On Internet Business

Which is the best mobile app store?

Posted by Michael under Uncategorized

Apps, or applications, for mobiles are a fast growing market – the paid-for apps market includes a vast range of services from maps, recipes, clothing size convertors and train times to complex games and powerful business applications. Although iPhone is currently seen as king of apps, there are apps stores for most mobile phones and a range of apps from free, widely applicable apps made on standard shareware through to paid-for apps system-built for a specific phone.

 
Apple

Launched July 2008

Total apps on offer - 122 featured apps but thousands more to be found via search.

At the top level, the apps are divided into ‘feature’ categories like ‘going out’ ‘Moms and Dads’ ‘cooks’. There’s some overlap in categories, so you might find what you want in ‘keeping current’ which has a stock market tracker and rather than ‘work’ which has a call maker ‘idialUdrive’ which seems as useful for recreation as for work. Then there’s a separate dedicated site: Apps for Enterprise &Small Business which contains thousands of business applications.

Very easy to use, in fact it’s almost to easy to download an app! Double-click by mistake and you’re into download mode …

Crisp, well-sized images and bite-sized information make this site a pleasure to browse, and because there’s no issue with compatibility (apps for Apple’s iPhone only) the navigation is clean and swift.
 

Nokia

Launched May 2009

Total apps on offer: over 2000

Offers star ratings for apps and a simple search system but the boxy little images to accompany each app are not as enticing as the Apple site images.  Displaying in list form improves the appearance of this site.

It’s well worth checking out reviews of any apps here as several listed on the site have such awful reports on the app as to make you run away screaming!

Android

Total apps on offer: several hundred, many more free than paid for

Hmmm – no search function. When you hover over an app the full information appears above it, but without either a search function or a way of seeing reviews or how other people have rated the app, you’re buying blind. Nice range of free apps as well as paid for ones, though.
 

Blackberry

Launched April 2009

Total apps on offer: thousands

Really good categories, although there’s some blurring around business and finance, for example. Then there’s a series of sort functions, by popularity and price, that really allow you to refine your search. Massive amounts of text information and screenshots make this the site that gives most information before purchase, but actually, it’s a bit difficult to read through and a simpler system with key features and larger text size would make it more pleasant to browse.
 

Getjar

Total apps on offer: thousands

Surprisingly appealing site, with a good range of apps, although all the business ones are listed under ‘productivity’.  Has a star rating system backed up by a vast number of reviews, making this perhaps the most user-fed site of them all. Not a place for the serious business user but definitely worth browsing for more lightweight apps.

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Affiliate Marketing in a Recession

Posted by Michael under Affiliate Marketing, Business Growth

If you’re involved in Affiliate Marketing (AM) which is where your business ‘rewards’ affiliates for each visitor (or preferably customer) brought  to your site by an affiliate’s marketing efforts, the latest economic news confirms that this is a good time to review your strategy.

The continuing recession in the UK means that sticking with what you’ve been doing before is not likely to be the best option for your business and its long-term growth. There are several steps all affiliate marketing people should be taking:

1) Review the Return On Investment (ROI) on everything you do – not just AM but all aspects of your spend – does the Pay Per Click (PPC) income exceed that spent on direct advertising? Do you know whether affiliates are returning more or less in the current economic climate – and do you know whether refining your campaign could increase your return?
2) Examine Search Engine Optimisation related to AM too. How long does it take to get a new site profitable and would that investment be better spent in more AM? It can take up to six months to monetise a new site, and that’s a long lag when cash is tight.
3) Reconsider what business you are in – the hardest hit industries in the current recession appear to be housing, consumer electronics, high-end furniture and foreign travel – but many of these businesses can be rebranded. For example, a personal computer or smartphone allows a consumer to do more comparison shopping, therefore saving money, or to apply for jobs as they appear on site, so they are at the front of the queue if they’re seeking employment. This moves a computer from ‘consumer electronics’ to ‘personal finance assistant’ and looking at your AM allows you to rebrand your goods as those things that people still need when they are cutting back on expenses.
4) Consider your support network – which is the first thing that tends to go when times are hard. Who has helped you in the past? Who can you help along the way? Having resources to support you and people you support as they start out means that you are in a more robust position: you hear good and bad news earlier, you get input from a wide range of people and if things go horribly wrong you have a career path and a bunch of people who can prove you were worth working with. If things go brilliantly well, you’ve got a great bunch of mates to have celebrate with – in either case, it’s easier to start your network now, in the tough times, because faint-hearted folk will be leaving all forms of entrepreneurship and that means the strong and visionary will be staying in the game, and those are the ones you want to associate with.
5) Make contacts work for you – think about buying in email lists, using social networking groups and link building and all forms of networking that can be converted to solid contacts to help you keep moving forward.

