Category Archives: Webworld

Uncovering The Right Models For Campaign Attribution

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Since the advent of online commerce, marketers are seeking solution to one unresolved question. How do you evaluate performance of online campaigns? Particularly, at a time when global organisations are increasingly relying on online advertising to improve visibility. It is true that measuring offline campaigns can be equally tricky, but online measurement is titillating. Simply because, there are enough mechanisms to employ a tangible measurement tool and marketers dwell with an increased expectation of being able to track and measure online campaigns.

Also, without effective measurement, it is a little challenging to convince senior management, those particularly averse to the new world of digital media. Lack of a good attribution model skews marketing contributions either by over-inflating or by under reporting the performance of a particular campaign.

Typically, an average conversion will have multiple touch points. For illustrative purposes, I have tried to capture five common online channels, which assists the conversion path. In the below example, I have taken paid search as the user’s first touch point, before he/she visits other channels such as display/display retargeting, affiliates, organic search, social media and finally converts by visiting the website directly. Now we are clearly aware that a user interacted with 5 different channels before converting, but what we don’t know is how much of an influence all these channels have on the user’s buying behaviour.

Old school attribution logic says that since the user visits the website to convert, this particular event should be fully attributed with the conversion, which clearly is the last click model. But does that mean that there is little need or necessity to run campaigns on different channels? This is where it begins to get clouded.

Marketers have experimented with different attribution models to identify the significance of a particular campaign. For example, from the above instance where a user travels through five different touch points starting from paid search before converting, we could attribute campaigns the in the following ways.

  • First click: Where Paid Search as the first touch point claims full credit for the conversion
  • Last Click: Since the user comes directly to the website, this model completely ignores the initial touch points and attributes the conversion to the direct visit.
  • Distributed: This is one of the simplest of attribution models where each channel is equally attributed.
  • Linear: This particular model attributes the value to a conversion based on recency of the user interaction in an ascending order, with the last touch point receiving the highest attribution.
  • Weighted: Weighted attribution model focuses on weighing the campaigns based on their significance.We have seen the different attribution models that can be applied to campaigns. But does that explain which model we should be using? Yes, I personally feel that weighted attribution is the way to go. However, one must realise that there are some subjective considerations while using this model.

In the above example, I have indicatively weighed Paid Search and Direct Visit with the highest attribution, while sharing a smaller percentage between the other touch points. This is a completely subjective option. Instead of weighing Paid Search higher, you may feel that for your particular campaigns, a display ad which has an online promotion initiates the traffic push. In such an instance, you may want to weigh a higher attribution to the display ad. Or you may feel that the one of your high converting keywords gains significant keyword positions on search engines, resulting in higher traffic, for which you may consider weighing Organic search with a higher attribution. You may even want to award a higher attribution to the recency of the interaction.

Weighted attribution certainly allows you to attribute the conversions effectively, but is it ‘the’ model for attribution? Well, it is debatable. However, one must understand that to fully comprehend the impact of different channels, it is imminent that we have to delve deeper. What the weighted attribution model offers is an improvement over other attribution models.

An Essential Guide to Successful Blogger Outreach

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Blogger OutreachWith social media rapidly consuming the internet space, it is increasingly becoming a part of our media landscape. In the recent days, more and more online news sites have embraced the pay wall model, resulting in social media, particularly blogs becoming an important source of news, opinions and products. Blogs represent an affordable opportunity to promote products & brands.

SO, WHAT IS BLOGGER OUTREACH?
In simple words, it is a process where businesses reach out to bloggers who are influential within a particular area of interest to the brand, product or service and have an interested audience (or target customers) where they can facilitate a conversation.

Businesses encourage this conversation, by offering something valuable which could be of interest to the blogger as well as his/her audience, which will then ensure acquisition of the bloggers audience, who could potentially be repeat customers to the business.

HOW DOES BLOGGER OUTREACH WORK?
Bloggers have an audience and have the ability to open a window of opportunity for the business to reach out to their reader-base, some of who could already be customers and many who are completely new. These readers help the brand websites by not just being a source of traffic, but also by being advocates of these brands to their own communities as well as search engines, which effectively would help in increasing conversions online as well as offline.

