Say Whaaat!

The UK has signed up to an EU directive which aims to protect online privacy of consumers by making them aware of the information that is collected about them whilst using websites. They have chosen to make it compulsory for websites to gain users permission before they use cookies or tracking technology.

Almost all websites use this technology. Despite widespread condemnation and a years delay, this ill thought out change in legislation will be coming into force and sites that do not comply will the law can be fined. A full description of the law can be found here.

Erm, What Is A Cookie?

Very simply, a cookie is a small file which is stored in your browser to record what you have done. It allows a website to know what you have done (like login for example). They cannot carry viruses and they can make no changes to your computer.

But Do I Need To Use Cookies?

No. But then you don’t “need” to have a website either. All eCommerce sites require them for usability reasons such as adding items to baskets.
There are exceptions to this law of which the shopping cart functionality is one. But many others are not; Including the way in which a site records how many users visit a site (ie Google Analytics). Cookies, in general, improve the experience of all websites.

So What Is The Solution

First of all, you could ignore the law. The chances that there are the resources available out there to administer the fines to every uncompliant website across the whole of Europe is unlikely. Popular opinion in technology circles is that the law will prioritise site owners using very intrusive data collection technology before rolling fines out to all sites – However, as with many of the attempts to regulate the web, there is no way to truly know how things will actually transpire.

The second option is to simply comply with the law. This is something we can help with and our development and design teams have already come up with solutions to the cookies laws for Ecommerce sites. These take no more than 30 mins to an hour to implement.

Get in touch or call us to see how we can help – Remember that the law changes this month! You can of course keep up to date with developments in this legislation change (and all the latest web marketing advice) by following us on Twitter or Facebook

In the social media world, there is a third group trapped between the plugged-in “Twitterati” and the shrinking group that remain unaware of it even existing.

This middle group know social media is important: They see it permeating popular culture and recognise the impact it’s having on society, as well as businesses. But without facebook friends, knowing what to say in 160 characters or what it means to hashtag something, for all intents and purposes they are in the group who don’t.

So what are the practical social media uses and how can business owners or those with no friends fans or followers really get anything meaningful out of it.

Networking

Let me reminisce…It’s 2005, it’s a damp Tuesday afternoon in Derby and I’m stood next to some sad looking sandwiches in a corner of the room listening politely to a guy talking about health and safety training workshops he runs. In 5 minutes he’ll ask me what I do, we’ll exchange business cards and then I’ll move onto the next guy whose probably an accountant and just as irrelevant.

Oh the fond memories I have of networking.

Fast forward to today and I can pretty much contact anyone in the world direct to their inbox with just a few minutes of searching. Furthermore, all this can all be achieved from the comfort of the sofa, sat in my pants if I so wished.

It’s not quite that simple of course but what the social web has done is place the opportunity for everyone in the world to be connected to everyone else. You don’t need to be a social media expert to appreciate that this has huge potential for businesses looking to make key contacts.

Even if you’d rather stick to face-to-face introductions, social media allows you to do your homework on the person you want to build a real relationship with. Get that attendee list before the seminar and do your homework! Or give the whole of that conference you’re attending a shout out on Twitter and let them do their homework on you instead.

As a case in point, whilst writing this post, I happened to look up who the CEO of Coca-Cola is on Linked In to use them as a potential example. Only turns out we went to the same University – If I ever get to meet Muhtar Kent I already know how I’ll break the ice.

Keeping Relevant

It’s not just big news stories that get reported first on-line. Any development within any niche is likely to be reported first via social media.

But it’s not just the speed at which you can discover news and information which is important. With so much content on the web, a social network can be used to filter information down to the best stuff from the best sources. Imagine every newspaper magazine and TV show in the world edited down to what you like and presented to you for consumption at your leisure.

It’s this mix of speed and pertinence that means within a few minutes it’s possible to get the latest oversight of any topic – even if it hasn’t been reported yet through “traditional” channels.

