Has Google changed the way it ranks websites?

There has been an email going around the last few days scaremongering that Google has radically changed it's natural listing ranking format by including 'Google Places Pages'.

Google Places Pages are what we have know for a long time as Google Business Listings.


They have been a useful long term SEO tactic for local businesses such as trades and B2B suppliers. Not many people had latched on to the fact that Google has, for a long time, shown listings and a small local map with markers when a geographic qualifier was included in the search term.

Like any SEO activity, the 'secret' to success to being shown in that map is relevance. A good description, keywords and choice of categories is more likely to bring a listing higher. Add to that a few reviews and the always important external inbound links to the website from influential sites, and you have a top listing when someone types in 'Plumber Gorleston' for example. The more refined the geographic term - the better chance you have of success.

So is this new?

No not really. All that's happened is that Google have decided to give it a little more relevance than they had done previously.

Any web designer worth his salt would have organised a Google Business Listing for you anyway and encouraged you to get your customers to login and leave a good review. Plus, of course, look for good directories and sites to gain links from. Inbound links are good for your website and your Business Listing too.

Google Places Pages are covered in my email Website Marketing Course which all my clients receive now, once their site is up and running.

So looking at this email, it's more about trying to sell you a link on their directories rather than 'new' news. But a useful reminder of it's importance all the same.
 
Need help setting up a Google Places Page, or Google Business Listing if you prefer it in old money, then just call or email me.

Some real website crackers!

I always love to see websites that make you scream in horror!

In these days of templates and easy to use web generators you can't really believe that stuff like this is still around.

Anyway enjoy these www's - (woeful web wonders)

http://msy.com.au/

http://www.frnz.de/

http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/

http://home.comcast.net/~computerphysicians/

http://www.arngren.net/

http://www.cwol.com/

Ohh, The bucket's over there in the corner by the way.

If you want to make sure your customers feel comfortable and happy when they visit your website contact me at Alloy CRM and I'll help you sort it out.

How did you choose your business name?

Choosing a business name always seems an exciting time and loads of ideas run around your head before you finally settle on 'The One'. But there's a few things that you should consider before those ideas run wild.

1. If the business is not going to be a global player, and potentially a household name, then including something that indicates something about what you do can help potential customers decide if they should be calling you or not.

Clever is ok, but if it leaves them mystified, it hasn't really helped the cause. Would Aviva, Corus or Square Giraffe say anything about your business?

If your business is really local I would even consider making it blatantly obvious what you do - Suffolk Management Training or Norfolk Plumbing Repairs.

2. Next on the list is to find out if your chosen name already exists. A search on Companies House and Trade Mark listings will show up whether your new business 'McDonalds Take Away' might get you into deep water with their legal department or simply get you confused with others of a similar name.

3. Finally you need to consider the Internet.

You really do need to have a domain name that matches your business name. Without that people will struggle to find you. If you have got this far and the domain name isn't available then I would go back to step one and start again.

If you are a UK based business then you absolutely need to have the .co.uk version of your business name but I would also buy the .com .net .tv .info and .biz versions too. Just think of the consequences of a competitor setting up in the same business, taking one of those domain suffixes, marketing it like mad and taking half your business. Just allow enough in your budget to buy all of them to be sure.

If we take one of the business name examples above I would also buy the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions - suffolkmanagementtraining as well as suffolk-management-training. The second version is easier for people to see, understand and remember when it's on your physical advertising.

Hyphens can help too if the words could be mis-read when put together. There are some famous 'howlers' in this department which must have horrified their owners once they realised:-

therapistfinder - 'therapist finder' or could be 'the rapist finder'
expertsexchange - 'experts exchange' or 'expert sex change'
whorepresents - 'who represents' or 'whore presents'
penisland - which is actually 'pen island' apparently

Advertising the hyphenated version of each of those domain names would have saved a great deal of embarrassment!

If you are choosing your business name, then choose it wisely.

Needs some help getting your business up and running? Just call me. Sales & Marketing Strategy with AlloyCRM

What's special about your home page?

On a recent web marketing course I was running, one of the delegates said ".. so my home page is a bit like the reception area of my bricks & mortar business?"

Well yes, he's probably right.

Those visitors who arrive on your website after seeing your domain name in your adverts, on your business card or on your van, will most certainly land on your home page. You then have just a few seconds to create the right impression - exactly as you would when someone walked into your main reception.

