebook’s other ally in their path to emoticon perfection is a little more distant.
Jones’s inspiration stemmed from Darwin’s 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, which documented the emotional expressions displayed by humans and the similarities they share with those of other animals. Whilst this may seem like a fairly simple task by modern standards, it is important to consider that this work had a significant impact on our understanding of human emotion, and paved the way for psychologists in understanding and communicating with sufferers of autism in the 1970’s.
Photographs from Darwin’s 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
It’s interesting to see the work of a great scientist of the past come together with the talent of a brilliant modern day animation artist to produce something that will become fairly integral in all of our daily social media lives. So far, Facebook has confirmed 16 icons from the collection by Jones, but with over 50 left in the set, we are likely to be seeing even more of him very soon! 🙂