Every SEO/SEM person says my site is not optimized and that they can work wonders for me. How do I tell one from another?

This is obviously a very relevant question you ask. With loads of companies offering (or claiming to offer) guaranteed results, it becomes very difficult to choose the right SEO/SEM consultant.

Let me try and give you a quick checklist -

1. SEO (Organic Listings) has to have a long term strategy. Acting on impulse or making quick changes here and there or having the feeling that you are a few days behind means you are being misled. Any company talking you through a long term strategy is a good company to work with. Delve deeper with this company on the entire strategy, say an annual plan of action.

2. A company giving you a plan for the next 3 months only, is a big no no.. Your site being on top, is only going to be there because of a whole lot of work that goes into the site constantly. The constant activities include a whole bunch of off page work as well.

3. Somebody who comes to you promising the best keywords (say from your PPC campaigns) within a short duration of time is jumping the gun. Usually a site has to be on top on Long Tail keywords first, which grows organic traffic on the site which helps the site to further move up on Short tail keywords.

4. There are a host of companies just offering link building or link exchange services. Remember these don’t work in isolation. An ideal blend of the service has to be the right website optimization (called On Page Optimization) and healthy (read moderate) increase of back links month over month.

5. Know if the company has html and programming skills in-house. You will otherwise be caught in the crossfire between your web designer/developer and the SEO consultant. Ideally the company undertaking the SEO service should be able to modify and optimize code themselves. The chances of getting sandwiched between two sets of people, is very high which can end up being very painful.

6. A company not linking payments to performances is obviously a big no. There are some fixed costs that are incurred initially, but after that make sure your payment plan is linked with clear performance parameters which should be pre-decided.

7. A consultant or an organization that is claiming to give you a certain ROI right from the beginning is hiding something. You need to be careful about being misled, as SEO has to be planned on a long term basis and should not be treated equivalent to running a pay per click campaign.

All the very best for your ‘search’!

-By Vivek Merani

Every individual has a distinct personality; likewise every website is unique in its own way. These websites reflects the identity of a corporate entity or any other company or an organization.

Hence, it is very important to design the company’s website in a way that is not only able to grab the viewers’ attention but is also able to evolve and hold the viewers’ interest and persuade the viewers to at least try the product or service once.

In this whole process, colors play an essential role. Colors are a very powerful weapon.

• Colors can effectively communicate the message of the sender to the receiver
• Colors can provoke
• Colors can tranquilize
• Colors can antagonize
• Colors can cheer you
• Colors have a strong retention power on the viewer’s mind etc.

Ok, so having understood the importance of colors and what they stand for, let’s try and understand the relevance to the online medium.

• Define the demography and psychology of the target audience and communicate this to the designer.
• Too many colors on a single page must be avoided, unless it is the need of the hour and is an unavoidable circumstance.
• The color of the logo and the background color should be balanced.
• The web designers must also maintain the rhythm and harmony of all the elements of the website.
• Generally the background should be white and the text should be black in color as it easy to read on a light background.

Moreover, due to the technological advancements, a website designer is now able create millions of color shades (hues) on his/her computer screen.

Every color has something to say. For example:-

• White color signifies purity, truthfulness etc.
• Red color signifies passion, energy, confidence etc.
• Blue color signifies loyalty, wisdom etc.

Take for an instance, colors generally used in the Real Estate websites are brown, green, white and blue.

Here, White denotes the corporate identity.

Green denotes the greenery on the earth.

And since the house/property is over the earth and under the sky, so Brown and Blue colors are respectively used to justify the mood.

For education based websites, generally white and blue colors are used. It is because white is a sign of purity and blue is a very soothing color and it also signifies wisdom.

Very light colors are used in e commerce websites. The reason for this is that since there are a number of visitors to these sites everyday, so simple and soothing colors are used to relax the mood and the focal length of the visitor’s eyes. This implies that harsh colors that may strain the eyes are normally avoided.

To understand this better, take a look at the screen shots below:

This is a screen shot of our own company’s website. As you can see that there is a tremendous use of red color in our website, this is because the logo contains the red color, so we have used this color in whole website. Also, since the color red signifies passion, confidence, energy and strength; so we have incorporated this color in our website.

This is a screen shot of a website we have done. Since, the company’s logo is orange, so we have used orange and green colors because orange resembles the fruit and green signifies the color of its leaves. The color white and the hue of grey color are used to highlight the corporate identity of the company.

Therefore, we can conclude that colors have a lasting impression on the minds of the people and are one of the most significant elements of website designing.

-By Neha Gulati

Recently, I was just learning about the different approaches used by the web marketers to woo the customers and it was then that I realized that there is a lot of buzz about the personalization and customization on the web.

Now, what is personalization?

Personalization basically means providing user specific data or information. The websites can be personalized depending upon two things:-

• Implicit personalization wherein the customers’ likes, dislikes, behavior, habits, time spent in viewing a particular type of page etc. is the main factor. This means that based on these factors, the web marketers serve the desired information platter to their customers.

• Explicit personalization, where the information is collected from the forms and questionnaires filled by the customers during the registration process.

This is a screen shot of iGoogle. When you sign in your gmail account and search for news, apart from the general news, Google recommends specific news to its gmail users based on the web search history of each and every user i.e. the genre of news that the user reads like sports news, sci-fi etc.

What is customization?

Customization means the ability with which the users can make some amendments in the page layout or change the look of the web page as per their needs.

This screen shot is an example of customizing the web where Facebook users can customize their business pages according to their choice.

From the above mentioned explanation, we can derive that:-

• Personalization depends on the interests and behavior of a single individual.
• Whereas, customization is based on the interests of a group of people or we can say that it depends on behavior, attitudes etc. of like minded people.

Thus, both personalization and customization go hand in hand. Since, the marketers are stressing on both personalizing as well as customizing the web, there is only a hair line difference between the two terms. The basic motive is to involve the users and to enhance their online experience.

I am sure you too have something to say, please feel free to share your thoughts on this.

-By Neha Gulati

You would notice that we have been speaking and writing about Social Media Optimisation, its importance in the present business scenario, how to go about it etc. But we have not addressed some of the most important questions that crop up in the minds of a marketer; how do I calculate the return on investment from a Social Media Optimisation campaign?

Before we do that though, let’s do a quick recap on what SMO is all about.

Below is a Wiki definition of SMO: Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for attracting visitors to website content by promoting and publicizing it through social media.

And Social Media is thereafter defined as:

Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques.

Activities part of SMO:

1. Social media features added to the content itself, including: RSS feeds, social news and sharing buttons, user rating and polling tools, and incorporating third-party community functionalities like images and videos.

2. Promotional activities in social media aside from the content being promoted, including: blogging, commenting on other blogs, participating in discussion groups, and posting status updates on social networking profiles.