Things get complicated from then on.... Not everyone will land on your home page.

Some will go straight to one of your sub pages that have been suggested by Google, or one of the other search engines, as relevant to their search phrase. They don't know (or care for that matter) that the page they've been sent to isn't your pristine, smart reception home page.

But they will certainly treat it as such! That means you have some hard work to do!

Every page on your site needs to stand up as a viable and professional reception page otherwise you'll fall at the first hurdle and they will look elsewhere.

Get looking at your web pages in isolation and see how they stack up.

Don't Compete on Price

If you are going to sell the same product or service as everyone else, sold in the same way and in the the same street too, then there is only one thing that differentiates you from your competitors - Price!

I don't know about you but I don't just want to be competing on price. That's reduced margins and a constant price war between you and your competitors to be the cheapest.

So how do you get away from price?

1. Don't sell the same product or service in the same way as everyone else.

Don't sell the 'same'! Find a way to re-package or add value to make your offer different. Seek out you customers and work out what they are really looking for when they buy from you. Tap into their desires and needs. Sell not just a product or service but an outcome.

Look for things that go with your product and bundle them in with a different price tag. Make yourself an advice and expert centre.

Do anything that steps you above your competitors and makes the price just one part of the buying decision rather than the only buying decision.

2. Don't sell in the same place.

Look for somewhere 'different' to sell. Size up your competitors and where their main selling and advertising focus sits.

Working out your customers real requirements will help you understand the problems they have and solutions they need which drive them to look for your products and services. Look for times and places that these may appear.

Work out what they may be asking or looking for - it may be different to how you would traditionally have thought. Then find ways of 'being there' at the right time.

This is all about finding your own Unique Selling Proposition or USP.

Without it you'll be selling on price and ever-reducing margins.

Need help getting your business moving? I'll see if I can help with your Sales and Marketing Strategy or your Website Profit

Get Ready for a Great 2010

Christmas is just about over and the New Year is just around the corner.

Going by the activity in the last quarter, 2010 looks set to be much better for buisness. Most seem to be waking up to the fact that sitting on your hands and doing nothing, hoping to sit it out and that the storm will just pass by isn't an option.

Doing the Second World War, Cadbury's chocolate continued to advertise heavily despite a severe shortage of their products and no chance of increasing revenue. But, once hostilities ceased and production restarted fully, the Cadbury's name was the one on peoples mind. It built their business to be the strong brand it is today.

Don't sit on the fence and wait for the world to pass you by. Get out there and let everyone know who you are and what you do - the business world hasn't stopped.

If you need help working out the best way to get your products and services in front of the right people - on the internet or in the real world - call me at Alloy CRM for a chat and see if I can help.

Testimonials make it all worth while.

I received a great testimonial from a grateful client today:

" I saw a prospect in November it came to nothing.

He was nosing at my website as it's the new tax year etc. He saw the video and was very impressed and has just signed up. A significant annual fee!

Many thanks :-) :-) "

That was from Simon Clarke, a partner at Great Yarmouth Accountants, HW Chartered Accountants.

What did I do to make it happen? I produced this short business video for HW Accountants just a few weeks ago and Simon uploaded it to his web page just last week.

I always look for ways to maximise the use of the Internet to increase leads, sales and profits. It has been my strong opinion for some time that the use of video on websites help build trust and confidence. This just proves it!

If you do the Return on Investment sums I should think that it comes out pretty well!

Need a video like that on your site? Call me at Alloy CRM and have a look at some other interesting video on my Alloy CRM video channel at You Tube.

Tips for using video to gain customers

It's reasonably well accepted that having a video on your site can be good for buyer confidence, good for sales and if hosted correctly, good for SEO too.

But there's some things you must do to ensure that you get maximum benefit.

Let's start with the video its self:

Don't make it too long
Boredom thresholds are low. Our exposure to modern day 'bite sized' TV programming and short, snappy adverts that are mini stories in their own right means we are intolerant of anything that labours a point. A front page video snippet shouldn't be more than a minute or so long. If longer is required, create a short 'taster' for the front page and a link to the full version further into the site.

Make it have a purpose
Just like the headlines and content of your site, your video should be focused on drawing in your visitor by providing useful and interesting content. If it's to gain your visitors confidence then tell them how you've successfully helped others for example.

