Author Archives: Shirish Agarwal

About Shirish Agarwal

Shirish Agarwal is the founder of Flow20 and looks after the PPC and SEO side of things. Shirish also regularly contributes to leading digital marketing publications such as Hubspot, SEMRush, Wordstream and Outbrain. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

August 7, 2013

Benefits of professional IT Support

If you’re a small business like us, you’ll know that keeping your work computers up to date, ensuring timely installation of OS and security updates and so on can be quite cumbersome unless you have dedicated IT personnel.

We recently started using the services of a professional IT support company and wanted to share my experiences and the benefits I found in using one.

First and perhaps most important is the safety of your data. In our case, we have two types of data, security of which is absolutely essential. Client data such as websites, database and so on and our own work data held in our office machines. Whilst the former is stored online with multiple backups in different locations, our own work data isn’t as securely stored. For example, a few days ago one of our work computers got hacked and infected by a nasty malware even though the computer was protected by Norton Internet Security. Usually, removal of malware isn’t very difficult but this was especially tough to get rid of no matter what we tried. After spending hours trying to remove it without any success, I decided to call our IT firm tech support. And, what do you know… within minutes they seem to resolve the issue and the computer was back up running again.

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This made me realise the second benefit – time saving. I used to spend a few hours every Saturday backing up all our computers, then making multiple copies of the data in different location. Even though some of this process is automated, some isn’t and that took time. Over the last month, this is done by our IT firm not once a week but every hour! And the best part is, it’s ALL automated. And, it’s being done whilst we continue working.

Of course, there’s a cost involved to all of this but I am pretty sure that the savings in time alone, our service is paying for itself.

You may just be managing everything perfectly in-house but if not, give a IT support company a try.

If you’re looking for a digital marketing agency why not give Flow20 a try? We can help you with PPC management, Facebook ads, LinkedIn Advertising and Social Media campaigns and even Google Ads training.

Ecommerce case study – 30% increase in pages per visit

Introduction

Based in Portsmouth, PSouth is one of the biggest installers and distributers of Permaroof roofing solutions.

At the time of initial contact with client, the business had been growing rapidly mainly by the way of repeat business and referrals from existing clients. PSouth wanted to take this one step further by adding E-Commerce capabilities to the existing website and increase traffic to the website via Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Google AdWords.

Analysis

Further to client discussions, competitor research and a review of the type of products that would be sold online, flow20.com identified the following that would play a key part in the campaign:

Due to the bespoke nature of the products sold, the E-Commerce platform should allow users to customise the product in size depending on their individual needs
Identification of the correct search terms which would generate traffic to website not just from the trade but from private customers as well
Just like any other project we take up, to maximum Return on Investment from SEO,

Analysis

Further to client discussions, competitor research and a review of the type of products that would be sold online, flow20.com identified the following that would play a key part in the campaign:

Due to the bespoke nature of the products sold, the E-Commerce platform should allow users to customise the product in size depending on their individual needs
Identification of the correct search terms which would generate traffic to website not just from the trade but from private customers as well
Just like any other project we take up, to maximum Return on Investment from SEO, having the essential lead-generation tools would be very important

Results

Within 9 weeks of the E-Commerce functionalities going live and within 12 weeks since the start of SEO and Pay Per Click campaign the website began seeing a healthy uplift in traffic levels. As importantly, the visitor engagement rates had gone which meant less Bounce Rate (single page visits) and time on site increased.

Pages per visit average increased from 2.92 to 3.85, an increase of 30%

Average visitor time spent had increased from 2min 54 seconds to 3min 25 seconds

The above metrics help understand website performance and are especially important for E-Commerce websites.

SEO accounted for 80% increase in visitor traffic levels
Pay Per Click accounted for 130% increase in visitor traffic levels
Total increase of traffic by 210%

Please note – flow20.com was not responsible from the design of this project but only the back end development and SEO.

We hope you find this post useful in understanding the incredible power of Search Engine Optimization and good web design in helping Ecommerce websites succeed. If you have a project you’d like to talk to talk to us about, call 0208 1500 294 or email create@flow20.com.