Most bloggers tend to write about subjects they are passionate about and on most times, the write-up is owned by the bloggers. The blog and the subject matter are therefore, extremely personal endeavours to bloggers. Choosing an influential blog /blogger in areas not just specific to the blogger, but also for us to promote our brand sentiments is the first step towards formalising a blogger outreach strategy.

Once we choose the blog/blogger and our niches, there are many ways to work with them (see box).

Bloggers Interest

WHY BLOGS?
The great thing about blogs is that they work in conjunction with the existing marketing efforts. For example, an online press release could generate sufficient buzz to result in a blog review. This blog review can then be promoted across a multitude of social media sites such as Facebook & Twitter, be bookmarked through social bookmarking tools such as delicious & digg and even communicated through our email marketing efforts. This results in creating that social influence which is fast evolving as one of the key metrics in the buying decision making.

Benefits of Blogger OutreachAbove all, blogger outreach of course, substantiates SEO efforts and helps in ranking higher on search engines, thereby ensuring higher visibility and traffic. The SEO benefits mainly come from the social interaction within the blogging community, where information and opinion is shared with individuals across many domains. Considering all these factors, Blogger Outreach remains one of the favoured strategies for online marketing. However, it has it’s own risks associated with it, which we will leave for another day.

Credits: 4 Imprint Blue Papers – Blogger Outreach.

Social Media & The Brand – How businesses fumble in the Media Space?

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So much has already been written about social media. In fact, many businesses have already ingrained social media into their business and marketing strategies. So, it comes as a huge surprise to see a few which are complete laggards. While businesses of all sizes and shapes have an established social presence, a number of them are still behind and beyond the social media realm. This is purely due to of the lack of a defined structure and strategy.

After nearly three years in online marketing, which includes a whole lot of social media activity, I must agree on one thing. Small businesses are certainly more receptive to the ever changing technology and the media that constantly evolves with it. They are also more likely to benefit as early adopters to these initiatives. They leverage the small amount publicity they get in the initial years and by the time other big businesses catch up, they have estbalished strategies which sets the ground work for big businesses to build on.

In the last few years, working for a small business, I have experimented with every new online marketing initiative that has been thrown at us by tech-savvy entrepreneurs. Some of them stuck by, and some of them, well, got stuck. From the early days of Delicious & Digg to WordPress & Livejournal, as well as the recent phenomenon named Twitter & Facebook, I have tried everything new that came out of the box for my old company. Today, it is fairly well known in the Social Media and Online Marketing world. If I look back on the proudest moments of my employment, two instances stand out among many others:

When our online marketing initiatives were used as a Case Study for a Text Book for Master’s Degree and when a renowned Search Engine Marketing service provider patted our back in front of 200 other online marketing professionals. While these two instances are much cherished moments of my life, I also wonder what made the online marketing so successful in a small business such as the one I worked for.

It immediately strikes to me that it was neither my enthusiasm for new media, nor the technology that was on offer which made these social media initiatives sucessful. Without outstanding business leadership, you neither get the enthusiasm, nor are aware of technology. I clearly remember when I was offered the role, I was told that apart from my regular responsibilities, I have two hours to read and keep abreast of the development of online marketing, which probably made what I am today. Something like a Google philosophy: 20% time

Now it pains me to see injudicious timing, ill-advised social media approaches, particularly when the media space is completely convoluted.  I feel that given the current adoption by businesses, you really need to rise up and stand tall to make your mark. Companies with inward looking social media approaches are sure to hit the wall as soon as they open their doors. Facebook & Twitter offer two of the most exciting platforms for businesses to take off. Both these platforms certainly deserve a clarity of thought and a well defined strategy, otherwise they are sure to be also rans.

How to Track Google Adwords Sitelinks in Analytics?