Make it interesting, amazing or funny
A difficult one this as it won't always come off. But if you can do it you have the chance of it going viral - a link to your video forwarded on to loads of other people with the obvious business benefits that it would bring.

Where you host you video is important too:

Hosting on your servers
Not always the best option. However, if you have long videos or you want better quality it might be the right way to go.

Hosting on Video Sites
External hosting avoids the possibility of racking up bandwidth charges if its popular. The biggest bonus is that your video might be seen by more people and gain you extra business. There's a load to choose from with YouTube the most popular and well known. Google videos no longer accepts new uploads presumably because of their YouTube purchase.

How you setup the video on the hosting is really important as the whole point of the exercise is to attract visitors to your site:

Choosing a user name
Just like themeing for your website, the user name you choose ought to be keyword based to help with SEO

Setting up the description
You always have the option to write a short description which will show up next to your video (or at least the first few lines) Kick this off with your web address. Start it with http:// and it will automatically be a clickable hyperlink, so if they like what they see, you are only a click away.

Also include, in the description, your keywords and phrases that match your target. Include them in the tags too. That will help push your video up the listings when someone does an appropriate search.

Start a Channel
This is a customisable area to showcase your videos with its own description and profile that can include all your SEO friendly keywords. The channel also shows your favorite videos and those people who are following you. So just like any other Social Media exercise you should find ways to increase your following.

If you need help with getting effective video onto your website contact me at Alloy CRM.

Get to the point on your website

Get to the point!

Your potential customers, generally, don't want to mess about.


When they arrive on your website they are probably looking for either of two things:

1. If they know of your business by recommendation they are just looking for how to contact you - email or phone.

2. If they arrived by searching or a tenuous link verbally or otherwise, it's information they're looking for.


They haven't the time or the patience to rummage around to find stuff. You need to get straight to the point.

Make sure your contact phone number and email address are prominent 'above the fold' that is the section of your web page that can be seen without scrolling down.

Make it bold and, if your purpose is to solicit phone calls from enquirers put it at the top right of the screen. This tends to be the spot that takes the eye.

If they are after information - then give it to them!

They're probably not particularly interested at this moment that you have been in business for 30 years, or that you have the best staff team around. All they want to know is, do you sell the type of things they are looking for, what variations/options are available and how will these solve my problem or fulfil my desire.

If you've made them click a couple of times to get that information, they've probably already gone back to the search engines to find an alternative. Harsh, but true.


If you get past that, then they want to know why they should choose you and how they can be confident that you are the right supplier. Why would they want to know that first before knowing even if you are a potential supplier?

Analyse your website home page, or at least the first page they are likely to see, through your customers eyes and ask yourself if it fits the bill.

If you need help to make your website work then look at our Website Profit Program from Alloy CRM

Master Email Lists to Increase Profits

I spend most of my time now working with on-line sales and marketing, but for the last 10 years I've been specialising in CRM - Customer Relationship Management.

They may seem worlds apart but there is a great deal that brings them together.

The whole purpose of having a website for your business is to generate enquiries, leads or direct sales. Either
way you will be collecting some data about your prospective customers. Probably all their details when they have purchased but maybe just their email address when they first enquire.

What you do with that data can make a great deal of difference to the result - a sale and maybe a second sale later on.

The smart businesses do that by using CRM. It isn't a piece of software, it's a process.

Keeping in touch with the people on your list can really make the difference. If they have made an initial enquiry, then sending them an answer quickly followed by a number of sequenced emails with more information and appropriate offers is likely to result in a sale down the line because you bothered to keep in touch.

Doing that can be a pain and time consuming, even though the end result is worthwhile.

There are a number of autoresponders around that make that process easy for you. Once your enquirer has handed over their email address via your web page, a whole series of email followups can kick-in, all designed to entice your prospect to take the next step.

Once you have written the emails and decided the gap between each before they are sent out, the whole thing is automated for you. Those email addresses are now held securely and have agreed that you can send them appropriate information. So, if you have a new product or service to shout about, it's easy to send out a mail to everyone who has ever enquired.

You don't even have to worry about people who un-subscribe or whose email address bounces. That's all done for you at a really sensible and cost effective price.

There are two providers I use regularily, aWeber - probably accepted as the industry standard, and SendFree - not quite free if you want the emails to look right, but still inexpensive.