Ok, so now having that in perspective, let’s try understand some parameters to help assess the impact of SMO on your web presence. You would realize that making an SMO activity tangible is fairly straight forward, since we can define numbers for each activity e.g. the number of blog submissions, the number of group creations, the number of updates on groups, the number of discussions and comments, etc. But how do we calculate the results?

We have put some points together as below:

1. Traffic on the site: There are several tools available that can help you understand the traffic coming to the site. Our personal preference goes to the Google Analytics tool that helps understand the source of traffic coming to your website. Take a look at the screen shot below. Here is an analysis of the above screen:
   • Total Traffic on the site = 852 Visitors
   • Total Traffic from referring sites (sites which bring users to our site) = 330 Visitors
   • Total % of traffic from referring sites = 48% of total traffic
   • Total traffic from SMO (Linkedin, Facebook) = 226 Visitors
   • Total % of traffic from SMO = 26%
2. Number of Unique Visitors:This would perhaps be one of the most important factors in defining the effectiveness of the campaign. The more the number of unique visitors on your site, the more effective is the campaign.Lets again take an example below:From the screen shot, you would see that 80% of the total visitors are absolute new visitors. It is quite safe to assume that this increase is because of the ongoing SMO activity that we perform as the period for analysis is the same.
3. Number of Enquiries: Following a general progression, an increase in the number of visitors on a site would imply an inherent increase the number of people enquiring about products/services. Now these enquiries could be in several ways i.e. through contact form submissions, through phone calls, by email or even in walk in customers for showrooms and shops.Taking an example of our blog, we notice that every time we create a new discussion on various social networks, the number of visitors on it increase drastically, and then comes down to the regular number (See the screen shot below). Then we do a new post, and the number again increases, hence it is safe to assume if we the number of enquiries is directly proportional to the number of visitors on the site, which can be increased by SMO.
4. Conversion or sales: Aha… so now we talk about it and I am sure every marketer would love this the most. Again, this is the natural progression of a user, however, you would need to also appreciate that the website plays the pivotal role in this.SMO can bring traffic to the site, it can increase the number of unique visitors, it might just be able to generate enquiries or leads, but if the website itself is not captivating enough, or does not provide sufficient information or has a functional error, the entire exercise goes waste.

So at the end of it all, we would just like to bring forth that a well planned SMO and a well created website can surely enhance your web presence and also boost your sales. Several large corporations use this today to not only increase sales but also take immediate feedback and increase interactivity with their intended target audience.

Also since all of the above mentioned parameters are directly proportional to the time spent on social networking, it is safe to assume that the more time you spend on productive networking, the more response you are likely to get.

You can read a little more about how to Expand your business using SMO and Top Social Media Trends on our blog.

We would all agree that the consumers are the crux around which the whole process of communication revolves. The emergence of the new media (read as the internet) has simplified the process of reaching out to the end customers. Now, within seconds marketers can reach out to the prospective target public.

The marketers generally follow 4 steps:-

· Awareness-Comprehension-Conviction-Ordering

First and foremost, the marketers create awareness about their product i.e. with the help of different sources they reach their target audience. For example: - marketers may publicize about their products in many websites using a variety of methods like banner ads, Search Engine Optimization etc.

Then a detailed description is provided so as to catch the attention of the target public.

Then the next step is to highlight the various USP’s of the product, give assurance that the product comes with the best features and for this they even give some special offers to persuade more and more people to purchase the product.

When all these factors are good enough to turn the prospective customer to a consumer, it leads to ordering of the product – essentially a sale.

· The other basic step followed by the marketers is the use of the Pull and Push Marketing strategies

Pull marketing strategies such as SEO, Google adwords or PPC campaigns etc. are used. Whereas methods like Viral Marketing, Rich Media, Banner Advertising, Email Marketing etc. are used as push marketing strategies.

It is observed that more than 60% of the consumers purchase the products because of a good digital experience. This is the time when the marketers must think beyond the awareness and conversion aspect and make the digital experience of their customers more interesting, fun filled and yet be able to grab the attention of the target user at the right time and the right place.

Internet is a two way medium and so it can make or break the image of a brand or a product in a short span of time. As the consumers are becoming more tech savvy, they prefer to spend more time surfing about the products online. More than 90% of population is believed to be affected by the online medium.

Also, it is the time of experiential learning. This means that just advertising the brand or the product would not fetch the customers. The whole journey from awareness to ordering should be an exciting experience for the customers.

So, avail the benefits of the online medium and make the digital experience for your target audience as alluring as possible.

-By Neha Gulati

Also, interlinking within the website is made so that the customers can have an effective ecommerce experience. These shopping carts are written in different programming languages.

There are a number of shopping carts available in the market and thus you, as a user need to scrutinize their pros and cons. However, we have tried to pen down the comparison between a few popular shopping carts based on certain parameters viz.

• Features
• Users’ reviews including both plus points and minus points

Let’s understand the comparison:-

osCommerce is one of the most commonly used ecommerce shopping cart. It uses PHP and MySQL.

Reviews

• It is easy to install, many products/categories can be added, amendments in the design is possible and payments can be made through both online and offline modes of payments
• On the other hand, it is not well coded, it is very difficult to configure and it is time consuming

Zen Shopping Cart is easy to install, you can use customer retention tools like gift certificates, etc. and both the online and offline payment processing can be incorporated into a Zen Cart e-store. It is freely distributed under the GNU General Public License.

Reviews

• It is very flexible and has a safe guest checkout system.
• On the contrary, it is slow, time consuming and all the buyers have to login and there is no option to disable it.

Agora Shopping Cart is a free open source ecommerce shopping cart which provides easy payment options, you can change the display of the products and you can completely change the look of your website within minutes by doing one or two changes. You can install this shopping cart via FTP or SSH, depending on your choice. It involves UNIX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD or a Linux based hosting account, Perl 5.6.x or higher etc.

Reviews

• Perfect shopping cart for beginner to advanced user
• It has good support forums and tutorials
• Nicely priced cart
• Limited features
• Meant for techies only

Magento is an open source ecommerce solution to perform e-business with easy product and catalog browser options, Search Engine Optimization tools and marketing promotions and other tools offering.

Reviews

• It has a good API
• The admin interface is confusing
• Directory structure is very confusing
• There is a lack of core developer’s support

CubeCart is an ecommerce script written in PHP and MySQL. This ecommerce shopping cart allows you to sell digital or tangible products to new and existing customers around the world. It provides email marketing option, new customer registration, easy checkout steps etc.

Reviews

• It is simple to install
• It is quick
• It is easy to modify
• But the image management is difficult

PrestaShop is a professional grade ecommerce shopping cart which is easy to download, install and use for free. It is written in PHP language with MySQL database. It uses source code that allows the customers to review the products you are selling and block any wrong comments.