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A few weeks back, Google announced a great new addition to adwords, letting advertisers to display sitelinks on their ads, similar to sitelinks which appears for organic searches. Adwords sitelinks allows an advertiser to add four additional links to deep content within the site and are particularly useful as they can show the customer a quicker way to get to important sections of the site. Unlike, Organic Sitelinks which cannot be influenced, Adwords lets the advertiser choose upto ten relevant links to be shown to visitors. It’s a handy addition as it gives the advertiser an option to highlight promotions and seasonal offers for a given site.

Dell Sitelinks

However, a point to note is that sitelinks do not automatically appear for all the enabled keywords. They only appear for an ad which occupies the first sponsored result for a search and also has a higher click through rate. Therefore, the probability of displaying sitelinks for an ad is higher for brand or sitename terms, where the advertiser enjoys a first position listing as well as a higher click through rate.

Nevertheless, enabling sitelinks on adwords fairly simple.

  • Log on to Adwords Account
  • Navigate to campaigns, then click on settings.
  • Scroll down to the ‘Networks, Devices & Extensions’  Section
  • For each individual campaign, click on ‘Show additional links to my site’ under ‘Ad Extensions’
  • Specify the links you want to display for your ads. You can add upto 10 links, but Adwords will automatically show 4.

Now, how do you track these links? How will you know if the Adwords Sitelinks are bringing in any conversions? Well, since Sitelinks is a new addition to Adwords, Google hasn’t implemented tracking on sitelinks yet. The first time I enabled Sitelinks for Adwords, I was seeking out various ways to track these links on Google Analytics. When I contacted the Adwords team for answers regarding tracking, they sent a neat little document on how this could be done, which I have summarised below.

Advertisers must add a query string to the end of each URL which works as an identifier for Analytics. For example, if www.example.com/category/page is the URL, Advertisers must add ‘?sitelinks=page-identifier’. The URL will look like this:

www.example.com/category/page?sitelinks=page-identifier

Adwords Sitelinks Tracking on Analytics

Now some of the sites already utilise query strings in their URLs such as this:

www.example.com/category/page?id=22

In this case, advertisers have to append the URL to include both the queries as below:

www.example.com/category/page?id=22&sitelink=page-identifier

Once the identifiers are in place, you can track sitelinks on analytics by following these simple steps:

  • Log on to Analytics
  • Click on the relevant website profile
  • Once you are in the dashboard, click on ‘Traffic Sources’ on the left navigation menu, which expands to show different options. Click on Keywords. It displays the list of keywords from the Adwords Campaign.
  • Select the filter ‘Landing Page’, which can be found below the tabbed menu and you should see the keywords which brought traffic to the site and the corresponding landing pages.

Hopefully, Adwords Sitelinks should improve CTRs and eventually result in higher conversions.

From Organic to Paid Search!!

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After two and half years at Arena, I decided to move on. Actually, it wasn’t an option I was looking at, but during my time off a few months back, I had casually met a recruiter to understand where I stand after my experience as an online marketer. Although, it did sound positive, nothing came out of the interviews immediately and I completely forgot about it as I returned back to Arena from my sabbatical.
It was nearly two months later that I got a call from a company and after going through the role again, I thought it could be challenging but I wasn’t fully convinced. I thought hard for a couple of weeks considering a whole lot of possibilities. Although, I was working as an marketer, I was only involved in organic search side of things and the new role promised plenty of opportunities in managing paid campaigns as well as other offline activites. Also, I am very keen on building my repertoire as complete marketing professional. This was enough to convince me to take up the role.
While monitoring search traffic and running reports, I used to marvel at how efficiently optimised and organised the campaigns were at Arena. Now I have a big challenge of doing something similar as my first challenge and I spoke with the external Camapaign Managers this afternoon to terminate the existing contract. SO officially, I am manning paid search from today.
Paid Search

Paid Search

After two and half years at Arena, I decided to move on. Actually, it wasn’t an option I was looking at, but during my time off a few months back, I had casually met a recruiter to understand where I stand after my experience as an online marketer. Although, it did sound positive, nothing came out of the interviews immediately and I completely forgot about it as I returned back to Arena from my sabbatical.