If you would like to go down this route and need some help and guidance, please contact me through my site Alloy CRM site where I help businesses increase sales, revenue and profit.
http://alloycrm.aweber.com
http://www.sendfree.com/affref/105448/

Bangers 'n Mash and the Internet

Pay Per Click advertising, through Internet search engines, still remains a bit of a mystery to many business owners. Not just the mechanics of making them work, but the core of why they can be so cost effective.

I always try to make things simple with real world analogies. So here goes.

Imagine you are a butcher specialising in rather exclusive sausages.

I'm delving into a personal fantasy here. My favorite meal, you may be horrified to know, is bangers and mash and my favorite 'restaurant' is a cafe tucked under the M40 flyover on Portobello Road in West London. They always have a choice of 6 or 7 unusual and delicious sausages, several mash combinations and few different varieties of gravy to finish it off. Absolutely superb!

So, back to the story, you're a butcher specialising in unusual sausages and you want to open a shop. But rather than opening your shop in the general high street you choose an unusual cul-de-sac. Here EVERY shop is a Butcher specialising in sausages.

Is that commercial suicide? Not necessarily.

The good news is that every person who wanders into that street is a potential customer, they just wouldn't be there otherwise. The bad news is that they may only buy from one shop.

But there's further good news. You will only pay your costs of being there on footfall through your door. In other words you will only pay when you actually attract someone into your shop and potentially sell some sausages.

So your job as a butcher is to make your shop window the most appealling and attractive in the street.

You can count the number of people who walk past your window and those who walk through the door. You can also measure the number that actually buy and how much they spend against that charge you pay for everyone that walks in.

Armed with those ratios and cost per sale, you can change your shop window as many times as you like to test the effect on your ratios and ultimately your profit.

But you're not restricted to how many times you change the window, so you can refine it constantly to maximise the results. Unlike many other forms of advertising, you are only paying for a defined result - someone walking through your door.

There's one more important aspect too. There will undoubtedly be some spots on the street that 'perform' better than others. If your shop window is effective in getting larger percentages of passers by into the shop, you'll be promoted to a better spot.

But you can short cut that promotion too by changing the amount you are prepared to pay each time someone walks in your door to try and secure the shop position you want. The more you are prepared to pay the better your position.

If you're still with me, I'll relate that to Pay Per Click advertising and make our butcher an internet business.

Your cul-de-sac is the phrase that potential sausage buyers might type into a search engine such as Google. They might type 'Wild Boar Sausages'. Your shop can sit in any number cul-de-sacs of key phrases that may be typed in by sausage buyers.

Your shop window is the 4 line advert that appears on the right hand side of the search results page. How good your ad' is determines the number of people who walk through your door into your website - the point at which you pay.


The final part, the one that decides if the project is worth while, is how effective the inside of the shop is in getting customers to buy. Are your potential customers seeing what they expected after being attracted in by your window display, or do they see Beef and Lamb joints with the sausages tucked right at the back of the shop out of site? That's the landing page on your website that you send visitors to.


Pay Per Click (PPC) can, if managed correctly, be a very effective and productive way to increase sales and profits. It should be considered alongside more traditional forms of advertising. Once you've tasted it's success you may find that your advertising spend will be reviewed in the light of it's results.


If you need help to make your website produce profit through Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising contact me at Alloy CRM.

A simple guide to website ranking with links

One of the key factors influencing how your site is indexed, and ranked, in the search engines is that of inbound links.

These are hyperlinks to pages on your site from other sites on the web. The basic theory is that the more links you have, the higher the value of your own site. Why? Because the search engines will assume that, if all those other people think your site is interesting enough to link to, then it must be important.

That was the premise a few years back, but sadly that assumption was abused by the darker side of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). They set up thousands of sites that were just 'Link Farms'. Pages and pages of listings with links to other sites. The more links you had on these sites, the better value you appeared to have, thus skewing the listing results.

Google got smart to this idea and, in an attempt to reduce the effect, they introduced a system of ranking each page it indexed. It's ranking process included a host of factors but was mainly designed to weed out the Link Farms. In fact sites that were/are still found to be listed on these sites are often penalised heavily and their own indexing can be severely impaired making it difficult to appear in any of the results listings.

So let's go back to the beginning. Inbound links are important, but they have to be carefully chosen and prepared links.

