Let’s examine it here in iClick Media’s blog.

1. Slow loading time

Nothing is more irritating and annoying than a website that takes like forever to load. Although most internet users these days have high broadband/cable connection speed, a huge percentage of the internet users are still surfing the World Wide Web (WWW) via slower dial up internet access. We should not neglect those users as they are potential customers of your e-business. When you build your website, try to stay away from big glossy image file that takes up a huge file size. You do not need those unnecessary pixels for web because the user experience will be more important than how your website looks. In fact, with a reduced in file size, it does not affect the overall looks of your site.

Try to avoid using Adobe Flash animation or fancy movie files because of the long loading time too. And no, no catchy music. These days, many users are already plugged into their own MP3 songs running in the background, do you want to annoy them by running your own sound files?

What’s important is that you have a website that delivery the necessary adequate information it promises at an instantaneous rate (if possible). For this reason, choose functionality over design.

2. A poor user experience (UI/UX) in navigation system

If your main navigation bar is too complicated or overly complexed, you’ll really end up driving away alot of your visitors because they can’t find what they want in like 3 seconds? In fact, many internet users are impatient people. If you can’t get them what they want in mere seconds, they leave. Simple as that.

You don’t want your visitors to get stuck in 1 page. You want them to explore your site, know more about your business and finally to checkout and pay you. Therefore, your pages should be interlinked in a logical and sensible way. This connection should be easily navigable through an intuitive interface that even a child can understand.

So, do place your navigation links at either the top of the page, or right below the header. Alternatively, place it at either side of the page in a vertical column. This is where your customer’s eyes will be when they are exploring the pages of your website.

3. Low quality content.

Haven’t you heard this before? Content is king on the internet. Repeat after me, Content, is King! Internet users log online to find information they need for their everyday life. Information is conveyed and transmitted via your website. If your content is poorly written, would people have the patience to browse through your website in detail? If the content is not unique, why should they choose your site over others?

In my opinion, there are 2 requirements for good quality content. Excellent presentation and originality. Without either of this, your website will be in jeopardy.

4. Poor choice of keywords to focus on.

Keywords drive traffic to your website. That is the reason why so many SEO companies have some form of search engine optimization writers in their company. Keywords are the key terms that users will search for when they’re looking for information.

If you select the wrong keyword, visitors will be scarce. So do make sure you check and discover the right keywords even before you start building your website.

5. Cookie cutter websites.

Why should your customers choose your website over your competitors if there is a lack of originality? You should probably offer different content, different layout and make your website special!

If you cannot answer these questions positively, then your e-business is bound to be doomed from the start. Know what’s worst? Search Engines like Google and Yahoo penalize duplicate content. If you copy content from others, your website will have a lower position in the search engine results page (SERPs).

6. Is your website focus rich?

Focus is key when we design your website. It is difficult for a website to focus on various unrelated topics. For example, why would visitors who are visiting a pets website be interested in a home plumbing industry website? There is totally no link between the 2 topics.

Instead, focus on giving your users the right relevant and related content. If you have a website on dogs, how about further enriching it by having more content on dog food, dog training, dog hostel and even dog costumes apparels?
The above 6 most common mistakes are things you should avoid. Your online business depends on how your website fares. Don’t be afraid to create several websites under different domains. Try and test and see which 1 works for you. Take time to think about how you can properly build your website.

Web Developer
iClick Media Pte. Ltd.

So, you have a website. You spend alot of money engaging a company to design and develop it. You then spend a huge bomb of money marketing your website. You do get alot of traffic to your site but you feel that the conversion to actual sales is lacking. Do you think your current website design is affecting or pulling down your conversion rate? The thing is, have you tried putting in a different design or a different landing page to test?

If you haven’t try, you never know.

Do you know that by making the smallest of changes on your website, it could mean a whole lot of difference to your pocket. Don’t believe it? Take a look at some past case studies on conversion tracking using data intelligence:

When you change a button’s color from green to red, it led to a 21% increase in conversion rate! This is huge! Soocial also experienced a 4.2% increase in conversion just by changing its site text from “Sign Up” to “Sign Up: It’s Free.” In fact, they’re still doing testing on their main site. If you visit their page now, it now reads “Sign up for free!”.

Unless you do various testing of your website’s design, (or for that matter, if you engage a digital agency to do it for you), you’ll never really know which piece of your website is pulling down your conversion rates. Like anything in life, the first step is the hardest. Take the step to let go of your current site design. Plunge in (calculated risk) and see if it works. If it doesn’t, what’s stopping you from changing back?

1) Let go of your emotional attachment

Yes, that web design may have been on your site since you started it 3 years ago. You’re so emotionally attached to it because that website made you $x. But you know what? Its probably time for you to give that design a rest. Let it go. The color scheme, website content, font type, font size and etc are just emotional burdens. You like it but that doesn’t mean this is currently performing at the best level for you.

Nothing is sacred without limits.