Reviews

• It is light in weight
• Modifications are easy
• Easy to understand
• Good for both the developers and the designers
• It has good support system

StoreSprite is a free PHP/MySQL shopping cart system which is easy to install and customize.

Reviews

• Though the cart is free but it has certain copyright notices that you can pay to get rid of

The CREloaded is an ecommerce solution built on a secure open-source platform and is easy to upgrade. It offers powerful shopping cart solutions in Standard, Pro and Pro B2B editions. You can distribute coupon codes; have a good template system and an affiliate manager.

Reviews

• It is Google friendly
• Installation is easy
• Easy to maintain by the user
• The 6.2.13 and 6.2.14 CREloaded versions are very good

Avactis shopping cart is built around PHP technology using MySQL database. It has UNIX, Linux, Windows and MacOS as its operating system. It allows you to integrate an online store into your existing site. It is very useful for the quick launch of an online business. It gives free domain name, unlimited web space and traffic.

Reviews

• Simple to use
• Can be modified with Dreamweaver

The CS Shopping Cart is easy to install and has user-friendly admin area. It is fully multilingual software with multicurrency feature. It is written in written in PHP and MySQL. It consists of 5 professional templates and their 20 color schemes in all. It has also an advanced Order management tool, Affilate add-on, Product configurator, Feature comparison and Gift Registry modules.

Virtuemart is an independent open-source shopping cart solution. It is identified as an e-commerce component for Mambo or Joomla CMS.

Reviews

• It provides you fast hosting solution
• It is flexible

NopCart is a very simple shopping cart application written entirely in JavaScript. This enables you to use it on your website without having to have CGI access.

Reviews

• It is simple to install
• Configurable for almost every currency type
• It has multiple product pages and there are no limits

Commerce.Cgi is one of the oldest and best established of all e-commerce applications. You can also manage a newsletter and offer promotions and gift certificates.

Reviews

• It provides a backend system that is simple to install and even simpler to manage

The above mentioned shopping carts are some of the most commonly used carts but there can be several shopping carts that we might have missed out. If in your knowledge there are some better shopping carts, please do share with us.

-By Neha Gulati

This is basically done to improve the website ranking on all the search engines.

But now it is the time when we must include those SEO techniques that are beyond using the most searched key words. This is no way undermining the importance of selecting the right kind of phrases that are most searched for, part of the site content, etc, its just moving on from there to what the next step should perhaps be.

In this article, we would be discussing some of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques or I may say advanced SEO techniques which the marketers can adopt to enhance their search engine visibility.

• If you have recently altered your website or you are still making some changes in designs etc. of your website then make sure that the archived pages of the site are arranged properly.
• Creating an XML sitemap helps you to improve your site indexing followed by additional user traffic.
• Link the old pages to the new ones through the 301 redirects.
• Use Google’s 404 widget tool to detect the pages that no longer exists. Also, ensure that this search function is confined to ‘your site only’ otherwise Google may move your site visitors away from you.
• It is noticed that sometimes there are multiple versions of the home page and it becomes difficult to locate the original and the duplicate versions. For this, 301 redirects can be used to point out which version of the site the users can see.
• Use the Page Rank Sculpting where you can use the ‘no follow’ feature to emphasize on more important pages of your website. By doing so you can increase your site’s page rank.
• Find out the areas where you can add universal/common search where the users can look out for images, news and videos. This can help you get more traffic on your site.
• As we know that link building is an important SEO technique and so, you should check that your website does not share link with poorly designed link directories.
• Get more user traffic by engaging in activities such as writing a PR story or creating a useful widget that can be uploaded by other sites as well.

The aforesaid are some of the SEO techniques for the online marketers, but the crux is that all the efforts are put to entice the target public. These techniques may not appear to be new to you but it is noticed that the marketers tend to forget these minute points and rather focus on getting the appropriate keywords only.

-By Neha Gulati

On the flip side, we have also noticed that still there is a chunk of population that fear shopping online. It is observed that there are a number of people that discard their shopping carts before checkout. The basic reason is that the overall checkout experience is quite difficult.

Hence, it becomes very urgent for the online marketers to find out something out of the box. The following can be a few important points that need to be kept in mind:-

• Say Yes to Social Networking

  Social networking sites have become a part of our every day’s life. Whether a consumer or a marketer, everybody prefers to socialize this way. And, thus it is a wake-up call for the marketers to evolve and adopt different strategies and find out innovative ideas to convert every potential public to a loyal customer.

• Bringing the Reel Life to the door-step of the Real Life

  Doing comparison shopping is possible only because of the ecommerce industry. Since 2010 calls for something special, effective use of audio, video and images can really boost up your online sales.

  Thus, producing interactive product catalogues is nothing beyond our imagination.

• The age of the smart phones combined with geo location technology
  
  In a survey conducted, it is observed that a large number of customers have done their Christmas shopping online with the help of their smart phones like the iPhones and the BlackBerries.

  The age group of 18-29 being the most tech savvy has used their mobile devices for the internet shopping.

  This was complimented by the geo location technology which allows the marketers to target the customers by connecting with them from their specific position.

  This implies, only creating an iPhone app extension of your website brand is not the solution but entering the real battle ground and competing with the thousands of other apps is the real challenge.

• Ecommerce with a tinge of Entertainment

  The online sales made on the Christmas Day are approximately £9.5m, up 17% from 2008.

  This means that the marketers will have to induct different ways to make the ecommerce experience more interesting and entertaining for their customers.

  The use of good quality and appealing videos can be one such example.

• Effective use of Data

  The year 2010 requires the marketers to be more agile and efficient in terms of the data that they are using to entice the customers.

  Efforts should be made to involve the customers as much as possible whether on one’s own website or on the social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc.

Therefore, the marketers have to be more proficient and competent in 2010 to improve their sales through ecommerce.

-By Neha Gulati

On the contrary, in the year 2010 it is predicted that social media would become more beneficial to the businesses. Now, it is the time when the businesses will have to keep a tab on all their links and keep their company profile updated on a regular basis. This implies that the more popular you are amongst all your fans, the better would be your search engine ranking.

Also, now this is the time when better and interesting content is appreciated more and promoting that very content amid all the people in your social network is the need of the hour.

Social media has a huge influence on the women as well. It is observed that about one-half of female Internet users had purchased the products based on the social networking sites and the blog posts.

The curiosity amongst the women to know or learn something different on the social media has increased as compared to the year 2008.

Since, the female audience is the most widespread and one of the most influential target audiences, it becomes very important for the businesses or the marketers to form marketing strategies that effectively reaches out to the female public of all ages.

According to the statistics collected, it is assumed that in the year 2010, social media will gain more popularity with approximately 56.3% of the population opting for this medium, 35.5% opting for the rich media display with around 49.7% of the people concentrating on keyword search.

Also, it is expected that around 90% of the businesses would switch from being busy with social media to being effective.