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12 Top Tips on Link Building.

Posted by Michael under Search

Link building is one of the most challenging and important tasks required for building a successful website. So what practical steps can you take to build links to your website ?

1. Person to Person Networking: Even with the explosion of social media it is worth remembering that links are created by people wanting to interact with content or other people. So if someone you know has a website or blog talk to them about how you  can link your websites.
2. Recommendations:If some does something well (a service,a product, a presentation….. ) tell others. Good Kharma comes back to you.
3. Link Bait: Can be risky. Create a controversial story to get people talking in order to get links to your blog or web site. Beware,  you can acquire links AND the wrath of others with a poor or poorly thought out startegy.
4. Directory Submissions: Although now widely discounted, there are still directories worth submitting to like DMOZ.
5. Competitor Analysis: Look at your competitors. Who links to their sites. If they link to them should they also link to you.  ?
6. Press Releases: Submit to services like PRweb. Results may be short lived or it could create longer term links if the press release is interesting enough !
7. Article Submission: Although declining in popularity, it is still an option.
8. Guest Posts: Blog on someone elses site or get someone else to blog on yours.
9. Submit story to online media: If you have a great story perhaps the Guardian, Telegraph or BBC will pick it up.
10. Share ideas and information: Got something genunily useful get it out on the web.
11. Break News First: Know something first, get it out on the web to get links.
12. Buy Links: This comes with a huge health warning. It is a tactic that Google will not tolerate  At a recent internet conference, I heard link brokers described in the same way as drug dealers. They are not interested in the impact of the links they have sold. Bad links will get your website penalised by Google and will damage you web business. Although it may well be a common practise with many major e-commerce sites buying into this strategy. It is not something I would recommend or get involved in doing.   

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The value of customer care to online retailers

Posted by Michael under Online Retail

Online retailers have limited opportunities to impress their customers with their service – but does it matter?

• Yes – customer service isn’t just about solving problems, it’s about building relationships, the chance to upsell related and valued additional items and to correct any misapprehensions the customer may have. It’s also a way of establishing a benchmark for what your customers need to know online that you aren’t currently telling them, or to deal with fast-moving situations, like postal strikes, that might otherwise adversely affect your business.
• No – if things go well, the customer never needs to explore how customer service operates. If your goods are easily and sensibly displayed, with enough information to answer customer queries, your order system is simple and your delivery process is fast and efficient, there should be no reason for people to have to call you. If they don’t have questions that aren’t answered by your website and they don’t have problems after placing their order, they never get involved with customer service personnel.

This view is borne out be a piece of research undertaken by Loudhouse Research which suggests that where online retail is concerned, in the phase leading up to a purchase, both email and phone are overrated as part of the customer experience. Almost half the online shoppers who responded to the survey said that they prefer to find information about a retailer’s products themselves rather than contact the company. Only 19% favoured an email approach to a online retailer and only 18% used, or were interested in, phone support.

But there could be other reasons that customers don’t appear to value customer service. Another finding of the research was that ‘multichannel consistency is a big problem’ and if you don’t know what multichannel support is, relax – it simply means the variety of ways that a customer could get an answer to a question; so for any company this could be by sending an email, making a phone call, using a chat system, using a webform on the company website or writing a letter. Slightly under 25% of the shoppers surveyed said that they received consistent responses from agents across the various customer care channels. In other words, when they asked a question by phone, the answer they got was different to if they asked a question by email. If your customer service is inconsistent, then it’s not surprising that people don’t use it!

Because the relationship with customers is less personal, there are things that online retailers need to learn to do better than actual retailers:

1) Ensure you have simple navigation around your site, swift download times, instant access to information and good ways of sharing customer reviews and responses with other customers
2) Make sure all your channels have the same training and same information so they offer the same solutions to problems. And make sure those channels are swift and responsive.
3) Build in trust factors such as secure payment systems and information about how stored data can and cannot be used as well as sending confirmation emails, information about order progress and either email or telephone follow ups on a certain number of customers to ensure you learn from their experiences – but don’t call them customer satisfaction surveys because that implies that you expect the customer to be satisfied and your efforts to be satisfactory, which is simply a way of saying you’ve prejudged the situation and you’re sure you’re doing everything right!