If you are unable to step back and be really objective about your goal, then it’s time to bring in the professionals. Hire a professional SEO company that can provide you with an effective, honest and affordable plan to get your website back to where it should clearly be. The digital marketing experts should be able to clearly identify some common spots on your website and they’ll probably also suggest some changes to you without any emotional attachment.

2) Have you tried Google Website Optimizer?

You should get yourself extremely familiar (or at least comfortable) with the Google Website Optimizer tool. It will be your best friend in no time. Did you know that this tool allow you to experiment with 2 different site designs by sending random traffic to both sites and yet being able to report the thorough analytics?

If you’re looking for a simple control over your current design versus a tweaked design (variable), then you should probably choose the A/B experiment.

Looking for something more fun? Try the multivariate experiment!

3) Look for common optimizers

The best part is, you do not have to start from scratch, from nothing.

You can follow the improvement other companies have made and take the cue from there.

In a nutshell, iClick Media Pte. Ltd. suggests that you can do the following and also list down, the possible improvements you can get.

• Add an arrow to applicable buttons can lead to a 20% improvement in your conversion rate.
• More than 50% of the top Internet retailers use “Add to Cart” over other popular purchasing messages, including “Add to Shopping Bag,” “Add to Shopping Cart,” or “Add to Basket.” Don’t ask us why, it just works.
• Bigger buttons are better: We suggest having button sizes of at least 225 pixels by 45 pixels.
• Adding security trust badges, such as those from Verisign, can bring a major boost to your conversion rates.

If you’re not sure, strip your website down to its most basic purpose: to direct and funnel web visitors into a chosen pathway. At the end of the day, your site design’s main purpose isn’t to look “pretty” or “sleek” or “modern” or “cool.” Its job is to bring clear results for your company. When it’s time to count your profits, it doesn’t matter how pretty your typography is — what matters is that your business is growing and thriving.

Until you test and retest that design, you’ll be forever underestimating your site’s true potential.

Want to know how your web design stacks up? Contact iClick Media for a professional site audit. And while you’re here, check us out on Facebook!

Internet users generally have two days of uninterrupted web browsing on weekends. With the extra time (Saturdays & Sundays) to search online, weekend web users potentially have higher purchase intents. Naturally since, more time to research, at a leisurely pace, will generally lead to a higher purchase intent. When we analysed year-end “Professional Services” search trends, we discovered that:

1 – Weekend searches are high and consistent!

2 – Weekend searches are significantly higher than weekday searches for some verticals. (Such as Pest Control, Confinement Ladies, Plumbers, etc)

So, the key thing as an advertiser is that you will want to attract New Clients and Retain Existing Clients on Weekends:

We’ll need to utilise the weekend trending to maximise your ROI. Allocate sufficient budget to capture the weekends’ new and existing client traffic surge. Also, keep your campaigns active during weekends to attract new clients.

As you can see from the table below, the searches generally increase towards the end of the week, with the tip usually falling on a Sunday.

So, which are the industries that should capitalise on this weekend trends? Let’s take a look at some verticals below.

Key Takeaways

1. Keep your campaigns active during the weekends (Saturdays & Sundays), attracting your existing customers and potentially new customers as weekend traffic is strong and consistent as weekday traffic.

2. Do not pause your campaigns on the weekends as searches are high, remember that you are on the CPC (Cost per click) model and thus you only pay for clicks and not whether your ad appears during a search or not. If you are on the CPM (Cost per impression) model then that is a different story altogether.

3. Plan early and allocate enough budget for the search volume surge on Saturday & Sunday, which have the highest searches of the week for some verticals. Quite simply, if you Fail to Plan, you Plan to Fail.

Closer Look

Now, let’s take a closer look at 2 verticals – Pest Control & Plumbing services.

1. Pest Control

Keywords: pest control Singapore, pest controls, bedbugs

Demand for good and affordable pest control solutions is generally high on weekends as users might require immediate solutions after discovering pest problems in their residential households. These are what we generally classify as the “ready buyers” looking for you to help them in their pest control services. If you can help them, they’ll generally go back to you for repeat business and even introduce you to their friends, families and colleagues!

2. Plumbing Services

Keywords: plumbing services in Singapore, Singapore plumbers

Plumbers are in high demand in Singapore during weekends. Users might require a range of solutions from plumbing repairs to fixtures installation and maintenance in residential and commercial water systems.

If you need more advise for your Search campaign, you can call us at 6362 0123 or write in to request for an appointment with our Sales Consultant.

- 70+ domains registered
- 600+ new videos uploaded to YouTube
- 694,445 search queries on Google
- 695,000 status updates on Facebook
- 168,000,000 emails sent

Here’s more:

Click on the image to enlarge.

PS: Hope you enjoyed the graphics. All the best for 2012! Adios…!

Do share this page with your friends if you think this applies to your industry/business as well.