Design considerations for mobile websites

If you’re considering having a mobile version of your desktop website created, there has never been a better time to do so.

In terms of searches, the mobile web has already taken over the desktop web (and the upward trend seems like it will continue) and with 2 out of 3 searches on mobile website being done to find local businesses; a well designed mobile website can have a significant and positive impact on helping your business grow if you’re a business serving customers in a fixed geographical area (see related Infographic on the mobile web).

The needs of your mobile website users will be slightly different to those of your desktop website users and keeping in mind some simple guidelines when getting your mobile website created can help fulfil those needs more effectively and helping your mobile website give you a better ROI.

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Here are some design guidelines to keep in mind:

Your business phone number

In my experience, I have found that conversion rates of mobile users are higher since the main goal of their visit is to get in touch with you. This perhaps makes your business telephone number the single most important piece of information of your mobile website and its important that this is clearly displayed within your mobile site.

Ideally, you should have a “Click to Call” button which will allow mobile users to call you with a single click rather than having to note your phone number down.

Avoid information-overload

Mobile users generally have a good idea as to the purpose of their visit to your site and it generally revolves around getting in touch with you, looking up your address or getting an idea of whether you can help them before they do either of first two.

You should keep this in mind when thinking of the number of pages and the amount of information you are going to put up.

Pages and content that work well:

Home – A brief write-up about your company with a clear Click to Call button
Services – More information about the services you offer. I don’t think each service warrants a dedicated webpage unlike desktop sites
Request a Quote – the terminology may be different for your business (maybe, Request an Appointment or ‘Make booking’) but another Call to Action apart from your phone number is a good idea
Contact – along with your business address, your business hours and a hyperlink to Google maps is very important. I don’t think contact forms are of much use on mobile sites but if you are going to have one, limit the number of questions to two or three and avoid any drop down options on answers as complex form features may not render well on all phones and will increase the page load speed times

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Keep design “light”

You’ll want to keep the design and look/feel of your mobile website consistent with the desktop version but avoid using too many graphics, overly fancy buttons and heavy background images. All of these will make your mobile website heavy, increasing load times which can put off many users. Also, and as mentioned already, these features may not work properly on all but only the more advanced smartphones.

Avoid using too many buttons as well as using overly fancy colour schemes which could make reading difficult on a mobile device.

What I have written here covers the basics of good mobile website design and guidelines to keep in mind. For a more in-depth look check out best practices for mobile design and iphones.

3 ideas to make your SEO life easier!

I recently came across an interesting article on Search Engine Watch on some “old-school” SEO tactics that you need to stop and some new ones that you should consider paying more attention to.

I’m not going to repeat what’s already been said but it did get me thinking about some of my own experiences when I’m discussing SEO Services with our clients or prospects and wanted to share a little more on this here.

Obsessing on the number of inbound links

This one just won’t go away!
The quality of your incoming link profile has always been more important than quantity. However, in the early days of SEO and perhaps even until not so long ago, you could still achieve decent rankings with intensive link building focused pretty much on quantity alone. I’m talking about article submissions, directory listings and blog commenting (to a certain extent). Any SEO professional now knows all too well that the quality of your inbound link is way, way more important than the number of inbound links. And by quality, I don’t mean just the originating PageRanks of your incoming links but the number of outbound links from that source as well, amongst other factors.

Search volume of keywords and key phrases

To get good results from your SEO campaign, making sure that your campaign search terms are targeted is critical. Considering the search volumes during the keyword discovery phase is important but I think a lot of us get carried away by this metric in our attempt to get “as much traffic as possible”. I think search volume is important but not critical to your SEO success.
For small and especially local businesses such as window cleaning or handyman services, I have found that including long-tail search terms (Example, “window cleaning Wimbledon”) which are often low in search volume (I’m talking less than 500 local searches a month) can give up to 300% higher return than focusing on short-tail keywords alone.

In fact, try this simple exercise: check your analytics software to see if you rank well for any local search terms. If you do, compare the traffic quality (Bounce Rate, Time on site, Pageviews and so on) of that to a short-tail (non local search) search term you rank for. I would say there’s a very good chance that the quality of the former is better. I’m also guessing that the search volume is lower too.