Search for info or just receive it

Which leads me neatly onto the following point  – if you you’d find it useful to have great online marketing resources, you should be following us @eventureteam, or you can make sure you don’t miss our latest blogs (like this one) by liking us on Facebook.

Listening

There is a subtle clue in the title which is often ignored. Social media should be…social! It’s all well and good living in our own worlds, finding out what we want to know and saying what we want to say. But great things can happen when you listen to your customers.

Engaging with people is an important part of what makes social media so powerful. When someone talks about your brand, you should know about it. When a customer tells their own followers about your products, you should know about it. And when someone declares their disappointment in your company, you should react to it.

Even if you do nothing else, you should at least be passively “listening to the internet” to maintain your brands image and join in with the conversation whenever possible. Even people who don’t care about social media should care about what others are saying on it about them.

Staff

How well do you know your staff and how well do they know each other. Second to a few hours in the pub, social media is the next best thing for helping create genuine real-world relationships amongst staff. Because we share so much of our lives online, it takes very little time for people to discover hitherto unknown shared interests between staff members.

A lesser appreciated advantage is the fact that no company database is likely to have up to date contact details, for every member of staff, past and present, which can be accessed from any PC or smartphone anywhere in the world at any time.

Final Notes

Social Media is an incredibly powerful tool and it’s certainly not necessary to have lot’s of connection already before it becomes of use (though it does become even more useful once you do). Best of all, it’s free – there isn’t much else out there which offers that kind of value for money.

And whilst it isn’t strictly necessary to have any social profiles yet, the next decade will see a normalisation of social media to the extent that those who aren’t plugged in will become quaint exceptions – perhaps it’s time to choose which group you want to be in?

Your comments are welcome encouraged below we are social after all! There is also a simple guide to setting up social media profiles you can read by following the link.

Today social media is so much more than a website our children use to talk to their friends. Everybody from big business to independent business owners are using some form of social media to promote their business and build their brand.

*50% of small business owners reported gaining new customers through social media – most notably through Facebook and LinkedIn.

*51% of Facebook users and 64% of Twitter users are more likely to buy from the brands they follow.

The sheer variety of social media sites out there is staggering, so just this article we will focus on the heavy hitters…..Facebook & Twitter.

Facebook appeals to people looking to reconnect with old friends and family members or find new friends online; the mashup of features like email, instant messaging, image and video sharing, etc. feels familiar, while Twitter is a bit harder to get your arms around at first.

Most people can very quickly grasp how to use Facebook to connect to friends and family and promote business, using it to share thoughts, images, etc. Like MySpace but more geared to adults.

Twitter on the other hand, encourages you grab ideals in bite-size chunks and use your updates as jumping off points to other places or just let others know what you’re up to at any given moment.

Facebook

Strengths

• Free to build: Facebook accounts are free to set up and there is no subscription to keep the page live.
• Facebook Pages are indexed in search engines: Increasing the likelihood of folks finding your organisation through a google search.
• A Page can have multiple administrators: This means maintaining a page can be shared by many people both internal and external. ( To add: Manage> Edit Page>Manage admins)
• Analysing traffic: Facebook Insights track data on visitors
• NO fan Limits: there are no limits to the number of fans you can have on a page
• Ability to send messages and updates to all your fans at once: Fans receiving those messages can easily foward the message or post the message to their facebook wall.

Weaknesses

• Pages cannot post to fan Profiles: Although they can post updates or send email to fans the profile cannot directly post to a fans wall
• Membership has it privileges: user have to be member of facebook to be able to interact with a page.

How to start a Facebook Page:

 Twitter

Strengths
• Real time news
• Customers’ loyalty and personal connection to brands
• Able to disseminate information easily
• Easy to sue a tool to find internet trends

Weaknesses
• 140 characters limit
• One issue with Twitter is that there is a ton of chatter, making it difficult to ensure you’re reaching your target to drive traffic to your site.