It was nearly two months later that I got a call from a company and after going through the role again, I thought it could be challenging but I wasn’t fully convinced. I thought hard for a couple of weeks considering a whole lot of possibilities. Although, I was working as an marketer, I was only involved in organic search side of things and the new role promised plenty of opportunities in managing paid campaigns as well as other offline activites. Also, I am very keen on building my repertoire as complete marketing professional. This was enough to convince me to take up the role.

While monitoring search traffic and running reports, I used to marvel at how efficiently optimised and organised the campaigns were at Arena. Now I have a big challenge of doing something similar as my first challenge and I spoke with the external Campaign Managers this afternoon to terminate the existing contract. SO officially, I am manning paid search from today.  Lets see how this goes!

Yet Another Tweet Post: Twitter benefits, Celebrities on Twitter, and random rants…

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twitter-fail-whale

2008 was a big year for Twitter users and 2009 promises to be even better. The micro-blogging site is a great social networking tool, putting individuals, businesses, celebrities and spammers on the same ground. Twitter is a micro-blogging tool which allows up to 140 characters of short messages to be broadcast from its interface, which can be read by any other Twitter user. Unlike Facebook or Linkedin, Twitter allows users to declare who they are interested in following. A User who is being followed by another user doesn’t necessarily have to reciprocate. In comparison with our regular blogging, which is limited to a few posts in a month, Twitter fulfills the need for a faster mode of communication as it demands very little need of time and thought for content creation.

It is far more easier to communicate with other users than through any other traditional means or by social networking tools. On Twitter, a majority of the users seem to be open minded and they are aware of their expectations from the platform, making it easier to connect with each other. The platform crosses all boundaries when it comes to Social Media interaction. While popular social networking sites like Facebook/Linkedin ensure people keep in touch with personal/professional acquaintances, Twitter lets users connect with almost anyone who has a Twitter account.

I have been on Twitter for very few weeks and I have actively started using it only from 26th November 2008, the day when Mumbai was attacked. Information dissemination capabilities of Twitter is incredible, which has been proved time and again during the Presidential elections, Mumbai attacks and recently during Apple’s keynote at Macworld Expo 2009. Couple of weeks before Christmas, Will blogged about how Arena Flowers newsletter was flagged as Spam by Messagelabs, resulting in fewer sales from the newsletter than usual. A few of our blog readers, suggested that the post made an interesting media story and we eventually featured on Daily Mirror. Following this, we decided to punt the story around to see if it could gain any more mileage. This is when I realised how powerful Twitter is as a communication tool as it was easier to interact with a few Journalists and editors of Technology News sites.

As a Sales and Marketing channel, Twitter has tremendous potential for businesses, although it is a common belief that social media marketing for businesses is hard to quantify, as a majority of the value is realised by creating awareness rather than directly translating it into profits. Recently Dell reported $1 million in sales from Twitter, which in effect sounds like a drop in the pond for the companye as it represents 0.0016 % of the revenue. At the time of writing this blog post, Dell had a combined total of 8550 Twitter followers from nearly 30 Twitter accounts, which is lower than Apple. True, Apple has a single Twitter account. However, $1 million from 8550 followers apart from the brand exposure Dell gets is incredible. Dell could do much more with Twitter if it could be a little more intuitive rather than being the bugle for the company. For example, if you look at all of Dell’s Twitter accounts, only two accounts seem to have a higher number of followers (Dell Outlet & Digital Nomads). Clearly, users like communication and both of these accounts seem to be doing great job in doing that. On the DellOutlet account, customers seem to be interacting with the company by posting questions and comments, while on the latter Dell interacts with all of its followers, which is explained by the number of Twitterers Dell follows back. This shows that it is vital for Twitter users be a part of the community rather than being one dimensional.

Facebook and Twitter, two of the popular forms of social media, may not be the biggest internet money making machines like Google. But people behind these companies as well as investors are backing it completely because these platforms are teeming with potential customers and an astonishing amount of data waiting to be mined by marketers. Just a question how these companies get to monetise it? Conventional marketing channels (Print, Television, Radio etc) are always limited to various resourcing constraints, particularly for small businesses. However, Web 2.0 offers a balanced platform and inexpensive advertising solutions for all entities irrespective of their size and might. This is why it becomes relevant for businesses and brands to promote themselves on such platforms.