Here are the three key factors you should consider:

1: What is the Page Rank (PR) of the page and site that will show the link? The higher the PR the better as it seen as an important site and it's outbound links are valued higher too. Not only that but it will 'feed' some of it's high ranking across to your page as a bonus.

2: Is the site relevant to yours? As an example let's say your site was about pet products. If you had a link on a site with heaps of information all about dogs - that would make sense to Google and be valued. A link on a dating site would be seen as totally irrelevant and virtually ignored.

3. Use good 'Anchor Text'. Having a hyperlink to your pet product site showing as www.petproducts.co.uk on that dog information site is not so effective, and meaningful, as having the hyperlinked text saying 'Buy dog baskets, leads and dog food'. Google sees and understands the relationship between the wording on the information site, the anchor text and that of your site - so it will value the link higher.

So to summarise, links to your site are good, but not all links. Be careful about accepting offers of links, especially if they are asking you to pay. Take time to consider those key factors before you commit.

Finally there is the issue of reciprocal links - the 'You show me yours and I'll show you mine' of the internet world.

You may be offered a link to your site in return for a link to theirs. If you accept this and the link to them is shown on, for example, page 2 of your site and the link to you on their site also points to your page 2, it will easily seen as reciprocal and not a 'vote' of confidence in your or your website, therefore valued less.

Turn that around based on the 3 key factors earlier in this blog. If the link from them is on a page of information about dogs, the anchor text reflects that and the page on your site which it points to is about dogs that's good.

So in return, work something on the same principal but using different pages, perhaps about cats. That way the links are less likely to be seen as reciprocal.

I hope that all makes sense, but you can always talk to me about how to maximise your website profits at Alloy CRM, Sales & Marketing Strategists

The Effects of Facebook?

There have been a couple of articles in the Daily Mail recently about the effects of the internet, specifically social networking sites, on us and children in particular.


The first was suggesting that social networking sites could produce cancer. At first glance you would probably say rubbish. However we need to dig a little deeper beyond the media headline hype.

Our bodies have evolved to be a socially interactive animal. Devoid of that element in our life can cause mental, and physical, problems. This is well documented by prisoners and hostages over the years. On the surface, social interaction via sites such as Facebook fulfills that requirement in our life. But does our body understand that?

Is our body hard-wired to determine the required social interaction as being face to face where it can receive not only words but also facial expressions and body gestures? The internet removes all of that. How many times have you misinterpreted an email, got the wrong end of the stick and reacted inappropriately?

So if you take the case of someone who's life revolves around the internet and they just don't meet anyone, how is the body going to react?


Dr David Mickel, the GP who discovered the possible cause of ME, believes that the body generates symptoms, and sometimes real illnesses, in an attempt to force a change in circumstances to rectify the life balance.

So if that's the case, maybe the theory of Facebook causing cancer may not be so far fetched.


Thankfully, for the vast majority of us, social networking sites are just a relatively small part of our life and we live, most of the time, in the real world.

The second article was a front page headline suggesting that the same social networking sites are causing our children to have remarkably short attention spans. Well if you've got this far down my blog you certainly don't suffer from that!


In this case I think we need to look at the wider world that our children are brought up in. It's a world of short, sharp messages and multi-tasking.

Most informative programes on television are broken into micro-segments with several themes running in tandem throughout the show. Flipping backwards and forwards between them with quick updates to remind you what's happening. I find that type of programming quite frustrating as I'm used to the traditional format but it must be popular as they all use it now.


Written media has taken the same direction too. The popular press and magazines consist of snippets supported by photographic images, almost a comic style, with no real substantial essay type material.

And then, of course, there is texting. Rapid, word truncated, conversations that are conducted whilst doing something else.

So is Facebook causing the problem? I doubt it. I think it's more about the new world we live in - good or bad is up to you to decide.

If you want help to make use of the internet to produce profit for your business contact me at Alloy CRM

What's your page rank and what is it's influence?

The search engine Google works hard to identify the websites that it believes would be the best option to show at the top of the listing when we type something into their search box.

Google takes loads of different factors into consideration to determine that all important list. Bottom line is that Google wants to keep us using their search engine above all others and rightly believes that, if it offers the best and most useful sites for us to visit, we'll keep coming back.

As a guide to how important Google thinks a site is, they have a Page Rank system. Ranging from 1 to 10, with 10 being the top, each indexed web page - note I said page, not site, is allocated a ranking number.