How to start a Twitter Page:

In essence, fan sites and business pages are not just cute pages to look into. These are powerful tools that can reach millions of homes and can help build your business.

The social media content that you decide to share to the online world will greatly determine the success or failure of your online presence. You would want more people to like and trust you so don’t bombard potential customers with a sales pitch at every turn. Make sure you publish well-written, unique content that readers will want to share through their networks.

Let the buying public realize that you’re there to provide their needs. Be patient when you’re setting up your pages. Let your potential clients learn about your company first and help them appreciate that you’re willing to walk the second mile for them.

Social media has made the world a much smaller place where business is possible with anyone from around the world, Learn to use this tool efficiently and your business will reap the rewards.

Pinterest’s popularity has sky rocketed in the past few months. Their traffic and user base has grown exponentially, bringing it to the attention of every digital marketer around the world. If you’re not already familiar with it, take a look and see if you can understand what the fuss is all about.

As marketers, one of the first things we ask before starting a project is, “who is our target audience?” This information is a huge factor when putting together any strategy or campaign.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at the demographics behind Pinterest. In the past month, Pinterest has grown to over 10.4 million registered users and 9 million monthly Facebook-connected users. In this melting pot of users, there’s one thing that stands out: the site is nearly 80% females.

*This one sided demographic is one of the most unique factors of Pinterest and has forced many male-oriented brands to rethink their marketing strategy.

So why only women?

A recent study showed that women are more likely to take a photo of an image and share it, while men are more likely to use their smartphones to find information. Despite this study more and more males are slowly starting to use the site.

Personally what I found since using the site is the ability to coexist with the female demographic, while still posting my own personal content and interest. I’m not saying you should be posting pictures of adorable animals or what Kate Middleton is wearing for the Queens Jubilee but you should be finding common ground that both male and female users will find interesting.

*Some male-focused brands have started to gradually appear, Men’s Health has already established its presence with a strong following of male users, posting content focused around the male lifestyle and health.

How Engaging is Pinterest?

It was in 2010 that Facebook passed Google for the first time in time spent on site.

What is more telling is to compare the amount of time that the average user spends per month on the other social networks as a comparison measure of the level of engagement.
1. Facebook is the most engaging site on the planet at 405 minutes per month
2. Pinterest and Tumblr are equal in second place at 89 minutes
3. Twitter comes in third at 21 minutes
4. LinkedIn – 17 minutes
5. Google Plus – 3 minutes

So why is it so popular?

There are currently a number of sites and platforms that serve as similar social bookmarking tools. Delicious, Reddit and Digg are the most obvious variations on the concept, with tagging as the common theme that runs through each. None of which are as visual or easy to use as Pinterest.

The reason why Pinterest has taken to another level is because it appeals to some more basic human needs: the ability to browse content in a minimalist and visual way. This basic human need to feel a connection with someone by sharing a common interest is mirrored throughout the Pinterest site.

But how can I use Pinterest as a marketing tool?

Since Pinterest’s emergence as a popular social media platform, SEO’s and marketers have been asking the same question: what’s the best approach to increase both traffic and links to my site?

Of course this depends on the type of business you have and what you wish to give as an experience.
The brands that will be successful here are the ones that go beyond just using Pinterest as a storefront and use it to unite people around passion points. Of course, you’ll want to use Pinterest to drive sales (particularly if the majority of the products you sell are online). Make sure you think creatively about how you construct boards: rather than just listing products. (It is important centre on a theme!)

With Pinterest, because the mobile versions are just as simple as the web version – and because they’re based on image sharing, it’s more likely that we’ll see more retail driven activity, especially with a nation addicted to smart phones.

Also think about it the service as a whole: people, are creating mood/story boards which mostly contain pictures of products. Sure there is the odd useless pic, but sifting through the noise is not all that difficult and the number of actual products on there is staggering. To put it simply and as bizarre as it may seem… it’s a marketing tool that lets you look into the mind of your consumer.

