Services
eBay Blackthorne
At the end of last year we were approached to help a client with managing their eBay presence, normally we wouldn’t get involved with setting up ebay stores and the like but this one was interesting.
Our client wanted to list over 300,000 products on eBay so clearly manually listing products wasn’t an option and the anticipated volume of orders would be hard to manage effectively using eBay’s standard processes.
Some kind of listing and order management software seemed like the only sensible way of tackling this so we did a bit of homework and chose to use Blackthorne, eBay’s enterprise level software – think turbo lister on steroids.
The main functions that led us to choose eBay Blackthorne were it’s ability to define data maps for importing large volumes of products from csv files and it’s ability to bulk process orders.
The data mapping means that even if suppliers provide data in all sorts of different formats and layouts it’s possible to import the data quickly and with minimal fuss if the data changes.
The order processing functionality means that you can print invoices and address labels en masse.You can also export data relatively easily with the customisable exports for use in book keeping, CRM systems or other third party software.
We’re not going to review eBay Blackthorne here other than to say that by and large it’s very good, the documentation leaves a little to be desired but the support forums more than make up for it.
If you’re thinking about using Blackthorne, you won’t be dissapointed, but do yourself a massive favour and follow this one piece of advice:
Upgrade the database from Access to SQL Server right away.
By default, Blackthorne uses an underlying MS Access database, it works, but as you add more products and records it becomes so grindingly slow that you’ll think it’s crashed everytime you try and do anything. You can upgrade the database to run on SQL Server, it’s not that hard and took us about half an hour. Once it’s done, you’ll notice that Blackthorne runs literally 10 times faster, this get’s more and more important the larger the database gets.
Driving Down The Costs Of Adwords Clicks
Adwords can get very expensive very quickly, particularly in competitive markets. Even in less competitive markets costs can be pushed up by the likes of eBay and Amazon broad matching words that appear in your key phrases. Escalating costs can put people off using PPC, but a better understanding of the mechanism that determines your cost per click – CPC – can help bring costs back under control.
Before we talk about the factors that effect your CPC directly, it’s worth thinking about Google’s goals. Google are very vocal about wanting to deliver the best results to users, but they also want to make money and every factor that goes in to determining your price is a balance of these two objectives. So here are a few points to think about next time you start to worry about your PPC costs.
1) ROI Is Everything
Before you decide that Adwords is too expensive, work out what you can afford to spend. Say you are selling green widgets, each one you sell makes you £10 on your bottom line. If Adwords traffic converts at 5%, that means you can afford to spend a maximum of £0.50 per click. At that cost you’d be breaking even and we can do better than that, but £0.50 is a line to try and shoot under. You’ll need to have either Analytics or the Adwords conversion tracking script installed - preferably both – to get a handle on your ROI, if you don’t have these then get them now, you’re fighting blind without them.
Once you have ROI data, mine it for all you’re worth. Look for keywords that convert well and spend more on them, look for keywords that deliver hits but not sales and ask why. Could you do something to your landing page to get the sale or is the keyword just not relevant.
2) Clickthrough Rates Matter
Google aim to show the most relevant results; now imagine two ads for the same search term, one gets a CTR of 1%, the other 10%. Without seeing either ad, which do you think is most relevant?
“Ah, but my competition is bidding higher than me!”
OK, that may be true, but even if we ignore Google’s desire to display the best results, it still makes sense for them to show ads with a better CTR even if the CPC is lower. Think about our two hypothetical ads;
Ad A – CTR 1% max CPC £1.00
Ad B – CTR 5% maxCPC £0.50
If each add is shown 10,000 times, ad A will produce 100 clicks and net Google £100, Ad B will produce 500 clicks and net Google £250, in Google’s shoes which would you put at the top?
Clickthrough rates are all about your ad copy, good ad copy is hard to write, particularly in the tiny space you get to play with but there are couple of tricks that help:
- Make your ads specific – a large number of highly targeted ads work better than a couple of broad ones.
- Include information that people will want to know about your product, if you offer free shipping put it in the ad. If your price is great put that in too.
- Include a call to action – “Buy Green Widgets, only £4.99 with Free Shipping” vs “Widgets, see our range of widgets on our website”
Using Google Alerts for Link Prospecting
One of the most time consuming aspects of SEO is link prospecting, trawling through blog after blog for suitable link partners is boring and there can be times when hours of work yield very little. But don’t get disheartened, Google’s Alerts service can be easily re purposed to do a lot of the leg work for you.
Imagine your doing SEO for the keywords “green widgets”, Google Alerts allows you to set up automated emails telling you when new content is indexed that relates to your chosen keywords, so every time anyone publishes content about “green widgets” you get to know about it.
You can set up alerts on content from websites, news, news, books and discussions, you can also choose how often you want alerts, from as-it-happens to weekly. I would suggest you start with daily unless you want a very full inbox.
The quality of the leads this generates isn’t guaranteed, you still have to sort the wheat from the chaff and you still have to persuade people to give you links. But the content you get alerted to is fresh, if news breaks that is relevant to one of your keywords you’ll know about it and even if you can’t always get a link you’ll be able to publish your own content and keep your site fresh.
Google Alerts is here:
http://www.google.com/alerts
It’s quick and intuitive so I won’t explain how to do it here, you’ll figure it out.
