Content is Not King – it is Supreme

How Web 3.0, the Semantic Web Will Affect Everything

The web of the future is going to make content supreme. What’s more, it’s going to make it incredibly valuable in ways that may finally see content creators get real reward and value for their efforts.

Almost since the start of the modern web, industry experts have been continually saying that Content is King: And they’ve been right, but now they’re right in ways that they couldn’t have possibly imagined.

The coming semantic web, known variously as the data web, microformats, FOAF, RDF, Linked Data, Web 3.0 and a whole host of new acronyms is pointing to big changes in cybersphere.

Yahoo recently announced it was embracing semantic web standards , and has already released some interesting tools that point to the future. Many are seeing this as a good thing and direct challenge to Google.

The End of Google?

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Wonderful Word of Mouth Marketing Resource

Learn From the Best in the Business - For Free

I’ve just discovered a fantastic new website dedicated to the study and practice of Word of Mouth Marketing.

Called The Society for Word of Mouth (SWOM), it is essentially another social network site, only this time the members are the ones you want to really be with.

Some of the best names in the business are already members and have contributed some great articles already. Read the rest of this entry »

Never Pay For Web Development Again

10 Free Solutions To Give You a Complete Website

When I first began working in e-commerce I was regularly "quoted" seriously high six figure amounts just to build a website, with another similar amount required for implementation.(It wasn’t that long ago.)

Mercifully, things are so much better now. Today there are so many free solutions and services that it is possible for anyone to build a fully featured website for nothing. And in almost no time.

Obviously there will still be design and set up costs involved, but for the most part the change has been radical.

Here then is my list of 10 free services and applications to get you on your way. They are not in any order, so you can choose at random.

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How To Generate Incredible Word of Mouth Marketing

Today (March 10th) I received a free copy of "The Soccer Mom Myth" by Michelle Miller and Holly Buchanan.

It was a surprise in so many ways, all of which illustrate how easy it is to generate fantastic word of mouth marketing.

It started when I left a tiny post on Future Now’s blog where Holly works.

Next thing I know I get an email from them saying they are going to send me a free copy.

Very impressed, but wait, I thought, they probably don’t know I live outside of the US, in Perth, Western Australia the most isolated capitol city in the western world.

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How To Get More Customers Online

Some interesting reports have recently been released detailing what techniques and strategies many direct marketers are using to acquire and keep customers.

Direct marketers are usually the sharpest cookies in the marketing arena because they are obsessed with producing financial results, and will usually do whatever it takes to turn a dollar. (No bad taste jokes please.)

Therefore, they are usually worth listening to as they can always back up their marketing strategies with hard results.

The Number One Tactic

According to Target Marketing’s Media Usage Report, the number one tactic for getting more customers and giving the strongest return on investment (ROI) was direct mail.

That’s the printed, personal letter in an envelope with stamp kind of mail. Read the rest of this entry »

To Market Online You Must Market Offline

Traditional offline marketing is one of the most effective ways of driving qualified customers to your online business.

However, it is often totally overlooked by many in the ecommece and online marketing arena. Scratch any online marketer and you’ll find an almost obsessive focus on search engine optimization, search engine marketing and online advertising.

There will probably be some talk about email marketing, and, if they are really on the ball, a discussion about conversion rate improvement, but traditional offline marketing methods will probably barely rate a mention.

As a business owner, this means you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to drive customers to your site and generate revenue.

Traditional marketing’s effectiveness at generating online customers was recently highlighted in research by The e-Tailing Group.

It found that consumers are most motivated to go online after:

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Calls To Action - Left or Right?

Which is Best?

I’ve been involved in a great conversation with John Quarto-vonTivadar over at Future Now about the best place to put calls to action.

It started after John and his friends saw online retailer, Crutchfield, had put all of its shopping cart call to action buttons on the far left of the screen.

This started a whole debate on where the preference for right sided calls to action came from, how to test them against left sided ones, and the total influence of design elements on the buying process.

Some very smart people have contributed to this conversation, so it’s worth checking out.
Testing Add-to-Cart Buttons: Stuck in the Middle With You

We haven’t come up with any definitive answers yet, but the discussion is lively and has brought a whole range of interesting points.

Do You Have a 30% Conversion Rate? Why Not?

The Popcorn Factory does. Or at 29.5% it’s close enough. Recent figures from Nielsen Net Ratings continue to show that a handful of sites are way ahead of the rest of the ecommerce world in terms of conversion rates.
The Popcorn Factory - 29.50%
L.L. Bean - 23.60%
Abebooks - 20.60%
Amazon - 17.60%
Hollister Co - 17.60%
Lands End - 17.20%
Coldwater Creek - 17.10%
Gymboree - 16.00%

Some of these sites such as Land’s End, LL Bean, QVC have consistently been among the leaders for a long time. What’s interesting is that they were all leaders in the field of direct catalogue marketing long before they went online.

Obviously they know something about how to sell, and how to transfer that expertise to the online world. Yes Virginia, the old rules still apply.

What’s more these results are now starting to get close to the bricks and mortar average of 50%, so it shows that great sales results can be achieved online

How Does The Popcorn Factory Do It?

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Online Advertising Doesn’t Work - Yet More Evidence

I recently came across a DoubleClick report entitled: Video Ad Benchmarks: Average Campaign Performance Metrics, which enthused about how video ads were 5 times more effective than graphic ads.

“Big deal,” I thought. Traditional graphic ads, banner ads etc have a click thru rate barely above zero, so 5 times zero is still nothing.

My assessment was confirmed later in the report where it stated: “…the click-rate for plain GIF or JPG image ads based on DoubleClick data is approximately 0.1%”

So let’s be clear about this. For every 1,000 people who see the ad, only 1 will actually click on it. If you couple that with the appallingly low conversion rates of 2% for most sites, then you need 50,000 people to see the ad just to make one sale.

You Will Lose Money

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