Just like Twitter, Digg, Reddit, or any other social network, building a following is the upmost important thing. However, with Pinterest, it’s imperative that you have a following before you post any site or product related material expecting significant traffic. Otherwise you risk alienating your followers from the get go.

Once you feel you have a significant following, it’s time to start with the good stuff: viral marketing.
Before creating any viral content your marketing team should always consider the demographic of the social network they are going after.

In my opinion you have 2 options for creating viral content specifically for Pinterest.

Option 1: Simply uploading your products and hoping that they will be shared is excruciatingly time consuming and rarely will people visit your site.

Option 2: Take your time, think about the content, and create something that will force the user to visit your page.

Conclusion

Pinterest is an exciting site with the potential to drastically increase the number of visits to any business. Learning early on how to properly navigate the waters will be beneficial to any business. This is especially true for male focused brands that establish themselves early; this will stand them in good stead when the gender demographics start to balance and the site isn’t so female heavy.

Adding Pinterest to your inbound marketing strategy is a smart and innovative way to attract increased attention from your audience. The key to success on Pinterest is thinking up inventive and entertaining themes for your “pin boards.” So get creative and start pinning!

Firstly, let’s talk about what Web hosting actually is!

What a Mouthful… Let’s put it down to a basic analogy:

Think of web hosting like a plot of land a house sits on. This plot of land can have hundreds of houses populating its area. Some people live in mansions (Great Website) and build on fantastic plots of land (Great Hosting) and others build their houses on swamps. Having a great website with great hosting is ideal scenario for any business, but all too often we see great websites built on poor platforms.

Save your website from poor hosting before its too late!

Hosting: Free, Paid or doing it yourself?

The best option? This would all be dependent on the business size and budget. Free web hosting service providers only hosts your website and nothing else. A web hosting company offers you security, reliability and professionalism. Free website hosting although great, should only be considered an option for small businesses, looking to “inform” rather than sell.

Can I not do the hosting myself? Of course! Although trying to manage your own hosting is extremely expensive and only should be considered an option if your business has both the expertise to maintain the servers and also the financing to back it up.

Choosing a professional web hosting provider will give you the option of round the clock customer care. This means that you can call their customer care system at any time of the day or night to ask a question or to have a problem that needs solving. After all you are paying them to host your website!

These few advantages illustrated above are enough to show you why web hosting is important. Most business looking to expand their online operations to an experienced and established clicks and mortar business, should be opting for a more professional web hosting services, rather than cheap “no frills” options.

Bandwidth

Some web hosting providers will cap your bandwidth limit and charge you, should you go over your monthly allowance. While cheap web hosting with very limited bandwidth might be appropriate for a small business, A company that is in worldwide markets and is trying to increase online sales will need all the bandwidth it can get, ( especially with unforeseen spikes in traffic). In the end, these cheap websites are probably more expensive than a pay website, since the limitations and restrictions you face are costing you in sales. Larger Businesses wanting to exploit all sales channels should always opt for unlimited/high bandwidth.

Do you have enough bandwidth?

Security

It is important for web hosting companies to be able to adapt their web hosting policies to ensure that their servers and customers are protected against any new security threats that arise. There are many different factors that can affect how secure a web hosting service is and it is the job of web hosting companies to analyse their infrastructures to identify any holes that could be potential security risks.

It is the responsibility of the web developer to make sure that all applications that you develop are done to a high standard. Poor Coding could result in Hackers hijacking a web hosting account (If your site will be dealing with thousands of pounds a week make sure have experts doing the coding!)

Reliability

Just how essential is it to have “reliable” web hosting? Every web service claims to be reliable, but some stress the promise more than others. Usually only pay services claim to have high uptimes. You may be wondering whether it’s worth investing in higher calibre web hosting services for this added reliability.