Check out Long tail vs Short tail for more on this topic.

Not paying enough attention to conversions

The conversion rate of your website has a very real and direct impact on the return from your SEO efforts. In spite of this, I’m not sure why many businesses don’t give enough importance to this.

I think the logic is that once the SEO begins to give some form of tangible return, you can reinvest that into improving the usability aspect of your website, whether that’s a complete redesign or touch-ups. However, if you can improve your conversion rates by even half or 1%, chances are that the increase in ROI from your SEO efforts will be able to pay for the cost of the website update in 2 or 3 months (for small businesses).

However, the challenge here is to get visitors to come back. As if it wasn’t hard enough to get visitors to stay on your website for long periods of time, getting them to return after their first interaction with your website hasn’t been effortless is going to be even more difficult.

This is the reason why I always prefer or recommend to start your SEO efforts with a website that’s geared towards giving good conversion rates as it can have a positive impact not just on SEO but your brand perceptions as well.

Hope you find this post useful and if you have any comments, look forward to it here.

The importance of Mobile Website Optimization [Infographic]

Mobile browsing is on the rise.

Now, with 3 out of 5 searches carried out via a mobile phones for local businesses, incorporating a Mobile Marketing strategy into your marketing mix can help you create additional revenue sources and build stronger relationships with your customers.

Take a look at these stats which shows just why the mobile web is here to stay….

Is ‘Avengers Assemble’ the first step in the death of the reign of the comic book film?

This week saw ‘Avengers Assemble’ take the number one spot in the UK box office charts for a second week in a row. The film has taken over $1,008,295,900 worldwide since its release. ‘Avengers Assemble’ has had the most sucessful release than any other film to date, beating ‘The Dark Night’ which previously held this tittle. The fact that both these films have held such lucrative receptions worldwide suggests that the general public are still enchanted by the classic formula of the Hollywood blockbuster comic book movie.

This is something that is more straight forward than most other mainstream cinema narratives that each comic book film rarely drifts away from: There is a main plot of a dysfunctional human being without purpose gaining a positive super human power through something out of their control. An unattainable love interest becomes more interested in them as their power develops and they change into the hero. A sub plot develops of a over ambitious person (usually a scientist) who nominates himself/herself for the first of human testing for the greater good of science. An experiment takes place with this person and it goes wrong and they develop negative anti social superhuman power, therefore are hero and villain are born. The hero and villain are forced to fight at least twice before the final showdown at the end where there are huge explosions and carefully choreographed action sequences. There is a resolution from good vs evil where good wins and evil experiences a terrible fate, usually a painful death or incarceration. The love interest becomes the lover. The world is restored to its natural balance and the credits roll.

This formula was something that developed slowly throughout the late 1980’s and 1990’s but I had not noticed just how rigid the formula had become until watching ‘X-Men’ in 2000. It was here I realised that although this worked well in the films up until this point such a simple formula will soon become boring to mainstream audiences and a new emergence of films from another medium would begin. Twelve years later with ‘Avengers Assemble’ and ‘The Dark Night’ generating the most revenue to date over any other films, as well as a constant flow of comic book films since 2000 I realise how wrong I was to think that.

‘Avengers Assemble’ has had not just a proffitable reception but also a critical one with the film having an average of 8.7 out of 10 on imdb from 170,000 reviewers. One the main reasons the film has had such a great reception seems to be that fans of several past comic book films including ‘Thor’, ‘Iron Man’, ‘Hulk’ to name a few, are given the change to see a an ultimate collaboration of their favourite superheroes in one film. However I wonder how the next few years will go for comic book film releases. As this breaks the formula of the comic book movie formula as there is not just one central protagonist but multiple. Now that cinema audiences have now received this standard of superhero’s film I am skeptical that they will be satisfied returning to the traditional formula of one central protagonist in each film, as this now seems quite limiting. It would prove difficult to to top this latest instalment in the Marvel movie machine and even if they were trying to do this where would they go? What would be next in our cinemas Batman vs Superman?

‘Avengers Assemble is out in cinema’s nation wide now.