Businesses are on the road to adapting newer forms of ever evolving media and the Web 2.0 offers tremendous opportunities for businesses to pursue. New media is certainly not same as the old web, where there was a one directional flow of information. It fosters a balanced communication between businesses and customers. It’s about every day lives of individuals and businesses connected to time. With interfaces that allow users to track lives of friends, families and acquaintances, social media has been registering an exponential growth in the recent years. Clearly for businesses, Twitter, along with other social media tools, will become pretty much the norm in the coming months and businesses will realise the need to have a recognised social media team to scrape out the opportunities it has to offer.

When I began writing the post, the intentions were to list out top British celebrities actively tweeting on Twitter Space, before I slacked on the weekend. By the time I got myself back to the post again, a fair number of celebrity lists as well as Twitter tips had been published on many popular blogs and sites. There are many interesting posts on how to benefit from Twitter, How to use Twitter, When to follow back twitterers etc. Caroline Middlebrook, an internet entrepreneur and blogger, has put together a comprehensive Twitter Guide, which is very useful for budding as well as established Tweeters. Also, there is a great list of top 100 influential marketer’s with links to their Twitter accounts. Over the last few weeks, ever since Jonathan Ross followed Stephen Fry into the Tweet space, he has effectively played a Twitter detective and authenticated the presence of many Celebrity Tweeters. Just yesterday, another list was published by Guardian. Although not Britain specific, It has a list of UK politicians on Twitter along with a US list and a generic celebrity list. So if you are looking for a list of famous tweeters who you would like to follow, you should probably head to one of these many links.

If you fancy, you could also checkout my Twitter account for some famous names and businesses.

Happy Tweeting!

Facebook Connect or Google Friend Connect: Which One Offers Better Brand Visibility?

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Facebook ConnectI am mighty impressed with Facebook Connect. It offers a tremendous potential for businesses and individuals to improve their visibility on the web. Of course, both Google’s Friend Connect and Facebook Connect came out of their test phases at the same time, but at the moment Facebook Connect seems to be holding the sway, largely because of its impressive 120 million user base. MySpace too has a fairly large user base which matches Facebook, but the growing popularity of Facebook, coupled with a cluttery feel and template heavy profile pages makes MySpace a bit messed up in terms of aesthetics. With Facebook hungrily adding new features by the day, the longer term prospects of Facebook look much more attractive than that of MySpace unless it does something drastic to counter this.

Google Friend ConnectMySpace certainly is not idle. It has constantly sought to improve it’s platform, and now with all the internet majors looking at data portability as an option, it comes as no surprise that it has tied up with Google for friend connect, along with the existing partnerships with Yahoo, eBay, Twitter & PhotoBucket. However, what MySpace really needs to do is to keep it simple and appealing to users. It really has to move away from its cluttery offering.

Google’s Friend Connect offers similar data portability as Facebook Connect, but again lacks in appeal and a popular social networking platform. Google has really failed in coming up with something as smart as either a Facebook or a Twitter. It’s very own Social Networking Platform, Orkut, has failed to catch-up with sufficient audiences and is limited to users largely from Brazil and India, failing in the first hurdle itself.

Facebook Connect, on the other hand, seamlessly integrates with a site or a blog with a one click login and allows users to interact with the site, which gets fed into the Facebook News Feed on the user’s Facebook Profile Page, making it visible to the user’s close community. This helps in increasing the brand and product awareness among Facebook users. Social influence in marketing is the key to succeed and Facebook offers this social influence in a surprisingly simple way to a very large user base at absolutely no cost. I am certain that in the coming months it will be a standard feature with many popular commercial/non-commercial online models as well as personal websites and blogs adapting to Facebook connect!