The use of smart-phones like BlackBerries and iPhones would further boost up your sales as more-n-more consumers would be active on their social networking profiles.

Hence, it is the time to pay more attention to all your social networks so as to gain more leads…

-By Neha Gulati

It comes up with a lot of features such as widgets, SEO, tagging, permalink etc.

Though WordPress provides a lot of ease to the publishers but it does not provide any platform for the user contribution.

To counter this problem, WordPress has come up with a new plugin named as MyReviewPlugin.

Now, what is this MyReviewPlugin?

MyReviewPlugin offers the users a number of features viz.:-

• Star Ratings by the users

Here, the users not only rate the posts but also rate the products with the help of the ‘star rating form’ provided by the publisher. Also, the users can post their comments in the comments box. The publisher can add or delete different rating sections as per his own will/ convenience.

• Editor’s Rating

The publisher can also allow the user to view the editor’s rating. This rating when combined with the user’s rating can add more weight-age to the administrator’s rating. Moreover, the comments or the feedback of the users will act as an icing on the cake.

• Bayesian Weighting

The Bayesian weighting is an effective way to arrange all the posts in the correct order. This system basically put all the posts in the order of the number of reviews received and stars attained (star rating). Thus, this system smartly places all your posts in the right order.

• Adding Comparison Tables

Comparison tables can be added and configured in the administration area which may include rating categories etc. as defined by the publisher, which means that the publisher has full control over the table’s appearance.

• Help to the users

As the user of MyReviewPlugin, you can thumbs up/thumbs down the comments or the reviews as posted by the different users.

• Custom Information display

You can display and compare the information like- file size, price etc. in the custom data table. You can also highlight the features of your product by using different checkmarks.

• Google Maps

You can incorporate the Google maps in the WordPress administration area in case you are running a local directory or anything with a location-sensitive value. In order to access the control of your display, you can mention the exact column of your database.

• Full control over the display of the reviews

In case you wish to have the reviews of your posts on some particular pages or may be on a few posts, MyReviewPlugin can help you to do this.

• Sidebar widgets

With this feature, you can display your top rated post or may be the latest post in your sidebar which is compatible with any theme that accepts widgets.

• Ratings on posts and pages

You can also insert the ratings on the preferred posts and pages.

• Three Themes

This new plugin provides the users three themes which can aid in the effortless website development. Moreover, this plugin is also compatible with all the WordPress themes available.

• Helps you do the SEO better

This is the era of semantic web which is highly recognized and rewarded by Google as you can enlist your reviews on Google with the help of hReview and RDFa Review integration. And if you are wondering what this actually means, then do not worry because this plugin helps the users to get the best search rankings followed by more user traffic.

• Automatic embedding

MyReviewPlugin can automatically insert any theme by checking the box and can adjust to act as a review site.

So, what are you waiting for? Get the benefits of star ratings to enhance your search results and the user traffic.

-By Neha Gulati

Yes, it is true that images act as an eye candy but beyond certain limit, you’ll end up spoiling the entire user experience and now your website organic rankings on Google too.

How do we search information on the internet?

We first open a search engine, type the key words corresponding to the required information and then click on the first few sites that appear as our search results. And if a particular site takes a longer time to open, then instead of waiting for it to open we flip to some other website.

Today is the time when we talk in milliseconds and every user is in a hurry to find the apt material on the web without waiting much.

Thus, a complete HTML text driven site with balanced use of images will not only entice the users but will also be rewarded by Google in terms of better organic search ranking of your site.

Google added another feather to its cap by announcing a Site Speed site, which provides even more resources to the webmasters exclusively to speed up their pages. Google provides some of these tools while some other ones can be obtained from other developers also.

What are the reasons behind the slow download time of my website?

Though there could be several reasons for a site opening up slow, however, we have tried to highlight some of the more common aspects for the same:-

• The redirection time of your website should be reduced to 0 (zero) seconds so that the users would not have to wait for a long time
• Check for the slow re-directs
• Use of interstitial pages
• Site hosting on a slow server
• Large HTML page document
• Use of Flash in the pages of the website
• Use of big images in the pages of the website
• Heavy pages of the website
• Use of Frames in the website
• Use of JavaScript in the pages of the website

Ok, so now having understood the broad parameters concerning the page download, I think you may like to see how fast your page downloads. You can try using the Google Webmaster tool. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

There is a new section in the ‘Labs’ menu titled as ‘Site Performance’ added by the Google Webmaster Tools. This feature basically offers statistics that tells about the speed of your page load, how it is compared to other websites, tips and suggestions to increase the speed of your page loads.

Some of the advantages of reducing the page download time are:-

• Reduction in the bounce rate of the website
• More leads
• Greater chances of converting the user to a potential customer
• Faster website Internet users get more interested in your site
• Can help you reduce your bandwidth and hosting costs
• Much better web

In conclusion, we would like to tell you that though presently there are no defined standards of what is Good Download time and what is not, we suggest that you run your website through the Google tool and try to reduce the download time as much as possible. You never know, your competitors may have already finished this portion of the optimization.

-By Neha Gulati

To counter several concerns over online shopping, companies like Mastercard and Visa have introduced a new measure in online shopping security: the 3D Secure system.

The Growth and Acceptance of Ecommerce

We all know that the Ecommerce today is growing at an amazing rate. One is able to buy virtually anything that they need from the internet, at any time, any place and send it to any person and get it delivered in any part of the world. There are several websites, selling several different products and catering to all age groups. Hence, it is crucial now, than ever, to be sure that your information is safe, secure and as a merchant that there is no fraud or criminal activity on the site.

What is the 3D secure system and how does it help?

Online transactions are categorized as the ‘Cardholder Not Present’ (CNP) transactions. Earlier, there was no way to confirm if the card is really in the right hands. Also, there was significant number of transactions that had to be refunded as cardholders denied the transactions. Hence, it became very difficult to plead against such transactions and refunds.

The 3D Secure technology is developed to reduce the chances of fraudulent card use by verifying the user at the time of the transaction and hence reducing your chances of disputed transactions and charge-backs.

As of 1 January 2010, all payments you receive through UK Website Payments Pro will need to be processed via 3-D Secure.

Now, what are the benefits of 3D Secure?

• A major attraction to a merchant is that once a cardholder is registered and has input their correct 3D Secure password during a transaction and is successfully authenticated (assuming they are acting within the law), the chargeback arising from the cardholder denying that they authorized the transaction, is shifted from you (the merchant) to the cardholder’s issuing bank.

• If a customer is not registered and because the transaction is checked for 3D Secure compliance, this would give a similar protection from the customer denying that they processed the transaction (providing the customer’s bank is participating in the 3D Secure scheme).

• Increased card holder confidence, leading to increased sales. Studies and research shows that currently approximately 50% of cardholders have not participated in any online transaction… This is a huge potential market!

• There is no additional fee.

