Everyone is talking about the role social media plays for companies online in the UK, and there are lots of opinions about how to do it right.

M-commerce is the new buzz word in the online word. Basically it’s about consumers using their mobile phones when making buying decision, researching products, sharing information with friends and making purchases.

How often do I hear the comments from individuals who express annoyance at websites that have things dropping in and out, cartoons moving across, pictures fading in and out and you name it pretty much everything potentially going on.

How long is a piece of string? Is the first answer. The second more helpful answer is a question in itself: “tell me more about your business and what you want to achieve and the importance your on line presence has in achieving your targets.”

This is a typical question that many website developers are often asked. My brother in law said that he built his website for free using free software and one of his team in his company who is reasonably IT savvy. Like all things in life, however, you get what you pay for (or not as in the case of my brother in law) and more equally as important - while you may get what you pay for, the other key question is what do you need in the first place?

The small business community of Great Britain is characterised by its entrepreneurial and creative approach and by its ability to be flexible and versatile. The businesses that succeed in the next decade are going to be those who are brutally honest about their operations allowing them to anticipate and adapt to the changing business landscape.

Although a huge amount of money was spent online over the Christmas period, you may be left wondering why based on the large numbers of visitors you had to your site, why a large number of visitors didn't buy from you.

Despite the influx of social media in 2009, there is still a place for e-marketing as we move into the new decade.  The challenge lies in understanding how all the pieces of an online marketing campaign fit together to engage with the customer.  Whatever communication tools you use, they need to be relevant and worth reading to encourage customers to take the actions you want them to take.

We’ve all seen the adverts from companies offering to bring you more business than you’ve ever dreamed of through the use of SEO. Those who claim to charge no set up fee, those who claim to get you guaranteed first page listings and those who claim that £20 a month will get you top rankings.

Although what is now known as the internet started in the 1960's as a method for computers to communicate with each other, it was in 1989 the Tim Berners Lee and others at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, more popularly know as CERN, proposed a new protocol for information distribution.

This was the question that a friend recently asked me. My response was, “well what do you think of it? Is it doing what you want it to do?” I went on to say it doesn’t matter what I think of it providing you are happy with what you believe the website to be achieving for your business.

A survey recently published on moneysavingexpert.com conducted from August 9th 2009 produced the following results:

Based on the question of whether when searching Google, or other search engines, often sponsored links appear at the top of the page and on the right hand column. These are adverts which people pay to be put there. The survey then asked, what is your view out of the following options:
 

A new survey from eBay has found that four-fifths of sellers who also have a bricks and mortar presence believe the rise of internet retailing is saving, rather than harming, their business.

42% of adults living in rural Britain are shopping online more than they did last year, according to a new report undertaken by The Future Laboratory for PayPal. The report also indicates that 94% of people living in the countryside now shop online.

If you don’t know your Twitter from your Facebook or you LinkedIn from your Digg then it’s safe to say you’re not taking advantage of the many opportunities available to your business.

It’s the growing craze across the nation; online networking for the professional business community. LinkedIn is the leading professional online network with over 46 million members worldwide. They get a new member every second.

Feedback can be a touchy subject for businesses. Everyone has an opinion and on the internet there is no shortage of individuals who want to share theirs with you. Plus those companies who are open and honest about their feedback, whether positive or negative are often perceived in a better light by new customers.

So just how do you make feedback, even the most negative work positively for your business?

Search engine optimisation is all about making incremental changes to your website so that search engines can read and therefore rank your website higher. Investing time and effort in SEO is vital if you want potential customers to find your site, improve brand awareness and increase conversions.

The most effective web stores are works in progress, using real customer behaviour to drive small, iterative improvements on an ongoing basis. This approach not only removes the guesswork, but also the pressure of trying to be perfect first time, says Mark Simpson.

What is the difference between Inbound and Outbound marketing?

Outbound marketing is the processes that you use to promote your business ‘message’ to your potential customers by methods such as promotional email blasts, cold calling, telemarketing, and direct maill and TV advertising etc. These methods rely on you sending this message out, hopefully at the point where your target is receptive to the message.

You’re challenge should you choose to accept it, is to redesign your website so that it starts working hard for your business.

Let’s be blunt here, when we say working hard for your business, what we really mean is either saving you money and or making you money. Other than that it’s a bit like Barbie, looks nice but doesn’t seem to do much despite having the safari outfit.
 

… Or how to use offers in the right way to drive online sales.

When you see special offers what’s your immediate thought? ‘What’s in it for me?’ Or more likely ‘what are they trying to get out of me?’ Customers are naturally sceptical about anything that offers that make your wildest dreams come true for the bargain price of ten bob and a pickled egg; shouting with big headlines and then failing to follow through with the goods, will instantly make your customers distrust you.
 

Handy hints and tips for you all here that will help to refine your online buying processes and make it a pleasure to do business with you.

Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses through revenue sharing advertising between two websites. The affiliate website displays a banner advertisement of another website, to share their visitors. The affiliate in turn gets compensated for displaying the advertisement.

An online business can never achieve its objective of making sales if it is not serious about its proper process of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques.

It is a widely held idea that "ergonomics is just common sense."

However, it is much more than that. The purpose of any application is to serve a particular person with a particular aim and this is especially relevant to the design of web sites. Visitors and/ or potential customers interact with your site and consideration of how they will do this, can have a major effect on their experience and your success.

I have built most of my business through networking, as have many others before me. I would like to share my experience and my opinion of what it is, how it works and why you should do it.

How does Google work (source - googleguide.com)

Google has three distinct parts:
• Googlebot, a web crawler that finds and fetches web pages.
• The indexer that sorts every word on every page and stores the resulting index of words in a huge database.
• The query processor, which compares your search query to the index and recommends the documents that it considers most relevant.

Advanced searching in Google (source eldis.org)

The broader your search terms are, the more results you are likely to get. You may end up with thousands of vague results.

The retired Church minister is in fact my Dad. He's no technophobe; he can program a video (although my Mum wants to know why he ‘accidentally' keeps recording the football rather than the celebrity ice-skating!), and although he doesn't have a computer he does nip round to my brothers house and pick up his hotmail there.

Thinking about how to get your business out there online set me thinking about something completely different – going out on the town. We’ve all done it. We’ve all had brilliant & not so brilliant experiences of it & strangely enough, those experiences kind of mirror the way in which you can get your website right or completely wrong.

The idea of SEO is to help your site gain greater visibility, traffic and conversions, which means that all content on the page must be interesting to people.  This article looks at how to avoid the pitfalls of writing for search engines rather than the people you want to attract.

When people are buying from you online, you want to make it as easy for them as possible, so we’ve gathered a few tips together which should make the overall experience a shopping delight for your customers.

The owners of the biggest & best companies in the world understand that careful management of their marketing, based on a complete understanding of their customers can turn passive purchasers into passionate advocates. Making the customer experience a top priority is crucial if a company is to achieve its business aims & remain at the top of its industry.
 

There are a multitude of potential challenges that will dictate the overall success of an e-commerce project. Getting all involved to buy in to the concept, pre-planning, choosing the right supplier & making sure you have the right levels of support, all have to work correctly for an e-commerce project to be a success.

I ask this because one of my clients referred to it in that way in an online review of our company (more of that later). Frustratingly for some, my answer would be “yes and no”!

E-newsletters are an effective & cost effective way for you to stay in touch with your customers & prospects, but how do you manage to give recipients the information they want whilst strengthening your business?