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Creating iPhone apps to generate business

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Mobile Search

When Google announced the addition of a ‘businesses’ layer to Google Earth they essentially revealed that this is business advertising for the iPhone. iPhone users can now locate businesses at the push of a button and by clicking on related icons, they are given additional information  such as  telephone numbers, reviews and comments from other customers that have been found on social media sites like twitter or facebook, hours of opening and so on.

So should your business have an iPhone app? The first question is iPhone or android, or both. Creating an application for both mobile systems is obviously going to be twice as expensive and as the iPhone currently has more than 72% of the mobile search market, you may want to start with the big player. 

In which case – Apple’s own development centre tells you (almost) everything you need to know to create an Iphone application and what isn’t covered by Apple can be explored at Smashing’s one stop guide to getting iPhone apps right.

But there are other ways of accessing the iPhone’s business capacity and Webmonkey offers an alternative way to approach the iPhone revolution.

But should iPhones feature within your business as well as being a platform on which to advertise your company? Zdnet points out that the proliferation of iPhones in the office could be very bad news indeed. The problems could be complex where corporate security and confidentiality are concerned. The risks are:

1) The iPhone is an operating system platform that is not licensed to alternative hardware suppliers, meaning there are limited backup options
2) Design deficiencies that can increase support costs (for example, no removable battery)
3) Currently available from limited sources in both the USA and UK, so that if you’re not happy with customer service from your supplier, you may only have a choice of one (or no) other suppliers to work with.
4) Cost of each iPhone which may become necessary to equip your team.

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Lead Generation – how to do it

Posted by Michael under Business Growth

A lot of businesses struggle to integrate the online part of lead generation with the traditional part that came from meeting people, cold calling people or generating lead referrals through referrals.  This is tragic, because online lead generation is quite possibly the most powerful tool in existence and even the smallest business can benefit from it.

To master the lead generation business, you need to use the principles from traditional lead generation and turn them into business online:

Even though it’s internet-based, the relationship you’re creating is one between individuals and your potential buyer has to have trust, respect and liking to give you money.

This means that you have to convert them from a total stranger to you and your business, into a confident purchaser and the way to do this is via these five tips:

Make it simple

Leads are usually generated through some kind of form – and that form needs to be as simple as possible while still giving you all the information you need. Don’t add extra fields for people to fill in (occupation or age, for example) unless you absolutely have to obtain that information. Many potential leads will look at the amount of information they have to input and turn away from any too complicated or long-winded form

Make it fast

Keep complicated graphics and other slow to load details for your other pages – if a form takes more than a couple of seconds to load, you’ll lose your potential customer: there are plenty of other places for them to go, and usually if they are working online, they want to get things done in a hurry.

Give something in return

Perhaps you offer to supply a quotation within 24 hours, or say that every pair of jeans ordered online will come with a free belt, or perhaps say that everybody who contacts you asking for winter travel insurance will get a free downloadable map of the ski resorts, whatever you say you are giving, make sure you give it. As a test, I completed email forms for seventeen firms claiming to offer a quotation to install radiators in a house. Ten came back with quotations, three said they needed more information (two rang, one emailed) and four never replied at all …

Be available in a variety of ways

Sometimes people want to pick up the phone and call you – make sure that they can.  Perhaps you need to have a public face at trade events to allow business to business customers to get to know you in a business environment. Make sure that people know that you are a real business, not just an online presence.

Consider who to dump

Every business has a few time-wasting clients: those who are difficult to deal with, pay late, demand ridiculous discounts, don’t refer other people or who complain constantly about your service or product while still using you again and again.  It’s hard to let these people go, but consider how much time you spend servicing them and whether that time couldn’t be better spent generating new leads with better manners and, maybe, deeper pockets. Sometimes letting go of the time-wasters can allow you to invest in new clients who really boost your business.

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Top business sites for entrepreneurs

Posted by Michael under Business Growth

Despite the turbulent economic conditions, there’s a range of powerful and inexpensive resources that mean it’s never been easier to set up a new business. From corporate design through to project management and monetisation of brand, there are sites that cost very little and help your business begin well and remain buoyant.  Here are a few of the best and what they have to offer.

