Copyright © 2010 I-COM International 2010-09-06T16:39:34+0100 2010-09-06T16:39:34+0100 http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. http://www.i-com.net/blog/ http://i-com.net/images/icom-net.gif http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. I-COM International blogmaster at i-com dot net I-COM International I-COM International en SEO, SEM, Web Design, Web Development 1440 http://www.i-com.net/blog/why-solicitors-need-to-crack-the-online-market-327/ A report published in the Law Society Gazette revealed that the internet has become indispensable when choosing a solicitor. The YouGov poll of 2,266 people found that after recommendations by friends, internet search engines and online review sites were the second most popular way to select a lawyer. The research showed that 21% of the people polled would use search engines to select a law firm.This sentiment was echoed by Simon McCrumb of Darbys Solicitors in Oxford, who explains: "This reflects the fact that even the lawyers world is changing. Companies that do not invest in raising their on-line profile will receive less calls and enquiries than a firm that does - its as simple as that. This brings two challenges though. First - will the callers be as profitable and as productive as callers in 'the old days' were, or will this generate lots of calls that take a lot of time to deal with but which go nowhere? Our view is that you have to kiss a lot of frogs in order to find a prince. The second challenge is whether these people, who are coming to law firms in a very modern way, will still want personal and face-to-face service and whether they will want to pay for it." As Simon rightly points out, these findings show that solicitors firms can no longer afford to ignore the internet. A good position in the search engine listings for a variety of highly relevant keywords is essential to gaining clients.Establishing an online presence for your law firmHowever creating a successful website that turns site visitors into paying clients, not to mention one that conveys the personality of your law firm, your expertise and also speaks to your visitors using language they understand, isn't as easy as it sounds.The poll also revealed that almost 10% of respondents would use specialist web directories of solicitors to find a lawyer and a further 4% stated that they would ask for recommendations for contacts on Facebook and other social networking sites.Sites such as Twitter and Facebook that allow social interaction are gradually going to take the place of personal recommendations so getting a head start in these emerging fields is essential for any business, especially a law firm.Understanding how people search for solicitors onlineThe key to online success is to find an internet marketing agency that you trust, one that understands enough about what you do to know what to say on your website and also knows how people search for solicitors on the web. You need to find a company that can engage with that audience both on your website, through use of compelling content that answers all the right questions, and elsewhere on the internet through social media, online PR and other forms of online advertising.Through years of work with law firms of all sizes, I-COM has established a solid base of knowledge and understand about how people search for legal services online.  Integrating search engine optimisation into site development we can build a firm base for the web presence of any law firm which brings in the right visitors who convert into leads and eventually clients. Our experience of sponsored PPC advertising can ensure high quality traffic and prove return on investment. I-COM also has great experience working with directory owners and developing social media campaigns which can provide law firms with a route into social media. We provide social media training to help customers understand the requirements of working in a social media environment and avoid the many potential pitfalls of bad social media practise that have unsettled many reputable brands in the past. If your law firm is looking to take its first steps into establishing an online presence or if you're simply not happy with how your website is performing online, read more about our expertise in the legal industry or get in touch with us on 0870 164 2389. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-03-23 09:59:27 http://www.i-com.net/blog/why-solicitors-need-to-crack-the-online-market-327/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/christmas-online-shopping-stats-a-round-up-301/ Christmas may seem like a distant memory now, with the only reminder of the festive period being that solitary mince pie left in the cupboard (they just dont taste the same when its not Christmas); but from an online perspective, there are some interesting results that are worthy of comment. A plethora of stats for online shopping in the UK in the run-up to Christmas have been released over the past couple of weeks. Those of particular interest include:  Cyber Monday (7th December) remained the biggest shopping day of the year, with the peak being 3 million being spent online in the UK in one hour between 13:00 and 14:00 The average order placed online was up by 94% this Christmas, compared to the same period in 2008 The number of goods that are purchased per transaction has also increased significantly, from 2.7 items in 2007 to 3.7 per order in 2009 132 million worth of purchases were made on Christmas Day, an increase of 29% on the previous year (eDigitalResearch) All of the indications from these stats are that peoples shopping habits are changing.  