You can see the Page Rank for any site quite easily. First you need to install the Google toolbar for your web browser here: http://pack.google.com/intl/en-gb/pack_installer.html?hl=en-gb
By default the Page Rank (PR) tool probably won't be on there, but you can add it in easily by right clicking on your newly installed Google Toolbar.

With that done every web page you visit will show the Page Rank. You will find that lots of pages have a PR of less than 2, maybe even 0, which means that they are unlikely to show up in Googles search listing other than for very unique phrases such as your own business name if it's unusual enough.

At the other end of the scale are sites like bbc.co.uk which has a PR of 9 - even they can't make 10! The difference between each rank increases enormously as you go up the scale. So you might be able to move from 2 to 3 reasonably easily, but the move from 6 to 7 is enormous.

So how can you influence your own PR and stand a better chance of ranking better?

Three key factors really:
1: Make sure that Google understands what your site is about by the careful selection and use of keywords throughout your content.
2. Relevant content, more relevant content and even more relevant content! The more there is on your site the more Google will absorb and value your site accordingly.
3. Links into your site from other sites. The higher the PR of those linking sites the better. So if you could get a link to you from bbc.co.uk that would benefit you tremendously.

I've been fairly simplistic about how the PR system works and can be influenced. There are a whole host of factors to be taken into consideration and I may well delve into those a little deeper in another post.

If you want to improve your standing in the PR stakes give me a call or click here to improve your website profit

Alloy CRM helps businesses to increase sale, revenue and profit

How are you selling?

Sorry to keep harping back to this again but I just think it's so important - especially in the current climate.

I guess that in your business you will have, or do, one of these things:
1. Have a retail shop
2. Have a trade counter and display
3. Have a demonstration area or showroom
4. Have an exhibition stand for trade shows
5. Have a presentation you use either one to one or at events
6. Used a designer to create your ads and leaflets

If you are serious about growing and increasing profit through sales you will have spent a great deal of time and care making sure that these are right.

By that I mean you would take care to make sure that your products and services are presented in a way that fits the environment and client you are targeting.

If you were looking to buy a Bentley you would expect the showroom to have a certain ambiance and appear upmarket. Buying produce from a farmers market you expect it to look fresh and presented well but may feel cheated if it was all laid in cardboard boxes that seemed to come from a wholesaler rather than directly from the fields. Would you man your exhibition stand in jeans and tee shirt if you were hoping to sell to business leaders?

We are all influenced significantly not just by the product but also it's presentation. That presentation needs to reflect, and tap into, the likely reason for buying.

It is said that there are 3 reasons people buy:
Greed
Fear
Desire

I have yet to see ad ad for a Bentley parked outside a roadside layby cafe surrounded by white vans and lorries. It's more likely to be on a beautiful country road, outside a stately home or the Savoy hotel, building a desire to be part of that lifestyle.

Where am I going with this?

Fire up your web browser and look at your own website.

Does it have the right ambiance? Does it look how a buyer would expect it to look?

Help your customers understand what they will gain, save or avoid by using your product and you will have a better chance of getting the result you want from your website.

Maybe you need to look at your other advertising, not just your website, in the same way too?

If you need help with sales have a look at our Sales Accelerator
If you need help with your wesite take a look at our Website Profit Program

What make a website a popular website?

With billions of websites out there all trying to attract your attention, it might be interesting to look at a few really successful sites to understand what might make them so popular.

Now these are just my views on these sites and there are probably a whole load of other factors too, but here goes.

bbc.co.uk
Enormous breadth and depth of information/content

youtube.com
Is this one of the greatest entertaining/time wasting sites ever?

gocompare.com
Saving money is on many peoples agenda normally. It's probably on everyones agenda in the current economic crisis

facebook.com
Another great time waster but the interaction factor just makes it so absorbing

'Adult' Sites
Exciting and teasing (so I'm told)


Now lets summarise that -

Informative
Entertaining
Money Saving
Interactive
Exciting

Do you think it would be worth making your website good enough to be described in one, or a few, of those terms? I bet if you did, it would be far more successful and earn you a lot more money than it is now.

Try it.

Alloy CRM has a Website Profit Program designed for small businesses that will increase profit.

Internet sales preditions for 2009 UP!

A report in eMarketer confidently predicts an increase in internet sales of about 4% in the US. Now that's not much but against high street drops of up to 10% it seems like good news to me.