We all know that the appearance of our business really counts, especially when we’re trying to establish ourselves in the marketplace. So the right designer can be key to getting your corporate image perfect – 99designs takes the risk out of this process by using your business brief to set up a design contest where designers compete to make the best design for your needs. All you need to do is know what you want designed and how much you’re prepared to pay for it. You choose your favourite and then pay the designer the agreed fee – they send you their completed design and copyright to the original art work. Couldn’t be easier!

Basecamp is a project management system that runs online. It’s collaborative and while it’s mainly recognised by web developers as a key tool, it makes a good project management system for any company.

It’s a very simple system to use and it provides file storage, as well as a way of communicating with your clients who may not be as good at online communication as you are. It’s got a simple interface which is quick to learn your way around and it makes time reporting on a project incredibly simple. The one real downside to Basecamp is that you can’t set specific deadlines other than by including them in the body or text of your task – it would be great if it had a ‘deadline’ tab like the ‘time’ tab, but that aside, it’s an excellent project management tool and prevents new businesses having to invest in setting up their own project management systems at great cost.

Affilitech specialises in affiliate marketing for SMEs – they say that they can help a small business ‘build an army’ of marketing partners who then actively refer that business in the marketplace and get rewarded for doing it. They also design promotions and train your team to work with their systems and technology. This is a great way of generating business for any company that would expect to spend money on traditional media advertising and is a good idea for businesses that: sell goods or services online; run promotions; rely on referrals from others.

This company offers to meet a technology platform needs and to provide ongoing business services and consultation. It has a simple, cost-predictable monthly charging model so that you don’t end up out of pocket without realising it. Venda’s key area is eCommerce –they have a team dedicated to finding simple speedy solutions to eCommerce problems. After implementation of the technology, there is a support and service infrastructure of over 200 people who work with you to boost your return on investment.  There is a guaranteed 24/7 help desk too.

But not all business can be done online – there are some areas where you just have to have real paper, and signatures in real ink: Simply-docs is the answer when you need legal and business document templates – for a fee it provides you with more than 1250 documents plus updates and additions that reflect changes in law or business trading conditions in the UK.

And a place to watch is: buildabrand – an online branding system that allows entrepreneurs, businesses and individuals to create, manage and apply instant and personalised branding to their business. Currently in closed beta testing, this could be a radical tool for business growth and brand promotion.

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Making Pay Per Click work for you

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Paid Search

There are good and bad sides to pay per click marketing. If you’re new to the PPC world or need a refresher in how to do it well, here are the good and bad parts of PPC.

PPC explained

It’s a simple concept – Google, Yahoo and other search engines and search services will offer listings on a bid basis. These listings appear either above, or to the right of, the ‘natural’ search results which are generated by a complicated blend of website keywords, link popularity and other elements. Each search engine has a algorithm that calculates natural search results but pay per click results always appear, regardless of the quality of your site or links, as long as you’ve bid enough for the keyword that generates the search results.

Depending on how much you pay, you will be the first ranking site in the paid listings or further down. Obviously, the big brands can pay more to make sure they always hog the top spot on popular words, so it’s worth finding search terms that are relevant to your business and used in searches.

When somebody clicks on a pay per click listing, they land at your site, and then you are charged the amount that you bid for your listing. So if you bid 10 pence per click on ‘shrubs’ and 100 people click on your pay per click listing, the search engine (or a PPC service that you’re using) will charge you £10.00

Obviously then, you need to ensure your bids generate enough income to cover their charges and then some! You don’t want to just be servicing a PPC campaign, you want it to generate substantial income.

Good reasons to use PPC

The good stuff is very good indeed:

1) It can drive a lot of traffic to your site
2) It happens in as little as a few minutes – unlike natural searches which can take a while and require you to do a lot of work on SEO and content to reach the top of the rankings, your bidding can put you top and drive traffic within half an hour of signing up
3) You have to write a good advert, but that’s easier than writing a similarly good website
4) PPC campaigns can be adjusted swiftly – it can take weeks for natural searches to adjust to new content, but a PPC campaign can be tweaked in a couple of minutes
5) If you are selling goods or services that people can buy the second they arrive, like insurance, gifts, an appointment with a therapist … anything that sells immediately out of an online storefront, PPC generates immediate income
6) Using PPC as a focused tool for a short term campaign can generate more income than anything else.