Some unique requirements of a Fashion Ecommerce website

At flow20.com, we have over 4 years of experience creating user-friendly and stylish websites for clients involved in the fashion and apparel industry and although any website we design needs to be easy to use and Search Engine friendly at the very least, when it comes to development, its important to take into account the unique set of requirements that websites and E-Commerce solutions for fashion businesses have.

Product attributes

Product attributes refers to the various options that a single item is available in and Fashion E-Commerce websites have one of the highest count of options available when compared to many other online shops selling popular items. At the very least, you would have size and perhaps colour. However, it isn’t uncommon to find options such as length, fabric and fit in online stores selling bridal dresses or bespoke clothing.

Even if your businesses doesn’t sell fashion wear which warrants multiple product attributes, it still makes sense to ensure that your E-Commerce platform is fully scalable in case you wish to expand your product line in the future.

Cross selling opportunities

This is one area where online shops have a significant advantage over physical stores – the opportunity to cross sell and their conversion rates. When implemented correctly, cross selling can help you increase your sales by 7-10% (or up to 35% of sales attributed to cross-selling, if you are Amazon!)

To achieve this, each time you add a product to your E-Commerce website, the system should allow you to manually select other related items and them display them alongside the main item. However, with time, your website platform should be equipped to ‘learn’ the viewing habits of your online users so that the process of populating the ‘similar items’ for cross-selling can be automated thereby saving you time and work.

Zoom

Zoom on images has become a bare minimum for most E-Commerce websites. However, if you are selling clothes, especially on the higher-end, a good quality zoom and preferably a ‘full screen’ option can help your website visitors take informed online decisions and increase your visitor to customer conversions.

Next has a great zoom feature which provides high-def images without compromising the page-load speed.

Whilst you may not see the zoom ‘plugin’ your Web Development company may use until the website coding has begun, it makes sense to insist on the highest quality of image zoom on your E-Commerce website.

Social Sharing

Although allowing users to share products with their friends should be a feature on every ecommerce website now, Social sharing is especially effective for websites selling fashion wear. Generally speaking, a younger demographic and fashion-savvy consumers are also more likely to be active on the social web resulting in a greater likelihood of your clothes getting greater online exposure with the help of social sharing widgets such as AddThis.

You can use this to your advantage by making sure that your online shop’s Social Sharing function isn’t an afterthought and in fact, occupies a prominent position within the individual product pages. A good example of this is placing the “Share” button alongside the Buy button.

We hope this information helps make the process of getting your Fashion website design a little easier. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

A basic guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of videos

The video marketing revolution is not around the corner but notably arrived and can boast of being one of the fastest growing online marketing channels. Internet users are creating and consuming video content at a substantial rate since it has already proven an effective means of promoting businesses and effectively conveying their message.

Video marketing combines the best of two ever evolving and exciting worlds: television and internet, providing an exciting new avenue for effective online marketing.

Consumption of online video surpassed 770 billion views across the U.S., U.K., France and Germany in 2011
By 2015, paid-for online video spending is predicted to reach close to £4bn across the four countries.
Smartphones sales are projected to surpass 450 million units worldwide for 2011, fuelled mainly by the impact of Android-based handsets.

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Improve Search Rankings with Video Marketing

If you are hoping to increase search engine rankings for your website, it is no longer an option not to utilize video marketing. Now that search engines incorporate videos and images into standard search results, businesses have the ability to gain greater visibility by employing standard video SEO formulas.

Here’s a basic guide on optimizing your video content for Search Engines and help your videos gain maximum views

1. Optimize with keywords

As with any type of text-based content, video SEO includes enhancing with targeted keywords — for both user experience as well as search engines. Try using keywords in:

File name
Title
Tags
URL
Link text

2. Distribute videos on multiple video-sharing sites

Besides posting videos on your site, consider taking advantage of video-sharing sites which are valuable tools for expanding your online presence and acquiring more links.

YouTube is the number 1 video sharing website so you at the very least you should create your own channel and post your video here. For example, you can check out our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/flow20com where we upload all our corporate video production work.