There are however, limitations of the system, but overall, the 3D secure system does increase system and is certainly one step above the present scenario.

There is a lot of buzz about the holiday season. But we should first understand what exactly a holiday season means. Holiday season is basically the period that lasts nearly for 2-4 months which generally starts from October and ends in January. Some of the important festivals celebrated all over the world make it, the center of attraction viz. Halloween , Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year.

Since all these winter festivals are celebrated with the exchange of gifts so, it calls for special shopping. Now, why you should opt for the holiday shopping?

• Well, the basic reason is to welcome the New Year and bid adieu to the present one.
• Also, we should not forget the fact that holidays are spend with the people whom we care for and presenting a gift is the best way to express our emotions.
• Moreover, it is in this season that the consumers can expect favorable holiday season deals.

So, what say? Aren’t these factors good enough to motivate each of us to go for it?

The recent consumer’s buying trend indicates that they are affected due to the global recession and thus, they are in search for huge bargains. This is the point where on-line shopping is preferred.

• Mainly because the customers can purchase the goods or services while enjoying the comforts of their home.
• There are plenty of options available and the customers can choose from the best product promotion deal or discounts offered by the manufacturers.
• A very important point is that on-line shopping can save you from the stress of facing the crowded market places.
• You are not in the look out for a parking place.
• You can do a lot of comparison shopping. This means just with a click of your mouse, you can visit a plethora of websites and can choose and compare the various price options available.
• Most importantly, you can save a lot of time and can invest that time by involving yourself in doing something special or anything that excites you.
• Internet shopping also gives you an edge to purchase gifts from across the borders. Especially if you are in search for a unique kind of a gift, then on-line shopping is the best thing for you.
• Due to a number of wrong practices, a toll of population still fear of shopping on-line. A common reason being identity theft. If you too fall in this category then I must tell you that most of the on-line retailers have a safe payment services like Verisign etc.
• If suddenly at the stroke of midnight you remember that you have forgot to purchase something for your dear one, then do not worry; switch on your PC and start shopping.
• Some of the on-line retailers deliver the orders immediately after you place your order.
• You can also avoid standing in long queues, just to pay the bill.
• Last but not the least you can buy anything on the internet while enjoying all the comforts of your place.

So, gear up for the gala season and rejoice this time by shopping on-line.

-By Neha Gulati

Then the web 2.0 arrived which is a social web. The web 2.0 brought various features along with it such as Content Management System (CMS), RSS feeds, blogs etc. this means now the advertisers can themselves edit or change any content. Also, they can generate a lot of information on their blogs on everyday basis. It’s all about networking.

But, the web developers are always in search of something new. And thus, the invention of the next generation web i.e. web 3.0 is by far the biggest discovery.

The web 3.0 is basically an extension to the existing Web 2.0. Compared to Web 2.0 which was basically a social networking web, Web 3.0 is semantic web which is considered to be more intelligent web. A semantic web helps the computer to read and use the web. Now, one can read, write and execute the web. The semantic web is all about the meaning of the data.

By intelligent web all I mean is that in the Web 3.0 information/the web content is presented in a language that software can understand. The content is written in specific programming language like OWL etc.

The application design in Web 3.0 is placed in a more systematized manner. Some of the very important traits can be:-

• Comparatively, the applications are small
• The data is in the cloud
• The applications can run on any device like- mobile phones etc.

For example: - If you type a complex sentence- I want to buy good clothes and watch a soccer match. Ask for the different alternatives. Now, this smarter web will look out for the various options and will present the best results. The more frequent the user will use the web; it understands the profile of its user, analyze the search interests and will present specific result to its user. Hence, the Web 3.0 gives more refined results.

You must be wondering that why this a smarter web? Well, this can really help you to boost your web presence.

• Precise information
  Web 3.0 has a software that analyze the type of information surfed by you and draws conclusions automatically. This means that Web 3.0 gives more user-specific information.

• 3D Web
  Web 3.0 use a three dimensional model and transform it into a series of 3D spaces. Personalized avatars are a common feature of the 3D web. So, you as an advertiser can expect more user traffic on your site leading to more frequent clicks.

• Easy access
  All Web 3.0 applications can run on even on mobile phones. Applications are very fast, giving the users required freedom to roam freely from database to database and from program to program. Hence, it becomes easy for you to reach out to the customers or potential customers with an ease.

  Let’s understand some of the basic features of the web 3.0:-

• Artificially intelligent web
  You can add voice/speech tool to your website so that when a user visits your site, he/she can read the site in your own voice.

• Personalized data
  You can save your bookmarks and tags on the personal space provided by the browser.

• Remote control
  You can access your PC from a distant location.

• Internet radio
  The web 3.0 is equipped with digital sound quality and can play a number of radio stations for its users.

Therefore, Web 3.0 gives an edge to the advertisers by providing a personalized experience to all its users.

- By Neha Gulati

· The introduction stage: the stage when the product is newly launched by the company.

· The growth stage: the stage where consumers know about the product.

· The maturity stage: stage where there is loads of competition and USP’s are highlighted.

· The decline stage: the stage where the demand of the product falls and in order to stay in the competition, one has to revamp the product.

Ok, great. So how can the web help?

Traditionally, marketing gurus have suggested using Pull Marketing during the introduction stage and Push marketing during the maturity phase. But in this age of technology, we feel the web is a medium that can enhance your product life cycle at every stage.

I am sure you would agree that the web is an equally crucial place to be present on and one has to make a mark there too. It is observed that a number of marketers are marketing about their products, services or ideas through the internet. It is the easiest, fastest and user-friendly medium to reach a large audience, globally or locally. Whether it is a small, medium or a large enterprise, internet has become the basic mode of communication.

Now let’s go in a roller-coaster ride of promoting your products through the digital medium:

1. The Introduction stage:

As this is the stage when a product is being launched, you would need to reach out to the end customer essentially through push marketing strategies such as Rich Media, Banner Advertising, Email Marketing, Viral Marketing.

Along with this, you would need to start laying the foundation of a strong pull marketing presence through services such as Search Engine Optimization, Google Adwords/ PPC campaigns.

However, the present buzz word in the online marketing sphere is Social Media Optimization. The service must not be ignored and creating brand awareness on social networks such as Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, etc is extremely important.

However, as we know that at this point of time the product is first being introduced so there is more dependence on Search Engine Optimization, Google Adwords/PPC campaigns, Rich Media and Banner Advertising.

2. The Growth Stage:

This is the stage when the users know your presence, your product and services. They would continuously be looking for you and you as the advertiser would need to ensure that you are placed highly on search engines and it becomes extremely essential for you to make sure that your target audience recognize your brand and fall for your product.

Online promotional campaigns, SEO, PPC campaigns, Rich Media and SMO are the basic tools used.

3. The Maturity Stage:

In this stage, it very important for you to show the distinguishing features of your product and compete with the competitors to win the rat-race.