PPC goes wrong for reasons that are not always understood by businesses but the bad stuff is avoidable if you understand it:

1) PPC is a risk and should be treated as one, not as a guaranteed reward system
2) If you don’t manage it well, you can spend a lot of money on creating a high number of visitors but still end up without income generation
3) Getting involved in automatic bid management (as you can opt for with several systems) can mean that every time a competitor bids up, you do too, without necessarily knowing it’s happening, and that means you can end up paying a lot more than you intended
4) Return on investment can be hard to understand if you don’t devote enough time to exploring the analytics you get back, or if your service doesn’t provide good enough analytics to understand what works, when, and why
5) PPC doesn’t seem to drive long term brand recognition as well as natural search does.

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Social Media Revolution – fact or hype?

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Social Media

This video makes some pretty big claims for social media and the way it will affect the business world.

80% of companies where, and of what kind, are using LinkedIn to find staff? I don’t think it’s mines or pet-shops or garden landscapers!

Wikipedia is more accurate than the Encyclopaedia Britannica? I doubt that’s true – although Wiki information may be more up to date, the pernicious tendency for people to alter wiki pages without fact-checking, or to post misinformation deliberately means that it can’t be relied on for accurate information. The SEOmoz blog highlighted the problem very well last year.

But 96% of Generation Y joining at least one social media network is a real kicker – if they are going to outnumber baby boomers next year, is your business reaching them, and do you even know what is being said about you on those networks? Do you have a strategy for measuring commentary about your brand, and a system to try and rectify bad information when it gets put out there?

What about those 300 million users of Qzone? Is that kind of untapped market of interest to you? If so, how do you tap it?

If 34% of bloggers post commentary on brands and products, what could they be saying about you? Do you know the key bloggers in your business and understand their purpose? Are you even on their radar? A quarter of online searches produce user-generated content. That means 25% of what people find out about those brands is personal – like word of mouth – and we tend to listen more to personal commentary than anything else. If somebody says they loathe what you do, it has much more effect on you than being told a certain behaviour is not considered generally acceptable. And so it is with brand information – if blogger X says your product is great, that has more effect on people’s thinking than if you do.

A social media driven economy will be more personal, more reactive and more interactive. Those Generation Y users will expect to give feedback not to you, but to the world, and you will be expected to respond.

Are you ready?

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EO Barcelona University is Over

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Leadership

As I travelled home having spent the last four days at EO barcelona unversity I reflect on what I experienced.

From Joe Duran and Verne Harnish I was able to decide on what my personal objectives and priorities are and how to go about achieving them.

Dr. Mario Alonso Puig showed how physiological factors can have physicological effects on your body and leadership. I learnt by how having awareness can allow you overcome these issues.

Arun Abey showed that affluence doesn’t equal happiness and why you should never work purely for finacial gain. The suicide rate in western countries has risen despite the increase in affulence with the highest rate of depression and suicide is in corporate law.  He had an interesting take on the relationship between marriage and happiness. The biggest take away for me was that to stay happy and healthy, I need to work on projects that I am passionate about and enjoy.

The highlight of the weeks speakers was Nando Parrado. How can a person stay alive 72 days lost in the Andes mountains ? How can a person with no equipment and no experience scale mountains to get help for the rest of the survivors. This was the most moving and inspiring presentation I have ever heard. I didn’t think that it would have had such an impact but it did. The human mind can achieve the most incredibles feats. No matter what your goal if you truly decide you can achieve something you can do it. Nando chose to survive no matter what he had to do. He accepted the brutal reality of his situation and never gave up. Tears were visible as the audience stood and applauded his triumph in the midst of adversity.

Miguel Torres did a interesting corporate presentation, gave some useful business tips (and supplied some lovely wines).

The presentation I wish I had seen was Morten Lundwho was one of the founders of skype who had just blown over a 100 million euros on a failed business and who’s current financial situation had left him with insufficient money to pay for a taxi to the hotel.

Bill Treasurer a former member of the U.S. High Diving Team diver spoke about courage in the workplace. Bill despite his fear of heights completed 1,500 high dives from heights that went up to over 100 feet…sometimes on fire!

I was entertained and had exclusive EO only access to Gaudi designed Casa Batlló, the stunning Gothic Casa Llotja de Mar and listened to a choral concert at the Santa Maria del Mar. I spent time on the beach at Stiges, saw military jets and stunt planes fly past my window in the Red Bull Barcelona air race……..and I partied in to the small hours with a fantastic group on international entrepreneurs.

I learnt from the speakers and from peers and left with plans for my improved future.

What an amazing first EO university experience. Roll on  2010  EO universities in Orange County and Cape town.

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