The more observant or caffeinated of you will have already noticed that the ads displayed alongside Google’s search results have moved closer to their natural counterparts. On a lower resolution system you might not have noticed, but whereas the ads used to be on the far right side of my 1680 x 1050 screen, they are now nestled quite cosily … Read More
The Value of Post Purchase Follow-Up
My wife and I purchased a new car in December of last year. Prior to our purchase, we did a lot of research into what car would best fit our needs and provide us the most value. Once we decided on a specific make & model, we then began visiting different car dealers in order to find the best price … Read More
17 million Brits won’t use the internet?
The BBC News Magazine have a bewildering article on The internet’s conscientious objectors, that suggests that as many as 17 million people in Britain are not using the internet. “Non-users are “becoming less and less likely to want to be engaging with technology such as the internet,” says Ellen Helsper, who has been a leading researcher with the Oxford Internet … Read More
Greed, haste and desire kill sales
In an age when people’s private information has become a commodity, some companies have decided that it’s reasonable to force their customers to share their data. I recently called a support phone number for a well known supplier of network hardware. To open a ticket, they needed to know the name and model of the product, where and when I … Read More
Recession: The beginning of the end or the eye of the storm?
At this year’s Software Industry Conference, myself and Sharon Housley (NotePage, Inc.) co-presented a session on Marketing in a Recession. The session went well, yet the feedback we received was fascinating. It turned out that most of the people who attended the talk believed that the worst of the recession was now behind us, and that we had taken our … Read More
What do you mean you haven’t heard of Baidu?
From Wikipedia: “Baidu is the leading Chinese search engine for websites, audio files, and images. Baidu offers 57 search and community services including an online collaboratively-built encyclopedia (Baidu Baike), and a searchable keyword-based discussion forum. In October 2008, Baidu ranked 9th overall in Alexa’s internet rankings. In December 2007 Baidu became the first Chinese company to be included in the … Read More
The internet has exploded!
Yesterday morning I returned from the Software Industry Conference in Boston. My three bags made it back, but a significant amount of my brain has yet to catch up with me. So my apologies if this post sounds as though it’s been written by someone else. During the conference I delivered four presentations, one of which (an A – Z … Read More
Fed up with Adwords ads pending review? Make your voice heard!
On April 10th, 2009, one of the SoftwarePromotions AdWords team posted 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 … Read More
AdWords conversion tracking – you probably didn’t know this
When Google AdWords updated their interface, you probably noticed their new conversion tracking metrics: The 1-per-click and many-per-click columns. I wrote about these new metrics some time ago, but do you know what happens with these values when you use multiple conversion actions? At the time of writing this, Google did not have any information on this topic within their … Read More
Loyalty is easily destroyed when the product is free
I’ve been a long-time user of the Cligs URL shortening service, and have recommended them to countless colleagues and friends. Yet they’ve recently been experiencing technical issues that have forced me to jump ship to one of their competition. There are two main issues, both of which remain unresolved. 1: Their shortened URLs don’t always work. This is a problem … Read More