However, don’t forget other to utilize some of the other video sharing websites to help you increase your online presence and maximise your video’s exposure, such as:

3. Apply a linking strategy

Your video will be judged by the same linking standards as all forms of digital content. Thus, building both internal and external links is vital for video SEO:

Cross-link to other videos
Link to videos from relevant web pages
Link to videos in blog posts
Tweet the video
Link to videos from social media pages

4. Urge users to share your videos

If you would like users to share your videos, create content worth sharing. If your video doesn’t interest, entertain or inform, users won’t share it, let alone watch it:

Encourage users to comment on your video
Simplify the way users can share your video on You Tube, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

5. Re-use your videos

Much like text content, the more optimized your video, the better. Get creative in order to re-use your videos across the web:

Insert videos in blog posts
Create multiple shorter videos out of a longer video
Post a screen shot of your video to an image-share site such as Flickr
Turn other content, like training videos, into digital assets for your website

Simply put, video is a powerful content driver. It is by nature, viral – a quality video can be one of the most effective channels for spreading your message, brand, or product around the world in the blink of an eye.

If your customers are going mobile, shouldn’t you?

In early 2010, Morgan Stanley predicted the mobile web to become bigger than desktop web by 2015. This actually happened in 2011!The growth potential for businesses who make the most of this emerging trend is far from insignificant.

Thanks in part to the growth of tablet devices such as iPad and Kindle, coupled with constant improvements and browsing capabilities of mobile phones, consumers are using mobile devices for everything from product research and online shopping to helping make decisions on purchases even while in physical stores. According to a Google shopping study done by Ipsos OTX, 77% of tablet users made use of their device for their 2011 holiday shopping. Not surprisingly, a 2011 Google study shows that tablet owners have a higher likelihood of using the device for online shopping than even smartphone users due to the better browsing experience tablet computers provide.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile advertising is taking a significant share of the overall Internet marketing budget and in 2012, 34% of UK marketers are expected to spend between 6% and 10% of their total online marketing budget on mobile advertising alone.

Mobile Advertising is predicted to sore over the next few years.

While spending on mobile advertising saw only a slight increase between 2009 and 2010 an unprecedented leap was experienced over the next few years and trend seems to continue.
Mobile marketing expenditure is expected to explode by 2014, to an unprecedented £285m. The larger percentage of which will likely be spent on mobile advertising just in the UK.

The expanding popularity of smart phones and tablets is creating a surge of savvy consumers willing and eager to use e-commerce mobile sites for their purchases. This trend opens up a vast new frontier for online businesses. By exploring this promising trend sooner rather than later and before your competitors do, you could significantly increase your marketing ROI You would do well to stretch your horizons and budgets to take advantage of this golden opportunity.

How to Optimize for Mobile Marketing

It is vital, in 2012, for businesses to optimize their website for mobile access in order to optimize their mobile site in these key areas:

Speed
Image rendering
Accessibility

An important point to consider is how you would like to allow mobile users to access your page. You have 3 options:

Generating mobile optimized webpages of your current website without any change to URL
Using dedicated mobile pages
Having a separate sub-domain for the mobile version of your website. For example, mobile.companyname.com

A well created mobile website differs to the desktop version in some ways. If you are considering having a mobile version of your website created, here are some pointers to bear in mind:

Your website’s mobile version doesn’t necessarily include all content from the desktop version. Think about the user intent and the information your user will most likely need having searched for and found your mobile website. IMDB is a great example of this – when viewing info about a particular movie, for example, the amount of information shown on the mobile version is significantly less and usually only contains the most important bits from the movie such as cast, year of release and so on.
Only show the most important information from content categories (ie. Pages). For example, whereas the full version of your website’s Contact page may contain a contact form, your mobile version only needs to show the contact information and opening hours.
If your website shows ad, you want to avoid showing these on the mobile version

Page Design for Mobile Marketing

Keep in mind; mobile devices have a different screen layout than do desktops.

