Who will be the next economic sacrifice?

The high street has taken a real battering over the last month. Some have gone down deservedly you might say. Woolworths has never really seemed to understand how modern retail works and I'm surprised that they have survived so long really.

MFI had suffered from it's appalling quality and customer service record in the past. Perhaps if they had renamed and re-branded a few years ago they might have been able to survive.

Although I don't grieve the loss of these retailers, who I didn't use anyway, my heart goes out to their staff and the many companies in their supply chain who will all lose out.

During my days in ecommerce I visited many reasonable sized businesses that were in the high street supply chain feeding goods to all of the famous high street names. I remember coming across a significant number of businesses that had one retail chain representing over 80% of it's customer base and, in some cases, 100%.

Most chains work on the 'just in time' stock principal. Which means that the retailer estimates his total supply requirements in advance. After an initial stock up, replenishment is by replacement only and it is up to the supplier to have the stock on hand to provide immediate turn around - with no commitment from the retailer to take the whole consignment if sales are bad, but penalties for you if you can't supply.

I don't know how they slept at night and I said just that to the MDs in question.

When we have a sharp economic downturn that level of reliance puts you on dangerous ground and your business can be wiped out even though your own business management and cash flow are sound.

As small business owners it is always attractive to accept business opportunities that give us 'security' by filling our order book for substantial periods. But it doesn't come without risk. I suspect there are hundreds of small businesses that spent more than 80% of their efforts pandering to MFI and Woolworths who will be left with virtually no business to speak of.

Perhaps our New Years resolution should be to spread our business across more customers and therefore spread the risk?


If you need help with a New Year sales and marketing strategy, particularly using the internet, I'll see if I can help.

Will you profit from the Google changes?

What is the point of having a website if it doesn't bring you a sale or at least high quality enquiries?

So we live and die by Googles' ability to index and rank our sites correctly to attract the right visitors. At any one time we can search ourselves on the keywords and phrases that we would like to be seen for and see exactly how we fair in the listings.

But according to search engine specialist Bruce Clay that's all about to change.

Google has, and probably always will, had to fight a battle with the 'black hat' SEO specialists who work hard to unfairly skew the rankings in their, or their clients, favour.

Google wants to maintain its standing as the leading search engine (over 80% market share in Europe) by offering the best, most useful and most appropriate web pages to us as web searchers. That's what keeps us coming back time after time.

Google has been experimenting for some time with ways to overcome the black hats by making each search unique. They are getting 'up close and personal' to help personalise each and every search that we make.

By using information gained from your previous search history, your location and a broad understanding of your 'intent' (are you looking to buy something or are you looking for information) they can create a different listing of web pages for you to view.

This is great for us as users as the results will probably be more akin to our requirements.

Google are also able now to interrogate video, flash and audio files on web sites and convert the spoken and printed word into text to help offer those in the listings too.

Overall, from a user point of view it's all good news.

How does this affect my website?

As a web site owner we still need to keep our eye on the SEO ball so that Google continues understand our site and knows when, and where, to rank it. Our problem is that we won't be able to check it's ranking for key words and phrases as that will vary from user to user.

This means that we'll need to study and understand the site analytics far more. How many people visit the site, from which keywords, how long did they stay, what pages did they view and did we gain something from them - some contact details or a sale for example?

With that information we are able to test and measure changes and influence the results without resorting to under handed tactics.

The other big change is the importance that Google is putting on what are described as 'Engagement Objects' - such as video and audio. These are seen as enhancements to the user experience and will give considerable weight to the ranking of a page. I have seen statistics that have indicated this for some time now so this element hasn't surprised me.

So the time has never been better to include video elements on your site as these changes will start to take effect during the first quarter of next year.

If you need help with video or how to make your site Search Engine Optimisation is up to scratch contact me at Alloy CRM - Sales and Marketing Strategists.

Welcome to my new sales and marketing strategy blog.

My plan is to give my readers useful and informative tips on sales and marketing strategy to help them increase sales and profit.

More information is available on my sales, marketing and CRM site.