There is an early release of a WordPress Plugin for Facebook Connect developed by Six Jumps and I have been experimenting on this to get it live on my blog and should hopefully done on the weekend. It is incredibly simple to set up, with a little help from extensive tutorials by Six Jumps and I highly recommend getting this working soon on your blog. You will instantly have an army of friends marketing your blog to a wider audience.

Facebook Tweets Twitter: How do two biggest Social Networking Sites Make Money?

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Do They Make Any?

Facebook’s courtship with Twitter in the past few weeks has officially ended after Evan Williams, the founder and CEO of Twitter confirmed on Tuesday that there would be no marriage with Facebook. The web world has been abuzz with news recently about Twitter’s reported refusal for a $500 mostly stock offer from Facebook. Both social networking platforms are yet to turn profitable and this raises several questions about how viable these are as propositions for investors. There is certainly a point in a way Mr. Williams envisions Twitter’s prospects in the coming years. He has clearly stated that Twitter would be looking to monetise its platform before such an association and if his strategies to turn Twitter profitable work, then there could be a higher price tag on Twitter than what Facebook is currently offering.

Twitter, a simple micro-blogging platform built on Ruby-On-Rails, has been gaining popularity since early 2007. Started with a $20 million capital raised from Venture Capitalists, Twitter allows users to broadcast messages up to 140 characters through its platform. With an estimated 6 million global users, Twitter is fast catching up with some of the other popular social networking sites although it lags behind miles in comparison with the massive 120 million user base of Facebook. Moreover, of the 6 million estimated users, only a fraction of them tweet regularly. Despite a fairly decent subscriber base, Twitter like most social networking platforms, is struggling to translate its success into profits, although Mr. Williams foresees the opportunity to monetise the platform in the next couple of years. However, one of the first tasks Mr. Williams has identified is to stabilise and improve the Twitter platform.

Facebook has its own challenges to turn profitable. Despite having 120 million registered users and consumer data which is extremely valuable for marketing, Facebook has failed to achieve the desired levels of success. It offers a great platform for businesses to market themselves by leveraging the options of setting up free business pages to interact directly by fostering communities with the target base on a personal level. It also offers an opportunity for businesses to advertise for a fee, although businesses might find that Facebook offers little return on money spent on advertising.

Given the current economic climate, it’s a huge surprise that Facebook is throwing $500 million weight of stock and cash on a smart tool which has, for the moment, no revenue potential. The $15 billion valuation, when Microsoft bought into a piece of the Facebook pie, seems to be extremely overvalued. If Facebook’s stock were to be revalued now, Twitter would loose much of the value of the stock, considering bigger technology companies like Google and others have seen their stock values eroding in the recent past. And the biggest irony is, Twitter refusing such an offer! This, despite Mr. Williams’ assertion that there are no business people among Twitter’s 25 strong team, which could actually put it on the path to economic success.

If past successes are anything to go by, then Google certainly is a beacon of hope. As most of us would already be aware, the seeds to Google’s growth were sown back in 1998 when Google developed an incredible product – a better search engine. And for nearly two years, they ran from pillar to post trying to convince venture capitalists to invest in an idea which absolutely had no revenue channels. Of course, it did benefit from the dotcom boom and fortunately, their revenue potential was realised through another smart product – Adwords, which literally is the driving force behind Google today.

Undoubtedly, both Facebook and Twitter have been successful in capturing user attention. How successfully they translate this attention to bank balance is a matter of curiosity, which depends on efficient leadership and only time will tell this. One thing is certain. They might not make any money for their founders but it certainly does make you less productive in the workplace!

Is Xobni – The Wonder Email Plugin for Outlook the future of social networking?

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Xobni Logo

I have been using Xobni (for inbox spelled backwords) for a couple of days and I must say its an incredibly handy addon. It transforms the otherwise torpid Microsoft Outlook into a powerful email client. And for a feature rich add on like Xobni, it’s hard to believe that it’s being offered free. Started by Adam Smith and Matt Brezina in 2006, with investments from several reputed venture capitalists and a few angel investors, the company has created ripples in the recent months owing to $20 million acquisition rumours by Microsoft. Apparently, after a series of discussions Xobni walked off the deal.

