9 - 2010 - Mitash Digital

3 Essential Shopping Cart Tips To Help You Increase Checkout Conversions

On the face of it a shopping cart might seem like a straight forward mechanism. A customer adds the item, clicks checkout and the money slips neatly into your pocket. Yet in reality a purchase is seldom that straight forward – any website marketing consultant will tell you that. It is quite remarkable how many online store owners manage to royally confuse the process and deter the purchase from taking place. In light of this, here are 3 important shopping cart tips to help you increase checkout conversions and reduce abandonment.

Don’t Confuse The Checkout Process With a Market Research Opportunity

It might seem like a good idea to obtain as much information about a customer before they leave your store, but if you knew that 12% of customers Read more

24/09/2010/by Ash Mehta

Want An Expert? Head On Over To Bing Social

The hype surrounding the Yahoo-Bing search merger has calmed down considerably, replaced by all the fuss over Google Instant. Honestly, the same questions keep being written about and Twittered, hourly!

How will Google Instant affect SEO?
Is SEO Dead?
Is Paid Advertising finished?
Will Google Instant cook my dinner…?

Yes, it has all got rather silly. So it’s nice to have something else to talk about that enhances the internet user experience and Read more

23/09/2010/by Ash Mehta

e-Commerce & Shopping Carts, Usability & Conversion, Website Design & Development

Ecommerce: Don’t Scare off Potential Sales – Allow Guest Purchases and Achieve 23% More Business!

How annoying is it when you really want to purchase something quickly online, only to go right through the checkout process and suddenly be asked to login or sign up. Okay, if you own an online store your aim is to establish long term customers by collecting email addresses and then sending out promotional material, newsletters and Christmas cards etc – yes I said Christmas cards – it’s only 3 months away!…

…Anyway, back to my point. Could you not just allow a guest customer to check out and then provide an option to save personal information post the transaction, that way you have guaranteed the sale.

So why am I ranting about this. I shall tell you. Read more

22/09/2010/by Ash Mehta

Internet/Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

Facebook Passes Google In Terms of Time Spent Online

When choosing an online marketing service there are a number of user behaviours you need to consider. Traffic and user volume are clearly the key two considerations, but one sorely overlooked aspect of advertising is the amount of time a user spends on a particular platform.

It is natural to gravitate towards advertising on the most popular mediums, Google remaining the most obvious choice. But surely the best places to advertise are the places in which users spend the most time. Think about it like this, the longer or more regularly a user visits a platform the more time they will have to view an advertisement and consider following the link.

With this in mind, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney compiled some very interesting data for August 2010, showing that Facebook has passed Google in terms of time spent online. Mahaney observed:

“Looking at % of Total Time Spent by the top 5 sites in August, Facebook, for the first time took the top spot with 41.1B minutes followed by Google with 39.8B minutes. Yahoo! fell to the 3rd spot with 37.7B minutes. Also, Yahoo!’s share of time spent in Q3 QTD slid to an all-time low of 9.3%. On a separate note, Google’s management noted that its number of global users crossed the 1B mark for the first time”.

Facebook is becoming an increasingly attractive online marketing service – not just a mere community network. Just look at the accompanying visitor statistics below (Source: Hitwise) Read more

21/09/2010/by Ash Mehta

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Security & Privacy

Google Stalker Proves Privacy Isn’t Always Protected – But Search Engine Optimisation Firms Need Their Big Brother

Have you ever wondered whether far away in “Google Land” there is a nerdy looking computer expert tracking your every move around the internet? Scary thought, but one that became a reality last week.

David Barksdale, site reliability engineer at Google has been given the boot after abusing his position by tapping into the voice phone logs, contact lists and chat transcripts of minors, he even went as far as unblocking himself after a teen account owner blocked him out. On one occasion he flaunted the name and address of a 15-year-old’s girlfriend after the teen refused to disclose her name.

David Barksdale – now ex- Google Site Reliability Engineer Read more

20/09/2010/by Ash Mehta

Internet/Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Got an Online Business Idea – Before Approaching a Search Engine Optimization Firm Do Some Basic Level Research of Your Own

You don’t need to find a niche market to create successful online business. Many marketers would have you believe that finding an untapped market with potential is much easier than entering a market already well catered for. This isn’t necessarily true. Agreed, there are over-saturated markets which you may do well to avoid, but most markets have unplugged gaps that can be exploited with the help of an effective search engine optimization firm. Read more

17/09/2010/by Ash Mehta

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO Myths Dispelled By A Website Optimisation Company

Like fashion trends, SEO myths seem to surface every now and again, only to die out when a trusted expert from a search engine company puts play to their silliness. The majority of myths begin in forums started by individuals speculating on their “SEO failures”. People find it difficult to understand the way algorithms interpret their changes and subsequently arrive at nonsensical conclusions.

You see, the hardest thing about SEO is understanding cause and effect. There are so many contributing factors as to why SERPs behave in a particular way. Sadly, for those like me who run a search engine company, clueless individuals spread rumours around the internet misleading unsuspecting readers. This means we get bombarded with the same questions pertaining to the same myths month in month out. Read more

15/09/2010/by Ash Mehta

Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Will Google Instant Affect SEO and Google Rankings & How Will Your Organic SEO Company Respond?

A few of my clients have been a little concerned about the recent launch of Google Instant and how it might affect their SEO progress and search rankings. In fact I have been reading a lot of conflicting information on Google Instant and SEO over the last few weeks so I did some investigating to set the record straight for you.

For those who don’t know, Read more

10/09/2010/by Ash Mehta

Pay Per Click (PPC) Management, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Google AdWords Document Leaked: Revealing The Big Google Spenders

Some naughty boy or girl has leaked a Google document that discloses the first half of 2010 AdWords advertising spend of Google’s customers. Oops, more bad news for Google, this certainly doesn’t do any favours for those involved and their collective search engine optimisation campaign. I wonder how much the culprit got paid for sneaking that little file out the door.

The document was first leaked to adage who have of course leaked into onto the internet and into my inbox via some other sources. Check out the graphs below.

I am pleased to be able to bring you this jaw dropping information that reveals Read more

08/09/2010/by Ash Mehta

Pay Per Click (PPC) Management, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO Optimisation Set to Get Harder as Google Experiments With Four Ads Above Search Results

Lately I have been praising Google for a number of new innovations including the recent Google Maps branded points-of-interest initiative which is currently in beta stage. But as an SEO optimisation consultant I must say today I am not a happy bunny.

Google has always shown a maximum of three ads above its unpaid organic search results, but it seems this is all set to change as they are currently experimenting with four, throwing in their own comparison ad into the mix. So, if you have just organically made it onto Google page 1, you may soon be dropping off to page 2 again. Read more

06/09/2010/by Ash Mehta