But is this shift a natural process, or are retailers being more savvy in their marketing and actively influencing shoppers behaviour in the direction of online? I certainly noticed that the larger retailers were much more on the ball this time around. For the six weeks leading up to Christmas, I came to expect at least five email messages in my personal email inbox every day from retailers promoting online Christmas offers and products.  (I would suspect that the free delivery over X offers as promoted in such emails had an influence in raising the average order value.  I was sucked into this on at least three occasions in the run up to Christmas!!)I have blogged previously about Marks and Spencers and how their online marketing efforts and social media campaigns are setting the standards for other leading retailers. In the run up to Xmas, there was a further noticeable step up by Marks and Spencers and their contemporaries in terms of their social media usage using Twitter and Facebook to keep customers informed about everything from their deals of the day, to last delivery dates and even updates on delivery delays due to snowy conditions. And with the likes of @chiconomise and @fashionpixies aggregating all offers from UK retailers and directing traffic to online sales, we are being spoon fed all the info we need to make Christmas shopping online easy peasy.There is little doubt that as the number of mainstream stores offering online shopping has grown, people in the UK are becoming more used to researching and completing online purchases. The fear factor has diminished significantly and the demographic of people making online purchases has undoubtedly broadened; and so long as retailers continue to do the right things and target their customers effectively via a variety of channels, all indications are that the online shopping bug will only continue to take a further hold.And what with all the snow and ice, freezing cold temperatures, and queues snaking around the aisles, there is certainly a lot to be said for Christmas shopping from your sofa <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Wingdings; panose-1:5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:2; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 268435456 0 0 -2147483648 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} /* List Definitions */ @list l0 {mso-list-id:950285101; mso-list-type:hybrid; mso-list-template-ids:1404189612 134807553 134807555 134807557 134807553 134807555 134807557 134807553 134807555 134807557;} @list l0:level1 {mso-level-number-format:bullet; mso-level-text:; mso-level-tab-stop:36.0pt; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-18.0pt; font-family:Symbol;} ol {margin-bottom:0cm;} ul {margin-bottom:0cm;} --> Internet Marketing 2010-01-25 09:27:00 http://www.i-com.net/blog/christmas-online-shopping-stats-a-round-up-301/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/making-the-most-out-of-your-target-market-142/ For years, I've been helping business owners tobecome more successful online, so I've seen a lot of the numbers! It doesn't matter what sector you are in, whether it be Legal, Recruitment, Health Insurance, IT Support, Dentures, Business Management Training, Diamond Jewellery, Memory Sticks, Health & Beauty, Copywriting, Costume Jewellery, Cosmetic Dentistry, Moving Boxes, Driver Training, Telecommunication, Health & Fitness, Debt Management, Dating, Entertainment Agency, Couriers... In practically every case, the amount of money that these business owners make online is proportionate to the value of their market. Generally, a business with keywords with higher numbers of searches tends to make more than a business based around keywords with lower visitor values. However, that doesn't mean that you cannot make an excellent profit from online marketing in these markets! There are plenty of other factors that will affect your success in your market online: The number of competitors in the marketplace - Each additional competitor means someone else is taking a slice of the pie. The strength of competition in the marketplace - Some markets are dominated by a few well-established competitors i.e. websites that are already in high positions in SEO or Adwords. Your product or service optimal price point Your ability to achieve high rankings in the search engines - The higher your website ranks the more traffic you will get! Your visitor-to-sale conversion rate - How good is your website? How good is your team of converting the enquiry to a sale - You won't make a bean if you can't convert visitors into customers! Your desire for success - Being successful is hard work! Your knowledge - Can you communicate with other people convincingly and with authority in your market? Your effort - A part-time effort will only ever create a part-time reward. Employ an internet marketing specialist company to increase your level of internet marketing skill - If you want to dominate a niche, you need to be at least a little bit better than your competitors. Market lifespan - If you are in a market targeting the "London Olympic Games" you might get you a lot of enquiries over the next few years, but after August 9, 2012, you can expect this market to perish! Product lifespan - Similarly, if you are