Is my web hosting going to be reliable?

Think of it this way: The failure to provide a reliable website that is easy to access throughout the day and night could be the difference whether a potential customer keeps returning to your site or never thinks of your name again.

You might think this is a little melodramatic, but in these situations you have to put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Online shoppers are impulsive and demanding and if you’re not there to completely accommodate them, they will find another merchant to do business with. Money is the motivation here and if you cannot sustain the interest of your visitors, you are well on your way to losing out.

Remember that your website could theoretically go down for any number of reasons. In addition to technical problems and severe weather, websites are often made inaccessible because of website modifications. Even if your customers are kind enough to give your business a second chance, frequent downtime will eventually affect your search engine rankings. If a search engine finds an “empty” site (which is actually just giving off an error message due to being offline) it will hardly consider it relevant to the keywords it is currently searching for.

Additionally, problems with loading speed can negatively impact the success of a marketing campaign. No user wants to have to wait for pictures of animation to load. Consider that many of these users pay the top end for high speed Internet access. The idea of a slow website may be insulting to them, and will quickly dissipate any initial interest. The less traffic you keep, the less sales potential you possess.

So is Web Hosting important?

Yes, Very, but remember the level of service is equal to the amount you spend; having someone design an eye-appealing, professional website is useless unless you have the right web hosting platform in place.

Are you using the correct keywords?

Using the right keywords, for an effective PPC campaign is crucial. Before a website is even built it is essential to do some Keyword research. Using Adwords, Wordtracker or similar platforms to find out what exactly the market is searching for is a great place to start. The research will help you decide which keywords should be used based on popularity (How many people are searching for that keyword) and price (the cost for a high page rank- “Max CPC”). The “right” keywords, in this case, are those that are going to lead into a visitor performing whatever action it is that you want them to ultimately take, whether it’s purchasing a product that you are advertising, signing up for a service or some other desired action. Don’t be too broad with your keywords, this could generate a lot of unwanted traffic and cost you a lot on your CPC. (Be Specific!)

So the keywords you have chosen are correct and you’re paying the top end CPC for a high page rank, what next?

Is your Ad copy good enough?

When designing PPC text advertising it is important to grab the reader’s attention this can be done by following these simple Steps:

•  Use actual keywords in the ad copy
•  Include a strong call-to-action “While Stock Last!”
•  Making it Exciting, Quirky and most importantly, Relevant!
•  Correct landing pages? Are you sending people to the right page?
• Spelling and Grammar? Do you have the correct spelling, grammar and punctuation? Missing out simple commas could potentially be a disaster for your campaign.

“My PPC campaign is generating traffic but still not converting”

So you are using the correct keywords, the ad is great, the impressions are high and the Click through rate is good, so why are you not converting? This may be down to the following factors:

Price

Is the Price of your product too high? Make sure if you are new to the market you offer the best price and if not there is some form of promotion or incentive.

People may not know about the market price and get put off when they click through. If this is a factor it may be worth stipulating the price in the advert to avoid confusion.

Page

Another issue may be the site itself. If certain adverts have been generating traffic and failing to convert you may want to take a look at the page in question. Are there any obvious mistakes? Is the primary message (be it a product, category or service page) obvious? Is the design up to scratch? Are there any Navigation Problems?

If any of the above is a factor it may be worth while doing some user experience and A/B testing, to see how people use the site.

Are you both online and in store?

A lot of the time people may get their initial referral from the PPC advertisement but may go to purchase in store, it is important to see this bigger picture and may be worthwhile finding how your customers found you, it may well turn out that your PPC is in fact bringing in the right traffic.

High involvement clicks and mortar business’ will often have online “window shoppers” as their customers will often spend considerable time and effort in searching for the right product. For example if you sell cars the majority of your click through will be from window shopping as it is a high involvement, high thought processed decision.