One last tip though, if you set up daily alerts for more than a few keywords you’ll want to set up filters in your email to put the alerts into a folder. If you’re working on keywords for more than a couple of sites you’ll also want to divide up the incoming emails that way too.
PICNIC duplicate content finder
Adhere SEO
Duplicate Content Discovery Tool
(“PICNIC”)
Non-technical Overview
If your website content is being duplicated on other websites, there are two reasons you might need to be concerned.
1. Other websites may be using your content, perhaps without your permission: stealing your intellectual property, in other words. And if they’re stealing your content, they’re also stealing your hits, and your customers.
2. Google may penalise your website if it contains content that is duplicated elsewhere. Websites with unique content get ranked higher by Google and the other search engines.
But how can you find out if other websites are duplicating your content?
You can search manually, but if your website has more than a couple of pages that will quickly become a costly and time-consuming task, particularly since you’ll have to repeat it regularly.
The Adhere SEO Duplicate Content Discovery Tool (PICNIC) does the job for you. It can check every page on your website (or just a selection, if you prefer: it’s completely customisable) to see if any other websites contain the same content.
It will even generate page-by-page reports for you, telling you which of your pages contain unique content (that’s a big plus in SEO terms), and, for those pages which contain content duplicated elsewhere:
How many other websites are duplicating your content, and
Which website are duplicating your content
PICNIC is designed to be highly flexible. You can customise its performance to match the specific requirements of your website.
You can customise:
Which section(s) of which pages should be checked for duplicate content
The length of the search phrases used to check for duplicate content
Whether to check for duplicate content in your meta description tags
Technical Specifications
1. Google API key
To use the Adhere DCTC, you must provide a Google API key. This is available through your Google account.
2. XML Sitemap Integration
The Adhere DCTC uses a simple XML document structure to analyze your website for duplicate content. You also use this XML document to set various configuration options.
You must provide us with the URL of your XML document.
If you have in-house capacity, you can create your XML document yourself. If not, we can create it for you.
Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
A great way to drive extra traffic to your website is by using Pay Per Click or PPC advertising. It’s quite simple and pretty quick to get up and running but if you’re not careful and monitor your spend it can get expensive very quickly.
A lot of people broad match a selection of generic keywords, which is effective in that it will generate traffic to your website, but if it does not generates sales or leads then that traffic is a waste of your PPC money. We carefully monitor conversion rates and click through rates across your adverts and campaigns so we will make sure that your money is spent on traffic that converts for you and shows a return on your investment.
Website Design
We provide a full design service. From initial concepts, through wireframes, to photoshop mockups right up to creating the user interface for your website. With this, combined with our experience in branding and identity design, we will help create a fully cohesive brand and front end to your website, integrating the user experience seemlessly into the visual to make your website not only attractive but importantly easy to use.
Please take a look at our portfolio for examples of sites we have created.
Design for Print
We offer a wide selection of print design services including:
- Branding and logo design
- Corporate identity
- Stationary
- Brochures and reports
- Flyers and postcards
- Posters and displays
Development
Our developers are experienced in multiple programming languages but we predominantly work using PHP with open source software such as Drupal, Magento and WordPress. We develop bespoke modules for integrating websites into third party systems to cut down on duplication and make your website work harder for you.
Areas of expertise:
- Drupal Content Management
- Drupal bespoke module creation
- XML integration
- Bespoke Content Management Systems
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Magento Ecommerce
- CiviCRM
- WordPress Content Management
- Google Adwords, Analytics, Webmaster tools, Adsense and Website optimiser integration
Multivariate Testing
Picture the scenario; your marketing people have written a new slogan, your web designer has made a new layout and your graphics guys have designed a new logo. Your MD likes the logo but hates the copy, your sales Director loves the copy but hates the layout and you love the layout but hate the logo.
You could argue these points for ever, you could ask more people in your organisation, you could employ consultants to decide for you, you could flip a coin or ask Paul the psychic octopus.
And you would probably still get it wrong.
The best, simplest and cheapest way to make the decision is to test. In the scenario above, you have two logos, two layouts and two slogans. If you were to make every possible combination you have eight different versions of the page – 2 x 2 x 2 = 8.
Multivariate testing lets you test each version of the page on real life customers – without them even knowing you’re testing.
Multivariate testing generates all the possible versions of your page, displays them randomly to each visitor and measures the conversion rate for each one. Not only that, it tells you which area – logo, slogan or layout – has the biggest effect on conversion.
You get to make the decision based on real results from your visitors, not on the personal opinions and vested interests of individuals. Clever huh?
Usability Testing
Just when you think you’ve made something idiot proof, someone goes
and builds a better idiot. We know your visitors aren’t idiots, but if
you make your site so a 5 year old can use it then your visitors will
be able to do so without even thinking about it.
You already know how to use your site, so do the people who built it,
but what about your visitors?Small stumbling blocks in the journey
through your site can cost you a fortune in missed opportunities and
you and your designers may not be able to see the wood for the trees.
Usability testing should be done early, before you launch and
certainly before you start spending money promoting it. Usability
studies needn’t be expensive, they’re no longer the preserve of the
big boys, getting real life people who weren’t involved in building
your site to test it for you is the best money you will ever spend.