Nevertheless, it is a clever software which integrates with Outlook and does clever things. Xobni’s viewing panel is a revelation. It features a lightning fast search option, people profiles, message threads etc. Xobni’s search is a million times better than the native functionality of Outlook. For every e-mail a user receives, it displays information about the sender including who else they communicate with regularly. It even scrapes sender’s phone numbers from their e-mails and also looks for their Linkedin profiles attached to that email. It displays all conversation threads between the sender and the user along with the attachments they have exchanged, making it easier to track attachments, a feature I feel is extremely beneficial, for I have always struggled to locate attachments in Outlook. Not just that, Xobni also acts a small email analytics tool which not everyone will find much use for. For example, it tells you the top ten people you communicate with, the time you/they take to respond to each other, the number of emails exchanged, average number of emails you get in a day, week, and month etc. You could say it is an Analytics version for the email. These features may be worthless, but its fun. To top this all, it doesn’t reduce Outlook’s functional capabilities or speed even a bit. Xobni has accomplished what other softwares haven’t been able to, to reside on the Outlook platform without eating up its resources.

Xobni also has tremendous potential as a software in the Social Networking Arena. Clearly, social networking is still in its infancy and how companies offering social networking align themselves will define the future. There are hundreds of networking sites out there, but Facebook seems to be running away with the crown. In the coming years, it is obvious for individuals and businesses to adapt to winning social networks, just like they did to Operating Systems of Microsoft and Apple and more recently to Search Engines, Google and Yahoo. Moreover, social networks have access to an incredible amount of user information, giving them the edge to serve advertising which matches an individual’s needs and tastes. So, Xobni’s ability to reside on email clients and disseminate information which not only helps the user but also helps them connect externally will undoubtedly be a winning feature. Unless companies which develop email clients, start bundling it as a package, Xobni has the headway. Xobni’s strength is its platform. Can its platform be replicated by companies which make these email clients? This remains to be seen.

But the issue drills down to one fact…why is Xobni free and why did it walk away from the Microsoft deal, although Microsoft clearly rated the software has top notch?!?! As I understand, Xobni has broader goals than being a plug-in company to Outlook. Xobni’s beliefs are based on developing platforms rather than developing plug-ins. The company is keen on developing similar apps for other popular email clients as well as web services which will also foster creation of new products, which will ultimately show the money. Reminds me of Google in the early days, when it went on to develop a search engine without focusing on the economic side. Today, Google has stood time. Good luck Xobni!

Get Your Website Right For Driving Up Sales

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Online retailers often face a huge conundrum. Although their primary objective is to drive traffic to the site and ultimately sales, they have to battle with a variety of mediums to achieve this. From the site development and maintenance to user experience, occupying enviable spots on search engines, and reinforcing the companies presence on various forms of online media, is all a massive challenge particularly in a web 2.0 driven age. Despite the surge in internet users, online shopping is still a distinct experience from visiting a high street retailer.

Consumers Shopping online not only get a cost advantage, but they are also served with an incredible amount of information helping them make the right decision. With many price and product comparison sites, blogs, product reviews, feedbacks etc, online shoppers, usually are equipped with product knowledge prior to their purchase. However, despite a wealth of information, consumers often bank on search engines to help them make a purchase. This is where, a company’s approach to its online presence comes into play. User engagement plays an important role in the performance of a website, therefore emphasising the need to develop a site that aids consumers in making a right decision.

Arena Flowers has recently been used as a case study in a forth coming text on Internet Marketing. We are quite pleased with this new development and we feel that we are doing things right. However, there’s always room to improve and enhance customer engagement and we constantly strive to understand internet marketing in its entirety to achieve this. We do rely on customer suggestions and feedback to improve our offering. However, since we are being used as a case study in an internet marketing text, we feel that it would be wise to take suggestions from one of the authors of the text on improving our website. So we approached Dr. Dave Chaffey, a leading Internet Marketing consultant and trainer and the author of best selling books on online marketing for an interview and he gladly agreed. Watch this space for tips on optimising a website for better customer engagement.