To do this, you have to highly depend on Banner Advertising, Rich Media, Search Engine Optimization, Link Exchange, Email Marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC), Affiliate Marketing, Viral Marketing and Social Media Optimization. In short, you have to implement all the available tactics to lure more and more customers.

This is the stage which needs the attention of the advertiser to maintain the company’s web presence and regularly update its activities on the SMO. Though, this is the most crucial stage so depending on the convenience of the advertiser for example budget, campaign time etc., mostly every tool is used.

4. The Decline Stage:

This stage forces you to either quit the market or face-lift your product. Generally the marketers choose the latter option.

To retain your control in the market, you have to refurbish your product. Renew your website, launch a new product range and promote them through the SEO, SMO, Email Marketing and each and every tool with which you can once again entice the eye and will of your target audience to buy your product.

Since changes are made on the existing product only, this means that the customers already know about your product and probably were using it in the past. So, all the tools that were used in the introduction stage are once again used here but stress on tools like Viral Marketing, SMO, Email Marketing and Banner Marketing is more.

The prima facie is that both Pull and Push Marketing strategies are central to promote your brand/product at every stage of the Product Life Cycle but it totally depends on the factors like:-

· Budget

· Time available

· Type of the target public

· Type of the product

· Reputation/goodwill of the company

· Type of the product etc.

Hence, it can be said that because internet is the convergence medium where other mediums like television, radio and print unite so, depending upon the will of the advertiser and the resources available every tool of web promotion is used in varied proportions.

-By Neha Gulati

What is a landing page?

Ask yourself this question, and then ask some of your friends. Some really interesting responses would come your way, more common ones are ‘a page the user lands on’, ‘it’s an alternate to the homepage’, ‘the output page of a search’.

Technically, a landing page is created specifically as an extension to an online advertisement for users to click through to and get more information on the advertisement. The landing page is also used as a customized page to measure the effectiveness of advertising campaign based on a click-through rate.

Types of landing pages:

There are 2 basic variations of a landing page; reference and transactional.

1. Reference page: A reference landing page is one that presents information relevant to the visitor. The page would provide information to the user through text, images, etc but would not have any ‘transactional activity’ on the page. The information provided on such a page would be to add on more to the advertisement so the user had more to read about.A variation of the ‘reference landing page’ is a ‘webvert’, with a prime focus on lead generation, interaction with the visitor and getting a response. The webvert is created on the AIDA principle (Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action) and is non-transactional in nature.

   The traffic to a webvert is usually driven from a Google PPC Adwords campaign and is created for two specific marketing goals:

   - To attain high Google Adwords landing page scores, and reducing the Adwords campaign costs,

   - The webvert has a clear call to action tool, usually like a ‘Contact Form’ or ‘Reply Form’.

2. Transactional page: this is a page to entice the visitor to take some action; fill out a form, play a game, buy a product, etc. Typically such a form would have a name, email id, contact numbers as the quick forms for contact.A visitor taking a desirable action on the site is called a conversion. Usually marketers keep a constant monitor on the conversion rate of the transactional page to access the effectiveness of the landing page, and they continuously keep looking for ways on improving the conversion rate by changing the look of the page, the display of information, the information fields captured through the form, etc.

Usually, a landing page is a very effective way of monitoring the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. Most of the time, we think that while advertising, bringing the user to the homepage of the website would suffice. This is not true. When enticed by an advertisement, the user wants to read about more details of the advertisement, or read more about the promotion, event, etc. Hence bringing the user to the landing page is the ideal thing to do.

By Naved

1. Precise Phrase Search: Try using double quotes for your search phrase (“”). By doing so, you would essentially instruct Google to search for the exact phrase within the quotes. For example, searching for Magnon International yields 143,000 results on Google, whereas “Magnon International” gives 2,590 results that have Magnon International written together.
2. Site Search: In case there is a specific site you would like to search, instruct Google by using [‘keyphrase’ site:‘name of site’]. The results would display all the places where the ‘keyphrase’ is mentioned in the website. Try this for an example: outsourcing to India site:magnoninternational.com.
3. Place Holder Search: a little known feature, yet very powerful. Use the * to fill in blanks and use it as a place holder for phrases that you are not too sure off.
4. Search for either of the words in a search term: Say you would like to search for a article/a result that have either of the search terms, use the word OR in between to define the words. For example try searching for Magnon International or Magnon Solutions, the results displayed would have either ‘Magnon International’ or ‘Magnon Solutions’ within their content. In case you would like to narrow down further, try using the “” for each phrase. Try “Magnon International” or “Magnon Solutions”.

There are always exceptions though:

Google approximates user search and tries to generate results as per the what the user may be searching for. For example,

1. The search term ‘to be or not to be’ would not give results for 2 different phrases and would instead give results for the entire phrases, leading you to William Shakespeares’ Hamlet.
2. Searching for 8*16 would give you a calculator result as against point 3 above.
3. Commonly used words like ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘the’, ‘for’ are usually ignored (with exceptions to that also).
4. Punctuations in commonly used meaningful words are not ignored (e.g. C++ or C# would give results pertaining to the programming languages).

By: Naved

If you are someone who would want to prevent your content from being copied, here are a few guidelines that you can try out:

Register your articles on the copyright sites:

In order to prevent your article from getting stolen, you can lock it up and claim it to be your own property. Just after you finish up writing your article, register yourself with the copyright sites like My Free Copyright , etc. Once you have an account on such sites, it would be possible for you to register your article and keep a record of the time of uploading it which would prove its authenticity and originality. On the contrary, you can attain the ‘Registered & protected’ badge that can be displayed on your article page.

Submit your articles to top directories:

Submitting your article to the top directories could serve 3 purposes. Your article will be known to the public easily; your website gets traffic every time a reader clicks on the link of those directories, and prevent the thief to copy your article to post it to other directories.

Google alerts could help:

Google alerts would very well help you out become aware of the potential thievery. These alerts send you mails informing you of any visibility about your articles on the web.

Check the theft for yourself:

With the internet coming into existence, an increase in the number of scraper sites is in vogue. These scraper sites copy content from other websites using software techniques to extract information from websites. All you need to do is write the name of your blog or the URL on the search bar of the scraper sites and wait for results. These sites search for duplicate content in the web and display all results highlighting the copied paragraph or lines. There are a few sites that even track users who copy content from your website.

The fact is that, you can very easily prevent your content from thievery if you keep yourself alert at all times. The content that you create after the entire research and hard work, need not go waste but appreciated and invite leads for your business. For this, you need to make sure that your content have the copyrights and not stolen in any case.

So why not follow these few tips above and let us know if you have anything more in store.

By: Shabana

However, the primary motive of increasing leads or enquiries remain to increase sales by giving you a larger number of people to interact with. Hence to generate more business, it is important to attract an increased number of quality visitors to your website who leave their information through the lead generation tool.

