A newspaper headline is written in large letters, and is supposed to indicate the content of the article. Front page headlines are the most important, as they need to be eye catching enough to snare the interest of passers-by. You can probably see where I’m going with this. Our own company sells services to help (mainly) software developers increase their … Read More
Time to say goodbye to Jakob Nielsen?
If you haven’t yet heard of Jakob Nielsen, I can only assume that you have memory issues. Welcome to my world. Jakob Nielsen has been described as the guru, king and world’s leading expert on website usability, and even the stoic Financial Times describe him as “perhaps the best-known design and usability guru on the Internet“. Perhaps. So it is … Read More
Google AdWords: The machine is broken. Please fix it.
On April 10th 2009 we wrote a blog entry entitled New AdWords Ads Increasingly Getting Stuck in the ‘Under Review’ Black Hole: “It seems like every new ad I create takes longer and longer to actually begin running. Depending on the client, and which AdWords GUI format they’re using, the new ads assume the label of ‘under review’ or ‘Active’, … Read More
Why won’t website visitors do what I want?
Pulling-in targeted visitors to your website is relatively easy. There’s Google AdWords, AdCenter, press releases, twitter, blogs and hundreds of other opportunities for jumping in front of the right people and waving your arms around so they don’t forget you. Getting them to stay, however, is more difficult. Many small and medium-sized companies make the mistake of too many assumptions. … Read More
Embrace the disposable customer
In days gone by, it was considered good business practice to treat your customers well. They were handled promptly, courteously and with genuine respect. Thank goodness those days over. Today’s customers are disposable. As soon as their credit card details have been processed we can cut them off, forget about them, and ignore them when they need our help. Why? … Read More
Plagiarism, theft and business – why are so many companies stealing our content?
We all work hard to create and fine-tune our website content. And an unfortunate reality is that there are a lot of people out there who are quite happy to steal our content for their own purposes. Take this page on our own website, actually I should rephrase that. Take a look at our Google AdWords Management page: In particular: … Read More
Twitter is dying (again) – my first New year’s prediction
WebProNews are reporting that new Twitter accounts are on the decline for the fourth month on the run. At risk of sounding extremely old-fashioned, Twitter are yet to reveal how they’re actually going to make money. Yet if or when they do finally start producing revenue, there’s little doubt that only a very small percentage of their user base will … Read More
Optimize at your own peril
The word “Optimize” implies a sense that it is a worthwhile or a good idea. For example: Financial optimization – sounds like a good idea. Search engine optimization – we know that we should all be doing this. However, optimized ad rotation is not a good idea when it comes to AdWords. You may have noticed when setting up an … Read More
Is Google wave only a ripple?
I recently asked for a Google Wave invite through my Twitter account, and had a surprising number of people send them my way. Thanks to all who responded. But I have to admit to being disappointed. While I haven’t spent that much time in Wave, from what I’ve seen so far, I’m less than impressed. Firstly I’m baffled. I really … Read More
Don’t forget about the AdWords category exclusions
Hidden within your AdWords account, there is a little known section called the Site and Category Exclusion tool. Within this section you can exclude specific sites or categories of sites from displaying your ads on the content network. Adding site exclusions has been around for some time, and they can be added from within the AdWords Editor as well as … Read More