Product

If all above checks off right it may simply be down to:

• Is the product/service good enough? Check what are the competitors doing and see where you might be missing a trick.
• Stocking Issues, Do you have enough in stock? If you cannot supply the demand you will not make the sale!
• You may be in a market where conversions are more prominent in particular seasons, take this into account and don’t be upset that your range of jumpers are not selling too well in the summer.

Finding what converts…

Once you have found what converts, it is important that you stick with that system. The bottom line is that sometimes you just need to accept that you’re getting the best quality and quantity of traffic Google can give you on a particular keyword scenario. Of course, you need to be profitable overall, but it is completely possible to ‘mess up the mojo’ with what is working and shoot yourself in the foot by trying to get more for less. When developing a working campaign, Keep your old campaign paused, not deleted that way if your new campaign is not converting you can always revert back to the old system.

Adwords Express

Google, whilst still providing excellent free listings, has taken the next step and is monetising this type of content. Whether this is good or bad for users is another topic entirely – what is certain is that businesses now have a new and potentially profitable marketing channel, which if they are currently already running pay per click adverts, should seriously think about.

Places Express is effectively a premium listing on Google places search listing. It gives more prominence to both the position and content of the ad, as well as replacing the places icon with a nice big blue one. Basically, it makes your Google places advert stick out above all of the rest.

Who Should Use It?

Any business which wants strong local prominence should be considering this service – this means any business with a physical shop(s) or place of business should be particularly aware of how these listings can help.  Currently, these ad’s will only show to people within a 25km radius of a business’s location.
It is also useful for businesses without a website – unlike normal Google PPC, adwords express does not require a website for listings to show. Think how useful this is for a local sandwich shop or businesses which may take advantage of searches made on mobile devices for nearby locations.

Costs

The cost depends on how competitive your market is as well as how many visits you wish to attract. Payments are taken in much the same way as normal adwords accounts. Only one paid ad will show at a time though so you aren’t competing against yourself and each type is invoiced separately.
Payments are only taken upon clicks (PPC) and the amounts charged are in line with estimations made by Google in advance of signing up. In simple terms

• you choose in advance how much your budget is
• you know roughly in advance of how many clicks that will achieve and all impressions
• clicks are recorded so that it’s possible to see its effectiveness.

Conclusion

I can see this being incredibly useful for certain types of businesses, almost to the extent where it will become essential. For most though, it may well be an advertising channel that doesn’t provide a game changing return on investment as online only based organisations are less likely to benefit from the geo-location aspects of the platform.

However, with no monthly contracts and the long term benefits for a business creating a strong local consumer base, it is worth experimenting with and our own PPC marketing teams are already setting up trial campaigns. Like most things in digital marketing, you don’t know until you try and with the full weight of Google behind this venture, it would be imprudent to not look very carefully at things before discarding.

I would be interested to hear other peoples thoughts on the ad-words express extension to Google places so please comment below. Alternatively, you can contact us or follow us to get advice and tips on selling more online @Eventureteam

In (another) Google algorithm update released today we see that Google are targeting websites that have too many adverts in the instantly visible area of the page, otherwise known as ‘above the fold’.

This change has been given the catchy title ‘page layout algorithm’ and it is locking on to sites that deliberately bury their content under piles of adverts almost as big as the one residents of Brierley Hill are dwarfed by.

Click Less – Find More

This change is all about enhancing the user experience, Google want users to be able to find what they are looking for in as few clicks as possible. They aren’t saying that websites have to reduce the number of adverts displayed on the page only that the content needs to be near the top of the page so that visitors to the site do not have to scroll down to locate it.

It was also confirmed, by Google, that sites that use pop-ups and overlays will not be impacted by this change.

Are You Guilty?

So how do you know if your site is going to be one of those penalised? Affiliate sites owners should definitely sit up and take notice.

Unlike other changes no tools are being provided by Google to enable site owners to instantly determine if there site falls foul of the new changes. Instead they have suggested that people use the Google Browser Size tool or similar to determine just how much of a page’s content is visible at first glance, it obviously takes into consideration various screen resolutions.