Well, you will find innumerable tools to capture leads, however we have highlighted some of the most important ones below:

Lead capture pages: One of the most important tools to capture a lead is the contact form or the quick connect form. This is for those who are genuinely interested in the product or services that you offer. These lead capture pages acquire the e-mail addresses and names of your visitors. When they find your website on the internet, these forms are the best means to communicate and get in touch to offer them the best.

Landing pages: A landing page is one that users come to first on the website, for example, while running a PPC campaign, you may have a particular page that you may like to promote during the campaign. The landing page needs to have all the necessary information as well as a lead capture mechanism like a form submission. These pages should be interesting and informative thus directing the visitors to the affiliate page or product that you are promoting. For instance, if you are some service provider, your landing page needs to be the page that tells about the services.

Articles or Blogs: Article writing on the web has now created a great impact on the web users. No doubt these articles bring quality traffic to your website but at the same time, even capture a good number of leads. The quality of your writing can impress people and in turn make them interested in your products or services. Your visitors would definitely leave their contact information after they find a well-written and helpful article. This could also be in the way of them leaving comments on your articles.

Newsletters: The basic motive behind sending a newsletter is top update the reader on the recent development in the organization or industry. This usually also reminds prospects of your presence in the business domain. Your company newsletter should contain all the information about your company and when you send them to your potential and existing clients, it may lead to interest generation and they could get in touch with you for a proposal.

Lead Generation is beneficial to your business and has become popular amongst all businesses.

• From proper lead generation comes a higher figure of sales.

• It allows the sales team to get in touch with the right person in organizations and invest more time in meeting the decision makers.

• Lead Generation saves both time and resource that are required to find the limited number of clients that falls into your category. You do not have to loiter around searching for your prospect clients amongst the scrambled lot.

• Last but not the least, with lead generation one can limit the prefecture one wishes to get business from. In other words, you can very well decide on the feasibility of making deals.

Would you like to add some more points?

By: Shabana

Verify your website’s compatibility

For better usability, your site needs to be multi-browser compatible. In other words, it should have the same experience when run on different browsers (like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Netscape, etc.) Why not check for yourself if your newly re-launched website runs fine on all possible browsers?

Is the favicon there?

A favicon and a logo represent the brand identity of your company or organization. It is necessary to make sure that whenever the URL of your site comes on any browser, or when someone opens multiple windows, the favicon appears. The visibility of your favicon can make a whole lot of difference to the branding of your products or services.

Is Analytics code important on every page?

Google Analytics is one of the best ways of monitoring the activity on your website. You can read about the benefits of Google Analytics on our previous post: http://blog.magnoninternational.com/web-analytics/

Do your site visitors get repulsed very often?

In order to determine how your site visitors react to your newly constructed site, keeping a track on the bounce rates can be helpful. A bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to your site who move away to different sites, rather than continue on other pages within your site. After undergoing so many changes in your site, there are possibilities for a striking change in the bounce rates as well. If the bounce rates go down on certain pages, make sure that the other areas of the site follow the same norms.

Why make your visitors wait?

In order to reduce the loading time of the website, the images embedded need to be optimized for quick downloading. So it is important to lessen the resolution of large images without distorting them because images with less resolution take less time for downloading. Also, if the downloading does not take time, it makes the search engine crawlers’ work easy. Making your visitors wait means abandoning them from your site!

Full and final testing

While re-making your website, it must have undergone innumerable changes. These changes could be anything - starting from a negligible one such as minor content changes, grammatical errors, placing of images, etc. to applying new functionality which can be significant additions. Moreover, it cannot be more irritating for a visitor to find errors in a fresh site. A full end to end test just before making your re-launched site go live could always help and benefit.

We might have missed out some points. Please help us to find out what they might be…

By: Shabana

Let us find out the different aspects of the changes:-

• Content is the main facet where modification is mostly required. Your website should have innovative content that is revised recurrently. Revising the content does not mean moulding the same content again and again. Adding fresh content or a new page to your website at regular intervals would really prove to be good for search engine promotion. You can always make updates by uploading news regularly, write-ups about the happenings in your company, etc.

• Apart from the content, changing the look and feel of the website on and off can attract the attention of the visitors. The change in the look and feel of your website helps retain your customers because they find variety in your website. Moreover, keeping the website up-to-date with the latest technology can definitely prove to be beneficial. For instance, if you see that your website still has Web 1.0 look, get it modernized with the features of Web 2.0. This would give a good impression on the minds of the visitors.

• When everyone is in a mood to celebrate during the festive season, why should your website sit back? Think of the Holiday season, or Christmas Eve with decorations everywhere. Adding a little festive cheer to your website, you can give a feel of celebration to all your visitors. I am sure a decorated shop would attract you more than a regular one. Same goes for a website.

• A website should be given constant attention to ensure its proper functioning. Checking the proper functioning of the links, forms, loading time of the pages etc. should fall in your website maintenance activity.

• You can offer various promotional packages, offers to your customers all throughout the year. This attracts attention of visitors who land on your website and gives you an edge over your competitors.

• Proper display of your products plays a very important role in retaining the visitor on to the website longer. When they find interesting pictures or images in your website, they remember them and make frequent visits.

There may be innumerable changes that can be made in your website but you should always keep in mind that the changes serve the purpose rightly. The ethnic way of promoting something is the word of mouth which still exists. Since people love change, frequently updating your website will make your visitors like your website which will build a trust in them about you and your service offerings. This trust will make them come back to your website which might also make frequent visits directly remembering your website which results in improved sale of your products or services.

Any other point that you want to add? Would love to hear your thoughts.

By:- Shabana

There are a few things to be noted that can make your email marketing effective:

• People will ignore anything that is nameless or without any significance because now-a-days, there isn’t any time to open every email in the inbox. So if you give relevant name to your emails, response will definitely come to you.

• For building internet business and earning online income, maintaining relationships is a must. Personal stroke works. Writing your emails from a personal standpoint can be time–consuming but can build relationships with your subscribers at the quickest.

• People have the urge to grab knowledge about more things and new things. Educating your subscribers through your mails can be a reason that many would sign up to your offers.

• Creating a sense of urgency in your emails will tempt people to open them up. No doubt people will never refuse if you give irresistible reasons.

• The business cycle of your potential customers is an aspect that needs to be understood very well before sending out the business emails. Sending out of such emails can be affected if you send them on customers’ peak sales time.

• For finding out the best contact time, you need to find out the response of your various customers. An experiment for the same might help. Just send out emails with similar content at regular intervals throughout the day and check out which one generates the best response.

Apart from this, it is very important to know the type of e-mails you are sending or the purpose of sending those emails.

Emails for quick announcements: These types of emails are usually straightforward and concise making some kind of announcements about your company products or services. These announcements can be anything that informs people about your company schemes or special offers or launch of some new products or services. They can have only one call-to-action and should also get scanned easily in no time.