Additionally a survey by ATG also in the US at the back end of last year, in the midst of the downturn, showed that purchasers would be turning to the internet to both research their requirements and actually buy where appropriate more than ever before. One of the triggers, along with price, for a purchase was no cost delivery.

So what should we take from this?

Well, there is no doubt now that EVERY business should be represented on the internet. But more than that, it needs to show your business in a professional and trustworthy way otherwise those potential customers will just head straight back to the search listings to find someone else. We know they are spending, and making purchasing decisions, via the internet - you need to make sure your are getting your fair share of those sales.

If you need help to make your website work and produce profit, I offer a Website Profit Program designed to help and guide you.

Alloy CRM is a Sales & Marketing Strategy consultancy that helps businesses find new ways of increasing Sales, Revenue and Profit.

New Year - New Revenue?

New Year - New Revenue? What can you do differently in 2009 that could significantly improve your revenue and profit?

Here's just a few ideas:

• Look back through your customer list and see who hasn't bought from you in the last 12 months. Contact them, find out why and rebuild the relationship if they are still potential customers.
  
• Check back to see who you pitched for business but lost out. Try re-packaging your offer in a different way and contact them.
  
• Build a follow up program for everyone who buys from you. Use that to maintain contact, make your customer realise you care and probably gain some referrals and testimonials into the bargain.
  
• Don't just carry on with the same old advertising. Be bold and look for something different. Try different publications, divert some of your spend to internet marketing and review your website to make sure it isn't losing you potential customers.
  
• Be more targeted about looking for new customers. Look at your customer base and see which industry sector and size profile produces the best results for you, find out where those sort of businesses hang out and join in with them.
  
• Try networking. There are plenty of events around each with it's own style and visitor profile. It might feel scary the first time but it's worth the effort. Networkers love to help each other and you could well create some useful contacts.

All the best to you for 2009 - may it be your most profitable yet.

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.

The Next Generation Websites

I remember saying, a good few years ago, that the internet would end up like electricity. It would just be piped into every home and business and we wouldn't be using the 'Internet' as such.

It would be just part of every appliance we use in our every day life. Your fridge and microwave would be seamlessly web enabled. Most people who I said that to gave me that strange look that suggested that I lived on another planet.

Well perhaps I wasn't as mad as they thought. I read today an article about Web v3.0.

You may already be conversant with the term Web v2.0. If you haven't heard it then you are certain to have used it. It's the label given to the development of the internet that gave us interactivity - Facebook, Myspace, Wikipedia, YouTube and ecademy. Web v2.0 is that ability to interact with others online and influence through commenting and reviewing.

That was a major step forward in our use of the internet which had previously been simply an information and research tool to view only.

Now Web v3.0 is on it's way. It is the seamless integration of web services and information with every other means of communication and device.

One of the examples went as follows:

A business contact has just rolled into town and called you his mobile phone to tell you he's stopping overnight in a local hotel and is suggesting that you might want to meet up over dinner.

The call from the mobile is already logged through GPS so you know which hotel he's in. A couple of presses on the touch screen of your phone gives a list of nearby restaurants. A further click on your restaurant choice offers menu selections and available booking times. Once booked your car satnav receives the location and route in readiness. Meanwhile your friend gets the same but as walking directions for his mobile phone.

At the same time your fridge has just texted you to let you know that you are low on semi skimmed milk and then offers a new recipe that you might like with a list of ingredients - all of which can be added to your regular on-line supermarket order, due for delivery tomorrow, with one click.

A step too far into the future? It may not be.

Technology such as this relies upon integration of information systems. Currently that information resides on PC's and servers. We have already seen the first wave of internet based systems such as Google docs - the online Microsoft Office look-a-like and more on-line applications that are no longer reliant upon a specific PC or server are just around the corner.

I watched James May's 20th Century program the other night and he told the story of the guy who took us from a multitude of electricity power stations, each with its own voltage and wall plug configuration, to the unified national grid system.

That allowed us to have 'electricity enabled' devices such as vacuum cleaners, plug in electric fires and eventually the TV.

That was electricity's Web v3.0.

Enjoy your 20th century PC - I'm not sure it will be around for much longer!

If you need any help and advice on your bussiness use of the web Alloy CRM offers website profit programs to ensure you achieve Return on Investment