selling paper-based directory advertising what is the lifespan? Not long!! Existing content - Having great content is a prerequisite for ranking well in Google. Is there existing content in your market that you can syndicate? If not, can you write content for that market? Time - Can you spare the time or employ people (regularly, in ample quantities, and for long enough), to grow your business into the authority in your market? Available resources - People, knowledge, money! Bearing in mind all these important factors, I guess what I'm saying is whether you sell services and/or products to B2B and/or B2C anybody can make an excellent return on investment from a well-thought-out online marketing strategy and plan. Search Engine Marketing 2009-01-19 15:22:19 http://www.i-com.net/blog/making-the-most-out-of-your-target-market-142/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/i-wise-may-be-answer-to-traditional-marketing-downturn-112/ The IPA's latest survey is showing that the credit crunch is certainly biting for traditional marketing industries, with annual marketing budgets falling at the fastest rate for over nine years and 35% of companies showing a downward revision in budgets allocated for main media marketing.The only exception to the decrease in marketing budgets is internet marketing and SEO - showing a modest upturn.Now while we can argue the pros and cons of revised spending in an economic downturn, the truth is that impact on traditional marketing media may be susbstantial. It may be that traditional marketing agencies may need to look to new revenue streams and services including digital marketing services. Problem is that Internet Marketing, SEO and PPC services are traditionally very specialist and much harder for many creative agencies to deliver profitably. I-COM has recently launched a new service, i-Wise, for partners in the creative media and marketing sector to help resolve these issues. Through the i-Wise service, agencies will benefit from: Search engine optimisation training which will help them develop websites which can be more effective in the search engines Access to advanced website development expertise - to help build sites that deliver Advice on other online marketing techniques that can help clients maximise the potential of their sites Access to website optimisation consultancy services to help improve the conversion rates of clients' sites A non-competition agreement - the client always belongs to the introducing agency not I-COM Commission - in return for introducing clients to I-COM, the agency will receive a small amount in recognition of the costs associated with maintaining the relationship. If you'd like to discuss the i-Wise programme in more detail and how it may be of use to your agency, contact Kate Silvers on 0870 143 3183 or email her kate.silvers@i-com.net Internet Marketing 2008-10-21 14:07:32 http://www.i-com.net/blog/i-wise-may-be-answer-to-traditional-marketing-downturn-112/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/apples-operating-system-market-share-grows-100/ Market Share, the internet tracking firm, has today released its latest statistics for operating system usage. It reveals that Apple's share of the internet-connected operating system market has increased to over 8%.Whilst they're still not challenging Microsoft's dominance, it does show that Apple are making significant progress; they've seen a growth in their market share of over 20% in the last year.What lies behind these figures is that Apple appeals in the main to a younger market who are looking for style and social approval. This is the key "Generation Y" market sector that many businesses are trying to target.This research supports what we're seeing with our clients whose sites are seeing increasing amounts of traffic from users employing Apple's Safari browser.Organisations putting up sites should ensure that their target audience has the best experience possible when visiting their property - this means sites need to be optimised for appropriate browsers. Web Development 2008-10-02 11:52:00 http://www.i-com.net/blog/apples-operating-system-market-share-grows-100/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/the-socio-demographics-of-search-24/ I have a theory that social demographics have an impact on search behaviour. I've looked all over for quantifiable evidence to support my theory but been unable to find any. It's my theory that products and services aimed at the more professional social demographic groups have better click through rates in the natural search listings than paid search listings. Whereas, products and services aimed at other social groups can be comparatively more successful in paid listings. This theory is supported by some dodgy qualitative research (asking people I know from outside the industry) about their propensity to use different parts of the search engine page. This research suggests that whilst blue collar browsers seem happy to scan the whole page and select whatever returned entry seems most interesting, browsers from professional and managerial backgrounds seem to have an aversion to paid results. I'd hate to pin my reputation on this theory but in my gut it does seem to hold fairly true. I'm sure our friends at Google would be able to confirm or deny this theory, but it might not be in their interest to reveal it if I'm correct. Could you imagine the impact it might have on paid search revenues? Search Engine Marketing 2008-09-29 08:47:00 http://www.i-com.net/blog/the-socio-demographics-of-search-24/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/top-25-marketing-research-and-analysis-tools-77/ Marketing research and analysis is one of the most important aspects of any business. Yet, it's normally overlooked by most small and medium size companies. We understand that back in the old days marketing research would cost a small fortune which most SMEs couldnt afford. However the internet brought us a host of resources and databases where you can get precious information for FREE. This article covers a variety of tools that we use on a daily basis when dissecting existing markets for our clients, discovering new ones, or keeping a close eye on the latest trends. 