What the tool won’t tell you are the all important factors how far down is too far and how many ads are too many? Google, kind people that they are, have decided to leave that to site owners to decide….give them enough rope eh!

Guilty – Send Them Down

Google have stated that the change will impact less than 1% of global searches on Google but what happens if you are affected and rankings begin to drop?

If you do start to see a drop in rank from today, it is likely to be the whole site that is penalised and not just the page that is ad heavy. Don’t panic just get the changes made and wait for Google to revisit the site. It will have been tagged as ad heavy initially and, unfortunately, it could be several weeks before the changes are noted by Google and normal service is resumed.

For more information read the official page layout algorithm update post in full.

One final thought regarding this change is how Google will apply this new benchmark to their own pages or if it will even apply at all? Its funny that you can’t test their pages with the Google Browser Size  tool to see just how their pages fair…..go on, try it you know you want to!

Google provides suggestions for your website to avoid your content being flagged as spam or penalised for over marketing by being removed from Google search. While the guidelines are not a complete bible of what to do and what not to do they hint towards best practices:

Quality guidelines
• Don’t hide text and links
• Don’t show one content to search engines and the other to users (cloaking)
• Don’t get involved in link schemes
• Avoid marketing tricks that don’t benefit users.
• Don’t use computer programmes to submit pages and check rankings
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords
• Don’t duplicate content across multiple pages and domains
• Don’t create pages with malicious content such as viruses and badware
• Avoid doorway pages, sites with little or no content that’s sole purpose is to link to your site.

Design and content guidelines.
• Sites should be designed with a clear hierarchy
• You should produce a sitemap to help users html sitemap and search engines (xml sitemap) navigate your site
• You should keep links on a page to a reasonable amount
• Link text rather than images and use text for content and important names, if you must use images use the alt attribute to detail what is there.
• Show the layout of your page and make sure title and alt tags are accurate and descriptive
• Check the site for broken links and make sure you use correct html
• If your page is dynamic be aware that Google may not crawl every dynamic page

Technical guidelines
• Use a text browser such as Lynx to see the text version of your site, this is how search engines see your site and you’ll be able to see if you are using to many images.
• Use robots txt to allow search bots to crawl your site and restrict access to areas you don’t want crawling.
• Optimise your sites performance and speed, fast sites improve user satisfaction and the overall quality of the web.

So how has Google broken its own rules, well it was actually a bit of an accident; Google paid a marketing company to produce some video adverts for them. The company paid bloggers to write articles singing the praises of Google chrome. These paid posts contained links to Google chrome and passed across page rank, causing Google chrome to appear at the top of search results. Google have apologised as it was unaware of the marketing campaign and the marketing company itself admits fault. All in all this is an embarrassing incident for Google who prides itself on keeping on the straight and narrow. The moral of the story is always use a reputable online marketing company like Eventure Internet that keeps to the right side of Google guidelines.

Key findings from the study include:

• Nine out of ten UK adults (90 per cent) are planning to purchase at least some of their presents online in the lead up to Christmas, an 18 per cent increase – representing 8.7 million more people – compared to last year’s 72 per cent.
• Two-thirds (66 per cent) plan to buy half or more of their presents online, with the average online spend per shopper at £158 – or £6.85 billion in total across the UK adult population.
• M-commerce is growing too, with almost one in four (23 per cent) intending to buy a Christmas present online using a smartphone or tablet. This is a 6 per cent increase on last year, and represents an additional 2.9 million people.
• Books are set to be the most popular online Christmas purchase, with 43 per cent of those surveyed planning to buy them. They are followed by DVDs and games (42 per cent), clothes and accessories (40 per cent) and electrical goods such as cameras and laptops (33%) – the latter indicating a growing trust in online shopping as a way to purchase ‘big ticket’ items.