Newsletters: The purpose of an email newsletter is to maintain the relationship of a company and its existing, as well as, potential customers. The content in email newsletters never talk about business directly but provide relevant informations about the services or products, or the happenings in the company itself. These email newsletters carry the look and feel of the company’s website and many links to the website as well.

Catalog Emails: A catalog email serves as an electronic brochure that displays the latest products or services of a company. Such newsletters are therefore self-explanatory and its primary focus is to encourage customers to purchase.

So why not move forward with your online business sending e-mails efficiently.

Any suggestions??

By: Shabana

- Buyers are three times more likely to purchase something if it is addressed in their own language

- Website visitors will remain on a site twice as long if they can read in their native language

- 70% of Web Users who can read English prefer buying from sites in their own language

- Nearly 90% of people who have little or no English ability spend most or all of their time on sites in their native language

Multilingual SEO - Concept

All corporates are aware about the benefits of Search Engine Optimization but when it comes to multi-lingual SEO, people become apprehensive. It is because the concept of Multi-lingual SEO is not very clearly understood by the people.

Multi-lingual SEO is nothing like translating your complete website according to the prefecture one belongs to. In fact it is about testing the potentiality of your online business with the international market. It does not have to deal with any native language for business but the global language - English.

There is a misconception about MSEO that one needs to translate the language of the entire website in order to submit to the foreign search engines. However, this is not true. In case you want your website to be optimized in German search engines, MSEO tells you to have at least one page in German, optimized with German keywords and Meta tags. This page will have the look and feel of your home page and will carry a German version of the page that gives an introduction to your services or products. The rest of the pages will be in English for the understandability of the people all over.

Multilingual SEO - Benefits

The main motive behind SEO is to make web users land on your website and MSEO does the same. Thus it brings your potential clients to your website by communicating with them in different languages. Once they have landed on your website, it is your job to take them further. If they refuse to communicate any longer after seeing your rest of the pages in English, they are not your true potential clients. Therefore, MSEO gives you the advantage of identifying your curious potential customers and the serious ones.

Further, when we say about ‘submission on Japanese search engines’, it is not the search engines in Japan alone. In fact it refers to all Japanese speaking markets which might be in any corner of the world.

Your website will not be able to be viewed by internet users in Germany, France, Italy, China, Japan, etc. if your website does not obey to the norms of MSEO. MSEO can indeed bring business to you from every corner of the world!

Tips for making your site multi-lingual

Localize for your target audience - Localization goes beyond translation. However, for either to really work in the target culture, one must to take into account the nuances of culture and language that are at the heart of true communication. So while a translation may be accurate linguistically, extra attention still needs to be paid to the broader context in which it will be used. Choose translators for understanding the current cultural nuances of the target audience.

Location-specific terms and keywords - Collect search terms and keywords popular with your potential audience and relevant for searches conducted in the target language.

Host natively - Host your website on a server in your targeted country. It helps with credibility and increases organic search engine benefits.

Regional domains - If you are focusing primarily on regional specific search engines for example ‘Netherlands’ then, register an .nl domain.

Regional links - Include links from websites in the same region as this will help increase search results.

PageRank Transfer - Make sure to link to your regional website from your main site.

Interesting? Share with us if you have something in mind..

By: Devrishi Arora

Quality is what that matters and not quantity

Social media is never about numbers but building healthy relationships. The effectiveness of social media comes to view when you count your friends according to the manner in which they revert back to you, rather than counting the number of friends on Facebook, your Twitter followers, your blog visitors, etc.

You can always count the ten people who can remember your name or know the reason for his or her connection to you, and not the rest of the 50,000.

Spread the content amongst like people

It might be a tough job to bring people to your content; thus taking your content to the people can be a good option.
You can always post your content to various networking sites depending upon the theme of the content thus allowing people to view it, like it and in return start following you. If you are following the right way, you may not require anything else to promote your business.

Tips: Increase the spreading of your content gradually!

Interaction helps

A two-way conversation is always effective in a social media because it makes people inquisitive to know more and thus maintain a lasting relation. In fact, engaging people in what you want to express is very important. For doing the same, one needs to:

• Talk to them
• Question them
• Answer them
• Find out what clicks them the most
• Discover what can attract them to you

But doing it at an apparent level would never help. One will have to invest some time in doing a research on the interests of the people you are connected to.

Tips: Explore and expand!

Consider the originality

Re-posting someone else’s posts can be easy but will provide very little value. No doubt, there are innumerable writers evolving with the emerging of the interactive media, and maintaining the originality has become difficult. Take your time to deliver posts but at the end of the day what attracts people, is a fresh look.

Tips: Make your content look fresh. Handle it tactfully!

Give time to your dreams

Success never comes at one go. You can be very good at socializing but you might have to wait and watch, if others are socializing well enough with you. Never dream about attaining stardom overnight. Instead, move forward steadily, systematically, and focus on building up quality community around your brand.

Tips: Slow and steady wins the race!

By: Shabana

Bold logos: A bold logo helps to create the impression of a clear and strong brand by incorporating attitude. Web 2.0 sites have logos that are bold enough to speak it all. They represent the brand’s quality at the first glance.

Beveled edges: Sharp edges can never give that smooth effect. Every corner in a Web 2.0 website is beveled in order to get a more polished look and soft feeling.

Iconic menu buttons: The menu buttons have icons on its side for easy understanding of the web users. Web 2.0 site designs use lesser but more meaningful icons. This makes the Web 2.0 website lively!

White space for uncluttered text: By the Web 2.0 attribute, the color scheme of any blank space on your website is of the similar pattern and the content / images uncluttered. Web 2.0 websites feel the necessity of spacing.

Big Texts & Big Buttons: Web 2.0 websites make use of larger and readable fonts; the headings are slightly larger than the normal content on the main body of the text. At times, different fonts for headings are used in order to draw attention to them.

Moreover, the buttons - big and bold – are inclined towards the Web 2.0 characteristics to highlight on the important offers or informations.

Easy Navigation: The navigation system in Web 2.0 websites need to be clear, steady and effortless reading. The visitors thus understand the site structure easily and instinctively know where they have to go.

Simple layout: Web 2.0 websites are extremely simple to use. Keeping in mind that in this age the web users cannot tolerate any unnecessary complexities, the site structures and navigation of these websites are simple for visitors to understand them effortlessly.

Gradients: Web 2.0 websites make full use of gradients that have drop shadows and curves. Such gradients give a stylish but professional look to your website.

Ability to participate with the members of the site: Interaction being the main motive, Web 2.0 websites has space for communication, expression of thoughts and ideas.

We might have left out with something, why not make some additions??

If you think your website looks old and outdated and want to move up the expectations curve of what your customer is looking for – Let us know, we might be able to help.

By:- Shabana