43 Things - 43Things.com it's a website where people can share their dreams and goals or find out what others want to do. The Zeitgeist section lists popular goals achieved by the community. About.com: Sites A to Z is the index of all about.com sites. It's good for brainstorming and exploring new concepts. Amazon's Hot New Releases lists bestselling new and future products on Amazon.com, it is possible to drill down your searches by product categories, bestselling, most wished and much more. Amazon's Most Popular Tags displays up to 1,000 tags used by Amazon customers to classify products. More frequently used tags are larger and more recently used tags will appear darker. AOL Hot Searches is a daily updated log of popular searches in the AOL search engines. eBay Pulse is a daily snapshot of the latest trends and hot products. eBay What's Hot is a mix of data from trade magazines, predictions from industry experts, and eBay sales data to determine whats in demand. eHow is a user generated content website providing information about "how to do just about everything". eHow is useful for finding topics in demand. Google Trends reveals how often a given search term is searched, relative to the total number of searches in Google. Google Trends also allows the comparison between two or more terms. Trends is useful to identify seasonality and geographical distribution. Google Checkout Trends aggregates sales data of Google Checkout merchants. With Google Checkout Trends it is possible to compare two or more products and discover which is selling more. Google Hot Trends displays the top 100 hot searches of the past hour. It is also possible to search the archives past dates. Google Insights for Search is a beefed up version of Google Trends. We have already explained how to use Google Insights for keyword research or market research. However there many other useful things that you can do with this tool. Google Press Center: Zeitgeist provides a snapshot of Google user search behaviour based on queries from around the world. The information is organised by country and displays "Popular Queries" and "Top Gaining Queries". HowStuffWorks.com teaches people how stuff works. The website will tell you how hard drive works or how a tsunami forms. It is divided in 13 main categories that cover virtually any subject. HowStuffWorks.com also features the most popular articles which is helpful for identifying trends and getting ideas for website content. Lycos 50 is a weekly chart of the top search terms in Lycos. It is focused mainly on the showbiz, celebrities and entertainment markets. adCenter Labs: Demographic Prediction determine user's age, gender, and other demographic information, based on their online behaviour. adCenter Labs: Online Commercial Intention detects customer commercial intent based on keyword or URL. The probabilities are distributed in 3 categories: non commercial, commercial-informational, commercial-transactional. adCenter Labs: Entity Association Graph provides a graphic view of associations between search queries or search sessions. adCenter Labs: Keyword Forecast is similar to Google Trends but also predicts demographic distributions of keywords by age and gender. adCenter Labs: Search Funnels helps with the analysis of users' search sequences. Enabling you to visualise how customers perform their search journey. SEOmoz Popular Searches aggregates popular search queries gathered from various sources across the web. Including Technorati, Flickr, Del.icio.us, Google, Amazon and many more. Yahoo! Answers is probably the biggest social Q&A website with over 70 million users. It is estimated that has a collection of in excess of 250 million answers written in English. To take advantage of the second most popular reference website after Wikipedia, just sit down, listen and learn what problems people currently have and offer solutions for those problems. trendwatching.com is a leading trend firms. trendwatching.com has 8,000+ trend spotters across the world constantly analysing and identifying the most promising consumer trends. Their findings are aggregated in a free, monthly Trend Briefing and an annual report. Shopping.com Consumer Demand Index makes it easy for you to put your finger on the pulse of consumer demand. With millions of shopping searches conducted each week, the CDI reveals emerging trends and hidden gems while highlighting the hottest products. With so many resources for gathering demographics data and customer behaviour information there's no excuse not to know your market and stay ahead your competition. Internet Marketing 2008-08-21 14:25:29 http://www.i-com.net/blog/top-25-marketing-research-and-analysis-tools-77/