Design pages for a screen size of 320 by 240 pixels
It is difficult for Mobile users to focus on detailed areas of your site’s design
Clicking on small links is challenging while running for a connecting train or plane
Add alt-tags for pictures; users tend to block downloading images in their web browsers in order to reduce bandwidth consumption.
If you have optimized webpages for mobile interface, you can give users a mobile meta-tag such as: mobile optimized. This will alert mobile web browsers that your content does not need to be minimized.

According to Mobile Marketing Association – The extraordinary growth of smart phones in combination with their exceptional user interface will enable people to use conventional websites on their handsets. Direct business-to-consumer apps can be delivered using traditional Web tools as well as Web adaptation tools. As smart phone and tablet saturation permeates online marketing, the mobile user now possesses the technology to access quality content on their mobile devices making this medium quite advantageous for marketers.

For more information on our Website Design Services and how we can help you grow via the mobile web, email create@flow20.com or call 0208 133 0754.

Tech milestones of 2011 [Infographic]

2011 has been a big year for some of the biggest tech brands and technologies. We put this infographic together to take a closer look at the biggest milestones of them all.

Enjoy!

…….

Dominance of Android – 2011 was a big year for Google’s Android OS. Google purchased the initial developer of the software, Android Inc. in 2005 and launched the OS in 2007. Since then, its market share had steadily grown. In 2011, Android overtook the Apple OS in terms of market share and currently stands at 50.1% compared to Apple’s 30.2% (as of Feb 2012).Google has often been criticised for its inability to gain commercial success of products outside the online realm such as search and email. However, the success of Android proves Google’s ability to make successful products outside of its core offering.

Dominance of iPad – As with the iPod and most Apple products, iPad has now become the generic term for tablet computer and leads the way not just in terms of market share but level of desirability as well. iPad’s market share at the end of 2011 was 54% (surprisingly, the last 3 months of 2011 saw its market share drop by 7%). When tablet computers were launched in 2010, it was met with resistance and deemed to be nothing more than a fad. Tablet computers now have become very much mainstream and the industry is expected to grow by a whopping 1000% by 2014. Check out this blogpost for more.

Growth of the Mobile Internet – Late figures released in 2011 suggest that almost 20% of all Internet traffic in the UK is generated via mobiles. 70% of this mobile traffic is generated by iphone alone!

Growing woes of RIM – The once iconic Blackberry brand continues its decline in every possible way. Towards the end of 2011, its market share was just 13.4%. There were even talks of a possible acquisition, most prominently by Microsoft but nothing happened (yet!). RIM shares lost approx. 70% of its value in 2011.

Rise of ebooks – In 2011, Amazon stated that its sales of ebooks had overtaken those of paperback books. 2011 has also been a solid year for Amazon’s Kindle and many analyst believe to be contributing factor in the recent drop of ipad’s market share.

Launch of Google + – 2011 saw the launch of Google +, Google’s attempt to rival the Social Media giant Facebook and to a lesser extent, twitter. Whilst the overall growth hasn’t lived up to the hype, 2011 saw registrations count to Google + reach almost 40 million. In recent months, this growth has been accelerated ever since Google announced that Google + can help improve search rankings.

Sale of Lovefilm – Amazon has had a stake in Lovefilm for quite some time. However, in January 2011, Amazon purchased the remaining stakes est. £200m to completely acquire Lovefilm. The reason behind this is widely believed to have a strong foothold in the growing online movie rental business and to rival Netflix’s worldwide expansion plans.

Growing older twitter – 2011 marked the 5th birthday of the micro-blogging site. The last 3 years has seen twitters popularity increase exponentially and it currently has 140 million active users. Here’s an interesting article on how the twitter website looked like when it was launched along with some others that are hugely popular today.

Birth of iCloud – The cloud computing phenomenon continues to grow and 2011 saw the launch of iCloud by Apple. The iCloud is a set of cloud computing apps which also includes iTunes on the cloud. See official press release.

50m WordPress – WordPress has grown to become the leading blog and Content Management System available on the web and for good reason. Its ease of use for both, users and developers and the myriad of plugins available have no doubt helped fuel its growth. Not to mention, its free! July 2011 saw the 50 millionth WordPress blog go live. That number now exceeds 70 million! See official stats site.

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About Shirish Agarwal