Google recently release new data that shows a huge increase in search via tablet during the evening time from 6pm to 10pm. This is not surprising data to us but since this data comes from a verified source (Google), it further reinforces the fact that people do use their iPads and iPhones/Blackberries/Smart phones during the evening time. Users could be sitting on the sofa after dinner, surfing the net while watching TV.

The below chart looks at the search volume by device throughout the entire day. Mobile devices/phones receives fairly steady usage that gradually pick up towards the evening.

Desktops are the main choice during working hours. This is probably due to the fact that the majority of adults are at work.

For tablets, the most interesting data is that the search volume spoke up in the evening. However, their usage is fairly limited during the day because users have other devices available.

So what does this means for advertisers? Consumers, especially the affluent ones, are using all these devices concurrently and throughout the day. They do not ignore any platforms entirely. They use the platform/device according to their lifestyle.

Search volume in the day

iPhone 5

Being a market leader in the Search industry, Google is putting in their maximum efforts to maintain the lead over the other search engines such as Yahoo! and Bing by rolling out frequent algorithm changes. In 2010 alone, there were more than 500 updates done. Which means to say we’re looking at between 1-3 updates on every singel day. More importantly in 2010, the Panda update was incorporated.

When you are looking for an SEO provider, do ensure that they are not practising any forms of black hat SEO. If they do, the sites often got impacted with frequent Google updates and thus, in the long run, their ranking would not be ideal. It is advisable to look for a reliable firm that practises white hat SEO. Proper SEO companies keep pace with evolving search technology and they use and employ the right methods and strategies to improve your site traffic and conversion.

Here is a video on how vigorously Google updates their algorithm.

Based on our experience, there are a few things you should do during the appointment with the provider.

- Test his knowledge.

Do a little bit of research before you meet him or her. Test him out on certain SEO terminologies and white hat/black hat practises. See how he respond. Does he really knows his stuff or is he just trying to humour you?

- Look at his portfolio

If he is really what he said he is, he should already have existing clients on hand. Look at his portfolio, do a search and see the SEO ranking. Is it really as good as he promised?

Below are some sure-fire ways of identifying lemon SEO providers:

1) Over the top promises.

When your SEO provider promises you #1 guaranteed ranking for x number of keywords. Be careful. Be real careful. Reason being no one owns the Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Search Engines own their own Search portals. No one can guarantee results or the #1 ranking because they do not own those portals. When the algorithm of these portals changes (and they do change their algorithm pretty regularly!), your ranking changes as well!

So if you meet someone who guarantees you the #1 spot. Be aware.

2) Lack of Transparency

The SEO Provider may be utilising Black Hat SEO techniques to booster your ranking on search engines. Hence, he or she may jeopardise your entire website being penalised by the search engines. Black Hat SEO is a big no-no in our industry. However, a few black sheeps have spoiled the market before. Just do a google search for “BMW Germany SEO” or “JC Penny Google”. Lots of information about Black Hat SEO.

3) Obsession with Ranking

Many companies are so so obsessed with ranking. In fact, many of my customers too. However, it is our job to educate them. Ranking is important. However, it is not the most important factor. The most important factor when you do SEO is to get more business. Period. If you can get the #1 spot for a certain keyword but your conversion is not improving. What’s the use?

Test your SEO provider on whether they can advise you on how to improve your conversion and to improve your CTR (Click through rate).

So what’s the key takeaway?

A good and reliable SEO company should have the decency to acknowledge that even they (the professionals!) don’t know everything about SEO. However, they are learning new things everyday as a matter of fact.

Remember, the only thing that is constant about SEO is change.

Many companies, especially the Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs), tend to get their staff or even their friends to help out in their Social Media marketing. However, though I can understand they’re trying to save a buck or two, what they do not know is that a mistake by their inexperienced staff or friend, could actually cost them way more in terms of reputational damage and the viral effect of it spreading amongst the marketplace.

In a poll done in the US by Symantec, it was discovered that any mismanagement of Social Media platforms could actually cost the company up to $4.8million dollars!

Some 28% of firms also indicated damage to their image or loss of customer trust due to social media mis-management totalled up to US$638,496 (S$767,925). More than a quarter coughed up $184,714 (S$222,157) due to loss of organisation, consumer or employee data.

“One in four firms lost US$619,360 (S$744,985) in revenue and 21% incurred US$641,993 (S$772,209) in direct financial cost due to social media misuse. The largest payout was spent on litigation costs, which was a hefty US$650,361 (S$782,196) for 15% of respondents while 16% reported reduced stock price at US$1,038,401 (S$1,248,896).

Some 94% of companies surveyed were facing “some sort of negative consequences” linked to social media, with most have had experienced on average nine incidents over the past year. They include damage to their reputations, loss of customer trust, data loss and lost revenue.”

How much of it would you have saved if you have outsource it to agencies such as iClick Media?

Over at iClick Media, we have successfully implemented and maintained various Social Media platforms across very diverse industries. We have the necessary expertise and experience to give the ‘oomph’ to your campaign. If you’re interested to find out more from our sales team, just drop us an email here!

We’ll be happy to share with you more.